​Diets like intermittent fasting are proving wildly popular for their rapid weight-loss effects, but scientists are also starting to uncover how they might benefit the body in other ways. A molecule produced during fasting has now been found to apply the brakes to aging of the vascular system.

It's a devastating case that serves as the medical warning we didn't even know we needed. An organ donor unknowingly bequeathed her undetected, malignant cancer at the same time as her organs.

Artificial trans fats will be off Canadian plates for good, as the final step to ban them in Canada is scheduled to take effect Monday. Researchers believe a ban could prevent up to 12,000 heart attacks in Canada over 20 years.

Doctors have reported a case where three patients died from breast cancer which they contracted from a single organ donor, a 53-year old woman with the disease whose kidneys, lungs, liver and heart were transplanted. After suffering a stroke in 2007 the woman’s organs were donated to five people, but her diagnosis was not known to doctors and four patients contracted aggressive “donor derived” breast cancers.

A year ago, a 24-year-old woman with depression was given an unusual prescription by her doctor: a weekly swim in cold water. The patient, Sarah, was filmed as part of the BBC documentary series The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs, presented by Christoffer van Tulleken, a doctor and researcher at University College London.

"Three months in a hospital bed. Check," the actor wrote on his Twitter Friday evening. It was the first tweet Perry has written since March. Friends alum Matthew Perry penned his first tweet since March 23 on Friday to announce that he has spent the last three months in the hospital. "Three months in a hospital bed. Check," the actor wrote.

Results from a large international study show that risks from taking daily low-dose aspirin outweigh the potential benefits for older people in generally good health.

MIT professor Dina Katabi is building a gadget that can sit in one spot and track everything from breathing to walking, no wearables required.

A strange thing has happened to men over the past few decades: We've become increasingly infertile, so much so that within a generation we may lose the ability to reproduce entirely.

A lack of regulation has created enormous genetic families. Now they are searching for one another.

Money has poured into Alzheimer's research, but until very recently not much of it went toward investigating infection in causing dementia. A million dollar prize may lead more scientists to try.

Ever wonder why some people seem to feel less pain than others? A study conducted at Wake Forest School of Medicine may have found one of the answers—mindfulness. "Mindfulness is related to being aware of the present moment without too much emotional reaction or judgment," said the study's lead author, Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomy at the medical school, part of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "We now know that some people are more mindful than others, and those people seemingly feel less pain."

Children whose mothers take fish oil supplements during pregnancy have more muscle and stronger bones in early childhood, a new trial has found. Research from the University of Copenhagen has found that women who took the omega-3 fatty acid pills daily from halfway through their pregnancy had children with a higher BMI by age six. X-ray scans revealed these children weren’t simply carrying more unhealthy fat as they also had more lean muscle, and higher bone density than the children whose mothers took an olive oil placebo pill instead.

It's entirely possible, albeit rare, for patients taking antibiotics or antipsychotics to develop a sticky, black mess on top of their tongue. Warning: possibly NSFL.

Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and 26 when he died. He couldn't afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies, so he tried to stretch the doses.

A cancer patient who lost most of his penis to a flesh-eating superbug after routine surgery has won a six-figure payout. Andrew Lane, 63, contracted the potentially fatal infection necrotising fasciitis after an operation to remove his prostate gland in March 2013. His bowel was punctured during the procedure at Southend hospital in Essex, but staff only noticed the injury six days later, his lawyers said.

Body mass index, or BMI, is currently the most widely used method for assessing whether someone is overweight or underweight. But now scientists think they've come up with a new and improved alternative: say hello to the relative fat mass index...

Probiotics are a booming business, with sales in the billions of dollars each year and millions of customers in the US alone. Companies claim that the microbial concoctions can help consumers do anything from lose weight to sleep better, but researchers report inconsistent effects on people’s microbiomes.

I have always been a tolerant and loyal opposition user of Cupertino's products. Now I am committed to using them, forever.

New HIV diagnoses in the UK have fallen to their lowest level since 2000, figures show. There was a 17% drop in the number of new diagnoses last year, declining from 5,280 in 2016 to 4,363 in 2017, Public Health England (PHE) said. Numbers have reduced by more than a quarter (28%) since 2015 and are at their lowest since 2000, when there were 3,989.

Italian state schools will no longer demand parents prove that their children have been vaccinated, the country’s new populist government has announced. Lega leader Matteo Salvini said he considered 10 vaccines - the amount Italian schoolchildren are required by law to have - to not only be useless, but potentially dangerous, in the run-up to the general election in March 2018. The new policy is likely to stoke fears that the coalition government, which also includes the Five Star Movement, may look to legislate other campaign promises which critics argue are not grounded in scientific proof.

Jet hand dryers spread dangerous bacteria around bathrooms and are significantly less hygienic than traditional paper towels, scientists have found. An international study in hospitals established that modern dryers create an aerosol effect, blasting E. Coli as well as traces of faeces and the bacteria responsible for septicaemia onto surfaces. While the devices can often be activated without being touched, which is supposed to improve hygiene, they are problematic because people fail to properly wash their hands, the experts said.

It’s been touted as the recipe for a healthy life, preventing all manner of ills. Now researchers say a Mediterranean diet still offers benefits in older age and could reduce the risk of death. While somewhat nebulous in specific makeup, the diet is typically said to be rich in fish, nuts, fresh vegetables, olive oil and fruit.

There is an urgent need to get people moving, according to research by the World Health Organisation which warns that a quarter of the global population, and more in wealthy countries, are becoming less and less active, damaging their physical and mental health. Around 1.4 billion adults are not physically active enough to stay healthy, says the research. One in three women and one in four men do not take enough exercise or move about enough, too often sitting at desks all day at work, in front of the TV in the evening and travelling by car.

Despite an international agreement, U.S. health authorities still have not received H7N9 avian flu specimens from their Chinese counterparts.

The number of dementia cases is predicted to more than double in the next three decades.

A Texas hospital that charged a teacher $108,951 for care after a 2017 heart attack told the patient Thursday it would slash the bill to $332.29 — but not before a story about the huge charge sparked a national conversation over what should be done to combat surprise medical bills that afflict a growing number of Americans.

Leoni Kahumbu remembers the night her 15-year-old daughter, Pascaline, first showed signs of Ebola. She found her fainted on the bathroom floor, blood everywhere. "She did not even have the strength to get up.… I called an ambulance," Kahumbu said. Experts came to their home the next day to disinfect the house. The 48-year-old and her three other children were isolated but have not come down with the often deadly virus.

New research identifies the various ways in which we’re most likely to come into contact with communicable diseases at airports. Turns out that toilets are surprisingly clean, but the same cannot be said for those plastic bins used at airport security, which are absolutely covered in viruses.

Pregnant women with high levels of DDT in their blood are more likely to have children who develop autism, according to NIEHS grantees.

Plastic trash less than 5 millimeters long is in the things we eat and drink, and the air we breathe. Scientists are just beginning to study where it comes from and how it might affect our health.

Governments should consider advising people to abstain entirely, say authors

Migration and a global shipping network have flattened biodiversity worldwide.

China has culled more than 38,000 pigs in a bid to contain an outbreak of African swine fever that has also reared its head in Europe and is threatening international pork supplies. The cull followed the discovery of the disease in five Chinese provinces, according to the country's ministry of agriculture. The current outbreak dates back to at least 2014, when reports detailed cases in Lithuania, Poland, Latvia and Estonia.

You'd think elephants would be getting cancer left and right, but they have evolved resistance. They're being studied for clues about how to treat cancer in humans.