If you had to pick one metric to sum up how well your body is aging, what would it be? Blood pressure? Cholesterol? Body weight? All of these are important. But there’s another number that outperforms each of these when it comes to predicting longevity. And...
Ask people what they do to protect their memory and cognition, and you’ll hear a familiar list: Eat well. Exercise. Do puzzles. Stay socially connected. Get quality sleep. Almost nobody says, “Get my hearing checked.” And yet, when researchers rank...
Hormones work by fitting into receptors that are found throughout your body. Hormone molecules are kind of like keys, and hormone receptors are like the locks that fit those keys. When a hormone molecule meets its corresponding receptor, a message is sent. And that...
Medications transforming the world of weight loss could have an unexpected secondary benefit: Protecting the brain from age-related decline. A growing body of evidence suggests that GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide and tirzepatide may be associated with reductions in...
Over the past two decades, researchers have come to think of skeletal muscle as being more than just machinery. Rather, it’s an endocrine organ that manufactures and releases chemical messengers into your bloodstream. This reframe has important implications for...
The mouth doesn’t get much respect (or attention) within the medical world. Have you ever wondered why that is? Or more specifically, why oral health is mostly cordoned off from other aspects of your health? Does that make sense? It turns out this separation...
While anemia has dominated discussions of COVID-19’s hematologic effects, an emerging and clinically important finding is elevated hematocrit in the post-acute phase of infection. As millions of patients recover—or partially recover—from COVID-19, a subset...
Once upon a time, sex was good. But then menopause happened. And somewhere between the hot flashes, the sleep disruption, the vaginal changes, and the way your body started feeling unfamiliar to you, your sex life quietly faded away. Maybe it’s been months....
Americans are living longer than ever before, thanks in large part to advances in medical technology, sanitation, hygiene, and nutrition. On the surface, that sounds like good news. And in some ways, it is. But here’s what doesn’t get nearly enough...
Do you envision the aging process unfolding somewhat uniformly over time? Like a slow, continuous drift in one direction? It turns out that picture isn’t quite accurate. Emerging research has identified something more specific (and less consistent): There appear...
