Dietary supplements send more than 20,000 people to the emergency room every year, according to a study conducted by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The New York Times reports on the research, which tracked emergency room visits at a large network of […]

How good is physical therapy for lower back pain? Not so good, according to researchers at the University of Utah, who followed more than 200 people with recent-onset low back pain who were randomly assigned to physical therapy or no treatment for the first month after their pain began. HealthDay reports that […]

Is drinking a beer after a dehydrating workout a good idea or a bad idea? According to the Wall Street Journal, it depends. The Journal quotes Jim White, owner of Jim White Fitness & Nutrition Studios in Virginia Beach, Va., advising us that, while the body needs carbs after a workout, […]

Researchers have known for a while that the pleasure and reward centers of the brain are activated in similar ways by exercise and by dangerous drugs. Yes, think runners’ high. Now, a news release from the University of Missouri reports that researchers at the school have found that activating these pleasure […]

Want to make sure you go back to the gym? Get some online peers to guilt trip you. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that the social influence of online peers is more effective for improving people’s exercise habits than motivational messages from you health club or employer. A […]

We can thank researchers at Chapman University for this advice about what we–both men and women–look for when we look for a mate. The findings –what people find “desirable” and “essential” in a long-term partner –are based on two of the largest national studies of mate preferences ever conducted. Here’s […]

If you’re over 50 and thinking about taking calcium supplements to improve bone density, think again. Two recent large-scale studies attempted to find exactly how helpful calcium could be, when taken either in dietary or supplemental form, and the answer turned out to be….not very helpful. Nicholas Bakalar reports in […]

Cannabis, yes, marijuana, has been found to be a “reasonably safe” choice for pain relief by researchers at McGill University. In what is called the largest study of the long-term use of marijuana for pain relief, researchers found that patients with chronic pain who used cannabis daily for one year, […]

First, Bryan Ferry told us that Love is a drug; now researchers at the University of Sydney are suggesting that exercise could soon be a drug too. A University of Sydney news story reports that researchers at the school have identified 1,000 molecular changes that occur in our muscles when we […]

Can a ten-minute walk reverse the effects of six hours of sitting? Researchers at the University of Missouri think so, at least in one respect. A U of Missouri news story reports that when researchers compared the vascular function of 11 healthy young men before and after a period of prolonged […]