OK, weight training doesn’t exactly burn belly fat, but it does appear to keep it off. How do we know? Because researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health say so. HealthDay reports that when researchers at the school compared the body composition and training habits of more than 10,000 […]

If your knees make disturbing popping sounds when you squat, New York Times’ health answer man Anahad O’Connor can tell you what to do about it: nothing. That’s right, nothing. Writing in the Times, O’Connor reports that “the crackling or popping sound you hear is known as crepitus. In some […]

Hoping to get through this winter without a cold? Hug somebody, or persuade somebody to hug you. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are convinced that hugs and other forms of perceived social support can keep people from getting sic, or sicker. A Carnegie Mellon news release reports that the researchers […]

When can you stop weighing yourself? Whenever you want to, but if you really want to keep losing weight, it’s best to weigh-in at least once a week. That’s the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, where scientists analyzed 2,838 weight measurements (up to a years’ worth […]

When you lose weight, where does the fat go? Don’t ask your doctor: new research at the University of New South Wales suggests that more than 50 percent of doctors think it’s converted to energy. Wrong. The correct answer is into the air, breathed out as carbon dioxide. A UNSW […]

People who feel younger than their age may actually be right–they may be younger than their age–healthwise, at least. Researchers at University College in London are convinced that feeling “young at heart” is a good indicator how long we will live. How do they know? Because when they followed more […]

Atrial fibrillation–doctors know it as AF,  you know it a disturbing irregular heartbeat–can be bad for your health. It is usually remedied with a procedure called catheter ablation, in which electricity is used to burn the tissue around the problem area. Strange, but it works, somewhat. Now comes a study […]

People who like people are the luckiest people in the world, in part because they appear to have stronger immune systems than people who don’t like people. (It remains unclear if people who don’t like people are the least lucky people in the world.) Futurity reports that when researchers at […]

Here’s a cheerful holiday entertainment: find the likelihood that you will suffer from heart disease. The new online calculator for cardiovascular disease is brought to you by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health, and claims to estimate the 20-year risk that you will develop cardiovascular disease (CVD). It’s a somewhat lengthy […]

Forget the money; let’s talk about time alive. A new study by researchers at McGill University Health Centre suggests that being fat can shorten our life by three to eight years. The study, which used data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (from years 2003 to 2010) to […]