Health & Medicine

Some research suggests that the gut microbiome influences our risk of heatstroke, with elevated exercise levels raising body temperature to unsafe levels and increasing gut permeability—causing a "leaky" gut.

Some animals, including certain tropical ants, have little or no bacterial populations in their gut, upending the idea that all animals rely on such microbes to help maintain their health and proper functioning.

Fecal transplants can help treat infections by transplanting healthy gut bacteria from a donor into a patient's gastrointestinal tract using samples of human waste, which are turned into a liquid mixture and often delivered via a colonoscopy procedure.

Scientists suspect that Alexander the Great and Rudyard Kipling are among the public figures that may have died from food poisoning.

Normal body temperature varies from one person to another; it's not uniformly 98.6 F, as physician Carl Wunderlich determined in the 1800s.

Too little stress can be as problematic for our health as too much stress, because mild or moderate stress—followed by recovery—helps make us resilient.

Birds, rodents, monkeys, lizards, bats, apes, and livestock can all get malaria—just like humans.

Mosquitoes top the ranking of the world's deadliest animals.

Q-tips were invented in the 1920s, and originally marketed for cleaning babies.

Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, does not come from monkeys but it was first identified in laboratory monkeys in 1958.

Unlike food allergens, encountering inhaled allergens—like pollen—rarely causes life-threatening illness.

World records are often broken later in the day—and scientists wonder if muscle clocks explain the difference.

The first major norovirus outbreak, in 1968, sickened half an elementary school.

Measles evolved from an ancient cattle disease, perhaps as recently as 3,000 years ago.

In 1982, around 20% of the people who ate some of the roughly 7,400 bags of cashews sold as part of a Little League fundraiser in Pennsylvania broke out in rashes because of natural urushiol residue on the nuts that hadn't been removed and fully cooked off—the same allergy-inducing substance found in poison ivy.

The study of dreams, formally called oneirology, has evolved over the centuries, from anecdotal interpretations to advanced brain imaging.

See how a novel gene editing technique called base editing can create precise changes in a single DNA base, using a more precise targeting approach than CRISPR-Cas9.

Most penicillin allergy diagnoses are wrong, leading to costlier, less effective treatments and contributing to the growing problem of antibiotic resistance.

Explore 3D models of some of the most dangerous viruses, allowing us to understand these and other pathogens in new ways.

Black patients are losing their limbs at a rate triple that of other groups due in large part to inequities in diabetes care and management.

Even non-amputees can be tricked into thinking they have phantom limbs, a phenomenon some estimates suggest is experienced by as many as 80% of amputees.

Read the 1866 story in The Atlantic that put phantom limbs on the map, a fictional story by a Civil War surgeon that was mistaken for being a true account by many readers.

Read about the longest wheelchair wheelie and other feats in the Guinness Book of World Record's adaptive section.

Prehistoric hunter-gatherers performed amputations and appear to have provided post-op care, according to analysis of a recent fossil discovery from almost 31,000 years ago.

The body produces its own opioids that act on several receptor types throughout the body, triggering the release of dopamine and suppression of noradrenaline, neurotransmitters associated with reward and alertness, respectively.

The REM cycle—named for the 'Rapid Eye Movement' that occurs during this stage of intense dreaming—happens around four to six times per night.

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s is on the rise as people seek it out for myriad reasons—the proportion of non-obesity and non-diabetes-related prescriptions for the drug soared from 4.5% in 2018 to 17% in 2023.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa—an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people—with evidence suggesting it may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

Read a deep dive on the 'all-purpose healing' peptide BPC-157, promoted by bodybuilders, biohackers, and some in the MAHA movement.

Sleeping on a problem does seem to help—in fact research published in 2026 suggests scientists can seed people's dreams with sound cues about a difficult puzzle during REM sleep and they'll be better able to solve it.

Sleep research published in 2021 confirmed that there is a 'creative sweet spot' when people are drifting off to sleep, and that if they wake up at that point to work, it can boost their creative problem-solving.

Sleep is no longer considered a binary state—scientists are seeking to map a variety of liminal states between sleep and waking, including the hypnagogic state associated with boosts of creativity.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak in the DRC is spurring new Ebola vaccine development for the Bundibugyo species.

The 2026 Ebola outbreak is hampered by the lack of a vaccine against the relevant species of the virus, heightening the need for rapid tests to aid in disease control.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Ebola species have historically been named after where they were discovered, stigmatizing residents who live there, including Bundibugyo, in Uganda.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which dates back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

Firework or sparkler burns, even if they cover a relatively small area of skin, can significantly affect our range of motion.

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic content)

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Fireworks-related ER visits are on the rise—in 2024, they increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

Ebola infects and disables immune cells, triggering a cascade of events that leads to small blood clots throughout the body, weakening blood vessels and interrupting blood flow to key organs.

See this overview of the firework rules across all 50 states, ranging from a complete ban on non-professional fireworks in Massachusetts to states with more lax rules like Indiana.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

Scientists have struggled to pin down Ebola's natural reservoir species for decades, but the available evidence suggests that it's very likely fruit and insect-eating bats found in Africa.

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.