Health, features and articles | Educational Science

Dec 31, 2015

New Oregon Law Allows Pharmacists to Prescribe Birth Control Pills

Women in Oregon no longer need a doctor's prescription to get birth control pills, according to a new state law. Instead, they can fill out a health questionnaire and receive oral contraceptives from a licensed pharmacist. The law removes barriers to birth control — typically, women get a prescription during...

Dec 31, 2015

3 High-Tech Ways to Track What You Eat

LAS VEGAS – Keeping track of everything you eat can help you lose weight, but it isn't always as easy to track your every snack and sip as it is to, say, clock how long you jogged today. But now, new gadgets aim to make food tracking easier and more...

Dec 31, 2015

Brief Psychotic Breaks Remain a Mystery

Not all psychotic episodes signal the beginning of a long-term mental health disorder like schizophrenia. In fact, when patients experience one of these short-term breaks with reality, it's not precisely clear how the individuals should be diagnosed. Now, a new study finds there are no significant differences in the prognosis...

Dec 31, 2015

Long-Term Opioid Use Linked to Depression

People who take prescription opioids, which are used for treating pain, for longer than a month may have an increased risk of developing depression, according to a new study. Pain itself can also lead to depression, but in the study, the link between depression and opioid use held even when...

Dec 31, 2015

Some Antibiotics May Change Gut Bacteria in Kids

Children who take certain antibiotics called macrolides to treat an infection may experience changes in their gut bacteria, a new study suggests. And children given more than two courses of macrolides during the first two years of life may face an increased risk of developing asthma and becoming overweight later...

Dec 31, 2015

Addiction Changes Brain Biology in 3 Stages, Experts Say

Experts who research addiction have long argued that it is a disease of the brain. Now, in a new paper, they present a model of addiction, broken down into three key stages, to illustrate how the condition changes human neurobiology. Essentially, each of these three phases affects the brain in...

Dec 31, 2015

Smartphone Trick Could Change Your Sedentary Lifestyle

Using reminders on your smartphone to prompt you to get moving during the day could help you reduce the amount of time you spend sitting, a new study suggests. The researchers found that people in the study who used such smartphone reminders spent 3 percent less time sitting per day,...

Dec 31, 2015

It's Not Your Fault You Sleep-In on Weekends (Op-Ed)

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Sleeping in over the weekend is one of life’s great pleasures. Yet some of us are much better at it than others. A teenager is much more likely to...

Dec 31, 2015

Grey Matters: Scientists Link Brain Size and Smarts

Having a big head might not be such a bad thing, if it means you have a gigantic brain. Animals with bigger brains may be better problem-solvers, according to a new study. Scientists long thought a correlation existed between an animal's relative brain size and its cognitive abilities, but even...

Nov 30, 2017

New Migraine Drugs May Stop Headaches Before They Start

People with frequent — sometimes daily — migraines may benefit from a new class of medications intended to prevent these severe headaches before they start, two new studies suggest. Both of the studies tested long-acting drugs that were administered as injections once a month, to once every three months. The...

Nov 30, 2017

Solar Eclipse Damage to Woman's Eye Revealed in Striking Images

Using a new type of imaging, doctors were able to peer into the eyes of a young woman and see — on the cellular level — the type of damage that occurs from looking directly at the sun during an eclipse. The woman, who is in her 20s, damaged her...

Nov 30, 2017

Health Stats: The Best and Worst States

Massachusetts is the overall healthiest state in the union, according to the 2017 America's Health Rankings Report by the United Health Foundation. Mississippi is the least healthy. But on individual metrics, the states vary widely. Here are the highest- and lowest-ranking states for each of the 35 different measures of...

Nov 30, 2017

Brewing Health Benefits: Hot Tea May Lower Glaucoma Risk

Hot tea may do more than warm your insides: Drinking at least one cup of caffeinated tea a day may lower a person's risk for glaucoma, a new study suggests. Researchers found that daily hot-tea drinkers were 74 percent less likely to be diagnosed with glaucoma, compared with those who...

Nov 30, 2017

When Do Children Develop Their Gender Identity?

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Gender is generally thought of as a stable trait: we are born male or female and we stay that way as we grow from small children to adults. It...

Nov 30, 2017

Cellphone Guidelines Won't Harm, But They Probably Won't Help Either

There's no harm in following California's new cellphone guidelines detailing how to reduce exposure to a phone's radio-frequency (RF) energy, but know this: There's no science showing that following these guidelines will make you safer, experts said. That's because large, high-quality studies have failed to find any big, adverse health...