Losing weight is hard, but many weight loss supplements promise to make the journey easy. Unfortunately, there’s little high-quality research to back these claims, a new study shows. Hundreds of weight loss supplements like green tea extract, chitosan, guar gum and conjugated linoleic acid are being hawked by aggressive marketers. And an estimated 34% of…  read on >  read on >

The pandemic not only cost hundreds of thousands of American lives, but it also appears to have triggered a deep drop in births, U.S. health officials reported Wednesday. Until 2020, the birth rate had been declining about 2% a year, but that rate dropped to 4% with the start of the pandemic, researchers from the…  read on >  read on >

Rashes, itchiness and other skin problems can develop after people receive COVID-19 vaccines, but such problems are rare and go away quickly, new research shows. For the study, the researchers looked at more than 40,000 employees of a Boston hospital system who received two-dose mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines) and…  read on >  read on >

As vaccination rates among young Americans lag, the White House acknowledged on Tuesday that it will miss two key benchmarks in its nationwide campaign to stop the spread of coronavirus. The first missed goal will be vaccinating 70% of all American adults with at least one shot by July 4, but officials stressed that threshold…  read on >  read on >

Women battling infertility are often given medications to help them conceive, and potential side effects are always a concern. Now, research suggests use of the drugs won’t raise a woman’s odds for breast cancer. Researchers at King’s College London in the United Kingdom analyzed studies from 1990 to January 2020 that included 1.8 million women…  read on >  read on >

Pollen is tough enough for allergy sufferers, but a new study suggests it also helps spread the new coronavirus and other airborne germs. Researchers had noticed a connection between COVID-19 infection rates and pollen concentrations on the National Allergy Map of the United States. That led them to create a computer model of all the…  read on >  read on >

Teaching has always been a stressful job, and now a new survey suggests the pandemic could be driving even more teachers from the time-honored profession. “Teacher stress was a concern prior to the pandemic and may have only become worse,” said study author Elizabeth Steiner, a policy researcher at RAND Corp. “This raises the concern…  read on >  read on >

Young adults who use marijuana appear to have an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide, according to a new study from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). In fact, the risk that someone between 18 and 34 will think about, plan for or attempt suicide increases with the amount of marijuana…  read on >  read on >