An estimated 9 million Americans turn to prescription pills when they can’t sleep, but a new study of middle-aged women finds taking the drugs for a year or longer may do little good. Comparing a group of about 200 women who were medicated for sleep problems with over 400 women who had sleeping problems but…  read on >  read on >

Steaks and burgers could be killing thousands of Americans each year, but in a way most people wouldn’t expect — via air pollution. That’s the conclusion of a new study estimating that airborne particles generated by food production kill nearly 16,000 Americans each year. Pollution related to animal products — most notably beef — accounts…  read on >  read on >

Maintaining adequate social distance from strangers — a key COVID-19 preventive measure — can be tough when you’re drinking alcohol, researchers say. In a new study, the researchers put more than 200 young social drinkers in different social situations in laboratory settings. They drank either alcoholic or nonalcoholic beverages. In half of the cases, participants…  read on >  read on >

When young women land in the emergency room with chest pain, they wait longer and get less treatment than their male counterparts, a preliminary study finds. Using a federal survey of U.S. hospitals, researchers found that younger women with chest pain were treated less urgently than men their age. That included a lower likelihood of…  read on >  read on >

Could having heart disease risk factors in childhood sow the seeds of thinking declines in middle-age? It looks like it might, new research claims. “I think it was not so big of a surprise for us, but maybe for the scientific community who have been focusing mainly on the midlife risk factors and old-age cognition,”…  read on >  read on >