A 2022 observational study publicized by Harvard Health claimed that drinking coffee could significantly lower your risk of dying. Is that true? Wasn't there a study in recent memory claiming that coffee would give you cancer? Well, it...

St. John's Wort has been used for centuries as a treatment for a wide variety of ailments. It's often promoted in modern times as a treatment for depression, ADHD, and many others. So, what does the research say? Is St. John's Wort...

A recent headline sounded the alarm about a study that found that smartphone use was related to the early onset of puberty in children. This headline was a real triple threat: fear of technology, children under threat, and sexualization...

Marijuana is the most commonly used recreational drug among pregnant people, and there are a lot of clashing opinions about whether or not it's safe. But what do the data say? Today we dive into the studies about marijuana use during...

Many people like to argue about whether video games cause violence, but what about evidence for the positive effects games might have? The research is out there, so what do we think about it?

There’s a lot of buzz around beauty products and how the chemicals in them may affect hormones, and thus contribute to the development of certain cancers. How much weight should we give to studies that report these associations?

Massive storms, flooding, extreme heat, droughts, air pollution, increased rates of disease, changes to our food and water… global warming, and the changes to climate that come with it, are increasing human health risks. Our physical...

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, making it difficult for researchers to study, and difficult to understand how it may help or harm our health. A recently passed bill is aimed at making marijuana research easier to conduct,...

The 2022 Shkreli Awards have been released! Each year, the Lown Institute passes out awards as a way of reporting on dysfunction in the US health care system. Dysfunction in healthcare is one of our foundational pillars here at...

Climate change is causing weather events that are a direct threat to human life. We’re not gonna lie, this is an anxiety-provoking topic, as is much of the conversation surrounding climate change. Increased heat, changing precipitation...

The Covid lab escape theory! This has been in the background for a while, but it came roaring to the forefront when a prominent news source claimed that the US Department of Energy concluded that Covid was the result of a laboratory leak...

Headlines recently blared about the new review that looked at how effective masks are at preventing the transmission of flu-like disease. Cochrane reviews are well respected, and the media coverage about the recent review has been hard...

Is the ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot more empathetic than your doctor? And does it deliver higher quality information? A recent study suggest that might be the case. At first glance we figured, sure, a chatbot never gets bored...

We’re back with another episode on climate change and health, and this time we’re looking at some of the indirect health effects, with a focus on how things like air pollution and allergens arise from a warming planet and make us sick,...

Are there harms of artificial sweeteners that outweigh the benefits? We’ve asked this question before at Healthcare Triage, and the answer was no! There are lots of data that suggest artificial sweeteners are bad, but none of those data...

Cold plunging is…almost exactly what it sounds like: Immersing your body one way or another in super cold water. Some people do this by hopping in a tub full of ice water, some people take very cold showers, or some people dive into...

Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, strikes fear into the hearts of parents, especially those with very young babies. It’s not very kind to other compromised populations, either. We’ve been working toward a vaccine for a long time, and...

A recent study conducted in the United Kingdom claims that breastfeeding makes for smarter kids when they reach the ripe old age of 16. If I had to guess, I’d guess that you were thinking, “So what, don’t we already know that kids are...

In our last climate episode we took a look at how climate change affects the spread of infectious disease. Unfortunately, that isn’t the end of our discussion of disease on a warming planet. Waterborne diseases are already a serious...

RFK Jr. is claiming that scientists do not test vaccines with placebo-controlled trials, specifically against a saline placebo, and that all he’s asking for is that they are tested this way, as all other medicines are.



On its...

So far in our adventures on climate change and health, we’ve covered the critical issue of how our water supply is impacted by a warming planet, and that is a perfect segue into something equally important: The impact of climate change...

Back in 2021 we did an episode on Semaglutide, the then-recently-approved drug for weight loss that was originally approved for Type 2 diabetes. Since that episode another paper has come out on what happens to weight when the drug is...

Misinformation. A recent and major problem facing us all, and one that is pervasive in many realms including medicine and healthcare, which are, of course, favorite realms around here. But is all this stuff recent? Is misinformation a...

In the first part of this three-episode series we touched on the fact that misinformation has been around for a long time, and that it may seem like a recent problem because the internet has forever changed the way we share...