Health

If a middle-aged or older woman with a normal body mass index wants to maintain her weight over an extended period, she must engage in the equivalent of 60 minutes…

In a new study, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health find that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated ones is likely to help reduce the risk of heart disease.

Although for nearly 60 years people have been urged to decrease their consumption of saturated fats to prevent heart disease, there has been surprisingly little scientific evidence that doing so actually decreases the risk of coronary heart disease events

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 375 2142 Harvard University 17 4 2630 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false The general theory of cancer development holds…

Assistant clinical professor of psychology Deirdre Barrett says that many of today’s ills come from intentional overstimulation of natural human impulses, giving people hard-to-resist appetites for everything from fighting to sex to unhealthy foods.

Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, and a team of collaborators have observed for the first time that the risk of multiple…

The trauma experienced during war may increase the risk of developing asthma, according to the results of a  new study by Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard…

Former FDA commissioner David Kessler says overeating has to be attacked the same way that tobacco was in the past, by making it socially unacceptable.

Amyloid-beta protein – the primary constituent of the plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients – may be part of the body’s first-line system to defend against infection.…

Research suggests that the brain’s lateral prefrontal cortex plays an important role in showing how well someone can rebound emotionally the day after an argument.

José Cordero, dean of the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Public Health, said that the progress made in the 20th century on infant mortality has revealed new health concerns stemming from that success: how to reduce birth defects and provide care for the greater number of children who are surviving them.

The Museum of Comparative Zoology’s invertebrate collection continues to expand, as biology professor Gonzalo Giribet brings home samples from the deep ocean in the North Atlantic.

Assistant Professor of Medicine Louise Ivers shares her story of being caught in the Jan. 12 earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Risk factors for childhood obesity may be evident before birth and are more likely to occur in African-American and Hispanic children than in Caucasian children. Researchers studied 1,826 mother-child pairs from pregnancy through the child’s first five years of life.

Normal 0 0 1 751 4281 35 8 5257 11.1282 0 0 0 Efforts to prevent childhood obesity should begin far earlier than currently thought — perhaps even before birth…

Bruce Smith, of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, discusses the rise of agriculture in a talk at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

In a lecture, neuroscientist Eric Kandel ’52 said that researchers have learned that short-term memory, the ability to recall things for minutes or hours, is fundamentally different from long-term memory, which holds information for weeks, months, even a lifetime.

Nearly a month after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, paramedic Anthony Croese looked into the crowd outside a destroyed orphanage near Port-au-Prince and spotted an emaciated baby cradled in his father’s arms.

Overeating in mice triggers a molecule once considered to be only involved in detecting and fighting viruses to also destroy normal metabolism, leading to insulin resistance and setting the stage…

Skeletons of whales diving and breaching are enlivening the lobby of Harvard’s new Northwest Laboratory building, bringing the killer whale and bottlenose whale specimens new prominence more than 70 years after they were last exhibited.

JoAnn Manson leads a nationwide study to assess whether vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids can boost immunity and protect against ailments from heart disease to cancer.

The best scientific insights, which ultimately may lead to the solution of the world’s great puzzles, do not always come from the experts in the fields in question. Sometimes they…

Harvard biology professor Richard Wrangham talks about the importance of cooking in human origins.

New research suggests that barefoot running is far less stressful on feet than running in shoes, if runners learn how to alter their strides properly to reduce impact.

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center (JDC) have taken a major step toward eventually understanding — and perhaps slowing — the aging process. In a series…

Harvard researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered a “gene activity signature” that predicts a high risk of cancer recurrence in some breast tumors that have been treated with…

A study that analyzed data from 36,827,828 U.S. babies born at full-term between 1990 and 2005 has found that birth weights decreased by up to 2.78 ounces during that time frame.

Thirteen-pound babies may make headlines, but they aren’t the norm. In fact, U.S. infants are getting smaller, according to Harvard researchers at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute’s Department of…

Some mouse sperm can discriminate between their brethren and the competing sperm from other males, showing an unusual behavioral complexity.

A new technique for screening drugs’ effects on zebrafish behavior is pointing Harvard University scientists toward unexpected compounds and pathways that may govern sleep in humans.