Category: Health

Jonathon McPhetres, a newly minted PhD in psychology from the University of Rochester, admits he’s “personally amazed” what we can do with genes, specifically genetically modified food—such as saving papayas from extinction. “We can make crops better, more resilient, and more profitable and easier for farmers to grow so that we can provide more crops around the world,” he says. Yet the practice of altering foods genetically, through the introduction of a gene from a different organism, has courted controversy right from the get-go. While genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are…

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Aging adults often show signs of slowing when it comes to managing their finances, such as calculating their change when paying cash or balancing an account ledger. These changes happen even in adults who are cognitively healthy. But trouble managing money can also be a harbinger of dementia and, according to new Duke research in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease, could be correlated to the amount of protein deposits built up in the brain. “There has been a misperception that financial difficulty may occur only in the late stages…

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A new study has raised the possibility that stress may cause autoimmune disease, such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, because it found a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases among people who were previously diagnosed with stress-related disorders. I have patients who heard about this research and are saying, “I knew it!” But before we accept a potential link between stress and autoimmune disease, let’s look at some details of the study and consider how we define the terms “autoimmune disease,” “stress,” and “stress-related disorder.” What is autoimmune disease? These are…

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