For decades, coffee has occupied an awkward place in conversations about heart health. It contains caffeine, a stimulant that can temporarily raise blood pressure and make some people feel their heart beating faster. Yet large population st...
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A mosquito bite is usually an itchy annoyance that disappears within a few days. During summer and early autumn in the United States, however, one particular mosquito-borne infection repeate...
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There is ordinary tiredness—the heavy-eyed feeling after a late night, a long flight or an exhausting week—and then there is the more puzzling question: Why am I tired all the time? You slee...
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You are reading an email, driving home or trying to fall asleep when one eyelid begins to flutter. It stops. Ten minutes later it starts again. By the third day, a tiny muscle movement that...
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“Why does my stomach hurt?” sounds like a simple question, but medically it is one of the broadest questions a person can ask. What we casually call the stomach is often the entire abdomen,...
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Some of the most senior people inside the U.S. military recently found themselves in an unusual position: sitting in a room, connected to physiological sensors, answering questions while inv...
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Step out of a dark cinema into brilliant afternoon sunlight and, for some people, the reaction is immediate. The eyes narrow, the nose begins to tingle and within seconds comes an involuntar...
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When George Herbert, the 5th Earl of Carnarvon, died in Cairo on April 5, 1923, the timing was almost too perfect for a sensational story. Only months earlier he had stood with archaeologist...
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Somewhere on Earth, while you read this sentence, babies are being born and people are dying. Others are crossing national borders, changing the population of one country without changing th...
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A dog stops halfway through a walk, lowers its head and begins grazing with the concentration of a miniature cow. For many owners, what happens next seems obvious: the dog must have an upset...
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