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An exercise prescription is worth asking for, especially if you have heart disease or are starting from very little activity. The useful version names what to do, how much, how hard, and when someone will check how it's going. A new statement from the American College of Cardiology gives that request clinical backing. Exercise itself has strong evidence behind it, and you don't need to hit 10,000 steps before it starts to count.
If you enjoy unsweetened tea, there's good reason to keep it in your day. A new study of nearly half a million Chinese adults found regular drinkers developed heart and blood-vessel disease less often. The evidence doesn't yet support drinking more than you'd naturally choose. The study's more consistent associations for black tea than green, and its lowest-risk point at several cups a day, come from observation and haven't been tested as a recipe. Staying active and not smoking remain the habits with the stronger evidence behind them.
In a new study of about 1,000 older Americans, people who napped often, and those who nodded off without intending to, were more likely to be classified with possible or probable dementia later. That makes persistent daytime dozing worth investigating, because it can point to a sleep problem, a medicine, or an early change in memory. It doesn't show that naps cause dementia. A small trial suggests that cutting back on naps may help preserve memory, though nothing yet shows it prevents dementia.
The best-supported way to protect your memory is a plan built around exercise, blood pressure, blood sugar and diet. High-dose DHA hasn't earned a place in that plan yet. In PreventE4, a two-year trial in older adults at risk for dementia, the omega-3 reached the fluid around the brain but didn't improve thinking or slow brain shrinkage. Whether that helps prevent dementia over longer periods is still unproven, so a rising omega-3 level doesn't show that your memory is being protected.
Four minutes a day of chair stands, push-ups, band rows and step-ups helped inactive older adults who had trouble walking get up from a chair faster in a new randomized trial. That makes a short, coached home routine a credible place to start when longer workouts feel out of reach. Balance improved too. Whether the routine helps people walk farther, fall less or stay independent for years is the next thing to test.
Blueberries are a reasonable food to eat when you're feeling low, but a daily blueberry regimen hasn't been shown to reliably relieve depressive symptoms. In the newest trial, sedentary older adults didn't improve significantly more on blueberry powder than on placebo. Earlier studies are split, including one encouraging result. The study's gut findings give researchers something specific to test. For persistent low mood, care with an established track record, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, is better supported for symptom relief.
Older adults in Stockholm whose homes were surrounded by more trees and greenery developed dementia at a lower rate over 16 years. The link was clearest for vegetation closest to home, and it is an association: the study doesn't show that moving or planting more lowers your own risk. The evidence does support using the green space near you as a place to walk, move and unwind. Any additional dementia protection remains uncertain.
Brown fat now looks like a credible treatment target: a Nature study of more than 100,000 patients found that people with more active brown fat had markedly less diabetes and heart disease. Whether deliberately switching it on prevents those diseases remains unproven in people, and the blood pressure drug the researchers flagged increased brown-fat activity in cells and mice. You don't have to wait for that answer. In a randomized trial, exercise cut visceral fat without measurably increasing brown-fat activity.
For almost every blood test your doctor orders, you can eat breakfast first. A new analysis of 9.7 million outpatient results in JAMA Internal Medicine found that only a handful of common lab values shift enough with fasting to change your care. The list is short and predictable: glucose, triglycerides, lipase, GGT, and a few others. Long water-only fasts also have real costs, especially if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea.
The two moves worth making at the dinner table while you're on antibiotics are to cut the added sugar and to lean on fiber-rich plants and fermented foods. A new Nature study makes the sugar part specific. In hospitalized blood-cancer patients on antibiotics, more sugar in the two days before a dose was tied to a further drop in gut bacterial diversity beyond what the drug itself did. The food that feeds your beneficial bacteria does the opposite. These are small changes, but the balance of upside to effort makes them one of the few useful things you can do at home while a course runs.
Any bite, scratch, or saliva contact with a bat, raccoon, skunk, fox, or a stray cat or dog counts as a rabies exposure. So does waking up to a bat in the room, even without a visible mark. Wash the wound hard with soap under running water for 15 minutes, then go to an emergency room the same day. The vaccine-plus-immune-globulin series started before symptoms begin almost always works. A squirrel, mouse, or vaccinated pet you know generally does not count.
Juvmo (tavapadon) is a once-daily Parkinson's pill, and if an older dopamine agonist has caused you or a family member trouble, it's worth asking your neurologist about. It's the first new class of dopamine drug for Parkinson's in decades. In three phase 3 trials it delivered the motor benefit you'd expect from an agonist, with very low rates of the compulsive gambling, sudden sleep, and leg swelling that push so many patients off pramipexole and ropinirole. It's the first agonist in a long time that most patients might be able to stay on.
A six-month wet AMD shot is close but not here yet. Zenkuda, a new anti-VEGF drug from Kodiak Sciences, matched Eylea for vision gains in a Phase 3 trial with more than half of patients dosed only every six months. The results come from a company press release and haven't been peer reviewed, and the drug isn't FDA-approved yet. But for anyone worn out by the frequent injections of wet AMD care, this is the first Phase 3 result showing a majority of patients can hold their vision on a shot every six months.
If you have a fever or real pain in pregnancy, acetaminophen at the lowest dose that works, for as short a time as you need, is still the safest treatment. The strongest evidence to date does not show it raises your child's risk of autism or ADHD. The FDA's September 2025 warning set off the alarm, but the largest sibling-matched studies and a BMJ umbrella review published since do not back the causal link it flagged. The higher risk older cohorts saw seems to track with something families share.
About 1 in 9 older adults who used cannabis in the past year meet clinical criteria for a use disorder. The pattern is recognizable at home: near-daily smoking, hours a day preoccupied with it, cravings, and needing more for the same effect. Most cases are still mild, which is when cutting back and evidence-based behavioral therapy work best.
Emcitate (tiratricol) is now the first FDA-approved drug for MCT8 deficiency. It's a daily oral tablet that lowers the toxic T3 flooding the heart, muscles, and liver of a boy born with this X-linked disease, and in trials it slowed the wasting and tachycardia that have driven early death. It doesn't cure the severe brain and motor disability that defines the syndrome, but it changes what families can do about the body-wide part of the disease. The earlier a family reaches diagnosis and starts dosing, the more of that benefit stays with the child.
Ischemic strokes in adults under 55 are rising because the vascular damage of middle age is arriving earlier. High blood pressure, extra weight, elevated blood sugar, and smoking now show up in people's 30s and 40s. The useful part is that the same levers likely work harder in a younger body. Addressing them together is linked to roughly 70% to 80% lower stroke risk, and the benefit is likely largest when you start in your 30s or 40s.
If you ate breakfast sausage at a restaurant in California, Florida, Michigan, or Nevada in the past week and feel fine, you're almost certainly past the risk from this recall. USDA pulled one lot of Fontanini Item 393 breakfast pork sausage links after two customers reported clear hard plastic in it. The Class I label on the recall describes the worst that could happen to someone who eats it. The product only went to foodservice, so it never reached a grocery shelf or a home freezer.
Camzyos (mavacamten), a daily pill, eased the blocked outflow from the heart in teenagers with symptomatic obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), much as it does in adults. In the trial that got it approved, no adolescent's pumping function fell below the safety threshold. If the next conversation at your teen's HCM clinic has been about septal myectomy or alcohol ablation, the pill is now an FDA-approved alternative to raise. The approval rests on one small trial that lasted 28 weeks, so how teens do on the drug over years is still unknown.
Survodutide's first Phase 3 trial in type 2 diabetes posted up to 13% weight loss in people who stayed on the drug. On paper, that makes it competitive. But the comparisons are cross-trial, far more patients stopped the drug for side effects than on placebo, and no regulator has approved it anywhere. For now, an approved drug like semaglutide or tirzepatide is the one that can help you this year.