ArcaMax

Some folks are seemingly obsessed with bargain hunting or extreme couponing. Assumed to be a habit copied from parents, a new study published in The Journal of the Association for Consumer Research suggests there might actually be a genetic component.

Researchers studied more than 100 pairs of twins (identical and fraternal), comparing their ...Read more

The Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers to avoid hand sanitizers from Mexico, which may contain a toxic form of alcohol. Some of these products use methanol or wood alcohol, which can be toxic when absorbed through the skin.

Methanol-contaminated hand sanitizers have been implicated in blindness, cardiac and central nervous ...Read more

New research suggests low-frequency electrical stimulation of the brain may help people reduce obsessive behaviors, such as hoarding. It's estimated the neurological disorder affects nearly 1 billion people worldwide.

Scientists believe obsessive behaviors are the result of abnormal habit-learning. Something goes wrong in the brain where ...Read more

As frustratingly slow as the COVID-19 vaccination rollout has been in the United States, it's a lot worse in many parts of the world, especially lower-income nations. The International Rescue Committee estimates that only 20% of populations in these nations are likely to be vaccinated in 2021.

The reasons for immunizations falling behind, ...Read more

President Joe Biden has asked Americans to embrace mask-wearing for at least the first 100 days of his administration, an effort to stanch the spread of COVID-19. Many Americans say they are amenable and supportive, but that doesn't mean you'll see many of them actually wearing masks.

An online poll, conducted by the USC Dornsife Center for ...Read more

Pulse oximeters are devices clipped painlessly onto fingers to externally measure blood oxygen levels. That would seem to be a singularly straightforward diagnostic, but new research suggests there is a potential racial bias that might put Black patients at risk.

Oximeters work by passing small beams of light through skin and the blood in the...Read more

A recent study found that older patients who underwent surgical procedures on a surgeon's birthday were more likely to die within a month of the procedure compared with those who were operated on any other day.

One possible reason may be surgeons feeling rushed to complete operations on their birthdays to accommodate post-work plans.

...Read more

Winter season or not, the color of nasal mucus can sometimes tell you a lot about your current state of health. It might not be the polite thing to do in company, but next time you blow into a tissue, take a peek. If it's:

Clear: This is normal. Untainted mucus is mostly water with proteins, antibodies and dissolved salts. It's pretty ...Read more

The pandemic has introduced TV viewers to a host of new "experts," but relatively few are actually medical doctors. A published survey of prime-time programming from Fox News, CNN and MSNBC found that only about 1 in 5 of the experts brought on to talk about the coronavirus was a doctor.

The survey covered mid-May to mid-June 2020 and ...Read more

In 25 states, one attempt to battle rising obesity rates among youth has been for schools to send home reports to parents on their children's body mass index, with the idea that the reports might inform and inspire lifestyle changes.

But a study of 29,000 elementary and middle school students in California found that the reports led to little...Read more

A pair of new studies suggest that patients older than 75 may benefit from cholesterol-lowering medications. Older persons have typically not been targeted for such medications, because the drugs can take a few years to produce beneficial results, and evidence of that benefit has been conclusive.

But a recent Danish observational study of 13,...Read more