ArcaMax

A new federal report, based on 2016 data, says that more than three-quarters of pregnant women start prenatal care in their first trimester -- a key factor toward ensuring a healthy pregnancy and newborn.

Less than 5 percent of women start in the third trimester; and only 1.6 percent get no prenatal care at all.

Of particular interest are ...Read more

The number of parents with kids in the home who smoke marijuana is growing. Researchers writing in the journal Pediatrics found that 7 percent of parents with children living with them had used cannabis in the past month, up from 5 percent in 2002. Parents who smoked tobacco products were nearly four times more likely to also smoke cannabis.

...Read more

More people are using e-cigarettes, but maybe for the wrong reason. It's presumed -- and advertised -- that e-cigarettes can help ease smokers out of their tobacco habits. But a study involving 6,000 smokers who were given free smoking cessation aids like e-cigs or nicotine patches in a work wellness program did not quit smoking in appreciable...Read more

Even as the debate on taxing sugary drinks continues to be waged (in some places), advocates are looking at expanding the arena (along with our consumptive waistlines). In the United Kingdom, researchers collected household spending data on different types of food and drinks, and then used that information to calculate how price changes would ...Read more

In a new study published in the journal Circulation, researchers describe a handful of healthy habits linked to adding years to life expectancy. They used decades of health data from more than 120,000 people to look at five factors: eating healthy, exercising regularly, maintaining a healthy body weight, not drinking too much and not smoking. ...Read more

We are becoming a nation of better Boy Scouts, whose motto is "Be Prepared." In its latest annual assessment of the nation's day-to-day readiness for managing health emergencies, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says the U.S. scores a 7.1 on a 10-point scale, up 3 percent from last year and nearly 11 percent since the index began five years ...Read more

In China, there is an indoor farm that raises cockroaches -- about 6 billion per year. It's the biggest farm of its type in the world, but not the only one. There are at least 100 other large-scale Chinese farms.

What's the demand for the insect, which has never seemed to have much trouble breeding abundantly on its own, in the wild or in the...Read more

The Journal of the American Medical Association just published a study by the U.S. Burden of Disease Collaborators, looking at causes of death and disease in the United States.

The top five causes of death from 1990 to 2016 were ischemic heart disease; lung, tracheal or bronchial cancer; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; Alzheimer's ...Read more

If you've ever participated in a sleep study, you know that one of the aspects that ironically keeps you awake is having myriad electrodes and wires connected to various parts of your body to monitor such things as breathing, brain activity and temperature.

Biomedical engineers may have found an answer to the latter with penny-sized sensors ...Read more

According to a new ranking by U.S. News & World Report and the Aetna Foundation, the healthiest community in the country is Falls Church, Virginia, based on categories such as education, infrastructure and population health, which takes into account access to care, mental health and health outcomes.

The survey ranked 3,000 communities and ...Read more

Disparities in heart health among ethnicities in the U.S. have narrowed in recent years, according to a new analysis, but not in a good way. Most Americans do not have healthy hearts -- at least as healthy as their doctors or medical guidelines would suggest.

The analysis, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that less than 40 ...Read more

A report in JAMA looked at health care spending in the U.S. and other high-income countries. The findings might make you a bit queasy. The U.S. spent approximately $1,443 per person on health care in 2016, almost twice the next highest country, Switzerland at $939 per person.

It wasn't because Americans use health care more often than ...Read more

If you have hypertension, a chronic condition that affects an estimated third of U.S. adults, your blood pressure isn't the only thing on the high side. So, too, are your health care costs. The Health Care Cost Institute says that in 2016, adults with hypertension spent 3.2 times more in total and 2.2 times more in out-of-pocket costs for ...Read more