Living Well

Sometimes, doctors can be killers.

I'm not talking about homicide. I mean that the folks we trust with our lives make lethal mistakes... And it happens more often than you might expect.

One of the deadliest cancers is about to claim more lives than ever.

Doctors expect liver cancer to claim 31,780 lives in the U.S. this year. It's one of the deadliest cancers you can get. That's because it's often undiagnosed until it's already advanced.

There's nothing like a small-town Fourth of July parade... and it's something Albert never missed. In his mid-60s, he's helped organize and run his hometown parade for most of his life.

But this year, he didn't see the parade.

Every pill you take could spell disaster.

I'm not talking about possible overdoses or getting the wrong prescription (like my mother did)... I'm talking about increased fall risk for folks who take multiple meds.

We now live in an age where a computer virus could hurt your body as much as a biological one.

If this seems far-fetched, you haven't paid attention to the news...

You weren't the only one happy about a warmer winter... So were these blood-sucking pests.

This past winter, much of the U.S. had a warmer and milder winter than usual. (Here in Maryland, we saw more than a few days of 70-plus degrees in the middle of winter.) That's the perfect environment for ticks.

Our children and grandchildren are growing "horns."

Or at least, that's what the popular media want you to believe...

I'm sick of kids and their video games.

I don't have anything against the games, per se. A few hours a week of video games improves skills like problem-solving. But too many young folks spend far too much time hunched over a screen or controller, shut off from the outside world.

Most people don't understand the odds.

Many folks struggle with statistical probability. Take the birthday problem... In a room of 23 people, there's a 50% chance two of those people have the same birthday. But if you have 75 people in a room together, the chance of two of them sharing the same birthday is 99.9%. Reaching a nearly 100% probability with just 75 people seems crazy... Surely you need more people, right? But it's statistically correct!

"How to Live Longer With These Three Lifestyle Changes."

That kind of promise makes for a splashy headline. We saw plenty of titles like this one (which was from HuffPost U.K.) last week in the wake of an article from researchers at Harvard. Published in Circulation, the article has a giant promise: These three interventions, if applied globally, will prevent 94 million premature deaths.