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Health

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Health

Ashwagandha Has Good Trial Data for Stress and a Growing File of Liver Injury Reports

The most popular Ayurvedic herb in the world looks reassuring in clinical trials and much less so in hepatology case series. A systematic review has identified thirty-seven cases of ashwagandha-associated liver injury.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

Dried ashwagandha roots, the part of Withania somnifera that is ground for supplements

Health

Oil Pulling and Tongue Scraping: One Has Modest Evidence, the Other Is Mostly Enthusiasm

Two Ayurvedic oral practices have gone mainstream on very different evidence bases. Neither replaces a toothbrush, and one of them has a Cochrane review that found two trials and forty people.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A stainless steel tongue scraper, the curved blade drawn from the back of the tongue forwards

Health

Nasal Rinsing Works, and the Water You Use Can Kill You

Saline nasal irrigation has reasonable evidence behind it for sinus symptoms. It also has a rare, almost uniformly fatal complication, and avoiding it requires one specific instruction that most people have never been given.

Sep 4, 2026/3 min read

A blue ceramic neti pot with its measuring spoon, the shape used for pouring saline through one nostril and out of the other

Health

The Immune System Appears to Remember Obesity for Years After the Weight Has Gone

Work in EMBO Reports finds obesity leaves a chemical mark on CD4 T cells that outlasts weight loss. The authors suggest the immune system may need years of sustained maintenance to reset, and say plainly that no long term human study confirms it.

Sep 1, 2026/3 min read

Health

A Tape Measure Round the Waist Did the Same Job as Four Measurements and a Formula

In 1,900 American adults, waist circumference on its own matched a new multi measurement framework against a proper body fat scan. BMI alone missed a substantial number of people who met the body fat criteria for obesity.

Sep 1, 2026/3 min read

A tailor's cloth tape measure coiled on a table, marked in centimetres and inches

Health

Adults Over Forty Thought Twelve Per Cent Faster After a Month With an Air Purifier

A randomised crossover trial with a sham unit found the effect only in participants aged 40 and over. It is also a secondary outcome analysis, it ran for a month, and it had fewer than ten people over 60 in it.

Aug 31, 2026/3 min read

Evening traffic streaming along Interstate 93 north of Boston, with the city skyline behind, the road the air filtration trial was run beside

Health

Omega Three and a Daily Aspirin Matched Antibiotics for Severe Gum Disease Over a Full Year

In a placebo controlled trial of 109 people, 58 per cent of the antibiotic group and 57.7 per cent of the supplement group reached the clinical target. The placebo group reached 23.1 per cent, and that third number is what makes the first two mean anything.

Aug 31, 2026/3 min read

A dental technician in a mask and gloves carrying out an oral examination on a patient lying in a dental chair

Health

Six People With Rheumatoid Arthritis Were Given a Cancer Therapy and Three Have Been Off All Medication Since

A phase 1 trial at the Charite in Berlin used CD19 CAR T cells, a treatment built for blood cancers, on patients who had already failed between five and eight biologic drugs. Disease activity fell in every one of them. Three reached medication free remission.

Aug 30, 2026/4 min read

The red brick buildings of Campus Charite Mitte in Berlin seen across the Humboldthafen, photographed in 2024

Health

Congo Has Started Vaccinating Against Ebola With a Vaccine Built for a Different Ebola

The only licensed Ebola vaccine was made for Zaire ebolavirus. The outbreak killing people in eastern Congo is Bundibugyo. Vaccination began this week anyway, with 20,000 of the 70,000 doses formally designated as a trial.

Aug 29, 2026/3 min read

Pharmacists in protective gear prepare doses of an Ebola vaccine during the PREVAIL trial in Liberia in 2016

Health

Something Has Been Crossing Into the Ageing Human Brain That Was Not Supposed to Get In

Stanford researchers borrowed the trick a consumer ancestry test uses and found immune cells migrating out of the blood and into the human brain from middle age onwards. Mice do not do it. Nor did the primates tested alongside them.

Aug 25, 2026/4 min read

Microglia, stained green, among neurons stained red in a mixed rat brain cell culture

Health

Loneliness Raises the Risk of Early Death by About a Quarter, and the World Health Organization Now Counts It as a Cause

A meta-analysis of seventy studies put the increased mortality risk from loneliness at 26 per cent and from living alone at 32 per cent. A WHO commission estimates 871,000 deaths a year. What the numbers mean, and what has been shown to help.

Aug 23, 2026/4 min read

A man sitting alone on a bench in silhouette against a sunset sky, seen from behind