Resources & Information

STAT News
April 27, 2026
In April 2020, people around the globe were struggling to come to grips with the strictures of unprecedented societal shutdowns aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19. Six years later, school and business closures, mask wearing, and social distancing are dim, unpleasant memories. What’s happened here? Have humans and the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the cause of Covid, reached a detente? Does this virus that ended an estimated 15 million lives globally in 2020-2021 alone still pose a major hazard? After two consecutive winters when influenza, not Covid, was the bug sending hordes to their beds, is Covid now more nuisance than peril? To help answer those questions, STAT asked a number of experts how they now think about the risk SARS-2 poses, and who they think should still be getting Covid booster shots.

Medical News Today
April 16, 2026
Exercise advice typically covers how often, how intense, and how long you work out. A new clinical trial adds a fourth variable: the time of day. Researchers enrolled 134 sedentary adults aged 40 to 60 years who carried at least one cardiovascular risk factor. All participants completed the same moderate aerobic sessions 5 days a week for 12 weeks. The only variable was whether they exercised during their body’s natural peak — morning for early risers, evening for night owls. The results demonstrated a clear difference. Chronotype-aligned exercisers saw systolic blood pressure fall by nearly 11 mmHg; those who worked out against their chronotype dropped only 5.5 mmHg. LDL cholesterol fell almost twice as far in the aligned group. Sleep quality and fasting glucose also favored the aligned group.

Medical News Today
April 13, 2026
GLP-1 receptor agonists are popular weight loss drugs that help manage obesity and type 2 diabetes. There is a growing demand for GLP-1–based therapies, with research suggesting roughly 1 in 8 U.S. adults report having ever used GLP-1 medication, with 6% currently using such drugs. Common side effects of GLP-1 drugs are those of a gastrointestinal nature, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and constipation. Research suggests these adverse events may occur in 40 to 85% of people. Health experts advise that people can make dietary adjustments to help reduce these side effects. Although many of these side effects are mild to moderate in severity and generally resolve shortly, adverse events remain a common cause of discontinuing the drug.

Now, a new study published in Nature Health used AI to analyze social media posts and uncovered patient-reported side effects linked to these medications that may not yet be fully captured in clinical trials.

NPR via LifeKit
April 4, 2026
If you got a painful injury today, what do you think the next few days would be like? Maybe you’re picturing yourself in a recliner with the hurt appendage elevated, a bandage wrapped tightly around the injury, rotating ice packs and getting lots of sleep. That image is in keeping with a long-standing protocol for injury recovery, known by the acronym RICE: rest, ice, compress, elevate. All these things reduce inflammation. Yet recent research suggests that in the long term, people who use the RICE protocol may be more likely to develop chronic pain.