Resources & Information

Nature
July 17, 2025
How does your brain wake up from sleep? A study of more than 1,000 arousals from slumber has revealed precisely how the brain bestirs itself during the transition to alertness — a finding that might help to manage sleep inertia, the grogginess that many people feel when hitting the snooze button. Recordings of people as they woke from the dream-laden phase of sleep showed that the first brain regions to rouse are those associated with executive function and decision-making, located at the front of the head. A wave of wakefulness then spreads to the back, ending with an area associated with vision.

NPR
July 14, 2025
For more than 30 years, Frank Frost worked as a long-distance truck driver, ferrying industrial chemicals across the United Kingdom. “I worked away from home six days a week, working up to 12-15 hours a day,” says Frost, now 76. “My only exercise was looking for a fast food outlet in the evening when I’d parked up.” He gained weight and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more. Then, Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach — one that changed his life.

STATNews
July 14, 2025
When anti-vaccine activists and others argue that the immunizations used to protect children from infectious diseases are risky, they often point to aluminum salts, a product added to many childhood vaccines to increase their effectiveness.

A new large study from Denmark directly counters those claims. After mining the vaccination and medical records of more than 1.2 million children over a 24-year period, researchers could see no evidence that exposure to aluminum in vaccines led to a statistically significant increase in a child’s risk of developing any of a wide variety of conditions that can be diagnosed in childhood, including asthma and autism.

STATNews
July 14, 2025
Nicotine pouches like Zyn have exploded in popularity in the U.S. With that growth comes a steep increase in the risk of young children accidentally eating the pouches, with potentially serious consequences, according to a new study.

Overall, the study found 134,663 cases of young children inadvertently ingesting nicotine between 2010 and 2023, whether in the form of pouches, gum, tablets, or the liquid used in e-cigarettes. (The study was based on calls to America’s Poison Centers about children under age 6.) In most cases, the children were fine, though they may have experienced symptoms like nausea or vomiting. But the consequences can be severe: 1.2% had serious medical outcomes like seizures or respiratory failure, and two children, both under age 2, died after consuming liquid nicotine.

NPR
July 10, 2025
Phillipa Munari started antidepressants in 2003. Her doctor recommended one, she said, after she complained of feeling tired. She didn’t think it helped, but she kept taking it anyway. When she decided to stop taking the drug 10 years later, her doctor helped her taper off it. At first, this went fine. “And then, six to nine months later, I started feeling horrible,” she said. “I had nerve pain. My neck and shoulders were sore all the time. My anxiety was through the roof.” These were symptoms Munari had never experienced before. Munari, who lives in New Brunswick, Canada, said she became so exhausted and physically weak she found it difficult to continue her job at a call center. She spent much of the next two years in bed. To receive disability, she agreed to go back on the drug she’d been on, Effexor. She then weaned off it again, this time much more slowly.

STATNews
July 9, 2025
The United States has now recorded more confirmed measles cases this year than in any year in well over a quarter-century — and 2025 is only just past the halfway mark. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the number of confirmed measles cases in the country had risen to 1,288, exceeding the 1,274 cases reported in 2019, to become the highest single-year total since the United States declared measles eliminated in 2000.