Medicare is uncharted territory for most of the 10,000 people who come into the program each day. It's not a minefield, exactly, but lurking in the undergrowth are pitfalls and traps that can be costly unless people take care to dodge them. "Avoiding the most common mistakes in Medicare can make the difference between having good [...]
Human health is the ultimate crapshoot. Mother Nature packs about 20,000 genes into every chromosome in each cell in our bodies, and some of us get high cholesterol and nearsightedness, while others get clear arteries and 20/20 vision. But the relationship between DNA and health is complex. For some conditions, such as early-onset Alzheimer's disease, the [...]
When Raymond R. Townsend, M.D., was in medical school in the 1970s, the formula for blood pressure was simple. "Doctors were taught that the normal top blood pressure number was 100 plus a person's age," says Townsend, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "We now know that numbers even close to that high [...]
