Screening guidelines often change after age 75. If you're in that age group, how do you decide which tests you need?

If you're close to age 75, you may have followed the same schedule for mammograms, Pap smears, and other screening tests for decades. And if you're like many women, you may be surprised that your physician is suggesting fewer tests or longer intervals between them. The practice seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. After all, the risk for many degenerative diseases increases with age, so shouldn't older women be monitored even more closely? The answer is, ...

You may think the home just needs an extreme makeover, but hoarding is a mental health problem that can be complex and hard to treat.

It's good to keep essentials on hand for the future. But some people take this to an extreme, acquiring and accumulating objects of dubious value (to others) in such large and disorderly quantities that their living space is filled and normal use of the home becomes dangerous or impossible. The problem is known as compulsive hoarding.

Paper is an especially common object of this stockpiling — vast stacks of old newspapers, magazines, books, mail, and ...

Physical activity confers important health benefits, reducing the risk for many chronic conditions, including heart disease. Federal guidelines recommend that we get at least 150 minutes (2.5 hours) of moderately intense physical activity such as brisk walking each week, with greater benefits if we do even more. But even 2.5 hours a week is too much for some people, including those who are strapped for time. They'll be glad to hear that, according to a study, you can significantly lower your risk for heart disease by getting as little as 15 minutes of exercise most days of the week.

The ...

Older women with sleep apnea may be at higher risk of developing cognitive problems and dementia.

Adding certain cholesterol-lowering foods to a low-fat diet may be more effective at lowering long-range heart disease risk.

Q. I'm looking for information on Prolia and Reclast as alternatives to Boniva.

A. All of the drugs you mention are used to treat postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, although they're in different drug classes. Ibandronate (Boniva) and zoledronic acid (Reclast, Zometa) are bisphosphonates; denosumab (Prolia) is a monoclonal antibody. Bisphosphonates interfere with the activity of osteoclasts, bone cells that are involved in normal remodeling. Osteoclasts break down (resorb) old bone. Bisphosphonates work by reducing the rate of resorption. Denosumab also reduces bone resorption but does so by inhibiting the formation of osteoclasts rather than their activity.

All three drugs suppress ...