Harvard Health Blog

It’s common to repeat ourselves trying to get children to follow our instructions, but how much of what we are trying to convey does a child truly comprehend? Paying attention to context and using words that make clear what we want are likely to get better results.

Many people have taken a friend’s or family member’s pain medication on occasion, but the ongoing opioid crisis has drawn attention to such behavior, forcing doctors, hospice workers, and other care providers to tighten their procedures and track quantities and dosages of pills more carefully.

For men diagnosed with aggressive cancer that’s confined to the prostate and nearby tissues, the overarching goal of treatment is to keep the disease from spreading (or metastasizing) in the body. Doctors can treat these men with localized therapies, such as surgery and different types of radiation that target the prostate directly. And they can […]

The health risks of loneliness and isolation have been known for some time, but more recently research has shown the specific effects in the brain. Finding ways to make connections with other people is the best "medicine" to alleviate the mental and physical effects of loneliness.

The medication Suboxone has helped many people who are addicted to opiates, but even within the addiction treatment community there are misunderstandings about this drug and its effects on the brain.

Men whose PSA levels continue rising even after surgery or radiation therapy may have a new treatment option with the approval of the drug apalutamide.

As a person loses weight, the body reacts by lowering its metabolic rate to conserve energy, an evolutionary adaptation that makes it harder to lose additional weight. A study of participants from The Biggest Loser found that this metabolic adjustment persists for years.

With recent data showing that childhood obesity is getting worse, here is some advice for parents on what can be done to help children avoid obesity or get to a healthier weight.

A newly approved drug called apalutamide is giving hope to thousands of men confronting a tenacious problem after being treated for prostate cancer. Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels should plummet to zero after surgery, and to near zero after radiation therapy, but in some men, they continue rising even when there’s no other evidence of cancer […]