Sarah Okonkwo
325 stories · Page 12 of 14
For Forty Years, Margarine Was the 'Healthy' Choice. The Chemistry Was Never on Its Side.
The spread your doctor pushed for decades delivered trans fats, then got rebuilt with a modified fat that raised fasting glucose 22 percent in one trial. Butter, the supposed villain, turned out roughly neutral for your heart.
Brain & AgingThey Told Older Adults the Pill Was Fake. Their Memory Got Better Anyway.
A 90-person Italian trial gave older adults inert pills and told one group flat-out they were fake. That group improved as much as the deceived one. Here is what that does and doesn't prove.
Infectious DiseaseMost People's Bodies Quietly Beat TB. The Ones Who Lose Are Drowning Their Own T Cells.
A new single-cell study of the airways of TB-exposed people finds that progression to disease tracks with a neutrophil flood that smothers protective T cells, with type I interferon as the switch.
Nutrition & FoodYour Kombucha Is Only as Good as the Tea You Brewed It From
A new five-tea kombucha study finds the antioxidant punch depends almost entirely on the tea you start with, with green and oolong on top and the label never telling you.
Autoimmune & InflammationThe Gene That Decides Whether Smoggy Air Wrecks Your Lungs
A University of Pittsburgh study of nearly 1,000 asthma patients pinpoints seven oxidative-stress genes that decide how badly dirty air damages the lungs.
InvestigationsHis Heart Was Pumping at 10 Percent. The Real Question Is Why It Took an Algorithm to Notice.
An AI tool flagged a 45-year-old's hidden heart failure and the story became 'AI beats your doctor.' The case actually documents a missed standard workup, and it dropped the same week as the FDA clearance.
Brain & AgingYour Brain Files Speech Where You'd Least Expect: In Hearing and Touch, Not the Motor Cortex
A TMS study from McGill and Yale finds that newly learned speech is stored in the brain's hearing and touch regions, not the motor cortex long assumed to run the show.
Nutrition & FoodThe Protein Numbers on the Government Charts Were Never Meant to Help You Thrive
A new Frontiers in Nutrition perspective argues official protein and exercise guidelines were built to prevent deficiency, not to maximize healthspan, and that older adults in particular need far more.
Brain & AgingThe Alzheimer's Field Spent Decades Trying to Destroy These Droplets. A Baylor Lab Says the Droplets Were Never the Problem.
A Baylor lab reports that tubulin redirects Tau and alpha-synuclein away from toxic clumping in the test tube. It is elegant mechanism work, and not yet a drug, an animal, or a person.
Nutrition & FoodYour Five-a-Day Isn't Enough Flavanols, Says the Company That Sells Them by the Capsule
A new study says following dietary guidelines won't get you enough flavanols for heart protection. Two of its authors work for the company that sells flavanols in a capsule.
Metabolic & WeightThe Obesity 'Revolution' Everyone's Promising Comes From People Who'd Cash In On It
A new commentary says the GLP-1 era is just the prelude to a bigger obesity "revolution." The authors have direct financial stakes in what comes next, and the celebrated new pill loses less weight than the shot.
Brain & AgingThe Brain Was Starving Before the Plaques Showed Up: Alzheimer's Metabolic Reframe Has a Case, Not a Trial
A rising camp says failing mitochondria, not amyloid plaques, may drive Alzheimer's first. The biology is compelling and the amyloid monoculture earned its reckoning, but the metabolic side has its own retractions and not one human trial showing it works.
Nutrition & FoodA Cheap Amino Acid Pulled Mice Back From a Cytokine Storm. The Twist Is Which Organ Did the Saving.
A Salk Institute mouse study found that dietary methionine cut deaths from severe inflammation by boosting the kidneys' ability to flush pro-inflammatory cytokines into urine, without blunting the immune response to infection.
Metabolic & WeightYour Kidneys Are Quietly Failing. The WHO's Plan Skips What's Actually Killing Them.
The Lancet is pushing fast implementation of the first WHO kidney resolution, which expands screening and treatment access while leaving the ultraprocessed food and sugar driving the global CKD doubling untouched.
InvestigationsWe Fixed the Ozone Hole. The Replacement Is Now in Your Blood.
A new Lancaster modeling study finds CFC replacement refrigerants and anesthetic gases have rained 335,500 tonnes of the forever chemical TFA across the planet since 2000, and it is now the dominant PFAS in American blood.
Brain & AgingUtah's Quiet Bet Against the Number-One Killer of New Mothers
Utah is scaling a free, CBT- and mindfulness-based perinatal depression pathway through MyChart in a state where suicide is the leading cause of maternal death.
Brain & AgingUltra-Processed Food Is Quietly Taxing Your Attention. The Mediterranean Salad Next to It Won't Pay the Bill.
A new Monash-led study finds ultra-processed foods track with worse attention and a higher dementia-risk score even after adjusting for Mediterranean diet quality. The biology of why is more interesting than the headlines admit.
Brain & AgingTwelve Genes, One Overlooked Neuron, and the Rett Brain That Was Already Off Course
A Baylor team's single-cell map of female Rett mice finds 12 dysregulated genes and a previously unsuspected vulnerable interneuron, weeks before any symptom appears.
Brain & AgingThe Supervised Prehab Worked. The Home Version Hospitals Want to Sell You Did Not.
Two randomized trials in older surgical patients, one positive and one null, draw the same line under what "prehabilitation" actually requires, and why the version a hospital can hand you on paper did nothing.
Brain & AgingThe amyloid-versus-tau war in Alzheimer's might be the wrong fight
A four-person UC Riverside chemistry group argues amyloid beta and tau compete for the same microtubule binding sites, a unifying mechanism that cuts under Alzheimer's research's three-decade amyloid-versus-tau fight.
InvestigationsThe AI Models Just Failed the Clinical Test We Use to Spot Executive Dysfunction
A new PNAS Nexus study put the same Stroop task neuropsychologists use to screen for executive dysfunction in front of GPT-5, Claude Opus, and Gemini. The accuracy collapse arrives months after the FDA quietly loosened oversight of AI clinical decision support.
Infectious DiseaseIt Grows Like a Cancer, Not a Parasite. And It's in 37% of Seattle's Coyotes.
A European strain of Echinococcus multilocularis has been found in 37 percent of Puget Sound coyotes, the first wild-host detection on the U.S. West Coast outside Alaska.
Nutrition & FoodBrewed tea has the longevity receipts. The supplement aisle has a liver problem.
A 2025 review finds 1.5 to 2 cups of brewed tea daily correlate with about 10% lower all-cause and 14% lower cardiovascular mortality. The EGCG-extract supplements built on the same chemistry have been linked to over 100 liver-injury cases, while bubble tea can match a Coke for sugar.
Brain & AgingMagic Mushrooms and an 80-Year-Old's Memory: What the Hype Actually Has, and What It Doesn't
An 80-something woman with advanced Alzheimer's took five grams of mushrooms and started speaking again. The biology behind why that might happen is real. The trial base it rests on is thinner than the headlines admit.