Deborah Franklin

Long before cooking was common, early humans needed extra energy to fuel bigger bodies and brains. Scientists say simple stone cutting tools likely allowed small-toothed meat eaters to thrive.

More than 5 million Americans have dementia, and that number is only climbing. Each case leaves some people wondering what's left in a friendship when the bond between confidants becomes literally unthinkable, when language and thinking fail. But a good friend can sometimes help in ways that a spouse, a ...

About half of all boys and a quarter of all girls will break an arm or leg before they turn 16, statistics suggest — in many skateboarding, ballplaying families, a fracture is almost expected as the price of a fun, adventurous life. And, assuming the bones are set the right ...

Staying snug within a watertight tent as a storm rages around you is one of the joys of modern camping and modern tents.

But if the weather suddenly turns nasty on your next camping trip, or nights are just colder than you expected, don't be tempted to bring your cook ...

Scared you'll have no idea how to choose the best health plan come fall? Dr. Ruth Parker feels your pain, and she offers a handy solution that may help.

One of America's savviest busters of medical jargon, Parker recently worked with several colleagues to create a guide ...

The notion that sport shoes and inserts should keep the human arch stiffly supported is a decades-old assumption that could use some rethinking, according to a British gait analyst who has closely studied more than 25,000 footsteps of healthy people.

Robin Huw Crompton, a physical anthropologist at the University ...

Online risk calculators are all the rage these days among public health groups trying to get us to change our unhealthful ways. The World Health Organization developed an online tool that lets you estimate your personal risk of cracking a hip in the next 10 years, for example. You ...

For all the benefits of exercise and teamwork to the heart and head, high school athletes still lead the nation in athletics-related deaths. And it doesn't have to be that way, sports medicine specialists say.

Many student deaths from head and neck injuries, heat stroke, sudden heart trouble and exertion-related ...

It's bad enough to have to be tested for dementia. It's even worse if the test isn't fair. Researchers in Chicago found they needed to update the screening test for a type of early onset dementia so that the measure would more accurately pick up symptoms among a new wave ...

Imagine a friend of a friend brings his family to stay with you — his family of tiny survivalists. For weeks or months you all live quietly side by side with no problems. You share meals. Your kids play together.

Then one day you get sick — maybe felled by ...

Public health advocates have lobbied hard in recent years to clear restaurants, bars and other workplaces of tobacco smoke, and the winds seem to be at their back.

Already, 36 states and the District of Columbia have enacted some version of an indoor smoking ban to protect the health ...

You can lead college students to soap and water, but you can't make them wash their hands. In fact, you can't even make them read their e-mail.

That was one takeaway from an outbreak of pneumonia at Georgia Tech last fall that sickened at least 83 students – "the largest ...

Each year more than 175,000 people around the world die from venomous snakebites, often because they live in remote, rural areas and didn't get to a hospital in time to get treatment. Toxins in the venom of snakes like cobras and kraits slowly paralyze their victims, who ultimately die ...

Don't try to pretend your gibes and judgments of the overweight people in your life are for their own good. Florida researchers have evidence that discriminating against fat people only makes them fatter.

"People often rationalize that it's OK to discriminate based on weight because it will motivate the victim ...