If you live in Japan, you should feel pretty good. The quality of health there is ranked number one in the world, according to a decades-long study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

If you live in the U.S. it's a different story, and not one...

Some things you just know. You know when your attitude has changed over time, when you've become accustomed to thinking there's not much in your life to feel really happy about and that maybe things now are as good as they're...

In the final minutes of a lunchtime talk sponsored by the Harvard Medical School, someone in the audience had a question for the two guest speakers, both of whom were there to talk about the placebo effect and its opposite, the nocebo effect. The question to Associate Professor...

Aaron Sorkin isn't a doctor, but maybe the acclaimed writer has a prescription that could not only benefit rea- life newsrooms but users and providers of health care as well. In a word, it's a dose of optimism.

Sorkin told USA Today that his new show on HBO...

The next time someone asks you what you're thinking about, take them seriously. They may be looking after your health in an important way.

Consider the following fast-expanding bundle of facts. You're probably aware of most of them. None are particularly new or hard to find. It's just that not...

For the past few years I've been tracking media coverage of health care on just about every continent in the world, not only by reading hundreds of news stories on the subject but by speaking directly with the journalists who write such stories, from Africa to America to Australia.

Penny Sarchet doesn't think of herself as a detective, but she's been acting like one. She recently received a prize for her science essay on the nocebo effect, one of the winning entries in a writing contest sponsored by the Wellcome Trust in association with the Guardian and...

The rising tide of health information -- from advertising, studies, statistics, media reports, personal advice and professional opinions -- has reached flood level. As anyone who has experienced a real flood will tell you, the challenge is keeping your head above water and not getting swept away by rushing currents.

A lot of sectors are struggling in today's economy. Personal experience isn't one of them. Personal experience is soaring in value thanks to our technical ability to access and share information. Personal health and health care experiences are no exception.

A study from the Pew Research Center found...

After reading Martha Rosenberg's eye-opener on pharma's latest marketing strategy for antidepressants, you might wish someone would come up with a cure for perpetually feeling at risk.

It isn't that the selling of sickness is new, or that we haven't been warned before to not be...

Summertime, and the livin' is easy, sizzling hot, frenzy-free, less tethered to email.

But is it truly leisure time?

It should be. Authentic leisure is good for us. It's revitalizing and healthy. But to make the most of leisure it helps to widen rather than narrow our concept of...

Did you catch the brief but remarkable story about researchers who have concluded (once again) that more and more Americans are praying about their health? As striking as that is, it's not the big surprise in the latest study.

Here's what is: as of 2007 the percent of...