Health
How Does Anesthesia Work — and Why No One Fully Knows
General anesthesia is closer to a reversible coma than to sleep. Several drugs quiet the brain's nerve cells at once — and no one can fully explain how it erases consciousness.
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Health
Evidence-led reporting on medicine, nutrition, fitness and wellbeing.
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Health
How Are Organs Allocated for Transplant, and Why It Isn’t a Queue
The national transplant list is not a queue. Each organ is matched by its own scoring formula, weighing urgency, compatibility and distance to do the most good.
Health
How Are Medical Devices Approved, and Why Most Are Not
Cleared and approved are different words with different meanings. Most devices reach hospitals by resembling something already on the market, with no clinical trial at any point.
Health
How Clinical Trials Work, and Why Most Drugs Fail
Roughly six in every hundred drugs that enter human testing come out the far end. The phases, the arithmetic between them, and what to check when a trial makes the news.
Health
Sleep Hygiene: What the Evidence Actually Supports
Most sleep advice mixes solid physiology with repeated folklore. Here are the habits with the strongest evidence behind them, and when to see a doctor instead.