Smoking harms just about every body part—from heart and lungs to bladder and blood vessels. What’s new is that smoking is more of a health hazard than we thought. Two new, NIH-funded reports make the persuasive, and alarming, case—on average, smoking takes an entire decade off of your life!
These snapshots reveal a very disturbing trend: the rise in obesity in the US from 1985 to 2010. Today one third of adults in the US are obese, another third are overweight.
Because obesity has risen to epidemic levels—causing devastating and costly health problems, reducing life expectancy, and provoking
Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., was officially sworn in on Monday, August 17, 2009 as the 16th director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Collins was nominated by President Barack Obama on July 8, and was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 7.