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Much unlike many a magazine editor who recommends you buy all sorts of crap that they most likely got for free, your Jezebel staff doesn't get jack shit (other than books, unsolicited). And that's how it should be. But on our own time, in our personal lives, we still buy stuff. So this is Worth It, our recommendation of random things that we've actually spent our own money on. These are the things we buy regularly or really like, things we'd actually tell our friends about. And now we're telling you. More »
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It happens to all of us: we stay out too late or we wake up in the middle of the night fretting about some thing or another and then we end up sleep deprived, and sure enough a few days later we come down with a cold or the flu. It's the reason our mothers used to hate letting us have sleepovers. It's why we spent so much of college feeling like shit. And it's probably the reason why those of us with young children catch every bug they bring home from school. But even though we intuitively understand that rest is important to our immune system, scientists are only just starting to figure out exactly why that is, and the answer is actually pretty cool. More »
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How has your day been so far? Did you make it through brushing your teeth this morning without disfiguring yourself? Then you're better off than some unlucky owners of the Spinbrush toothbrush, which the FDA has just issued a warning about. Apparently, they've been chipping people's teeth, cutting up gums, and doing all manner of damage to people's faces. Open wide! More »
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So many of us smear our mouths in lipstick multiple times a day, but how often do you stop to think about what exactly is in it? Well, here's one terrifying ingredient it might have: lead. Lead? Yes, and lead is some serious shit. So just how much danger are we all in if we want to keep our lips looking sumptuously kissable? It depends on whom you ask, but the FDA is looking into it.. More »
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‘Tis the season for sinus infections, but next time you get one, you might want to forgo the often unpleasant experience of taking antibiotics. A new study from Washington University in St. Louis, which appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that antibiotics did not reduce symptoms of the most common type of sinus infection (called rhinosinusitus) any faster than a placebo did. More »
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It's almost Valentine's Day! Want to hear something romantic? There's a chance your name and photo is on a site where anyone — seriously, anyone — can accuse you of carrying an STD. Better yet, the site is completely open to the public and there's practically nothing you can do about it. More »
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We like to think that doctors are somehow superior to the rest of us. After all, doctor knows best, right? We want to believe that they are wiser, more skilled, more honest than we are—except a new survey finds that, in fact, they're not always as honest as you might think. More »
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We use our phones for most things these days—scheduling meetings, throwing birds at pigs, keeping track of everything from our grocery lists to our periods, checking Facebook, calling our mothers. So is there a limit to how far we're willing to let these little devices into our lives? As much as you love your phone, would you want it to tell it your secrets and let it be your therapist? More »
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Today in studies that would've made my eighth-grade self feel vindicated, we learn that kids who feel ostracized when playing games are less likely to exercise. And unsurprisingly, there are way better ways to get kids moving than shaming them. More »
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Much unlike many a magazine editor who recommends you buy all sorts of crap that they most likely got for free, your Jezebel staff doesn't get jack shit (other than books, unsolicited). And that's how it should be. But on our own time, in our personal lives, we still buy stuff. So this is Worth It, our recommendation of random things that we've actually spent our own money on. These are the things we buy regularly or really like, things we'd actually tell our friends about. And now we're telling you. More »
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The story of the collapse of Susan G. Komen's brand among the young, mobilized and progressive isn't as much a story of one organization's downfall as it is another's gain. In the days since Komen announced they'd no longer be providing support to Planned Parenthood, the family planning provider has made out like a bandit, Komen's been left with egg on its face, and Komen supporters are just about universally mad and confused. Let's quantify this shitshow. More »
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Before Susan G. Komen died of breast cancer in 1980, she asked her sister Nancy to promise to work towards finding a cure. Now, more than 30 years later, the organization that bears Suzy's name is still fighting — but instead of fighting for a cure, it seems to be fighting for an agenda. Who was Susan Komen, and what would she think of the foundation's downward spiral? Would she even want her name on it anymore? More »
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There are so many good reasons to exercise already, but a new study has found one that might be particularly motivating for anyone who's ever been permanently scarred by an episode of Hoarding: Buried Alive. Exercise can keep your cells from becoming tiny hoarders! Seriously. A new study, done by scientists at the University of Texas and published in Nature, has found that exercising maximizes your body's ability to keep itself clean. More »
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One million packages of birth control pills have been voluntarily recalled after their manufacturer has announced that the drugs might not contain enough hormones to prevent pregnancy. So instead of calling them "birth control pills," it might be more accurate to refer to them as "one-a-day useless hormone candy." More »
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There's so much excitement during the Super Bowl that it can be easy to get caught up in all the hoopla and... forget to attend to basic bodily functions? Most people are usually more concerned with consuming as many nachos as possible than they are about whether they're breathing or have to go potty, but according to Methodist Hospital in Houston we should put our bladder's needs before all others. More »
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Frozen diet meals cater to that particular — and vast — demographic of people who are at once lazy and calorie-conscious. Like some of us here. Despite common sense, we believe that we're popping a healthy and satisfying dinner in the microwave; the box show us so! That dinner looks so delicious, so fresh, doesn't it? In reality, however, it's all just a big pile of soft wet stuff that, with any luck, is at least made with "convincing" ingredients — like when the fake cheese actually tastes like real cheese. See, we're buying into the fantasy of a suitable dinner. Sound familiar? It should, because these frozen dinners are marketed to ladies like pretty much everything else: fantasy eyelashes, fantasy skin, fantasy fashion...fantasy dinners. Herewith, the reality of what eating three weeks worth of Smart Ones and Lean Cuisines actually looks like. More »
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Ahh, peeing in bed. Many of us have unpleasant memories of doing it as children, and no doubt many of you have been woken to change the sheets after one of your children let loose his or her bladder while deep asleep. There are plenty of reasons why kids wet the bed, but now scientists have discovered that there's something which could be causing a lot of this night-leaking that never occurred to anyone before: constipation. As odd as it sounds, the study, which was published in the journal Urology, found it played a big role: More »
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We all have those friends who are competitive or are constantly causing drama for one reason or another. It's tempting to just put up with them, but a new study has found that conflicts with those kinds of people could actually be irritating you physically—as in causing your immune system to fire up. This leads to your body to become inflamed, a state which has been associated with things like cancer and diabetes. More »
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The topic of women with two vaginas has been fertile (sorry) territory for Tyra Banks. But now it appears the condition may be pretty common. The World Health Organization says 1 in every 3,000 women has a double-vadge, and the director of maternal fetal medicine at a Philly hospital says, "We see many couples, maybe one a month or more" (I guess he means straight couples where the lady has two vaginas, although if two women who each had two got together, that would be sort of awesome). Maybe those of us with singleton ladybits (ladybit?) should consider ourselves poorly-endowed. More »
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Here's a story that really tests the limits of the five-second rule. A heart was being transported to a hospital in Mexico City to be transplanted into a patient there. After it was unloaded from the helicopter outside the hospital, the lid of the cooler it was in came loose, and the heart feel out onto the street. Yikes! Unfazed, they picked the heart up, and the doctors proceeded to stick it in the patient. Of course, the heart was wrapped in plastic, so it's not totally insane—not to mention hearts are such precious commodities that even if it'd landed in a pile of dog shit, they probably would have been totally justified in picking it up, washing the hell out of it, and then transplanting it. More »
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A large new study has found that eating fried foods doesn't increase your risk of heart disease. One caveat: the study was conducted in Spain, where people mostly fry stuff in olive or sunflower oil. So deep-frying a chicken in a bucket of lard could still be a no-no. More »
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It turns out it's hard out there for a narcissist — at least if he's a guy. A new study has found that men who are full of themselves may actually be stressed out by their own narcissism. More »
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A new study shows that for people with heart disease, "sexual activity generally is safe and no more strenuous than golf." That's provided that you do it "with a familiar partner in a familiar setting," so sex on the golf course is apparently out (unless that's your regular thing). Still, this is a study that's veritably begging for its corresponding Viagra commercial. More »
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There are many online resources about pelvic exams, but they're not always reassuring. As a woman who was raped many years ago I went online to find reassurance, and what I read had the opposite effect. But I'm happy to say that the exam was fine, I didn't notice any discomfort, there was no pain and I felt respected. Here's how I prepared for it. More »
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It may be a common dramatic device in movies for people to drop dead of heart attack in the middle of having passionate sex, but the reality, according to a new report from the American Heart Association, is that sex is not likely to send you into cardiac arrest—unless you are a man who's cheating on his wife, in which case, watch out. More »
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There are plenty of nice reasons to get married, but increasingly the basic experience of being married doesn't seem all that different from simply living together without ever making it legal—or living in sin, as our grandmothers like to call it. Now there's some new research that proves that the line between marriage and cohabitation has been blurred to such an extent that it's barely visible. More »
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Like something straight out of The Crucible, 12 girls in Upstate New York have fallen suddenly ill, displaying acute symptoms such as verbal outbursts and tics. Unlike Abigail Williams et al., these young women—who all attend LeRoy Junior Senior High School in LeRoy, NY— are no fakers, having had their mysterious disorder legitimized by a still somewhat-bewildered medical community. More »
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A woman who arrived at a New Orleans hospital with an arm infection left sans one arm, thanks to recreational injections of bath salts, an increasingly popular and incredibly dumb drug that no one should ever use, ever. Seriously. Don't inject yourself with bath salts, you guys. Good lord. More »
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Butter, y'all. More »
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Last month, the FDA asked a panel of outside experts whether the blood clot risk for newer birth control pills like Yaz and Yasmin was significant enough to pull the drugs from the market. The panel found that the risk is worth it to prevent pregnancy (which is an even bigger clot risk), but the narrow margin didn't quite inspire confidence. While it seemed like the issue was finally settled, now a watchdog group is asking the FDA to reconsider because it found that four advisers have ties to the companies that make the drugs. More »
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Bad news, winos: Turns out, the University of Connecticut researcher who discovered that red wine has anti-aging qualities actually fabricated a shitload of data. Which means that your purple mouthed cry-juice might not be good for your heart after all. More »
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Are you eating right now? If so, please stop before continuing to read. A UK mother of six has been credited with saving her own life after hacking up what turned out to be a fucking tumor. Holy shit. More »
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In a column for Glamour magazine, Maggie Gyllenhaal reveals herself to be not only an actress and a mother but a veritable badass, voicing her ardent support for Planned Parenthood — as well as her anger and disappointment with politicians working to restrict women's health services: "I find it incredibly frustrating that we're being forced to spend so much time and energy (and, yes, money) defending something as basic as self-determination." Yep. More »
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Who doesn't love a new study about drinking? You can feel superior to all those other sloppy drunks, until you read the fine print and realize that what you think of as a normal glass of wine actually counts as five drinks or whatever. Here to make you feel briefly good about yourself and then bad again are five fun facts from the CDC's freshly-released study on Americans' binge-drinking habits. More »
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Yesterday, Novartis Pharmaceuticals announced it would be recalling some bottles of Excedrin, NoDoz, Bufferin and Gas-X. Now they've explained why: the bottles could have super-strong painkillers in them instead. More »
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Young people with cancer have a lot to contend with, and one major issue is the potential effect of treatment on their fertility. But young female patients say doctors are failing to discuss potential fertility problems with them. More »
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Perhaps you've heard of this case called Roe v. Wade, which affirmed that women have the right to seek an abortion until a fetus is viable. Florida legislators are aware of the ruling, but since they don't agree with it, they've introduced a bill that blatantly violates the decision. The near-total ban on abortion in the state certainly won't stand, but lawmakers have packed it chock full of methods to take away a woman's right to choose, in the hope that some bit of it will wind up becoming a law. More »
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Next time you have a terrible cough, remember to worry about accidentally shifting your organs around. Though "coughing up" a lung isn't possible, according to a case report in the New England Journal of Medicine, a woman with asthma did manage to get a bit of her lung caught in her ribs after coughing especially hard for two weeks. There have also been rare cases of people rupturing their spleens or popping their eyeballs out, so remember to cough with caution. More »
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Currently multiple births are still a novelty, but the number of twin births is on the rise and at this rate, in a few years red carpets could be overrun with Mary-Kate and Ashley wannabes delivering synchronized SexyFace. It's well-known that the development of fertility treatments has led to an increase in multiples, but new data shows just how drastic the shift has been. In the past three decades, the number of twins born in the U.S. has roughly doubled. More »
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You now have a scientific excuse to call in sick to work: according to a small study, driving with a bad cold is just as dangerous as drunk-driving. More »
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