Better Off

Eating several small servings of nuts each week may significantly lower your risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In this week's episode we speak with Marta Guasch, a research fellow in the Department of Nutrition, and author of the study—which is one of the largest to date on the health benefits of nuts. We'll discuss what differentiates this study from other research on nuts, how many you should be consuming each week, and simple ways to include more nuts in your diet. Later in the episode, we’ll tell you about research examining the effectiveness of strategies to increase physical activity on a large scale.

Around 30 million Americans will be affected by an eating disorder in their lifetime, but these psychiatric disorders are not regularly tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That's why a coalition led by Harvard’s Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED) is asking the CDC to monitor eating disorders as a part of national disease surveillance efforts. In this week's episode, we speak with Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and director of STRIPED, to learn how better data on eating disorders could improve treatment and prevention.

In this week’s episode: It may be hard to have a truly healthy Thanksgiving, but we have some tips from Gary Adamkiewicz, assistant professor of environmental health and exposure disparities, to make your holiday feast more environmentally friendly.

In this week’s episode: The science of Thanksgiving. Guy Crosby, adjunct associate professor in the Department of Nutrition, explains how you can use food science to cook the perfect holiday meal, plus he shares recipes for simple, delicious, and healthy side dishes.

In this week's episode we delve deep into our cells to talk about some exciting new basic science research coming out of the Harvard Chan School. We spoke with Quan Lu, associate professor of environmental genetics and pathophysiology, about a newly discovered cellular messaging mechanism that could have important implications for disease treatment—and may even change how public health researchers can track the impact of harmful environmental exposures, such as air pollution.

According to preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), an estimated 45,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2016. On October 26, President Trump responded to the crisis by declaring it a public health emergency. In this week's episode we'll examine what that means, how we arrived at this point, and why that presidential election likely won't be enough to stem the tide of opioid addiction and overdoses. You'll hear from Howard Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, and Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management.

In this week’s episode we speak with two leading experts on Zika virus—which grabbed international attention when it sickened a million people in dozens of countries more than two years ago. Marcia Castro is associate professor of demography in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard Chan School. She has extensively studied the lingering effects of Zika in Brazil—including how the virus has affected physical and mental health—as well as its effect on birth rates in the country. And Celina Turchi Martelli is professor of epidemiology of infectious diseases and a researcher at FIOCRUZ in Brazil. As the Zika outbreak began, Turchi worked closely with other scientists to track what was happening. Her research helped played a critical role in confirming that Zika did indeed cause microcephaly. Both Castro and Turchi participated in a panel discussion as part of Harvard Worldwide Week. The event, The New Era of Epidemics: Surveillance, Response, Impacts, and Challenges focused on lessons learned from past infectious disease outbreaks, and ways to prepare for future public health crises. We spoke with Castro and Turchi about what Zika can teach us about preparing for future epidemics—as well as what Brazil did well in its response to the outbreak.

In early October, President Trump took aim at the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with two proposed changes that could weaken the law. The President said that the government will stop making cost-sharing reduction payments to health insurance companies. These payments are intended to subsidize plans offered to lower income Americans under the ACA. And in a separate move, President Trump issued an executive order which would ease the rules and regulations for health plans offered under Obamacare and open the door for the creation of association health plans. The moves come just before the next ACA open enrollment period, running from November 1 to December 15. While the changes are not likely to affect plans offered during the upcoming enrollment, Benjamin Sommers, associate professor of health policy and economics, says the changes could lead to higher premiums and co-pays and potentially destabilize insurance markets over the long-term.

Visit healthcare.gov to sign up for insurance beginning November 1.

In this week's episode we discuss two decades of nutrition science with one of the leading experts in the field. Walter Willett, former chair of the Department of Nutrition, recently released an updated version of his book Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy , which compiles decades worth of evidence about the components of a healthy diet. During an in-depth conversation with Willett, we talk about what's changed in nutrition since the book was first released in 2000 and the topics that will dominate the field in the years to come—including obesity—and how climate change will force us to change how we eat.

In the wake of a mass shooting on October 1 in Las Vegas that left at least 59 people dead and more than 500 injured, David Hemenway, professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, speaks with us about the public health approach to gun control. Hemenway discusses what made the Las Vegas shooting so deadly, how Australia effectively responded to a mass killing in 1996, and why restrictions on federally funded gun research hamper efforts to prevent violence. We also re-play a story on background checks and gun purchases from January, 2017.