Health

The Tsimane people are among the most isolated people in Bolivia. They number about 16,000 and live in 80 mostly riverbank villages of 50 to several hundred people scattered across about 3,000 square miles of Amazon jungle. They are forager-farmers who fish, hunt, cut down jungle trees with machetes and produce an average of nine children per family, says Michael Gurven, chair of the Integrated Anthropological Sciences Unit at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Last Saturday, while I was visiting Fatty's Tattoos and Piercings, a college-aged woman in a hoodie walked in and asked for a tattoo, her first, right on the spot.

"I want a red-tailed hawk feather," she told the artist on duty at the Washington, D.C., tattoo parlor.

He peppered her with questions: How big? What style? She alternated between a blank stare and a furrowed brow: "I ... have a photo on my phone of the feather that I like, I could show you that?"

Antidepressants and medications for bipolar disorder can be life-changing and even lifesaving, but journalist Lauren Slater warns that the long-term side effects of these drugs are "cloaked in mystery."

"As a nation, we're consuming them; we're gobbling them down," she says. "And we don't really know what we're taking into our bodies."

A grocery store's baby formula aisle often stocks an overwhelming number of options. Aside from different brands of pastel-hued tins and tubs, there are specialized formulas — some for spit-up reduction, gas or colic. And in the past decade or so, companies have introduced formulas meant for toddlers who are leaving bottles behind.

It's shaping up to be one of the worst flu seasons in years.

If you are one of the thousands of Americans who are sick with the flu, this one's for you.

Parents today struggle to set screen time guidelines.

One big reason is a lack of role models. Grandma doesn't have any tried-and-true sayings about iPad time. This stuff is just too new.

But many experts on kids and media are also parents themselves. So when I was interviewing dozens of them for my book The Art of Screen Time, I asked them how they made screen time rules at home.

Updated on Feb. 6 at 3:49 p.m. ET

Epidemiologists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health say they've identified the largest cluster of advanced black lung disease ever reported, a cluster that was first uncovered by NPR 14 months ago.

When Sarah Jay had her first seizure, she was in her mid-20s and working a high-stress job at a call center in Springfield, Mo.

"I was going to go on break," she says. "I was heading towards the bathroom and then I fell and passed out."

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a beautiful milkmaid. Her face was flawless, her complexion peaches and cream, her smile confident as she bragged, "I shall never have smallpox for I have had cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face."

Somewhere around 300,000 years ago, our human ancestors in parts of Africa began to make small, sharp tools, using stone flakes that they created using a technique called Levallois.

The technology, named after a suburb of Paris where tools made this way were first discovered, was a profound upgrade from the bigger, less-refined tools of the previous era, and marks the Middle Stone Age in Africa and the Middle Paleolithic era in Europe and western Asia.

Dr. Andrey Ostrovsky's family did not discuss what killed his uncle in 2015. The man was young, not quite two weeks past his 45th birthday, when he died and had lost touch with loved ones in his final months. At the time, Ostrovsky wondered if his uncle had perhaps killed himself.

Human skin is a cornucopia of fragrances.

The bacteria living on our skin emit more than 200 odor chemicals.

"Many of these molecules smell quite pleasant," says biologist Jeff Riffell at the University of Washington. "They smell grassy or a little bit like mushrooms. Some human scents are the same ones found in flowers."

Other chemicals — well — they aren't so nice. "They're pretty funky," Riffell says, like an overripe Brie cheese or a musty basement.

The year was 2004, and according to certain TV ads in California, great medical breakthroughs might be just around the corner.

A federal regulator has launched an investigation into a Baltimore hospital after a passerby shot a video earlier this month of a confused patient wearing just a hospital gown discharged at a bus stop on a cold night.

The video provoked outrage across the country, prompting an apology and an investigation by the University of Maryland Medical Center Midtown Campus.

Philadelphia is a step closer to opening what could be the nation's first supervised site for safe drug injection. But turning the idea into reality won't be easy.

The idea that each of us has a unique nutrition blueprint within our genes is a delicious concept.

Perhaps, this helps explain the growth in personalized nutrition testing and services such as Habit, Profile Precise and Nutrigenomix.

So, what exactly can these tests tell you?

The results of an IQ test can depend on the gender of the person who's conducting the test. Likewise, studies of pain medication can be completely thrown off by the gender of the experimenter. This underappreciated problem is one reason that some scientific findings don't stand the test of time.

Contaminated food is taking too long to be removed from store shelves, according to a report issued by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The report says the Food and Drug Administration "did not always have an efficient and effective food-recall process that ensured the safety of the nation's food supply."

Federal investigators reviewed 30 of 1,557 food recalls between 2012 and 2015.

Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode Rethinking Medicine.

About Siddhartha Mukherjee's TED Talk

When it comes to medicine, one rule of thinking has generally prevailed: Have disease, take pill, kill something. But physician Siddhartha Mukherjee says treatment should take a broader approach.

About Siddhartha Mukherjee

Part 3 of the TED Radio Hour episode Rethinking Medicine.

About Jocelyne Bloch's TED Talk

Neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch and her colleague were studying brain samples of head trauma patients when they made an amazing discovery — brain cells with the ability to generate new cells.

About Jocelyne Bloch

Part 4 of the TED Radio Hour episode Rethinking Medicine.

About Joseph Ravenell's TED Talk

Many black men trust their barber more than their primary care doctor, if they even have one. Physician Joseph Ravenell wants to turn barbershops into a place where men can access basic health care.

About Joseph Ravenell

A day after President Trump said the Affordable Care Act "has been repealed," officials reported that 8.8 million Americans have signed up for coverage on the federal insurance exchange for 2018 — nearly reaching the 2017 number in half the sign-up time.

That total is far from complete. Enrollment is still open in parts of seven states, including Florida and Texas, that use the federal HealthCare.gov exchange but were affected by hurricanes earlier this year.

The Food and Drug Administration Tuesday approved the first gene therapy to treat an inherited disease.

The treatment is called Luxturna, a genetically modified virus that ferries a healthy gene into the eyes of patients born with retinal dystrophy, a rare condition that destroys cells in the retina needed for healthy vision.

A new study found that teenagers are increasingly depressed, feel hopeless and are more likely to consider suicide. Researchers found a sudden increase in teens' symptoms of depression, suicide risk factors and suicide rates in 2012 — around the time when smartphones became popular, says Jean Twenge, one of the authors of the study.

Debra Thompson is throwing a block party. She has good weather for it — never a sure thing in Chicago — a warm and sunny autumn afternoon. Music is playing, hot dogs are grilling.

But this party isn't just for fun. Thompson is the volunteer chairwoman of Englewood Village, an organization that connects low-income older adults on the city's South Side with services from nutrition to job assistance to home repair. And this is how she is reaching out to potential new members.

Research shows women veterans don’t use VA health care at the same rate as men, and many report delayed or unmet health needs. A group of nonprofits is testing a new program in Los Angeles meant to overcome the barriers that keep female veterans from seeking help.

Libby Denkmann (@libdenk) of KPCC reports.

It may not be rocket science, but a group of surgeons at the University of Michigan has devised an approach to help curb the nation's opioid epidemic — starting at their own hospital.