As Cannabis Users Age, Health Risks Appear To Grow

Benjamin Han, a geriatrician and addiction medicine specialist at the University of California-San Diego, tells his students a cautionary tale about a 76-year-old patient who, like many older people, struggled with insomnia. “She had problems falling asleep, and she’d wake up in the middle of the night,” he said. “So her daughter brought her some…

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When the Doctor Needs a Checkup

He was a surgical oncologist at a hospital in a Southern city, a 78-year-old whose colleagues had begun noticing troubling behavior in the operating room. During procedures, he seemed “hesitant, not sure of how to go on to the next step without being prompted” by assistants, said Mark Katlic, director of the Aging Surgeon Program…

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2025 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to…

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt. The Nobel Prize committee said that the award was merited “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” The Nobel Prize committee summarizes their key contributions as follows: Over the last two centuries, for the first time in history, the world has seen sustained economic…

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“Will my insurance cover my stay?”

This is a question I can’t answer with certainty. Patients often believe that since I’m part of the health-care system, I would know. But I don’t, not as a doctor — and not even when I’m a patient myself. In the United States, health insurance is so extraordinarily complicated, with different insurers offering different plans,…

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