Most adults over 35 carry a quiet passenger they haven’t thought about in decades. It arrived during childhood, announced itself with spots and fever, then seemed to disappear entirely. But it didn’t leave. The varicella-zoster virus, which causes chickenpox, never fully exits the body. Instead, it retreats deep into the nervous system and waits. For...

There is a moment most of us recognize but rarely discuss: the slow shuffle of a parent crossing a parking lot, or the way an older friend hesitates before stepping off a curb. We tend to file it under “getting older” and move on. But a growing body of research is asking whether that ordinary...

Few people exit a life quite the way Ted Turner entered it: loudly, on their own terms, and impossible to ignore. The man who bet everything on a 24-hour cable news channel when no one believed the idea would work, who sailed across the Atlantic and raced in the America’s Cup, who owned more land...

Executive Summary: In mid-April 2026, President Donald Trump posted a video of Frank Sinatra performing “My Way” on Truth Social, with no caption or context. The opening lyrics – “And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain” – triggered a wave of public alarm and reignited a months-long debate about...

Most people picture dementia as something that creeps up in old age, something that belongs to a distant future most of us would rather not think about too carefully. But the science is shifting that picture in an uncomfortable direction. A wave of large-scale research is identifying the dementia risk factors that accumulate long before...

Insomnia often simply gets dismissed as a mere annoyance, yet long stretches of poor sleep can be linked to real brain outcomes. These large population studies connect certain insomnia symptoms with a higher risk of later dementia. The headline number can sound dramatic, but it comes from a specific finding: trouble falling asleep has shown...

Andre Yarham’s family expected the normal turbulence of early adulthood; they did not expect dementia. Andre lived in Dereham, Norfolk, and his first changes appeared in November 2022. Reporting says his mother, Samantha Fairbairn, noticed forgetfulness and behaviour that did not match him. Doctors later found unusual brain shrinkage and diagnosed frontotemporal dementia, often called...

Dementia is often treated as unavoidable, yet research has revealed that many cases are linked to risks that people can change. In 2024, for example, the Lancet Commission estimated that 45% of dementia cases could be “delayed or reduced” by addressing modifiable risks across life. While that percentage does not guarantee immunity, it does indicate...

Illness and disease don’t exist in silos: often, one can trigger or exacerbate another. Emerging evidence is painting a clearer, more urgent picture: the global epidemic of diabetes may be one of the strongest, yet most controllable risk factors for developing dementia. Far from being two separate conditions, researchers are increasingly recognizing them as a...

As people age, it is normal to experience small shifts in memory and processing speed. Forgetting where the keys are or occasionally misplacing glasses is part of everyday life. But when changes begin to interfere with independence, they may point to something more serious. Recognizing the signs of dementia early is important because intervention, planning,...

Across the globe, women are more likely to develop dementia, and biology provides one key reason. The story is quite complex, though, since your reproductive milestones and medical decisions tend to shape your lifelong exposure to hormones. Researchers are now carefully tracking how events like your first period, pregnancies, or surgery relate to later cognitive...

Prescription drugs play an essential role in treating everything from anxiety to chronic illness. But growing evidence shows that some of these more common medications are linked to dementia or memory loss, particularly in older adults. These effects are often linked to how the medications interact with brain chemicals like acetylcholine, which is vital for...