What are Americans dying of? Spoiler alert: obesity. Second spoiler alert: complications of diabetes.

Artificial sweeteners may be associated with stroke and dementia risk. I've mostly given up artificial sweeteners, but not because of this paper. I'm making a bit of a Pascal's wager on artificial sweeteners: they're surely not good for us, even though they may not be as bad as sugar itself. So I take steps to avoid them, just like I take steps to avoid sugar itself. The fact that this paper didn't show any risk associated with sugar-sweetened beverages makes me a little suspicious of its results. Maybe the editorialists' note that people sometimes switch to diet soft drinks after they are flagged as "high risk" by their doctors is right. They're on their way to a stroke one way or the other, and they just happen to have switched to a diet drink beforehand.

Garden City, Kansas voted to raise the legal age for the purchase of tobacco or e-cigarettes to 21 years. The decision "grew from a request made by a group of Garden City High School students earlier this year." Garden City is the fifteenth (!) city in Kansas to make such a decision.

Exercise may help cognition (that's the thinking part) in the elderly. Seemingly if you work moderately hard for at least 45 minutes. What is moderate? According the ACSM guideline they used, it is hard enough to use "40%-60% heart rate reserve." That means halfway between your normal resting heart rate and your maximum heart rate, which is usually calculated by subtracting your age from 220. So if your normal heart rate is 70 and you're 50 years old, you have a maximum heart rate of ~170, so using 50% of your heart rate reserve would mean getting your heart rate to ~120. Confused? Well, "moderate" intensity is also about a 5 or 6 out of 10 in perceived exertion. There. 

The FDA is warning (again) about bogus internet cancer treatments. A couple observations here: 1) I can't believe it's only 65 products. That must barely scratch the surface. 2) I don't know if the fact that so many of the products are co-marketed for cats and dogs is a good sign or a bad sign. 3) Even a casual observer must be astonished that we know so much about how to prevent cancer, and it's not complicated, and it's generally cheap or even money-positive (don't smoke, get a little exercise, eat fruits and vegetables, wear sunscreen)

But yet we as a society are so much more interested in giving our money to snake-oil salesmen for untested bunk.