By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Nearly 1 million Massachusetts residents who don’t smoke and live in apartments or attached houses are exposed regularly to cigarette smoke from their neighbors’ homes, according to a report released Friday by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, about 45 percent of apartment dwellers -- or 29 million Americans -- are exposed to health risks from secondhand tobacco smoke, even though they enforce smoke-free rules in their own apartments.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

At least 25 people, including 18 children, were killed this morning in a frightening massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. Children will no doubt hear about this and wonder whether it’s safe to go to school. After the July movie theater killings in Aurora, Colorado, I spoke with Boston-area mental health specialists on how parents should talk to their children about horrific news events. Here’s what they recommended.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Life expectancy is increasing among the world’s population, including in the United States, but people are living longer in chronic pain and with physical and mental disabilities, according to findings from the giant Global Burden of Disease study, published Thursday. Seven separate reports conducted by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and elsewhere determined that developing countries are looking more like richer Westernized countries in terms of the health problems that pose the biggest burden.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

How dangerous is it, really, to text and walk? Is it as bad as distracted driving? University of Washington researchers last summer decided to observe more than 1100 pedestrians at 20 busy intersections in Seattle and found that nearly one-third performed a distracted activity while walking like emailing, talking to a friend, or listening to music.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

A new device for hearing loss in one ear could help patients avoid surgery. It’s being used at Boston Medical Center and elsewhere. Manufacturers are also trying to develop implantable hearing aids for those with hearing loss in both ears.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Massachusetts moved up three places in an annual state health ranking this year, grabbing the No. 4 spot for healthiest state overall in a measure of 24 parameters including rates for smoking, alcohol abuse, exercise, violent crime, diabetes, heart disease, and infectious diseases, as well as access to primary care physicians.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Should doctors who forget where exam rooms are be allowed to stay in practice? How about a physician who forgets to leave his hospital patients in the care of another doctor when he heads out of town for vacation? A provocative piece published in the Washington Post on Tuesday in conjunction with Kaiser Health News raises those questions and points out that most hospitals don’t have policies in place to require that doctors maintain their cognitive abilities and medical skills as they age.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

When Worcester Polytechnic Institute grad Mike Abramson went to a Boston club three years ago, he took a sip of his first drink, felt extremely woozy a few minutes later, and quickly realized his drink had been spiked with a drug. That inspired him to invent a product that could detect common “date rape” drugs. With the help of one of his old chemistry professors, the two came up with plastic straws, cups, and stirrers that change color when they come in contact with a drug-laced drink.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

A government task force recommended on Monday that doctors discuss the dangers of smoking with all patients ages 10 to 17, citing evidence that children who learn about the dangers of smoking from their doctors will be less likely to become addicted to cigarettes. What may be most surprising to both parents and physicians is that such recommendations weren’t already in place.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

While pink is usually the color most associated with breast cancer advocacy, women may want to think red and orange if they’re looking to lower their own breast cancer risk. Red tomatoes, carrots, and butternut squash are chock full of plant chemicals called carotenoids, and Harvard School of Public Health researchers found that eating plentiful amounts was associated with a 20 percent lower risk of breast cancer, according to a study published last week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

By Deborah Kotz

Mother Nature must have known what she was doing with genetic inheritance, because parents clearly prefer to raise miniature versions of themselves. But what happens when the apple falls very far from the tree? Can parents still provide the same amount of nurturing and love? That’s the question writer Andrew Solomon asked in his new best-selling book “Far From the Tree.”

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Along with chemotherapy’s well-documented side effects of nausea and fatigue, cancer patients also complain about a type of brain fog that sets in clouding their memory, judgement, and cognitive abilities. But a new study presented Friday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio suggests that the condition -- called “chemobrain” -- may not always be due to the drugs but to the stress and anxiety of surrounding the diagnosis and fears of impending treatment.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Can providing free meals to seniors in failing health prevent some of them from winding up in nursing homes? That was a thought experiment conducted by Brown University researchers in a new paper published online earlier this week in the journal Health Services Research. The researchers found that with all things being equal, the amount of money a state spends on subsidized meals correlates with with a reduction in the percentage of relatively healthy seniors in nursing homes.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I’m guessing that phones are ringing off the hook at oncologists’ offices today as breast cancer patients hear the news that taking tamoxifen for 10 years, rather than the usual five, will lower their risk of recurrence and ultimately dying from breast cancer. That news comes from a long-awaited clinical trial published in the journal Lancet involving nearly 13,000 breast cancer patients of all ages who had “estrogen-receptor positive” cancer, the most common type that’s treated with estrogen-blocking tamoxifen.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

After covering new Boston University research linking contact sports with brain damage, I asked Dr. Lauren Smith, interim health commissioner of the state Department of Public Health, whether she had any advice for parents worried about the risks of football and other contact sports. Smith was instrumental in getting a concussion law passed in the state two years ago. Here are excerpts from our interview.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

With news reports that the flu season has started early and could be worse than last year, you may be wondering if it’s too late to get a vaccine. It’s not, since flu season has barely gotten underway in Massachusetts, according to a new government report. The New England region is still seeing normal levels of flu activity, while Southern and Midwestern states have already seen a spike in flu-like illnesses.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I’m attending the mHealth summit in Maryland, which is filled with all sorts of gadgets, apps, and promises of better technologies in the future. But for the here and now, it’s hard not to be a little skeptical -- especially after passing a booth in the exhibition hall promising an app for app fatigue. Still, I’m looking forward to e-visits, which may be coming soon, and could mean access to an online doctor 24/7.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Mother Nature must have known what she was doing with genetic inheritance, because parents clearly prefer to raise miniature versions of themselves. But what happens when the apple falls very far from the tree? Can parents still provide the same amount of nurturing and love? That’s the question writer Andrew Solomon asked in his new best-selling book Far from the Tree. I asked him to reveal lessons gleaned from his interviews with more than 300 families about what parents can do to bridge the differences.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Here’s some interesting news from the obesity drug front. First off, Aetna, one of the nation’s largest insurers, announced Wednesday that it was going to provide coverage for prescription obesity medications including Qsymia and Belviq. Many insurance companies have been dragging their feet on reimbursing for the drugs, which has led to a lag in sales. Also, Boston Medical Center researchers are now looking for overweight volunteers to enroll in a clinical trial to test an experimental obesity drug.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

File this in the folder of stupid things women do in the name of beauty. Apparently some -- and I’m guessing very few -- are having plastic surgery procedures to have their baby toes sliced off or their longer toes shortened in order to squeeze their feet into super-high stilettos.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s diabetes -- disclosed during a news conference Monday when he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital -- was likely triggered by the multiple medical problems he had when he began a month-long stay at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in October, one of his doctors said Tuesday.

By Deborah kotz, Globe Staff

A new study linking air pollution to autism has the potential to scare many parents living in high traffic areas, but the conclusions are fraught with uncertainty and highlight the need for better, larger, more well-funded studies to determine which environmental and lifestyle factors are contributing to a rise in the disorder.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

On the heels of a recommendation to make birth control pills over-the-counter and potentially available to teens without a prescription, another group of doctors has called for teenage girls to get a morning-after-pill prescription during their annual physical -- just in case they might need it when a condom breaks.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I probably spend about half my time at the supermarket reading food labels, trying to decipher which snack for my kids’ school lunches is more nutritious than the others. This week, though, I’m going to try to save a little time by planning ahead and perusing categories of snack foods on the healthcastle.com website run by registered dietitians.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

I was pleasantly surprised to hear about a new recommendation from the medical society that represents gynecologists in support of oral contraceptives being sold over the counter. After all, many women -- myself included -- see their gynecologist every year in order to get their pill prescription renewed and they may stop if they can buy their pills off the shelf.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Much attention has been paid to the overdiagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in kids and the over-prescription of drugs such as ritalin, but a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics indicates that certain kids -- those in the youngest third of their class -- are 50 percent more likely to wind up getting prescribed ADHD drugs than their older peers.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Researchers estimated Wednesday that mammograms caused more than 1 million American women over the past three decades to be diagnosed with early-stage breast cancers that would not have proved fatal if left undetected and untreated -- a controversial finding sure to provoke more heated debate over the benefits of the screenings. The study concluded that these women were “overdiagnosed” and “overtreated” because there was not a corresponding decline in the diagnosis of tough-to-cure breast cancers that have already spread.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Most of us will eat thousands of extra calories during the holiday season, with the average person gaining about a pound that they’re likely to never lose, according to one study; overweight folks put on an average of five pounds or more during the six-week period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. Here are some heart-healthy cooking tips for the holiday season.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

With all the focus on the childhood obesity epidemic, we’d be foolish to think that teens don’t care about their bodies. They’re just as, or perhaps even more, obsessed these days with looking good -- which means ripped muscles for boys and super-skinny with toned biceps for girls. The vast majority of teens reported in a survey published Monday that they’ve changed their eating and exercise patterns in an effort to gain muscle or look more in shape.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

How to keep from overspending this holiday season. Tips from Stacey Tisdale, author of the True Cost of Happiness.

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff

Coming soon to a store near you: Cracker Jack’D, a new twist on the popcorn candy that offers caffeinated Power Bites that claim to have as much caffeine per serving as a cup of coffee. That could mean kids could easily get an overdose of caffeine if they consume more than one serving at a time, warns the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit nutrition activitist group based in Washington, DC.