Many people are unaware how a herbal compress or poultice can speed healing of broken bones and sprains. Join discussion...

Arthritis is a common problem that literally means pain and inflammation in joints. Previously it was considered the problem of elderly people but now it is also very common among younger age people. Join discussion...

Thin sheets of polymer coated with living muscle could be used to test new drugs, repair damaged body parts, or even create life-like bio-machines, researchers say. The Harvard University team created the "muscular thin films" by attaching muscle cells to elastic polymer sheets. By laying down striped patterns of proteins on these polymers, they were able to make the muscle cells arrange themselves into muscle fibres, similar to those in animals. When shocked with electricity, the resulting hybrid material can be made to bend, roll up, or wriggle, at a rate that can easily be controlled. Join discussion...

Eeeek! Hot sand, tarry asphalt, pool slop crawling with microbes, teetery high-heeled sandals, 10-mile hikes -- feet sure take a beating in summer. Nearly half of all Americans suffer from a foot problem at some point in their lives, says the American Podiatric Medical Association. And summer, when people are more apt to be active and away from home (and doctors), can be especially problematic. But there are ways to be nice to those tootsies. Join discussion...

t's an ambitious deadline: By 2009, DARPA hopes to have a mechanical arm whose functionality is on par with a flesh-and-blood limb. A new arm developed by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is just as ambitious, allowing its user to actually feel an object in his grasp. Proto 1, the first prototype to come out of DARPA's prosthetic initiative, was tested by Jesse Sullivan, a lineman who lost both of his arms in an accident six years ago. Proto 1 was att Join discussion...

Doctors reattached the right foot of a 13-year-old girl involved in a gruesome amusement park accident, but her left foot was too severely damaged to repair, her family and doctor said in a statement Tuesday. Kaitlyn Lasitter of Louisville remained in stable condition at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., Dr. Douglas Weikert, a surgeon and assistant professor at Vanderbilt, said in the statement. Join discussion...

"No shirt, no shoes, no service." It's a common enough sign in store windows and other establishments, though, who would ever be seen without shoes? Shoes are essential to civilized life, and they bring with them a distinctly civilized manner of walking: lock the knee, and brace a controlled fall on the heel; roll the foot forward, rocking into another locked-knee heel-fall. It's difficult to walk any other way while wearing shoes, and you'll often find this described as the way humans walk. But Join discussion...