# sleep

A day's slate of studies highlights how single episodes of excess can damage gut integrity, how alternate-day fasting trades fat loss for muscle loss, and how early-onset cancers are outpacing late-life diagnoses. Cross-species sleep research and data from forests and galaxies underscore the need for skepticism toward neat interventions and for recalibrating models to match shifting realities.

Rising health costs, shrinking rural clinician capacity, and environmental contamination are converging to constrain outcomes well before patients reach care. At the same time, robust evidence elevates sleep as a powerful lever for longevity and daily performance, while youth screen habits and structured play emerge as actionable targets for prevention.

A long-term analysis of vaccination coverage indicates population-level herd protection from the HPV vaccine, while new evidence reframes how neurons fuel activity and links poor sleep to accelerated brain aging and inflammation. Social research underscores gaps between self-diagnosis and clinical care and highlights the need to safeguard researchers amid escalating smear tactics.