‘I want to do everything I can to head off dementia’: why demand for the shingles vaccine is soaring

Could a drug intended to prevent painful rashes also protect our brains as we get older? The signs are promising – but not conclusive. Yet that’s enough to be driving a boom in shingles jabs

‘Cancer is tripling and will keep increasing’: first African to lead global action against disease ready for battle

With cancer cases rising fastest in poorer countries, Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu, president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control, says Africa needs investment in research, diagnosis and prevention

The generation raised on sugar rations – and what their health reveals 70 years later

From blood pressure to ageing, research suggests the first 1,000 days of sugar exposure could leave a decades-long mark on health

Shortages of crucial HIV medicines due to aid cuts are a ‘warning’, say experts

More than half of organisations providing HIV care surveyed by International Planned Parenthood Federation said they had run out of stock at some point during past 12 months

My relationship with food was broken. Then I killed my own dinner

For years, eating was something to control, fear or regret. After I hunted my first deer, I started to see fat, hunger and my own body in a different light

A moment that changed me: My mother fell off a mountain – and my life began again

A bad breakup had made me afraid I would be mired in anger for ever. But on that family hike, in our fear and horror as we awaited the air ambulance, my old hurts took on a different hue

The one change that worked: Anxiety had me hiding from the world – then two magic questions set me free

I used to be terrified of socialising, certain I would embarrass myself the moment I opened my mouth. And as for dates …

Does avoiding misery make you happy?

It might seem like self-preservation, but the results aren’t necessarily what you’d expect

‘They accepted the money but didn’t take care of my child’: what Luna Wong’s death reveals about the treatment of international students in the UK

When her parents waved her off to study in England they hoped it would be a fresh start the 16-year-old needed after struggling with her mental health in Hong Kong. Instead, 10 months later, she was dead. What went so wrong?

Experience: a brain surgeon dropped part of my skull on the floor

I was a healthy 34-year-old when a mass of blood vessels ruptured in my brain. It took three neurosurgeons and a risky 16-hour operation to fix me