"Never brush immediately after an acidic meal or drink. Always wait at least 30 minutes."

This Medicine Cabinet Quiz to test your knowledge of home remedies claims to be "deceptively easy" but the answers are, in order: A, B or C; C; A, B and C; Trick question — it depends; A or B, depending on the cause; and A, B or C. You'll never make it! Just call 911! Upshot? Our screams were not enough, but they were correct: alcohol and hydrogen peroxide on a scraped knee can actually do more harm than good.

It's unfortunate, but there's a chance you'll spend this weekend recovering from oral surgery. Hopefully it rains. What movies are you planning to watch?

Here is a wonderful email from reader Michelle Siobhan Reid:

I feel tacky writing in and being like, "Post about this!" because I am sure you are inundated with these requests all the time, but there's no harm, I suppose!

Organ donation awareness week is the last week of April for Canada & the US, and while it seems like every day is marked for awareness of something or other, my mom is alive thanks to a transplant in 2009 so I'm pretty into this one. Most people agree that they would like to be organ donors after they die, but they don't register (you are doing better in the [...]

“Nobody knows exactly how many people there are with it in the United States,” says Nash, who is the chief of the Gastrointestinal Parasites Section at NIH. His best estimate is 1,500 to 2,000.

Worldwide, the numbers are vastly higher, though estimates on a global scale are even harder to make because neurocysticercosis is most common in poor places that lack good public-health systems.

Sometimes scientists tell you stuff you'd rather not hear, you know? For example, if a meteor was going to hit Earth tomorrow and end all life and nothing could be done about it, would you want the scientists to tell you? Maybe that is why [...]

“If you have HPV, it’s probably not going to mean anything. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get cancer. As long as you get your follow-up tests, cervical cancer is the most preventable cancer.” —If the third episode of 'Girls' threw you for an HPV loop (why did she get tested, why does she call it precancer, why does that guy say he tested negative, etc.), the Times Well blog parses it all out. Plus there's our handy-dandy Guide to Your Abnormal Pap Smear that has the pictures of cervixes in bowties. Hellooo!

A few weeks ago, a story came across my desk from a woman who said she has snatiation. "Has what?" you say. "Snatiation," I respond, and then proceed to interview her, Gillian Weeks, about the condition none of us has heard of.

Jane Marie: So you have a thing called snatiation. I've never heard of this! What is it?

Gillian Weeks: Snatiation is a portmanteau of the words "sneeze" and "satiation." It means, in short, that I sneeze after large meals. And I'm not talking about a single dainty, baby panda-like "achoo." I mean a dozen (or, Dear God, DOZENS) of robust, juicy sneezes. All because I overate.

There's also a handy [...]

"The relationship between coffee and risk of death was even more dramatic in women. Those who drank one cup per day had 5% lower odds of dying during the study compared with women who drank none. Those who consumed two or three cups a day were 13% less likely to die, those who downed four or five cups were 16% less likely to die, and those who drank six or more cups had a 15% lower mortality rate."

"Commuting Bad" says the URL of this LiveScience piece.

"Long Distance Commuters More Likely to Be Fat" says this chattier Telegraph one.

Meanwhile, the study "yields new information about biological outcomes and commuting distance," says one of the researchers, and "provides important evidence about potential mediators in the relationship between time spent driving and cardiovascular mortality," according to another. Poor commutes. Commute, are you making me fat? Commute: Yes, it's all me, nothing else, and I should have spoken up sooner.

I stand up and pace around the hospital lobby again. We — my husband, my nine-year-old daughter, and I — arrived here at 11 for my surgery at 1. My implanted pacemaker device is malfunctioning and needs to be replaced, three years before its originally anticipated due date. The Information Desk lady tells me my procedure is actually scheduled for 2:45, and I won’t be called to the operating room floor until 1:30. She smiles and hands me one of those coaster things with red lights that buzz when your table is ready at a chain restaurant. Great, I think, having heart surgery is now just like going to Applebee’s [...]