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As long as I have been a pediatrician, boys have told me — usually in not so many words — that they feel the exact same body pressures girls do, just in different directions. This body-sense emerges earlier than we might expect thanks to the younger onset of puberty, which has moved squarely into the elementary school years, yes for both boys and girls. The difference is that female body changes tend to be obvious from the start; not so for the male ones. (Natterson, 12/3)

The meat industry has a warning for consumers: Beware of plant-based meat. That is the message behind a marketing campaign by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a public relations firm whose financial supporters have included meat producers and others in the food industry. In recent weeks the group has placed full-page ads in The New York Times and other newspapers raising health concerns about plant-based meat substitutes like the Impossible Burger and the Beyond Burger, which are designed to look, taste and even appear to bleed like real meat. (O'Connor, 12/3)

A few months ago, in a conference room at the Yard, a co-working space in Manhattan, a group of female employees were updating their boss, Alisa Vitti, on their latest projects and the state of their hormones. “I’m in my luteal phase right now, so very into organization,” said one woman, citing the second phase of her menstrual cycle as explanation for the series of perfectly structured charts she was presenting on a screen at the front of the room. (Schiffer, 12/4)

To prevent heart problems later in life, people 45 and younger with higher levels of bad cholesterol might want to change their eating and exercise habits, or even talk to their doctor about medications such as statins, a new study says. The study, published in the medical journal the Lancet on Tuesday, is one of the most comprehensive analyses of the long-term risk of cardiovascular disease related to what's known as non-HDL cholesterol. (Christensen, 12/4)

Regular exercise throughout adulthood may protect our muscles against age-related loss and damage later, according to an interesting new study of lifelong athletes and their thighs. The study finds that active older men’s muscles resemble, at a cellular level, those of 25-year-olds and weather inflammatory damage much better than the muscles of sedentary older people. The study also raises some cautionary questions about whether waiting until middle age or later to start exercising might prove to be challenging for the lifelong health of our muscles. (Reynolds, 12/4)

When BJ Miller was a sophomore at Princeton University, he climbed atop a commuter train that had been parked for the night. What began as a lark took a tragic turn when 11,000 volts of electricity suddenly surged through his body. "There was a big explosion, a big flash of light, and I was thrown ... quite some distance," Miller says. "My body was literally smoking." (Gross, 12/3)

Across the country, nearly 95,000 people are waiting for a kidney transplant, including more than 500 in Iowa, and that list has been growing for years. This has pushed some to try unusual ways to find donors. (Krebs, 12/3)