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Clesta Dickson, 86 years old, never married. The retired teacher lives on her own in a tidy apartment on the second floor of Pleasantview Towers, a subsidized apartment building for older adults and people with disabilities in Vienna, W.Va. When her own parents became frail, she bought a house for the three of them. They died years ago. She has a brother, but he is 82. Without children of her own, she wonders what will happen to her. “I think about it all the time,” she says. She made her funeral arrangements, after noticing how many people she knew died and never had a memorial service or obituary. (Ansberry, 7/20)

If you're in the hospital or a doctor's office with a painful problem, you'll likely be asked to rate your pain on a scale of 0 to 10 – with 0 meaning no pain at all and 10 indicating the worst pain you can imagine. But many doctors and nurses say this rating system isn't working and they're trying a new approach. The numeric pain scale may just be too simplistic, says Dr. John Markman, Director of the Translational Pain Research Program at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. It can lead doctors to "treat by numbers," he says and as a result, patients may not be getting the most effective treatment for their pain. (Neighmond, 7/23)

Elephants have 100 times as many cells as humans. But they seldom get cancer. This is surprising, because cancer is a result of cell division gone wrong, and the more cells an organism has, the higher the chances that some will mutate into tumors. Also, because elephants live so long — between 60 and 70 years — their cells have more opportunities to mutate. The counterintuitive observation that cancer risk does not always correlate with a species’ size or longevity is known as Peto’s Paradox, named after British epidemiologist Richard Peto, who first noted the phenomenon in 1977. It turns out that cancer does not strike all species equally: Some animals have evolved powerful strategies to keep the disease at bay, while others are particularly vulnerable. (Kohn, 7/21)

Jose Belardo of Lansing, Kansas, spent most of his career in the U.S. Public Health Service. He worked on the frontlines of disasters in places like Haiti, Colombia, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. At home with his three kids and wife, Elaine, he'd always been unfailingly reliable, so when he forgot their wedding anniversary two years in a row, they both started to worry. "We recognized something wasn't right and pretty much attributed it to being overworked and tired," Elaine says. (Smith, 7/22)

Among the more than 2.5 million men and women who have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are many veterans -- exposed to sandstorms, burn pits and other hazards -- who suffer from a mysterious pulmonary illness, as well as the confusion and doubt that surrounds their condition. (Sagalyn and Schifrin, 7/20)

How much potassium do you need? Is it worth shelling out for the botanical supplement du jour? What’s abetalipoproteinemia? When it comes to dietary supplements, there are often more questions than answers. Although many Americans report using them, their benefits can be questionable. And there are so many on the market that it can be hard to figure out which to buy and how to use them. The website of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Dietary Supplements addresses such issues. (Blakemore, 7/21)

Jet lag can put the brakes on the most exciting vacations. Almost everyone who has ever flown across time zones knows what it feels like. The experience ranks somewhere between eating day-old cooked oatmeal and nursing a hangover. These food and drink metaphors aren’t just a coincidence. Jet lag, it turns out, affects more than our sleep; it affects our internal organs as well. Given what is known about the importance of intestinal bacteria (called the microbiome) and their connection to immune function and well-being, it’s clear that any discussion of jet lag, and how to deal with it, needs to consider “gut lag” as well. (Wellbery, 7/21)

Researchers in Australia have developed a blood test that could potentially detect melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, in its early stages. ... Of the 245 blood samples collected, the researchers were able to identify those with melanoma with 79 percent accuracy and those without the cancer with 84 percent accuracy. (Pirani, 7/20)

The virus, which can lead to AIDS if untreated, disproportionately affects African-Americans nationwide. This stubborn racial disparity persists in Connecticut and in neighboring New England states despite years of work to undo it, according to a Connecticut Mirror analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Rigg and Kara, 7/23)

Growing up in Washington, D.C.'s Columbia Heights neighborhood, Rebecca Lemos-Otero says her first experience with nature came in her late teens when her mother started a community garden. "I was really surprised and quickly fell in love," she recalls. The garden was peaceful, and a "respite" from the neighborhood, which had high crime rates, abandoned lots and buildings, she says. (Chatterjee, 7/20)

After a colonoscopy two years ago, Patti Damare felt so delirious and weak that she couldn’t stand on her own. That was on a Friday, and she chalked up her symptoms to lingering effects of anesthesia. On Saturday, the San Marcos, Calif., woman wondered if she had contracted a killer flu or urinary tract infection.The next day, she couldn’t get out of bed. (Bazar, 7/23)