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Stephanie Zerwas, the clinical director of the Center of Excellence for Eating Disorders at the University of North Carolina, was trying to find a restaurant in Orlando, Fla., last weekend, so she put the address into Google Maps for directions. She was baffled to see a new feature: The iPhone app told her that walking instead of driving would burn 70 calories. While it was perhaps meant as an incentive to walk, those with eating disorders might instead fixate on the number, a dangerous mind-set that counselors try to minimize, she said. (Victor, 10/17)

People who have obsessive-compulsive disorder can get trapped inside a thought. It repeats itself, like a stuck song. Did I lock the door? Is that doorknob clean enough to touch? I better wash my hands again — and again. The biology underpinning this loop remains murky to scientists, but scientists are beginning to sniff out potential genetic factors behind OCD and shed light on how the disorder affects the brain. (Chen, 10/17)

For the past year and a half I’ve been buying a medical device from Italy that has improved my life immeasurably. It wasn’t easy: I roped in a good friend who had moved to Milan to buy the device and ship it to me because it wasn’t yet available in the States. And it was expensive: over $1,600 a year. (Zimberoff, 10/17)

Most doctors have absorbed racist, sexist, and other bigoted verbal remarks from patients under their care, according to a new national survey. And in interviews, physicians say these ugly incidents, while not frequent, can leave lasting scars. ...A wide-ranging survey of more than 800 U.S. physicians, conducted by WebMD and Medscape in collaboration with STAT, found that 59 percent had heard offensive remarks about a personal characteristic in the past five years — chiefly about a doctor’s youthfulness, gender, race, or ethnicity. As a result, 47 percent had a patient request a different doctor, or ask to be referred to a clinician other than the one their physician selected. (Tedeschi, 10/18)

Staggering rates of obesity and diabetes among Native Americans have led to shortened life spans. Native adults are twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes as is the general population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diets worsened when Native Americans were forced to live on reservations and government commodities replaced the nutrient-rich, natural foods they were used to eating. (Shah, 10/17)

A new therapy for HIV that does not require a lifelong regimen of daily drug cocktails may be on the horizon if early indications from studies on mice prove effective in people, scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida announced Tuesday in the journal, Cell Reports. (Chang, 10/17)

Most dementia patients are older people in generally frail health, which adds to their vulnerability. Such a person can fall prey to a horrific accident, or simply collapse unnoticed in some out-of-the-way location and not be found in time. ...But experts believe there are ways to reduce the number of tragic outcomes. (Kanne, 10/17)