People who swear by the cold-fighting properties of echinacea may want to skip the herbal remedy -- and save a few bucks -- the next time they feel the sniffles coming on.In a new study of more than 700 people who came down with colds, echinacea pills were not measurably better than placebo at speeding recovery time or reducing the severity of runny nose, sore throat, cough, and other symptoms.Echinacea has flunked similar tests before. Over the past eight years, several high-quality studies in which cold sufferers were randomly assigned to receive echinacea or placebo have arrived at the same conclusion: The herb has no discernible impact on colds. (This type of study is considered the gold standard for medical research.)"The benefits [of echinacea] were not dramatic," says David Rakel, MD, the director of integrative medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine, in Madison, and one of the authors of the new study. [Read the full article]

And a separate recent study found that some dyslexics may have a heightened understanding of space, despite an impairment in language.In dyslexia, also called developmental reading disorder, the brain doesn't properly recognize or process symbols. Children with this condition may find reading comprehension difficult because they don't connect sounds with letters and can't recognize words well. Celebrities including Whoopi Goldberg, Cher and Henry Winkler (the "Fonz") have made their dyslexia publicly known, and great artists such as Pablo Picasso are said to have had it.Some children with the disorder can "compensate," or read fairly normally, but perhaps more slowly than their peers, by adulthood. It is hard to know who will be able to improve reading skills over time, and how much extra help is necessary.A study led by Fumiko Hoeft, psychiatry researcher at Stanford University School of Medicine, used brain imaging to answer this question. [Read the full article]

If you take aspirin, you've got a pain reliever, heart attack preventer and possible cancer preventer rolled into one tablet. You might think that whoever invented aspirin is a genius, but the truth is humans have been using its natural equivalent for thousands of years."Aspirin is one of those things that, long before there were ever clinical trials or any kind of scientific knowledge, people figured out, 'Hey, I feel better when I take this substance,' " said Dr. Karol Watson, assistant professor of cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.The drug has been making headlines because a study in the Lancet recently found that a daily aspirin appeared to lower the risk of cancer by at least 20% during a 20-year period. That's based on data from more than 25,000 patients and builds on earlier findings that aspirin may lower the risk of colorectal cancer. [Read the full article]

No man (or woman) is an island, and it's well known that social ties are good for your health. Social connections have been linked with greater longevity, and just living with someone else may lower heart disease risk.But a new study suggests that if those relationships -- particularly with your partner -- are stressful, it may be bad for your heart.Middle-age people who feel that their family members are excessively demanding or a source of worry are more than twice as likely as worry-free people to develop angina, the chest pain that occurs with exercise or exertion due to a reduced blood flow to the heart.Frequent conflicts with an argumentative spouse or even a neighbor (as opposed to a worrisome or demanding one) were also linked to angina risk, but not fights with children or other family members.In the six-year study, which included people in their 40s and 50s, about 1 in 10 people developed angina. [Read the full article]