The Check-Up: Today’s Top Health Headlines

Aww, what a cute little lung-cancer detector.

• Sometimes a good cry is all you need to feel better—or, you know, maybe not. A study of 97 Dutch women, who were asked to keep “mood journals” for three months, found that 61 percent didn’t feel any better at all after a good waterworks session—and 9 percent reported feeling worse afterwards. Here’s an interesting tidbit: The study also probed when and how long women cried during the study period. Apparently, the average crying session lasted eight minutes and most of the outbursts occurred in the living room.

• Women’s Health posted a funny little guide to toothpastes made with unusual flavors—from licorice to tea-tree oil to chocolate—and their surprisingly potent bacteria-fighting ingredients. All gag reflexes aside, I’m strictly a mint-and-only-mint-toothpaste kind of girl. What about you?

• And lest I leave out the guys, Men’s Health enlightens us with a guide to—ready for this?—the “20 Scariest Food Facts.” Like, did you know milk may contain cancer-causing hormones? And that aluminum cans are lined with BPA? Eeeep.

• Oh fine, I’ll throw Fido a bone, too. WebMD reports that German researchers trained four dogs—two German shepherds, an Australian shepherd and a Labrador retriever—to sniff out lung cancer in human breath. They correctly identified cancer in 71 out of 100 cases, and ruled out a diagnosis in 372 out of 400. If they’re able to be replicated, the findings could be huge for lung-cancer patients; the disease is apparently very difficult to diagnose in its early stages, and that’s when it’s still treatable.