Our ratings of new elliptical machines include the pricey, but thrilling, Vision XF40 Touch, $3,100, which comes with a Virtual Active feature that lets you run the trails of the Rockies or catch a glimpse of Niagra Falls as you work out.

Q. I've heard that not sleeping enough can cause you to put on the pounds. True?

There are just a few things to know about Mother's Day. First, remember the holiday. This year Mother's Day takes place on Sunday, May 12, so you don't have many shopping days left. Second, book a table. Restaurants are packed on Mother's Day, so if you're going out to celebrate, get on Yelp, OpenTable, or some other dining site now. And third, don't limit yourself to the classics and the clichéd. When choosing a Mother's Day present, the sky's the limit, as you'll see below in our selection of gifts for the mom who . . .

If you'll be doing yard work, hiking, or just sitting on the lawn in the spring loveliness this weekend, be aware that you might not be alone out there: It's tick time again.

Emergency-room visits stemming from Ambien, Edluar, Zolpimist, and other insomnia drugs containing zolpidem have more than tripled in recent years, according to a new report.

I was surprised to learn while editing a recent beauty article for our sister publication, ShopSmart, that the label "cruelty-free" on cosmetics doesn't necessarily guarantee that the product wasn't tested on animals. The same goes for "no animal testing" (how's that for incongruous?). While the terms sound good, it turns out that neither of them is legally defined nor backed by any certifying organization.

More than half of the raw ground turkey and patty products we recently analyzed contained fecal bacteria, and 90 percent had at least one of the five bacteria that we looked for, including some notorious for causing foodborne illness, like salmonella and staphylococcus aureus. And almost all of the disease-causing bugs were resistant to one or more of the antibiotics commonly used to fight them. So if you get sick you might have to try several antibiotics to find one that helps. A better strategy: Take steps to avoid getting sick from ground turkey in the first place. Here's how.

Superstorm Sandy devastated not just homes and property, but people's ability to get needed health care, too. A quarter of the people in our survey of online subscribers in Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York said Sandy caused medical hardships, especially with getting prescription drugs by mail and closed pharmacies.

Yes! Many retailers offer discount prices on generics that may be cheaper than your co-pay. We asked our Secret Shoppers to price common generic drugs at more than 200 pharmacies around the U.S. and they found some real deals if you use cash or credit card instead of insurance. For instance, instead of paying a $10 drug co-pay for the generic version of escitalopram (Lexapro), you could instead pay just $7 at Costco.

If you've ever had trouble affording your medications and wanted to call your doctor on it, here's some encouraging news: Doctors aren't pleased about the prices either. Denouncing "profiteering" by pharmaceutical companies, more than 100 cancer doctors and researchers specializing in treating the blood cancer chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) argued the pressing need to lower cancer drug prices in a paper published last week in the journal Blood. And the doctors noted that the costs of prescription drugs, combined with medical illnesses, are the "the single most frequent cause of personal bankruptcies."

If you've experienced problems with a medical device (or even with medications and vaccines) the Food and Drug Administration wants you to know that now there's a free app to help you report it to the FDA.

My heart rate monitor has been sitting, unused, at the bottom of my gym bag for months. I couldn't get used to putting on the chest strap that comes with it, especially during winter workouts when that chest strap was ice cold from being in the car all day.

Six months ago today—on October 29, 2012—Sandy slammed into the mid-Atlantic region. A new Consumer Reports survey documents the deep disruption and devastation Sandy wrought, along with highlighting the steps that helped victims cope in its aftermath.

About a year after they expire. In most cases, prescription-drug expiration dates are one year to five years from the date they were made. But some pills can actually keep for a decade or even longer, research suggests. "Except for tetracycline, which can become toxic and cause kidney problems, expired drugs generally don't appear to cause harm," says Consumer Reports' chief medical advisor, Marvin M. Lipman, M.D. "But they do become less potent over time."

Nectresse, the newest sugar substitute to enter our kitchens, has far fewer calories than regular sugar. But our taste testers weren't crazy about it in baked goods or when it was added to coffee or lemonade.