Archive | Health & Disease

Niacin, Vitamin B3 I know this information is already about a year out of date but I thought it might be worth republishing (as I just ran into this article and study this last weekend.) At the 2009 meeting of the American Heart Association, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed…

The latest examination of obesity rates by the CDC comes to some sobering conclusions about the state of public health in America. Their findings show a block of states, mostly concentrated in the South, now have obesity rates over 30%. Back in 1990, no states were over 20%, making the run-up in the last 20 years…

Neurophotonics, up close Researchers at SMU are working with DARPA (the US hyper-advanced military research group that initially developed the internet) to create an artificial fiber optic signaling system that will directly interface with your body’s central nervous system.  This technology, called neurophotonics, would allow bidirectional communication to and from the brain, giving amputees with prosthetic arms…

The New York Times has a really good piece on the coming rules regarding the amount of antibiotics that can be given to confinement livestock. Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to…

ost of us already know that we should be eating fiber – according to the Institute of Medicine, adults should be eating 20-35 grams of it per day. But why? What’s so important about fiber anyway? What does it do for us physiologically? And does it matter what kind of fiber we eat? I can hear…

Almost everyone has heard of Insulin. You probably know that people with type 1 diabetes need to inject themselves with insulin to survive, and must constantly monitor the amount of sugar they eat. But what do you really know about insulin? What is its purpose in the body, and why do we need it? How does…

The most common advice as to how to lose weight given my doctors to people that are overweight or obese is to cut calories. Reduced caloric intake has been lined to all kinds of health benefits, from extended life span to reduced risk of heart disease. But the primary goal of people who slice their…

Once you start to understand the science behind a lot of diet, nutrition and health science publications, you realize that it’s rare for the recaps of science in the newspaper to accurately depict a scientist’s results or a study’s real-world implications. I’m not trying to take a shot at all health journalists – just a…

“Pain in the abdomen. Splitting Headache. Nausea and vomiting. Choking and couldn’t get their breath. Coughing up blood.” Phone calls like these broke the dawn of a fall day in the mill town of Donora, Pennsylvania back in October, 1948. Already two had died and another 18 were soon to follow. The death toll would…

Childhood obesity is becoming a hot topic in health circles, even to the point of being called an epidemic. Experts estimate that 20% of children between the ages of 6 and 17 are overweight, predisposing them to terrible diseases like diabetes and heart disease. Why have the world’s children ballooned over the past hundred years? Ice…