health

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Is a cold most contagious before or after symptoms appear?

It's that time of year when people are sneezing and snotting everywhere and thousands of times across America each day someone coughs or sneezes in a group and says "Don't worry, I'm not contagious at this point." As a parent and as someone who'd rather be well than sick, I always wonder whether this claim is true. Our friends over at HowStuffWorks have an article on the contagious period for cold and flu. Here's a bit from the article: So, when are you most contagious? Most experts agree that... READ ON

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Even after cancer scare, temptation to smoke is too much

A new study finds that even after having surgery to remove early stage lung cancer, almost half of those who smoked before surgery eventually start smoking again. A third of those patients resumed smoking within a year of the... READ ON

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Why your mom's wrong when she says "Sit up straight"

The headless woman pictured at left is working really hard at sitting with good posture but it turns out sitting up straight is pretty stressful on your back. According to LiveScience, sitting back at a 135 degree angle is better than sitting up at 90 degrees or leaning forward. Using a new form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), researchers studied 22 volunteers with no back pain history. The subjects assumed three different positions: slouching; sitting up straight at 90 degrees; and sitting back... READ ON

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Would you skip sleeping if you could?

New Scientist has a piece on the possibilities of 24 hr awake time and many sleep scientists believe it's inevitable that we'll get pretty close to this one day. With drugs like modafinil, people are already staying up many more hours without the side effects of caffeine or amphetamines (so they claim). This is just the first step toward doing away with sleep entirely. And it's one of those subjects that's going to face incredible division of opinion: "The more we understand about the body's 24-hour... READ ON
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Electric stimulation applied to brain during sleep improves memory

As long as you're willing to look like this at night, you too can improve your verbal memory by 8%! Actually, the potential for this kind of technology is pretty cool. Maybe one day we'll all strap on our brain caps before bed. Read about the study over at... READ ON

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Tall Women More Likely to Have Twins

LiveScience reports on a study that shows a link between the height of mothers and the likelihood that they will have twins. The study compared the heights of 149 mothers of twins or triplets to those of average U.S. women and found that the moms of twins and triplets were on average more than an inch taller. Dr. Gary Steinman, who led the study, explained that taller women have more insulin-like growth factor. Insulin-like growth factor (IGF) is a protein released by the liver in response to growth... READ ON

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Obesity is more than a U.S. problem

The media often talks about how fat the U.S. is and while that's true, scientists gathering at the 10th International Congress on Obesity are pointing out that this is a global problem. Some very interesting facts: There are now more overweight people in the world than undernourished. There are over 1 billion overweight adults (more than 300 million are obese) and about 800 million undernourished. The World Health Organization recognizes that obesity is more of a problem in rich countries but... READ ON

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An Incredible Invention: The LifeStraw

 The Wired NextFest is coming up September 29th and the current issue has bits on some of the featured inventions. One of these inventions, the LifeStraw, gives us hope that it might actually be possible to significantly reduce the number of people suffering from waterborne illnesses like Typhoid, Cholera and Dysentery. This could be huge for the one billion people in the world who have no access to safe drinking water. According to the developers of the device, the LifeStraw kills 99.9% of the... READ ON

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A possible end to the stem cell debate?

Although I doubt this will bring an end to the debate on federal funding for stem cell research, scientists have now proven that it's possible to derive stem cells from an embryo without killing the embryo. New Scientist reports on the promising development: Last year, Bob Lanza and his team from Advanced Cell Technology of Worcester, Massachusetts, demonstrated that stem cells could be harvested from mouse embryos without killing them. Now they have done the same in human embryos left over from IVF... READ ON

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How Fiber Works its Magic

Nothing makes good morning office chat like fiber talk. So the next time one of those great fiber-focused conversations comes up, here's something to share. Scientists at the Medical College of Georgia have released the results to an interesting study on how fiber works in a rather paradoxical way. As they explain, fiber actually does its job by first doing damage to our gastrointestinal tract. As the fiber passes through, it tears cells along the way. These cells produce mucus, which is... READ ON

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