The United States has an opioid problem. Heroin overdose deaths rates have tripped since 2010 according to one report—and overall opioid overdose death rates have tripled since 2000. It’s not going away.
Being healthy is good. That is what we should all aspire to be: Not dead, but with all of our flesh on our bodies intact. Unfortunately for us humans, having our flesh eaten is one of the possible side effects of being alive.
Tattoos are very cool and I do not want to say bad things about them. Evidence of tattooing dates back thousands of years, and the art form has a long history across the world in various cultures. Tattooing has associations with wealth, crime, or seafaring depending on where in history you look. Today, there’s no…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that sitting for long periods of time is bad for us. But new research suggests it’s not just the total amount of time we spend sitting each day that we need to worry about, it’s also the length of time between bouts of physical activity. While still incomplete, these results suggest a…
There’s no doubt that settling down into a marathon TV viewing session is one of the most enjoyable ways to spend an evening (or morning or afternoon), but it’s also true that you can have too much of a good thing. If you want to know the ground rules for binge-watching without harming your health, we’ll outline them…
Death comes for us all here on Earth at a rate of nearly 7,000 people every hour. Yet, despite its inevitability, most of us know very little about the experience. This is what happens to your body and mind as you slip away—and it’s not as frightening as you might think.
If you agitate cream enough, you will make whipped cream. Continue agitating it and skim off the liquid, and you will make butter. Put that in your coffee, and you have now wasted a lot of energy to put cream into your coffee.
These days, you can’t throw a rock without hitting some start-up trying to boost our microbiomes. For the health-obsessed, microbiome has become the buzzword of the day. That’s because it’s becoming ever-clearer that all the trillions of microorganisms that inhabit our bodies, and particularly our gut, play an…
Extreme rainfall and flooding from Hurricane Harvey has left thousands in Houston and surrounding communities stranded. Some parts of the city have experienced over 40 inches of rain, and forecasters say that number is expected to rise over the coming days. Currently, the storm has repositioned itself in the Gulf of…
Data-tracking watchdog group, Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI), has reported dozens of instances where the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences has deleted references to climate change from its site.
The Hazda is a small group of hunter-gatherers living in the central Rift Valley of Tanzania, one of the few remaining groups of people left in the world who still collect the majority of their diet through foraged foods. Modernity has still managed to touch their lives, of course, but far less than it has for those…
President Donald J. Trump has decided to advance his bogus ban on trans individuals openly serving in the US military beyond tweeting vague dictates on the matter.
Opana was a painkiller twice as strong as Oxycontin. Like most opioids sold in the US it was easy to snort, until one day it wasn’t: Its manufacturers, Endo Pharmaceuticals, rigged it with crush-resistant technology in 2012. Within months the largest HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history was underway—addicts had taken to…
Science doesn’t give answers. Instead, it’s a tool that humans have created to make meaningful conclusions from data. So, if someone tells you that science says energy drinks will turn you into a cocaine user, well, science won’t ever do that.
In 1845, Sir John Franklin led two British Royal Navy ships on an ill-fated expedition through the Northwest Passage—a famous and hazardous corridor connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. None of the crew members returned, spawning a mystery that has endured for more than 150 years. A new analysis explores the…
You have, as of today, a one hundred percent chance of dying. But a lot of people would like a little more time to do things, like eat interestingly-shaped pastas, or play catch with their grandchildren. That makes sense. I’d also like to do those things. But sometimes, our pursuit to eat lots of pasta or die trying…
If there’s one thing you should always remember about science, it’s that fact and truth are established after multiple studies converge on an answer. Even after that, further research might turn over what you thought was true of the other studies, because you were looking at it through too narrow of a lens. Single…
Researchers from MIT have developed a wireless, artificially intelligent sensor that can detect the various stages of sleep, including rapid eye movement—the sleep stage associated with dreaming. The non-invasive system could change the way clinicians diagnose sleep disorders and other health complications.
It would be really nice if something you could just go to CVS and buy off a shelf unequivocally had some massive health benefit. But the world does not work that way, and neither does science. There are an array of caveats, and layers of complexity, attached to nearly every health study you see sensationalized and…
In a bizarre case from the UK, a 62-year-old man developed a severe neurological disorder, and doctors learned it probably had something to with his dentures. Or at least, with the stuff keeping them in place.
