Health

How Altitude Sickness Affects Your Body And How You Can Beat It

Altitude sickness can make you dizzy, nauseous, and, in extreme cases, can even kill you. All of us at IndefinitelyWild have experienced it. Here’s what we’ve learned and how you can minimize its symptoms. What is altitude sickness? Altitude Sickness, which is officially known as Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), is the effect on a person…

No One’s Eating Enough Veggies, But Here Are the States Where It’s Worst

How many adults are eating enough vegetables on an average day? Less than 10%, says the CDC—and that incredibly low number somehow manages to get even worse when you look at the state-by-state breakdown. The CDC released its review of how America is doing at eating its fruits and vegetables, and the answer, it turns…

Mapping America’s Obesity Problem Using Twitter

If you eat mountains of food and don’t exercise, you are more likely to be obese. This is not exactly news. But measuring calorie input and energy expenditure on a large scale has traditionally been difficult, and that’s where Twitter comes in. According to a paper posted on open-source submission site arXiv (and therefore not…

Longitudinal Study Confirms Dadbod is Real

A new study that tracked more than 10,200 men over a 20-year period finds those who became fathers gained weight, whether or not they wound up living with their kids. The men who didn’t become dads? They actually lost weight, over the same period. WaPo’s Elahe Izadi breaks down the findings, with some examples: Weight…

​The Best Fitness Tracker for Every Need

Like many of you, I work in front of a computer. They’re powerful devices, but they also suck your will to live and trick you into never, ever getting up and going outside. Reasons like that are why fitness trackers were invented. Over the last few years as Giz’s primary writer for Fitmodo, I’ve had…

Only 81% of Seattle Kindergartners Have Been Vaccinated for Polio

“That’s lower than the 2013 polio immunization rates for 1-year-olds in Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Algeria, El Salvador, Guyana, Sudan, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Yemen, among other countries, according to data from the World Health Organization,” Seattle public radio station KUOW reports. This in the same state where a woman recently died of measles, marking the first…

Why Choosing the Right Surgeon Matters Even More Than You Think

In February 2012, LaVerne Stiles went to Citrus Memorial Hospital near her home in central Florida for what should have been a routine surgery. The bubbly retired secretary had been in a minor car accident weeks earlier. She didn’t worry much about her sore neck until a scan detected a broken bone. The operation she…

What It’s Like to Visit a Radiation Spa

When Geoff Watts went to a radon clinic within an Austrian mountain, he found the heat and humidity more troubling than the radioactivity. For anyone sharing my dislike of high temperatures and extreme humidity, a trip into Bad Gastein’s healing galleries is a foray through something akin to one of Dante’s nine circles of hell.…

Does Talking Count as Exercise? Even a Little Bit? Asking for a Friend.

I’d classify this question as so dumb it’s actually kind of interesting, in a hair-splitting, pedantic sort of way. At Popular Science, Daniel Engber takes a stab at answering it: For a study published in 1998, speech-language pathologist Bridget Russell, of the State University of New York at Fredonia, asked participants to read aloud using…

What exactly is a calorie and why do we care?

By now, in 2015 with gluten excommunicated from diets and paleo celebrated and superfood vegetables being discovered left and right, we all generally know what kind of food is good for you and what kind of food is bad for you. But do most of us really know what a calorie is other than a…

“Stroke Ambulances” Could Save Lives Before Ever Reaching the Hospital

The last year or so has seen the arrival of super ambulances, emergency vehicles equipped with life-saving CT scanners that can treat stroke victims without waiting to arrive at the hospital. Earlier this week, the University of Alberta debuted Canada’s first “stroke ambulance,” a souped-up vehicle that carries a CT scanner and clot-busting drugs onboard.…

Oh Good, We Have One More Year to Eat Bloomin’ Onions In Oblivion

Although you might already be aware of the 520 calories in a Orange Mocha Frappucino thanks to existing laws in your city or state, the FDA recently mandated that calorie counts are to be posted at all chains nationwide by the end of 2015. Thankfully, a new ruling has postponed the deadline until next year.…

Brain-Eating Amoebas Have Struck Again in Minnesota

It’s July, and, like clockwork, brain-eating amoebas are back in the news. Last week, the deadly parasite Naegleria fowleri, which thrives in warm bodies of fresh water, claimed the life of a 21-year-old woman from Inyo County, California. Now a child in Minnesota is believed to have developed primary amebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), the rare, usually…

Report Finds WHO Unfit To Confront Public Health Emergencies Like Ebola

In the wake of West Africa’s Ebola crisis, an independent panel assembled at the request of World Health Organization director Margaret Chan has judged the WHO unfit “to deliver a full emergency public health response,” finding that it has neither “the capacity [nor] organizational culture” to do so. The Ebola Interim Assessment Panel, led by…

This Bacteria-Slaying Light Fixture Is Perfectly Safe For Humans

Bacteria-killing ultraviolet lights can sterilize everything from toothbrushes to bedsheets. But a new type of light fixture called the Indigo-Clean is able to wipe out those same dangerous pathogens while still being safe for patients or caregivers in a hospital. Originally developed at the University of Strathclyde Glasgow, the Indigo-Clean fixture, commercialized by Kenall Manufacturing,…

How Aging Affects Athletic Peformance

“I’m old” is the common refrain for why we get worse at athletics as we age. But here’s what’s really happening in the body through the years to make world-class performance less possible. Above: At 42, Chris Horner became the oldest person to a win a cycling Grand Tour. In this photo Horner climbs during…

An American Has Died From Measles for the First Time Since 2003

A woman in Clallam County, Washington has died of measles. It is the first U.S. death since 2003 to be attributed to the highly infectious disease. State health officials say the woman’s case “illustrates the importance of immunizing as many people as possible to provide a high level of community protection against measles.” The Washington…

Sugary drinks kill 184,000 people each year through diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, according to new research from Tufts University. “It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet,” notes lead researcher Dariush Mozaffarian, who says these drinks have no health benefits. Image: Mike Mozart/Flickr/CC BY 2.0

XKCD Tips Its Hat to the Microbiome (and so Should You)

When was the last time you thanked the bugs in your belly? Even if the concept of a “healthy” microbiome is flawed, the trillions of microorganisms living in your gut (and mouth, and vagina, and nose, etc.) play a vital role in many of your body’s functions. They’re so essential, many refer to the microbiome…

You Can Freeze Your Fat and Poop It Out

“Watch the pounds melt away!” “Lose 20 pounds in 20 days!” “Fit into those high-school jeans!” The weight loss industry shills all sorts of questionable quick fixes: Herbal pills promising to block carbs, body wraps, ab stimulators, “Shape-Up” Sketchers, patches, teas, “exciting medical breakthroughs,” overpriced buttery coffees, and As-Seen-On-TV stickers. Taking a shortcut to get…