That any of us exist at all is a biological miracle. Fertilization is a finicky process that requires sperm to be in tip-top shape as they navigate their way through the female reproductive tract in a specific set of chemical conditions. If anything is off, sperm don’t make it to the egg, which is tucked away in the fallopian tubes within a layer of gelatinous goop.
In theory, teenagers should be some of the healthiest people on the planet. They’ve made it through the perils of childhood sicknesses and they’ve not yet reached the point of aging, where the wear and tear of living take their toll.
For all the problems with US healthcare, there’s one service that’s been fully funded by the government since 1972.
Although HIV hasn’t be an immediate death sentence for a long time thanks to medications like antiretroviral therapy, those who are diagnosed still typically died younger than the general population.
We’ve said it before: Don’t put cotton swabs in your ear to clean out the wax.
The good news for Americans: life expectancy in the US increased more than five years from 1980 to 2014, up to 79.1 years. The bad news for Americans: your actual life expectancy could vary by more than 20 years depending on where in the US you happened to be born.
For most of us, gluten is more or less synonymous with carbs.
It’s easy to take the conveniences of modern life for granted—like the fact that the vast majority of us will never develop anthrax infections in our skin.
Generally, weight loss can be thought of as a balancing act between calories consumed and calories used: If you eat less than you use, you body uses energy reserves from fat cells, and you lose weight.
Since January 2017, marches along the National Mall have become more or less a feature of weekend life in Washington, DC.
Opioid addiction usually starts with prescription painkillers. Drugs like oxycodone (sold as Oxycontin) and hydrocodone (sold as Vicodin) are incredibly addictive because of the way they alter brain chemistry. If patients taking these drugs for normal reasons, like surgery, find themselves addicted, they’ll often turn to heroin for cheaper high. As they build up their tolerance, it’s tempting for them to look for more powerful drugs—which are often lethal. Drug dealers have taken notice of this demand, and have started lacing heroin with an elephant tranquilizer called carfentanil.
Fats have a PR problem.
For expecting parents, 24 weeks is an important milestone. It’s a little more than halfway through pregnancy, and it’s at this age that the fetus has at least a fighting chance of surviving outside its mother’s body. The odds of survival aren’t great—only about half of babies birthed at this age survive—but it’s possible.
Malaria has been a problem for humans for over 2,000 years, and still kills in high numbers; 429,000 people—most of them children—died from the mosquito-borne disease in 2015. Fortunately, scientists finally have a vaccine that’s ready to be deployed.
Washington DC
The day US president Donald Trump was sworn into office, an article from Motherboard about the scrubbing of all references to climate change on the White House website made its way onto Reddit. The story, posted to the subreddit for US politics, swiftly garnered more than 76,000 points as the upvotes rolled in.
Blood from umbilical cords may be medicine’s fountain of youth—at least for mice.
On Saturday, April 22—Earth Day—thousands of scientists and science enthusiasts will take to the National Mall in Washington, DC for the March of Science.
For all that can be said about this remarkable chapter of history, one thing is certain: we are living in a golden age of protest signs.
Everyone has the fitness-crazed friend who constantly posts about his runs—or at least lets a fitness tracker app do it for him.
Sometimes, the most effective health policy is to acknowledge that people are going to make unhealthy decisions—and try to create an environment where those choices are a little safer.
Our brains show us patterns in everything, even when none are present. This is why, for example, we tend to see faces in random structures. This tendency toward finding patterns means it’s actually hard for us to think without them. It requires concentration and a degree of complex thinking—skills we develop as children and lose with age.
It’s no surprise that marathons, at 26.2 miles (42 km) long, are taxing on the body. Even the most conditioned runners finish races with similar body chemistry to patients who have undergone major surgery. But these races can also be harmful to people just near them.
The differences in men and women even extend to the way our brains are built.
