Have you ever seen the TV show “Naked and Afraid”? A man and a woman go (naked) into the wild with no food or tools and have to survive for 3 weeks. If they make the full 3 weeks it they usually come back emaciated. Guess what? That’s the norm for mammals, humans included. When you live in natural state, you don’t get 3 meals a day. Maybe 3 meals a...
I’m sure you have heard of the microbiome? That’s the trillions of bacteria in the human gut whose functions we still only dimly understand. But one thing has recently become very clear. That is that the microbiome has a huge impact on our feelings, moods and mental functioning generally. Here’s the interesting part. It’s also become clear that the...
Uh oh, I guess this is really a sacred cow. I’m a runner (road, not gym) too. But it looks to me like there’s a big problem in this area of gyms. Not only that, by using a gym, exercisers are actually denying themselves some much greater health benefits. First of all the bad news about gyms. Past research shows that they often have a serious proble...
Was just reading an article about plummeting fertility rates in Europe. Seems like no-one wants kids any more. Just too expensive or too much trouble. But there’s another totally different possibility that almost no-one seems to have considered. What if women in developed countries actually really want more babies but they can’t? Because their sign...
Now here’s an interesting idea. Is the cause of obesity simply due to the antibiotics that every meat producer puts in the food supply for their animals? You might have thought that meat producers add antibiotics to their animal feed to prevent or cure disease. You would be wrong. They do it because it results in a significant weight gain for the a...
The new kid on the block is smartwatches. They will have everything that a fitness tracker has, and then some. But I think we are going to lose an important signal of people’s potential in so doing. You wear a fitness tracker all the time. It measures your activity including steps in walking, running, stair climbing, calories and so on. It’s part o...
Yep, it’s true. If you don’t believe me read the January 2015 issue of Consumer Reports here. Before we get to the killing part, Consumer Reports points out that their research shows that gluten-free foods usually have a lot more fat, sugar and calories than gluten-ful foods. And of course, they are way more expensive. But the killer argument, pun ...
I’ve just been reading about the Yo app. You know the one whose only job is to text you the word “Yo”. It doesn’t get much briefer than that. But who knows. Maybe it will get a billion dollar valuation too and make me at least look like a total fool. There are lots of theories about Silicon Valley’s success. Crazy entrepreneurs, risk-taking VCs, im...
Of course we have all seen the tragic news about Robin Williams, So I get to thinking yet again about health. The most immediate impacts of ill-health are on psychic and emotional well-being. That impacts both the ill person and their friends, colleagues and family. So of course, these social and personal impacts are what have the most immediate im...
Did you see the recent study in Science that compared Chinese who eat wheat versus those who eat rice? It turns out that there’s a big difference. The wheat-eaters (from the North) are more individualistic and the rice-eaters (from the South) are more communalistic. The authors believe that it’s due to the fact that rice takes a lot more effort to ...
So Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, just got outed again in a new crack video. You’ve got to hand it to him; he’s a newshound and a highly successful one at that. Ironically he also seems to be a good mayor, if you exclude his many exploits, both drug-related and otherwise. Actually I think we have to view him not as a politician but as an entertain...
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