Tag: medicine

I itch, therefore I scratch

Before you read any further, let me warn you: today’s column may cause itching. It’s got nothing to do with the ink it’s printed with, either, or mysterious radiation from your computer monitor. It’s simply because I’m going to write about the science of itching, and one of the peculiar things about itching is that …

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The cold facts

We are, alas, heading into winter, which is not only the cold (Brrr!) season, but also the cold (Ah-choo!) season. We all get colds. That’s not surprising, because, as the Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University in the U.K. likes to point out, we breathe in some 15,000 litres of germ-laden air every day. Which …

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Tinnitus: the sound of silence

“The Sound of Silence” is not just a title of one of Simon and Garfunkel’s biggest 1960s hits, it’s also an ironic reality for millions of people who never experience real silence–because they hear noises all the time. It’s a condition called tinnitus, and it’s one of the most common hearing afflictions around. The Tinnitus …

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A vaccine for Ebola?

They’re about to start testing one in humans that has proved effective in non-human primates. keep your fingers crossed! This caught my eye because I wrote a book on Ebola a few years ago.

Why is winter the flu season?

Scientists may have finally figured out why there’s a “flu season,” why flu is so much more prevalent during the cold months: Dr. Zimmerberg and his colleagues found that at temperatures slightly above freezing, the virus’s lipid covering solidified into a gel. As temperatures approach 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the covering gradually thaws, eventually melting to …

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Hemophilia: stopping the bleeding

Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. To receive these columns weekly by email, just provide me with an email address at edward(at)edwardwillett.com or in comments. *** A few years ago, I wrote a children’s book on hemophilia, an inherited condition in which the blood fails to clot properly. Which meant …

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What lies beneath

Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. The house in which I live was built in 1926. Over the years, as we discovered recently when we had the walls of a couple of rooms repainted, several layers of wallpaper and paint have accumulated. Peeling back those layers is a bit like …

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A new way to control high blood pressure?

Like millions of other people, I have mildly high blood pressure: nicely controlled with drugs, thank you, but still a concern. Which is why this item caught my eye: Surgeons recently implanted the RheosR System into the first clinical trial patient. When the device was turned on, the patient’s blood pressure measurements significantly decreased. The …

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Promising Alzheimer’s news

This sounds promising: Reversal Of Alzheimer’s Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation.I wrote a book on Alzheimer’s a few years ago.

The end of tooth decay?

We’ve all had the importance of tooth-brushing drilled (sorry) into us from an early age, and it’s not hard to understand why: humans have been plagued by tooth decay for as long as we’ve been human, and had teeth. Cro-Magnon skulls 25,000 years old show evidence of tooth decay, for instance, and as long ago …

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Jesus was on to something (well, duh!)

According to the Mayo Clinic, forgiveness is good for your health: Holding a grudge appears to affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems. In one study, people who focused on a personal grudge had elevated blood pressure and heart rates, as well as increased muscle tension and feelings of being less in control. When asked to …

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Jesus was on to something (well, duh!)

According to the Mayo Clinic, forgiveness is good for your health: Holding a grudge appears to affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems. In one study, people who focused on a personal grudge had elevated blood pressure and heart rates, as well as increased muscle tension and feelings of being less in control. When asked to …

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