Tag: physiology

Teeth

Here’s a question that has bugged me since childhood. Why does the tooth fairy collect teeth? Why does she want them so much she’s willing to give a quarter or even a loonie for every one she finds under a pillow? Teeth, at first glance, don’t seem very valuable. As any encyclopedia will tell you, …

Continue reading

Singing

  I’ve sung all my life, and I’m rather good at it–good enough that people sometimes actually pay me to sing. Yet I’ve had friends whom people might very well pay NOT to sing. Why is it that some of us can sing, and some can’t? Physiologically, there’s no reason at all. Singing is really …

Continue reading

Skin

  Quick! Name the largest organ of the body! The liver? Bzzzzz! Wrong. The large intestine? Bzzzzz! Even wronger. Here’s a hint: it’s waterproof, comes in a variety of designer colours, and fits any shape of body. Yes, it’s the skin, and yes, it’s an organ, a specialized mass of tissue with a surface area …

Continue reading

Bodily functions

Our bodies are complex biological machines performing millions of tasks all the time, most of which we aren’t aware of. But occasionally some function of this machine draws itself to our attention, usually at an inopportune time. Just why certain bodily functions are embarrassing and/or annoying to ourselves and those around us, when, after all, …

Continue reading

Eyeglasses

I got my first pair of glasses in kindergarten. Everybody in my class wanted to try them on. By the time I was 10 my vision was 20/200, which made my classmates even more eager to try on my glasses: seeing the world through my thick lenses was a mind-blowing experience, and, hey, it was …

Continue reading

Hallowe’en: vampires, werewolves, and fear

It’s All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween, the night when the spirits of the dead are free to walk the Earth, a night of frightening sounds, horrible sights, terrible deeds…not to mention a night when forty-seven iterations of Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers will appear at your door begging for candy. Of all our holidays, Halloween is surely the …

Continue reading

Laughter

At a dinner party I recently attended, the hosts commented on having seen the movie Four Weddings and a Funeral during their vacation cruise. Several of us immediately began waxing eloquent about the film’s delightful humor. Whereupon our hosts concluded their assessment, which we had interrupted in our enthusiasm: they’d been bored stiff. A sense of humor …

Continue reading

Pimples

Beauty, the old saying goes, is only skin deep. Unfortunately, so are pimples. The difference is that while very few of us can claim to be beautiful (certainly not I, as a glance at my column photo will attest), almost all of us have had pimples. Our skin contains two kinds of glands: sweat glands …

Continue reading

Snoring and yawning

  A couple of weeks ago I wrote about dandruff, bad breath, growling stomachs and body odor. Aside from the fact that none of these things are ever likely to be the subject of a blockbuster TV movie, they have something else in common: they’re all likely to embarrass us. That segues nicely into this …

Continue reading

Headaches

Few afflictions are more common than headaches. Statistics (themselves the cause of many headaches) show that in the U.S., up to 50 million people go to the doctor for headaches annually. They’re continuing an ancient tradition. Around 5000 B.C. in China, acupuncture was the treatment of choice. About 160 B.C., the Greek physician Galen recommended …

Continue reading

Bones

Our bones, being hidden away inside our skins, are not something that we normally think about much. But once you break one, it’s hard to think about anything else. I had an early introduction to the subject when I was seven years old and my big brother broke my arm. Not deliberately: we were rolling …

Continue reading

Sunburn

Summer, contrary to recent evidence in this part of the country, is usually considered the time for fun in the sun. But although some sun is nice, too much sun isn’t, because only 60 percent of sunlight is visible, and only 25 percent is heat. The remaining 15 percent falls in an invisible part of …

Continue reading

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal