TFPPublic discussions about obesity can fall prey to false dichotomies in portraying complex relations among weight, eating, activity and disease risk. Applying the logic of false dichotomies, obesity is either caused by individuals eating too much, or an environment that promotes weight-gain. It’s either a disease or the result of gluttony.
Australians are 40 times more likely to die from errors in health care than from traffic. Poor communication resulting from uncivil medical hierarchies can be deadly. Mistakes caused by poor communication are particularly frequent in surgical teams. Similarly, doctors are both the least compliant with...
We all suffer from too little sleep from time to time, some more than others. There are many possible reasons, depending on our age, genes and sleep habits; but another possible culprit is using technology before going to sleep.
In my practice as a speech language pathologist and music therapist, I’m able to use music to serve a variety of patients with an array of needs. Children with autism tend to be more attentive to musical sounds than speech sounds. For cancer patients, I’ll use songs of hope and resilience. I’ve helped patients preparing for surgery...
“Our goal is to prevent or reduce obesity and in this paper we’ve shown how to do this in principle,” says Phipps. “We believe that weight gain is not necessarily just a result of eating more and exercising less. Our focus is on the intricate network involved in fat cell development.”
Our body loves us, but it needs to know we love our lives in order for it to do all it can to help us survive. The change in body energy activated by the love alters our internal chemistry and makes a difference. When you are willing to do the work, and live in your heart, magic can happen.
In 1954, the first director-general of the World Health Organisation, Dr Brock Chisholm, famously stated: “Without mental health there can be no true physical health.” More than half a century later, we have large numbers of studies backing up his belief.
Common over-the-counter painkillers, such as ibuprofen and aspirin, can decrease risk of developing squamous cell carcinoma, according to a study published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology. Squamous cell carcinoma is one of the most common types of skin cancer. The results mean these drugs may have potential as skin cancer preventative agents, especially for high-risk people.
The link between exercise, diet and ill health has been recognised for a considerable length of time. The ancient Greek physician, Hippocrates (460-370BC), wrote: Eating alone will not keep a man well; he must also take exercise. For food and exercise … work together to produce health.
The trendy Paleo Diet draws inspiration from how people lived during the Paleolithic or Stone Age that ran from roughly 2.6 million to 10,000 years ago. It encourages practitioners to give up the fruits of modern culinary progress – such as dairy, agricultural products and processed foods – and start living a pseudo-hunter-gatherer lifestyle, something like Lon Chaney Jr. in the film One Million BC.
Whether man-made sources of mercury are contributing to the mercury levels in open-ocean fish has been the subject of hot debate for many years. My colleagues Carl Lamborg, Marty Horgan and I analyzed data from over the past 50 years and found that mercury levels in Pacific yellowfin tuna, often marketed as ahi tuna, is increasing at 3.8% per year. The results were reported earlier this month in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
The prevailing notion about obesity is that if we just work out harder and eat a little bit better, then perhaps the obesity trend will subside in a few years. However, the key to really making a difference is food – the number of calories we eat is the most important factor in obesity.
Government nutrition guidelines recommend a high carbohydrate diet regardless of the ample evidence of the health risks it promotes. Yet, chronic diseases and obesity rates have risen in correlation with a reduced intake of dietary fat. While science has moved on, nutritional advice lags behind.
Might the economic burden and individual suffering associated with Alzheimer’s disease be reduced by the simple and inexpensive expedient of prescribing B-vitamins to those with high levels of homocysteine?
You can trade massages with a friendly co-worker! Massage in the workplace is no longer reserved for just the wealthy, the weird, or the weary. In fact, individuals and corporations alike are finding it to be a practical and joyful way of increasing employee satisfaction and productivity.
Environmental chemicals are wreaking havoc to last a lifetime. 10 to 15 percent of all babies born in the U.S. have some type of neurobehavorial development disorder. Still more are affected by neurological disorders that don’t rise to the level of clinical diagnosis.
Is walking the next big thing? It's been called "America's untrendiest trend." The evidence that millions of people are finally walking again is as solid as the ground beneath our feet.
Scientists say a new biomarker that predicts the risk of developing dementia can be detected with a simple blood test—a test they hope will be applicable in clinical practice.
Women whose mothers smoked while pregnant are two to three times as likely to be diabetic as adults. Fathers who smoked while their daughter was in utero also contribute to an increased diabetes risk, but more research is needed to establish the true effect.
What causes cancer? This deceptively simple question has a devilishly complex answer. So when US researchers proposed a relatively simple mathematical formula to explain a long-standing conundrum in cancer earlier this year, it was bound to get a lot of attention.
Marijuana appears to ease symptoms of depression caused by chronic stress, new research with animals suggests. The study focused on endocannabinoids, which are brain chemicals similar to substances found in marijuana.
We all have a poor night’s sleep from time to time: those nights when you lie awake for hours trying desperately to go to sleep but can’t stop worrying about tomorrow. Or when you repeatedly wake up throughout the night, or can’t get back to sleep in the early hours of the morning.
The human brain is the most extraordinary and complex object in the known universe. So it’s a little surprising that only recently has the concept of brain health begun to emerge. After all, if the body is a “temple”, then surely the brain must be the “high altar” as it generates all our thoughts, feelings and movements.