Aaron Hernandez, the former Patriots tight end who died by suicide earlier this year while serving a life sentence for murder, is the latest football player to be publicly diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The condition is linked to depression, aggression, and problems with impulse control.
It’s that time of year again—the time where we American humans decide to blow things up in order to celebrate the birth of our country. But it just so happens that humans and explosions don’t get along so well—and they never have.
Doctors have this nasty habit of asking a lot of questions, many of which make us uncomfortable or self-conscious. So we bluff. A lot. Here are 10 typical lies we tell our doctors, and why these seemingly innocuous fibs are hazardous to our health.
Harold Bornstein, New York-based gastroenterologist and personal physician to Donald Trump, is quite the man. He looks like Upper West Side Willie Nelson, talks with an inhuman calmness and quietness, and his wife crafted the greatest Dadaist tweet of all time and hates reporters.
There’s been a lot of finger-wagging of late about the health risks associated with sitting at a desk all day, or binge-watching our favorite TV shows. Now couch potatoes can rejoice because a new study has found that just an hour of moderate activity a day wipes out all the negative impacts of sedentary…
AIDS was a terrifying mystery, and then we solved it. When researchers identified the human immunodeficiency virus as the reason why young, previously healthy people were developing rare cancers and wasting away, it was a triumph of medical science.
Some strains of human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer, so you often hear about it as a ‘female’ sexually-transmitted infection. It’s not — it’s a human thing, and all humans can get infected. Here’s what happens when males get it.
“Slim by Chocolate!” the headlines blared. A team of German researchers had found that people on a low-carb diet lost weight 10 percent faster if they ate a chocolate bar every day. It made the front page of Bild, Europe’s largest daily newspaper, just beneath their update about the Germanwings crash. From there, it…
The quick and dirty route to gaining strength is to take some kind of anabolic steroid. These drugs actually trick the body into building up muscle mass and endurance — but they can also age you far beyond your years.
One in ten Americans takes an anti-depressant drug like Zoloft or Prozac. These drugs have been shown to work in some patients, but their design is based on a so-called “chemical imbalance” theory of depression that is incomplete, at best.
The FDA just issued a warning not to use the weight-loss supplement Oxy ELITE Pro Super Thermogenic — because it contains fluoxetine, also known as Prozac. Not a drug humans should be taking unaware, and one that can cause serious side effects, including suicidal thoughts and seizures.
There have never been more options for those convinced that the medical establishment is hiding secrets from them. Look at the Google ads running down the sidebar of just about any website you visit, and you're almost certain to see ads about "natural" cures—gluten-free diets and alkaline water, superfoods and…
You and me, we have Wikipedia. Radiologists, they have Radiopaedia. If you can get past the clinical language, you can see it for what it really is: An amazing cache of images that show the human body at its extreme limits. And a place to find (and share!) x-rays of weird stuff people have put up their butts.
What should you cut out of your diet to be more healthy? Everything. According to the most popular diet books on the market, there’s barely a food on Earth that’s safe to eat. But what is the actual benefit of these diets? Here’s what science has to say.
This is what happened when a zoo keeper in China—who has some pretty dope boots, by the way—tried to feed some medicine to two of the young pandas being held in the zoo. Dude's plan was to squirt the medicine into their mouths with a syringe; the pandas' plan was to fight this jabroni and get him the fuck out of their…
Contraceptives fail a lot more often than you may have realized. Those failure rate statistics that you see are actually a bit misleading — they are for failure rates in a given year. Over time, the risk of failure is compounded.
Lots of people have a little booze before bed to help them get to sleep — but while a night cap may help in the dozing-off department, too much alcohol can actually do a number on the overall quality of your shuteye.
Fascia is a web of fibrous tissue that permeates the body, but is it really the “Cinderella Tissue” that new age therapists, Rolfers, and yoga instructors suggest? The fascial system is still a medical mystery. But that could soon change, thanks to an unlikely alliance between researchers and alternative therapists.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released guidelines for helping to prevent the spread of HIV in key populations. The group, which also monitors the globe for pandemic outbreaks, says we have to decriminalize sex work and drugs if we want to stop HIV.
In a surprising breakthrough for the world of materials science, researchers have created some of the most powerful artificial muscles we've ever seen. And they did it with simple fishing line. These freakishly strong and cheap muscles could revolutionize robotics, and perhaps one day our own bodies.
