Good news stories can be sometimes hard to come by. All too often the television and media tell us only of humanity at its worst: crimes, killings, and politicians doing dodgy things. Away from the flat screens, however, remarkable victories take place every day – often in the most surprising places. Rwanda, for example, is known as one of the poorest and most deprived nations in the world but has witnessed an incredible and inspiring health revolution over the last fifteen years. What has been happening in that one small African nation can teach us how to have a healthier life and society. Read more
Don’t forget to vote: it’s good for body and mind
Waiting for the general election has been a bit like waiting for Christmas. The hype keeps building but the big day never seems to arrive. Rather than greetings cards, however, ‘vote for me’ flyers have been piling up on the door mat. And instead of wall-to-wall seasonal specials, television viewing has been nonstop politics. Come May 7th, few of us will expect to be unwrapping gifts and digging into turkey, however. But taking a visit to the polling station could be just the thing for leaving you feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Read more
Is owning a dog is good for you? Separating howling myths from tail-wagging truths
There are some things in life no one ever teaches you. Like the etiquette of dog walking. As a reluctant dog owner of two years, the strange world of dog walkers still mystifies me. Should I let my dog sniff another dog’s crotch? Should I apologise when my dog barks at a stranger? Will the 6 foot, burly man with tattoos thump me if I ask him why he owns a dog as small as a hamster? Read more
A chocolate a day (may possibly) keep the doctor away
The Easter eggs don’t last long in our house. It wouldn’t have always been that way though: as I child, I would diligently squirrel away Easter chocolate, treating myself only on special occasions. I now have no such willpower and, by the looks of it, neither do the rest of you. A recent survey has shown that 43% of us hide chocolate wrappers to conceal how much we eat while 37% of Britons tell outright lies to our spouses about the amount they scoff. Presumably the world’s chocoholic scientists also share our guilt because over the years, chocolate has been one of the most intensively researched foodstuffs in nutritional science. Thousands upon thousands of research papers have searched for health-giving virtues in our favourite indulgence – over 1,600 studies look at cocoa’s effect on the heart alone. The prospect that excusing our chocolate addiction just seems too tantalising to resist. Read more
‘Google to rank pages by accuracy’ shown to be inaccurate
As a science writer who writes a lot about health, I spend more time than most scouring the internet for medicine-related information. Unfortunately, the advice that ‘Dr Google’ prescribes is all-too-often a bit dodgy. Search ‘how to treat my headache’, for example, and in alongside the sensible suggestions are some rather more dubious and laughable ‘natural cures’. Search for answers to child health problems and things get far scarier. A 2010 paper showed that only 39% of the top 500 Google results gave correct information about specific child health questions. Search queries related to mumps, measles and rubella and autism yielded the the most misleading information.
It was exciting, therefore, to learn of Google’s new effort to rid the internet of dodgy advice and quackery. Today, all search results are ranked according to popularity (crudely speaking); dodgy science seen as ‘trustworthy’ by appears toward the top of search rankings, regardless of how erroneous it may be. Published research reveals how Google ‘want to’ organise search results according to their accuracy. Read more
Three parent babies: it’s not what you think
Most of us came into this world through a moment of passion between our father and mother. Not so for everyone. In the world today there are 200,000 people who were not conceived in the conventional way – but in a Petri dish. For the past 35 years, IVF (In Vitro Fertilisation) and similar ‘test tube baby’ techniques have transformed the lives of millions of couples with fertility problems, offering them the chance to have children when they otherwise couldn’t. Lauded as one of the greatest achievements of modern medicine, it nevertheless remains controversial. For example, the process often results in fertilised eggs being discarded – something many religious organisations object to. A few weeks ago, however, fertility techniques just became a whole lot more contentious when the UK became the first country in the world to allow three-parent babies. By next year there will probably be children born of two mothers and one father. It sounds truly bizarre but it’s not what you think. Read more
The risks of drinking bottled water: getting some clarity
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One of the best ever episodes of Only Fools and Horses has to be ‘Mother Nature’s Son’. Originally aired in 1992, the hilarious Christmas special sees Delboy convert his kitchen into a mineral water bottling factory after he successfully duped a wealthy entrepreneur into selling his brand of ‘Peckham Spring’ water. In true Del and Rodney fashion, his pricey bottled water turns out to be nothing more than tap water. It’s a ridiculous plotline, but sometimes the truth can be funnier than the fiction. Read more
Romance is more than a feeling – it’s a matter of health
Dim the lights, uncork the wine and light the candles – Valentine’s Day is here! For all you love fools out there, the flowers will have been ordered days ago while your surprise Eurostar ticket to Paris is already safely tucked under your pillow. The strange intoxicating power of love can change our perspective on life and can make us do many strange things – like buying roses at £5 a stem or even saying you’ll never look at another man or woman again. But as you gaze, heart-a-flutter, into the eyes of your beloved this weekend, remember that love is more than a feeling – it’s a matter of health. Read more
Why it’s time to forget about online dementia tests
You probably remember a time when nobody dared talk about dementia. Comedians would joke about ‘mad granddad’ but no-one seriously wanted to contemplate a life without memory. Thankfully, Alzheimer’s disease charities have started to wake us up to the reality of the 850,000 people who live with dementia in the UK.. Stigmatisation is waning but dementia is still greatly misunderstood and is feared more than cancer or even death. So when the headline “Test to STOP Alzheimer’s: Simple 20-minute quiz could be key to beating the disease” made the front cover of the Daily Express last week, it struck a chord with a great many of us. Promising to “halve the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease”, I decided to try it out to discover just how well it could ease fears of dementia. Read more
Exercise machine calorie counters: they exaggerate the burn
January is the month of the jogger. Every evening for the past three weeks, regular-looking folk have been bouncing their bits up and down our streets, running in the pursuit of getting a bit fitter. No doubt prompted by a New Year’s resolution or ill-considered pledge to run this year’s half-marathon, such noble joggers oftentimes prefer an air-conditioned gym. Away from the wind and snow, the treadmills and ‘cardio’ machines offer music, television and – the greatest motivator of all – the digitised calorie counter. Trundling away on a treadmill while watching ‘Cash in the Attic’ is soul-crushingly dull but the knowledge that twenty minutes of puffing will burn off the a chocolate bar’s worth of calories can help keep your legs pounding. It’s such a shame, then, that the treadmill is lying to you. The truth is that if you want to justify a chocolate indulgence then you’ll probably need to sweat for just a bit longer than the computer tells you. Read more