Fasting for a full day, or any part of it, will certainly reduce one's caloric intake. But can food avoidance, which mimics the activity of our hunter-gatherer forebears, be safe? And can it improve our health? Let's take a look.
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An alarmist article by NPR wants us to believe that we're in grave danger. That's because some deli meats have labels that are inaccurate, regarding the presence (or absence) of nitrate, a preservative. Here's the science that explains why the whole thing is nothing but a silly scare.
While indoor air pollution in the U.S. involves cleaning or hygiene products, as well as cosmetics, for most of the world's population the source of indoor air pollution is cooking. India tries to move to a more sustainable fuel source, but with unintended consequences.
This hypothesis suggests that pregnancy may protect women from auto-immune diseases, and further, that not being constantly pregnant and breastfeeding dysregulates the immune system.
Many of those who want to shove their kids into a lead-lined, basement safe room when someone walks by with a can of Raid or diet soda, are unknowingly feeding them multiple, unknown chemicals by giving them dietary supplements. And virtually none of those are useful -- and some are actually dangerous.
The science of discovering and developing new antibiotics is difficult enough. But antibiotics present an additional, unique problem: economics. It is very difficult for a pharmaceutical company to even recoup its R&D costs because of a small market, which is mostly hospital use. Some kind of subsidy is necessary. ACSH advisor Dr. David Shlaes examines whether Medicare can help, and to what degree.
Just when you think "alternative medicine" can't get any worse, an article in The Week will prove you wrong. It's about leech therapy. You will learn that there is an approved use for these creatures, and also something so ghastly that you may regret reading about it. But you will anyhow. Morbid curiosity is very powerful. Just don't say we didn't warn you.
Scientific facts and pleas for personal responsibility to protect the most vulnerable among us. Those are the immunocompromised and children too young to be vaccinated. They apparently don't matter to the selfish fools who continue to reject vaccines. These selfish people have blood on their hands, and society has not chosen to hold them accountable.
Homebirths, formerly the norm, have been replaced by hospital births. Some say it needlessly medicalizes a normal human activity. A new study looks at whether home births in low-risk situations result in harm.
Here's what's in store this time: A bit of beautiful writing (really a meditation) on working with your hands. A possible explanation for why some objects become tainted, i.e. wrapped in the shadows of its origins, like "blood diamonds." Wealth work in the gig economy. And finally, another rapidly diminishing resource: sand.
The protection of intellectual property is vital to innovation. If anyone can just take something you created -- be it a song or a drug -- without proper compensation, there would be little reason to develop anything new. That, however, is predicated upon innovators playing fairly. In other words, they cannot seek patent protection for things that are not patentable. Yet, some pharmaceutical companies are doing just that.
Some migraine sufferers are easily treated with triptans or opioids. Other migraine sufferers, however, aren't so lucky. Perhaps immunotherapy will provide relief. Several companies are working on injections of anti-migraine antibodies.
There's more tree cover on Earth now than there was 35 years ago. Why? Because of technology and wealth. If we want to save the planet we should encourage more of both.
Usually, when we have something to say about California, it's bad. After all, this is the state that gave us Proposition 65, a smorgasbord of insane public health policies, as well as 38 seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. But now, the state has done something good. In fact, very good.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, having virtually eliminated the diversion of prescription pain relievers into the underground market for nonmedical users, appears to be setting its sights on regulating the medical management of pain, a mission not suited for law enforcement.
From a public health perspective, what's the biggest preventable cause of cancer? Pesticides? Poor diet? Pollution? UV light? No, no, no, and nope. It's tobacco, by far. Obesity and infectious diseases are #2 and #3.
Scientists have discovered molecules that inhibit tumor growth by starving cancer cells of their favorite foods: the sugar glucose and the amino acid, glutamine.
The science of our health and nutrition has been a hot mess for some time, with multiple conflicting studies all claiming the scientific truth. The recent study on red meat's role in our health is different in several meaningful ways: in how it reports outcomes; how it communicates the certainty of the findings; its intellectual transparency; and to whom it is addressed. Let’s break it down.
It's no secret that the CDC's 2016 Advice on opioid prescribing, by any measure, has been an unmitigated disaster. Dr. Red Lawhern, ACSH advisor and pain patient advocate, spares no one in his discussion of the egregious mistakes that the CDC made -- and continues to make.
Dr. Pinker is an excellent writer and thinker. Perhaps his greatest contribution to our national dialogue is his insistence, backed up by considerable research, that life keeps getting better and better. However, he seems to miss the mark in a recent essay titled "Why We Are Not Living in a Post‑Truth Era."
When it comes to energy and climate policy, there's little rationality to be found. Those who believe that climate change is an existential threat often reject nuclear power in favor of wind and solar, despite those options being insufficient to power the planet. That said, to embrace nuclear energy, we also must have a realistic solution to the problem of waste.
The mystery of vaping deaths widens. What is going on? Let's ask Steve. We go back a long way, so when a tricky chemistry problem comes up we like to fire off an email, to pick his warped brain. Often he is right on the mark.
Dietary science is shaky on a good day. When you throw in new and/or trendy terms, like microbiota, vegan, and plant-based, it becomes even shakier. Angela Dowden tries to digest (sorry) a new study that looks at weight loss, diabetes, vegan diets and gut microbiota. The results may surprise you.
In 2017, ACSH interviewed Dr. Harvey Friedman (pictured) from the Infectious Disease Division of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. We discussed his group's prophylactic herpes vaccine. The animal data generated since then have been eye-opening, and the group is preparing for human clinical trials. If it succeeds it would be the first successful herpes vaccine in 100 years of research.
Four sips from the firehose that is Internet content: Spicy and bitter are ways plants tried to dissuade you from eating them; CRISPR, in service of animal welfare, hits a snag; a podcast contrasts Nathan's Hot-Dog Eating Contest to chemotherapy, and good news science is alive and beautifully well.
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