Category: Health

One thing that can be guaranteed about COVID is that evolution will provide us with a more or less constant stream of new coronavirus variants, some of which will be more successful at infecting people. Talk of mutations sounds scary and it can lead to serious problems, but it would be a mistake to think […]

Lucy* used to be known fondly as the “iron lady” by colleagues at work. In her mid-50s and still the main breadwinner for her family, she had always thought of herself as strong, energetic, and indestructible – but not any more. Since contracting COVID in March 2020, Lucy told us she had been struggling with […]

The many jars and boxes of fish-oil supplements on shelves of Israeli pharmacies and health-food stores show how popular they are, even though they aren’t cheap.  People have been persuaded that these food supplements can prevent heart disease and other ailments – but new study at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas […]

One of the lasting memories of the 2022 Uefa Women’s Euro is England’s Chloe Kelly celebrating her match-winning goal by taking her shirt off and running towards her teammates in sheer joy. It was seen as a significant and empowering moment for women’s sport as the image of a woman in her sports bra was […]

There are various optical illusions, some tricking the mind and others revealing hidden aspects of your personality. The next drawing can unveil your personality type, depending on what you see first. You can see a rocky mountain in a desert landscape in the photo. However, some surfers noticed a massive foot in the desert. This […]

Your hands reveal a lot about the state of your health. This is something that has been recognised since at least the time of Hippocrates – the father of modern medicine. The ancient Greek physician first described “clubbing” in a patient with empyema (where pus fills the space between the lungs and the membrane around […]

A year-and-a half ago, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University in California placed two tiny sensors as small as baby aspirin in the brain of Pat Bennett, now 68, a former human-resources director and onetime horseback rider who also jogged daily. In 2012, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease), a […]

COVID boosters will be available to buy from high-street pharmacists and private healthcare providers across the UK in 2024. The news comes just weeks after the UK government announced that free boosters would only be available on the NHS for over-65s this autumn. As we adapt to living with COVID, prioritising resources (such as vaccines) […]

Males who feel they are misunderstood – by their wives or all women in the world – can now heave a sigh of relief. For decades, the Y chromosome – one of the two human sex chromosomes – has been notoriously challenging for the genomics community to sequence due to the complexity of its structure. […]

Lucy* used to be known fondly as the “iron lady” by colleagues at work. In her mid-50s and still the main breadwinner for her family, she had always thought of herself as strong, energetic, and indestructible – but not any more. Since contracting COVID-19 in March 2020, Lucy told us she had been struggling with […]