Health

As a teenager, I remember pasting a quote from Blaise Pascal on the wall of my room. It was a thought I resonated with, not without some arrogance: "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

Breast cancer claims the lives of more women than most other forms of cancer. In the United States, the incidence of this disease in women is about one in eight, which is nearly 13 per cent, while in Australia and New Zealand it’s slightly lower at one in nine (11 per cent).

There are a number of beliefs and practices around sleep that have been created and followed by many people, but which science has shown to be false and even dangerous for those who follow them.

Our bodies reap the first benefits of giving up smoking almost immediately after we have ceased the habit. The scientifically proven changes that are visible within the next hours, days, months and even years after we quit smoking reinforce the fact that putting out that last cigarette is one of the best decisions you will ever make for the benefit of personal health.

Do we need to wait for the results of longitudinal scientific studies, extending to decades, to know if vaccines are safe?

For some people, being vegan is part of their lifestyle, but others cannot conceive of missing out on dairy products, meat or eggs. This could be explained by several myths that revolve around these diets.

Why can vaccinated people still get COVID-19 or even die from the disease?

There have now been over 12 million cases of COVID-19 infection globally, and half a million deaths. Researchers are constantly looking for new and better information to reduce the uncertainty around the virus.

When it comes to cases where "doctors don't know what to do," the first thought that comes to mind is usually cancer. Conventional treatment, which can prolong life for a few years and sometimes just a few months, comes at a high price in the quality of life, and patients come to prefer the "natural" way: alternative medicine.

Physical strength is often automatically associated with meat consumption, and the association seems logical: doesn't the strength of the animal that has become food pass through digestion to the body that consumes it? This is the question we seek to answer in this article.

Tueday, 31 March 2020, marked exactly three months since the World Health Organization, the Chinese office, was notified of incidences of pneumonia from an unknown cause. According to specialists from the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, we have not yet reached the peak of the pandemic in Europe. We hear about mild and asymptomatic cases, but also about many deaths globally.

What feeds our fear in times of crisis, such as this pandemic we are in? How can we avoid letting fear paralyze our search for information and our ability to make the right decisions?

In Europe, few people know Gwyneth Paltrow as anything other than an American actress. In the United States, however, her "modern lifestyle" wellness brand called goop is growing her reputation—in a negative way.

For a long time we’ve exercised for our physique. But studies are showing more and more the mind-blowing benefits exercise has on our brains.

Grandpa’s eyes, mother’s wide hips, aunt’s serene gaze, father’s ambition, great-grandmother’s rheumatism—all the little traits that define us seem to come from ancestral parents who, together, should have all the genes that anyone can have today, all the possible ingredients for the recipe from which we were made.