Brain health, a key to a happy life

It can be simple or complicated to find and, especially, apply strategies to increase your level of happiness. What we can be sure of, however, is that in this ongoing discussion about what makes us happy, brain health is not a topic that can take a backseat.

“Don’t you have a lifestyle pill?” An interview with Dr Zeno L. Charles-Marcel

Dr Zeno L. Charles-Marcel is an associate director in the Department of Health for the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Addicted to alcohol: The friends and enemies of abuse

When you are addicted to alcohol, the whole of society is your enemy: TV shows, their commercials, your neighbours in your free time, the family at big holiday gatherings, entire aisles in shops that convey the message that "you'll feel better if you drink alcohol".

What could console our terrible fear of death?

Along with the rising death toll due to coronavirus complications, a usually latent aspect of our fear becomes harder to ignore. Despite the fact that it is the only certainty we all share, realising that our own end is a reality we might need to confront sooner than we had thought leaves many of us fervently searching for consolation.

No laughing matter

We’ve all been guilty of memory lapses at times—forgetting a birthday or anniversary, that needed ingredient we were supposed to pick up at the grocery store, where we put our car keys, even where we parked the car. And mostly we just joke about these memory lapses and tease each other about them. However, for some 50 million people around the world who...

COVID-19: The new mirror in which we look at our parents

How can we encourage the elderly during this time? How can we help them understand that we don't want to lose them and that, although it's hard for them, we didn't abandon them. I have an elderly mother and, honestly, it would help me a lot. Can you write for me?

COVID-19: Why and how do masks, gloves and other protective equipment help?

I leave the house with gloves and a mask on. When I return, I clean my shoe soles and I wash my gloves with disinfectant. Then I take off my clothes, place them somewhere outside, take off my gloves and mask and wash my hands. Is this normal? Or am I a germophobe?

How can the church support those affected by dementia?

According to experts and organisations that support this category of patients, people suffering from dementia and their caregivers need all the congregational support they can get.

How the antibiotic apocalypse can be avoided

“By 2050, AMR could potentially kill one person every three seconds and become a more common cause of death than cancer.”

COVID-19: How can we transform the crisis?

Tens of thousands of articles about the new coronavirus crisis are filling news outlets around the world these days. What is the crisis, how we go through it, what to do, how to do, when to do it etc. Only one thing seems certain these days: our uncertainty about the future. We would prefer an authority to go out in public and tell...

Gluten under the microscope

Only people with specific gluten-related conditions—such as celiac disease, wheat allergy, or non-celiac gluten sensitivity—experience adverse reactions to gluten consumption.

COVID-19: How has it affected young people?

Early reports out of China showed that elderly people and the chronically ill were most vulnerable to Covid-19. Yet an alarming number of young people in the United States have been hospitalized with severe infections. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 40% of American Covid-19 patients who were hospitalized were under 55 – and 20% were between ages 20...

Remember to rest

Sunday afternoons were a sacrosanct time when I was growing up in Argentina. Everything seemed to quiet and slow down between 2:00 and 5:00 pm, during siesta. Even shops would shut. All you could hear was the sound of the cicadas as the whole neighbourhood took a nap. Young and old, rich and poor were unified by this wonderful tradition. At least, I...

COVID-19: How do you recognise a conspiracy theory in a pandemic?

The Colorado beetle that threatened the potato crop of the former GDR in 1950 might have been an American method of sabotage against the Eastern bloc. A sinister German plot might have been the cause of the Spanish flu. Perhaps AIDS emerged as a biological weapon developed by the United States and has been tested on prisoners and minorities. Every crisis humanity has...

Back from the brink: A doctor’s struggle with depression

Here’s a disturbing fact: Medical doctors have the highest suicide rate of any profession. It may be uncomfortable to read that in the USA nearly 400 doctors take their life every year. So how does a physician find assistance in a system that seems to be clearly failing its own? I sat down recently with Dr Charles, a fitness enthusiast, soccer fanatic and dad, to...