Health

In Romania, they say that everyone is an expert in football and politics. But I believe it is more appropriate to say that everyone is an expert in food—or so they think. Except for a small minority, most of us have quite strong opinions about what we eat.

How important is wearing a mask for preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection? We must say, at the outset, that wearing a mask remains important in preventing SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially because the "delta plus" variant has a high potential for contagion.

An old saying states: "If youth knew; if age could". This truth is reflected by countless studies showing that lifestyle adjustments made in middle age (or even earlier) favour a transition to a healthier old age.

The importance of proper nutrition is often underestimated. The nutrients in food provide energy, contribute to tissue growth and repair, and regulate physiological processes. Nutritional needs vary depending on age and physical condition.

We might be tempted to believe that most antibiotics are distributed to people through pharmacies and hospitals. The reality, however, is surprising.

In antiquity, rituals were used to purify both spirit and body. With advances in technology and the refinement of marketing techniques in recent decades, the idea of purification has been revived in the form of “detoxification,” a concept that capitalizes on people’s fears related to pollution, unhealthy diets, and sedentary lifestyles.

On 17 January 1920, America officially "dried up". It wasn't a shortage of water or a prolonged drought, but a law banning the sale, transport, and commercial production of alcohol.

One of the reasons quoted most often by those who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19 is the hypothesis that vaccines cause infertility.

How was it possible to produce a vaccine against COVID-19 in less than a year, and what guarantees are there that there were no compromises in the process? What can we say about the COVID-19 vaccine's safety?

A famine of biblical scale is already looming on the horizon, says David Beasley, director of the World Food Program. More than 30 developing countries could be affected by the scourge – 1 million people are already affected. It's not just people going to bed hungry, Beasley insists, explaining that it's a state of emergency where outside help is the only hope.

Life in lockdown had an atypical rhythm and texture. While for some this upset their daily lives, for others it was an unexpected response to an unspoken need.

The epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch thinks that social distancing will have to continue, in one way or another, hopefully in milder forms and in correlation with other activities. Lipsitch is the author of a study suggesting that social distancing may be necessary, possibly intermittently, until 2022.

The fear of protein deficiency is one of the oldest and most persistent barriers to adopting a plant-based diet.

I am not an expert on the phenomenon of death. But like all of us, I have to live in its shadow, and watch the restlessness and greed it causes. The same gloomy reports that circle the planet also reach me. I feel especially conscious of this as COVID-19 claims its first victims in my country.

Discussions about the reasonable number of deaths in a pandemic, about whether or not the price for saving people is killing the economy and, ultimately, debates on a life’s value were brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic.