Health

Our planet may be fittingly compared to the 1994 film, Speed: A bomb is planted on a bus and rigged to explode when the bus slows to less than 80 kilometres per hour. The bus barrels through Los Angeles, hitting obstacles and endangering the lives of passengers and pedestrians until a solution is found.

Although a small minority deny the existence of COVID-19 (claiming that it is a malicious conspiracy), most people are interested in what they can do to be as prepared as possible for a potential encounter with the dreaded virus.

Any large-scale phenomenon, such as a pandemic, activates our instinct to preserve our state of being—especially when we feel like we are losing it.

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

Let’s not go back to the abnormality of before! This is one of the messages which the French hung from their balconies on May 1, when the activities that would usually happen on this national public holiday could not take place. What can we change and what is worth changing after COVID-19?

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

I was a sickly child. If I wasn’t catching a humble cold, it was something more exotic, like whooping cough or bronchitis.

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...

What would you think if your doctor prescribed a dose of nature, as a clinical and therapeutic treatment—to admire a cloud, to have a meal at the beach, to bury your face in the grass? This is exactly what some doctors are doing, after studies have shown the benefits of connecting with nature—especially since the trend of moving away from nature in recent...

As the crisis caused by the new coronavirus deepened and spread, it was to be expected that the phenomenon would be framed in apocalyptic terms. It is something that tends to occur in such contexts.

If we had to choose a star among vitamins, a star similar to the celebrities that electrify the world of people, vitamin D would have a very high chance of occupying the podium.

I have an acutely vivid memory which triggered this article. It was a wet day in London in the winter of 2002. My 145kg frame was squished in the front seat of a tiny blue Fiat Punto with two colleagues in the parking lot of a Burger King.

Our attitude towards fruits and vegetables as well as other plant-based foods is almost paradoxical: they are probably the healthiest of foods, they are tasty (or can be prepared to be, with little skill), and they are relatively cheap. However, most people consume these super foods in smaller quantities than is necessary.

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.

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.