All juiced up

I have a mentor friend at the gym who I catch up with every now and again between sets. He’s one of those massive dudes who everyone in the gym knows—his walk from the locker to the dumbbell rack consists of greeting and fist-bumping pretty much every guy on the way.

Is sugar the most dangerous drug?

While few people can remember the details of their first hit, everyone can identify with the rush of satisfaction, the tingling delight that starts on the tip of your tongue and then courses through your entire body.

Laugh your way to a healthier you

We’re born ready to laugh. In fact, as part of a normal baby’s development, they will begin laughing at about the age of three months. That’s long before we begin to say our first words—older babies begin to start speaking at the age of nine to 12 months.

Dealing with negative emotions in times of crisis

Many years have passed since I last lived with my brother. Recently, I decided to go and stay with him for a while. One day we both decided to visit a place in nature that neither of us had been to before. When we got there, it started to rain—while not very heavy, rain was not what either of us had wanted. But...

COVID-19: When time no longer means money

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."

COVID-19: Fake news, now and ever

Elisa Granato, one of the first people to be tested for a Covid-19 vaccine, died. The news rolled in the virtual media 6 times faster than other news.[1] Keep this number in mind. This is important because, as we learn from a study published in Science, fake news spreads on average 6 times faster than genuine news. And not only faster, but also...

Sexual abstinence: absurd, an option, or a necessity?

It was 1984 when hospitals in southern China were besieged by young people in a state of extreme agitation. Thousands of people, of both sexes, were suffering from panic attacks accompanied by fear of death because of the overwhelming belief that their sexual organs were retracting and disappearing, or that their nipples were retracting into their breasts.

Why do phones make us tired and ruin our mood?

The phenomenon of technoference (that is, the daily disturbance people experience due to the use of mobile phones) is becoming more and more prevalent, and researchers at the University of Technology in Queensland warn that as we become more dependent on these devices, we become more tired, more unproductive and unwell.

Are you really okay?

Let me ask you a question: if a friend of yours or I were to stand in front of you today and ask, “Are you OK?” how would you respond? Could you, or would you, share how you really are? As a society, we seem to be becoming more and more aware of the mental health crisis we are in. On 8 September, Australia...

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.

COVID-19: Rehearsal for the big surprise

There has been a lot of speculation in the online environment about COVID-19 and the end of the world, but the connection between the two is more subtle than it first appears. It has been suggested that the pandemic is only the tip of the iceberg, that it is one of the seven last plagues of Revelation, or that it is the fourth...

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines

What are mRNA vaccines? How do they work?

The fight against cancer is a silent fight in the pandemic

The costs of the COVID-19 pandemic are easy to quantify, but not easy to pay. In fact, in some situations, this is even impossible. Cancer patients are showing it undeniably. According to a study published on May 10th, 2021 by the European Cancer Organization (ECO), throughout Europe, health systems have been overloaded, due to a large number of COVID patients. Consequently, dysfunctions in...

A healthy old age is built decades before

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.

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...