Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts

Monday, July 18, 2011

Health Related Tweets studied by Johns Hopkins


This is so excellent! Two scientists from Johns Hopkins have analyzed 1.6 million health-related tweets to see if they can assist in tracking disease progression across the country & provide other useful information. Result: Yes!

Guess publicly complaining can be useful at some point after all...

Read about it in The Atlantic, or just jump to the actual study.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Is Sugar Toxic?

Pretty compelling article in the NY Times questioning sugar's effects on our bodies.

Here's the full talk:

Thursday, January 6, 2011

News: Autism vaccine study an elaborate fraud

Really important news, especially for all parents:
A now-retracted British study that linked autism to childhood vaccines was an "elaborate fraud" that has done long-lasting damage to public health, a leading medical publication reported Wednesday.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

News: Man Cured of HIV

For the first time, a man has been declared officially cured of HIV.
Read the full story at Gizmodo

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Dopamine Makes You Addicted to Seeking Information

Interesting, perhaps especially for those of us who are constantly looking for new things online:
The myth — You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs.
It’s all about seeking — The latest research, though is changing this view. Instead of dopamine causing us to experience pleasure, the latest research shows that dopamine causes seeking behavior. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. It increases our general level of arousal and our goal-directed behavior. (From an evolutionary stand-point this is critical. The dopamine seeking system keeps us motivated to move through our world, learn, and survive). It’s not just about physical needs such as food, or sex, but also about abstract concepts. Dopamine makes us curious about ideas and fuels our searching for information. The latest research shows that it is the opioid system (separate from dopamine) that makes us feel pleasure.
Read the full article here. 

Monday, October 4, 2010