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Inspiring Science

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Tag Archives: Health

Fight back against junk food marketing

24 Monday Apr 2017

Posted by sedeer in Disease, Humans, Science communication

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Children, crowd funding, diet, Education, food, games, Health, Human, junk food, People, science and society, Science in Society

Frugivoro: a board game about health foodMost people realize that our food is loaded with sugar and that our eating habits are unhealthy, but it’s very hard to change them. Rather than simply accepting the situtation or complaining about it, my sister-in-law and her mother decided to change it. Over the past several years, they’ve designed, tested, and refined a new board game, Frugivoro, that gets kids excited about healthy foods (and sneaks in some education, too!). Many of our eating habits form in childhood, so this is a create way to counter the deluge of junk food marketing kids are exposed to. Continue reading →

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Book Review: Born Anxious

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by sedeer in Books, Development, Disease, Genetics, Humans

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Behavior, biology, Developmental biology, Gene expression, Health, Popular science, science, science and society, Science in Society

I enjoyed Born Anxious more than I expected to but less than I hoped. Written by Daniel Keating, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, it synthesizes over a decade of research on how stress affects the course of our lives. Keating presents an interesting and convincing case that experiences early in life — or even in previous generations — can set biological switches that have wide-ranging consequences, affecting health, social well-being, and professional success. Continue reading →

Drug resistance evolves in inbred parasites

05 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by sedeer in Disease, Humans

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

biology, drug resistance, Education, Health, Human, malaria, Popular science, science, Science communication

Mosquito (photo courtesy Wikipedia)It all starts with a mosquito bite. When a hungry mosquito pierces someone’s skin to gorge herself, she also pumps in her saliva to stop the blood from clotting. Far too often, microscopic stowaways hiding in the insect’s salivary glands also make the trip, crossing over into the victim’s bloodstream to look for a new home. These serpentine parasites swim along the blood vessels, making their way to the liver and infecting liver cells within just a few minutes. They hide inside these cells for anywhere from a week to a month (or even several months, in some cases), copying their DNA and growing larger and larger as they prepare for the next stage of their life. Eventually, the growing mass breaks up. A swarm of single-celled parasites bursts out of the liver cells and into the blood; once there, they invade red blood cells, feeding on their haemoglobin and energy stores to fuel another reproductive burst which will infect more red blood cells. As the parasite spreads through the blood, the unfortunate host will start showing the symptoms of malaria — everything from headaches and joint pain to fever, vomiting, and even convulsions. When a mosquito bites an infected person, she sucks up the parasite as part of her bloody meal. The malaria parasite mates within the mosquito, going through several stages before producing the serpentine cells that migrate to the salivary glands, ready to start the entire cycle anew.
Continue reading →

We’re getting closer to a malaria vaccine

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by sedeer in Humans, Immunology

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Tags

biology, Education, Health, Human, immunity, malaria, mosquito, Popular science, science, Science communication, vaccination, vaccine

Malaria parasite (photo courtesy Wikipedia)Malaria hardly needs an introduction. With over 200 million people infected, it takes the life of an African child every minute. Although we have drugs to help treat the disease, there isn’t an effective vaccine available, partly due to the malaria pathogen’s variability. Now, a research collaboration between labs in the US and Australia has brought a step closer to that goal by figuring out how to produce a vaccine which works against many different strains. Continue reading →

Why you can’t stop – Eating & Addiction

16 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by sedeer in Humans

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

addiction, Behavior, biology, diet, eating, food, Health, Human, obesity, Popular science, science, science and society, Sugar, weight loss, yo-yo dieting

Strawberry cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Everyone knows sugar-rich, fatty foods are unhealthy, but we keep eating them. The diet industry is booming, but so are waistlines. In the UK, 1 out of 5 adults is obese; in the US, the figure is 1 of every 3 adults. Why don’t we eat better? Are we just too weak-willed? Maybe not. The picture emerging from recent research into the neurobiology of eating tells a different story, in which our evolutionary history and changing environment have created a dangerous new relationship with our food. Continue reading →

How much sugar is too much?

23 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by sedeer in Humans, Mammals

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

biology, Coca-Cola, Diet (nutrition), food, Health, High-fructose corn syrup, Human, Popular science, science, Sugar

A 50cl Italian coke can. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Everyone knows that too much sugar is bad for you, but how much is too much? According to a study published earlier this year, the amount of additional dietary sugar considered safe by regulatory agencies was enough to impact the health of mice, reducing the lifespan of females and the fertility of males. Continue reading →

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All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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