Healthcare has cultural roots. Chicken soup as “Jewish penicillin” exemplifies one culture’s role in signifying quality, remedy and affective connotations like comfort. Meanwhile, many choose traditional Chinese medicine over its Western counterpart, a decision that provides insight but leaves us with some questions.
Disease
This allergy test, a sometimes unpleasant childhood right of passage, may be a thing of the past someday. New research shows that a urine test can determine if a person has an allergy to a specific substance.
To underscore how important the battle for its eradication still is, misperceptions are clarified and key aspects of the inherited illness are addressed here.
The second edition of "The Next Plague and How Science Will Stop It" comes with a new preface for COVID-19. Download a free copy!
There's nothing magical about a rattlesnake. Just because rattlesnakes are tough and cool doesn't mean that you'll be tough and cool if you eat them. Instead, you might just be a dope.
The diagnostic criteria for high blood pressure are evolving. Should patients who are fine in the office, but hypertensive all the rest of the day, be considered as having high blood pressure? Should they be treated? Let's take a closer look.
Given widely-varying belief systems about medicine and health, it shouldn't be surprising that these also exist when it comes to what causes cancer. But surprisingly, cancer belief systems don't significantly impact lifestyle behavior.
Sepsis, sometimes inaccurately referred to as blood poisoning, is sparked by the body’s reaction to infection. Between 12 and 25 percent of patients with sepsis will die during hospitalization. Sepsis contributes to one-third to one-half of all in-hospital deaths.
Despite the reality of measles, rotavirus, and a plethora of other infectious diseases, there's yet another anti-vaccine movement afoot in California. And its aim is to turn the clock back to the 10th Century.
A case of the "stomach flu" is bad enough, so the last thing we need is our own immune system making it worse. But that's just what can happen, courtesy of an obscure component in the intestinal lining called tuft cells. These little devils help us fight off parasites. But they also give norovirus a place to replicate and a reservoir in which to reside.
Science and medicine often move in small, incremental steps. A framework for researchers studying Alzheimer's Disease won't make the evening news, but it is a victory in a much longer battle. We should pause to acknowledge the quiet work of our scientists and clinicians.
One of the biggest goals of autism research is to determine its cause. And one of the best ways to achieve that is to rule out the things that don't cause it. So let's acknowledge this month by doing just that.