Why chocolate feels so good — it is all down to lubrication
Scientists have decoded the physical process that takes place in the mouth when a piece of chocolate is eaten, as it changes from a solid into a smooth emulsion that many people find totally irresistible. By analysing each of the steps, the interdisciplinary research team at the University of Leeds hope it will lead to […]
Opinion | Perverse Economies: Who Is Worth Saving?
Back when I was a medical student I learned a lesson about who was expendable. I was doing research for the liver transplant team at UCLA, one of the largest organ-transplant centers in the U.S., and one of the surgeons gave me an assignment: can you track how sick the patients are before they come […]
Love, Betrayal, Sex And Ghosts: 27 Incredible True Stories From 2022
When we launched HuffPost Personal in 2018, we were thrilled to finally have a department that features real people writing about their real experiences. From sharing incredible triumphs to detailing devastating heartbreak to relaying the hilarious, unexpected and sometimes just plain strange parts of life, the hundreds of essays we now publish on HuffPost Personal […]
Opinion | When Was the Last Time You Wore a White Coat?
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to dominate all aspects of healthcare, many of our colleagues opted to wear scrubs instead of their routine work attire and white coats. They cited concerns about personal infectious risk and not wanting to bring the virus home to their loved ones on their clothes. This reluctance aligned with research […]
Blood-based metabolic signature outperforms standard method for predicting diet, disease risk: The study found that machine learning techniques improved diet prediction by 10-20%
When it comes to studying food and diet, it’s difficult to know what people are eating — let alone their risk of disease caused by what they eat. Doctors and researchers usually ask people to fill out a long-from food frequency questionnaire that estimates caloric intake, food groups and nutrients. That relies on a person’s […]
Is There A Best Time Of Day For Therapy? Here’s What Therapists Say.
There are a few crucial items to figure out when starting therapy ― like finding a therapist who you trust, picking the best treatment modality, and figuring out a way to fit a session into your schedule. When it comes to the latter, the time you choose may be more influential than you think. Is […]
Opinion | Is Red Meat Consumption Bad for You?
When the Skeptical Cardiologist was training as a cardiologist in the late 1980s there were two (unproven) concepts that had emerged from epidemiological research that I accepted as proven. The first was that consumption of saturated fatty acids (SFAs) of any type and in any food increased the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). The […]
Why Don’t We Say ‘ADD’ Anymore?
When I was younger, I often heard people say things like “I’m so ADD right now!” to refer to periods when they had trouble focusing. Others would talk about “ADD meds,” like Adderall or Ritalin. Invoking ADD, or attention-deficit disorder, felt rather common in the ’90s and early aughts. The term was also used interchangeably […]
I Had An Abortion In My 40s. I’ll Never Forget The Shocking Thing The Doctor Said To Me.
I never would have guessed that my first abortion would be when I was in my 40s, married, and a parent already. But that’s the situation I was in when my pregnancy test came back positive in the first July of the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, I thought I had COVID — or just anxiety from […]
Mom’s dietary fat rewires male and female brains differently: Excess fat triggers immune cells to overeat serotonin in the brain of developing male mice, leading to depression-like behavior
More than half of all women in the United States are overweight or obese when they become pregnant. While being or becoming overweight during pregnancy can have potential health risks for moms, there are also hints that it may tip the scales for their kids to develop psychiatric disorders like autism or depression, which often […]