Tag: how

The hotter our body temperature, the more our bodies speed up a key defence system that fights against tumours, wounds or infections, new research by a multidisciplinary team of mathematicians and biologists from the Universities of Warwick and Manchester has found. The researchers have demonstrated that small rises in temperature (such as during a fever)

A cancer diagnosis is a firestorm that turns lives upside down. It may not be life-ending, but it almost always is life-changing. Few life experiences are crueler than childhood cancer, but this blatant unfairness motivates some of the best, kindest and most heartfelt medical care. Clinicians in adult oncology can learn a lot from pediatric

It’s an age-old debate: Can men and women really just be best friends—or are they bound to fall for one another eventually? The answer changes depending on who you ask. And complicating the question even more is the fact that a romantic relationship needn’t be physical to be real. Hence the increasingly popular term “emotional affair.” So

One of the great things about social media is how people are able to share experiences and put their messy, imperfect truth out there—posting about everything from mental health issues to grief to the reality of stretch marks and cellulite. What’s also refreshing is how many influencers are opening up about the positive influence therapy has had on their

  Rowan Blanchard was 14 years old when she made headlines for a social media post in which she shared that she struggles with depression. The activist and actor, then starring on Girl Meets World, posted a personal essay reflecting on her year on New Year’s Eve 2015, in which she wrote how she’d come

A study published this week in Nature sheds new light on the connection between the gut and the brain, untangling the complex interplay that allows the byproducts of microorganisms living in the gut to influence the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. Investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have been using both animal models and human

The study entitled “Long term extension of a randomised controlled trial of probiotics using electronic health records” led by researchers in the Swansea University Medical School and the College of Human and Health Sciences, was published in Scientific Reports. The findings demonstrate the potential of using anonymised routinely collected electronic health records, such as those

Sleep is known to be important for creative thinking, but exactly how it helps and what role each sleep stage—REM and non-REM—plays remains unclear. A team of researchers have now developed a hypothesis, outlined in an Opinion published May 15 in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, to explain how the interleaving of REM and

Mental health problems are more common than we might think. The National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) estimate that 16.2 million people in the United States have experienced major depression at least once in the past year. Depression is considered the leading cause of workplace absenteeism in the U.S., as well as the leading cause

A stem cell is one with infinite possibilities. So, for decades, scientists have puzzled over how the cell chooses to keep being a stem cell and continue dividing, or specialize into a specific cell type, like a heart or brain cell. The same type of decision is made by HIV. When the virus infects a

Psychologists first described the syndrome in 1978. Research from 2011 suggests that approximately 70 percent of people will experience at least one episode of impostor syndrome in their lives. It may be especially prevalent among women considered to be high-achievers. Many people experience symptoms for a limited time, such as in the first few weeks

Nurses are often considered the unsung heroes and backbone of our health-care system but it’s their actual backs that bear the brunt of physically demanding movements like lifting and transferring patients. In fact, nurses are the highest category of workers to experience back injuries on the job, even more than construction workers, says nursing researcher

Aimee Haller Follis hardly knew anything about toxic shock syndrome before she nearly lost her life because of it. Besides reading the standard warning that comes on every box of tampons, Follis, 37, told PEOPLE she hadn’t really heard anything about TSS since grade school, and assumed it was “kind of an old wives’ tale.”

It is not uncommon for people to have a heart attack when the stock market crashes, taking all of their money with it, because people are very attached to money. After all, we all need money to survive these days, that is why financial stress is a big part of our lives. However, studies have

A daytime nap promotes a false memory of words, psychologists have shown. A study by John Shaw and Professor Padraic Monaghan of Lancaster University found that sleep influenced false memories in a memory recognition test taken after a nap. They tested two groups of people, with one having slept for up to 1 hour 45

Every day we make a range of choices in the pursuit of pleasure: we do things that make us feel good or work in a specific job because it’s rewarding or pays well. These experiences help shape our perspectives on life and define our personality. Consequently, problems with our ability to manage or maintain our

How people fitted with gastric bands are turning to drink and drugs after surgery because they can’t eat There’s an attitude among some surgeons that the operation ‘fixed’ the patient However the patient may have been over-eating to deal with their issues Therefore they are dealing with their inability to eat by turning to drugs

A research team from Queen’s University Belfast, in collaboration with an international team of experts, have made ground-breaking insights into how inflammatory diseases work. This development could in time lead to new treatments for a range of diseases caused by inflammation, including sepsis, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis and Multiple Sclerosis. The findings have recently been published

Traditional methods of testing for high-blood pressure are no longer adequate and risk missing vital health signs, which can lead to premature death, a study co-led by UCL has found. The research, the largest ever cohort study of its kind, published in the New England Journal for Medicine, assessed 63,000 doctors’ patients, who had their

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are a class of stem cells located in bone marrow. HSCs give rise to every type of blood cell—from the red blood cells that carry oxygen to the white blood cells of the immune system. Bone marrow provides a niche that both houses and regulates HSCs to ensure proper formation of