Medicine & Health:
This new article on the website of the NY Times listing "the 11 best foods you aren't eating" is a perfect example of nutritionism run amok, full of dubious claims like this: Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the...
Posted on July 2, 2008 10:17 AM • 3 Comments •
I've written before about the dangers of transparency and medical technology, at least when it comes to diagnosing back pain. Simply put, doctors tend to assume that any imaging technology with better resolution will lead to better diagnoses. But that's...
Posted on June 30, 2008 3:27 PM • 1 Comments •
In the past year, I've spent a small fortune at the dentist. Between wisdom teeth removal, a few routine cleanings and the replacement of an old cavity, my tab has come to several thousand dollars. (Needless to say, I don't...
Posted on May 27, 2008 5:38 PM • 6 Comments •
At first glance, "mindfulness" meditation practices seem completely counterintuitive. If people are suffering from pain, shouldn't they learn ways to not focus on their pain? Isn't it better to block out the negative sensations? (Repression isn't always such a bad...
Posted on May 27, 2008 2:18 PM • 5 Comments •
Over at the wonderful World's Fair, Ben Cohen has an interview with Kelly Joyce, author of the forthcoming Magnetic Appeal: MRI and the Myth of Transparency. Here is how Joyce summarizes the main argument of her book: In the United...
Posted on April 23, 2008 10:24 AM • 2 Comments •
I'm really looking forward to reading Anne Harrington's new book on the history of mind-body medicine. I thought this factoid, from her interview with the Boston Globe Ideas section, was quite interesting: IDEAS: One of the things I learned reading...
Posted on February 4, 2008 12:25 PM • 4 Comments •
Apparently, if you breathe in vaporized bits of swine cortex you have a decent chance of getting very sick. That, at least, is the tenuous conclusion of a doctors in Minnesota: The ailment is characterized by sensations of burning, numbness...
Posted on February 4, 2008 10:11 AM • 7 Comments •
One of the many reasons I'm a big fan of Michael Pollan's work, including his latest manifesto, is that he's one of the few science journalists who emphasizes what science doesn't know. Here's an interview from Gourmet: CH: When your...
Posted on January 10, 2008 10:12 AM • 10 Comments •
From the great Harold McGee comes an investigation into raw milk, bacteria and cultural evolution: On our journey up to the Stichelton Dairy last September, Mr. Hodgson [a cheesemaker] explained how cheese quality progressed for centuries, then declined in the...
Posted on December 5, 2007 9:59 AM • 7 Comments •
The statistics are troubling: Almost half of all cigarettes sold in the United States (44 percent) are consumed by people with mental illness. This is because so many people who have mental illnesses smoke (50 to 80 percent, compared with...
Posted on November 19, 2007 12:26 PM • 24 Comments •
The Cartesian wall separating the mind and body has been so thoroughly deconstructed that it's newsworthy when a bodily condition is not affected by our mental state. After all, recent studies have shown that everything from chronic back pain to...
Posted on October 30, 2007 9:57 AM • 7 Comments •
Gary Taubes has a pretty damning takedown of modern epidemiology at the Times Magazine: In the case of H.R.T. [Hormone Replacement Therapy], as with most issues of diet, lifestyle and disease, the hypotheses begin their transformation into public-health recommendations only...
Posted on September 16, 2007 8:14 AM • 0 Comments •
Yawning is famously contagious. Except that is, if you're autistic. Here's Mindhacks: The study showed that children with autism were far less likely to yawn in response to watching others do the same. Often, autistic social difficulties are put down...
Posted on September 7, 2007 3:38 PM • 2 Comments •
Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
