HEALTH AND WELLNESS

                                        King Ferdinand I [1751-1825] is said to have disguised himself as a commoner and, in clandestine fashion, visited a poor neighborhood in Naples. Why the secrecy? One story has it that he wanted to sink his teeth into a food that the queen had banned from the royal court –pizza. If Ferdinand were alive today, he would have no trouble indulging his appetite. Currently, there are some 30,000 pizzerias in Italy, and each year they produce enough pizzas to serve 45 to each inhabitant.                                            ...

  You may have imagined that all living things must inevitably wear out. Cars and vacuum cleaners in daily use eventually stop working. It is easy to suppose that animals age and die in a similar way. But professor of zoology Steven Austad explains: “living organisms are very different from machines. The most fundamental defining character of living organisms, in fact, may be their ability to repair themselves.”   The way your body repairs itself after an injury is marvelous, but the routine repairs it makes are, in some respects, even more remarkable. Consider your bones, for example. “Seemingly inert when viewed from the outside, bone is a living tissue that ceaselessly destroys and rebuilds itself throughout adult life,” This remodeling essentially replaces the entire skeleton every 10 years.”   Other parts of your body are renewed more often. Some cells in your skin, liver, and intestines may be replaced almost daily. Every second, your body produc...

                                       WHY DO I FAINT?                       The doctor wanted to check the pressure in my eyes, a procedure that required him to touch my eyeball with an instrument. I knew what was going to happen. It always does. It is the same when a nurse uses a needle to extract blood. Sometimes just talking about injuries has the same effect. –I faint. According to a British report some 3 percent of us often faint when we are in one of the aforementioned specific situations. If you are a fellow sufferer, you may have tried in vain to stop yourself from fainting. You might have tried walking to the bathroom to avoid fainting in public. But that is not a good ide...

                                      Does it make any health difference whether you exercise by hiking up or down a steep incline? Researchers say that in some ways it might.   Taking the stairs regularly is a simple and practical means to improving health. Researchers asked 69 sedentary employees to use the stairs at their place of work instead of the elevators. After 12 weeks, the workers aerobic capacity had increased by 8.6 percent, which gave them a 15 percent reduction in all-cause mortality risk. The workers also saw significant improvement in their blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, fat mass, and waist circumference. A study conducted on a mountain in the Alps where for two months 45 volunteers hiked up the 30-degree slope and rode a cable car back down. Then, for two months ...

                                     A few drops of blood taken from a newborn can show whether the baby has a thyroid abnormality. If blood tests reveal a problem, physicians can take corrective measures. Lacking sufficient thyroid hormones, a child may become physically and mentally retarded, a condition called cretinism. Hence, babies are usually tested just days after birth.   Thyroid impairment may be the result of a diet poor in iodine, physical or mental stress, genetic defects, infections, disease [usually autoimmune disease], or side effects of medications prescribed for various        illnesses. An enlarged thyroid, or goiter, may be an indication of disease. The enlargement may be diffuse or in the form of nodules. Although genetically benign goiters shoul...