Children between the ages of 5 and 18 are sleeping two hours fewer per night than they did 100 years ago. The ramifications of this major shift in sleeping patterns are seldom discussed. Some recent studies have pointed to how high social media use is stealing sleep from teenagers and pre-teens, with these individuals losing …
Continue reading “Sleep Deprivation in Children & ADHD Symptoms”
In the US, most people average less than 6 hours of sleep per night, when the amount needed for a healthy functioning body is between 7-9 hours. Sleep deprivation has a variety of negative effects on the body, including the type of daytime fatigue that leads to car accidents, difficulty concentrating, and reduced ability to …
One of the most influential pieces in the field of public health is a paper called Sick Individuals and Sick Populations, written by Geoffrey Rose in 1985. Rose describes how the root cause of a disease within a population may be hidden if the cause is homogenously distributed throughout the population. Although the paper was …
Continue reading “Geoffrey Rose & Prevention Theory: What is Healthy?”
In the US, about 20 million people live with some degree of age-related macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of vision loss in individuals 60 and older. The macula is an oval-shaped spot of pigmentation on the retina, and the degeneration of this part of the eye results in a loss of sharp vision. …
Recently, the drug Wegovy was approved for use in the UK. Similar to other brand-name semaglutide pharmaceuticals such as Ozempic, Wegovy can be used to treat diabetes. It involves a weekly injection in the stomach, thigh, or arm. It has recently made the news, however, for supposedly being a “game changer” for weight loss, and …
Continue reading “Wegovy – the Side Effects and Controversy”
Worldwide, one in eight people have a mental disorder such as depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety. In the US, major depressive disorder affects around 7.1% of the population, and around 18.1% of Americans have anxiety disorders. There is much money to be made from giving out medication for these mental health issues. Without insurance, a 30-day …
In the past few weeks, I have encountered several people who were under the impression that humans must eat cholesterol. These individuals didn’t just believe that consuming cholesterol is not unhealthy, they believed it to be essential for human survival. I had not previously heard anyone say this, but perhaps the misperception is more widespread …
Continue reading “The Misperception that Humans Need to Eat Cholesterol”
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently released update guidelines pertaining to childhood obesity. The updated guidelines give the specific ages at which doctors should offer certain treatments for obesity: children 12 and older can be offered drugs, while children 13 and older can be offered weight-loss surgery. Childhood obesity is a grave issue in …
Fad diets come and go over the years and decades. Such diets are particularly popular if they propose some strange idiosyncratic way of eating that doesn’t differ too much from someone’s regular eating pattern. That way, the person can convince themselves that they are making a big change in their health, even if it isn’t …
Continue reading “The Blood Type Diet: Complete and Utter Rubbish”
Reproductive issues in both men and women have risen sharply in the US in the past few decades, with issues such as miscarriages and declining sperm counts increasing by about 1% each year. There is certainly evidence that endocrine-disrupting chemicals such as phthalates and BPA can cause reproductive issues in humans. However, one major contributor …
Green Humanist 