health

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Signs your HGH injections might be fake

From Paul Byrd and Rick Ankiel to the upcoming Mitchell Report, accusations of HGH are flying around baseball. But Human Growth Hormone use is also on the rise outside of sports; plenty of people looking to get bigger are injecting themselves. So, let's say you want to bulk up, get taller, increase your focus or just feel younger. You've bought some HGH on the Internet or from a pharmacy (hint: stay away from BALCO). But, could it be fake? Here are some signs your HGH might be phony. Your... READ ON

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When your heart's not broken, just inverse

One of the more common kinds of situs inversus--the condition in which one's internal organs appear on the opposite side of the body--is dextrocardia, when the heart sets up headquarters on, yes, the right... READ ON

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Obesity, Global Trade and Beer Prices: Why the Farm Bill is actually cool

As is usually the case with bills in Congress, I had a lot of trouble believing that the 2007 Farm Bill was applicable to me. After all, the last time I even remember going to a farm was on a kindergarten field trip, when I got goat's milk squirted directly into my mouth and I almost threw up. So, when a friend told me the Farm Bill was really important for everyone, I laughed at him. That is, until he told me beer prices might go up. I... READ ON

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Question of the Day: Can Spicy Foods Kill You?

I'm learning how to cook, which has been an adventure. The other night, after an encounter with some particularly spicy Italian sausage combined with even spicier barbecue sauce, my roommates and I found ourselves wondering if eating spicy foods could kill you. I mean, it can certainly cause intense pain and chest tightness; so can too much spicy food kill... READ ON

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Kissing booths

Kissing booths...They've always seemed about as desirable as stocks and pillories. Of course, I understand raising awareness/cash for a worthy cause (e.g. when Kate Moss sold a one-minute, Â£60,000 kiss to benefit the Hoping Foundation--the man who bought it ceded his kiss to Hugh Grant's girlfriend; fittingly charitable and salacious). Elsewhere, you've got bear-kissing booths ("just a small part of a larger twice-daily presentation about wild bear safety"), pug-kissing booths, and then there's always... READ ON

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The incredible liver and its appeal

This summer I stumbled upon a detox, and I've been so fascinated with it that I'm keeping it up. It's like finally handing your body the microphone! It just has so much to say, and I want to give it the floor as long as I can stand it. And once it starts talking, the toxins keep coming. It's our biggest internal organ, so I suppose that makes sense. I had no idea it took so long to detox, or that your liver was in much worse shape right after you stop drinking than it ever was while regulating normal... READ ON

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Chocolate Toothpaste, Paper-thin Batteries and the Resurgence of the Dodo (the bird, not your neighbor)?

A Toothpaste Cathy Would Love I didn't think it could get any better than the day my dental hygienist told me that beer cleaned teeth (a fact I've never bothered to verify because I just don't want it to be wrong). But now it turns out that chocolate may be the best ingredient to add to toothpaste. A doctoral candidate at Tulane University has shown that cocoa extract is more effective at fighting cavities than fluoride, having done animal tests and developed a peppermint toothpaste... READ ON

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Beach sand as bacteria source: shocking?

Engineers at Stanford have been combing West Coast beaches to show how beach sand is just as capable of passing along harmful bacteria as ocean water. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that sand at beaches all along the California coast contained some level of fecal indicator bacteria -- 91 percent of the beaches in the study had detectable levels of enterococci and that 62 percent of them had traces of E. coli. Contaminated beach sands can act as bacteria... READ ON

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Mr. Yuk

I have fond memories of Mr. Yuk from my childhood. My parents placed the green-yucky-face stickers on various items under the kitchen sink, and sure enough, I never drank drain cleaner. But where did Mr. Yuk come from? According to Wikipedia, Mr. Yuk is from Pittsburgh, and was introduced in 1971. Prior to 1971, poison symbols were commonly of the skull-and-crossbones variety, but there was concern that children might associate that "jolly roger" symbol with pirates. This article further explains... READ ON