All posts filed under: Health

All about physical, mental and social wellbeing.

Lacking total recall

1 July 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 4
Biology / Health / Medicine / Myths / Psychology

What’s your earliest memory? Chances are you can’t remember anything before the age of three. Otherwise known as childhood amnesia, it affects us all but isn’t quite the stuff of Hollywood. In the movies, the plot usually revolves around someone being bopped on the head and suddenly having no idea who they are or what they are supposed to be doing. And more often than not, a second whack to the head and the person’s memories return, good as new. But is that an accurate depiction of amnesia?

The look of concen­tration

24 June 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 4
Evolution / Health / Myths

Most young kids do it. Michael Jordan was famous for it. And it’s quite possible you do it too. What am I talking about? Sticking your tongue out when you concentrate. It’s incredibly common and over the years there have been a variety of theories attempting to explain the habit. Recent research supports the suggestion it’s connected to the way humans evolved spoken language. A quirky tongue? Next time you have the opportunity, watch a […]

When am I going to die?

10 June 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 4
Health / Medicine / Myths

Remember when Marty McFly desperately tried to warn the 1955 Doc Emmett Brown that in 1985, Doc was going to be gunned down by Libyan terrorists in Back to the Future? Doc insists that he doesn’t want to know about the future. How about you? Would you want know in advance when you are going to die? New research out of the UK can tell you the chances you’ll still be alive in five years based on your answers to some very simple questions.

It’s not all in the mind

3 June 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 6
Health / Myths / Psychology

Want to build more muscle, play sport more skillfully and heal better after injury, all without lifting a finger? I’m talking about <em>visualisation</em>: imagining your body doing something before you actually do it. Rather than an urban myth, it turns out there is lots of science behind the power of mental training.

Do you taste what I taste?

27 May 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 14
Biology / Health / Myths / Zoology

Confession time: I adore chocolate. I’ll never forget a chocolate experience I had almost 20 years ago when I was given the opportunity to try some <em>Gymnema sylvestre</em>. It’s a herb that suppresses your ability to taste sweetness. And eating chocolate straight after the herb was rather distressing. The chocolate had virtually no taste and had the texture of wax, or maybe soap. I could feel it coating my tongue and teeth and I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to eat it again. That’s the power of our taste buds. But not all animals can taste the same flavours we can.

Living to a ripe old age

20 May 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 5
Biology / Botany / Evolution / Health / Zoology

When I was a kid I aspired to live to 100 so I could get my letter from the Queen. These days I have a rather different view of the monarchy and more insight into the pivotal role of good health in old age. If you want to talk old age, there are a plenty of other animals and plants with lifespans far more impressive than ours. The question is: why do some living things live so much longer than others?

A glitch in the Matrix?

15 April 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 2
Health / Myths / Psychology

Remember when Keanu Reeves experienced déjà vu and was told it indicated a glitch in the matrix? Not restricted to Hollywood sci-fi, in fact almost all of us have had the disconcerting feeling that what is happening now has happened before (even though it hasn’t). There are heaps of scientific theories, but no consensus as to why we have these experiences.

Seeing the light

1 April 2015
by Jen Martin
comments 5
Health / Medicine / Myths

Did your parents tell you to turn off the TV and play outside? Perhaps they threatened that you were going to end up needing glasses if you didn’t stop playing computer games. It turns out your folks may have been right after all, although not quite for the reason they thought.