Our bodies produce vitamin D when our skin is exposed to the ultraviolet (UV) rays. This is moderated by factors such as the season, air pollution, cloudy skies, geographic latitude, and skin melanin content. That is, the production of vitamin D is decreased during the winter months and when the skies are cloudy or smoggy. It is also lower for those who live north of Boston/northern California and for those who have darker skin tones. [read post]
If you live in the U.S. and watch TV or read newspapers and magazines, you probably know all about the dangers of sun exposure. Media reports are replete with warnings about skin cancer and premature aging caused by sun damage. Coupled with the warnings are the loud calls for staying away from the sun and, if you must go outside, using loads of sunscreen.
There have been attempts, however, to introduce a more balanced view of “the scary sun” into public discourse. These attempts revolve around vitamin D. Over the past few years, mainstream media sources—including , , , , , , , , and —ran stories on getting enough vitamin D. Most recently, the January 2010 issue of described the circulating levels of vitamin D as “a number to know” (by the way, the magic number is 35 ng/mL and above).
Now, what does vitamin D have to do with sun exposure? [read post]
In the 2004 movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a couple who have a turbulent romantic relationship decide to undergo a psychiatrist’s experimental procedure to erase the memory of each other. If you could take a pill to alter the memory of painful, traumatic events, would you take it?
Researchers are finding that altering memory is no longer science fiction. A group of Harvard and Canadian researchers are challenging what we know about memory. Until recently, memory has been thought to be like clay with recent memory soft and pliable and older memories hardened into a permanent, stable state. Scientists are finding, however, that long-term memories can be changed. Recalling an event causes older memories to revert to an unstable state. [read post]
The December 2009 issue of European Journal of Clinical Nutrition came out with a study on energy density of foods. Energy density of foods (EDF) is the amount of calories in a particular weight of food. Some foods, such as donuts and pizza, are packed with energy, which means that they provide a lot of calories per ounce. Other foods, such as fruits and vegetables, have low energy density. So, for example, if you eat the same weight of donuts and cabbage, you’ll get a lot more calories from donuts than from cabbage. This is because donuts are energy dense and cabbage is not. [read post]
A recent study examined the connection between social anxiety (shyness and discomfort with face-to-face conversations) and communication choices. The research question was whether shyness influenced teens’ preferences for face-to-face communication vs. technology-facilitated communication such as cell phone, IM, Facebook, MySpace, and so on. [read post]
