Zika may soon be coming to a home near you. The virus spreads through mosquito bites, blood, and sex. In the womb it laces rapidly through early brain cells of infants, destroying enough of them to create small heads, or microcephaly. In adults the virus can provoke Guillain-Barre disease, a horrible neurological condition where the white […]
The First Night
Many folks find they don’t sleep well their first night in a new bed, or anywhere that’s new. Sleep is more fitful and difficult, rest less lasting. In the sleep lab this is known as the “first night effect.” The expectation is strong that sleep the first time in a new, or even a different environment, […]
Timing Your Life
Time rules life, how it’s lived and performed. Time and our inner clocks make most of our lives possible. Consider the monarch butterflies that unerringly cross Canada, the United States, and as good citizens of these NAFTA states, direct themselves to the same valley in central Mexico. How do they do navigate so brilliantly? They use […]
Why It’s Better to Be Rich
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Rich is better.” So said Sophie Tucker, long ago. It’s still true. A recent study in JAMA demonstrated that if life expectancy was extrapolated from age 40, American males in the top 1% of income would live 15 years longer than the bottom 1%; among women the life expectancy difference […]
Confessions of a Marijuana Maker
When drugs are also foods, addiction becomes easier. The pleasures of dining conflate with drug pleasures. Particularly when new experiences are so prized people often ask, how can this be bad? That is why edible marijuana, now being packaged into innumerable combinations with many foods – especially chocolates and candies – represent a particular public […]