Ten Questions To Ask At Doctor Appointments

by Angela Haupt TIME Magazine    When you go to the doctor, you’re probably the one answering most of the questions. Yet it’s essential to make sure you’re asking plenty of your own.    “We need to get someone to fund a bazillion-dollar PSA to tell people to be bolder when they talk to their …

Five Household Items You Need To Clean More

by Matt Fuchs Time Magazine    We often overlook the dirtiest items in our homes because grime is invisible (think bacteria) or accumulates too gradually for us to notice.    Another factor: our brains tend to tune out the appearance of familiar, everyday objects, in a phenomenon called attentional blindness. This means we’re least likely …

Sleep Researcher Details The Perfect Nap

by Talar Moukhtarian Wired.com    You’re in the middle of the afternoon, eyelids heavy, focus slipping. You close your eyes for half an hour and wake up feeling recharged. But later that night, you’re tossing and turning in bed, wondering why you can’t drift off.    That midday snooze which felt so refreshing at the …

“Life Changing” Gene Therapy Restores Vision

by Kevin Burton    Been reading with joy, a small flood of stories about people having sight restored through gene therapy.    Voretigene neparvovec, sold under the brand name Luxturna, is a gene therapy medication for the treatment of Leber congenital amaurosis, according to Wikipedia.  The US Food and Drug Administration approved Luxturna,  in December of …

Web MD: Slow Down, You Eat Too Fast

by Kevin Burton     Our cat Ronnie is “food-motivated.”  The manager of Save The Kitties in Derby said so and she wasn’t lying.    Ronnie was obviously supplied with people food in large quantity by her previous owners because she clung to our feet when we opened the refrigerator. She knew exactly what the apparatus …

Be Thankful To God, Stop Complaining

by Kevin Burton    I caught myself in a lie last week. Christmas music, in a manner of speaking, revealed it to me.    Stay with me here.    I have heard people talk about when it was OK to begin playing Christmas music each year, after Thanksgiving, end of November, whatever. But I haven’t …

Read This Column Now, Don’t Put It Off!

by Kevin Burton    So I’ve had this material for a while. My friend Tracy sent it to me. Jusuuuut haven’t gotten around to posting it yet.    You know, busy, busy, busy.    It arrived under the headline “procrastinator’s creed.”    Did you know that if you rearrange the letters in “procrastinator” you get …

Free Surgery Saves Vision Of Young Child

by Kevin Burton    There is great news in this article: a young boy’s vision has been saved.     But by the time you get done reading it, you will realize that some things that are routine in the US are not routine elsewhere. The challenges that blind people face here are formidable, but people …

Déjà Vu: Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Before

by interestingfacts.com    Déjà vu (French for “already seen”) is not just the feeling that you’ve experienced something before — it’s also the sense that the feeling is eerie, uncanny, or even wrong.    Scientists are still trying to figure out this mysterious but common glitch in the brain. Here are a few facts about …

How Drinking More Water Improves Health

by Dictionary Scoop    Drinking enough water every day is crucial, and as time goes by it becomes even more important.    Adults over the age of 60, for example, are at increased risk of dehydration due to natural drops in thirst levels and changes in body composition. While everyone’s hydration requirements differ depending on …