The Gene That Wouldn’t Let Us Sleep
Imagine one of your ancestors walking across the African savannah. The grass moves. There are two possibilities. It is the wind. Or maybe it is a lion. The relaxed hominin thinks: Probably the wind. The anxious hominid stops. The heart rate rises. Pupils dilate. Blood is redirected towards muscles. The brain begins calculating escape routes. […]
Running and Longevity: The Wisdom of the Second Half
I say this to reassure many patients who ask me about bringing their children for skin cancer checks. In general, we lose our beauty, or develop cancers, after our reproductive peak. Evolution is all about survival of the species. This is why cancer is extremely rare in the very young. Life is an endurance […]
Thoughts While Running a Marathon in Antarctica
In an island on Antarctica, a single icy, gravelly path bends to follow the Antarctic research stations of Chile, Russia and China. Runners—if you include my ambling while wearing multiple layers of woollens to go with waterproof pants, socks, balaclavas and multi-layered gloves—have to traverse the hilly terrain that bends towards the penguins lining the […]
A Christmas Message from the 100-Acre-Wood
A few years ago, I was walking through Regent’s Park in London, heading towards Primrose Hill where I had a book signing at the lovely bookstore there. On another occasion, I was invited to visit the zoo to examine the skin lesions of some animals! This is because over the years I have built up […]
What Vitamins Can You Take to Reduce Skin Cancer?
The taking of various supplements—derived from plant or animal—is as old as mankind itself. The ancient Greeks had cures for everything. Earwax, taken from the sufferer of the ailment—but for more efficacy, some texts suggested that the earwax must be extracted from the ear of a freshly executed person! —and applied to treat human bites, […]
What you don’t know about AI (but must)
First, they took our liberty by attaching us to trackable mobile devices; next, they destroyed our attention spans with social media. And now, they are after our brains! Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be aptly described as the next big thing. Everywhere since the advent of ChatGPT, tech bros have been outdoing each other in releasing […]
What Serial Killers and Golfers may Have in Common
In measuring environmental impacts on health, we sometimes can confuse morality and science. About ten years ago, Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, Amherst College, MA, wrote an article about the effects of lead exposure on population health. Higher amounts of lead in the water supply unfolded a series of […]
Dreams and Nightmares may lead to a Medical Diagnosis
Whenever I drink Bailey’s Irish cream, irrespective if it is the original version or one of the new-fangled flavoured versions, I have nightmares. Therefore at home I call it “nightmare Baileys” and avoid the damn drink! What I also know is that it was the creation of a guy called David Gluckman, a South African […]
Why having a Cat may Make your Children Unemployed!
Cats have been pets or living around humans for around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. This first began in the fertile crescent, a moon-shaped grouping of countries that include the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Ancient Egypt. In modern geography, this includes countries like Lebanon, Turkey, Israel and Iraq. As nomadic humans left Africa, their turning to […]
Uber v. London Taxis: Only One is Good for Your Brain!
Photo by Sam Kimber on Unsplash No city is perhaps prouder of its taxis than London—alright, New York’s yellow cabs may disagree—with its black automobiles for hire. Still officially called The Hackney Carriage, these were horse-drawn since the 17th century and became petrol-powered in 1903. Never mind that in the spirit of globalisation, it is […]