It’s amazing what science and medicine is discovering about our world. However, sometimes the news floating around the medical world reads more like a cheesy tabloid than legitimate health related information. For example…
Got no willpower? That’s okay, just do some cardio at the gym and increase your heart’s variability! A new study found that willpower is a lot like muscle strength, in that it can be increased with a little training. Actual cardiovascular training, apparently! Why? Because self-regulation (willpower) and cardiac variability are both linked to the parasympathetic nervous system, so what affects one should affect the other, right? Want to develop some willpower – just maintain a consistent gym regime. Hm.
Pizza is the New Carrot Stick. Yes, that’s right – pizza is being hailed as the new ‘health food’. The University of Maryland claims that increasing the cooking time and temperature of pizza dough increases the antioxidant content by at least 60%. Sure, there’s no denying the benefits of antioxidants, but this is still pizza, right? Health food? Apparently so, but forget the cheese and meat, scientists say. Pizza is healthy – but only if you don’t use toppings.
Don’t Want That Blood Type? Change it, Then! Scientists claim that they can convert the main blood groups A, B, and therefore AB to the universal donor – O. All it takes is a couple of enzymes to safely degrade the blood group antigens on the surface of erythrocytes. This has been 25 years in the making, and would be invaluable to medicine, though it does read a bit like science fiction. What’s next….DNA disguising?
Adrian.
