Health News

Our bodies are built for reproduction. In nature’s grand scheme each individual living thing (plant or animal) is just one part of a system for the survival of its species. Many people baulk at this philosophy, but I agree with whoever first said ‘The chicken is only the egg’s way of making another egg’.

Reproductive drives [...]

In the old days, town gas used to contain high quantities of carbon monoxide. These days, in Britain, we use North Sea (natural) gas almost exclusively. This type of gas contains methane, but no carbon monoxide. Methane is not a direct poison, though in high enough concentrations it can be dangerous simply because it can [...]

In the brain messages are passed electrically along the nerve cells, but on reaching a junction between two nerve cells this electrical impulse is converted into physical form. Chemicals called transmitter substances are released by the first cell and travel across the synapse, to land on special receptor sites on the second cell. Here they [...]

Noise is like glare – the more there is, the more tension it inspires. Part of this tension occurs reflexively. The eardrum is the receptor for sound inside the ear, vibrating as sound waves impinge upon it. The movements of the eardrum are picked up by a tiny bone called the malleus, which then transmits [...]

Sadly, brain tumours are more common in younger children, certainly during the first five or so years of life. There are good physiological reasons for this – tumours are essentially disorders of cell division, where the cell doesn’t know how to stop dividing. During the development of the baby in the womb, and then in [...]