This New Yorker article on cognitive enhancement is actually pretty well-balanced and wise. The whole thing is worth reading if you're interested in this subject, but in particular the comments of "Alex" had a familiar ring for me:
That afternoon, he went to the library, where he spent “too much time researching a paper rather than actually ( Read more... )

The last piece of advice my doctor gave me*: try taking 3mg of melatonin before bed.

That worked *great*, let me tell you: waking up in the middle of the night becomes a total non-issue when you're nolonger able to get to sleep in the first place. I have to hand it to him, that solution would never have occurred to me. Last night was the worst ( Read more... )

There's that feeling again. Et tu, peanut butter and strawberriesAnybody who has chronic fatigue, trouble concentrating, and/or an acute sensitivity to cold would do well to read that list and take heed. Goiter is to hypothyroidism roughly what type II diabetes is to hyperinsulinemia. People have expressed surprise at my new found ability to go ( Read more... )

( Part I | Part IINon-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM hereafter) only represents one pathological extreme of a continuum: our understanding of its pathogenesis suggests that there ought to be less severe forms of the same underlying pathology, and in fact there are ( Read more... )

pleasedtoeatyou had been getting stomach aches in the morning, and for a while we were both stumped -- subtracting regularly consumed foods from her diet didn't seem to yield consistent results. Then last week she suggested it might be her toothpaste; lo and behold, when I plugged in "gastric+fluoride" into Gscholar I came up with two decades' worth of papers, of ( Read more... )

( Part IWhen you eat carbohydrates, your digestive system converts them to glucose which is then transported into your bloodstream. Glucose is the most readily combustible fuel your body uses, and like oxygen it's as dangerous as it is precious. As a first step to understanding the importance of diabetes mellitus, it helps to understand why your ( Read more... )

I've read a lot of books, and it takes a lot to impress me these days. With that said, Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories is one of the most important books I've ever read. It's really three books in one: an eye-opening portrait of pathological science and its consequences, an incisive refutation of what's become conventional wisdom about ( Read more... )

That beautiful line comes from what just might be my favorite TED talk ever, embedded below and brought to my attention by Brad. It's about perfume, but it's really about how olfaction is nanoscale molecular spectroscopy, but it's really really about science and how it progresses mainly by serendipitous moments where the right pieces of information ( Read more... )

Nobody expects the Lebanese Inquisition! Part of me wants to join Nassim Taleb in screaming from the rooftops that it should be a felony to use Value at Risk when managing other people's money, and that everyone promoting such snake oil ought to be publicly disgraced. Another part of me then snidely remarks that if we're going to do that every time ( Read more... )

Q: What's unglamorous and would be predicted to increase GDP per capita in poor nations by about 1% percent per year in perpetuity, for the price of a few cents per person per year?

A: Nick Kristof has the answer plus a bonus joke about Canada, and the associated website is here. ( See also.)

(via patrissimo.)