Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/toxins

  • If you try one detox this year, make it this one

    …I eat whole grains and fruit and avoid beef and pork and, after a humiliating experience involving stuffing semisweet baking chips into my mouth with both hands, I no longer allow chocolate in the house. Even though I can run 13.1 miles in one shot, I don’t look like a model. And when it comes to the reckoning on the elliptical with that pink pile of glossy magazine paper in front of me, the images under my nose tell me that my body is riddled wi…

    Authored by on January 21, 2013

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …e X Extra: A triglyceride can have up to three different fatty acids attached to it. Canola oil, for example, consists primarily of oleic acid, linoleic acid, and linolenic acid, all of which are unsaturated fatty acids with 18 carbons in their chains. Why do we take in fat anyway? Fat is a necessary nutrient for everything from our nervous systems to our circulatory health. It also, under appropriate conditions, is an excellent way to store up…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • No gene is an island: What do scientists mean when they talk about environment and genes?

    Nope. This island does not represent your genes. (Source) When you read news stories about what affects a developing human in the womb or how cancer or obesity arises, you probably also see references to genes and environment. Some articles may focus on genes versus environment, or mention that something is “mostly” genetic or that the “environment” contributes to a disorder or trait in some way. What some people…

    Authored by on May 7, 2012

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    Protip: Don’t diagnose based on speculation. by Jessica Wright                Attention journalists: If you’ve been calling people “nuts” or “deranged” in your stories, the Associated Press is recommending that it’s time you stopped. This guideline — along with the common-sense assertion that writers shouldn’t diagnose individuals with a mental illness based entirely on speculation — is part of a new recommendation added to the AP styleboo…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • Pregnancy 101: Peas made me puke, but not just in the morning

    …d picked up on my soaring level of discomfort and without missing a beat, ate all my peas when Diane wasn’t looking. We ended the evening with my stomach contents intact, but barely. The next morning, as I was preparing my 18 month-old daughter’s daycare lunch, I remembered that we were provided with a parting gift of sautéed peas. I took them out of the fridge and proceeded to aliquot them into containers more suitable for a toddler. As I rem…

    Authored by on February 14, 2012

  • Science, health, medical news freaking you out? Do the Double X Double-Take first

    …nded diagnostic inclusion, better identification, and, ironically, greater awareness of autism. In countries that have been able to assess overall population prevalence, such as the UK, rates seem to have held steady at about 1% for decades, which is about the current levels now identified among 8-year-olds in the United States.  What anyone needs when it comes to headlines honking about a “link” to a specific condition is a mental ch…

    Authored by on April 27, 2012

  • What does ‘safe’ mean when we’re talking about chemicals?

    …f asking whether something is safe, I’ve begun to try (try!) to look at things on a spectrum of lower risk to higher risk and think about decisions as risk evaluations.  At the lower risk end, I would include things that have 1) solid, evidence-based records of few or no harmful effects, 2) relatively few/unusual circumstances in which it produces harmful effects, and 3) statistics favoring my likelihood of emerging unscathed. Here are some thin…

    Authored by on June 4, 2012

  • YES. The CDC childhood immunization schedule is safe. For reals.

    …members who review the evidence to make their assessments are not all necessarily experts specifically in the field in question and are “selected to avoid any real or perceived biases or conflicts.” That means the 14 committee members are not all vaccine researchers, pediatricians or infectious disease epidemiologists. In the report’s appendix, you can read the bios of all the committee members, who include a nursing professor,…

    Authored by on January 24, 2013

  • Depressing genes

    …ch experience — yet it was obvious he didn’t have the knack for it. This student’s dogged pursuit of a mental health career made me wonder what kind of emotional turmoil he experienced which would make him think, at age 19, that psychiatry was the only vocation worth working towards. Then there were the two graduate students who both worked incredibly hard and were both prone to obsess about their experiments. Each burned off stress in quit…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …nt movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was used with mammography. Approval of a device of this nat…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

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