It’s 6:15 in the morning and the pavement is flying beneath me. With each stride through the dark, frosty morning, I’m gobbling up yards of San Vicente Boulevard as I head for the final stretch back to the office. Even though I’m cold and clammy, there’s a certain exhilaration knowing that there aren’t many others up at this hour, let alone preparing for an event like the marathon: 26.2 miles of grueling, energy-sapping punishment. I’d wanted to run a marathon for more than twenty years. But even during the fog of my alcohol and drug addiction, I somehow acknowledged that subjecting my body to that kind of stress would be…
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Can Stress Cause Me to Gain Weight? How much you eat may not be the only reason you're gaining weight
Cave women had it easy. Except for the occasional attack by a saber-tooth tiger, the only stress in their lives was foraging enough food to feed their families and keeping the dirt floor clean. How did we get so stressed? Fast forward to modern times, we’re deluged with stressors that begin the moment we wake: checking our email, getting the kids out the door in time for school, checking Facebook, struggling with deadlines at work, checking Twitter and having dinner ready for the last-minute guests your husband has decided to bring home. While stress may have saved your life as a cave dweller, these days it can lead to serious,…
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Blaschko Lines Blaschko's lines disease proves there's a little zebra in all of us
Nature has an interesting way of identifying animals in the wild. Lions have their manes, leopards have spots. Tigers and zebras have stripes. And apparently, so do people with Blaschko Lines. Blaschko Lines are common skin patterns that were first identified in 1901 by a German dermatologist named Alfred Blaschko. Over the course of years of examining thousands of patients, he often observed people who exhibited unusual patterns of dark stripes and swirls that encompassed their entire bodies. Some patterns were restricted to an arm or a leg. Other patients had stripes that ran from head to toe, beginning on their face, migrating to their chest and wrapping around their…
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Monkey in a Pink Canoe Why parents refuse to talk about the birds and the bees
“Where did I come from?” asked Shadrach as we pulled up to his football game at Fleigenbaum Field. Having never been married, I thought I’d be exempt from ever having to discuss the birds and the bees with a 6-year-old quarterback, so I never put much thought into what I’d say if asked. Looks like I was going to have to punt. “Well, Shadrach, each month, in one of your mommy’s two ovaries, a few immature eggs develop into follicles. The mature follicle releases an egg during ovulation, which turns into the corpus luteum. Progesterone prepares the endometrium in anticipation of the embryo. Then, your daddy’s sperm travels up the…
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The Golden Era of Cigarette Ads When cigarette smoking, big tobacco and lung cancer were cool
When Sir Walter Raleigh helped to popularize tobacco during the 16th century, he probably had no idea that he would be responsible for cigarette ads; one of the largest and most profitable advertising campaigns in the history of Madison Avenue. Campaigns that would see a single product go from lifestyle enhancement to a pariah of the medical community within a matter of years. Give Me Your Young at Heart Before their negative association with health, cigarettes were marketed to successful young men and women as a way to relax and get more out of life. Advertisements were filled with virile, athletic men and women prancing around tennis courts in snow-white…