Health

Eating more fresh vegetables is one of the simplest choices you can make to improve your overall health. A vegetable-rich diet can help protect you from arthritis, heart disease, stroke, dementia, cancer, and can even help slow down your body’s aging process.

A recent study found that people who consume seven or more portions of vegetables and fruit a day have a 42 percent lower risk of dying from any cause, compared to those who eat less than one portion—and vegetables have the greatest impact…

More than 100 years ago, a Japanese chemist named Kikunae Ikeda discovered the secret that made dashi, a classic seaweed soup, so delicious. It was glutamic acid, which, in your body is often found as glutamate.

Ikeda called this new flavor “umami,” which means “delicious” in Japanese, but it wasn’t until 2002 that modern-day scientists confirmed umami to be a fifth taste, along with sweet, sour, bitter, and salty…

Mercury pollution is extremely persistent once in the air, water, and soil, and levels steadily increase over time as it accumulates. A number of industries contribute to mercury pollution, but dental offices are one of the primary culprits.

Dental amalgam, a tooth filling material that is 50 percent mercury—not silver—is the leading intentional use of mercury in the US, and dentist offices are the largest source of mercury in wastewater entering publicly owned treatment works…

Your body’s microbiome—colonies of various microbes that reside in your gut and elsewhere in and on your body—is as unique to you as your fingerprint.

It varies from person to person based on factors such as diet, lifestyle, health history, geographic location, and even ancestry. Your microbiome is in fact one of the most complex ecosystems on the planet…

A new study found that deaths from opioid overdoses have fallen sharply in the 23 US states where medical marijuana is now legal. Coincidence? Not likely.

For those with chronic pain, medical marijuana can be life changing, allowing a safer, natural form of treatment than the conventionally recommended pain-relieving drugs called opioids.

More than one in 10 Americans take an antidepressant, and that number jumps to one in four among women aged 50 to 64.1 They’re the most commonly prescribed class of medication other than antibiotics,2 but despite their overwhelming popularity there’s an important question that needs to be answered: do they work?

Overwhelming evidence shows that antidepressants do not work as advertised. In fact, at best, antidepressants are comparable to placebos…

Are you having trouble trimming down? Your diet definitely accounts for the majority of your success here, but exercise can help take you the rest of the way.

In addition to high intensity interval training, weight lifting is an excellent way to get rid of that stubborn excess body fat, because working your muscles is the key to firing up your metabolism…

In 1832, a Belgian mathematician named Adolphe Quetelet developed what is today known as the body mass index (BMI). The formula divides a person’s weight by the square of his height, and is one of the most commonly used measures of excess weight, obesity, and overall health.

Initially, BMI was primarily a tool used by insurance companies to set premiums (people with BMIs in the “obese” category may pay 22 percent more for their insurance compared to those in the “normal” category)…

Less than a generation ago, only three percent of dentists were mercury-free. Dentistry’s best-kept secret was that amalgam fillings had mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently injure the developing brains of children and fetuses.

The secret was enforced by tyrannical dental boards, which threatened to pull the license (the right to practice) of dentists who spoke out — and who did in fact pull mercury-free dentists’ licenses in California, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Minnesota, and New York…

The hot dog is one of America’s most popular foods, with the average person consuming 50 of them per year. Hot dogs are one of the most nutritionally bankrupt foods.

Yet for decades, they’ve been given a free pass, granted one pardon after another thanks to their towering status in American culture. But when you look at what they are giving you in return, you will want to seriously reconsider their status.