How Much Exercise Does a Body Need?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: Shutterstock) Researchers keep moving the goal posts on exercise. For a while, the trend was to show benefits of minimal exercise, perhaps as an olive branch to people too busy for a full workout. Lately, the trend is essentially to say effort matters; more exercise means better health. So which is right? Both are. But one overrides standard health guidelines. Health institutions say people need about 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of intense aerobic exercise each week. Moderat ...read more

He thought he had intestinal worms. What he actually had was Chinese food!

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

Image: Flickr/Roland Tanglao If my body could play an April Fool’s joke on me, my guess it would be this one. Here, a 32 year old patient was horrified to notice “worms” in his poop. And like any sane person would, he carefully fished a sample of the worm-laden poop out of the toilet to bring to his doctor. Given the patient’s travel history, the doctor suspected a hookworm infection, and sent the sample off to the lab. Turns out the “worms” were mung bean s ...read more

How Nutritious Is Human Flesh?

Posted on Categories Discover Magazine

(Credit: Shutterstock) Ancient cannibalism may not have been as nutritious as previously thought, a new calorie-counting study finds, which means ancient cannibalism may have been more complex than often thought. Nowadays cannibalism is associated with fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter or by desperate souls as a last resort, such as the Donner Party or the survivors of the Andes flight disaster. But studies suggest cannibalism was practiced since prehistory, and even performed by extinct ...read more