As people age, the chemical signaling pathways in muscles become less potent, and it gets harder to build muscle and maintain strength. But the health benefits of strength training only increase with age.
When not hibernating, ground squirrels need to feast to store energy.
Robert Streiffer
Months not eating or moving don’t result in muscle wasting and loss of function for animals that hibernate. New research found gut microbes help their hosts hold onto and use nitrogen to build proteins.
Cold weather exercise can keep us healthy, but there are risks.
(Shutterstock)
You’re working out, feeling great – until your stomach starts to churn and you’re sidelined with a bout of nausea. Here’s what’s happening in your body and how to avoid this common effect of exercise.
Tsimane children look out over the Maniqui River, in the Bolivian Amazon.
Michael Gurven
Michael Gurven, University of California, Santa Barbara et Thomas Kraft, University of California, Santa Barbara
‘Normal’ body temperature has declined in urban, industrialized settings like the US and UK. Anthropologists find the trend extends to Indigenous people in the Bolivian Amazon – but why?
When you read in the back seat of the car, your eyes tell your brain you’re still. But your ears can sense you’re moving. Your eyes and ears are having an argument that your brain is trying to settle.
It’s one of your body’s most basic vital signs.
Andrey_Popov/Shutterstock.com
Trying a new exercise routine? Strapping on a new wearable monitor? An expert in human physiology explains the ins and outs of your heart rate and why it’s a valuable number to understand.
At a molecular level, stresses and strains can make your body clock break into a sprint.
Lightspring/Shutterstock
Emerging evidence suggests that prolonged stress exposure can accelerate the ticking rate of an internal cellular clock. By doing so, stress can contribute to faster ageing and body deterioration.
Turkeys do a lot of standing and milling around, not a lot of flying.
Richard Wozniak/Shutterstock.com
Sit down to Thanksgiving dinner ready to amaze your companions with physiological facts about why different cuts of the turkey have different characteristics.
Prince Andrew during the recent BBC interview.
BBC/Mark Harrison