“The optimist”, wrote American fantasy fiction writer James Branch Cabell, “proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.” Reading about the global food…
Shivering is not an activity many of us enjoy. We do it because we are cold and uncomfortable. But perhaps the news that it could have some of the same benefits as moderate bouts of exercise will stop…
Google has teamed up with researchers at the University of Washington to create a contact lens that can measure blood glucose levels in a person’s tears and display the reading on their mobile phone. If…
This could have been such a yawn. Is sugar the “toxic drug” or fat “the deadly ingredient”? Is it yet more popularised quasi-science, claiming life-threatening consequences from foods we eat every day…
As a medical student in India in the early 1980s, the biggest problems I encountered were under-nutrition, sanitation, high burden of infectious diseases and woefully inadequate vaccination of children…
Added sugar in our diet is a very recent phenomenon and only occurred when sugar, obtained from sugar cane, beet and corn, became very cheap to produce. It’s a completely unnecessary part of our calorie…
Daily jabs of insulin are a painful reality for many with diabetes. That may change if researchers who have successfully tested oral insulin in rats are able to replicate those results in humans. Nearly…
People who are obese and have normal blood pressure, cholesterol and blood-sugar readings will still be unhealthy and die sooner compared with people who have a normal body weight, according to researchers…
What image pops into your head when you hear the words: non-communicable diseases? The name probably tells you a bit about the type of diseases that fall into this category, even if you may not be familiar…
Pig cells could be used to deliver insulin to Type 1 diabetes patients via an implant under the skin, potentially freeing sufferers from the need to have regular insulin injections, according to researchers…
If your great-grandparents lived through a famine, their experience could well have altered their genetic code. And three generations later you could well be showing signs of that change. The idea that…
Professor and Programme Director, SA MRC Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science - PRICELESS SA (Priority Cost Effective Lessons in Systems Strengthening South Africa), University of the Witwatersrand