the-psoriasis-treatment

I have been regularly recommending to users of the software HCE ( ) to include a column in their health data reflecting their alcohol consumption. Why? Because I suspect that alcohol consumption is behind many of what we call the “diseases of affluence”. A while ago I recall watching an interview with a centenarian, a very lucid woman. When asked about her “secret” to live a long life, she said that she added a little bit of whiskey to her coffee every morning. It was something like a tablespoon of whiskey, or about 15 g, which amounted to approximately 6 g of ethanol every single day. Well, she might have been drinking very close to the optimal amount of alcohol per day for the average person, if the study reviewed in this post is correct. Studies of the effect of alcohol consumption on health generally show results in terms of averages within fixed ranges of consumption. For example, they will show average mortality risks for people consuming 1, 2, 3 etc. drinks per day. These studie...

The amount of melanin found within our skin has long been a source of division for humans culturally, but anthropologist Nina Jablonski of Penn State tells the story of how human skin color unites us all biologically. It's become one of my favorite stories to share as it relates to nutritional biology: More pigment was naturally selected because it acted as a sunscreen needed to protect against DNA damage and destruction of folate, needed for reproduction. Depigmentation was selected for when humans dispersed from Africa and into the Northern Hemisphere where they needed skin light enough to absorb sufficient UVB rays to produce vitamin D. I first heard Jablonski discuss the nature of human skin pigmentation almost two years ago at the  AAAS conference  in Washington DC. Later, I discovered her TED talk, which I've posted above. It's older, but worth watching over and over again. Jablonski has a simple message: instead of using skin color to discriminate, use skin color t...