Category: Science

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The Science Behind Your Morning Trip to the Bathroom

Whatever you want to call it, many of us head to the bathroom to take care of it first thing in the morning (or at least, after your morning coffee).

And it turns out there’s a reason that many of us get the urge at the start of the day – it’s science.

According to gastroenterologist Dr. Sarina Psricha, morning is the best time to have a bowel movement because it’s the time of day when your body is best equipped to evacuate.

 

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“In the morning, when we first wake up, an internal alarm clock goes off in our colon, and the colon starts contracting more vigorously. In fact, the colon contracts and squeezes three times as hard in the first hour we are awake compared to when we are sleeping.”

Your small intestine and colon work to process any food leftover from the day before as you sleep, and that’s why the urge sets in about 30 minutes after you wake up. Add in stretching, having a drink of water or coffee, and voila – bowel movement!

“Drinking early morning coffee works synergistically with gut motility to create healthy bowel movements.”

If you’re not a coffee person, try warm saltwater with lemon if you’re having trouble getting things moving.

 

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If you find yourself wondering if your bowel movements are normal, and the good news is that, even if you don’t head to the pot first thing in the morning, there’s probably nothing to worry about. There’s a large range of what is considered “normal”: anywhere from three times a week to three times a day. Plus, factors like diet, exercise, and travel can alter your regular schedule.

 

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“Typically, the best time of the day to have a bowel movement is in the morning. However, some people may not have morning bowel movements and this does not necessarily mean there are any issues. It is okay not to have morning bowel movements as long as people are having regular daily bowel movements.”

There it is – all you ever wanted to know about your morning dump (and probably a whole lot more).

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This Is How the Earth Got Its Name

It’s pretty obvious, especially if you’ve ever read any Greek and Roman mythology, how most of the planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn, and the rest) in our solar system got their names, but what about Earth?

There’s no Roman or Greek god named Earth, I’m pretty sure.

Image Credit: Pixabay

You might not know that there’s a different word for our planet in other languages – terra (Portuguese), dunya (Turkish), and aarde (Dutch), to name a few – but that each word is, like Earth, derived from a root word meaning ‘ground,’ or ‘soil.’

The use of the word ‘earth’ goes back around 1,000 years (that we know of), to when English was evolving from Anglo-Saxon as Germanic tribes spread from Europe into Britain. The Anglo-Saxon word for ‘earth’ was ‘erda‘ and the German equivalent ‘erde,’ both meaning ground or soil.

Image Credit: Pixabay

In Old English, the words became ‘eorthe‘ or ‘ertha.‘ Over the next millennium, we get the word ‘earth’ to mean soil – eventually it came to mean the planet as a whole.

Earth is definitely the only planet name that was never connected to Greco-Roman mythology, which might perhaps be because the other planets were discovered over time, whereas people have always lived on the earth. Translations of the Bible also support the fact that our planet was never referred to by any word that meant something other than the land itself.

Image Credit: Pixabay

And now you know – just wait until you can drop some of this etymology at your next dinner party!

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Check out the Air-Breathing Snakehead Fish That’s Invading Georgia

If you’ve ever wondered what it’s going to look like when nature finally rises up to finish off human beings once and for all, well, this air-breathing fish that’s able to trade water for land seems like a good candidate.

It’s called the Northern Snakehead, and wildlife officials in Georgia are advising residents to kill them on sight.

 

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The fish, which can breathe air long enough to traverse short distances on land, is not native to North America. That means it’s invasive, and can easily upset local ecosystems by outcompeting endemic species for food and habitats if it is allowed to reproduce and spread unchecked.

There are several varieties of snakehead fish – this particular one is native to East Asia, not in privately owned ponds in Gwinnett County, Georgia, where the first one was spotted.

 

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The fish is nightmarishly long – it can reach up to 3 feet in length – and a mottled or splotchy brown color. If you catch or see one, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Resources Division would like you to kill it and then freeze it until someone from the agency’s fisheries office can come and collect it.

 

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No one knows for sure how it first arrived in North America, or in Georgia specifically, but the aquarium trade or the food industry are the most likely culprits.

Georgia is not alone in this battle – varieties of snakehead have been spotted in 14 states so far.

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Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) Is a Rare but Real Condition

The few people who have highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) can tell you exactly what happened on any given day, down to the way they felt and at what time. It’s both a superpower and a curse, depending on the circumstances. And to this day, scientists have no idea what contributors make a person have HSAM.

Though they do have some theories.

In 2006, a case study of  Jill Price, referred to by the pseudonym AJ in the study, was published in Neurocase. It described in detail her unusual memory. Price later outed herself as AJ publicly.

In an email, Price explained her ability:

I can take a date, between 1974 and today, and tell you what day it falls on, what I was doing that day and if anything of great importance (i.e.: The Challenger Explosion, Tuesday, January 28, 1986) occurred on that day I can describe that to you as well …Whenever I see a date flash on the television (or anywhere else for that matter) I automatically go back to that day and remember where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on and on and on and on and on. It is non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting.

And she wasn’t alone. A number of people came forward after the report, saying they had the same ability. Some were tested and found to have HSAM, same as Price.

Photo Credit: Flickr

Currently, only about 60 people worldwide are believed to have HSAM. Scientists are working with them to see if they can learn more about the average person’s memory, as well as how, and why, their super memories operate the way they do.

Something researchers have uncovered is that people with HSAM tend toward obsessiveness with cleaning, collecting and organizing, so there is thinking that perhaps collecting and organizing memories is part of HSAM.

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Also, structural differences in the areas of the brain associated with autobiographical memory creation show up on scans. When asked about particular dates from the past, regular people lose their ability to recall them after about a week. People with HSAM recall details up to a decade and longer.

Something else researchers found was that people with HSAM can recall false memories just as often as regular people. So, their superhuman memories are far from perfect.

Photo Credit: Pexels

So, what does this all mean? Maybe the answer lies in the mysterious part of the brain where we turn short-term memories into long-term memory.

It would be interesting to figure out, although where this could have practical applications for those of us with normal to poor memories remains to be seen.

I kind of like living my life able to forget – at least I don’t remember all my regrets…

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A Study Shows That Tattoos Can Strengthen Our Immune Systems

Even though tattoos are pretty trendy at the moment, they’ve actually been around for over 6,000 years. They’re made to express a person’s thoughts, feelings, and or cultural beliefs. Some get them as a source of strength or healing, while others may get them just for fun.

Whatever your reason, have you ever thought about what tattoos do to your body? Like, for example, how might your immune system react to getting your skin dyed?

Funny you asked…

Christopher Lynn has been studying Samoan tattooing culture “and the impact of the big traditional pieces called pe’a and malu — tatau in general — on the immune system.”

The Samoa study is actually the fourth phase of his research about how tattoos interact with a person’s immune system. He first started with a group of mostly women in Alabama, and he found an interesting outcome.

“What I’d observed among that group suggested that tattooing could help beef up one’s immune response.”

But one study was not enough to gain a solid understanding of how or why. So he explored further, and that led him to Samoa:

“That’s why I traveled in 2018 with fellow anthropologist Michaela Howells to the Samoan Islands. Samoans have a long, continuous history of extensive tattooing. Working with contemporary machine and hand-tap tattooists in American Samoa, we wanted to see if we’d find the same link to enhanced immune response.”

Photo Credit: Unsplash, Allef Vinicius

What happens to your body when you get a tattoo?

Whenever you sit for a tattoo, you are allowing ink-coated needle pricks to penetrate your epidermis. This sends a warning to your immune system that these small “wounds” need healing. Your body responds in two ways. First:

“…getting a new tattoo triggers your immune system to send white blood cells called macrophages to eat invaders and sacrifice themselves to protect against infection.”

It will also send a level of adaptive responses to the area in the form of proteins. These proteins help the skin heal, but they also keep an eye out for this to happen again in the future.

“There are several classes of these proteins — called antibodies or immunoglobulins — and they continue to circulate in the bloodstream, on the lookout lest that same invader is encountered again. They’re at the ready to quickly launch an immune response the next time around.”

It’s like these little antibodies know how addictive tattooing is!

How is the level of antibodies and white blood cells measured to understand the immune systems reaction?

Photo Credit: Unsplash, Joel Muniz

“This adaptive capacity of the immune system means that we could measure immunoglobulins in saliva as approximations of previous stress caused by tattooing.”

During the study, Lynn and anthropologist Michaela Howells sampled 25 tattoo recipients, both Samoan and non-Samoan tourists to the island.

“We collected saliva at the start and end of each tattoo session, controlling for the tattoo duration. We also measured recipients’ weight, height and fat density to account for health. From the saliva samples, we extracted the antibody immunoglobulin A, as well as the stress hormone cortisol and inflammatory marker C-reactive protein. Immunoglobulin A is considered a frontline immune defense and provides important protections against frequent pathogens like those of the common cold.”

They determined that immunoglobulin A remained higher in the bloodstream even after a tattoo fully healed. Also, if one of the recipients received a larger tattoo, leaving them under the needle longer, the saliva produced more immunoglobulin A than those who experienced smaller tattoos

It seems that getting a tattoo for the first time primed the recipient’s bodies. Meaning, it ramped up their immune system to fight back in case there is a next time. Even if they chose not to get additional tattoos, their immune systems were still heightened in case they get sick. It’s the body’s way of preparing for future ailments due to body stress.

“Stress’s bad rap comes from chronic forms that really do undermine immune response and health. But a little bit is actually good for you and prepares your body to fight off germs. Regular exercise provides immune function benefits through repetition, not necessarily single visits to the gym. We think this is similar to how each tattoo seems to prepare the body for vigilance.”

Even though these findings sparked more interest on what tattoo can do to keep you “healthier,” you may want to wait before going out and covering your body in ink. Lynn is still exploring the ramifications.

“Our Samoan findings supported the results of my first study in Alabama. But of course correlation does not imply causation. Enhanced immune response is correlated with more tattoo experience, but maybe healthier people heal easily from tattooing and like to get them more. How could we find out if getting tattoos could actually make a person healthier?”

I guess we’ll have to wait and see!

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When Is the Best Time of Day to Exercise?

What time of day do you like to exercise? Would you change your mind if science suggested one of those were a better time?

Maybe, maybe not (for me). But if you’re curious, here are a few things to consider.

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What does the early bird get?

So, morning or evening? Well, it gets a bit complicated.

Throughout the health and wellness community, there are people who swear by “fasted training” for losing weight; the idea is that working out on an empty stomach burns fat to melt away the pounds. Fasted training is often done in the morning, before breakfast.

But studies have been mixed. “Fed training,” when you eat before a workout, has been shown to help spark your body’s energy so that you can have a strong workout.

So which is better?

Well, the evidence says that it depends on your personal body composition, so you need to decide what works. Also, more important than either fed or fasted training is consistency. We all know there are tons of reasons in life why you might skip the gym – and that’s a major pro to getting your workout out of the way in the morning.

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But evening workouts also have their perks…

Throughout the day, your body warms up, making your evening workout better. Also, your muscles cells contain biological clocks that abide by your circadian rhythms, which are regulated by your larger internal clock and sleeping regimes. What that means is that “…muscle cells are more efficient during an organism’s normal waking hours.”

So if you are into strength training and weight lifting, evening hours could be your best bet, as your muscles are at optimal efficiency and maintain higher levels of testosterone. Not to mention that later workouts have been shown to increase focus and energy.

Back to the question: which is better?

Well, sorry to do this to you, but it depends on the person. Perhaps the most important factor to consider is consistency, if you’re working toward weight loss goals. But if you’re looking for other types of gains, then you should consider muscle fatigue, sleep, and your schedule larger. If you ever see a trainer at the gym, they can give you a bit more advice specific to your body composition and goals.

But as long as you’re doing exercise, you are on your way!

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A Woman Woman Born with Two Vaginas and Two Wombs Becomes a Mother of Four

In all seriousness, I had never heard of such a thing. Two vaginas?

34-year-old Australian Lauren Cotter was born with uterus didelphys, meaning she had two cervices, two uteruses, and twi vaginas. It is a birth defect that affects 1 in 3,000 women, and it can cause excruciating periods and abnormal bleeding. It can also cause infertility and/or miscarriages.

Lauren was diagnosed at the age of 16 after she went to the doctor for her excruciating menstrual cycles. The doctor performed a pelvic exam and ultrasound to come to the diagnosis. He also told her that conceiving children would be difficult, if not impossible.

Posted by Lauren Cotter on Friday, January 18, 2019

She decided to have surgery to correct her double vagina, which would give her a more fulfilling sex life. When she was 17, she met her future husband and shared the news that pregnancy may not be an option.

“From quite early on, Ben and I discussed having children and it was clear that he really wanted to be a dad,” she told PA Real Life.

“I knew I had to be open and honest and tell him that might not be a possibility for me.”

So what happened? They married and tried anyway.

“We have found it easy to fall pregnant,” she said. “I am not sure why, or if it has anything to do with my two vaginas.”

With her diagnosis, Lauren understood there would be complications, but they stayed strong.

“We knew it might be a bumpy road and tried not to get our hopes up too much,” said Lauren.

In 2014, their first daughter, Amelie, was born via C-Section, completely healthy. Lauren and her husband decided to try again.  About a year and a half later they had no trouble. The crazy thing was that Harvey was born from her left womb when Amelia was born from the right!

“I carried Amelie in my right, and just assumed the left one was a dud,” said Lauren

Harvey was born prematurely at 4 pounds, 12 ounces and had difficulty swallowing. But after 3 weeks he was released in good health.

After that, the Cotters felt it best to go on birth control due to her medical history

“The [birth control] pill was giving me migraines and I couldn’t use [an IUD] coil, so in the end, the implant was the only option left,” she said.

Posted by Lauren Cotter on Sunday, May 12, 2019

But low and behold, she became pregnant with TWINS! Apparently, this family has no problems with infertility.

“‘Shocked’ doesn’t begin to cover it. During 17 years together, Ben and I had only ever got pregnant when we’d planned it. Now, here we were, having surprise twins. My doctor was very honest and said he couldn’t know how the pregnancy was going to play out.”

The doctors ordered her to bed rest for 19 weeks in order to help with any potential complications. But luckily, Lauren didn’t seem to suffer any. After 37 weeks, Maya and Evie were born each weighing about 5 pounds.

Ben and Lauren are through the moon with their family and decided to take measures to prevent future pregnancies; Lauren had her fallopian tubes tied. She said, “Ben and I are one super-fertile couple, and now we’re happy with things just as they are.”

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MIT Engineers Say There’s a New Blackest Black Color

Vantablack, the world’s “blackest black” pigment since 2016, has been controlled by artist Anish Kapoor.

But as of now, he no longer owns the blackest black out there because engineers at MIT have developed a new material that is 10 times blacker than Vantablack.

The new material, made of carbon nanotubes, absorbs 99.995% of all incoming light.

They created it by vertically aligning the microscopic carbon filaments, which resulted in a sort of fuzzy forest of trees that they them grew on a piece of chlorine-soaked aluminum.

The results were published in a scientific journal, as well as displayed in an exhibition at the New York Stock Exchange.

The artwork on display is called The Redemption of Vanity and was conceived by Diemut Strebe in collaboration with MIT professor Brian Wardle. Together, they covered one of the shiniest objects they could think of – a 16.78-carat natural yellow diamond worth 2 million dollars – with the new black pigment. This made it appear to be a black void in front of another black background.

Wardle talked a bit about the project and why he thinks it’s important”

“There are optical and space science applications for very black materials, and of course, artists have been interested in black, going back well before the Renaissance. Our material is 10 times blacker than anything that’s ever been reported, but I think the blackest black is a constantly moving target. Someone will find a blacker material, and eventually we’ll understand all the underlying mechanisms, and will be able to properly engineer the ultimate black.”

The scientists made the discovery on accident – they were looking for a way to grow carbon nanotubes on materials that would boost electrical conductivity, not a blacker black than Vantablack – but they couldn’t help but notice how black their substance became as it grew.

Now, they’re applying for a patent for the technology. And word on the scientific street is that the artists who were irked about Kapoor’s monopolization of Vantablack will be pretty happy to have an alternative.

I, for one, am new to the ruckus and completely fascinated.

Blackest blacks and their blacker challengers are a thing scientists and artists throw down over. Who knew?

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Studies Show That Having a Dog Helps People Have Longer and Better Lives

I’m sure that this won’t be news to some of you.

Dogs and people go together like peanut butter and jelly. Of course, your dog will eat your peanut butter and jelly when you’re not looking, but I digress.

Dogs make us crazy happy, and a recent study gives us even more reason to bring these fuzz balls into our homes. Turns out, dogs help their owners live longer.

Published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, the study looked at cardiovascular research from between 1950 and 2019 for evidence that dogs decrease the risk of heart disease in owners.

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Well, they found it in droves. People who had survived heart attacks were less likely to have another heart related event and were also less likely to ultimately die from cardiovascular disease if they owned a dog. In fact, owning a dog was shown to boost heart health.

But researchers found it wasn’t just heart conditions dogs improved. The data from millions of patients over all those years of study also showed owning dogs lowered the rates of death from any cause. The study stated that dogs decreased the risk of dying by anything by 24 percent.

Health aside, according to a different 2019 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, dogs can also be credited to improving your overall quality of life.

Which is good, because if you’re going to live longer, you want a high quality life.

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Even participants who suffered from chronic pain reported more socialization and lowered rates of depression and anxiety.

Dogs are also shown to help people manage emotional and mental health, says a 2016 study published in the journal BMC Psychiatry. When participants mapped out their social structures, dogs consistently were placed as most central to their social lives.

Another 2019 study, this one published in the journal Aging and Mental Health, showed that older people received mental health benefits when they owned dogs. Having a pet around gave them purpose and decreased feelings of loneliness.

Photo Credit: Max Pixel

Another segment of society benefitting from dog ownership is youths experiencing homelessness. The animals create a barrier to getting into shelters, but the yong people studied reported feeling more loved than those who didn’t have dogs, according to a 2015 report in Child Psychiatry and Human Development.

What about people who cannot responsibly take care of dogs in their current environment or situation? All is okay. Current Opinion in Psychiatry research from 2015 tells us that even interacting with someone else’s dogs or volunteering to take care of other dogs can be hugely beneficial.

So, the science is in: dog love is a health tonic.

Take a dog for a walk, scratch his ears, rub her tummy and soak up all the healthy goodness for a longer and happier fur-filled life.

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Here’s the Truth Behind Why You Stop Feeling Tired the Moment You Crawl into Bed

Does this sound familiar?

You’re exhausted all day long. There’s isn’t enough coffee in the world to prop your eyelids up during your commute, at your desk, your kid’s soccer game, but suddenly, when you’re in your pajamas, teeth brushed, and between your nice, clean sheets, you can’t sleep.

According to TIME, you’re not alone – many people have trouble falling asleep in their own beds, thanks to a phenomenon called conditional arousal.

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Basically, it happens because you’ve inadvertently trained your body to associate your bed with being awake, as opposed to being used for sleep. We don’t get in bed when we’re tired, we get in bed an hour before we want to be asleep and then binge a couple of Netflix episodes, scroll through our social media, read a few chapters, have a snack, etc – and that tells our brain that the next time we get into bed, we won’t be going to sleep right away.

So, it holds off on the good chemicals.

Conditional arousal is a cycle, something you’ve made a habit, which means you can’t really break it in one night. To fix it, you basically have to stop doing anything that isn’t sleeping in your bed, and you’ll need to give it time.

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This is also the reason that sleep experts advise you get up and go into another room if you’re struggling with a bout of anxiety and/or insomnia that keeps you tossing and turning. If you stay in bed, your brain will begin to associate your mattress and pillows with flopping and frustration as opposed to a peaceful night’s sleep.

Like any habit, you’ll need to establish a new routine, and then stick to it for as long as it takes to erase the previous one from your brain.

If it doesn’t work, or you suffer from clinical insomnia or anxiety or other conditions that can make falling asleep difficult, you might want to consult a medical professional in order to get the sleep you need.

But if you’re just guilty of climbing into bed to wind down, try doing that part of your routine in another room and saving your mattress for when you’re actually ready to catch some zzz’s.

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