分类目录归档：health
In the summer of 1976,
a mysterious epidemic suddenly struck two central African towns,
killing the majority of its victims.
Medical researchers suspected
the deadly Marburg virus to be the culprit.
Imagine that day by day,
your field of vision becomes slightly smaller,
narrowing or dimming
until eventually you go completely blind.
We tend to think of blindness as something you're born with,
but
It's a hot day,
and you've just downed several glasses of water,
one after the other.
Behind the sudden urge that follows are two bean-shaped organs
that work as fine-tuned internal sensors.
They bal
Beneath your ribs, you'll find, among other things, the pancreas,
an organ that works a lot like a personal health coach.
This organ controls your sugar levels and produces a special juice
that relea
Nestled in the tissues of your neck is a small unassuming organ
that wields enormous power over your body.
It's called the thyroid.
Like the operations manager in a company,
its role is to make sure t
Right now, you're probably sitting down to watch this video
and staying seated for a few minutes to view it is probably okay.
But the longer you stay put, the more agitated your body becomes.
It sits
We hear about calories all the time.
How many calories are in this cookie?
How many are burned by 100 jumping jacks,
or long distance running,
or fidgeting?
But what is a calorie, really, and how many
An estimated 20 million cases of blindness worldwide are caused by cataracts,
a curable condition affecting the lens that focuses images onto the eye's retina.
A cataract occurs when proteins in the
If you've got a cold, mucus is hard to miss.
But what is it, and what does it do besides making you miserable?
Your body produces more than a liter of mucus every day,
and all the wet surfaces of you
In 1845, Ireland's vast potato fields were struck by an invasive fungal disease
that rapidly infested this staple crop.
The effect was devastating.
One million people died of famine,
and over a millio