For most adults the “touch” interface on computers (you no longer use a keyboard) is a convenience. However, it is also a small revolution because now even small children under the age of two can use a smartphone or tablet. In the pre-touch, era to use a computer or mobile phone you had to know...
Various studies tell us that young people should sleep 8-10 hours a night to fully exploit their mental and physical potential. Sleeping less hours is associated with learning, emotional, growth and relational disorders. A new study lasting eight years and involving 68000 youngsters has shown a close relationship between number of hours slept and high-risk...
Working as a pediatrician I get to know many children and their parents, sometimes the grandparents and occasionally the great grandparents. There are not many jobs where you meet people spanning so many generations. I see the film of how things have changed in terms of educating children over eighty years. A long time ago...
Words like Gene, Neuron, DNA or Hormone are now used casually even by children. Nature, and in particular humans, are studied using instruments that until recently belonged to science fiction. Knowledge no longer comes by word of mouth, dogma, subjective truth or faith, but thanks to the scientific method which includes double blind studies, skepticism...
As a pediatrician I meet lots of ‘types’ of parent. I see many different ways of bringing up children and I see many children each with particular requirements and at times problems. I asked myself if the experience of having children is in some way useful in bringing up future children, if young parents feel...
The explanation given to me by a student as to why his classmate always scored better marks in class tests was: “Well, he has a way”. Some time ago I saw a film where a guy says to a shop owner: “Nice shop you have here! It’d be a pity if something happened to it”....
We speak of placebo effect when a substance that has no pharmacologic effect gives a therapeutic result. Fever, pain and vomiting are ways to get better but have an associated cost. The pain related to an ankle sprain stops us from walking and is the price to avoid making things worse. Fever kills bacteria, but...
Our social relations influence our health not only psychologically but also biologically. For the elderly being socially isolated is as bad for their health as having diabetes or high blood pressure. For teenagers it is as bad as being obese or physically inactive. In youth and old age there is a direct relationship between number...
Prevention is better than treatment. A Swedish study shows that people who are about to fall ill, but do not yet show clinical signs of disease, emit unpleasant olfactory and visual signals. Photographs of people’s faces taken a few hours after their immune system was activated following contagion (and thus a few days before the...
A few considerations on the measles vaccine: Molecular biology studies reveal that many infectious diseases of humans derive from similar diseases in animals of the distant past. Measles used to be, although in a different form, a disease affecting cows. In places where man lived at close quarters with livestock and where the population density...
