It's all relative: how to understand cancer risk

Mar 07, 2016 03:00 am UTC| Health

Absolute risk is the risk of developing a cancer over a certain period of time. Relative risk is the risk one group of people has of developing a cancer compared to the risk of another group. The Conversations...

Explainer: what is the placebo effect and are doctors allowed to prescribe them?

Mar 05, 2016 15:05 pm UTC| Health

Suppose you discovered that some past prescription a GP gave you was actually a placebo. The treatment made you feel better, but now you know that the perceived benefit was really a placebo effect. Would you be upset at...

Those post-binge-watching blues? They might be real

Mar 05, 2016 11:33 am UTC| Health

With the release of the fourth season of House of Cards, all 13 episodes are available for Netflix subscribers. Some fans might space each episode out over the course of the ensuing weeks. But many will binge-watch ...

Does talcum powder cause ovarian cancer?

Mar 04, 2016 17:58 pm UTC| Health

The debate about whether or not talcum powder causes ovarian cancer has rumbled on for decades. However, it recently reached fever pitch after a US court awarded damages to the family of a woman who died of ovarian cancer,...

We're unsure if e-cigarettes are harmful, but it still makes sense to restrict them

Mar 04, 2016 17:08 pm UTC| Health

E-cigarettes have rapidly risen in popularity in recent years and are now the subject of heated debate as to whether they are effective in helping smokers quit tobacco or whether they are actually making smoking attractive...

A bit of claustrophobia is normal – stop treating it as a disease

Mar 04, 2016 15:22 pm UTC| Health

Claustrophobia is generally described as an irrational fear of confined spaces, and it has been estimated to affect some 5-7% of the world population. Clearly, some people are more distressed than others when they are in...

There's no such thing as an 'addictive personality' – here's why

Mar 04, 2016 11:22 am UTC| Health

Life is a series of addictions and without them we die. This is my favourite quote in academic addiction literature and was made back in 1990 in the British Journal of Addiction by Isaac Marks. This deliberately...