myths

5.8 million people aged 65 years or older in the United States have dementia.Due to the fact that the average lifespan of people in the U.S. has increased over recent decades, some experts project that by 2050, the number of older adults with dementia could reach 13.8 million. Figures of this stature spark justifiable fear,…

300,000 generations ago, the human species split from an ancient ancestor that we share with chimpanzees. Since then, human life expectancy at birth has doubled.Over the last 200 years, life expectancy at birth has doubled again. As animals go, humans perform well in longevity.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “Between 2000 and 2050, the…

here.This time, we focus on myths that surround how much sleep the average person needs. We also discuss naps, the effects of sleeping too little or too long, and sleep in the animal kingdom.As with many aspects of human biology, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to sleep. Overall, research suggests that for healthy young adults…

need sleep of some kind, and if evolution has retained a behavior across many species, it must be important.After all, lying unconscious for hours does not seem like the safest activity for an animal in the wild. So whatever goes on during sleep is vital.“Those little slices of death,” as Edgar Allen Poe referred to…

JAMA published a meta-analysis that combed through the findings of 23 experiments across 16 scientific papers.The authors only included studies that had used a placebo and were blinded, which means that the children, parents, and teachers involved did not know who had received the sugar and who had been given the placebo.After analyzing the data,…