Just as you relish in your summer warmth, you may be suddenly struck by a summer cold - its out of season ferocity will make you feel completely rundown. Besides taking vitamin C to help boost your immune system, try brewing up some Echinacea, an (...)
Have you ever danced and had sweat pouring down your face, soaking your clothes, and felt like you didn't have a care in the world? If so, you will know that dancing can be a reviving and exhilarating experience; if not, then it's about time you did (...)
A few laughs a day may help keep the doctor away
More than a bemused pastime, laughter is proving to be the best anecdote to good health. As well as erasing feelings of gloom, comic relief can protect us against disease and alleviate our (...)
Now that we know sex is good for us, what do we do next? A rampant sexual drive can be mind-blowing but in our modern world of stress and disease, it can also be nonexistent. Last week's column discussed the benefits of frequent sex, but if you are (...)
Marvin Gaye was right, it is good for us
A celebration of human pleasure, our senses and often our souls, sex is an all-encompassing act that also happens to confer many health benefits. Sex may be shrouded in moral mystery to some, and an (...)
How many times have you started your evening with an alcoholic drink, and ended it many drinks later only to regret your having drunk too much and waking up with a hangover. Unfortunately in today's world "getting drunk is still synonymous with (...)
Years ago, while I was studying pharmacology, aspirin was viewed as a useful drug for relief from pain, fever and inflammation, and for preventing heart attacks and strokes. However, its potentially serious side effects of causing stomach bleeding (...)
Many of us roll out of bed in anticipation of an enticing cup of coffee to stimulate our senses, while others steer clear from coffee completely, believing that it's unhealthy.
Whether coffee is harmful or beneficial remains debatable, but recent (...)
We all know that olive oil sprinkled on our salads is good for us, but the full extent of the benefits that this oil confers on our health is truly astounding. As well as being protective against developing heart disease, recent research suggests (...)
Dubbed the silent killer, high blood pressure, or hypertension, creeps up on patients until it is often too late, causing heart attack, stroke and kidney failure. Over 600 million people suffer from high blood pressure worldwide and in over 90% of (...)
If you relish eating salmon sushi and filets, and think you are being healthy in doing so, you will disappointed to learn of some nasty truths about this luscious fish. In Egypt, the salmon we consume is mostly farmed salmon (reared in a salmon (...)
Shisha, the social scourge
In Egypt, the popularity of smoking shisha has become something of a phenomena; men, women and adolescents have taken up the habit oftentimes to "be part of the crowd and with the mistaken belief that it is healthier (...)
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been compared to a 'viral time bomb' with an estimated 3 percent of the world's population (180 million people) infected worldwide and 3-4 million people being newly infected per year, according to the World Health (...)
Thanks to the clever marketing tactics of the sugar industry we have all come to think of refined sugar as part and parcel of 'all things nice'. We grow up believing sugar is related to pleasure, happiness and reward. We and our generations before (...)
The benefits of exercise in disease prevention
A regular exercise regimen goes hand in hand with a healthy diet to maintain health and reach our ideal body weight for our given age, genetic or disease disposition. The benefits of exercise have (...)
Developing breast cancer (BC) is a frightening prospect for many women as it is the most common cause of cancer death, and the most common cancer in women worldwide (one million women are diagnosed with BC annually).
One in eight women and one in (...)
Manipulating embryonic genes to avoid disease
Have you ever wondered what you or your children would look like with different colored eyes, hair or any other feature? More importantly, if you suffer from an inherited disorder, wouldn't you wish (...)
Conception is a miraculous event, orchestrated by a multitude of factors that culminate in fertilization of the female egg with the male sperm and nine months later, the birth of a new human being.
But fertility and the speed with which you (...)
Is red wine the secret to longevity or a potent poison? The balance of alcohol's benefits versus its sinister sins on our health is as complex as it is controversial, and has been documented throughout civilization in many religions including Islam (...)
A handful of nuts a day might keep the doctor away. Recent nutritional studies released in the Journal the American Medical Association and other reputed publications, found that eating nuts regularly has a multitude of beneficial effects on health (...)