Yep that’s right! Measuring blood cholesterol typically involves collecting a blood sample, but this new method developed by N. R. Shanker of the Sree Sastha Institute for Engineering and Technology uses digital photography to gauge the concentration of cholesterol in the creases of your fingers. This non-invasive and affordable technology could make it much easier to…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this encouraging report showing that the proportion of adults who take a 10-minute walk at least once a week increased 62% between 2005 and 2010! Even though this still falls short of the federal guidelines for 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise each week, these findings are…

When you hear the terms “anorexia,” “bulimia,” and “binge-eating,” it’s pretty common to think first of a woman.  But this recent study, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, found that the number of men who binge eat is actually not that much lower than the number of women.  So just because men are underrepresented…

In a fun/crazy study, scientists showed that when human diets change, like when fasting for Lent, so too do other animals’ diets – like Spotted Hyenas! “Before Lent, 14.8% of hyena droppings contained donkey hairs, during Lent this increased to 33.1%, falling again to 22.2% once the fast was over.” According to the scientists, “Our study…

A new study out of the UK shows that dieting around the time of conception leads to changes in gene expression in the genes that have been linked to obesity and Type 2 Diabetes. Two things to note before you run for the ice cream: (1) it was only genes implicated in obesity and Type…