Move over, prehistoric bears. Humans have loved honey since the Stone Age. Rock art pictures of honey harvesting, date to about 8000 B.C. Beeswax has been found on pottery dating as far back as 7000 B.C., most likely used for waterproofing. The ancient Egyptians offered honey to the gods and then joined the Greeks, Romans and Chinese in using it as a salve for wounds and a treatment for fevers and stomach ailments. Today, proponents of honey tout its miraculous healing properties, claiming that it can prevent cancer and heart disease, reduce ulcers, ease digestive problems, regulate blood sugar, soothe coughs and sore throats, and increase athletic performance. But just how many of these us
At the start of every year, millions of people resolve to get in shape. A few months later, the majority of them have abandoned their commitments. The likely cause? Too many of us view diet and exercise programs as punishment for bad behavior rather than a positive lifestyle change. We think we can achieve our aesthetic goals of trimming and toning by forcing ourselves -- like it or not -- to show up at the gym and go through the motions. Whether walking mindlessly on the treadmill while watching TV or pushing ourselves in a bootcamp-style class designed to "crush" us, we usually disregard any connection between our mind and body in an attempt to simply get through our exercise. This war-aga
When Kate and Jeremy Plants were making plans for their 2014 marriage, they had no idea the future they would face. Just months after they tied the knot, Kate was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a deadly form that the American Cancer Society says takes more lives than any other female reproductive cancer. Because treatment could affect Kate's fertility, doctors encouraged the newlyweds to consider banking Kate's embryos so they could have children someday. "So every day for two weeks, we drove 45 minutes each way to the doctor," Kate recalled. "There were shots in stomach multiple times a day; I was high on hormones; it was very stressful. And the whole time, I don't know if the cancer is spr
A second woman in the U.S. born without a uterus has given birth to a baby, thanks to a uterus transplant. The birth took place at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, a part of Baylor Scott & White, which performed the first birth via uterus transplant late last year. The baby, born in February, is a girl. The hospital is not revealing the identity of the mother, but says the pregnancy and birth were uncomplicated. The birth is the second in the hospital’s ongoing uterus transplant clinical trial. The women in the trial have absolute uterine factor infertility (AUI), which means their uterus is nonfunctioning or nonexistent. Like the first woman to give birth as part of the trial, th
Gene editing has the power to completely reshape our world. It promises everything from fixing the genetic faults that lead to disease, to destroying disease-causing microbes, to improving the nutrition of the foods we eat and even resurrecting extinct species like the wooly mammoth — all largely thanks to the genetic editing tool CRISPR, which has both popularized this work and made it possible. Now, researchers in Japan have developed a new gene editing technique that uses CRISPR alongside a DNA repair system to modify a single DNA base in the human genome, with what the team’s press release calls “absolute precision.” The new technique, described in the journal Nature Communications, is k
