Author: healthtost
Last updated on July 23, 2026 at 8:35 pm When I started buying magnesium supplements, I realized how confusing labels can be. One number appeared on the front, another on the back, and most of the time you needed several capsules to get the advertised amount. That’s when I learned how important elemental magnesium is. So what does it actually mean, how do you find it on the label, and why does it matter? What does elemental magnesium actually mean? Magnesium in a supplement usually doesn’t come on its own. It binds to another substance, such as glycine to magnesium…
Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect, affecting about 1 in 100 babies born each year. One of the many causes of this disorder is having only one functional copy of the TBX5 gene, instead of two healthy copies, inherited from the parents. However, scientists have struggled to understand why a defective copy of this gene, even in the presence of a second healthy copy, can so drastically derail heart development. Now, researchers at the Gladstone Institutes have shown that TBX5 plays a role in the natural folding of DNA into the architecture that heart cells need to…
A 14-day UK study shows that differences between daytime and weekend sleep hours may be linked to when people use up energy, with the clearest pattern occurring later in the evening. Study: Social jetlag predicts greater evening energy intake in a UK cohort. Image credit: PawelKacperek / Shutterstock In a recent study published in the journal npj Biological timing and sleepa group of researchers examined whether social jetlag is associated with the timing of daily energy intake during weekdays and weekends among healthy adults in the United Kingdom. Background Nearly half of the general population may experience more than an…
Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk, author, and one of the most influential spiritual voices of the 20th century—a man concerned with solitude, silence, and the demands of the interior life.He is best known for his spiritual autobiography, The seven-story mountainwhich traces his restless youth and eventual conversion to Catholicism.As I mentioned in last week’s Odds and Ends, I recently re-read this book and enjoyed it. It is full of interesting intellectual ideas. But I also caught something else that Merton mentioned: a simple, practical trick for falling asleep.Thomas Merton’s trick to falling asleep when you can’t sleepMerton discovered the…
No one forgets the birth of their first child. For me the blessed event occurred on November 21, 1969. I had done my best to train my wife through the Lamaze breathing techniques we had learned in our childbirth classes. It was now time for her to move into the delivery room to complete the delivery process and welcome our newborn into the world. We were both ready for the last leg of the journey. The nurse turned to me smiling and said; “Okay Mr. Diamond, your work is done now. You can go to the waiting room and we…
I’m not a tennis fan. I said it there. I’ll watch it if it’s on, but I don’t exactly reframe my day around a match or pretend to understand every rule. And yet here I am writing a tennis blog post as someone who wouldn’t exactly call herself a tennis fan. But there’s something about the Wimbledon season that changes everything, right? It gets to the end of June and something changes in my brain. I’m suddenly very interested in tennis. The matches. The clothes. The atmosphere. The strawberries. Like, literally everything about it. So, what is it about…
SynGenSys, a biotechnology company that designs synthetic gene promoter systems to address critical biopharmaceutical production bottlenecks and enhance cell and gene therapy development, today announced the expansion of its senior commercial and scientific teams with the appointments of several department heads. These roles have been created as part of the Company’s continued growth, to support commercial scale and strengthen alignment between customer needs, product development, scientific positioning and external engagement. Appointments include: Dr Thilo Pohle, Head of Commercial Department Thilo will lead SynGenSys’ commercial team, driving the commercialization and industry adoption of the Company’s synthetic promoter and signal peptide technologies.…
I’ve been in the fitness industry for almost 40 years, which means I’ve lived through every questionable idea the 80s and 90s gave us. Step aerobics in a thong leotard. SnackWell cookies in the sleeve. Sweating to burn every bite. I believed everything. I taught some of them! And one by one I have let them all go. So here are 7 things I was totally obsessed with that have no place in my life at 60 and what I’m doing instead. If you still have any of these with you, consider this your permission slip to set them up.…
Wistar scientists have developed a new type of bispecific T cell engagement, or BTE, that is effective against ovarian cancer in preclinical studies. It’s a major development for this type of immunotherapy, which has been used successfully against blood cancers but has so far been less effective in solid tumors. The researchers developed a new “knob-in-hole” platform to deliver BTE, by which they construct an antibody “knob” that is forced to fit into an antibody “hole,” resulting in two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. They showed that BTEs could be delivered with DNA-based technology, a powerful approach that could…
More people are relying on social media – like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit – to learn about mental health conditions and interact with people who have shared experiences. These are not only long-known disorders such as depression, anxiety and schizophrenia. They also include conditions often placed under the “neurodevian” umbrella, such as autism, ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder), Tourette’s syndrome, and dyslexia. For example, on TikTok the hashtag #adhd had more than 50 billion views. We wanted to explore how social media platforms shape the way we understand mental health. So we analyzed more than 14 million posts and comments…