Good crazy woman

Last Sunday, December 16th, I missed the Miss Universe broadcast for the first time in a long while. Born and raised in Colombia, beauty pageants were part of my culture and I always watched it with my family.

But since I moved to the U.S., almost fourteen years ago, I had to watch it alone. My husband dreaded this each year because of my non-stop yelling during the two hour phone conversation with my mother or girlfriends. Continue reading “Beauty Pageants Biggest Miss”

On Monday, November 26th, the international scientific community was shaken to its core by Hen Jiankui, the biomedical researcher who posted a video on YouTube telling about the existence of the first twin babies whose DNA was modified as embryos before birth.

Their names are Lulu and Nana, and they were allegedly born in China a few weeks ago. According to He Jiankui, the objective of the research was to achieve that two twin baby girls, whose father is HIV positive, could be born resistant to the disease. Continue reading “The genes of a very lucrative business”

During the last two centuries, the eradication of infectious diseases such as smallpox and rinderpest became a reality, thanks to breakthroughs in immunization science.

Other illnesses like polio and the highly contagious measles are on the same path. And, if the eradication of these and other diseases has been delayed, it has been due to the difficulties of distribution in the world population, not the lack of effectiveness of the vaccines.

However, vaccines have been the target of negative controversies since the 90’s. The best-known case, and probably the modern genesis of the movement against children vaccination, was the study of the British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield. Continue reading “Rejecting vaccines increases health risks”

Years ago, my mother-in-law told me that her four children were delivered by c-section. I remembered her saying, “It was the 50s and 60s. You entered the hospital with a belly, they put you to sleep, and when you woke up, you had a baby in your arms!“

Compared to my grandmother, who gave birth to her seven children naturally, having a c-section was never an option. The lack of medical services in rural Colombia back in the day mandated women to endure labor and God’s will.

Nonetheless, more than half a century later, Latin America has changed drastically, becoming the region in the entire world with the highest rate of c-section, according to the latest data published by the medical journal, The Lancet last week. Continue reading “Giving birth, giving light”

Even though I wrote about the risk of using groups of muscles that are not exerted often two weeks ago, I fell victim to a fitness challenge my husband saw on YouTube–100 daily push-ups for a month–motivated to get rid of the “bat wings” that hang from my arms.

As expected, I could barely finish 50, and that by supporting my legs on a yoga ball. To make the long story short, I ended at the acupuncturist office last Thursday with an acute sciatic nerve pain in my right leg.

Waiting in agony to see the doctor, I saw a new poster on the wall. It was the silhouette of a female torso in thermal images which alluded to breast cancer prevention. when the doctor greeted me I asked her about it. Continue reading “Thermography, a complement for mammography”

Since its inception in 1789, the Supreme Court of the United States has had 114 associated justices including the new member, Judge Brett Kavanaugh; he was sworn in on Saturday, October 6th.

The court’s justices are nominated by the sitting president and the tenure is for life. To this day, they all have served until they retired or died. Not one has been removed via impeachment. Continue reading “The Freedom of The Law”

Exercising regularly is one of the pillars to live a healthy life. Based on this principle and sponsored by the popularity explosion on social media, the fitness fashion and sports apparel market harvest exorbitant fruits in the last decade.

According to recent data, the launch of this market worldwide–with Nike, Adidas, Puma, and Under Armour as key players–reported $135 billion dollars in 2012, this year will be almost $174 billion, and projecting for 2024 is $220 billion dollars. Continue reading “The hidden danger in fitness fashion”