Last updated February 22, 2018 at 11:37 am
The Check Up is a weekly feature highlighting some of the best, most fascinating, most important, or simply unmissable health, medical, and human stories from around the web.
Looking inward
If you’re not feeling well, it’s super common to google your symptoms and play Internet Doctor. This has positive and negative consequences, but I have to think that more information about health and the human body is ultimately a good thing. This article will introduce you to a man who has taken it to the next level. Scientist Larry Smarr has used his own body and health issues as a test case for absolute knowledge. Among his projects has been acquiring so much information about himself he has created a working, navigable 3D image of the insides of his body. This is some Star Trek stuff.
Body moving
This article isn’t necessarily explicit, but I should warn the faint of heart that it talks quite plainly about death, dead bodies, and body parts. It’s a fascinating read about the demand from foreign hospitals and research institutions for body parts from the United States. There are grey areas in the legality of transporting these body parts that don’t really seem like grey areas when you put them to the pub test. Bottom line, it’s one time when you don’t want to skim the small print.
Flapping tongues
The rates of tongue tie surgery – where the bit of flesh that connects the tongue to the bottom of the mouth is snipped – have increased drastically in Australian babies over the last ten years. While the procedure clearly has huge benefits for plenty of breast-feeding mums, there is conflicting evidence about the outcomes of this surgery.
Treating pain
Meditation and mindfulness are starting to seem like the answer for everything – and apparently doctors (at least in the USA) think so too. Rather than treating pain seriously, there’s a trend towards ‘prescribing’ meditation to manage it. If you’ve got a great doctor this article will make you grateful, but still pissed off that anyone has to go through this. If you’re in the same boat as the patients in this article, you’ll know you’re not alone.
Genetic attraction
And finally, if you find that mosquitos are particularly attracted to you, you’ve got at least one thing in common with Derek Muller from Veritasium.
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