Surprising Science

Scientists have found girls who consume more than one sugary drink a day start their periods more than two months earlier than those who consume fewer.

Breakfast wasn’t always a mainstream mealtime. In the Middle Ages, it was thought as unhealthy to eat another meal before the previous one was fully digested. So what brought about breakfast? Coffee and stable working hours.

How does someone’s facial features influence how we view their decisions? The truth is if we think someone has a trustworthy face, we’re less likely to contradict their decisions.

How would your brain respond to seeing an image of grilled chicken? How about a plate of french fries? It turns out lean and overweight women’s brains respond very differently to healthy and unhealthy foods.

For pregnant women, continuous anxiety and mental strain could cause babies to be underweight and nutrition-deprived at birth, according to a recent study. So, it’s important not to stress about your stress levels.

What do our brains look like when we read aloud? What about when we read to ourselves? To your brain, it’s the same thing.

Stress causes us to feel threatened, and even if the “threat” is something as small as a test, our minds shift into self-preservation mode, which may cause us to make immoral decisions.

Loneliness is known to cause depression in people, however, social isolation can also have physiological effects, namely, cardiovascular disease. A new study offers further proof to show how heavy isolation can weigh on the heart.

Men and women respond differently to the prospects of parenthood. But a recent study delves into the details of these dynamics and how they can affect the future of a relationship.

Americans aren’t getting enough sleep for a multitude of reasons. But a new study shows that we should really be making time for sleep during our younger and middle-age years if we want to retain our minds as we get older.

Amit Sood, professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic wants to help the general public benefit from recent esoteric advances in neuroscience.

Electroceuticals — electrical signals used to trick the brain into thinking the gut is full — have been approved by the FDA to treat obesity.

Personality and intelligence do help lift people from poverty in America, lending some plausibility to the American dream in which hard work and stick-to-it-iveness improve one’s lot in life.

While no piece of technology can instantly put someone to sleep, various forms of research are making strides toward better sleep efficiency and other improvements.

An expectant mother’s enhanced exposure to Vitamin D via summer rays likely explains new research that indicates children born in October and November have a step up athletically.

Personality is a partial indicator of health and more extroverted people tend to have stronger immune systems, perhaps because they interact with a wider range of people—and those people’s germs.

It is in our nature to need rules. By improving social productivity rules beats no rules, and evolution endowed us with rule-following traits accordingly. Comparing languages and tools can help us see our biological rule dependence. As can noticing that we are apt to ape more than apes.

Oftentimes, doctors will suggest or invite a person’s significant other to be there as a means of comfort and support. But recent research suggests that, for some women, having a partner present may cause more pain than comfort.

Researchers have found a way to make running and walking seem less long and tiresome. People who narrow their attention and focus on a specific object in the distance can motivate themselves to push on.

How often a film is referenced in other films is a better determiner of how important the work is than the combined efforts of reviewers, critics, awards, and box office sales.

Public opinion surveys are often cited as evidence of how people feel. What they really demonstrate is how human cognition is more a matter of emotion than reason.

If your aim is to get healthy, numerous studies have said it’s best not to go it alone. Take walking groups for instance, people are less likely to skip out on a daily walk if they’re being held accountable by a group.

People whose diets are made up of saturated fats and sugars may have more than a growing waistline to worry about. A recent study indicates that a “Western diet” could cause considerable brain damage.

Medicine could benefit from what technology has to offer, so why aren’t fitness bands being used by physicians? Doctors say that without FDA regulation to guarantee accuracy, there’s no way these device will be taken seriously.

A new study shows that the American school tradition of scheduling lunch before recess may be putting more fruits and veggies in the trash. Researchers have found swapping the order will reduce the waste of healthy foods.

A recent survey conducted by the Oklahoma State University Department of Agricultural Economics found that the percentage of Americans who support labels on foods containing GMOs also support labels on food containing DNA.

The discovery of the lost Beagle 2 spacecraft demonstrates just how close European space authorities were to success when it touched down Christmas Day, 2003.

The field of bioarchaeology is concerned with investigating skeletal remains to learn how people in from the past lived (as opposed to how they died).

There are pills and surgeries that are all vying for consumers’ attentions as the weight loss solution, and one more is about to become available to Americans looking for a way out from their obesity.

A recent study that has found sleep can be a predictor of future behavior in teens. Those that have a particularly troublesome time dozing off are more likely to develop alcohol and drug problems.