The Truth About Cancer + Other Stories
Every week, we corral the best wellness stories from around the internet—just in time for your weekend bookmarking. This week: how warming temperatures could contribute to more cases of diabetes, an excerpt from a fascinating new book about soil health, and an important examination of how cancer research is communicated to the public.
No, We Can’t Say Whether Cancer Is Mostly Bad Luck
Ed Yong’s deep dive into the way cancer statistics get reported, and the fine line that practitioners walk—between discouraging risky lifestyle factors and assigning unnecessary guilt to patients—gave us the chills.
Why Global Warming Could Lead to a Rise of 100,000 Diabetes Cases a Year in the U.S.
A new study out shows that diabetes varies closely with temperature—a fact that scientists attribute to lack of activity in brown adipose tissue (BAT), which we burn when it’s cold outside and the body’s trying to keep us warm.
The Treasure Trove of Unique Genomes Hiding in Plain Sight
TED speaker Keolu Fox, a biomedical researcher of indigenous heritage, speaks to the concerns and potential benefits of understanding the genomes of indigenous people—and how it may lead to incredible discoveries down the line.
We Need to Protect the World's Soil Before It's Too Late
We became completely immersed in the question of topsoil depletion as we did research for goop Wellness, since the need for vitamins is closely linked to the fact that our depleted soils can no longer provide the nutrition we need. Paul Bogard’s book, The Ground Beneath Us (excerpted here at Popular Science) takes an even further-reaching view, questioning whether our soil can continue to feed us in the future.