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March 17, 2014 Andy Cush

Seventy-five percent of Staten Island residents are overweight or obese, according to Borough President James Oddo making it the unhealthiest borough in the city. Staten Island dwellers are also significantly more likely to smoke or contract heart disease than other New Yorkers. “The cold hard truth is that we as a community are not as healthy […]

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February 20, 2014 Andy Cush

Somehow, fecal microbiota transplantation is a real, scientific treatment that actually cures diseases. That is, in real life, not an Austin Powers film or a bad episode of South Park, you can get other people’s poop implanted into your colon to treat your Clostridium difficile, a deadly digestive infection. And it works! But until now, there’s been no place […]

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August 21, 2013 Marina Galperina

Have you done LSD, psilocybin or mescaline? You are no more likely to exhibit symptoms of mental illness or find yourself in mental health treatment, says a new study from Norway. Johns Hopkins School of Medicine psychiatry department psychologist Matthew W. Johnson says, There seems to be no evidence of overall negative impact — and even some […]

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July 26, 2013 Andy Cush

The next full moon is August 21, a Wednesday. Don’t plan on getting a good night’s sleep. New analysis of a years-old study shows that when the werewolves come out, the regular people may be having trouble getting rest at night. Christian Cajochen, a researcher at Switzerland’s University of Basel, realized the information from an older […]

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June 5, 2013 Nate Cepis

Last week, Michael Bloomberg called medical cannabis “one of the greatest hoaxes of all time,” ignoring countless scientific studies  that have shown the plant’s usefulness in treating everything from cancer to HIV. We figured the mayor could use some brushing up, so we sent a packet of summer reading to his Upper East Side townhouse. […]

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May 28, 2013 Andy Cush

Each time you step on to the subway, you’re joining quite a large crowd of bacteria. How large? Microbiologist Norman R. Pace published a study this week detailing the roughly one billion tiny organisms living in every two cubic meters of air in the transit system–about the amount one person breathes each day. But don’t […]

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May 1, 2013 Kyle Chayka

PS244 is now the first school in the nation to offer an all-vegetarian menu, forgoing “mystery meat” — and all meat. The transition didn’t happen overnight. Since opening in 2008, the school began to offer vegetarian options more frequently, in turn greatly reducing the amount of days in which they served the usual elementary school fair of breaded oval-shaped […]

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January 31, 2013 Andy Cush

In an effort to make NYC’s food carts more sanitary and collect some money along the way, Mayor Bloomberg is creating a seven-person, $580,000 squadron to enforce cleanliness laws on the carts and make sure violation fines are paid. Though the Health Department touted the new measure, saying it would protect public health, some vendors […]

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January 22, 2013 Andy Cush

In what must be the most frightening news of the day, 57-year-old Long Island dentist Robert Garelick was arrested for reckless endangerment yesterday after conducting a procedure while drunk. Information about the case beyond that is relatively scant, and there are some burning questions I’d like answered. How drunk was he–are we talking two-beer lunch […]

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January 11, 2013 Andy Cush

Ah, it’s been a while since we’ve gotten any updates on metzitzah b’peh, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish practice that finds Rabbis using their mouths to suck the blood from infants’ freshly-circumcised penises and has led to fatal contractions of herpes simplex virus. Back in September, New York City’s Board of Health ruled that rabbis who wanted to […]

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