HB Mag Health Research Team
An avocado is bad when the flesh has turned brown or black, smells sour or rancid, or has mold on the skin or inside the cut fruit. A soft, mushy texture with stringy flesh is another clear sign it has passed its prime. The tricky part is that avocados darken in stages, and some browning … Read more
Chamorro food is the cooking of the Chamorro people, the Indigenous inhabitants of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. It blends foods grown and caught on the islands — rice, taro, breadfruit, coconut, fish, and meat — with cooking methods and ingredients brought by Spanish colonizers, Filipinos, and other Pacific islanders over centuries. The result … Read more
You cannot be allergic to sugar. Sugar is a carbohydrate, and true food allergies target proteins. What people call a “sugar allergy” is almost always something else — an intolerance to a specific type of sugar, a reaction to other compounds in sweet foods, or a condition like diabetes that affects how your body handles … Read more
Biting a nail too short leaves a small wound. The nail plate pulls away from the nail bed underneath, and the exposed tissue is raw, sensitive, and open to irritation. The fastest relief comes from protecting that exposed area, keeping it clean, and reducing swelling with a short course of cold. Most of these injuries … Read more
That bloated, pressurized feeling has a physical cause, and it is usually gas trapped somewhere in your digestive tract. Your gut produces gas constantly as you swallow air and as bacteria ferment food in your colon. Most of it leaves without you noticing. When it builds up faster than your body can move it along, … Read more
Insoluble fibre is the part of plant food your body cannot break down or absorb, and it does not dissolve in water. It passes through your stomach and small intestine largely intact and reaches your colon, where it adds bulk to stool and helps move waste through your gut. You will find it in foods … Read more
What you eat around a run changes how you feel during it and how well you recover afterward. Before a run, the goal is easy-to-digest carbohydrate for fuel, eaten about one to three hours ahead depending on the size of the meal. After a run, the goal is carbohydrate to refill muscle fuel plus protein … Read more
Staphylococcus aureus is a spherical bacterium that grows in grape-like clusters. Its structure is built from a thick peptidoglycan cell wall, an inner cell membrane, and a polysaccharide capsule that surrounds some strains. These layers, plus a set of surface proteins, determine how the bacterium survives, sticks to surfaces, and interacts with the human body. … Read more
A sore on the roof of your mouth usually heals on its own within one to two weeks once you remove what caused it. Most of these sores come from hot food, sharp chips, or a scratch from a toothbrush, and the tissue there repairs quickly. Keeping the area clean, avoiding irritants, and using a … Read more
An electrocardiogram — an ECG or EKG — records the electrical signals that travel through your heart each time it beats. An abnormality on that tracing means the pattern of electrical activity differs from what is typically expected. That difference can reflect something harmless, something that needs monitoring, or a sign of a serious heart … Read more