health

Ketamine, a drug with its fair share of recreational users, is also a controversial hit when it comes to treating severe depression. The drug is finding increased use in some clinics as a way to deal with treatment-resistant depression, giving patients a possible solution to the damaging condition. Ketamine itself isn't without its own side-effects, though, and that has led some to investigate how its anti-depressant qualities come about, potentially opening the door for new treatments with less side effects.

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Goodbye Withings, hello Nokia Digital Health. As planned, the company best known as a phone-maker has fully rebranded its Withings acquisition, adding a few new fitness tracking gadgets to the mix in the process. It's another step in Nokia's reinvention, something the storied Finnish company is no stranger to.

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Even if you're not as lazy as I am, you probably spend a lot of your time sitting down. Desk jobs may have spawned a whole industry of ergonomic seating, but getting up off your chair altogether is the newest trend. First came standing desks, initially seen as a fad but gaining traction so that no modern office is without at least a few of them; now, treadmill desks like LifeSpan's TR1200-DT7 are looking to crank up your movement even more. I may not know whether "sitting is the new cancer", but I do know I need more exercise.

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While most tech companies are scrambling to climb the machine learning mountain, Apple has its sights on a different goal. Sure, it did just dip its fingers in the smart home speaker jar, but its interests apparently lie elsewhere. According to insiders, Apple is looking to turn your iPhone into a one-stop shop for your medical information, with the goal of making it easier for users to share their information with health care personnel without having to go through the hoops and potential errors involved in traditional health care systems.

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The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a generic form of the drug Truvada, an antiretroviral and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) from Gilead Sciences. The approval notice was posted on the FDA's website yesterday; finer details, such as the cost associated with the generic (Emtricitabine and Tenofovir Disoproxil Fumarate tablets) is still unknown, though the price will no doubt go down. While the name-brand drug is blue in color, the generic version may arrive with a different design.

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If you keep an eye on certain corners of the web, places like Longecity and nootropics subreddits, you may have heard about trehalose, a type of mild sugar believed to have many beneficial properties from a health standpoint. Outside of those niche interests, though, trehalose has largely gone unnoticed, but that may soon change: a new study has found that, at least in mice, this sugar triggers a type of 'housekeeping' effect in the immune system, prodding it to deal with plaque in arteries (atherosclerosis), fat in the liver, and more.

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For the past two years or so, there has been a surge in interest in fitness trackers and wearables. It seems that more and more people are becoming health conscious. But a healthy lifestyle isn't just for adults and big kids. Even, and perhaps more especially, the actual kids need to start living healthy at an early age. While there might be tablets for kids and educational toys for kids, there are few devices that put their health front and center. That's what Kiddo is setting out to do. Not only does it help parent keep an eye on their kid's health, it can also encourage kids themselves to be active and healthy.

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Diabetics may have a better -- that is, painless -- way to monitor their blood glucose levels in the future: a smart tattoo that changes colors based on glucose levels. Such a technology is made possible via biosensor inks, which react to certain things related to the body and present that information visually using color. The inks don't have to be limited to glucose-based applications, though, also being presented with sodium-based and pH-based sensitivities.

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Prepare to feel vindicated, mushroom-lovers. A new survey has found that mushrooms containing psilocybin are the safest of all recreational drugs, topping other popular favorites including tobacco and alcohol. The information comes from the latest Global Drug Survey, which found that the biggest risk related to mushrooms is picking the wrong kind and then becoming ill from consuming them. This is based on data from users who report very infrequent instances of emergency medical treatment following magic mushroom ingestion.

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Mushrooms have long been a staple food item in the human diet, offering a wide array of nutrients alongside a bunch of filling fiber but a relatively small number of calories. As with most food, eating mushrooms raw is the best way to experience their full nutritional profile, but that's also the least tasty way to consume them. Researchers recently set out to find the best compromise between raw and cooked-to-ruin and the end result is the best (two) ways to prepare mushrooms.

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Forget images of sci-fi battles between enhanced soldiers, aliens, and machines. Though it definitely looks like a prototype prop for the Edge of Tomorrow, this exosuit has a less violent and more benign mission. Born from a collaboration between Virginia Tech and home improvement company Lowe's Innovation Lab, the exosuit simply uses the principles of preservation of energy and a few flexible but sturdy materials to make lifting something like a bag of concrete less painful.

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We've seen enough incidents involving e-cigarette batteries to know they can be dangerous. The issues tend to revolve around either poorly constructed 'vaping' devices or users improperly storing the batteries and shorting them out via loose change and key rings. While we've seen these incidents happen at home, in courtrooms, and at convenience stores, the U.S. Navy has seen them elsewhere: on its own ships, where the vaping devices are now banned.

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