The Medical Manifesto

Life is a rollercoaster and it's totally normal to experience anxiety throughout it. However, the 'anxiety' we hear and see splattered all over social media is of a different nature to that experienced when actually stepping onto a rollercoaster. Often when we refer to anxiety as a problem we don't mean the mere experience of it, but the degree to which it can effect people. This is because some people are less able to deal with or have more intense feelings of anxiety than others, to the extent where it may begin to have an impact on their day-to-day life. Anxiety... it's "all in your head"... right? Right... the feeling of anxiety does arise in the head, specifically  in a region of the brain known as the amygdala, which regulates our emotions, but is particularly involved in detecting fear. This has been proved by many functional neuroimaging studies, showing increased activity in this region during anxiety episodes. When the amygdala senses anxi

One of the hottest topics worldwide right now is the human diet, but the problem is that there are so many opinions on what the ideal human diet should be, that it’s almost impossible to know which one to follow. What we do know is that diet has a direct effect on both mental and physical health. Inappropriate diets have been shown to lead to undesirable diseases such as type 2 diabetes or even cancer. Recent research has lead many people to believe that a plant-based diet may be the answer to the worlds growing diet dilemma. It is often debated whether humans should be meat eaters or not – from our teeth (with a lack of true canines as found in carnivores) to our gut (which is similar to that of apes, who survive on a diet of fruit, leaves, nuts, insects and the occasional scrap of meat as opposed to that of bears, who are true omnivores) all the signs point towards a diet without meat. However, evolutionists have suggested that without meat and animal products we may not have ev

The drinking of coffee began approximately 1000 years ago in Arabia and this custom spread to Europe at some point during the 16 th century. Before this, unsanitary water conditions drove Europeans to drinking weak beer or wine in order to hydrate – we can all imagine the potential result of that, and it does not include a good work ethic. At the time, the arrival of coffee was considered nothing short of a miracle: simultaneously increasing energy, work ethic and hydration. Only recently have we begun to investigate the effects that coffee has on our bodies.   Coffee contains a molecule called caffeine. Caffeine is very similar in structure to adenosine, a component of adenosine triphosphate (ATP, our bodies’ source of energy). According to Brain Research Reviews, this means that caffeine is able to bind to adenosine receptors in the nervous system. Caffeine is unable to activate these receptors, but blocks the binding of adenosine. Adenosine typically binds to type 2 adenosine