Health

“When It’s Safe” in Church Means Never

When It's Safe in Church Means Neverby Fr. Geoffrey Korz –
Kindly set aside the idea that you will return to the holy services “when it’s safe”. That day will never come.

At every liturgy in the Orthodox Church, just before the singing of the Nicene Creed, the priest or the deacon intones the words, “The doors! The doors!” This call dates back to the earliest times, when the doors of the church had to be barred shut, to prevent outsiders (in those days, Roman soldiers) from entering the church, witnessing those who confessed the faith, seizing them, and killing them.

Being a Christian was not safe. [Read more…]

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Homosexuals Only 1.6 Percent of the U.S. Population

Homosexuals Only 1.6 Percent of the U.S. Populationby Sandhya Somashekhar –

The National Health Interview Survey, [run by the CDC] which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual.

Less than 3 percent of the U.S. population identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday in the first large-scale government survey measuring Americans’ sexual orientation.

The National Health Interview Survey, which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual.

The overwhelming majority of adults, approximately 97.7% of the population is heterosexual. [This includes the 96.6 percent who labeled themselves as straight and the 1.1 percent who either declined to answer, responded “I don’t know the answer” or said they were “something else.] [Read more…]

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The Internet Is Altering Our Brains, in a Good Way

Fox News | UCLA Study | Oct. 19, 2009

Adults with little Internet experience show changes in their brain activity after just one week online, a new study finds.

The results suggest Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

As the brain ages, a number of structural and functional changes occur, including atrophy, or decay, reductions in cell activity and increases in complex things like deposits of amyloid plaques and tau tangles, which can impact cognitive function.

Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to the stimulation that occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information. [Read more…]

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The Appendix: Useful and in Fact Promising

Yet another issue that Darwin was wrong about. Darwin considered the appendix as a “vestige of evolution” and used it to support his speculative theories about man’s “evolution.”

LiveScience | Charles Q. Choi | Aug. 24, 2009
The body’s appendix has long been thought of as nothing more than a worthless evolutionary artifact, good for nothing save a potentially lethal case of inflammation.

Now researchers suggest the appendix is a lot more than a useless remnant. Not only was it recently proposed to actually possess a critical function, but scientists now find it appears in nature a lot more often than before thought. And it’s possible some of this organ’s ancient uses could be recruited by physicians to help the human body fight disease more effectively. [Read more…]

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Condoms don’t protect souls

AmericanThinker | Ben-Peter Terpstra | March 22, 2009

Is abstinence, in particular, more realistic than promiscuity or less so? Is Christianity more realistic than Oprah or less so? Is the Pope wiser than Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” tour dancers?

In the Christian tradition, real believers have the audacity to believe that condoms don’t protect souls. The adulterer doesn’t need rubber, he needs a heart check. [Read more…]

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Abortion Increases Women’s Mental Health Problems

LifeSiteNews.com | Dec. 1, 2008

Women who have an abortion face a 30% increase in the risk of developing common mental health problems such as depression and anxiety, according to a new study from the University of Otago, Christchurch.

The study, led by Dr. David Fergusson and funded by the Health Research Council of New Zealand, was published in the December issue of the British Journal of Psychiatry. The conditions most associated with abortion included anxiety disorders and substance use. In contrast, none of the other pregnancy outcomes was consistently related to significantly increased risks of mental health problems. [Read more…]

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What Happens When We Die?

Time | M.J. Stephey | Sep. 18, 2008

A fellow at New York City’s Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Sam Parnia is one of the world’s leading experts on the scientific study of death. Last week Parnia and his colleagues at the Human Consciousness Project announced their first major undertaking: a 3-year exploration of the biology behind “out-of-body” experiences. The study, known as AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation), involves the collaboration of 25 major medical centers through Europe, Canada and the U.S. and will examine some 1,500 survivors of cardiac arrest. TIME spoke with Parnia about the project’s origins, its skeptics and the difference between the mind and the brain. [Read more…]

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Humans Have Astonishing Memories, Study Finds

Biology or secular-athiestic science simply cannot explain how such enormous amounts of information and data can be stored and knowledge can be retained and continually increased in a finite number of neurons. One word, miraculous!

LiveScience.com | Clara Moskowitz | Sept. 8, 2008

If human memory were truly digital, it would have just received an upgrade from something like the capacity of a floppy disk to that of a flash drive. A new study found the brain can remember a lot more than previously believed.

In a recent experiment, people who viewed pictures of thousands of objects over five hours were able to remember astonishing details afterward about most of the objects. [Read more…]

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Dangerous Pollution from China Threatening US Mainland

McClatchy Newspapers | Les Blumenthal | Aug. 29, 2008

Scientists fear impact of Asian pollutants on U.S. – From 500 miles in space, satellites track brown clouds of dust, soot and other toxic pollutants from China and elsewhere in Asia as they stream across the Pacific and take dead aim at the western U.S.

A fleet of tiny, specially equipped unmanned aerial vehicles, launched from an island in the East China Sea 700 or so miles downwind of Beijing , are flying through the projected paths of the pollution taking chemical samples and recording temperatures, humidity levels and sunlight intensity in the clouds of smog.

On the summit of 9,000-foot Mt. Bachelor in central Oregon and near sea level at Cheeka Peak on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula , monitors track the pollution as it arrives in America. [Read more…]

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