Do you really know?

Throughout our lives, we meet new people at school, at work or through our hobbies. Some remain acquaintances, while others become close friends. Now, maintaining those relationships isn’t always easy, but evidence has shown just how important having friends can be, given that loneliness can affect both our happiness and health. What role do friends play in our happiness levels then? Does that mea...

Snus originally comes from Sweden, but is also consumed a lot in other Nordic countries like Denmark and Norway, as well as the United States. It’s made headlines in the last few months, with young people using it more and more.  The latest media discussions have centred on a number of Premier League footballers being spotted using snus on camera. It’s a semi-legal cigarette alternative, whic...

It can be embarrassing when your stomach rumbles in public, but it’s a totally natural bodily function. The scientific name for those rumbles or growls is borborygmi, a term invented by the ancient Greeks. We tend to associate stomach rumbles with hunger, but that’s not totally true. In reality, our stomachs rumble regularly, whether we’re hungry or not. It's just that when the stomach is empty, t...

Greying hair can be triggered for a number of reasons, genetics; some people’s hair turns grey earlier than others. Stress, a recent study in mice showed that stress can cause stem cells to leave the hair follicle and migrate to other parts of the body, leaving no cells to produce melanin. Some Illnesses like thyroid disease and of course ageing. But could the days of grey hair be over?...

Ever since they were first introduced in the United States in 1973, barcodes have been part of our everyday consumer lives. They helped stores around the world transition to digital, but their days are numbered.  That’s right, traditional barcodes are due to be gradually replaced by 2D versions as part of a worldwide initiative called Sunrise 2027. It’s led by GS1, the nonprofit standards org...

Launched by a Polish startup in 2017, PimEyes is a powerful facial recognition software tool, which uses reverse image search technology. Just like with Google image search, users can submit an image of a person’s face and Pimeyes will find all images of that person online, providing links to the websites where they are located. It can be helpful for locating images that are difficult to find else...

Picture a packed football stadium. One fan stands up, hoping to start a Mexican wave. Nothing happens. Ten people join in? Still nothing. Twenty? No. But once around thirty people rise together, the wave spreads through the crowd. Physicists have studied this phenomenon in stadiums around the world and found a surprisingly consistent pattern: it takes about thirty people to get a wave going. That'...

If you have heard of Munchausen Syndrome before, it’s far more likely you’ve seen it represented in popular culture than in real life. Like a lot of psychological syndromes, it’s used as a dramatic device in many films and series, like Sharp Objects or The Politician to name just a couple.  The most recent example is The Act, which was created by Nick Antosca and Michelle Dean, and first appe...

YouGov data from 2019 showed that 49% of Brits shower once per day, while 20% do so 4 to 6 times per week. And 6% even shower more than once per day! That’s despite dermatologists saying that we don’t really need to shower every day. According to health professionals, both routines come with certain benefits. You might want to know the pros and cons of each option. For example, a morning shower ca...

Natural disasters lead to damaged property, loss of life, psychological trauma, displaced individuals and families, among other consequences. According to the World Meteorological Organisation, the number of natural disasters has increased five times since 1970. Researchers from all over the whole world have dedicated their careers to studying natural disasters. And they all agree on one thing. Th...

A lot has changed in the workplace since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Companies have had to figure out how to best manage remote work for their employees, all the while supporting their career development and helping them feel more satisfied at work. Well, the concept we’re going to talk about today may be just what’s needed to address those challenges. It’s a modern HR strategy kno...

Eating a healthy diet that includes a lot of fruits, vegetables, legumes, and fish can help you keep your brain in tip-top shape. There are plenty of brain boosting foods but here are five that you might want to start including.  First of all, oily fish. When people talk about brain foods this is often at the top of the list. This type of fish includes salmon, trout, tuna, herring,...

We've all been there. You wake up in the middle of the night and simply can’t get back to sleep, no matter how hard you try to relax. Suddenly, a problem that seemed insignificant earlier feels enormous. You overthink it and imagine the worst. Then morning arrives, and you realise you’d blown it out of all proportion. It’s a very common experience: anxious, irrational thoughts can feel much more i...

Over the course of our lifetime, we around 34,000 litres of urine, according to Business Insider. Urine evacuates the nitrogen-containing waste produced by the organs and expelled into the blood, like urea and uric acid for example. It's also made up of water and mineral salts. It tends to be a clear shade of yellow, ranging from pale to dark at different times of the day. Nevertheless,...

Although it is quite usual to find insects in markets in both Africa and Asia it is rather more unusual for people in the West to eat them. However, with increased awareness of animal welfare and environmental concerns around eating meat people are beginning to think more seriously about insects as food rather than something to be swatted. The problem is that a lot of people find eating bugs prett...

Have you ever noticed how revisiting films from your childhood, listening to old tunes, or flipping through cherished books can bring on a certain sense of solace. Your past is intricately woven into your present; it shapes who you are and influences the person you go on to become. With its comforting embrace of fond memories, nostalgia seems to breathe new life into past moments, giving us a boos...

Young people have much less of an appetite for sex these days, it seems. The phenomenon has been labelled a “sex recession” in the media and terms like “puriteens” have emerged to describe sex-shy youngsters.  Studies have backed up the idea of a sex recession too. One published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior journal in November 2021 found that the proportion of adolescents reporting no s...

Whether it’s out of necessity or for enjoyment, lubricant helps a lot of people in their sex lives. According to The Cleveland Clinic: “Around 17% of people assigned female at birth (AFAB) age 18 to 50 report problems with vaginal dryness during sex, even before menopause takes place.” And that figure increases to 50% after menopause. There are a number of factors that can contribute to insufficie...

Perfume is a luxury product worn by people all around the world, but fragrances are not without health risks. Perfumes use a mix of chemicals, some are natural, such as essential oils from plants, but many of them are synthetic, meaning they are created in a laboratory. The problem is that the perfume industry is not very transparent about what goes into their products. They can hide hundreds of i...

We’ve already talked about narcissistic abusers in a previous episode of Do You Really Know? Let’s refresh your memory: narcissistic abusers, or NAs for short, are people with manipulative tendencies, who inflict a range of toxic behaviours on their target and position themselves as victims. Now NA-victim relationships don’t always exist solely between two individuals. There can be one or more add...

You may have heard of the Werther effect, named after Goethe's 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. After the story's hero takes his own life, the book was linked to a wave of copycat suicides. Even today, research suggests that when a celebrity's suicide receives extensive media coverage, suicide rates can rise by an average of 13%. The effect has been observed following the deaths of Marilyn...

Let's be honest: being productive at work on Fridays can be a real challenge. A 2019 study by Accountemps found that Friday was the least common choice for American workers when naming their most productive day of the week. The slump is likely down to having worked hard over the first four days of the week, as well as thinking ahead to the weekend. What’s more, your colleagues are in the same fram...

Have you ever heard ot the stairs test? Experts say it’s an excellent gauge of a person’s overall health. The idea is to run up as many flights of stairs as your body allows you to. If you can’t manage two flights at a brisk pace, you may need to consider lifestyle changes to improve your health. Meanwhile if you can climb eight or more, the chances are you’re in excellent health already. But beyo...

A time optimist is someone who is overly optimistic about how much time they have to do something, and therefore often ends up being late or missing deadlines. They tend to underestimate how long tasks will take, overestimate how much they can accomplish in a given period, and ignore potential delays or interruptions. They may also have a distorted perception of time, losing track of how fast it p...

A funeral is one of those rare occasions where you don’t really need to think too much about your choice of outfit. After all, everyone wears black to funerals as a sign of grief, don’t they? Well, that might be true in the Western world, but it’s not necessarily the case everywhere, which is what we’re going to talk about today.  In the Western world, funeral customs have long been intertwin...