Do you really know?

Vitamin D is known as the ‘sunshine vitamin’, and it’s not for nothing. Our bodies make it from cholesterol when exposed to sunlight. The sun’s ultraviolet B rays hit cholesterol in the skin cells, providing the energy needed for vitamin D synthesis to occur. Naturally, during autumn and winter, there’s less sunlight and government advice suggests that everyone should consider taking Vitamin D sup...

Musculoskeletal disorders, like back pain and arthritis, are recognized as occupational diseases in Western countries which have a large office workforce. The UK’s Health and Safety Executive lists some of the causes of these disorders as repetitive work, particularly using the same hand or arm action, carrying out a task for a long time and working with display screen equipment. Pain or stiffness...

You might have heard of ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ a motto with the aim of encouraging us to think about how we consume and consider the impact that buying lots of stuff has on the planet. But now the high end department store Selfridges has launched a new campaign, ‘Project Earth’ to try and change the way we shop: resale, repair, rental and refill is their response to customers' growing demands fo...

The online bullies have come up with a derogatory term for their targets; lolcows. Like cash cows, they are exploited, or milked, for entertainment purposes.  Longstanding American forum Kiwi Farms was shut down by Cloudflare in early September 2022. The reason: an “imminent and emergency threat to human life”, according to the internet infrastructure company. That’s because the forum is pretty mu...

Three days after his army invaded Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced he was raising his country’s military nuclear deterrence threat level. He justified the move by citing the economic sanctions placed on Russia by the West, as well as what he called “aggressive statements” from NATO.  Concerns grew further quickly a few days later when Russia shelled Europe’s largest nuclear powe...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! With many types of personal goals, actually doing the task is only part of the battle. Being mentally prepared is also hugely important and can sometimes be overlooked. Sports and...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It doesn’t matter which fancy moisturizers or expensive skincare routine you use, nothing quite matches how your skin looks and feels after an intense workout. Just take a look in...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! After an intense and sweaty workout, the first thing most of us want to do is jump into the shower to relax our muscles and wash off the sweat. However, that’s not actually the be...

We spend a lot of time in bed and there is nothing nicer than snuggling up in clean fresh sheets but apparently not everyone feels the same. According to a survey commissioned by Pizuna Linens of over 2 thousand people in the UK  it was discovered that 45 percent of single men are happy to wait up to four months to wash their sheets with a horrifying 12 percent only doing it ‘when they remembered’...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It’s been labelled the most controversial World Cup in history. Nevertheless, preparations for Qatar 2022 are in full swing and we’re now less than two months away from the start...

It's back to school! Do You Really Know is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! One of the biggest challenges that we have been facing and will be continuing to face in the coming years is protecting our planet. So it’s worth reflecting on how we can exercise...

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...

It's back to school! DYRK is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! It's well known that we should all be doing half an hour of moderate physical activity every day. But sometimes our busy lifestyles make it difficult finding thirty consecutive minutes to do ex...

It's back to school! DYRK is dedicating a special week to sport. Because moving and doing regular physical activity is important for our physical and mental health! Listen again to our episodes about sport! CrossFit is a branded fitness regimen which combines weightlifting, gymnastics, endurance and other forms of physical conditioning. The name comes from the constantly varied nature of workouts,...

It may be a little taboo to talk about it, but there are a lot of people out there who, for a variety of reasons, don’t have as much sex as they would like, or arguably need. And there’s actually a form of therapy out there which is specifically designed to help people become more comfortable with sex and intimacy. The idea of sex surrogacy started catching on in Europe in the 2000s, and these day...

According to the American National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders, around 9% of the US population are affected by an eating disorder. We’ve all heard of anorexia, bulimia and binge eating, which are among the most commonly diagnosed. But there is also orthorexia. It’s called orthorexia, coming from the Latin words “orthos”, meaning correct and “orexis”, meaning appetite....

How do you like the idea of going to sleep and waking up richer? Sounds pretty sweet, huh? Well believe it or not, sleep streams have actually become a big trend among influencers on streaming platform Twitch.  Influenceurs film themselves asleep, set challenges and go through sleep marathons in interactive formats. Meanwhile, viewers try to annoy the streamer or wake them up by playing videos and...

As we head into the final quarter of 2022, the world’s biggest entertainment franchises are going head to head. HBO struck first with Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, and then Amazon followed up with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. So it was only a matter of time before Disney got involved. Just as well for them then that they have one of the most lucrative licenses of all t...

The announcement of the  sad news of the Queen’s passing, like all of the events following her death, followed strict protocol. The Prime Minister was informed using a pre-arranged code  “London Bridge is down”. And somewhere, deep in the gardens of Buckinham palace, the royal beekeeper informed the royal bees. That’s right the beekeeper, John Chapple, who’s been the Queen’s beekeeper for 15 years...

If you’ve got Netflix, you’ve no doubt seen this series pop up in your recommendations more than once. All the more so given the fourth season just hit the platform on New Year’s Eve, adding to the 30 episodes which were already available. Well in order to really understand we should probably be asking “What is Karate Kid?”, as Cobra Kai is a direct sequel to the Karate Kid films which inspired a...

If just thinking of spiders is enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, or you jump any time you see one, the chances are you suffer from arachnophobia. It affects up to 15% of people according to the Cleveland Clinic, making it one of the most common phobias out there. As it turns out, human fear of spiders may well be down to evolution. Researchers from Germany, Austria and Sw...

If you’ve got heavy legs, nighttime cramps, varicose veins or swelling in the legs, you may have blood flow issues. When you consider that our bodies contain an incredible 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels, it’s really not uncommon. Something like a varicose vein is usually relatively harmless. Other conditions include hemorrhoids, and phlebitis, which is a blood clot in a deep vein. Worse still...

It’s not news that museums all around the world contain works of art that have been looted or forcefully taken during colonial rule but is it time they gave them back?  It seems pretty straightforward for an increasing number of people that it is the moral thing to do and that art and artifacts belong in their country of origin. Museums often counteract this by saying, amongst other things, that i...

Most of the time, when we hear the word prostate, we associate it with cancer. We don’t necessarily know where it’s situated in the male body and even less so its potential as an erogenous zone! Let’s take an anatomy lesson then. The prostate, or male P-spot, is a small gland around the size of a walnut which can be found just below the bladder. It weighs between 20 and 40 grams, growing bigger as...

There’s been a lot of discussion of Roe vs Wade this year, with the US Supreme Court controversially overturning the decision nearly half a century after it was made. Henceforth, each American state is free to decide whether abortion is legal or not, to the despair of many women’s rights supporters. But if we go back to 1960s America, abortion was illegal pretty much everywhere and treated as equi...