We spend a third of our lives doing it.Napoleon, Florence Nightingale and Margaret Thatcher got by on four hours a night. Thomas Edison claimed it was waste of time. 

Why do we sleep?

So why do we sleep? This is a question that has baffled scientists for centuries and the answer is, no one is really sure. Some believe that sleep gives the body a chance to recuperate from the day's activities but in reality, the amount of energy saved by sleeping for even eight hours is miniscule - about 50 kCal, the same amount of energy in a piece of toast.

Twenty-four hours of sleep deprivation can lead to conditions similar to the symptoms ofschizophrenia in healthy persons, a new study has found.

A team led by researchers from the University of Bonn in Germany and King’s College London said that after 24 hours of sleep deprivation in healthy patients, numerous symptoms were noted which are otherwise typically attributed to psychosis or schizophrenia.

A radical procedure that involves replacing a patients’ blood with cold salt water could retrieve people from the brink of death, says David Robson.

“When you are at 10C, with no brain activity, no heartbeat, no blood – everyone would agree that you’re dead,” says Peter Rhee at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “But we can still bring you back.”

Nicotine is a chemical compound that is present in cigarettes and tobacco. It’s common knowledge that Nicotine addiction(Cigarettes/tobacco) is bad for your health, but careless young people are still choosing to light up more than any other demographic in the World. Researchers, now we have evidence that a specific part of the brain varies between nicotine addicted person and non-nicotine addicted person. The researchers say it could be nicotine causing these changes, even in teenagers who have exposure to nicotine(via cigarette smoking) for a relatively short period of time.

There are about 200 different types of cancer. It can start in any type of body tissue. What affects one body tissue may not affect another. For example, tobacco smoke that you breathe in may help to cause lung cancer. Overexposing your skin to the sun could cause a melanoma on your leg. But the sun won't give you lung cancer and smoking won't give you melanoma.
Apart from infectious diseases, most illnesses (including cancer) are multifactorial. This means that there are many factors involved. In other words, there is no single cause for any one type of cancer.

Got the flu? Think twice before you pop a pill to feel better.

Most over-the-counter flu medications include a fever-reducing ingredient such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. But suppressing fever, according to new research, actually increases the number of seasonal flu cases by at least 5 percent in the U.S., and could cause as many as 1,000 additional deaths from influenza nationally each year.