What is the function of the colon? The current understanding is surprisingly narrow in scope. Once food passes through the small intestine and reaches the colon, most digestible macronutrients have already been absorbed. The structural features also change from the ileum to the colon in a way that suggests functional divergence. The ileal lumen has features that increase surface area (circular folds, villi, and brush border) for efficient nutrient absorption. This area-maximi

Insulin — the most important hormone There is a silent epidemic in much of the industrialized world. As our lives become modernized, our nutrition and hygiene improve, and our knowledge of medicine enables the early detection and treatment of an increasing number of pathologies, a novel illness also creeps in. Completely asymptomatic for years, even decades, by the time it manifests, it has morphed into a monstrous entity, well beyond the reach of even the most advanced thera

The Doctor, an 1891 portrait by Luke Fildes ( Wikipedia ) Based on what information do physicians make decisions?  We would like to think...

Jan Hus, Czech Secularism, and the Forgotten Christian Roots of Modern Individualism If you wander through the beautiful streets of...

Dedicated to all the medical students who never understood what was going on... In the human body, the main job of the Krebs cycle is to...

Vagus hotline One of the most fascinating reports from last year came from Charles Zucker's team regarding the interaction between the...

Complaints from Ph.D. holders about poor job prospects have become increasingly common these days. Indeed, a Ph.D. is the most advanced...

For a very long time, aging was considered to be largely the result of wear and tear accumulating over a lifetime — be it free radicals,...

“Lactic acidosis” is among the more basic clinical concepts taught in medical school, but this term is hugely misleading. In our uni’s...

To be verbally descriptive is to be informationally inefficient. All that space, time, and cognitive effort wasted on words! Most books...