News Wellness
The Omicron Chronicles
Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels What’s that wriggling down the chimney? Why, it’s a brand-new COVID variant! The Omicron variant was first detected in California this past week, but despite the headlines, there’s little indication that there’s any reason to be overly…
Tour of the Organ Body, Part 5: Love is a Many-Splenic Thing
Photo by RF._.studio from Pexels The spleen is a purplish, 4-5 inch long, roughly fist-shaped abdominal organ, sitting to the left of the stomach, attached to the left kidney by a ligament, and just within the lower-left rib basket. In ancient Greek and…
Pill Pushing
Photo by Leohoho on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on November 23, 2021 At long last, pharmaceutical leviathan Pfizer has come up with a pill whose name is ugly enough to terrify the disease it’s meant to fight: COVID-19,…
Tour of the Organ Body, Part 4: The Kidneys
Photo by Robina Weermeijer on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on November 9, 2021 A couple of fist-sized, bean-shaped organs tucked behind the stomach just beneath the lower back ribs, the kidneys were considered during biblical times to be…
COVID Roundup: This Week in Pandemic News
Photo by Mufid Majnun on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on November 2, 2021 Less than a year after the first vaccines were administered in the United Kingdom, almost half the planet has received at least a partial vaccination…
Tour of the Organ Body, Part 3: Pancreas
Photo by cottonbro from Pexels Posted in the Humboldt Independent on October 26, 2021 When famous ancient Greek physician Galen of Pergamon declared the pancreas nothing more than spongy protective padding separating the stomach from some large blood vessels, no one challenged the…
Fluff Piece
Photo by Sander Dalhuisen from Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on October 19, 2021. Around the world, doctors, nurses, and medical staff are suffering from more stress and fatigue than at any time in human history, courtesy of everyone’s favorite not-really-novel-anymore coronavirus.…
Be Still My Heart
Photo by hopefilmphoto from Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on August 17, 2021. Dating back to 1733, not long after the invention of the “Physician’s Pulse Watch”, a time device that had a second hand that could be stopped, it has…
Standing up to Peripheral Neuropathy
Photo by Anupam Mahapatra on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on August 3, 2021 As many as 20 million Americans suffer from some form of peripheral neuropathy. This condition, which can give rise to numbness, tingling, and/or mild to…
You Can’t Touch This
Photo by Yoann Boyer on Unsplash Published in the Humboldt Independent on July 20, 2021 We arrive finally at the last of the five human senses: touch. Last in our series, but likely the first sense to develop in human…