Chicken noodle soup is regarded as a therapeutic dish in several cultures, including Jewish-American and Chinese communities where traditional medicine is practised.

Although researchers have not been able to determine the cause of the alleged positive effects of chicken soup, several studies have confirmed that it helps to unblock congested noses and throats.

Chinese Chicken Noodle

Archaeological evidence shows that people started using poultry to make soups soon after they discovered how to boil water. The earliest recorded evidence of chicken soup being used as a therapeutic dish dates back to Chinese antiquity.

Gonorrhoea could become an untreatable disease, England's chief medical officer has warned.

Dame Sally Davies has written to all GPs and pharmacies to ensure they are prescribing the correct drugs after the rise of "super-gonorrhoea" in Leeds.

Her warning comes after concerns were raised that some patients were not getting both of the antibiotics needed to clear the infection.

Sexual health doctors said gonorrhoea was "rapidly" developing resistance.

A highly drug-resistant strain of gonorrhoea was detected in the north of England in March.

That strain is able to shrug off the antibiotic azithromycin, which is normally used alongside another drug, ceftriaxone.

In her letter, the chief medical officer said: "Gonorrhoea is at risk of becoming an untreatable disease due to the continuing emergence of antimicrobial resistance."

Dear coffee: I love you. I have since the tender age of 15, and I've never once doubted your abilities to make my mornings more complete. I love you so much I drink you black. But are you good for me? Do I actually have a sane and salvageable relationship with you?

I'm not the type of person to gulp down gallons of coffee throughout the day. I stick to one or two cups and drink them ever so slowly — indulging in each sip's robust depth of flavors. And while I enjoy my morning cup of goodness, it seems I can't get through a week without overhearing someone declare that they're finally giving up coffee for good.

"Sit up straight son," said practically every parent around the world at some point. It's been drilled into us that bad posture will be the source of great pain and discomfort in the future if not corrected. But what if there is no bad posture? What if our posture is a reflection of who we are and changing it has nothing to with either a rudimentary adjustment of joints and muscles or mental focus on obtaining that perfect plumb line. Many postural correction inventions and therapeutic manipulations will have you believe that there is a perfect posture to be attained. Let me explain why bad posture is a myth.

Chiropractors can do some wonderful things for their patients, and there should only be admiration for their skills in treating a wealth of dysfunction in modern populations. However, a good percentage of their treatment protocols center around posture--and that requires a commitment on behalf of their patients which many are not prepared for.

Sunlight: we all feel better when we're exposed to it, but do you know why? Dr. Michael F. Holick, a foremost expert on vitamin D with an impressive list of credentials, is just the right person to explain the healing power of sunlight.

His academic credentials include chief of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition at Boston City Hospital and Boston University Medical Center from 1987 until 2000.

He's currently the director of Bone Health Care Clinic, and a professor of Medicine, Physiology, and Biophysics at Boston University Medical Center. He's also the director of the Boston University Heliotherapy, Light, and Skin research lab.

While enrolled at the University of Wisconsin, he worked with Dr. Hector DeLuca on vitamin D, and ended up getting his M.S. by identifying 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 as the major circulating form of vitamin D in the human blood stream.

This is the form you want to measure to determine your vitamin D status.

For his Ph.D. he identified the biologically active form of vitamin D as 1,25-dihydroxyfitamin D3. As a postdoctoral fellow he participated in the first chemical synthesis of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 that was used to treat bone disease in kidney failure patients.

Later, he became interested in understanding how vitamin D is made in the skin. So he worked out methods to determine how factors such as time of day, season, latitude, skin pigmentation, and obesity influence this cutaneous process.

"I also realized that the skin had vitamin D receptors," he says. "What that means is that the active form of vitamin D was working in the skin, and I wanted to know why. It turns out that active vitamin D inhibits skin cell growth and modulates it in a very important way.

I then realized that maybe you could use it to treat a very common hyperproliferative skin disorder: psoriasis. I basically introduced the concept, in the mid-'80s, of topically applying active vitamin D to treat psoriasis ...

I've also done lots of other studies looking at how vitamin D is absorbed by the body and its impact on your health."

Recently my husband brought an article from the Guardian to my attention that was titled:

"YOU CAN'T DETOX YOUR BODY. IT'S A MYTH. SO HOW DO YOU GET HEALTHY?"

The article byline went on to say:

There's no such thing as 'detoxing'. In medical terms, it's a nonsense. Diet and exercise is the only way to get healthy. But which of the latest fad regimes can really make a difference? We look at the facts.

With a measure of skepticism, I read the article. What was the author's aim in claiming a basic biochemical process to be a myth? Was this another example of media sensationalism?

I had a hunch that it might be an example of how we moderns seek facts at the expense of truths.

We seek answers that work for everyone and throw out the mysteries of bio-individual nuances. Leaving no room for one man's meat to be another man's poison.

While the article did a good job of pointing out fallacies in the detox 'industry', I felt there were issues skirted around...that there were elements of truth mixed with elements of contradiction and sensationalism.

Sensationalism - the use of exciting or shocking stories or language at the expense of accuracy, in order to provoke public interest or excitement: media sensationalism.

Since purification and cleansing processes have been around for thousands of years and since gentle detoxification support is an important piece of the GAPS Protocol, of which I am a practitioner, it seemed a good project to take another look at the topic of detoxification as a whole.

Whether it's a post-party kebab or a midnight fridge raid, we are all guilty of eating when we should be sleeping. As well as ruining our waistlines, a study in mice suggests our brains may suffer too.

Mice are nocturnal and eat throughout the night. To find out what happens when this pattern is disturbed, Dawn Loh and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, fed one group of mice between 9 pm and 3 am, while another group only had access to food between 9 am and 3 pm. The mice ate this way for two weeks.

Toxic substances kill more Americans than guns each year. And Congress is protecting the killers.

Guns take more than 30,000 lives in America each year.

But there's a less-visible, even deadlier scourge that's been mostly lost in an era of mass shootings and terrorism scares: work-related illness, which kills 50,000 people annually, according to the best government estimate. Hundreds of thousands more are sickened by job-related exposures to toxic substances.

Occupational disease lacks the macabre drama of a San Bernardino, California, or a Newtown, Connecticut. The bodies cannot be easily counted. The victims may hang on for years or decades before quietly succumbing. Often, only families, friends, and former co-workers acknowledge their deaths.

In a series called "Unequal Risk," the Center for Public Integrity has tried to bring this little-understood, little-examined topic into the light. The most important takeaway: Many work-related diseases are preventable.

Examination of thousands of genes from nearly 150 human brains shows the circadian rhythm of gene activity changes with aging, according to a first-of-its-kind study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest also that a novel biological clock begins ticking only in the older brain.

A 24-hour circadian rhythm controls nearly all brain and body processes, such as the sleep/wake cycle, metabolism, alertness and cognition, said senior investigator Colleen McClung, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry, Pitt School of Medicine. These daily activity patterns are regulated by certain genes that are found in almost all cells, but have rarely been studied in the human brain.

Diseases mostly forgotten and often associated with Victorian times or undeveloped nations are now making their way across modern countries. Diseases like tuberculosis (TB), scarlet fever and scurvy — which were rampant in the 19th and early 20th centuries — are increasing at alarming rates in neighborhoods across London, sometimes surpassing places like Iraq and Rwanda, according to CNN.

The surprising revival is likely caused by increased migration, malnutrition, poverty and inaccessible health care combined with lower vaccinations for whooping cough and the measles, CNN reported.

"I think there is a general sense in this country, at least for me — which is incorrect — that infectious diseases are completely eradicated, or that we found some way to get rid of them and that they are 'Victorian' illnesses," Londoner Josie Garrett, who is recovering from tuberculosis, told CNN. "The reality is that's just not the case. It's definitely something people need to be aware of."