Medical

Forget the Supplements and Bring On the Berries

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:38:05 +0000

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

The Barbie Drug Your Dermatologist Has Never Heard Of

Julia Nevski — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 14:12:37 +0000

Spray it up your nose, or inject it under the skin, and within days your skin turns a deep, even, suspiciously permanent bronze. No sun required. TikTok calls it the “vacation peptide.” The compound is melanotan II, and its more famous nickname, the “Barbie drug,” has been showing up in dermatology journals since at least 2010 — for the tan, plus a side effect serious enough that it later spun off its own FDA-approved libido drug. The name conjures exactly who you’d picture: young, female, chasing an Instagram-ready glow.

Resveratrol Supplements. Trifling Facts. Lots of Conjecture.

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 13:32:12 +0000

A quick online search for “resveratrol supplements” finds dozens produced by various companies. They contain anywhere from 50 to 500 mg resveratrol per capsule and sport labels that scream “source of antioxidants.” But there is no mention of any condition that resveratrol is expected to treat or prevent. For good reason! While there is plenty of speculation about what this compound can do based on laboratory experiments that use cell cultures, yeasts, worms, flies or rodents, it is best to remember that humans are not giant test tubes or colossal rodents.

Should You Worry About a Carcinogen in Your Shampoo?

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 18:54:58 +0000

Our story starts with “surfactants,” a term derived from “surface active agents.” These are molecules with one end being “hydrophilic”, meaning it is attracted to water, while the other “hydrophobic” end is attracted to oily substances or to air. If you like your shampoo to form a luxurious lather, disdain stains on your clothes and dishes and don’t want your face cream to separate into layers, then you want surfactants in your life. But surfactants aren’t grown in fields or harvested from trees, not directly anyway. They have to be chemically synthesized. And therein lies the problem.

Injections of ‘MOTS-c’ Can Make You Live Longer. If You Are a Mouse

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 03:24:15 +0000

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

Handling Receipts at the Supermarket

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 18:18:08 +0000

I was startled by the comment from the shopper just behind me at the checkout counter in the supermarket. “You really shouldn’t be doing that!” Noting the quizzical look on my face, a further clarification was obviously needed. “I mean you shouldn’t be handling the receipt,” she went on. Indeed, I had taken the thermal paper receipt from the cashier and without looking at it tossed it in with the groceries. I now understood my fellow shopper’s concern.

How PCOS Became PMOS

Sophie Tseng Pellar BSc — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

When scientists discover they've been wrong about a disease, changing their minds is only half the battle. The other half is updating everything that came from that misunderstanding: the textbooks, the guidelines, the assumptions people carry around, and sometimes even the name of the disease itself.

That's exactly what's happening with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which has officially been renamed Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS).

Let’s Rap About Rapamycin

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:54:52 +0000

Easter Island in the Pacific off the coast of Chile is famous for the giant stone statues that were erected by natives some 500-700 years ago. The thinking is that the statues were designed to honour eminent ancestors by providing a home for their spirits to inhabit. In the 1960s, Easter Island made it into headlines for a totally different reason. Soil samples were found to contain Streptomyces hygroscopicus, a bacterium that produces a chemical with antifungal activity.

AI Scribes in the Clinic: What Patients Should Know

Sophie Tseng Pellar BSc — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:16:13 +0000

The last time I went to the doctor, I was handed a form to sign. It was a consent form asking for my permission to allow the doctor to use an AI scribe during our appointment. I signed it without much hesitation, partly out of habit, partly out of an assumption that this is simply where healthcare is headed in the age of AI technology. Now, months later, after spending a semester conducting a health technology assessment on AI scribes for one of my courses, I realized that moment deserved more scrutiny.

Aspartame: Not the Devil Incarnate but Not A Godsend Either

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 28 May 2026 23:43:46 +0000

Long before “wellness influencers” honed the art of spreading misinformation on the internet, the public was at the mercy of being befuddled by hoaxes through chain emails. Way back in the 1990s, I was the recipient of one of these from “Dr.” Betty Martini in which she described a speech given by one Nancy Markle at the “World Environmental Conference” in which she claimed that the artificial sweetener aspartame was the cause of multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, seizures, brain tumours, lupus and Alzheimer’s disease.

Exaggerated Fears Over Cancer Biopsies Can Worsen Cancer

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. — Thu, 28 May 2026 22:54:23 +0000

Fear of the needle is not reserved to the vaccine hesitant; it extends to biopsies as well. In corners of social media where misinformation accumulates, influencers with an axe to grind against doctors are warning people to stay away from biopsies that help diagnose a cancer. “NEVER do a prostate biopsy, NEVER do a breast biopsy,” you will read, as the biopsy is said to spread the very cancer it is sampling.

Our Bodies Are Full of Dark Proteins. Can We Use Them Against Disease?

Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. — Thu, 21 May 2026 21:53:35 +0000

These proteins were not supposed to exist. Yet, there they were. As we started to learn more about them, researchers wondered if we hadn’t stumbled upon new targets for treating diseases like cancer.

If wellness fads abided by their own horoscope, we could say 2025 was the Year of the Protein. The macronutrient was shoved everywhere: inside of cereals, milk cartons, even pasta. Everyone wanted more protein.

But proteins are simply the building blocks of the human body. They make up much of the infrastructure of our cells’ cityscape. They make life possible.

The Science Behind the Quest for a Non-Peptide Oral Weight Loss Drug

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:02:24 +0000

Not only does it have a tongue-twisting name, “orforglipron” has a complex molecular structure that made its synthesis very challenging. A massive effort by chemists at the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company finally resulted in a viable synthesis, but why this massive effort? Because the payoff also promises to be massive! Orforglipron is the first “small molecule” to act as an oral “GLP-1 agonist". Its discovery takes us on a long and winding journey.

Intense Back Pain Led Me From Outer Space to the Inside of a Cell

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 21 May 2026 15:03:44 +0000

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

My knowledge of anatomy is rather limited, so I wasn’t too surprised that I had never heard of the “multifidus” muscles that line the spinal column and have the task of supporting movement of the vertebrae. Neither had I heard of the “transversus abdominis” muscles in the abdomen that act as a natural corset, stabilizing the lumbar spine.

Health Monitoring Has Come a Long Way, From Rolled-Up Paper to AI

Joe Schwarcz PhD — Thu, 14 May 2026 21:14:04 +0000

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette.

Remember Theranos, the company that promised to revolutionize longevity by making health data instantly available from blood collected from a finger prick, allowing for “alerts” to make lifestyle changes?