McGill Office for Science and Society (OSS)

07/22/2025

Jenny McCarthy is back in the wellness spotlight, this time promoting the carnivore diet 🥩 Once a vocal figure in the anti-vaccine movement 💉 she's now claiming that cutting out plants and eating only meat cured her fatigue, acne, and even her bathroom woes 🚽

Others making similar claims say the diet fixed everything from brain fog to autoimmune issues, but there’s little solid science to back it up.

In this article, we explore:
• Why the carnivore diet is gaining popularity online
• The health risks of eliminating entire food groups
• How personal testimonials are not the same as scientific evidence

Read the full article here ⬇️
https://mcgill.ca/x/isu

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette. Jenny McCarthy, a former Pl***oy Playmate of the Year, is playing with science again. This time it is all about the “carnivore diet.” Her first foray into the scientific arena was in 2005, when her son was diagnosed with autism. She began...

07/21/2025

🧬 What can wild animals teach us about cancer?
In labs and in the wild, scientists are uncovering the surprising ways animals evolve to resist (and sometimes spread) cancer. Studying them could reshape how we understand the disease.

This article explores:
🐘 Why some of the largest animals on Earth have unexpectedly low cancer rates

🐢 How turtles defy aging and disease

🦠 What infectious cancers in Tasmanian devils and clams reveal about tumour development and transmission

🏞️ How captivity and environmental change are reshaping cancer risk in wildlife

Wildlife is full of cancer suppression mechanisms, but they’re no match for their biggest threat of all: human activity 🧍

Read the full article here 👇
https://mcgill.ca/x/isB

In a lab in Rochester, New York, a group of scientists were trying to grow cells taken from a naked mole rat. Instead, they ended up with a petri dish full of goo. The cells had secreted a thick, viscous substance, unlike anything typically seen in standard lab cultures. The scientists discovered th...

07/20/2025

Have you ever felt sluggish or achy on a rainy day?☔️🌧️ You’re not alone. While you could see a rainy day as an excuse to cozy up with freshly brewed tea and a movie, your rain-induced back pain may be out of your control🫖🛋️.

☁️ Researchers have long investigated the influence of changing temperatures and environmental conditions on our musculoskeletal system. Trips to healthcare providers, reports of chronic pain flareups, and general discomfort have all been associated with weather changes. The culprit? Something unavoidable: the atmosphere.

This article will give you a brief yet comprehensive overview of how weather systems work - meaning that you will be able to impress those in your life with a fun fact or two about clear skies. However, the extent to which air pressure influences bodily pain is still heavily debated. Some scientists argue that the change in air pressure has real effects on joint swelling, while others claim that it is just rainy-day laziness that may make you a bit sore. This article lays down the facts, and you get to decide which camp you fall into!

Regardless of the cause of your pain, the relief methods are still the same. Healthcare providers recommend regular exercise, stretching, eating well, taking a warm shower, and/or taking over-the-counter pain relievers.

The Key Takeaway? 🔑

🌧️💊While the link between joint pain and rainy weather is still unclear – for some, the connection between the weather and their physical comfort is very real. But for now, it might be a good idea to ditch the couch when the next rainy day rolls in.

https://mcgill.ca/x/is6

Have you ever felt sluggish or achy on a rainy day? You’re not alone. While you could see a rainy day as an excuse to cozy up with freshly brewed tea and a movie, your rain-induced back pain may be out of your control. Researchers have long investigated the influence of changing temperatures and e...

07/19/2025

Would you let someone draw your blood, shine UV light on it, then pump it back into your body?

Some wellness clinics think you should, and they’ll charge you hundreds of dollars for it 💵

UV blood irradiation is being sold as a miracle treatment for everything from asthma to HIV. But is there any real science behind it?

This article discusses:
🩸 Where UV blood therapy came from and why it disappeared
🩸 Why it’s making a comeback in wellness circles
🩸 What it’s actually used for in legitimate medicine
🩸 What the science really says about its health claims

Keep in mind that as your blood drains out of your body, so does your money out of your wallet.

Read the full article here ⬇️
https://mcgill.ca/x/is8

Would you allow someone to draw your blood out, expose it to ultraviolet light, and pump it back into your body, even if I told you it wouldn’t turn you into the Incredible Hulk? There are many arguments in favour of this procedure, which you will find mainly offered by questionable clinics, and t...

07/18/2025

"Betcha can’t eat just one."
🥔 That 1963 potato chip slogan by the Frito-Lay snack food company may have captured something scientists are still debating: can food be addictive?

🧠 Some researchers say ultra-processed foods may hijack the brain’s reward system like morphine or co***ne. Others, like Dr. Kevin Hall, found no dopamine spike in response to these foods, suggesting they may not be addictive in the same way as drugs 💊

In this article, we explore:
• What rat studies tell us about food and addiction
• Why the concept of “food addiction” remains controversial
• The link between ultra-processed food and chronic disease, where the evidence is much stronger

Read more ⬇️
https://mcgill.ca/x/imH

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette. “Betcha can’t eat just one” is one of the most successful advertising slogans ever fashioned. Introduced by the Frito-Lay snack food company in 1963, it was crafted to promote its potato chips. For its television campaign, the company h...

07/17/2025

Are all snake oil salesmen lying to you to get to your money? Or do some really believe what they’re selling?

We apparently live in the era of the con, the scam, the grift. Podcasters, YouTubers, and social media influencers have no qualms in referring to anyone that is selling you something that is not backed up by good evidence as a lying grifter.

But what if some of these people actually believe what they’re selling?

The line between scam artist and true believer is blurrier than we’d like to think.

This article asks: does motivation matter? And what happens when we label everyone with a product as a villain?

Read more 👉 https://mcgill.ca/x/imK

You may be the victim of a grift. We apparently live in the era of the con, the scam, the grift. Podcasters, YouTubers, and social media influencers have no qualms in referring to anyone that is selling you something that is not backed up by good evidence as a lying grifter. Anti-vaxxers? Grifters!....

07/16/2025

💥 Think you need to max out your heart rate to melt fat? Think again.

If you've ever chased "splat points" in the Orange Zone at Orangetheory, you’re not alone. It’s marketed as the fat-burning promised land—but science tells a more nuanced story.

🔬 Research shows that maximal fat oxidation actually happens at lower intensities—around 60–70% of your max heart rate (Zones 2–3), not the explosive Orange or Red zones. One meta-analysis even found that people with obesity burn the most fat between 57–66% HRpeak.

🏃‍♂️ Sure, high-intensity zones can boost performance and VO₂max, but for fat loss? Sustainable, moderate effort is often more effective—and more enjoyable.

The bottom line: You don’t need to suffer to slim down. A steady jog, brisk walk, or even a kitchen dance party might be just what your metabolism needs.

🎯 Read the full breakdown: "Orange You Overdoing It? A Deep Dive into the Science of Zone Training"

https://mcgill.ca/x/ima

The Truth About Heart Rate Zones: Beyond the Burn If you’ve ever found yourself sprinting on a treadmill under glowing orange lights, surrounded by pulsing music and digital screens showing your name next to a series of colored bars, congratulations—you’ve experienced the world of Orangetheory...

07/15/2025

Sleep deprivation affects memory, ability to concentrate as well as emotions. Lack of sleep can cause fits of anger 😡 and increase reaction time when driving 🚗 But there is more.

In this article Dr. Joe addresses:
• The potential side-effects from lack of sleep 💤 Risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, mood disorders and impaired immunity have all been linked with poor sleep.

• Sleep aids 😴 There is reasonable evidence that blue light emitted from television, computer and cell phone screens 📱 affects the secretion by the pineal gland of melatonin, the hormone that signals the body to fall asleep. The recommendation is to turn off screens two hours before bedtime. Many people opt into taking a melatonin supplement. The research here is not conclusive, but points toward 1-3 mgs taken 3-4 hours before the intended sleep time possibly being beneficial. However, there is the usual caveat with supplements: labeling is unreliable since dietary supplements are not regulated as drugs. One study found that in the melatonin supplements assayed, the actual quantity of melatonin ranged from 74-347% of the labeled quantity and 88% of products were inaccurately labeled.

• Simple solutions 🍵 Chamomile tea has some evidence although mostly anecdotal. It does contain apigenin, a compound that binds to benzodiazepine receptors in the brain, the same ones that drugs 💊 such as Va**um (diazepam) and Ativan (lorazepam) bind to for the treatment of anxiety and insomnia. 🥛 A glass of warm milk is said to help because it contains the amino acid tryptophan that the body converts into serotonin, which in turn is converted into melatonin. The amount of tryptophan in milk though is very little, so any benefit attributed to drinking warm milk is likely due to a placebo effect. Poultry, eggs, nuts and cheese are better sources of tryptophan although these are also unlikely to contain enough for a physiological effect.

Remember if all else fails, count sheep. Good night! 💤

https://mcgill.ca/x/imb

07/14/2025

As a kid, I always played with my food. After a trip to the grocery store, where my mom allowed me to select one candy to bring home, playing turned into experimentation.

The candy I chose? 🍬

Skittles! I had seen several YouTube videos of people taking these colourful candies and placing them in water, causing the vibrant colours to bleed out 🔴🟡🟣 Prompted by these videos, I grabbed a shallow dish, filled it with a bit of water and began placing my Skittles around the perimeter. Like magic, streams of color began to leech from the candy, converging towards the middle of the plate, creating an admittedly unattractive brown colour.

Little did I know that this experiment was my introduction to chromatography.

In this article we unpack:
• What is chromatography? 🤔 Chromatography comes from the Greek word “chroma” (χρῶμα) meaning colour and “graphein” (γράφειν) meaning to write. In more scientific terms, chromatography is a method by which a mixture is separated by distributing its components between a mobile and a stationary phase.

• How are we able to separate mixtures of compounds 🧪 Chromatography essentially revolves around the idea that “like dissolves like.” Water is a polar substance, and oil is highly non-polar.

• What colours are hiding in a green skittle 🟢 I took a drop of the solution from a dissolved green Skittle and spotted it on the bottom of a strip of chromatography paper. Most remarkably, the originally green spot separated into its primary colours, yellow and blue, along the path of the liquid.

• The history of chromatography 📜There are many, many variations of chromatography but they all fit into one of two categories: planar or column. Column chromatography, an invention often attributed to Mikhail Tsvet, a Russian botanist, separates plant pigments using a column filled with chalk.

My advice to you, read the full article and then go get some Skittles to “experiment” with 😉.

https://mcgill.ca/x/im4

As a kid, I always played with my food. After a trip to the grocery store, where my mom allowed me to select one candy to bring home, playing turned into experimentation. The candy I chose? Skittles! I had seen several YouTube videos of people taking these colourful candies and placing them in water...

07/10/2025

Mention Frankenstein 🔩 and what springs to most people's minds is Boris Karloff’s portrayal of the “monster.” That's because they’ve skipped the book and seen the movie, which is a true Hollywood-style horror story 😱

In this article we unpack:
• Frankenstein's true origin: Mary Shelley did not intend to scare 👻 her readers—what she penned was a work of science fiction that explored the consequences of allowing science to go astray. And she never used the term “monster!” To Mary, it was the “Creation,” the “Creature,” or the “Being.”

• Who was Victor Frankenstein? Christopher Goulding argues that Dr. James Lind was the model for the fictional Victor Frankenstein, who, contrary to popular belief, was not a doctor! He was a university student interested in medicine, chemistry, and electricity but never completed his education. 📚

• Galvanism's influence: Lind was particularly drawn to a new area of research, called galvanism. He infected his young protégé with his enthusiasm for science, as evidenced by the fact that Percy’s room was filled with scientific apparatus.

• Aldini's public experiments: Aldini stimulated the severed heads not only of cows, horses, dogs but also of people with an electric current and demonstrated that the teeth 🦷 could be made to chatter and the eyes roll. Perhaps his most famous “performance” took place in 1803 at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

• Mary Shelley's spark⚡of inspiration: The demonstration of galvanism had quite an impact on Mary—she even dreamed of a stillborn baby being brought back to life with electricity. In the preface to the 1831 edition, Mary explicitly mentions galvanism as the scientific principle behind the creation.

Read the article for the full story!

https://mcgill.ca/x/iWZ

Mention Frankenstein, and what springs to most people's minds is Boris Karloff’s portrayal of the “monster.” That's because they’ve skipped the book and seen the movie, which is a true Hollywood-style horror story. In writing her novel, Mary Shelley did not intend to scare her readers—what...

07/09/2025

Dr. Joe ran a fun in-class experiment, asking his Chemistry of Food students to anonymously list what they ate the day before and how much his lectures changed their eating habits. The results? Let’s just say vague measurements and conveniently healthy food logs made it hard to get a clear picture 🔎

In this article, we dig into:
• Why nutrition studies are so difficult to conduct—and interpret
• What the massive NutriNet-Santé study (170,000+ participants!) tells us about long-term health trends
• Why we have to be cautious about mistaking association for causation
• What consistent patterns do emerge: more plants, fewer ultra-processed foods, and moderating both sugar and sweeteners

🍽️ We may not always remember what we ate yesterday—but there’s still a lot we can learn from studying diets at scale. Here’s what the data says (and what it doesn’t) 📊

https://mcgill.ca/x/iWt

This article was first published in The Montreal Gazette. Last semester I carried out a little experiment in my Chemistry of Food course. At the end of the last lecture, I handed out a blank sheet of paper and asked students to anonymously list the foods and beverages they had consumed the day befor...

07/07/2025

They’re small, round, and stuck to your skin—but are they doing anything?

LifeWave patches have become a multilevel marketing wellness craze, with promises of pain relief, stem cell activation, and fat-burning miracles. But if you're wondering how they work… you're not alone. Even the published papers and sellers can’t agree 🫣

In this article, we unpack:
• The inconsistent (and often bizarre) claims about how these patches supposedly work
• Why the scientific studies backing them are deeply flawed
• How emotional testimonials and multilevel marketing fuel their popularity
• Why their “FDA approval” isn’t what it seems

💰Curious how patches that cost $150/month can get away with saying almost nothing? Read the article before sticking one on.

https://mcgill.ca/x/imZ

They came in droves. On Valentine’s Day 2023, Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher who criticizes pseudoscience in his field, published his assessment of the LifeWave X39 patch. Eight months later, he closed the comment section on his post. People were flocking to it, sharing their story of how ...