How’s your holiday gone? Had a good time? A little too much to drink perhaps? Got a hangover? Most of us have one sooner or later – usually after an immense celebration like New Year’s Eve or some endless bachelor party. Roughly 75% of people who get drunk will have a hangover the next morning – and they’ve been familiar since Biblical times: ‘Woe to those who rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink, who stay late into the night until wine inflames them!’ (Isaiah 5:11). Continue Reading

Whenever a baby’s born, the first question’s always the same, isn’t it? Boy or girl? And people have very definite preferences – usually for a boy. Why should that be? And if it’s so important, can we do anything about it? People have certainly tried. The ancient Chinese believed a woman could choose her baby’s gender up to the third month of pregnancy – by holding pearls for a girl or a bow and arrow for a boy. If an ancient Greek wanted a boy, he was told to make love lying on his right hand side. Continue Reading

Ever wondered what babies experience before they’re born? No one ever remembers anything about it, so it’s easy to imagine it was pretty uneventful. Just warm and wet. No thoughts or sensations. Mind you, as your mother will tell you, you took plenty of exercise! She probably first felt you move sometime after you were four or five months old, but it’s likely you started making small movements from around seven weeks. Slowly flexing your back, hiccuping, breathing, touching your hand to your face, yawning, sucking and swallowing. You were definitely either right or left handed soon after that, and began moving your eyes round about four months. The rapid eye movements that you see when someone’s dreaming started after about six months, and gradually all this activity becomes organised into a regular pattern – quiet sleep, dreaming, quietly or actively awake – which continued after you were born. Continue Reading

Isn’t yawning embarrassing? Yet we all yawn many times a day, though mostly we’re unaware of it. We even start before we’re born. And it’s highly contagious. If I yawn, so do you. Actually small babies don’t. Yawns only become catching between our first and second birthdays. And that suggests that yawning might be more interesting than it appears at first sight…

So despite it’s apparent simplicity, yawning is quite extensively studied! Generally psychologists tend not to research simple behaviours, probably because they think people might laugh at them if they did. They like to go for complex problems, like polygyny or child abuse. But yawning is an exception. It’s studied because it’s a behaviour pattern that we share with very many animals and it occurs in so many different situations. And because it’s so catching. Continue Reading

You enjoy a beer, I’m sure – or perhaps not. Drinking is one of those issues that people have strong opinions about – some for, some against. But through much of world history alcohol may quite simply have been essential. It can’t be an accident that both the Old and New Testaments scarcely ever mention water as something fit to drink!

As agriculture developed, leading to food surpluses and ever larger groups of people living close together, they encountered a real problem: water supplies were inevitably polluted by their own activities. Throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Europe, wine and beer became the only safe liquids to drink because their alcohol content and acidity made them free of infection. Continue Reading

Once upon a time no-one had any idea that cigarettes might be harmful, and so deciding whether or not to smoke was no big deal. Socially, it was a completely acceptable habit, and the decision was as much about fashion and style as anything else.

Things are different now of course. We know all about the health hazards, and campaigners have persuaded governments everywhere to control tobacco advertising, raise cigarette prices, issue vigourous health warnings and prohibit smoking in public places.

And so we see fewer people smoking – but some still do, despite the higher prices and health warnings. And even now, almost every teenager will try a cigarette. That suggests that there’s something much more to the decision than simple logic, advertising, health issues and prices. Continue Reading

‘I’m too fat. I’m too thin. If only I were taller, shorter, had a smaller nose, bigger muscles, longer legs…’

Do any of these sound familiar? Are you always putting yourself down? If you do, you’re not alone. Young people especially worry a lot about what other people think of them. And it is feedback from people who are important to us that largely forms our self-image – which is what psychologists call our feelings about ourselves. Your self-image is very important because when you feel good about yourself, you enjoy life a lot more and are more successful. Successful people believe in themselves.

Our self-image of course applies to every aspect of how we feel about ourselves, from our personality and intelligence to our possessions, but we most often talk about it in terms of our physical appearance. That’s not at all surprising, because we all care what people think of our looks. But if their reactions – to the clothes we wear, the shape of our body, or the way we wear our hair – means that we feel less attractive than them, then we begin to develop a poor self-image and start to feel bad about ourselves. Continue Reading

Everywhere when people celebrate something important in their lives, food and it’s preparation is an important part of the ceremonies. And Easter’s no exception.

In Greece for example, Good Friday is a day of mourning and no cooking is done on that day, so it is on Easter Saturday morning that preparations start for the festive dinner on the night of the Resurrection. They cook ‘maghiritsa,’ a soup made from lamb tripe and herbs, and roast lamb, often on a spit. Maghiritsa is also eaten just after midnight on Easter morning as people return from church. They make the sign of the cross by candlelight over the front doors of their houses for good luck and gather to crack red eggs and eat the soup. There’s a festive atmosphere everywhere and people eat and dance until late into the night.

Lamb (or kid) is associated with Easter everywhere because Christ became known as the Lamb of God. But the idea of the sacrificial lamb is much older. Pesach means ‘passing over’ and the Israelites marked their doors with the blood of a lamb to prevent the Angel of Death killing their first- born in Egypt. Their doors were therefore ‘passed over’ and Jewish temples began to sacrifice lambs ritually to mark Passover.

But it is the exchange of eggs which everyone – especially children – think of as the real mark of Easter. And as often happens in religious ceremonies, this is a tradition that’s much older than Christianity. People have exchanged eggs in the springtime for many centuries before Easter was first celebrated. They’re ancient symbols of fertility and the Seder meal incorporates a hard-boiled egg as a symbol of new life. From the earliest times, the egg has been a symbol of rebirth in most cultures. Nobles wrapped eggs in gold leaf, while the rest of us coloured them brightly by boiling them with the leaves or petals of flowers.

Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was a common custom everywhere in England in the middle ages. Eggs were brightly coloured to mimic the new, fresh colours of spring, and this still done in the traditional way in northern parts of England, where the custom is called ‘Pace Egging.’ The name’s clearly derived from Pesach and involves putting patterned designs on hard boiled eggs. The background colour is provided by onion skins, with designs created by leaves and flowers placed next to the shell.

The ancient Persians also painted eggs for Nowrooz, their New Year celebration falling on the spring equinox. There are a great many rituals associated with eggs, mainly dating from medieval times in Europe, usually involving decorating, throwing or rolling eggs, or hiding them for children to find them.

To ancient pagans the egg’s oval shape represents the eternal cycle of seasons. In their tradition, the egg’s yolk symbolises the sun-god, and the egg-white and pale shell represents the maiden goddess. Their sacred marriage was said to have occurred at the Spring Equinox. Egyptians buried eggs in their tombs as did the Greeks, and a Roman proverb states ‘All life comes from an egg’. It’s probably no surprise that Christianity should also adopt the egg to symbolise the resurrection of Christ.

The Easter bunny comes from the hare, another ancient pre-Christian symbol of fertility associated with spring. Anglo-Saxon mythology says Eostara changed her pet bird into a rabbit to entertain a group of children, and the rabbit laid brightly coloured eggs for them, which is why they are hidden in a nest or in the garden.

There are many Easter baking traditions, ranging from simnel cake, popular in Britain, to kulich, a traditional bread in Russia and the Ukraine. The simnel cake’s a rich fruitcake covered with a thick layer of almond paste, which is also traditionally baked as a layer into the middle of the cake. Eleven balls of marzipan are placed around the top to represent the eleven true disciples – excluding Judas.

The Finns and Swedish eat mammi or memma, a baked malt porridge, while in Naples they eat pastiera, a cake made from ricotta cheese and in the province of Salamanca, a meat pie called hornazo made from pork loin, chorizo sausage and hard boiled eggs. Ham tends to be more popular in the United States, where the custom was brought by Scandinavians and Eastern Europeans. Poland’s mazurki are sweet cakes made with honey and filled with nuts and fruit. Hot cross buns, made around Europe, are probably the most well known – spiced buns made with currants and leavened with yeast, carrying the symbol of the cross and containing no ingredients that were not allowed in the Lent fast.

It’s also traditional to eat fish on Good Friday in many traditions, an idea that comes from the early Christians, who decreed that Friday would be a fast day on which no meat was eaten because that was the day Christ was crucified.

Colds may not be very serious, but they’re a miserable experience. And a disaster on a date! So is there anything you can do about them? They’re our most frequent illness – adults often have up to four a year and children up to ten. And there’s no cure, despite over 300,000 cold remedies available worldwide.

Your mother probably blames them on cold weather – and she has a point. You spread the virus longer if you’re cold, and the cilia in your respiratory system work more slowly, so it spreads further through your body. The virus is also more stable in cold weather because the air’s drier, and it stays airborne for longer.

Bad breath isn’t exactly one of life’s more important troubles – but it can certainly have a dire effect on your relationships! So not surprisingly, breath fresheners are big business. Well over $500 million worth are sold in the US alone every year. And lots of us have a real phobia about it – even though we’re quite blameless.

Most of the time the problem’s caused by anaerobic bacteria living in our mouths. They feed on bits of protein from our food and so on – and can produce some truly awful chemicals. Stuff like hydrogen sulphide, which smells of rotten-eggs; methyl mercaptan and skatole, which are also found in faeces; indole, which is used in perfumes – but actually smells dreadful on its own; cadaverine and putrescine which are also found in decaying meat; and isovaleric acid which smells like sweaty feet. It’s a wonder our breath ever smells sweet!

The problem’s usually at the very back of the tongue. This area’s difficult to keep clean and has lots of tiny pores where bacteria can hide. They feed on the debris from our mouths and mucus and the like dripping from behind the nose. Most of the time, saliva washes away the bacteria – and the smell. But anything that makes the mouth dry soon make their activities very obvious. Like breathing through the mouth, fasting, talking too much, stress and many medicines. Bits of protein rotting between the teeth can also smell, as can gum disease, abscesses, bad fillings and dirty dentures. It’s worse if you smoke. Smoking dries out the mouth, worsens gum conditions and any post-nasal drip, and leaves a smelly residue of its own. Continue Reading