First, something to consider: White teeth aren’t necessarily healthy teeth. Us British, for example, who are apparently well-known for our “popcorn mouths”, generally have healthier teeth than Americans, who are obsessed with blinding white smiles. Still, there’s normally no harm in whitening your teeth for vanity’s sake,...
Societies develop rules of etiquette for a number of reasons: To signal that you come in peace (in the case of handshakes), to embarrass you at the dinner table (the justification for dessert spoons and fish forks) or to keep those around you safe from whatever leaves...
Whether it’s seeing our home team lose or splitting up with a partner, we’ve all had a cry at some point in our lives. Those big drops of sadness even have their own name, and are distinct from regular eye moisture: They’re referred to as emotional tears,...
Like a thief in the night, a panic attack can strike at any moment and without any obvious reason. Those who’ve suffered them understand that they can be a truly terrifying experience: The pounding heart, the shortness of breath, the feverish sweat, all culminating in a seemingly...
There are two types of people in the world: Those who smile with their mouth open, and those who smile with their mouth closed. The former presumably have better teeth than the latter, and are likely more confident as a result (which explains why they happily show...
Pop quiz, hotshot: What’s a hangnail? Some people use the term to refer to torn skin around their nail and cuticles. Others reserve it for nails that break, rip or split. In reality, it’s the former — but whatever you call it, the goal of treating hangnails...
I often observe, bemused, as my girlfriend fiddles with her eyelashes before presenting herself to the general public. She chomps on them with a strange metal clamp thingy, darkens them with some black sludge and combs them with a miniature round brush that looks like it was...
Every man’s stream fires off in an unintended direction from time to time. But what’s actually causing that to happen? According to Adrienne Carmack, board-certified urologist and author of The Good Mommy’s Guide to Her Little Boy’s Penis, complications caused by circumcision (or other surgeries on the...
Getting swoll. Doing work. Pumping iron. No matter what you call it, exercising can be tough on your body. There’s a certain degree of pain or discomfort while you’re working out, but the real burn is often felt in the days after your initial trip to the...
It’s been ages since, so why can’t I get that explosive love affair I once had out of my head? “When we are going through challenging times, or our life just doesn’t seem interesting enough, it can be common to start ruminating about happier or more exciting...
If, as George Bernard Shaw once said, “whisky is liquid sunshine,” hangovers are a meteor straight to the face. But how exactly does too much of our favorite alcoholic beverage add up to a throbbing headache, dizzying nausea and draining fatigue? Dr. Aaron White, senior scientific advisor...
Pubes get more attention than ever in the modern world. More and more dudes are sculpting them with some simply shaving them off in their entirety. But is that actually recommended? And why have we even got the short, curly little blighters in the first place? Let’s...
