Universal Medicine

Nope its a runner! Unfortunately the Olympics are coming to a close and there truly was some incredible displays of athleticism shown including Mo Farah's defense of both 10,000m and 5,000m Olympic titles to secure his place in the history books. In this article I'm going to look at one of the training methods many top long-distance athletes employ to maximise performance- Altitude training. To many of us altitude training is just running around on top of mountains and jobs a good'un but in reality it is not so simple as that. So before I explain to you the effects of altitude training, I will first go over the how athletes use altitude to maximise their training. Traditionally athletes adopted the live high, train high approach to altitude training as the idea of as you train at high altitude (under hypoxic conditions) your body adapts to the conditions and your performance increases however studies have shown that this performance is not transferred when back at sea lev...

For those of you who have been following our blogs for a long time, you may recall that back in February, Adil Rahman insightfully explored the origin, causes and symptoms of the Zika virus. Just as a recall, the Zika virus is an infection transmitted by mosquitos – which act as vectors. Although this disease originated in 1947, it has only become widespread recently in areas of Africa, Asia and more recently, the Western Hemisphere. This week on Universal Medicine, we return to the virus due to recent news exposing the contraction of the virus by the US military forces. A spokesman for Pentagon, the headquarters for the United States department of defence, reported that 30 active members of the US army have the Zika virus. In total, the US has 41 people with the virus, including one pregnant woman. Even though some of the information has been revealed, we are still not told the countries from which the virus has been contracted. Further to providing some form of treatment to the se...

Okay, so many of us use coffee as a method to ignite our day to give the sensation of being active and ready for the upcoming task ahead. However, what affect is coffee having on an individual? Is caffeine causing negative health issues? Well this week on Universal medicine we will be exploring a majorly discussed topic in the effects of having coffee. Firstly, we can establish that the main ingredient in coffee is caffeine which is natural compound obtain from 60 different plant sources which include coffee beans and cacao seeds. We acknowledge that coffee is a go to drink for individuals wanting to increase their alertness but, how does this occur? Well, caffeine can be seen as a stimulant as it can activate the central nervous system thus preventing tiredness and lack of concentration. A positive point about the intake of caffeine is that it could potentially reduce the chance of obtaining Parkinson's disease as studies have indicated that a high intake of coffee could b...