Hoverboards and health: how good for you is this year’s hottest trend?

Hoverboards and health: how good for you is this year’s hottest trend?

Walking across campus to my office each morning this semester, I’ve found it hard to ignore the growing number of students using hoverboards to get around. These two-wheel self-balancing boards (they don’t really hover, Back-to-the-Future-style) are one of the hottest gadgets this holiday season. As sedentary lifestyles continue to be a major underlying factor in chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, I wondered whether these trendy two-wheelers are simply another way to avoid the exercise we all need to stay healthy. As it turns out, it’s not only their health that hoverboard users need to worry about.

The low-down on vaping and health

The low-down on vaping and health

Vaping has come of age it seems – at least according to the Oxford Dictionaries.  The word “vape”, which is synonymous with electronic cigarette use, has been selected as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2014. So what is vaping, and what are...