By Aliza Hirsch, Exercise has the power to confer extensive health benefits. However, at extreme levels, there are those athletes and competitors who are willing to sacrifice their wellbeing for the sake of improved performance. Despite the recent stricter enforcement of drug testing and punishment for drug use amongst competitive athletes, the use of [...]
By Andrew Golin, Simply put, the cardiovascular system is a set of connected tubes with varying sizes that circulate blood around the body. Physiological systems can be classified as open or closed. Systems where substances can easily enter or exit, such as the digestive tract, are referred to as open. Conversely, blood is unable [...]
By Andrew Golin, The largest artery in the body, the aorta, carries oxygenated blood to all parts of the body via the circulatory system. The coronary arteries branch off from the aorta and supply oxygenated blood to heart tissue. It is thus critically important that the coronary arteries remain healthy in order for the heart [...]
By Andrew Golin, Movement is one of the most distinctive characteristics of human life. Body motion is facilitated by specialized cells called muscle fibers and is controlled by our nervous system (1). Three broad classes of muscle fibers exist: skeletal, cardiac and smooth. Skeletal muscle fibers are multi-nucleated long fibers that have a cross [...]
The underlying pathology of ischaemic heart disease in adults is typically damage to and the loss of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells) that leads to heart failure (1). After embryonic development, cardiomyocytes have little to no capacity to regenerate (1). This is a fundamental issue in treating heart disease. Because much of heart disease is the [...]