Cafe Health

Lissa Rankin, MD is an OB/GYN physician, author, keynote speaker, consultant to health care visionaries, professional artist, and founder of the women's health and wellness community OwningPink.com. Discouraged by the broken, patriarchal health care system, she left her medical practice in 2007 only to realize that you can quit your job, but you can't quit your calling. This epiphany launched her on a journey of discovery that led her to become a leader in the field of mind/body medicine, which she blogs about at OwningPink.com and is writing about in her third book Mind Over Medicine: Scientific Proof You Can Heal Yourself (Hay House, 2013).

Pain helps us survive, and yet some people are born without the ability to feel pain, how?

The average person experiences dozens of individual itches each day. We've all experienced the annoyance of an inconvenient itch - but have you ever pondered why we itch in the first place? Is there actually an evolutionary purpose to the itch, or is it simply there to annoy us? Emma Bryce digs deep into the skin to find out.

Some animals produce venom that is lethal to both their prey and to humans, but scientists are finding ways to use these compounds as medicine.

Scientists are taking cancer patients' immune cells and engineering them to fight cancer. How does it work?

Your research team has found a prehistoric virus preserved in the permafrost and isolated it for study. After a late night working, you're just closing up the lab when a sudden earthquake hits and breaks all the sample vials. Will you be able to destroy the virus before the vents open and unleash a deadly airborne plague? Lisa Winer shows how.

Are GMOs bad for your health? Or is this fear unfounded?

Most people think the Mediterranean diet is just about restricting what you eat, but they're getting it all wrong.

This tech helps paralyzed people type with their minds, but the sky's the limit.

So maybe we can't outrun cheetahs or antelope, but humans are uniquely adapted for long distance running. What does science have to say about marathon running? To find out, (and because I was feeling a little crazy) I decided to run one!

"I'm now swimming in a sea of color": This colorblind designer is seeing a whole new world around him thanks to these innovative glasses.

One man cracked his knuckles in one hand for 60 years and not the other. Watch the video to see what he found out.

Have you ever wondered what a fly is doing when it lands on your food? Laci did some research to figure out just what happens.

Researchers have found that working long hours could be putting your mental and physical health at serious risk.

There have been plenty of scandals and questionable practices in the house that Big Mac built, we're gonna keep things simple, by focusing on the food, the marketing behind it, and its impact on the way we eat.

Every second of your life you are under attack. Bacteria, viruses, spores and more living stuff wants to enter your body and use its resources for itself. The immune system is a powerful army of cells that fights like a T-Rex on speed and sacrifices itself for your survival.

Humans know the surprising prick of a needle, the searing pain of a stubbed toe, and the throbbing of a toothache. We can identify many types of pain and have multiple ways of treating it - but what about other species?

Should you stop using hand sanitizer?

Engineers at MIT have found a way to prevent hydrogels from dehydrating.

Some perfumers can distinguish individual odors in a fragrance made of hundreds of scents; tea-experts have been known to sniff out the exact location of a particular tea; and the NYC Transit Authority once had a employee responsible only for sniffing out gas leaks.

This artificial leaf creates medicines using sunlight.