The Daily Beast, June 17, 2012

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Barbara Natterson-Horowitz’s world was turned upside down by a monkey with a heart attack. Natterson-Horowitz is a cardiologist at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She’s also on the medical advisory board for the Los Angeles Zoo, where she goes from time to time to consult for the zoo veterinarians. One day in 2005, the vets at the zoo asked her to come by to take a look at a kitten-size emperor tamarin named Spitzbuben that was suffering from heart failure.

As Natterson-Horowitz examined Spitzbuben, she did what she usually does with her human patients: she gazed into Spitzbuben’s miniature eyes to put her at ease.

Continue reading “‘Zoobiquity’: What Animals Can Teach Us About Our Health” →

Discover, June 15, 2012

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I dig a knife into a cardboard box, slit it open, and lift a plastic bottle of bright red fluid from inside. I set it down on my kitchen table, next to my coffee and eggs. The drink, called NeuroSonic, is labeled with a cartoon silhouette of a head, with a red circle where its brain should be. A jagged line—presumably the trace of an EKG—crosses the circle. And down at the very bottom of the bottle, it reads, “Mental performance in every bottle.”

My office is full of similar boxes: Dream Water (“Dream Responsibly”), Brain Toniq (“The clean and intelligent think drink”), iChill (“helps you relax, reduce stress, sleep better”), and Nawgan (“What to Drink When You Want to Think”).

Continue reading “Bottles Full of Brain-Boosters” →