This is Your Brain When You Give Up Sugar for Lent

Can you resist? (Shuttershock)

Anyone who knows me also knows that I have a huge sweet tooth.

I always have. My friend and fellow graduate student Andrew is equally afflicted, and living in Hershey, Pennsylvania—the “Chocolate Capital of the World”—doesn’t help either of us.

But Andrew is braver than I am. Last year, he gave up sweets for Lent.

Are you abstaining from sweets for Lent this year, too? Here’s what you can expect over the next 40 days.

Ecstasy: "Safe"?

Call me a prude, but I'm not so thrilled about the announcement made yesterday by British Columbia's top health official that ecstasy is "safe."

Dr. Perry Kendall asserted yesterday that the health risks of 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine—or MDMA, the active ingredient in the drug ecstasy—are exaggerated, and that pure ecstasy is not dangerous when consumed responsibly by adults.

Its lethal dangers arise, he says, when gangs pollute the drug with other chemicals.

I'm not sure when the notion came into play that anything which doesn't kill you automatically means its "safe," but I would like to respectfully debunk Dr. Kendall's remarks with a very powerful and striking study published 13 years ago.