Science &THE IDEAS JOURNAL
Science. Systems. Possibility.
Explore questions across science, from everyday observations to the ideas and methods that help explain them. Clear reading for a curious mind.
Yes, lung tumors can be benign. Most small lung nodules turn out not to be cancer, and several non-cancerous tumor types (hamartomas, lipomas, fibromas, and inflammatory pseudotumors) grow inside the lung itself.
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Inside the tools of discovery ↗Yes, low iron can be a sign of cancer, but it is far more often a sign of something benign. Iron deficiency anemia affects roughly 1 in 20 adults in the United States, while cancer causes only a small fraction of those cases.
Yes, low ferritin can cause depression-like symptoms, and the link is biologically plausible, not just correlational.
Yes, low potassium (hypokalemia) can cause both headaches and dizziness, but through different mechanisms and at different severity levels.
Yes, low iron can cause chest pain, but not through the mechanism most people assume.
Yes, low estrogen can cause dry eyes, primarily by shrinking and destabilizing the meibomian glands that supply the oil layer of your tear film.
Yes, losartan and carvedilol can be taken together, and the combination is both common and guideline-supported in heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and in difficult-to-control hypertension.
Yes, losing weight can improve kidney function, particularly in people with obesity and chronic kidney disease (CKD) or type 2 diabetes.
Yes, low vitamin B12 can cause tinnitus, and the link is biologically direct rather than coincidental.
Yes, locusts can hurt you, but almost never through biting. Their mouthparts are built for shearing plant tissue, and a locust would have to be handled roughly or feel trapped to nip human skin.
Yes, low vitamin B12 can cause migraines, and the evidence in 2026 supports it as a real but under-recognized trigger, especially in people with elevated homocysteine.
Yes, but usually indirectly. A single injection of lidocaine or bupivacaine clears the bloodstream within roughly 8 to 24 hours, so the drug itself rarely causes days of fatigue.
Lorazepam does not relieve pain directly. It is a benzodiazepine with no analgesic mechanism: it enhances GABA-A receptor activity to calm the nervous system, but it does not block pain signals, reduce inflammation, or act on opioid…
Yes, lifting can cause sciatica, but usually not the way most people assume. In the majority of cases, the lift itself does not crush the sciatic nerve.
Yes, lisinopril can cause swelling, and the mechanism is a bradykinin buildup rather than an allergy.
Yes, leeches can hurt you, though the harm is rarely dramatic. A leech bite is usually painless because the worm injects a local anesthetic, and most exposures cause only a temporary, slow-bleeding wound.
Yes, lisinopril can cause diarrhea, but it is one of the least common gastrointestinal side effects of the drug, reported in roughly 2% to 3% of patients in clinical trials compared with about 10% to 20% for cough.
Lithium does not reliably lower blood pressure, and in most people it does the opposite. The drug has no established antihypertensive role; no major cardiology guideline lists it as a blood pressure treatment.
Yes, life can exist without water, but only under specific conditions: organisms must substitute water with a solvent that shares its key properties, namely liquid range at ambient temperatures, high polarity, and proton-exchange capacity.
Levothyroxine does not cause high cholesterol. If anything, untreated or under-treated hypothyroidism raises LDL cholesterol, and levothyroxine lowers it by restoring thyroid hormone signaling in the liver.
Yes, lemon extract can go bad, but the risk is driven almost entirely by alcohol content and storage conditions rather than by the lemons themselves.
Levothyroxine can cause low white blood cell count, but only rarely, and almost never as a direct bone-marrow suppression effect the way chemotherapy or carbimazole does.
Yes, laser hair removal can cause bruising, and it is a recognized but uncommon side effect that occurs in roughly 1 to 5 percent of treatment sessions.
Yes, lemon juice can kill some bacteria, but only weakly and inconsistently. Its citric acid lowers pH to roughly 2.0–2.6, a range that inhibits or inactivates many foodborne bacteria over minutes to hours rather than seconds.
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