Quotulatiousness

September 30, 2011

Coming soon: the “sober-up” pill

Filed under: Health, Science — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:09

Scientists at the University of Illinois may have cracked the secret to sobering up after a night on the town:

It’s your mutinous immune system that gives you that sozzled feeling after a boozy session, scientists claim in a paper published today in the British Journal of Pharmacology.

Conk out certain immuno receptors in your brain and you’ll be able to walk in a straight line, perform complex manual tasks and probably even stay awake on the night bus home after a heavy dose of alcoholic refreshment.

These receptors are a particular part of your immune system and scientists have been trying to figure out their connection to alcohol for years. When active TLR4s react with alcohol they release an inflammatory chemical called cytokine that seems to contribute to making us sleepy and poorly-coordinated.

It was a research team at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Illinois, that made the breakthrough. Their pill works for mice, at least.

September 20, 2011

“In the short term, self-control is a limited resource”

Filed under: Health, Media, Science — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:18

NPR Books exercises a bit of willpower to look at a new book by John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister:

The power to resist temptation — to pass up dessert, to endure an unpleasant experience, to defer satisfaction — is our “greatest human strength,” argue psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and science writer John Tierney in their new book, Willpower. The book delves into the science of our age-old struggle with self-control.

“The Victorians talked about this vague idea of it being some form of mental energy,” Tierney tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “In the last 15 years we’ve discovered that it really is a form of energy in the brain. It’s like a muscle that can be strengthened with use, but it also gets fatigued with use.”

Whether you’re resisting a favorite food or completing a dreaded task, exercising self-control in different areas of your life saps the same mental energy source. Many dieters employ the out-of-sight-out-of-mind technique of hiding desirable food — and studies show there’s something to it.

September 14, 2011

Broken CFL? “The four-page document that followed read more like reactor-core meltdown protocols than simple reassurance”

Filed under: Environment, Health, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 14:49

As the compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) becomes the only readily available replacement for boring old incandescent bulbs, more people are discovering that cleanup after breaking a CFL is not child’s play:

Not long ago, Dan Perkins was in his New Haven home when his wife told him that she’d broken a lightbulb. She’d been cleaning in the attic bedroom of their seven-year-old son when she knocked over a lamp. The bulb, one of those twisty compact fluorescents, shattered onto the carpet next to their son’s bed.

Perkins, who draws the political comic This Modern World under the name Tom Tomorrow, was vaguely aware that a broken compact fluorescent bulb might be more problematic than a broken conventional incandescent.

“I knew that they had some mercury in them,” Perkins says. “That had been kind of a propaganda point for the right wing in the debate over bulb efficiency, so that was on my radar.”

To learn what kind of risk the broken bulb posed and what he ought to do about it, Perkins turned to Google, which sent him to a fact sheet put out by the Connecticut Department of Public Health entitled “Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs: What to Do If a Bulb Breaks.”

“Stay calm,” the fact sheet instructed. But the four-page document that followed read more like reactor-core meltdown protocols than simple reassurance. It cautioned that small children, pregnant women, and pets should be sequestered from the breakage site and called for an immediate shutdown of any ventilation systems.

Here’s a post on the incandescent bulb ban and CFL breakage from earlier this year. Tom Kelley posted an informative comment to that post, addressing several issues including the energy efficiency of CFLs:

I don’t use enough of the CFLs to notice a difference in the electric bill, but in a straight-across, lumen for lumen, hour for hour comparison, these bulbs should lower one’s kW/hr electricity consumption (so says the Mythbusters tv show).

BUT, and this is a real big BUT, that does not translate into a reduction in the raw energy needed to create the electricity, due to a small detail known as “power factor.” While resistive loads like an incandescent bulb (typically) have a power factor of 1.0, the CFL bulbs have a 0.5 to 0.6 power factor rating, meaning that the CFL consumes as much as twice the raw “energy” (VA (Volt Amps) at the generator), as the electric meter measures in W (Watts).

So, one can go ahead and buy CFLs if one thinks the bulbs may lower one’s electric bill, but one should not be under any illusion that the CFLs are saving any consumption of coal, oil, gas, etc.

A response to the chefs’ open letter

Filed under: Environment, Food, Health, Politics, Randomness — Tags: — Nicholas @ 08:42

A group of well-known chefs recently issued an open letter about the relationship of cooking to the wider world. Rob Lyons would prefer them to stick to what they do so well and avoid being pawns for dietary puritans and scolds who want us to live poorer lives:

Dear chefs,

I would like to be a great admirer of your collective works. However, I’ve never had enough money to eat in your elite restaurants, so I’ll just have to trust that you really are the best in the business. I read with interest your recent Open Letter to the Chefs of Tomorrow. It clearly expresses your views on the way you think cooking should be done and how the restaurant business can interact with the rest of the world. But what you are suggesting is just nonsense. You should stop talking to your well-off customers and the food industry’s dreadful hangers on, and get a sense of perspective.

[. . .]

Please, stop now. St Jamie of Oliver is doing quite enough on behalf of chefs to scare us about what we eat without you lot joining in. Authoritarian busybodies have spent the past two or three decades lecturing us about our eating habits. They now want to exploit your reputations as chefs to justify their prescriptions. You may be flattered by the attention, but those miserable puritans have nothing in common with you.

Good food — especially restaurant food — is about pleasure and excess. It’s about oodles of butter, oil, salt and vino. It’s about staggering away from the table stuffed but happy. The petty puritans of the health lobby want low-fat, low-salt and no booze, in mean and miserable portions. If you go along with that health agenda, it will only prove you’re not the sharpest knives in the cutlery drawer.

[. . .]

Face it, guys. What you do isn’t about food at all. You’re an expensive and exclusive branch of the entertainment industry; you have more in common with high opera than family dinners. And in that respect, I wouldn’t want you to change a thing (except, perhaps, those prices). But please don’t use your success and reputation to parrot the sickly prejudices of the foodie crowd.

September 5, 2011

“Listening to some foodie types, you would think that anything that has been remotely industrially processed was as deadly as nerve poison.”

Filed under: Food, Health, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:48

Rob Lyons calls out hypocritical attitudes toward processed food:

Listening to some foodie types, you would think that anything that has been remotely industrially processed was as deadly as nerve poison. Yet even food snobs eat plenty of processed food. It’s just the right kind of processed food.

A great illustration of the fact that there is nothing wrong, per se, with processed food is a little bit of self-experimentation by Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University. Last year for 10 weeks, Haub ate a Twinkie bar every three hours instead of a meal, adding variety to his diet with Doritos, Oreos and sugary cereals. He kept up some semblance of good nutrition by taking multivitamins and throwing in a few vegetables, too.

But most importantly, Haub stuck to eating no more than 1,800 calories per day — well below the 2,500 calories per day usually suggested for men. The result was that Haub lost 27 pounds. This ‘convenience store diet’ may not have been ideal, but in many respects his health appeared to be better. His cholesterol test results suggested he was in better condition than before, despite this diet of ‘junk’.

August 23, 2011

“[T]he doughnut burger was pretty much the healthiest thing offered”

Filed under: Food, Health, Randomness — Nicholas @ 07:37

The horror, the horror:

I wish you could see the disdain my boys are showing as they pose for this picture. They’re embarrassed for their mother that they have to pose with food that you could get at TGI Friday’s. A true Hoosier would have ordered this:

Now that’s dairy. Someday my kids will understand that there are things you do for Mom so that she doesn’t realize your next stop is this:

That’s a doughnut burger. They take a Krispy Kreme and put it on the griddle. Then they take a bacon cheeseburger and put it on top. No veggies for us. Of course, it’s topped with another Krispy Kreme. Noah, who has the most discriminating palate in the family, loved this. Aimee will deny liking this, but she darn well tried it. What makes the Indiana State Fair better than any other food adventure you can think of, though, is that the doughnut burger was pretty much the healthiest thing offered at the grill.

August 19, 2011

Excellent news for players of impact sports

Filed under: Football, Health, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:04

It’s becoming more a topic of concern for players (and especially for the parents of younger players) in sports which feature significant amounts of contact: detecting when a player has suffered a concussion. Football and hockey players are often determined to prove how tough they are by “playing through” injury, but concussions are not like bruises or other injuries — they can have long-term dangerous side-effects. There’s now a product available at the retail level that may help:

Over the next few weeks, a U.S. company called Battle Sports Science is making its Impact Indicator available throughout Canada and the United States. It is a sensor that is fastened to a helmet chin strap and detects when the user’s head undergoes an impact likely to cause a concussion.

Football versions of this device should be on the way to Canada in two weeks, said Battle Sports CEO Chris Circo, and one for hockey is expected to be available in late September or early October.

When attached and operating, a green light will be illuminated at the player’s chin. If the light turns red, it’s indicating that the player has been hit hard and should be evaluated before returning to play.

Once the technology is widely available, the professional leagues and the college and university teams should adopt them as standard equipment. Junior players would have less reason to resist using the device if all the top-level players were seen to be using them. It’ll take longer to retrain sports announcers to stop glorify big hits and featuring them on slo-mo playbacks while saying things like “He got jacked-up”, “They blew him up” and “He got his bell rung on that hit”.

August 17, 2011

Ontario enables a “snitch line” in the fight against private health care

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:28

The Ontario government is fighting back against even the hint of privatization of health services in the province by, among other things, setting up a new snitch line:

“There’s no doubt in my mind that people are trying to get around (the law)…. I think it’s really important that we all protect our universal health-care system,” the Health Minister said in an interview. “It’s just important that we are ever-vigilant.”

Critics, however, call the initiative a politically motivated waste of money that could be better spent on improving actual medical services. In the lead-up to this fall’s provincial election, the Liberal government seems anxious to portray itself as a steadfast defender of public health care.

“How is this going to improve patient care for anybody?” Brett Skinner, president and health-care analyst at the conservative Fraser Institute think-tank, asked about the snitch line. “It’s not helping patients get better access. In fact, it’s designed to prevent patients from getting better access.”

The Canada Health Act generally forbids health-care providers from charging patients directly for services that are covered under medicare. Various private health services have cropped up in Quebec, B.C. and Alberta in recent years, however, with little interference by the federal government.

The Ontario Liberals, on the other hand, have presented themselves as strenuous foes of private health care.

Maclean’s on transgendered teens

Filed under: Cancon, Health — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:19

Maclean’s covers a controversial topic:

Treatment of GID is highly controversial. Some experts believe that the best way to help children and teens is to convince them to accept their bodies and not undergo the therapies that will cause dramatic physical changes. Cormac, however, lives in Vancouver, where pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Daniel Metzger and the B.C. Transgender Care Group are based. The loosely organized group, of which Metzger is a member, is the sole provider of care for transgender youth in B.C. and offers the most extensive suite of medical services for GID adolescents in Canada. Metzger believes that the best course of treatment for teenagers diagnosed with GID is hormone therapy: either blockers to stop puberty or, if post-pubescent, hormones that physically alter the body in a way that reflects their chosen gender. For some teens like Cormac, who are confident, psychologically stable and have family support, this transformation can be complemented further with cosmetic surgery.

Without treatment, Metzger argues, the path to adulthood for GID teens can be torturous, as evidenced by shockingly high suicide rates: 45 per cent for those aged 18-44, in comparison to the national average of 1.6 per cent, according to the U.S. 2010 National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report on Health and Health Care. Cormac carefully considers what life would be like today if he were still Amber. He pauses for a few seconds then gravely announces, “I think that would push me to be suicidal.” He is much more calm now, he says, free from his obsession with wanting to be a boy. “Before I transitioned I thought about it a lot, like, every minute. Now, I feel like I have so much extra brain space,” says Cormac, who is an honour roll student.

July 21, 2011

The “food desert” theory of US obesity

Filed under: Food, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:06

In short, it fails to explain the phenomenon:

Policymakers are scrambling to find a solution to our growing waistlines. Some are targeting America’s “food deserts” — areas lacking in grocery stores.

As first lady Michelle Obama explained last March, “families wind up buying their groceries at the local gas station or convenience store, places that offer few, if any, healthy options.”

[. . .]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines a food desert as a low-income census tract where a large number of residents are more than a mile from a grocery store.

By this definition, 13.5 million Americans are supposedly McVictimized by food deserts. That’s less than 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, yet roughly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese.

You don’t need a Ph.D. in mathematics to understand that food deserts are, at best, a very small aspect of a vast problem.

July 19, 2011

Virginia Tech publishes football helmet safety rankings

Filed under: Football, Health, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:41

Gregg Easterbrook has the details from a Virginia Tech comparative study of football helmets:

Researchers at Virginia Tech have produced the first brand-by-brand, model-by-model ranking for the likely concussion resistance of helmets. A star-rating system modeled on crash safety rankings for automobiles, the rankings clearly identify the best and worst helmets. Virginia Tech researchers give high marks to these helmets: the Riddell Speed, Riddell Revolution, Riddell Revolution IQ; the Schutt Ion 4D and Schutt DNA; and the Xenith X1.The Virginia Tech researchers give medium grades to the Schutt Air XP and Schutt Air Advantage. The Virginia Tech rankings warn players not to wear these helmets: the Riddell VSR4 and the Adams A2000.

Now the chilling part: the VSR4 — Virginia Tech’s second-lowest-rated helmet — was the most common helmet in the NFL last season. The VSR4 is widely worn in college and high school, too. Immediately after the Virginia Tech findings were released, Riddell advised football teams to stop using the VSR4, long the company’s best seller.

(The new Rawlings line of football helmets was not on the market in time to be included in the study. Virginia Tech will rank Rawlings helmets — which from the start is promoting safety features rather than styling — next year.)

July 8, 2011

Shifting in the general direction of legalizing marijuana?

Filed under: Health, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:30

Ace is still not eager to see pot legalized, but he’s had a bit of a change of heart lately:

The liberty argument is a strong one.

The counter-argument, and the one I have previously relied upon/acceded to, was that the state has such a powerful interest in protecting people from harming themselves that our Duty to Protect outweighs the case for liberty.

But I don’t believe that any more. For one thing, I am becoming, little by little, and belatedly, very suspicious of any argument that assigns liberty a lower priority than another value. And I’m becoming, again belatedly, very very suspicious of the general claim that we can use the Coercive Power of the State to make people live better lives.

It’s not so much a slippery slope argument — of the type “If we say the state can do X to supposedly improve our lives, who’s to say they can’t do Y, as well, making the same claim?” — as it is an argument about that first step itself.

I don’t think I want the state using its coercive power to lock people up any more for doing drugs.

What business is it of mine? I do lots of things that others may look down upon but I wouldn’t be at all happy about having State Coercion brought to bear upon me for any of it.

So, cut through all the stuff about medicinal marijuana and the like… it’s really just about respecting a citizens’ basic right to do as he pleases without state coercion, so long as what he pleases does not produce direct harm for anyone else.

And I just don’t buy the case for “direct harm” anymore.

July 7, 2011

“Bodice-rippers” guilty of perverting women’s lives

Filed under: Books, Britain, Education, Health, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:00

Apparently, The Guardian thinks that women are weak-willed and easily (mis-)lead, especially when it comes to their sex lives:

Mills & Boon’s romance novels should come with a health warning, according to a report published in an academic journal.

Blaming romance novels for unprotected sex, unwanted pregnancies, unrealistic sexual expectations and relationship breakdowns, author and psychologist Susan Quilliam says that “what we see in our consulting rooms is more likely to be informed by Mills & Boon than by the Family Planning Association”, advising readers of the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care that “sometimes the kindest and wisest thing we can do for our clients is to encourage them to put down the books — and pick up reality”.

Her comments follow a recent claim that romance novels can “dangerously unbalance” their readers, with Christian psychologist Dr Juli Slattery saying she was seeing “more and more women who are clinically addicted to romantic books”, and that “for many women, these novels really do promote dissatisfaction with their real relationships”.

July 6, 2011

Restricting your salt intake? It may not help you

Filed under: Food, Government, Health, Media — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:36

Rob Lyons recommends you take the constant barrage of advice about lowering your salt intake a bit less seriously:

The advice to reduce our salt intake has been so ubiquitous for so long that it simply must be correct, right? Those white crystals may make our food taste better, but it’s a Scientific Fact that salt increases blood pressure and, therefore, cutting back on it will reduce blood pressure and we’ll live longer. Trouble is, while this seems to make sense, the evidence keeps failing to back it up — and a study published today raises further questions about this simplistic advice.

The new study is the latest Cochrane Review, an effort to revisit the evidence on a wide variety of healthcare interventions to provide clearer guidance to medical practitioners and patients. The review took in seven studies involving 6,489 patients. ‘Intensive support and encouragement to reduce salt intake did lead to a reduction in salt eaten and a small reduction in blood pressure after more than six months’, according to the article’s lead author, Professor Rod Taylor of the University of Exeter. But the real question was ‘whether this dietary change also reduced a person’s risk of dying or suffering from cardiovascular events’.

And the answer was ‘not really’. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Previous studies have come to a similar conclusion: reducing salt does seem to reduce blood pressure a little, but the effect on cardiovascular disease is so small as to be hardly worth bothering with. If your blood pressure is high enough that you’ve been prescribed drugs to reduce it, then there may be some benefit in also reducing how much salt you eat. But that’s about it.

Perhaps they should call themselves the Canadian Fundraising Society?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Health — Tags: — Nicholas @ 12:21

As it appears that they only have a sideline in cancer research these days:

An Ontario cancer researcher is concerned that the Canadian Cancer Society has proportionally shifted funding away from research and is spending more of its dollars on fundraising and administration costs.

“Most scientists don’t realize that the budget has been going up and up, and donations have been growing, but the budget for research has been shrinking,” said Brian Lichty, a researcher at McMaster University who is looking into treating cancer with viruses that kill tumours. “So they are surprised and disappointed when they find out that this is the case, and the trend.”

CBC’s Marketplace analyzed the Canadian Cancer Society’s financial reports dating back a dozen years. It discovered that each year, as the society raised more dollars, the proportion of money it spent on research dropped dramatically — from 40.3 per cent in 2000 to under 22 per cent in 2011.

The amount of money spent on research has increased slightly over the years, but as a portion of the Cancer Society’s growing budget, it’s almost been cut in half.

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