Health & Wellness
Boost?: L-carnitine is often put in energy drinks.
Read the ingredient label on any energy drink and odds are fairly good that, among other arcane items, you'll come across something called L-carnitine.
Also sold in supplement form, L-carnitine is often touted as a miracle molecule that boosts energy and helps burn fat naturally.
The claims appear to stem largely from studies showing that the molecule may improve endurance and energy in people with heart or vascular disease. But to conclude that it would do the same in healthy people is a big leap, says Dr. Ziv Haskal, professor of radiology and surgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
A recent study conducted by researchers from the State University of New York (SUNY) found that fluoride ingestion may be responsible for causing premature births. Presented to the American Public Health Association at its annual meeting, these findings ratchet up yet another detrimental consequence of ingesting this toxic poison that is added to most American municipal water supplies.
Sodium fluoride, a waste byproduct of the aluminum industry, is touted by most mainstream health bureaucracies as one of the greatest public health achievements ever discovered. The American Dental Association praises the medication of the public through fluoridated municipal water supplies, claiming that it has done wonders to prevent tooth decay. A simple investigation beyond the glaringly false rhetoric, however, reveals the dirty reality behind fluoride and the incredible harm it inflicts upon those who ingest it.
Contrary to popular belief, fluoride is not a natural substance; it is the byproduct of the aluminum and nuclear industries' use of fluorine gas. The Merck Index lists fluoride's primary use as rat and cockroach poison and it is a known carcinogen. It wasn't until the 1950s that the FDA was somehow convinced that the poison allegedly helped protect teeth.
Gingivitis, which may affect more than one-half of the U.S. adult population, is a condition commonly attributed to lapses in simple oral hygiene habits. However, a new study shows that development and reversal of gingivitis at the molecular level is apparently much more complicated than its causes might indicate.
Research conducted jointly by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Procter & Gamble (P&G) Oral Care has found that more than 9,000 genes -- nearly 30 percent of the genes found in the human body -- are expressed differently during the onset and healing process associated with gingivitis. Biological pathways associated with activation of the immune system were found to be the major pathways being activated and critical to controlling the body's reaction to plaque build-up on the teeth. Additionally, other gene expression pathways activated during plaque overgrowth include those involved in wound healing, neural processes and skin turnover.
Results of the study are published today in the December 2009 edition of the Journal of Periodontology. This study is the first to successfully identify gene expression and biological pathways involved with the onset and healing process of gingivitis.
© Eshel Ben Jacob and Herbert Levine
Colonies of billions of Bacillus subtilis bacteria exhibit the complex structures that sometimes form under environmental stress.
Scientists studying how bacteria under stress collectively weigh and initiate different survival strategies say they have gained new insights into how humans make strategic decisions that affect their health, wealth and the fate of others in society.
Their study, published this week in the early online edition of the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was accomplished when the scientists applied the mathematical techniques used in physics to describe the complex interplay of genes and proteins that colonies of bacteria rely upon to initiate different survival strategies during times of environmental stress. Using the mathematical tools of theoretical physics and chemistry to describe complex biological systems is becoming more commonplace in the emerging field of theoretical biological physics.
The authors of the new study are theoretical physicists and chemists at the University of California, San Diego's Center for Theoretical Biological Physics, the nation's center for this activity funded by the National Science Foundation, and Tel Aviv University in Israel. They say that how genes are turned on and off in bacteria living under conditions of stress not only shed light on how complex biological systems interact, but provide insights for economists and political scientists applying mathematical models to describe complex human decision making.
Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, primarily found in fish and seafood, may have a role in colorectal cancer prevention, according to results presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held Dec. 6-9, 2009, in Houston.
"Experimental data have shown benefits of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids in colorectal carcinogenesis, ranging from reduced tumor growth, suppression of angiogenesis and inhibition of metastasis," said Sangmi Kim, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, N.C. "Our finding of inverse association between dietary intakes of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and distal large bowel cancer in white participants adds additional support to the hypothesis."
Although experimental and clinical data suggest that long-chain omega-3 fatty acids possess anti-neoplastic properties in the colon, epidemiologic data to date has been inconclusive.
Anti-depressants really can change someone's personality, researchers find, as patients become more extrovert and less neurotic.
A study in America found patients taking the popular antidepressant paroxetine, also called Seroxat in Britain, were more likely to see a drop in neuroticism and a rise extrovert traits than those receiving talking therapies or a dummy pill.
It had been thought that any changes in personality with the drugs was due to the patient's depression being lifted.
But now it appears the medicine, one of the drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs, can directly affect traits.
The human sensory experience is far more complex and nuanced than previously thought, according to a groundbreaking new study published in the December 15 issue of the journal Pain. In the article, researchers at Albany Medical College, the University of Liverpool and Cambridge University report that the human body has an entirely unique and separate sensory system aside from the nerves that give most of us the ability to touch and feel. Surprisingly, this sensory network is located throughout our blood vessels and sweat glands, and is for most people, largely imperceptible.
"It's almost like hearing the subtle sound of a single instrument in the midst of a symphony," said senior author Frank Rice, PhD, a Neuroscience Professor at Albany Medical College (AMC), who is a leading authority on the nerve supply to the skin. "It is only when we shift focus away from the nerve endings associated with normal skin sensation that we can appreciate the sensation hidden in the background."
The research team discovered this hidden sensory system by studying two unique patients who were diagnosed with a previously unknown abnormality by lead author David Bowsher, M.D., Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool's Pain Research Institute. These patients had an extremely rare condition called congenital insensitivity to pain, meaning that they were born with very little ability to feel pain. Other rare individuals with this condition have excessively dry skin, often mutilate themselves accidentally and usually have severe mental handicaps.
Half of Australian adults and 63 per cent of Australians on a higher income believe 15- to 17-year-olds should be allowed to consume alcohol under parental supervision at home, according to the latest MBF Healthwatch survey.
Bupa Australia* Chief Medical Officer, Dr Christine Bennett, said these statistics were both surprising and of concern given alcohol can have long-term implications for young adult brains that are not yet fully developed.
"Our survey suggests many Australians believe it's acceptable to buy alcohol for teenagers and allow them to drink under parental supervision at home," Dr Bennett said.
"Some parents may think this is harmless; some may see this approach as a way to teach their teenage children about socially responsible drinking. But we want parents to understand that early exposure may actually be doing them damage.
"Evidence suggests that the earlier the age that alcohol is introduced, the greater the risk of long-term alcohol related health problems.
Individuals who experience psychological or social adversity in childhood may have lasting emotional, immune and metabolic abnormalities that help explain why they develop more age-related diseases in adulthood, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
As the population ages, age-related conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes and dementia are becoming more prevalent, according to background information in the article. New ways of preventing these diseases and enhancing the quality of longer lives are needed. "Interventions targeting modifiable risk factors (e.g., smoking, inactivity and poor diet) in adult life have only limited efficacy in preventing age-related disease," the authors write. "Because of the increasing recognition that preventable risk exposures in early life may contribute to pathophysiological processes leading to age-related disease, the science of aging has turned to a life-course perspective."
Sunshine vitamin may play protective role against common form of the blood cancer
A shortage of vitamin D may stack the deck against people fighting a common form of lymphoma, researchers reported December 5 at a meeting of the American Society of Hematology. The new study adds this cancer to the list of malignancies suspected of being more difficult to control in patients with vitamin D deficiency common in parts of the U.S. population.
From 2002 to 2008, the researchers analyzed blood samples from 374 newly diagnosed patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, a fast-growing cancer of white blood cells called B cells. It mainly hits people over 50 and accounts for roughly 40 percent of lymphomas.
The study participants averaged 62 years of age. The blood tests revealed that half were deficient in vitamin D at the start of treatment, having less than 25 nanograms per milliliter of blood.
