Health & WellnessS


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Acetaldehyde in Alcohol - No Longer Just The Chemical That Causes a Hangover


PhysOrg
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:08 UTC
A new study published today in the journal Addiction shows that drinking alcohol is the greatest risk factor for acetaldehyde-related cancer. Heavy drinkers may be at increased risk due to exposure from multiple sources.

Acetaldehyde is ubiquitous in daily life. Widely present in the environment, it is inhaled from the air and tobacco smoke, ingested from alcohol and foods, and produced in the human body during the metabolism of alcoholic beverages.

Research indicates that this organic chemical plays a significant role in the development of certain types of cancers (especially of the upper digestive tract), and it is currently classified as possibly carcinogenic by the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization. New research from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto and the Chemical and Veterinary Investigation Laboratory Karlsruhe (CVUA) in Germany recently provided the necessary methodology for calculating the risk for the ingestion of alcoholic beverages.
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The Brain Maintains Language Skills in Spite of Alcohol Damage By Drawing From Other Regions


PhysOrg
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:08 UTC
Researchers know that alcoholism can damage the brain's frontal lobes and cerebellum, regions involved in language processing. Nonetheless, alcoholics' language skills appear to be relatively spared from alcohol's damaging effects. New findings suggest the brain maintains language skills by drawing upon other systems that would normally be used to perform other tasks simultaneously.

Prior neuroimaging studies have shown alcoholism-related damage to the frontal lobes and cerebellum. Yet even though these regions are involved in language processing, alcoholics' language skills appear to be relatively spared from alcohol's damaging effects. A new study suggests that alcoholics develop "compensatory mechanisms" to maintain their language skills despite alcohol's damages... compensation which may, in turn, have a restrictive effect on other processes.

Results will be published in the June issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
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Book

Flashback My life with a psychopath


Yorkshire Post
Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:50 UTC
Kate Lock
© Simon HulmeChapters from the past: Kate Lock in the Blakehead Bookshop, York. Writing her book has proved a huge release and relief
Kate Lock knew her much older boyfriend had been jailed for murder but it was only after they split up and when he later committed suicide that she realised the full extent of his crime. She talks to Jill Armstrong about how writing a book has helped to finally lay the past to rest.

Kate Lock was a naive, 20-year-old undergraduate when she met the charismatic Tim Franklin. He was a mature student, 36 years her senior, recently released from prison on a life sentence.

They embarked on an intense and explosive relationship but it was not until Kate tried to leave Tim when her studies at Exeter University came to an end, that she began to realise how dangerous he was.

She had been living with a murderer and came very close to becoming another victim. Twenty years on she has written what started out as a memoir of their time together and turned into an investigation of the crime he committed and the realisation that the man she had loved was a psychopath.

Kate, now 43, is a former journalist and has written eight TV novelisations. Her own story is so incredible that as she says, you couldn't have made it up. Even after she had left Tim she still felt trapped by him and in the book she describes a chilling encounter when he wouldn't let her out of the house.
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Beer

Low To Moderate, Not Heavy, Drinking Releases 'Feel-good' Endorphins In The Brain


ScienceDaily
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:48 UTC
martini glass
Scientists know that alcohol affects the brain, but the specifics remain unclear. One possibility is that alcohol may increase or decrease the release and the synthesis of endogenous opioid peptides - endorphins, enkephalins and dynorphins - in distinct brain regions important for drug addiction.

For the first time, a rodent study has confirmed that low to moderate levels of alcohol alter beta-endorphin release in the midbrain/Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) region, producing the pleasant effects that likely reinforce alcohol consumption.
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US student Virgil Griffith does 'study' aligning musical preferences to intelligence levels

Ian Rakowski
News.com.au
Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:47 UTC
music and intelligence
© Virgil GriffithSweet note ... Lovers of Beethoven will be pleased to know they top the pile in intelligence
If you're a fan of Lil' Wayne, chances are you're, well, stupid.

Love Beyonce? You're in major strife. And if you love the music of the Lord, the news is bad for you, too.

A California Tech student has matched music preferences to US high school marks, and come up with correlations that will send brainiacs scurrying for their iPods.

PhD student Virgil Griffith's "somewhat unscientific" study showed the smartest students listened to Beethoven, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens. Radiohead and Ben Folds Five also appealed to big brains.

Lil' Wayne, Beyonce and Soca took the cringeworthy honours at the other end of the scale.

But before you relax, consider this: jazz, gospel and pop were all well down the ladder - and even classical music was behind the general pack, trailing acts like Snow Patrol and Kanye West.
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Light Saber

Study Says Hip-Hop Dumbs Listeners Down

Tolu Olorunda
ThisIsRealMusic.com
Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:47 UTC
"Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons who have acquired some knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form which is exercised for amusement or for show."

--Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Essays. New York: Peoples Book Club, 1949, pp. 253.

In a recent study conducted by Virgil Griffiths, a PhD student in California, Hip-Hop music listeners are portrayed as unintelligent and intellectually deficient. The independent study, titled "Music That Makes You Dumb," found that those who listen to Lil' Wayne, T.I., Kanye West, Jay-z and Ludacris (the usual suspects) are, essentially, dumb. On the contrary, listening to Beethoven, U2, Bob Dylan, Counting Crows and Sufjan Stevens displays intellectual sophistication. Excuse my coarseness: BULLSHIT! We've been through this before. We need not pretend otherwise. For how long do we entertain these barrages of insults, before responding back?
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Cheeseburger

Angry? It might be something you ate

Jenn Gearey
The Ottawa Citizen
Mon, 09 Mar 2009 04:56 UTC
Research is finding a connection between your food and your mood

Imagine that a calm, happy life could be served on a breakfast, lunch or dinner plate, even in a brown bag. According to some, it can be.

You won't find it in a fast-food hamburger box or a vending machine. But more and more research shows there is a correlation between good food and good mood.

"It's a fast-food nation, and we don't always take the time to make the connection between what we eat and how we feel," says Kristy Lewis, a naturopathic doctor at Pure Med Naturopathic Centre in Ottawa.

"We live in a society where people want to take a quick pill, whereas conscious nutrition is a lot of work."

Aggression is a behaviour that many food experts say can be altered by diet. What we eat can even affect our sense of right and wrong.

"Food is not just something that fills our stomach. It's very active biologically and chemically, and it affects us," says Jack Challem, Montreal-born author of The Food-Mood Solution. "Your body needs vitamins, protein and other nutrients to make the brain chemicals that help you think clearly, maintain a good mood and act in socially acceptable ways."
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Pills

Smoke from tissue-burning tools like lasers can be toxic to surgical team

Sheryl Ubelacker
The Star
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 04:33 UTC
laser surgery
© Darren Calabrese/The Canadian PressA cloud of plume escapes into the air as Dr. John Semple, Chief of Surgery at the Women's College Hospital, demonstrates a common surgical procedure during a press conference in Toronto on Wednesday, March 18, 2009. Using lasers or cauterizing tools during surgery creates a noxious smoke that can affect the health of doctors, nurses and patients. New voluntary standards were unveiled Wednesday to minimize the number of pathogens that enter health workers' lungs.
Smoke from tissue-burning tools like lasers can be toxic to surgical team

The surgeon touches an area of exposed flesh with a cauterizing tool for less than a minute, sending up a cloud of noxious smoke that quickly wafts across the room and catches at the eyes and throat.

It is only a demonstration - the flesh is actually raw turkey - but the result illustrates the hazard that doctors, nurses and even patients can be exposed to during operations that employ lasers and other tissue-burning tools.

Known as "plume," the smoke is laden with all manner of potentially toxic substances and disease-causing microbes that can make their way past surgical masks and into the lungs.

"According to one study, exposure to (vapours from) one gram of laser-cut tissue is like smoking three unfiltered cigarettes," said Suzanne Kiraly, president of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA), which on Wednesday released new guidelines for capturing and disposing surgical plume.

"Thus far, researchers have identified more than 600 organic compounds in plume generated by vaporized tissue," Kiraly told a news conference at Women's College Hospital in Toronto, where the demonstration took place.

Comment: While reporting on a legitimate problem, mainstream medicine can't resist getting a dig in at smoking. What cigarette or pipe tobacco will ever contain "aerosolized blood and blood-borne pathogens"? The two are hardly equatable.

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Red Flag

Silent victims opt for jobs over workplace bullying, sexual harassment complaints

Charles Brewer
News Com Australia
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:30 UTC
Image
© Charles BrewerTough times ... a new survey reveals bullying and sexual harassment are rife in Australian workplaces
Australian workers are putting up with bullying and sexual harassment because they fear a complaint would mean "career death".

Almost two thirds of Australian workers say they have been bullied at work, and nearly one third claim to have been sexually harassed, according to a survey by employment website CareerOne.com.au. It showed 74 per cent of of sexual harassment cases went unreported, often because workers feared the impact it would have on their job.

Australian Human Rights Commision sex discrimination commisioner Elizabeth Broderick said the findings were no surprise, and said the dire economic climate would reinforce the culture of silence.

"Job security is now seen as all-important," she said. "People will be reluctant to do anything.

"It's too soon to tell, but I would expect (low levels of reporting) to become worse."
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Arrow Down

Book: Columbine shooters mentally ill, not bullied

Michael Rubinkam
Associated Press
Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:35 UTC
Shortly after the massacre at Columbine High School, a question popped into Peter Langman's mind: What would possess a child to pick up a gun, take it to school and mow down his classmates?

His interest wasn't merely academic. Langman, a child psychologist, had been asked to evaluate a teenager who posted a hit list on his Web site.

"To be sitting face to face with someone who was thought to be a potential risk for doing something like a Columbine attack was very intense," Langman says now. "A lot was riding on what we did with him. This was a potential mass murderer."

Since there was very little research at the time to guide him, Langman says, he felt an "ethical obligation" to learn all he could about the psychology of school shooters. The result of his decade-long inquiry: a book that plumbs the lives of 10 notorious school shooters - including Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho - to draw conclusions about what set them off.
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