Diet and Health
terrasig | March 31, 2010Who knew?
As I am stuttering through recovery from LungMutiny2010, I am paying more attention to my diet. So, as I try to go out for my 10 min walk everyday, I still drink some sports drink - usually Gatorade made from the massive vat of powder you can buy here at Costco.
We tend to get plenty of sodium in our diet - far too much in the US, actually - but I always worry about potassium when I am sweating (Disclaimer: I am not an exercise physiologist or a cardiovascular or nephrology physician.).
I always thought that the widely-sold sports drinks were the best sources of potassium outside of…
terrasig | January 4, 2009I should really save this new item for next week's Friday Fermentable but I was too excited walking back from picking up the NYT and local fishwrapper from the cold, rainy driveway this morning.
Beer enthusiast, brewer, and public policy wiz, Sean Wilson, is staring back at me on the front page of the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer as "Tar Heel of the Week," in a Josh Shaffer article entitled, "Brewer to blend mad science, local flavor."
Each week, the N&O recognizes a citizen making substantial and often unique contributions to the state's economy, community, cultural patina, or all…
terrasig | November 20, 2008Just a quick reminder of who you're really supporting when you come by and click on this humble blog.
It's no secret that joining Seed Media Group's ScienceBlogs.com can bring the blogger(s) a very small amount of compensation based upon grades of site traffic - depending on your traffic, this could be about as much as paying for your monthly highspeed internet connection at the house. But over the course of a year, this ends up being more money than I donate personally to my public radio station.
Anyway, when I started Terra Sig at the old joint and was invited to join Sb, I was in a…
terrasig | November 2, 2008If you haven't already heard it elsewhere, one of your favorite blogging physicians, Dr Val Jones, has recently hung out her own e-shingle at Getting Better with Dr Val. Many of you know Dr Val from her previous blog at Revolution Health, Dr Val and the Voice of Reason. Dr Val served there as Senior Medical Director and oversaw the growth of the consumer health portal as it grew to 120 million pageviews per month (!).
Here's how Dr Val describes her new digs:
Getting Better is the continuation of Dr. Val Jones' previous blog at Revolution Health: "Dr. Val and the Voice of Reason." The…
terrasig | August 20, 2008Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog.
Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers:
For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…
terrasig | May 13, 2008I'm not sure whether this story qualifies as alternative medicine or religion, or neither. I throw it out to you because I and other sci/med bloggers widely criticize the infiltration of so-called alternative medicine in our academic medical centers.
But here in today's Health Journal section of the Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck tells us of the application of mindfulness, a practice derived from Buddhism, to overcoming binge-eating disorders. Sure, this may be considered alternative medicine but it's really an application of psychology under the auspices of integrative medicine:
In a…
terrasig | March 22, 2008I usually don't do these kinds of linkfests but we're on the road for a Pharmboy family Easter weekend and there are a few items of interest that slipped through my fingers recently. Here are a few things that readers may enjoy this weekend:
Bora's blog gets its 1,000,000th visitor
Go over and offer congratulations to Mr Community.
Get a tetanus shot first, and be sure to use clean nails.
Adding new meaning to "get off the cross, someone else needs the wood," WSJ Health Blog alerts us to ritual crucifixions in the Philippines. By the way, belated congratulations to our Health Blog…
terrasig | January 1, 2008...there is a very colorful discussion thread of hangover remedies over at the WSJ Health Blog.
Yesterday, Health Blog's Jacob Goldstein briefly discussed a 2000 Annals of Internal Medicine paper on alcohol hangovers and remedies/prophylactic approaches. Despite all of the discussion, Goldstein also cites a 2005 systematic review in BMJ by Max Pittler and Edzard Enrst at Exeter that concluded,
No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of…
terrasig | December 30, 2007In rats, though. But still very interesting.
So says yesterday's New York Times Op-Ed by psychiatrist, Paul Steinberg, entitled, "The Hangover That Lasts." This timely piece follows our discussion on Friday about champagne choices for New Year's Eve, the premier event for binge-drinking.
While I'm not a neuropharmacologist, Steinberg's article piqued my interest because it focuses on the work of Dr Fulton T Crews and his former student Dr Jennifer Obernier (now with the National Academy of Sciences) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr Crews is director of the UNC Bowles…
terrasig | September 16, 2007Leukemia Drug Adulteration
Chinese generic versions of the anticancer drugs, methotrexate and cytarabine hydrochloride, have been reported to be contaminated with an undisclosed substance according to several wire reports this morning.
Several children in a Shanghai hospital were reported to suffer leg pain and difficulty walking after being injected with methotrexate. A common drug used in many chemotherapy regimens for leukemia, methotrexate is not normally associated with these side effects.
The Xinhua news agency reported that the drugs had been traced to one manufacturer, Shanghai…
terrasig | September 4, 2007A press release came in from the US NIH before the weekend noting that NCI's Dr Jeffrey Green has identified potential anticancer activities from a grape skin extract that is not dependent on the presence of the well-known compound, resveratrol. The report is to appear in the 1 September issue of Cancer Research, but the article is not yet online.
Green's group investigated a skin extract from muscadine grapes (Vitis rotundifolia) that was apparently nearly devoid of resveratrol but contained high levels of compunds called anthocyanins (they called it MSKE for "muscadine skin extract"). The…
terrasig | July 19, 2007My post the other day on a study showing a diet high in fructose caused massive increases in plasma triglycerides received an unusually high number of comments for this blog.
One comment in particular, from Audrae Erickson, corrected me on subsidies given to sugar cane producers vs. corn producers:
Regarding the comment that "large corn-processing companies benefit from subsidies unavailable to conventional sugar cane producers."
The U.S. government provides support to a number of farm commodities, including sugar cane producers, in order to ensure a stable farm economy and a reliable food…
terrasig | July 14, 2007Consumption of fructose, usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), has been suggested as one of the underestimated causes of the increased incidence of obesity/metabolic syndrome in the U.S.
Given the magnitude of the issue, Medscape covered this report, "Fructose but Not Glucose Consumption Linked to Atherogenic Lipid Profile," from a presentation at the recent meeting of the American Diabetes Association by Peter J. Havel, DVM, PhD, and colleagues at the University of California at Davis Department of Nutrition.
In this small trial, 23 normal volunteers were first given an…
terrasig | May 27, 2007After worries over the last few weeks of diethylene glycol being substituted for glycerin in cough syrup and toothpaste, I was happy to be reminded that we have a green source for glycerin. No need to risk using Chinese-sourced glycerin - glycerin (glycerol) is a by-product of biodiesel production.
But rather than sell it for pharmaceutical uses, researchers at the University of Missouri at Columbia are investigating the biodiesel by-product for use in cattle feed:
In a study that began this month, Monty Kerley, professor of ruminant nutrition in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural…
terrasig | May 9, 2007Via the Knight Science Journalism Tracker at MIT, I was directed to one of the best-written articles on melamine contamination of pet food and animal feed.
David Brown at the Washington Post is the guilty party whose article appeared Monday. Brown does a terrific job of explaining how the modestly toxic substance, melamine, can cause renal failure when combined with cyanuric acid. Not widely reported in the press is the fact that cyanuric acid, another nitrogen-rich compound, has also been found to contaminate some wheat gluten and wheat flour from China.
For example, here is the most…
terrasig | May 9, 2007Between melamine and diethylene glycol, most of my attention this past week has been on unsafe food and drug additives in products imported into the US and other countries. Nicholas Zamiska has an article in today's Wall Street Journal detailing this widespread problem: China, India, and Mexico are the countries that lead the number of refusals of food product imports by the US FDA:
Formaldehyde, which has been linked to cancer, has legitimate uses in adhesives and embalming. But in Indonesia, Sutikno, a 35-year-old tofu maker in south Jakarta who goes by one name, uses it to keep the tofu…
terrasig | April 20, 2007In the comment thread of my recent post about Herbalife, the multilevel supplement marketing company, I brought up the company's association with Dr Louis Ignarro who shared the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.
My medblogging colleague, Orac, reminded me of a post he put up last October about his personal experience hearing Dr Ignarro talk at the American Association for Academic Surgery meeting:
You see, what happened is that Dr. Ignarro started delving into what sounded to me like woo about…
terrasig | March 27, 2007A few years ago, GlaxoSmithKline marketed Remifemin brand of black cohosh extract from their consumer products division as a hormone-free alternative in managing menopausal symptoms. But after reports surfaced that black cohosh might be associated with cases of liver damage, GSK very quietly walked away. (To date, no one has ever shown that black cohosh is causally associated with liver damage). A company called Enzymatic Therapy continues to sell this product in the US, one that is manufactured by Schaper & Bruemmer in Germany.
Well, here's what happens when GSK gets involved in…
terrasig | February 24, 2007A Colorado high school has banned a newly-released energy drink after six students reported "symptoms including shortness of breath, heart palpitations and nausea." Interestingly, convenience stores near the high school have also stopped selling the energy drink, Spike Shooter.
Tim Patterson, chief executive of Colorado Springs-based Biotest Laboratories, which produces Spike Shooter, said the drink isn't meant for anyone under 18. "I don't want these kids consuming the product," Patterson said. "That's not my target market."
Funny. The 7 February press release from the company notes from…
terrasig | January 16, 2007Dan Hurley's new book, "Natural Causes: Death, Lies and Politics in America's Vitamin and Herbal Supplement Industry," has the industry on the defensive.
Cited by Katie Couric's two-part CBS News series on dietary supplements and excerpted today in the New York Times, Hurley seems to have created a buzz reminiscent of Marcia Angell's similar indictment of the prescription pharmaceutical industry.
Hurley's book is already #953 on Amazon and had been picking up heat from supplement advocate bloggers since before it was even released on 26 December.
Unfortunately, I was not privy to the…