Category Archives: Science

Coffee prevents cancer of the head and neck

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Good for her. Photo: Vladimer Shioshvili/Flickr CC

Cancers of the mouth and throat are among the deadliest. But if, like me, you drink coffee by the bucket-full, your chances of developing the disease are 40 percent less that non-coffee drinkers.

“Since coffee is so widely used and there is a relatively high incidence and low survival rate of these forms of cancers, our results have important public health implications that need to be further addressed,” Huntsman Cancer Institute (University of Utah) investigator lead researcher Mia Hashibe said in a release this afternoon.

This news comes on the heels of a report last week that coffee might reduce your risk for diabetes…

In other words, if you’ve been following Dr. Andrew Weil’s snake oil advise, and been feeling superior for not being a coffee drinker, you’ve again been misled by the self-appointed sage of alternative medicine.

U. of Utah's Mia Hashibe makes a startling epidemiological finding. Photo: American Association for Cancer Research

More from the announcement:

Using information from a pooled-analysis of nine studies collected by the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology (INHANCE) consortium, participants who were regular coffee drinkers, that is, those who drank an estimated four or more cups a day, compared with those who were non-drinkers, had a 39 percent decreased risk of oral cavity and pharynx cancers combined.

Data on decaffeinated coffee was too sparse for detailed analysis, but indicated no increased risk. Tea intake was not associated with head and neck cancer risk.

The association is more reliable among those who are frequent, regular coffee drinkers, consuming more than four cups of coffee a day.

More evidence that coffee cuts diabetes risk

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And scientists at Nagoya University say it’s the caffeine. (Note, this is a finding in mice, not humans.)

Take that Andrew Weil!

Weil is the bearded supplements guru, who is for just about anything, until he’s against it (after the science catches up with him). Ditto for the reverse: He has railed against the evils of coffee and black pepper, for example, based on scant evidence that either is bad for you.

Indeed, the evidence is mounting that coffee is an excellent tonic.

Results of the study:

Effects of Coffee Ingestion on Blood Glucose Concentration and Lipid Metabolism in KK-Ay Mice (Experiment 1)

In experiment 1, 4-week-old KK-Ay mice ingested coffee or water as their drinking water for 5 weeks. The body weight, food intake, and tissue weights are shown in Table 1. The final body weight did not differ between the control and coffee groups. The food intake (on days 11−13 and 25−27) was also not different between these two groups. Coffee ingestion reduced subcutaneous or retroperitoneal fat tissue weight, but did not affect epididymal or mesenteric fat tissue or interscapular BAT weights. The liver weight in the coffee group was significantly lower than that in the control group. As shown in Figure 1A, the blood glucose concentration in the control group gradually increased during the course of the experiment, reaching a maximum of 30.2 ± 1.5 mmol/L. After the second week, the blood glucose concentrations in the coffee groups were significantly lower than the respective values in the control group. Finally, blood glucose concentration in the coffee group (19.6 ± 1.7 mM) exhibited a 30% decrease compared with that in the control group (28.1 ± 1.5 mM) (Figure 1A).

via Coffee and Caffeine Ameliorate Hyperglycemia, Fatty Liver, and Inflammatory Adipocytokine Expression in Spontaneously Diabetic KK-Ay Mice – Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (ACS Publications).

Report: Better to have two moms than one dad

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Outstanding. And, of course, consistent with the personal experiences of anyone lucky enough to know a family with two moms. Bonus here is how CNN chooses to balance the story with criticism not from other scientists, but a Bible lady. Which makes this an example of something other than science reporting.

(CNN) — A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers.

via Kids of lesbians have fewer behavioral problems, study suggests – CNN.com.

Needy? Codependent? You're only human

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Someone's doing something right. Photo: Pedro Ribeiro Simões

I’ve always hated the term “codependent,” which emerged in the 1980′s as a relationship bugaboo. It is one of those labels that doctors started slapping on people who — for better or worse — were holding-on too hard to their humanity.

No surprise, then, that a new study –from department of obvious finds — reports that treating your partner like a human makes in likely she or he will have sex with you:

Humans are interdependent, with people doing things for each other all the time. Simply because a person does something for another does not mean that the emotion of gratitude will be felt. In addition to the possibility of not even noticing the kind gesture, one could have many different reactions to receiving a benefit from someone else, including gratitude, resentment, misunderstood, or indebtedness.

via It’s the little things: Everyday gratitude as a booster shot for romantic relationships.

Four tips for healthy red meat eating

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Health nut: Photo: H Anderson/Flickr CC

I knew I’d live to see red meat lose its bad boy image.

Turns out that the problem with the meat we’ve been eating is its toxic load, thanks to giant agribusinesses and our huge appetites.

Behold, the Heretic’s four-point harm reduction plan for meat eaters:

  1. Buy grass fed beef. It way better for you (higher in the good-for-you fats and vitamins) than corn fed cattle.
  2. Use spices. Rosemary and curry spices drastically reduce the formation of certain carcinogens.
  3. Avoid deli meats and dogs. A study suggests that processed meats, particularly those cured with sodium nitrate, are the real killers (quote from a WBUR story):

    We found that processed meats were associated with higher risk of heart disease and diabetes, and then unprocessed red meats were not.

  4. Don’t burn it. Hockey pucks are not the way to go. High heat and long cooking times turn burgers into poison pills, with higher levels of carcinogens. Surprisingly, though, grilled chicken is ten-times higher than beef burgers in its levels of certain cancer causing agents, according nutritionists at The Cancer Project.

via Not All Red Meats Are Heart-Unhealthy, Study Says | WBUR.

Star Trek prophecy fulfilled, centuries early

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Thanks to the Secret Sun for alerting us to the news that — as anticipated by the interesting, if boring, Star Trek: The Motion Picture — Voyager 2 is still speaking.

Only this time, the craft is speaking to us Terrans, and in a strange language, which the craft acquired “out there.”

“Alien expert Hartwig Hausdorf said:’It seems almost as if someone had reprogrammed or hijacked the probe – thus perhaps we do not yet know the whole truth.’”

via Have aliens hijacked Voyager 2 spacecraft | The Daily Telegraph.

Tylenol's trust issue: kids' meds made in grimy US plant

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Photo: Woodley Wonderworks/Flickr CC

Now, it’s American manufacturers who appear to be making poor quality meds, in filthy, grimy plants, and shipping them to the rest of the world. — MB

I’ve been railing against Tylenol for a long time, now.

I do not trust this drug.

Each year, tens of thousands of overdoses of acetaminophen, Tylenol’s active ingredient, fill US emergency rooms and hospital beds, and jam the phone lines at poison control centers. And it is the cause of hundreds of cases of acute liver failure in the US each year.

Now, Johnson & Johnson, which makes Tylenol, finds itself plagued by a quality control problem:

“Raw materials used to make over-the-counter infant’s and children’s medications, which are subject to a massive recall, tested positive for bacterial contamination, according to a Food and Drug Administration inspection report released late Tuesday.”

via FDA finds bacterial contamination in children’s medicine ingredients – latimes.com.

Darwin: victim of bad breeding

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Photo: Michael Bridgen/Flickr CC

A new article in the journal, BioScience, strikes me as being one about a ruthless, not a hapless, family. — MB

The Darwin family’s inbreeding created some misery for its youngest members, a new report suggests. (Charles Darwin, who married his first cousin, is the son of Susannah Wedgwood, the daughter of third cousins.)

“Three of Charles Darwin’s 10 children died before reaching adulthood, one from childhood tuberculosis at age 10 and one from unknown causes as an infant. A third child, who died in infancy of scarlet fever, appears in a photograph to have developmental abnormalities…Furthermore, three of Darwin’s six children with long-term marriages left no offspring. Unexplained infertility may also be a consequence of a consanguineous marriage.

Oddly, the scientists offer up this bit, as if to say, the Darwin-Wedgwood breeding effort was worth it, despite the dead babies:

“On the other hand, three of Darwin’s sons were fellows of the Royal Society and were knighted by Queen Victoria.”

via Inbreeding may have caused Darwin family ills.

Neanderthals still walking among us

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Who's your great-great-great-great...-granddaddy? Image: John Gurche, artist. Chip Clark, photographer. Via PhysOrg.

As a kid, you might have used the word, “Neanderthal,” to describe the bully who whaled on you at recess.

Turns out, new research suggests, almost all of us carry a bit of the prehistoric brute in our DNA.

Anthropologists at the Max Planck Institutes say they have found evidence that Neanderthals interbred with our ancestors in East Asia and the Mediterranean, about 50,000 years ago.

From PhysOrg, a description of the gene survey that found traces of the Neanderthal DNA in modern humans:

“The subjects of the study were drawn from 99 population groups in the Americas, Oceania, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the researchers analyzed over 600 microsatellite positions on the genome, which are sections that can be used rather like fingerprints. Doctoral student Sarah Joyce then developed an evolutionary tree to explain the genetic variations found in the microsatellite positions.”

via Neanderthals may have interbred with humans twice.