DailyDirt: Hangovers -- Ain't Nobody Got Time For That

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Hangovers are pretty common for alcohol drinkers, but oddly, medical science doesn't really have an exact cause for the phenomenon. Sure, there's a bit of dehydration and trace amounts of toxic compounds from some alcoholic spirits, but brain inflammation from high alcohol levels seems to be just something that happens (pending further study). There have been some studies on hangovers, but no reliable cure just yet. If you want to try a few things that might work, check out some of the links below.

• The Hangover Club offers a service to deliver you a certified registered nurse and a drip bag that goes right into your bloodstream -- that's not at all guaranteed to cure a hangover or act as any kind of treatment for a disease. However, if you're otherwise healthy, it won't hurt (too much), and there could be some placebo effects mixed with some actual pain/nausea medications to relieve hangover symptoms. [url]
• A "drunken headache cure" written on sheets of papyrus in Greek has been translated. The treatment involves wearing a kind of wreath around your neck made up of twigs from a particular shrub. Yup. That's probably 100% effective for a hangover. [url]
• Try preventing a hangover by just not drinking as much, and drinking more slowly and eating some food with your drinks. Duh. One drink per hour. And liquor before beer? Nope. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: alcohol, dehydration, drunken headache cure, hangover, health, medicine, myths, nausea, pain medication, placebo effects
Companies: hangover club

DailyDirt: No More Urban Legends Of Waking Up In A Bathtub Without Your Kidneys...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are plenty of ethical issues with organ transplants and how to handle the undersupply of donors. Hopefully, medical science is getting advanced enough to grow organs and eliminate the shortage of organs for patients who need them. Here are just a few stories about organs in modern medicine.

• A 6-way paired kidney transplant operation took 2 days and a handful of surgeons to complete. Software called MatchGrid identifies chains of donors and recipients that can optimize organ compatibility and significantly shorten the recipient wait list. [url]
• Researchers have grown mini-stomachs from stem cells -- technically, just the lower end of the stomach, but still. Petri-dish stomachs could help in learning how to prevent certain stomach cancers and potentially lead to stomach patches for ulcers. [url]
• Are there really vestigial organs in your body? Living without a gall bladder or appendix is not uncommon, but who gets these organs removed as a precaution? (Answer: Antarctic explorers and perhaps some astronauts.) [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: appendix, cancer, gall bladder, health, kidneys, matchgrid, organ, organ transplant, regeneration, stem cells, stomach, ulcer

DailyDirt: What Are We Going To Do With All This Genetic Information?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Genomic sequencing is becoming more readily available and cheaper by the minute. It's not quite as easy as it looks on TV (ie. we don't have a Star Trek tricorder just yet), but minuscule amounts of DNA are revealing a vast amount of information about our health and our ancestors. This treasure trove of data is literally lying around everywhere just waiting to be collected.

• The genetic information of 2,636 Icelanders has helped researchers more accurately pin down when the father of all humanity lived -- some time between 174,000 and 321,000 years ago. Our mitochondrial Eve is estimated to have lived about 200,000 years ago. However, our most recent common ancestor (MRCA) likely lived just 2,000-4,000 years ago. [url]
• A routine blood test can determine the sex of a baby just 7 weeks into a pregnancy. Can we expect people to use the results of these tests responsibly? How accurate do these tests really need to be? [url]
• A diagnostic test for cancer based on a simple blood test could save a lot of time, money and stress. The Lymphocyte Genome Sensitivity (LGS) test is still in clinical trials, but early results suggest it might be possible to detect cancer or pre-cancerous conditions without requiring biopsies. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, if you have some spare change (or more) and would like to support Techdirt, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: blood tests, cancer, data, dna, genetics, genomic sequencing, health, icelanders, lgs test, lymphocyte genome sensitivity test, mitochondrial eve, mrca

DailyDirt: Eating More Chocolate

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Plenty of folks like chocolate, so it makes some sense to try to make chocolate ever so slightly more healthy (as long as the taste isn't horribly affected). If you're going to binge on chocolate in the near future, you might want to check out a few of these links to help rationalize your chocolate consumption.

• Scientists have figured out some simple processing steps that help maximize the naturally-occurring antioxidants in chocolate. Storing cacao pods for a week and roasting them at lower temperatures seem to help make slightly healthier chocolate -- as if anyone needed another excuse to eat chocolate. [url]
• Watch how 12 pounds of chocolate is formed into an enormous Easter egg. Then watch some cacao farmers from the Ivory Coast eat chocolate for the first time. [url]
• The global demand for chocolate is increasing, but the supply hasn't caught up. The price of chocolate might be going up unless farmers figure out how to grow more cacao to feed the world's hunger for delicious chocolate bars. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: antioxidants, cacao, candy, chocolate, food, health

DailyDirt: Meals From Around The World

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People eat all kinds of different things in different parts of the world. Some countries have well-known traditional meals and menu items, and foodies all over the internet are posting pictures of what they're eating all the time. Food-obsessed folks seem to like to capture snapshots of food -- both good and bad -- for fun and commentary. Here are some global food snapshots for you to look over that might not be all that appetizing.

• Military food rations from different countries have surprising variety. There are some similarities, such as: chocolate, isotonic drinks, muesli, pâté, coffee, chewing gum and disinfectant wipes. [url]
• Kids all over the world are posting pictures of their school lunches on the internet. However, some of the photos that are supposed to represent a country's school lunch program aren't very accurate -- and it's fascinating to see some comparisons of what could be served and what actually is. [url]
• Oxfam reports that the Netherlands is the easiest country in the world for getting a balanced, nutritious diet. The US and Japan tied for a spot in 21st place, and Canada landed at 25th. Obviously, the global food distribution system could use some improvements since there's enough food for everyone, but obesity and starvation still exist. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: diet, food, health, meals, menu, nutritious, rations, school lunches
Companies: oxfam

Health Impact Assessment: TPP Poses Risks To Affordable Medicines, Tobacco Control And Nutrition Labeling

from the matter-of-life-and-death dept

The TPP negotiations are still being conducted with a total lack of transparency -- especially compared to TAFTA/TTIP, where public pressure has led to the release of a large number of documents from the EU, though not from the US. Despite that secrecy, the TPP negotiators seem to have no qualms about proclaiming the talks as nearly "done." Since they have been saying something similar for years, skepticism is required, but it is possible that negotiations might be getting closer to the end game where all the really difficult issues need to be addressed.

That makes the absence of any official release of the draft text pretty appalling. Assuming that the final text will be released if and when an agreement is reached, this will leave very little time for the complex provisions to be analyzed properly before the national votes take place in some TPP countries. Given what's at stake -- TPP is likely to have a big impact not just on trade, but also on many aspects of daily life -- one group has decided to pre-empt that eventual release, and to analyze what information we have, notably from leaks. HIA Connect, based in Australia, describes itself as follows:

A resource for health impact assessment (HIA) as a method and a process to ensure that public policies, projects, plans, and programs contribute to the health of the population and health equity.

HIA's new report "Negotiating Healthy Trade in Australia: A Health Impact Assessment of the Proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement" (pdf) focuses on TPP's likely impact on health in Australia, but many of its conclusions apply to other countries participating in the TPP negotations. Here's a summary of its findings:

A report released today by a large team of academics and non-government health organisations reveals that the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) poses risks to the health of Australians in areas such as provision of affordable medicines, tobacco and alcohol policies and nutrition labelling. Many public health organisations have been tracking the progress of the TPP negotiations over the past several years and have expressed concerns about the potential impacts and lack of transparency.

As that makes clear, the academics and other experts who put together the report are concerned about a number of adverse effects that TPP is likely to have. Some are familiar, for example the impact on affordable medicines, or on the ability to regulate and restrict tobacco advertising -- an area where Australia is already suffering thanks to corporate sovereignty provisions in other treaties. Others are new, but similar: some TPP provisions could limit the regulation of alcohol availability and alcohol marketing, and restrict alcohol control measures such as pregnancy warning labels. Food is another area where labeling restrictions in TPP could prevent governments from warning about the consumption of unhealthy ingredients.

Of course, supporters of TPP will doubtless say that all this is premature, and that nothing certain can be said until the final text is released -- a point echoed by the authors of the report:

"In the absence of publicly available current drafts of the trade agreement, it is difficult to predict what the impacts of the TPP will be," said Dr Deborah Gleeson, one of the report's authors. "In the study, we traced the potential impacts based on proposals that have been -- or are being -- discussed in the negotiations.

But as Gleeson goes on to point out, there's a very easy way to remedy this problem:

"The only way to properly assess the risks is to allow a comprehensive health impact assessment to be conducted on the final agreement before it gets signed by Cabinet."

Given that people's health and even lives may be at stake here, it is irresponsible for participating governments to withhold the draft texts -- especially since they are allegedly so close to completion -- and thus to prevent a proper health impact assessment of them being conducted well in advance of any final votes.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: affordable medicine, health, health impact, patents, tobacco, tpp

DailyDirt: Big Bones Are A Myth, But Obesity Has Legit Causes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people are naturally skinny and able to eat almost anything they want without gaining weight. Obviously, there are also plenty of folks who need to watch their diets very carefully and exercise regularly to prevent unhealthy weight gain. The causes for obesity are not well understood, and while many observers like to say it's obvious that people need to expend more calories than they consume, the challenge of doing so isn't as simple as it sounds for many. There aren't any miracle diets or drugs, but as we study obesity and understand it more, there could be more palatable treatments someday.

• Mitochondrial genetics could explain metabolic changes with age and with different environmental conditions. Large scale studies of mitochondrial changes in city populations are just beginning, and researchers will try to make sense of how cell genetics influence health. [url]
• A rare chromosomal abnormality can cause Prader-­Willi syndrome -- a condition that can be fatal and cruel because its victims can literally eat to death. People with this condition have no sensation of satiety, so they can eat until their stomachs rupture. [url]
• There's evidence to support the idea that intestinal microbes correlate with obesity. A fecal transplant from an overweight daughter to a mother suffering from an intestinal infection resulted in the infection going away -- but also a weight gain problem for the mother that previously didn't exist. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: diet, fecal transplant, flora, genetics, gut, health, microbes, mitochondria, obesity, overweight, prader-willi syndrome, satiety, weight

DailyDirt: Eat This, Don't Eat That...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fad diets and diet recommendations seem to change every few years. Whole eggs were bad for you, but now they should be considered as part of a balanced diet. What makes a diet balanced? More carbs? Less Fat? Maybe you should just walk every day to your nearest Subway and only eat sandwiches. Or maybe you can just track your calories and eat whatever you want. Or not.

• The American Heart Association and the US govt have been recommending low cholesterol, low saturated-fat diets for over 50 years. However, mounting evidence is removing foods high in cholesterol from the "bad" food lists -- and maybe someday foods with saturated fat won't be perceived as unhealthy either. [url]
• Saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease. The unintended consequences of vilifying fat in our diet has shifted people to consume more carbohydrates -- which actually do have proven negative health effects. [url]
• Dietary guidelines from Brazil are a bit non-specific, but they also sound pretty reasonable. Brazil's dietary advice includes this point: "Be wary of food advertising and marketing." [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: calories, cholesterol, diet, food, health, jared fogle, recommendations, saturated fat

DailyDirt: Keeping Your Memories

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you're only a couple decades old, you probably haven't experienced too many problems with your memory. But if you're more than a few decades old, you might have started to get "senior moments" as some call them -- where you forget why you went upstairs to your bedroom as soon as you get there, or you can't remember your ATM PIN, or the name of that guy is just on the tip of your tongue but you can't seem to recall it. These could be early signs of more serious memory loss, but the medical science is only just about to start really understanding how memory and aging works. Here are some links you might want to check out (and bookmark so you don't forget them).

• Resveratrol has been associated with a lot of benefits related to minimizing the effects of aging. It's not a cure yet -- or even an approved drug -- but a study with aging rats shows that it could help improve cognitive functions and memory. [url]
• There are some people who are "SuperAgers" -- people over 80yo who have the memory capabilities of those decades younger. Researchers are studying these SuperAgers and comparing their brain images to those of other seniors. They've found some significant differences which could lead to a better understanding of how these SuperAgers retain their cognitive abilities. [url]
• People with an AB blood type are more at risk for cognitive problems as they age. Fortunately, this isn't a common blood type, but if you've got it, there's not much comfort in this correlation. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aging, blood, blood type, brains, cognitive skills, health, medicine, memory, resveratrol, senior moments, superagers

DailyDirt: Three Blind Mice... Cured Someday?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

An estimated 285 million people (worldwide) have some blindness or visual impairment. About 43% of those visually impaired around the world are people who need glasses but don't have them. However, there are obviously blind people who have more severe vision problems that are more technologically difficult to fix. Some kids with blindness are learning how to echolocate nowadays, but that's a skill that gets harder to learn as a person ages. Here are just a few other ways that might restore vision to people someday.

• A chemical injection into mouse eyes has been shown to make "blind" cells in the retina sensitive to light again. The effects of acrylamide-azobenzene-quaternary ammonium (AAQ) eventually wears off, but it is far less invasive than retinal implants or other procedures. [url]
• Retinal prostheses are being developed, too. However, implants require an invasive surgical procedure, and so far the resolution isn't quite comparable to a Geordi La Forge visor. [url]
• Eye injuries are a serious problem for the military, so doctors are coming up with plausible ways to perform entire eye transplants. The University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has some funding to work on eye transplants and how to regrow cells to mend severed optic nerves. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aaq, blindness, cure, echolocation, eyes, health, low vision, organ transplant, retina, retinal prosthesis, treatments, vision, visual impairment, visually impaired