Science Ain't So Bad

I READ THIS ARTICLE, SEE..

ANN COULTER EFFECT

Conservative author Ann Coulter read an article ( Science Section of the New York Times) which, she says, shows how a certain  amount of nuclear radiation’s okay. Healthy, even.  She said most physicists are on board with this.

Which they’re not.

Coulter’s confusion (?)  isn’t hard to understand. Science is a slippery thing.

In an interview with Bill O’reilly, Ms Coulter says “It’s not me I’m citing, it’s a stunning number of physicists”. She said that there’s science going WAY back about how low doses of radiation may be a good thing.

What IS she talking about?

HORMESIS

This is the brainchild of  Dr. Abraham Lessismore (Montgomery Junior College) who tried to poison some  geese which were despoiling his dock. Couldn’t get rid of them. Tried everything. Finally decided it was time to stop foolin’ around.

Lessismore, a graduate student in 1998, couldn’t afford the recommended 10 bags  of  Gretchen’s Goose Killer so he only bought one . “I figured it might not kill ALL a those sonna bitches but even two or three would make me happy.”

Lessismore spread the Goose Killer stuff  and watched the geese peck at it while he crouched behind his fake coyote to enjoy the dying paroxysms of these horrible creatures.

When they had finished eating the Goose Killer, they stood around. Lessismore, thought the fat one looked bad.

It wobbled.

Then it turned turned toward him, locked eyes,  and pooped.

Large one.

It  fluffed its wings, and waddled away.

After some time, it occurred to Lessismore that the poison hadn’t harmed the geese at all. If anything, the flock appeared sturdier than before. They had  more energy. The one with the growth on its neck? Was he imagining it? Each day, the growth appeared smaller. Eventually, the growth disappeared and that goose turned up leading a group of new hatchlings.

Undaunted by his failure to roust the geese, Dr. L turned to the scientific implications of what he had just witnessed. Giving the geese a reduced dose of a toxin didn’t result in reduced casualties and, instead, seemed to have some kind of curative effect. This, it seemed to Lessismore, could be a new scientific principle. Thus was born the idea of “Hormesis”.

(If you don’t believe my goose story, here’s another version of the thing.)

Seriously?

Are things that are bad  in large doses, good  in small doses? Sure. That’s why medicines have labels. A truck full of aspirin would probably give you a REAL headache, wouldn’t it?

Researchers such as Edward Calabrese   believe toxins in low doses stimulate some kind of protective reaction without doing real damage. The problem? The evidence is weak and confusing which isn’t surprising. There’s always a “signal to noise” issue when you’re measuring something very small.

And some of the researchers may be a little  ”intense”. One wore a radioactive vest around for its health benefits . Enthusiasm amok.

Here’s the deal. There IS a lot of info about hormesis. If you google it, you get the impression that hormesis is the real deal.  In fact (and strangely) you don’t find much serious criticism. Not in the first 25 hits, anyway.  So I don’t blame Ann Coulter.

Not really.

Unfortunately, googling isn’t always the best way to settle a scientific question. Sometimes you just need someone you trust and, yes, I do hope MISTER ScienceAintSoBad’s on your list.

The  basis for hormesis is pretty sketchy. Even if it is, ultimately, confirmed, it will only apply to some stuff.

What about radiation?

Let me put it this way, most physicist do NOT walk around wearing radioactive vests.

Trust me on that.

TYPICAL VEGAN

Dear Mister ScienceAintsoBad,
Was Dr. Spock a Vegan? – GetItAllWrong

A Vegan? From the planet Vega?

Good GRIEF, GetItAllWrong. Spock was a Vulcan, not a Vegan. Very serious. Pure logic. Big ears. Mind-melds. Telepathy. His planet was nipped by a black hole before its  population had a chance to switch to a more enlightened diet.

Vegans currently live on OUR planet. Earth. Not the planet Vega. Most Vegans are very serious and logical. They have big ears and they’re kinda empathetic, if not telepathic. The difference, my dear GetItallWrong, is meat.

Not having any of it.

At all.

No milk, no pig’s knuckles. No seafood. No poultry. No eggs. No dairy products.

Pretty extreme, you may say. But, you know what? Healthy as pineapples. (Was gonna say “pigs” but some vegans do read this blog, after all.)

Here’s the thing.

An article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (Duo Li), reviews lots and lots of studies about Vegans here on earth over about 30 years.

The conclusion?

They can do better.

Cutting out the animal products is a very, very good thing. However, Vegans tend to be a little light on iron, zinc, B-12 and Omega 3 fatty acids.

Not good, since that can lead to atherosclerosis, heart problems, and stroke. But tweaking things a bit with fish oils and nuts should do the trick here.

This is a worthwhile report.

Scientifically sound.

But this is a “may increase the risk” thing. I don’t see any “Vegans Keeling Over In Large Numbers” data.

Could be next.

Take yer supplements.

OK?

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

IRRITABLE BOWEL

FECAL MATTERS

FLATULENCE.

Pretty funny!

And cramping pain, diarrhea, constipation, general misery.

I’m KILLIN’ you, right?  Hard to say what causes such symptoms in so many but let’s call it irritable bowel syndrome so we can have a medical billing code, OK?

Maybe 20% of grownups “live with it” (IBS) because – what’re ya gonna do? Just the way it is. It’s common and it’s not well understood. Gastroenterologists  call it a functional disorder. Know it when you see it.

Its REAL! It’s REAL! You’re NOT (that) crazy!

Dr. Michael Schemann leads a team at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Munich) which has been trying to figure out what’s up with this hard-to-define disorder. They’ve described some  interesting work . In the case of IBS, the mucus membrane’s just a bit inflamed and, at the same time, the nervous system of the gut is very jacked up. Probably wouldn’t make much difference somewhere else in the body but the intestines are much more sensitive than you would think for an organ that spends so much time in close contact with – well you know.

When the lining of the intestine gets irritated, it releases a “cocktail” of chemicals like protease,  seretonin, and histamine.  And this chemical fog  may be the real reason for the symptoms of IBS.

This is supposed to come as a relief to IBS sufferers who might feel on the defensive cause maybe they’re making it all up. But IBS is real enough. MISTERScienceAintSoBad can tell ya and he ain’t no crank!

By the way, did you notice that histamines are part of the “cocktail”? Histamines. As in immune response? Isn’t that what ANTI-histamines for allergies are all about? What would happen if IBS sufferers took antihistamines?

Well their noses would stop dripping. That’s for sure. But Dr. Robert Wascher (mensdailynews.com) describes a double blind study for IBS where an antihistamine is taken for 8 weeks.

WHAT a surprise! The subjects did lots better.

What to make of all this?

It’s all good. It’s medical science doin’ its thing.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 9 . Not definitive. But it moves things onto more solid ground and exposes a possible mechanism for a widespread and annoying illness.

Nice.

Credits for the image: Just me.

No More Colorblind Monkeys

Ophthalmology: Colorblindness

MONOCHROME WORLD

You always wondered, didn’t you? What’s it like to be colorblind? That word – blind. Very dark and murky. But, if you’re colorblind, it’s colors you can’t see. It’s not like yer gonna wump into a wall or anything.

So is it such a bad thing?

The answer’s kinda yes and kinda no.

Some people are only a LITTLE color blind. They see a lot of colors. But not all of them. And some people (with monochromasy) are flat out colorless – like a “black and white” movie. Just black, white, and a bunch of grays.

Minochromasy isn’t common. But if you’ve got it, I wouldn’t plan a career around painting or photography or even police work (“Watch  for a guy wearing a blue cardigan”). And try not to take stuff like “Those SOCKS! What’re you, colorblind?” to heart.

Whether it’s a disability or just a disadvantage, it is one a those imperfections that makes life richer (one might even say, more colorful) if, sometimes, a little tougher.

A CURE

So. Guess what Jay Neitz (University of Washingon) just cured?

You’re GOOD!

That’s right. Fixed it right up. In monkeys. (Which, at least in your case, isn’t SO far removed.) And he seems optimistic that homo sapiens isn’t too far down this path as well as other vision disorders.

Good one, Dr Neitz.

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 9

She's got a MIGRAINE, you nitwit!

I had a rental car with a broken radio. You couldn’t lower the volume or turn it off and it only got one station which had Rush Limbaugh, ranting and raving. What could be worse? – BizWhiz59

MIGRAINES

My wife says migraine headaches are worse than a date with MISTER ScienceAintSoBad . But she’s probably exaggerating.  A musician who gets migraines almost weekly says they’re “The worst thing that can happen to you that doesn’t kill you permanently”.

WHAT THEY ARE

About 30 million Americans get migraines ; they (the headaches) usually don’t hit till the teens or later.

The “classic” migraine’s a funny guy. You get visual or auditory “auras”. You’re thinking “wow! I bet there’s a spiritual relevation coming.” and, POW!, the top of your head blows off.

Mean!

The “common” migraines don’t have explicit auras although you might feel kinda “weird” or sluggish before the pain, itself, hits. The head pain varies but it can get pretty bad. It’s normally one-sided and, in case you’re not miserable enough with just pain,  there’s often nausea/vomiting too.

Far as is known, migraines are probably kicked off by some signal in the brain stem which causes arteries  (including those in the dura which encase the brain) to contract and then dilate abnormally while local levels of dopamine and serotonin (neurotransmitters) go off script too.  This is all sustained by a runaway condition in the temporal artery (a blood vessel near the temple).

WHAT THEY’RE NOT

Other kinds of headaches.

But it can be kinda hard to tell the difference. The Headache Center (Springfield, MO) says that 97% of people who thought they had sinus headaches had migraines.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

WHAT YOU CAN DO

I think, somewhere in here, I’m supposed to tell you to check with your Doc first and (seriously) you should because a bad headache may be a manifestation of a tumor or an intra-cranial bleed or God-Knows-What. It’s hard ENOUGH to get readers, in the first place, I don’t wanna lose one over a missed doctor visit.

However, as a matter of general information, you might like to know the best way to minimize the discomfort and to move on with your life:

1. Take the pain meds your Doc prescribed.

2.  ice packs, cold water, etc to your head/face.

3. Don’t be a hero. Don’t read. Don’t do anything. Lie down in a dark room. Meditate, listen to music, think about ScienceAintSoBad.. restful stuff.

An article on Health Square has more detail and  goes on to describe common triggers and ways to, maybe, dodge some headaches. Worth reading if you’re cursed with this syndrome.

THE NEW STUFF

From a scientific standpoint, there’s still plenty of work to be done here. I won’t bog you down, overly, with long, long shots.

Some of the newest stuff that’s currently on the market: zolmitriptan, Amerge, and a nasal spray version of  Migranol .  (Ask your Doc).

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation: Uses a dynamic electromagnetic field to knock down the “cortical spreading” waves at the onset of the headaches. It seemed to work about 50% of the time. It’s still very much an experiment.

Wanna go under the knife? If you do, surgical removal of certain trigger sites seems surprisingly good and may even be a surgical “cure” for many.  This is from a joint study led by Bahaman Guyuron, Chairman of Plastic Surgery at Case Medical Center.

Archives of Dermatology offers a small study with  a particularly tough form of the headache which got decent results using botulinum toxin injections. MISTER ScienceAintSoBad wishes there were more data.

A fair sized study done in Philadelphia with a “snorter” (an inhaled drug) called Levadex sounds interesting. According to the (only slightly puffy) description, patients had “significant” relief from symptoms. This was just the study that proves “safety”. Good one to keep an eye on though. Levadex.

Naturally, there are homeopathic “cures” for migraine. Make what you will of my quotation marks.

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(If you want the above cartoon on a t-shirt go here. )