Health and Medicine – Page 45

Try spring tide swimming for a dose of the squits

The American Chemical Society reports today that beach pollution is worst during a new and full moon.

A new study of 60 beaches in Southern California suggests that water pollution varies with the lunar cycle, reaching the highest levels when tides are ebbing during the new and full moon. The findings could help beachgoers and managers better assess the potential risk of swimming. The study is published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Alexandria Boehm of Stanford University and her colleagues at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project found that in the full and new phases of the moon, levels of enterococci were higher at the vast majority of the beaches studied. Boehm found that during so-called “spring tides”, when water levels vary the most between high and low tides, a beach is twice as likely to be out of compliance with water quality standards. Spring tides are exceptionally high or low tides that take place during the full and new moons, but have nothing to do with the season of the year.

Beach managers can now use tides as they currently use rainfall to assess warnings, Boehm suggests. When it rains, managers recommend that swimmers not enter the water for three days. “They could also suggest that during spring tides — and especially spring-ebb tides — water quality is more likely to be impaired, and those who are risk-averse should avoid swimming,” Boehm says.

So, no more moonlit beach parties for all you West Coasters…unless you fancy a dose of the squits…you can always blame the barbecue chef.

Facial

My wife uses a facial toner from a famous UK store that claims to have “Plant extracts at levels that really work” and is obviously marketing at the cynically savvy consumer who has realised “homeopathic levels” are a nonsense. That’s all well and good, but the list of ingredients in this product still looks to be pretty much a standard set of cosmetic chemicals to me – “Aqua, butylene glycol, alcohol denat., glycerin, polysorbate 20…and at last…Equisetum arvense, then phenoxyethanol, lactic acid, glycolic acid, parfum, citric acid, dipropylene glycol, malic acid, sodium citrate and tartaric acid…

…that plant extract is from the noxious weed field horsetail. Is this really something you’d want to be rubbing on your skin at “levels that really work”? I better warn my wife.

PubChem – Making Chemical Information Open

A Eurekalert report discusses the topic of PubChem, a database I mentioned last year in a Nature news item.

This time, the issue is more contentious than an announcement of how useful such a database might be as certain toes in the profit-making-not-for-profit sector have been trod on.

According to my good friends Peter Murray-Rust and Henry Rzepa, an XML-based approach to the communication of chemical information in the biomedical literature would prevent the loss of crucial information and facilitate the re-use of data – and would be easily achievable using existing open tools and resources. They have published a commentary article in the Open Access journal BMC Bioinformatics arguing that it is time chemistry followed in the footsteps of bioinformatics and structural biology and moved towards the creation of an open semantic web facilitating access to chemical information.

PMR of the University of Cambridge, John Mitchell and Henry Rzepa of Imperial College London argue using three case studies that conventional methods such as cutting-and-pasting chemical information are time-consuming and introduce errors. The authors argue in favour of an open XML architecture linking to connection tables or open databases such as PubChem, to identify chemical compounds mentioned in the biomedical literature. Their article thus provides additional support for open chemical databases like PubChem, which is currently at the centre of a legal battle between the NIH and the American Chemical Society (ACS).

The chemists explain that an open XML-based architecture would provide a cost-effective and user-friendly way to publish chemical information.

Citrus Compound Cuts Cholesterol

It’s old news now, but a recent visitor to Sciencebase hit the site searching for citrus PMFs, so here’s a link to the information they were probably after: Compound found in the peel of citrus fruit can potentially lower cholesterol more effectively than some prescription drugs, at least if you’re a hamster.

According to multiple media reports, “US scientists fattened up hamsters on a high-cholesterol diet, and then fed them compounds found in tangerine and orange peel. They found the compounds significantly lowered the animals’ levels of LDL cholesterol – which is associated with heart disease.”

The compounds in question are a kind of antioxidant known as polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs).

Diagnose-it-Yourself

Almost every minor symptom seems to be tied to a deficiency in some mineral or micro-nutrient or other, according to the Body Language site. I’ll leave visitors to check into the affiliations of the website, in case they’re simply touting supplements, although I don’t think they are.

Meanwhile, a taster, as it were:

Muscle cramps, calf tenderness, hypertension? – Magnesium

Wheezy after fruit/veg/wine? – Molybdenum

Stretch marks? – Zinc

Vitiligo/premature grey hair? – PABA and magnesium

Making dough from old mould

Over at sciscoop we just received a press release announcing a new enzyme-based mould-reducing cleaning product. The PR company that sent it announces that the eco-friendly solution removes mould stains and odours, and go on to say that “Unlike bleach and other commercial cleaners, it is 100% environmentally safe, biodegradable, and hypoallergenic – thus, not harmful to human, animal, plant and marine life.”

Quite a few claims to be making about a solution containing enzymes. 100% environmentally safe. That’s a load of bull, nothing can be 100% safe in any terms. It kills moulds for a start, who’s to say that destroying mould species won’t upset an ecosystem somewhere or other? Biodegradable, fair enough, but doesn’t biodegradation release carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases? The claim for hypoallergenicity has to be taken with a pinch of salt too. Enzymes are proteins and it is well known to anyone who has had a rash from using biological washing powder, that enzymes can cause allergic reactions and eczema. Why would these mould-destroying enzymes be any more benign. There will be users who “react” to this product.

My own reaction – everyone wants mould-free domestic environments, but making such spurious claims about a product won’t get me checking the supermarket shelf for this one any time soon. I’m not even going to name it – that’s how annoying their press release was!

A cup of hot tea does not cool you down

nice-cup-of-tea At the time of writing, the UK was in the middle of a rare heatwave, and my mother, as usual, suffers when the mercury rises about 25 or so (it’s 33 here today!) and, as usual, is suggesting everyone has a nice cup of hot tea to help them cool down.

Of course, it is easy to mock the underlying physics of such a suggestion (Does Hot Tea Really Cool You Down?), and I have explained to my mother that it’s a myth, but such conventional wisdom seems to persist and someone only this morning visited the sciencebase site searching for an answer to the question, does hot tea cool you down? Or more generally “does a hot drink cool you down?” Someone, even asked the presumptuous question: “Why does drinking hot drinks cool you down?”

Bluntly, no.

However, even as a hot drink, it can make you feel refreshed even when the air is still and humid and as long as you don’t gulp it down too quickly it won’t make you even more sweaty. I guess there may be a psychological effect, if the air is warm and humid and you drink something hot, that will heat you up more and make you sweat, sweat evaporates from your skin cooling your skin, so maybe you end up feeling slightly cooler, but I’m still not convinced. In fact, sweating inflames the skin in some ways as capillaries open up and you actually feel hotter when you sweat more, unless you’ve got a very strong fan. Anyway, from the thermodynamics point of view adding a hot liquid to a cooler container (your body) will raise the temperature of the container.

Now, iced tea is a different matter – make mine a peach one! And, plenty of ice!

Of course, there’s also this well-known 19th century quotation from Gladstone

If you are cold, tea will warm you. If you are too heated, it will cool you. If you are depressed, it will cheer you. If you are excited, it will calm you.

For more on teatime etiquette, check out this item.

Red meat linked to increased risk of bowel cancer

The UK media today reported that red meat increases the risk of bowel cancer: e.g. Telegraph

35% increased risk screamed the headlines. But, as fascinating as the finding is none of the reports I saw mentioned the incidence rate and how low that actually is compared to, say, deaths from road accidents or obesity-related heart disease. No absolute risk was mentioned. If it’s 100Â in a ten-thousand, then a 35% increase would then be 135 in 10000…

So, a 35% increased risk of something not very risky is not necessarily as significant as the cancer research organisations are claiming. Moreover, just one portion of any fish once a week can reduce the risk by 30%. So, presumably you can eat bacon, burgers and bangers 5 days a week and fish at weekends to almost cancel the positive effect with a negative.

Do you want Rosemary with that?

It’s not the most likely request you’ll hear at your local flame-grilled burger joint, but according to (KSU researchers, antioxidants in rosemary could help reduce the potentially harmful formation of heterocyclic amines during the “barbecuing” process. That’s all well and good, but who wants a burger tasting of rosemary, now if they could demonstrate the same benefits with onions, and a six-pack of beer, that would be a different matter.

Onion Skin

Many readers found my recent article in Reactive Reports (Picking up the sweat scent, issue 41) rather interesting, not least a 54-year old massage therapist from Houston, Texas, who emailed me to ask my advice on her body odour problem.

Apparently, she had only been working at her present fitness centre for a few months when she noticed the scent of her axillae (armpits to you and me) and arms had changed from the usual smell to an onion-like fragrance. She asked whether there were an enzyme available that might be taken orally to combat the bacteria producing this smell (no, enzymes are digested in the stomach, like other proteins), and whether or not she may have “picked up” the microbes in the health club.

It’s a possibility, I guess, especially as she is working in such close contact with clients.

Solutions? Using a pH balanced soap instead of shower gel? Switching deodorants? Maybe just wearing long sleeve tops 24/7 is the best option.