Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

BPA in Store Receipts

August 31st, 2010

BPA, Bisphenol-A, Receipts

As a nod to greenness, many people avoid taking receipts when they make purchases at a store.  Now there’s another reason not to take your store receipts: avoiding contact with the bisphenol-A (BPA) that is often used as a color developer on thermal sensitive cash register paper.

Can you believe it? Even receipts you get for buying supplements at the health food store can cause cancer. As I’ve written several times before, BPA is bad stuff with a rap sheet as long as the Gambino family’s. And despite the FDA’s blessing, the list of charges keeps growing.  Used in making plastics–most notably water bottles and food containers, BPA mimics the effects of estrogen and has, in the past, been linked to breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, birth defects, and heart disease, among other things. A study last year connected BPA exposure with erectile dysfunction in men.  And just a few months ago, I reported on a British study that showed that those with high concentrations of BPA in their urine were twice as likely to have coronary heart disease.

What’s BPA doing in cash register paper? To make thermal paper, manufacturers sprinkle the surface of one side with a powdery coating that contains BPA, dye, and solvent. When the paper is heated or subjected to pressure, the coating ingredients combine and release the ink’s color. 

Three recent studies have assayed the amount of BPA that is found in cash register receipts and its transferability to the skin.   Researchers at the Warner Babcock for Green Chemistry in Wilmington, MA looked at 10 receipts and found BPA in six of them, in quantities ranging from 1.09 to 1.7 percent by mass, and in two more, in quantities of .30 to .83 percent BPA

Separately, a Swiss study looked at 13 European receipts and found that in eleven, 0.8 to 1.7 percent of the paper’s mass was BPA. According to the co-author of this study, analytical Chemist Koni Grall, a substantial amount of BPA rubbed off the paper from contact with dry fingers. Wet fingers picked up ten times more. But even with dry skin, two hours after contact, around 30 percent of the BPA that rubbed off the paper and onto the skin "was no longer extractable — could not be washed off." Grall theorizes that the BPA probably was absorbed into fatty or waxy elements of the skin. He goes on to say, "The shocking thing is what happened when I applied a bit of BPA onto my fingers with ethanol [alcohol]. After two hours it had disappeared. Totally." In other words, the alcohol significantly enhanced the absorption of BPA into the skin.

In the Washington, DC area, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) assayed 36 receipts that they collected from DC area retailers, as well as stores in seven other states and several in a city in Japan. Says study leader Frederick vom Saal of the University of Missouri in Columbia, "I won’t touch receipts now."  His study not only confirmed the wet-versus-dry transfer rate reported by Grall, but it also showed that the longer you hold the receipt, the more BPA gets transferred to your skin.

According to Grall, the exposure from touching one receipt is miniscule — 2.5 percent of the tolerable daily intake (assuming you believe that the assessment of what’s tolerable is valid). But for someone who is working in a retail store, handling receipts all the time and using skin cream, the intake could reach what European and US health authorities define as the tolerable limit — 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. The concentrations of pure BPA found in a surface coating on register paper can be as high as 10%.

Again, the bottom line is that longer contact and contact accompanied by moisture significantly increases the exposure. This means that drooling babies who play with store receipts, people with sweaty hands, those who use skin creams and oils, and those who have frequent contact with cash register receipts are likely candidates for higher levels of absorption of BPA.

The EWG notes, "Retail workers carry an average of 30 percent more BPA in their bodies than other adults. It is unclear how much BPA-coated receipts contribute to people’s total exposure to the ubiquitous plastics chemical. What is certain, however, is that since many retail outlets already use BPA-free paper for their receipts, this is one source of contamination that could easily be eliminated completely." And the EWG mentions a hopeful statistic: 60 percent of the receipts collected did not have significant levels of BPA.  Indeed, according to the EWG, "The leading U.S. thermal paper maker, Wisconsin-based Appleton Papers Inc., no longer incorporates BPA in any of its thermal papers."  They take these facts as evidence that retailers are using alternatives.

It’s not possible to distinguish the BPA containing receipts by looking at them, although you can tell if the receipt is thermally treated if it discolors when you rub it with a coin.   The study by the Environmental Working Group gives some hints about what to avoid.  According to its online summary, "The receipt for a McDonald’s Happy Meal™ purchased in Clinton, Conn., on April 21, 2010, had an estimated 13 milligrams of BPA. That equals the amount of BPA in 126 cans of Chef Boyardee Overstuffed Beef Ravioli in Hearty Tomato & Meat Sauce —  one of the products with the highest concentrations of BPA in EWG’s 2007 tests of canned foods." In fairness, the EWG did point out that receipts from a MacDonald’s in Japan had undetectable levels of BPA. It also noted that Safeway had the highest levels of BPA in its receipts by several measures.

There are specific steps you can take to minimize exposure to BPA from store receipts.  The EWG advises that you go paperless whenever possible, stash receipts in a separate wallet or envelope and handle them as little as possible, avoid the use of alcohol-based hand cleaners after handling receipts, and wash your hands immediately after handling receipts. Don’t give receipts to toddlers and babies to play with. And finally, don’t recycle BPA laden receipts. Remember, just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean your receipts aren’t trying to kill you!

:hc

Hospital Errors in July

July 27th, 2010

Hospitals, July, Residents, Death, Deadliest Month

Here’s a new meaning for the phrase "dog days of summer." A study from the University of California at San Diego has found that July is the deadliest month for hospital errors.  All other months, the rate of medication mistakes within hospitals stays about even, but in July, that rate consistently spikes by 10%.

The researchers reviewed 62 million U.S. death certificates issued between 1979 and 2006. Of those, 244,388 listed medication errors in a hospital as the cause of death. That’s a disturbingly high quarter of a million people who died unnecessarily because someone in the hospital messed up their medication. The errors included accidental overdose of a drug, wrong drug given, drug taken inadvertently, and accidents in drugs used in medical and surgical procedures. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that only 244,000 people died from medication errors in this time period. Rather, it means that 244,000 such errors got reported. You can bet that plenty of unreported deaths related to mistakes involving medication go unreported. Also, the study did not include medication deaths caused by allergic reactions or medication deaths that occurred after patients got released from the hospital. It also didn’t include nonfatal medication errors. But the point of the study was that the problem gets even worse in July. Although overall hospital admissions are down in July, rates of fatal medication errors go up.

The author of the study, Dr. David Phillips, blames new residents fresh out of medical school for the July spike. July, apparently, is the month when medical school graduates start their residencies at hospitals. In fact, though Phillips surveyed hospitals from coast to coast, he only found the so-called "July effect" in counties that had a high number of teaching hospitals. Those counties that did not have many teaching hospitals showed no spike in fatal medication errors in July, and, the report notes, "the greater the concentration of teaching hospitals in a region, the greater the July Effect." Now that little tidbit of information could cause you to watch Scrubs reruns with a different frame of mind.

Certainly, inexperience among medical interns and residents may be a major factor. Dr. David Orentlicher of Indiana University says, "You’ve got people who are inexperienced. You’ve also got people who are trying to learn a new system." But then he added, "When you are transitioning and you are handing off patients to a new provider, not all of the information is communicated." In other words, the more experienced doctors may dump their patients onto new residents without bothering to fill them in on everything they need to know. So it might not be the residents, but the experienced doctors who are at fault. But in either case, you still "die in July".

In addition to inexperience, new residents famously suffer from unmanageable schedules and sleep deprivation. I’ve written before about the connection between physician fatigue and medical errors. As I’ve mentioned, a 2006 Harvard University study showed that doctors who worked even one extended, 24-hour shift during the month increased the odds of reporting a "significant medical error" by 300 percent. Those who completed five extended shifts reported 700 percent more significant errors and a 300 percent increase in errors that resulted in patient death. Although some hospitals have made efforts to reduce the 120 hours a week that new medical residents typically work, those reductions still have residents working 80 hours a week or more.

Given these ungodly schedules, one would expect to see plenty of mistakes, but Dr. Phillips reports that, according to his study, reduced schedules did not seem to reduce the number of errors that medical residents made. But the reduced schedules he referred to only capped the number of hours that medical students could work at 80 per week. Consider that an 80-hour a week schedule could, conceivably, include two 36-hour shifts or three 24-hour shifts, and you can see trouble coming.

Clearly, medical professionals need to be at least as well rested as say, hairdressers, accountants, lawyers, and others who don’t literally take our lives in their hands. Capping physician schedules at 80 hours a week simply isn’t sufficient to ensure that they will perform at their best. Plus, as the study authors wrote, "Our findings provide fresh evidence for re-evaluating responsibilities assigned to new residents; increasing supervision of new residents; and increasing education concerned with medication safety. Incorporating these changes might reduce both fatal and non-fatal medication errors and thereby reduce the substantial costs associated with these errors."

It’s hardly comforting, but the head of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Dr. Joanne Conroy, gives another potential reason for the July spike. "Even though we associated July with new residents, actually there are a lot of new caregivers in July," she said. "It’s probably a time where there are a lot of health professionals assuming new responsibilities. Everybody moves up."

As if you didn’t already have plenty of good reasons to stay away from the hospital, at least try to stay healthy and accident-free in July. If for some reason, you do find yourself admitted to your local hospital in the heat of summer, make sure you check, double-check, and triple check every medication that comes your way, and line up an advocate now who will accompany you should you end up so ill that you have no choice but hospitalization…during any month.

:hc

Nap Your Way to Better Recall

June 22nd, 2010

Napping, Memory Recall

In what can only be extremely good news for those of us who enjoy an afternoon siesta, Harvard researchers have discovered a very lazy shortcut to enhanced recall of learning tasks. All you need to do is dream about the tasks during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. When people in the Harvard study dreamed about a task they just learned, they scored much higher when retested on the task. If they dreamed of anything else, or stayed awake and rested quietly, they showed no improvement in ability to do the task.

Of course, getting yourself to dream about a particular thing isn’t a matter of simply willing it so, at least not for most people. But on the other hand, it may not be as much of a stretch as it seems. In fact, nearly 10 percent of the subjects did dream about the task they had been assigned. The researchers know this because they woke the students after a minute of NREM sleep and asked them to recall their dreams. They also monitored the students’ brain activity with scalp sensors.

NREM sleep refers to the stages of sleep before Rapid Eye Movement, or REM, sleep. The NREM sleep phase has four stages, during which the sleeper moves from drowsiness into deep sleep. NREM sleep commonly lasts from 90 to 120 minutes and provides an important precursor to REM sleep. During this period, several of the stages of NREM sleep typically repeat. Although most dreaming occurs during REM sleep, subjects also report dreaming in up to 75 percent of awakenings from NREM sleep, depending upon the stage from which they have awakened. Studies have shown that NREM sleep is connected to the activation of the hippocampus and amygdala of the brain, both of which are associated with the consolidation of memory.

The Harvard sleep recall study followed 99 college students ranging in age from 19 to 30.  The students spent an hour trying to navigate a difficult three-dimensional maze on a computer. They were asked to navigate it from a variety of starting points and were told to remember the position of a specific tree in the maze. After an hour of practice, the students rested for five hours. Some students were asked to nap, some to quietly watch videos. Those who napped had their brain activity monitored with scalp sensors.  They were also asked about their dreams before napping, one minute into non-rapid eye movement sleep, and after napping. The students who remained awake were asked about their thoughts during the break period

After the five-hour break, the students went back to the computer maze. Once again they were asked to navigate it from a variety of starting points and to find the tree that they had previously been asked to remember. The students who had dreamed about navigating the maze found the tree much more quickly than they had in their attempts prior to the nap. Those who stayed awake did not show any enhanced recall, even if they thought about the task during the rest period. Interestingly, the dreaming students had all performed poorly in their attempts prior to the nap. 

Said study coauthor Robert Stickgold, a cognitive neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School, “I was startled by this finding. Task-related dreams may get triggered by the sleeping brain’s attempt to consolidate challenging new information and to figure out how to use it.” He believes that memory-building processes that are at work in the hippocampus during sleep foster the dreams. He suggests that challenges perceived by the dreamer as important to solve strongly stimulate the brain to utilize these processes.

In an earlier study reported by the National Institute of Mental Health, Stickgold and colleagues showed that napping for 30 minutes in the middle of learning complicated tasks prevented information overload, while a one-hour nap actually enhanced learning later on in the day. In that study, the researchers pointed to REM sleep (not NREM sleep) as the key factor in improved learning. Those who napped for one-hour experienced four times the REM compared to the half-hour nappers, and again, they actually improved learning.

Another study by the same team found that if subjects slept through the phase-two REM stage at the end of a full-night’s sleep (a phase lasting about two hours), they improved performance on motor and perceptual tasks by 20 percent. Apparently, improved performance the morning after learning a complicated task directly reflects the amount of stage 2 REM sleep the subjects experienced during the night. This means that if you wake up early, you probably miss out on that rich passive learning time. The director of this study, Dr. Matthew Walker, said “All such learning of new actions may require sleep before the maximum benefit of practice is expressed. [A full night's sleep is prerequisite, and so] life’s modern erosion of sleep time could shortchange your brain of some learning potential.” According to Dr. Walker, getting a full night‘s sleep could improve your ability to learn sports, music, or artistic skills. Unfortunately, considering that up to 70 percent of the population suffers from inadequate sleep, as I’ve reported before, few reap these benefits. The study recommended taking power naps to at least partially compensate.

All of which adds up to a good argument for instituting mandatory nap-time in offices and schools — and not just at kindergarten level. If your boss assigns you something impossible to learn or do, tell her you need to sleep on it…if you dare.

:hc

Exercising in Nature

June 10th, 2010

Exercise For Mental Health

A recent study from the money-spent-to-prove-what-we- already-know-but-refuse-to-believe department shows that just five minutes of exercise in nature makes people feel better. According to study authors Jules Pretty and Jo Barton of the University of Essex in England, five minutes of exercise in a natural setting — like walking in a park or gardening in your backyard — benefits mental health. The surprising thing here, if you can call it surprising, is the importance of where the exercise takes place.

A 2008 study by the same department found similar effects. In that study, participants walked for 30 minutes in either an indoor shopping mall, or a country park. Ninety percent of those who walked in nature experienced improved self-esteem, and 71 percent felt less depressed, but only 45 percent of the shopping center walkers experienced a mood lift. In the current study, Drs. Pretty and Barton analyzed 1,252 people of different ages, genders, and mental health status who participated in 10 different UK studies. Their conclusion was that exercise in the presence of nature led to mental and physical health improvements.  Said Pretty, “For the first time in the scientific literature, we have been able to show dose-response relationships for the positive effects of nature on human mental health.”  (Only a scientist could refer to a walk in the park as a “dose-response relationship.”)

In fact, the results showed that five minutes of exertion in nature was all it took to improve self-esteem, and in fact, that was the optimal dose. The scientists looked at a variety of types of exercise including walking, gardening, cycling, fishing, boating, horse-riding, and farming. They found that while all ages and social groups benefited, the young and the mentally ill experienced the greatest mental health benefits. And while all exposure to nature was beneficial — including visiting green space in urban settings — exposure to environments with green space and water seemed to convey even more benefit. And, no, the artificial plant display with the fake fountain in the middle of the mall doesn’t count.

According to the study, mental health benefits from nature in a multiple ways. Self-esteem improves, and in fact, two out of three subjects had improved self-esteem after walking in nature, two out of three had improved mood, and three out of four felt less depressed and anxious.

The results should get the attention of policy makers, according to Pretty and Barton. “We know from the literature that short-term mental health improvements are protective of long-term health benefits,” Pretty said. “So we believe that there would be a large potential benefit to individuals, society, and to the costs of the health service if all groups of people were to self-medicate more with green exercise,” added Barton. (Too bad the study came out after the national health care debate in the U.S.  Imagine all the fun each side could have had telling the other to “take a hike,” so to speak.) 

An earlier UK study, Green Exercise: Complementary Roles of Nature, Exercise and Diet in Physical and Emotional Well-Being and Implications for Public Health Policy, published by two divisions of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Essex, promoted the same idea in 2003 and did not shy away from its broader implications.  According to the study, “Green exercise is likely to have important public and environmental health consequences. A fitter and emotionally more content population costs the economy less. Increasing the support for and access to a wide range of green exercise activities for all sectors of society will produce substantial public health benefits.”

So why don’t individuals simply incorporate a five-minute stint in nature daily to feel significantly better?

Perhaps it’s because so many people don’t exercise at all — nature or no nature, and so even five minutes seems a stretch, let alone having to drive to a “green” area to exercise for those five minutes. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, only 32.5 percent of adults engage in regular leisure time physical activity. On the other hand, 36 percent of adults engage in NO leisure time physical activity.  Worse still, 59% of adults aged 18 and older NEVER engaged in vigorous physical activity lasting ten minutes in an average week. When looked at from the point of view of gender, 53% of men and 64% of women NEVER engaged in vigorous physical activity lasting ten minutes or in an average week.

Clearly, the latest study isn’t news so much as it is a reminder of what we’ve known for quite a while.  Yes, the public health benefits would be tremendous, and we’d probably save the health care system beaucoup bucks if more people took advantage of green exercise. Heck, maybe even the politicians would give a more vigorous public health care option a second thought if they took advantage of the mental health benefits associated with a nice walk outdoors themselves. Then again, why not just rent Blue Lagoon? It’s got greenery, water, and you get to watch Brooke Shields exercising. Plus, you can eat a large bowl of buttered popcorn at the same time.

:hc

Elephants Use Language: Health Blog

June 5th, 2010

Elephant Intelligence

Humans, in their arrogance, believe that they are the only intelligent species. For example, most people believe that talking, feeling, thinking elephants exist only in Disney movies and Babar books. Yes, we’ve seen elephants paint and sell artwork. In fact, elephant art has become quite pricey in some circles. But that’s just a novelty, not real intelligence, right? In fact, that wall between animals and humans is steadily eroding. Not long ago, best-selling books came out describing the emotional life of elephants, befuddling those who thought of elephants as big, dumb beasts. And more recently, research uncovered the fact that elephants have a well-developed type of verbal communication. They use specific noises to signal the birth of a baby elephant and also to warn of the presence of humans.

Now it seems that scientists have taken a step towards decoding that elephant language, adding another “word” to the pachyderm’s vocabulary. The word signals danger — and not from humans or from Timothy Q. Mouse, as in Dumbo — but from bees. As it turns out, bees sting elephants between the eyes and inside the trunk, causing serious pain. Apparently, the animals utter a specific, distinctive sound when they encounter bees, perhaps as a way of warning others in the herd.

Research director Dr. Lucy King of the University of Oxford in England says, “In our experiments, we played the sound of angry bees to elephant families and studied their reaction. Importantly we discovered elephants not only flee from the buzzing sound but make a unique ‘rumbling’ call as well as shaking their heads.” The researchers assume the head shaking plus throwing dust around allows the elephants to chase away the bees.

The researchers, from Oxford University, Save the Elephants, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom, first played “bee sounds” as well as “white noise” sounds to 10 elephant families. “In 14 out of 15 bee trials (93 percent), families had moved away, compared to six of 13 white noise control trials (46 percent),” said an article in PloS One.

The researchers then recorded the noise the elephants made after hearing the bee sounds. When they played the sounds back to the elephants, even though no bees were in the area and no bee buzzing sound was heard, the elephants fled in response to hearing their own bee warning sounds. “The results were dramatic,” says Dr. King. “Six out of 10 elephant families fled from the loudspeaker when we played the ‘bee rumble’ compared to just two when we played a control rumble… Moreover, we also found that the elephants moved away much further when they heard the ‘bee’ alarm call than the other rumbles.” The researchers also slightly altered just one component of the “bee rumble” and played that back to the herds, and most of the elephants did not respond to that sound.

When the results came in, the researchers concluded that elephant language may be more complex than originally thought. One of the researchers, Dr. Joseph Soltis of Disney’s Animal Kingdom said, “The calls give tantalizing clues that elephants may produce different sounds in the same way that humans produce different vowels, by altering the position of their tongues and lips. It’s even possible that, rather like with human language, this enables them to give superficially similar-sounding calls very different meanings.”

Plus, the sounds travel over far distances (as is the wont of low frequency sound): some experts say up to 10 km. Evidence further suggests that elephants recognize individual voices of herd members, and will react differently if a rumble comes from a family member or friend versus from an unknown elephant. Dr. Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell of Stanford University found that herd members move closer to sounds coming from elephants they know, and ignore sounds from “strangers.” Junior members of the herd tend to raise their voices to higher pitches in order to get attention or to respond to dominant members of the group. Sound like any children you know?

For those who would dismiss the evidence of elephant speech as mere bestial grunting, studies show that elephants have brains larger and more complex than any other land mammal, including humans. Their brains develop in a pattern similar to that of humans, with an enormous amount of brain growth apparent in the years between birth and adulthood. The elephant hippocampus, which is the brain area associated with memory and emotion, takes up a larger proportion than does the human hippocampus, and elephants in fact clearly do show emotion and may be capable of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Studies show that elephants have elaborate “grieving” rituals.” They mimic what they see and hear, use tools, exhibit profound loyalty, protect loved ones and even strangers, recognize themselves in mirrors, solve complex problems, and as previously stated, create impressive artwork. They chew particular plants in order to induce labor, just as their human neighbors in Kenya do. (Now if they could just write my blogs and newsletters!)

In light of all these studies regarding elephant smarts, one wonders about the intelligence of humans who poach them and contribute to their becoming an endangered species. No wonder Aristotle once called elephants, “The beast which passeth all others in wit and mind,” and in that utterance, he no doubt included his fellow citizens.

:hc

Morality Altered by Magnets? Health Blog

May 1st, 2010

Magnets, Head, Temporo-Parietal Junction, TPJ, Moral Judgement

Moral relativity is the view that when it comes to morality, there are no absolutes and no objective right or wrong; moral rules are merely personal preferences and/or the result of one’s cultural, sexual or ethnic orientation. Well, a new study indicates that moral relativists may be half right — just not about the personal preferences, cultural, sexual, or ethnic thing. No, when it comes to moral relativity the key may just turn out to be magnets. The study, just published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists, discovered that by applying a magnet to a subject’s head, researchers could alter that person’s moral judgment, almost instantly.

The research team, led by Dr. Rebecca Saxe of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), asked volunteers to read a series of scenarios that involved moral decision-making. In one scenario, subjects judged if it was okay for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge when he knew it was unsafe, even if she makes it across safely. In another scenario, subjects considered whether it was acceptable if a woman named Grace put a substance she believed to be sugar in her friend’s coffee, but it turned out to be poison. In another iteration of that same story, she believes she’s adding poison, and she’s adding that poison with evil intent, but it turns out to be sugar and her friend is just fine.

Normally, subjects forgive Grace for the accidental poisoning but condemn her for the deliberate attempt, and the same thing goes for the bridge incident and the two dozen other situations presented. But magnetic pulses seemed to change all that: when asked to judge the perpetrators, the subjects who had been exposed to magnetic impulses didn’t seem to find the risky forced walk across the bridge or the deliberate poisoning all that pernicious.

“If no harm was done, then subjects would judge [Grace's behavior] as OK, even if the story made it clear Grace was trying to poison her friend. That’s the sort of moral judgment you often see in kids who are three- or four-years old,” said researcher Lianne Young.

To achieve the moral turnabout, the researchers used two different techniques, and both worked. In the first experiment, they stimulated a specific area of the brain known as the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) using magnetic impulses for 25 minutes before the subjects read the scenarios. Previous experiments had established that the TPJ, located just above and behind the right ear, becomes active when people think about the motivations and beliefs of other people. In other words, this is the part of the brain where moral judgment resides, and interestingly, the TPJ doesn’t finish developing until late teens or even early 20s in most individuals, which might explain some of the shockingly immoral behavior kids sometimes exhibit. (A point in favor of not treating children as adults when it comes to crime.)

In the second experiment, subjects only received magnetic stimulation to the TPJ in short, 500-milisecond bursts at the moment when asked to make a judgment. And those simple pulses clearly changed the way the subjects viewed morality, disrupting their normal ability to differentiate right from wrong.

For those who maintain that morality got handed down at Mt. Sinai and is the very thing that separates the saints from the sinners among us, the news may be hard to believe. “You think of morality as being a really high-level behavior,” says Dr. Saxe. “To be able to apply (a magnetic field) to a specific brain region and change people’s moral judgments is really astonishing.”

But her neighbor at Harvard University, Dr. Joshua Greene, says that in fact, it’s not so.  “Moral judgment is just a brain process. That’s precisely why it’s possible for these researchers to influence it using electromagnetic pulses on the surface of the brain.” (When you think about it, Dr. Greene’s statement tips even further in the direction of moral relativity.)

It’s interesting to think about the implications. First, there’s the temptation to speculate about a future sci-fi scenario where morality gets bio-engineered. Already, some experts have considered useful ways to exploit this knowledge. For instance, Owen Jones, a professor of law and biology at Vanderbilt University says that knowledge about the biochemistry of morality might “enable sophisticated judgments about responsibility, harm and appropriate punishment.” According to Dr. Jones, “This study, and other recent studies like it, enable us to peer into the very brain activity that underlies and enables legal judgments.”

As for now, one may wonder if our increasing exposure to ambient electro-magnetic fields has any effect on moral development. Does the magnet really need to be pressed right up against that particular spot in the skull in order to influence morality, or are we all being gradually altered by long-term, constant bombardment from EMF exposure? Does talking on the phone influence moral development, given the EMF exposure near the TPJ? Given that studies show that in workplace environments, EMF exposures often are up to 10,000 times greater than the average exposure, it might explain some notorious corporate scandals so celebrated in the news. In any event, the next time you use a cell phone, you might want to hold it to your left ear, and even at that, you might want to invest in an EMF shielding device, unless you’re a moral relativist at heart.

:hc

Blaming Ronald McDonald: Health Blog

April 13th, 2010

McDonald's Food

Let’s hear it for Ronald McDonald, world famous philanthropist, educator, and company spokesperson. Everybody knows him — but as it turns out, not everybody loves him, and that fact has been causing quite a stir.

A Boston-based group called Corporate Accountability International recently issued a report calling for Ronald McDonald to die. Pointing to the negative health effects of eating McDonald’s food, the group claims that Ronald is “the product of a well-orchestrated and shrewd marketing strategy by America’s king of fast food….to build brand loyalty among children [so] you will have customers for life.” The red-haired clown, the group says, has led “pioneering efforts to market unhealthy food to kids, disguise marketing as charity, and outflank the most well-intentioned parents.”

Corporate Accountability International has a track record that should worry the McDonald’s leadership. In 1997, the group forced the tobacco industry to retire Joe Camel, the former mascot for Camel cigarettes. The group’s website, RetireRonald.org, makes for great reading and poses a convincing argument. When kids see colorful, friendly icons, the group argues, they immediately want the associated products, and those products cause disease. “No one has been better at hooking kids on unhealthy food, spurring an epidemic of diet-related disease [than Ronald],” says the site.

McDonald’s rushed to the defense of its besieged clown, arguing that Ronald is “…a beloved brand ambassador …who helps deliver messages to families on many important subjects such as safety, literacy, and the importance of physical activity and making balanced food choices. That’s what Ronald McDonald is all about, which our customers know and appreciate.”

Many parents do seem to agree. An outpouring of indignation from readers appears on the CNN website. Comments include this one from a reader named Lincoln Brigham: “Attacks on the fast food chains always amuse me. Groups like these can’t even properly identify which foods are the problem. It’s not so much the burgers, the problem is the sodas and milkshakes. A burger is actually a benignly healthy food.” A reader named “Terry” says, “For goodness sakes don’t these morons have anything better to do than to harass a clown? Get a life you people and leave Ronald to his good deeds.” In fact, most of the 497 comments run along these lines, with the added dimension of blaming the parents for not being able to control the diet of their kids.

But outside the CNN website, the sentiment on this issue is as split as sentiment on healthcare reform, it seems, and almost as impassioned. Nearly half (47%) of the parents polled by Corporate Accountability International wanted Ronald McDonald to retire, while the other half voted in favor of him. Those against him recently organized protests outside of McDonald’s locations at 24 sites across the US.

All of this brings up a few significant issues. First, just how unhealthy is the food at McDonald’s, anyway? Is it fair to say that Ronald the clown is pushing products that are as unhealthy for kids as the cigarettes touted by Joe Camel? Does Lincoln Brigham have a point that the burgers themselves actually are benign? Consider that a quarter-pounder with cheese contains 530 calories, 30 grams of fat (including trans fat), and 1310 grams of sodium. Add to that a medium order of fries and you have another 450 calories and 22 more grams of fat, for a grand total of 52 grams of fat and 980 calories, before dessert and without beverage. Plus, consider that McDonald’s purchases its food from sources like the factory farms at Cargill and Tyson’s, uses high-fructose corn syrup, and uses potatoes drenched in pesticides. Put it altogether and it’s extraordinarily unhealthy for an adult. But in a child’s much smaller, more sensitive body, it’s downright deadly.

Certainly, there’s no way to claim the food served under those golden arches is healthy. And in fact, study after study shows that living or working in proximity to McDonald’s or other fast-food restaurants correlates to obesity and higher rates of weight-related health problems. And the problem isn’t just that kids associate Ronald McDonald with happy and delicious meals — it’s also that he may make them crave more of it.

Which brings up the second key issue: does the fact that Ronald McDonald sponsors good causes excuse him from pushing dangerous foods? A closer look at some of those causes reveals a masterful use of double-speak. For instance, the McDonald’s Active Achievers program sponsors educational programs for kids about nutrition and the need to stay active. The related Passport to Play program has been used in 45,000 schools in the US and soon will get delivered to about 11 million kids worldwide. While these programs seem to be virtuous, the fact remains that they bear the McDonald’s trademark and have the effect of building brand loyalty, even though the brand is the antithesis of what the programs represent. What good is learning about exercise and nutrition when what the kid remembers from the lesson is that Ronald McDonald sponsored it, and that he’s friendly and happy and lives in the place that sells burgers, fries, and shakes? Equally dubious are McDonald’s-sponsored academic programs that award kids with coupons for happy meals if they do well in school, or that encourage kids to draw pictures that go on display at the local McDonald’s franchise.

As the Corporate Identity International website says, “You’ve got to give it to the “hamburger-happy” huckster. He’s mastered some clever means of marketing burgers to children and using the adults kids trust most to validate his product…despite its effect on public health.” Even if the campaign to retire Ronald McDonald doesn’t achieve the goal of giving the clown a pink slip, it might put pressure on McDonald’s to start offering healthier alternatives to kids, and that alone would be a major coup. Don’t laugh. Things can change. Really! Since salads were added to the menu to encourage more health-conscious customers, McDonalds has actually become the largest seller of salads in the world!

:hc

Men Eschew Soap: Health Blog

January 26th, 2010

Washing Hands

There’s a Seinfeld episode in which Jerry sees the owner of a restaurant leave the restroom without washing his hands – return to the kitchen and then proceed to make Jerry’s pizza, with a horrified Jerry watching from his seat. It’s classic Seinfeld – and as it turns out, classic male behavior.

 

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine recently discovered that women are twice as likely as men to wash their hands with soap and water after using the toilet. To get this information, the scientists attached sensor devices to soap dispensers placed in public bathrooms. The post-toilet washing habits of 250,000 men and women then got recorded. While 64 percent of the women did use soap, only 32 percent of the men bothered.

Translated, this means that two out of three men have potty hands, which are far more likely to spread disease. But women still aren’t a sure bet for handshaking (or pizza making), given that one out of three foregoes cleansing. Study director Dr. Val Curtis said, “We are really puzzled about this and can’t really explain it.” Yet, she says, “Some of the men that were included in the study were only urinating. That’s probably why they think they don’t need to wash their hands even if they should.”

To test what might inspire bathroom-goers to use soap and water, the researchers posted flashing signs in bathrooms. The signs worked for men only when the message had dramatic flair. Whereas women responded to signs saying things like “Water doesn’t kill germs, soap does,” men needed to be hit over the head with “manly messages” like, “Soap it off or eat it later.”

Dr. Curtis says that invoking disgust worked particularly well in encouraging recalcitrant men to improve their hygiene habits, although men, it appears, don’t get disgusted easily. But the most effective tactic for both men and women was shaming them. When flashing signs saying, “Is the person next to you washing with soap?” were placed above the sinks, 11 percent more women washed and 12 percent more men.

“If they think other people are watching them, then they are more likely to wash hands,” Curtis said. Study co-director, Dr. Judah Gaby added, “It was interesting to see that, for men, the more people there were in the toilet, the more likely they were to wash their hands with soap.”

In a separate study of about 3000 men and 3000 women back in 2007, men and women were interviewed about their bathroom habits by telephone and then observed. While 89 percent of the men claimed to wash their hands every time they used a public bathroom in the interviews, only 66 percent actually did so. The women also showed a discrepancy, with 96 percent claiming on the phone that they always washed, but only 88 percent actually doing so. Since these results make it appear that far more people wash after using the toilet than the current study by Dr. Curtis reveals, we can conclude that either:

  1. Men wash their hands more regularly than Dr. Curtis’ study found, but they lie like Pinocchio, while women do wash more than men, plus they lie less.
  2. Men wash only with water (the 2007 study didn’t differentiate types of washing, whereas in the 2009 study, washing with soap was necessary).
  3. People washed more frequently back in 2007.

In fact, research does indicate that hand-washing has declined, in spite of all the public awareness campaigns. And that’s in spite of the fact that, according to the study’s authors, washing hands with soap is the single most cost-effective intervention for the worldwide control of disease.

“It could save more than a million lives a year from diarrheal diseases, and prevent respiratory infections — the biggest causes of child mortality in developing countries,” they wrote. According to Unicef, washing with soap and water could reduce the spread of diarrheal diseases by over 40% and respiratory infections by 30%.

Before you get all steamed up about your neighbors having sloppy hand hygiene, consider that hygiene among healthcare workers apparently isn’t any better than among men and women in the general public. In fact, experts contend that the two million cases of hospital-related infections contracted each year and the 90,000 resulting deaths could be drastically reduced or eliminated if only nurses, doctors, and other health professionals made friends with soap and water.

The situation in hospitals is so drastic, in fact, that a company called HyGreen has developed a sensor that discerns if healthcare workers have dirty hands. The workers all must wear badges that light up only after proper hand-washing. The CTO of HyGreen, Richard Melker, says, “If you look at the hospitals in the United States and all the health care workers, hand hygiene adherence in the best of the hospitals is around 50 percent.” When you think about it, that’s less than the public in general!!

Which goes to show that knowing better doesn’t guarantee acting smart. Considering that so much attention has been given to the possible terror of a swine flu pandemic in the media, one would think that all of us would wash up after using the loo. Do we really need to wear HyGreen badges of shame like Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter before we take the time to use soap and water?

:hc

Boost Memory While You Sleep: Health Blog

December 19th, 2009

Sleep, Memory

In this era of multitasking, idle time has become increasingly archaic. We’re always plugged in, carrying cell phones on hikes and laptops on cruises, always ready to do several things at once. Even so, one area of life has remained somewhat untouched by the pressure to get productive — and that’s been sleep time. Now, though, scientists have found a way to boost productivity even during sleep.

Researchers at Northwestern University recruited 12 subjects who completed exercises in which they dragged 50 objects to various randomly assigned areas on a computer screen. Whenever the subject moved an object, a corresponding sound played — a cat meowed while it was dragged, for instance, or a wine glass shattered. The subjects repeated the exercise a few times to learn the correct location for each object. Then, they waited 45 minutes and went to an adjoining, darkened room and took a nap.

While the subjects slept, they wore electrodes attached to their scalps. The resulting EEG readout told the researchers when the subjects fell into deep sleep, at which point the researchers quietly played back 25 of the sounds that had been associated with the moving images. The subjects didn’t rouse as the sounds played back and, in fact, none remembered hearing the sounds when they woke up.

Sure enough, upon awakening, the subjects correctly remembered the locations of the objects associated with the sounds played while they slept, but they didn’t do as well remembering the correct locations of the other objects.

Study coauthor John Rudoy said, “The research strongly suggests that we don’t shut down our minds during deep sleep. Rather this is an important time for consolidating memories.” His colleague and coauthor Dr. Ken Paller, explained, “The thinking is that during sleep, memory consolidation is going on and that rehearsal is a good way to strengthen memories. We showed that you can get information in during sleep using the auditory system and that you can cue that rehearsal by providing sounds specific to each episode of learning.”

In other words, the sound triggered a constellation of memories associated with that sound — in this case, a memory of a picture and of a spatial task. According to neuroscientist Dr. Robert Stickgold of Harvard University, “It’s not really that you reminded the subjects of what they needed to know, but rather you reminded them of a larger memory that they needed to know.”

The news excited researchers who right away saw the possibility that nighttime programming tapes might work, after all. Students might improve SAT scores overnight, they suggested, or learn a foreign language while under the covers. In fact, study coauthor Joel Voss suggested that the process might even work in reverse. “Can memories be distorted as well as strengthened?” he wondered. “Can people be guided to forget unwanted memories?”

This isn’t the first study indicating that memory can be manipulated during sleep. A 2007 study exposed card players to a rose scent while they played. Later, while the players slept, some of them were given whiffs of the rose scent. Those who smelled roses overnight subsequently did a lot better on tests asking them to recall card pairs. The different and exciting factor in the new study is that it showed a way to stimulate particular, selected memories, and this is the first research to show that effect.

“Auditory stimuli have the advantage that they can be very specifically linked to visual stimuli,” says Dr. Jan Born, a sleep researcher from the University of Lübeck in Germany. “With odors, this kind of thing is not possible.

The thing that keeps getting clearer as sleep studies pile up is that during sleep, memories get “cemented” into our brains. You need a good night’s sleep to assimilate memories of any sort, for your brain to assign memories space and to store them. Previous research has suggested that during periods of rapid learning of new tasks, such as during infancy, humans need more sleep to allow for the memory of new tasks learned to be assimilated and stored. At any time of life, though, if you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t assimilate memories as well and you’ll have a harder time retaining learning.

Scientists have suggested that sleep may have special significance for stroke survivors and those with brain injuries. Sleep programming certainly holds promise for those with particular cognitive deficits, who perhaps can program themselves during sleep to regain lost skills, but what about for those normal people who simply want a shortcut to learning?

While it’s exciting to think that maybe we can learn effortlessly while we snooze, the question the scientists aren’t asking is this: might programming ourselves to learn during sleep disrupt the normal function of sleep and create psychological issues? Does “sleep learning” interfere with the natural processing the brain needs to undergo during sleep so that we achieve optimal health and restoration? Is it really beneficial to go to school 24 hours a day, to be on the information highway even while dreaming? Isn’t rest meant to be just that — rest? Maybe yes, maybe no. But surely, it’s a question worth asking before we assault our one last refuge from multi-tasking.

On the other hand, for more advanced information on neural enhancement and accelerated sleep learning, check out the Flanagan Neurophone.

:hc

The Sunny Side of Grumpy: Health Blog

November 10th, 2009

Moods and Cognition

Planning to buy a car? If you want the best deal, wait until you’re in a really foul mood. A study out of the University of New South Wales found that subjects who felt miserable paid more attention to their surroundings, had better discrimination, were less gullible and showed better recollection than their more cheerful cohorts. (So you’d better hope your car salesman is in a good mood — assuming you’re one of the few people buying a car nowadays!)

The researchers put subjects through a series of tests in order to reach their findings. In one such test, the subjects observed a staged fight between students and a teacher in a lecture hall. A week later, the subjects reported to the lab where they watched 10-minute videos intended to induce either happy, sad, or neutral moods. Those subjects who saw the depressing videos did much better at recalling accurately what had happened during the fight earlier in the week compared to the students who saw the happy film. Apparently, good moods led subjects to spruce up their memories with irrelevant and misleading details — almost like putting flowers on the table in a dirty room. The grumps, though, remembered events with sober clarity. (Perhaps part of cramming for finals should be watching Gigli just before the exam.)

In another test, subjects again watched mood-altering films. Then, they had to rate the accuracy of a series of urban myths. The subjects who saw the depressing films did a much better job of discerning reality than did those who had watched happy flicks. They also communicated more clearly. The sad subjects did far better at stating their case in written arguments. Study director and professor of psychology Dr. Joseph Forgas explained that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.”

Apparently, the researchers found that gloomy weather exerted the same effect on subjects. On beautiful, sunny days, the memory lagged, but on gray, miserable days, the memory functioned just fine. So perhaps it’s no accident that Microsoft is based in Seattle; then again, that would make Silicon Valley harder to explain.

According to Dr. Forgas, “Our research suggests that sadness…promotes information-processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations. Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world.” Well, there you go. That’s why Google and Apple are in sunny California rather than rainy Seattle.

Ironically, the inaccurate cheerful folks had more confidence in their memories and judgements than did the depressed subjects. This led the researchers to warn that happy people may make lousy witnesses at judicial proceedings. (Of course, it’s an easy fix. Just require all witnesses to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf right before the trial.)

Forgas says that, “The finding makes sense in evolutionary terms. Animals that are wary of their environment are more likely to perceive threats to their survival. This supports the idea that mood states are evolutionary signals about how to deal with threatening situations. That is, a negative mood state triggers more systematic, more attentive, more vigilant information processing. By contrast, good moods signal a benign, non-threatening environment where we don’t need to be so vigilant.”

It’s interesting that the relaxed mind tends to embellish and create stories, while the vigilant mind simply recounts facts. Could it be that when we feel happy, the right brain functions more actively and clouds the logical left brain?

In any event, the findings converted the researchers over to the “grumpy is good” school of thought. “Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in a negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages,” the report said. Now that we know the truth, it’s easy to see that the campaign slogan for the next Presidential election will not be the upbeat, “Change you can believe in.” Instead we can look forward to something more along the lines of, “Depressed and loving it.”

But before you turn on the evening news to induce despondency, know that being glum isn’t all good. In fact, plenty of studies show that depression takes a huge toll on your health, and it can even shorten your life. So choose your fate carefully: healthy, happy, and a bit dull-headed…or wretched, ailing, and sharp as a saber.

:hc

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