Glass of wine for the brain?

Health studies are constantly being completed. The results are sometimes even surprising. This Spanish study links a delay in Alzheimer's disease to moderate drinking in women. The study took into lifestyle considerations while performing the research. Results were conclusive with the alcohol consumption benefiting nonsmoker women the most.

"Our results suggest a protective effect of alcohol consumption, mostly in non-smokers, and the need to consider interactions between tobacco and alcohol consumption, as well as interactions with gender, when assessing the effects of smoking and/or drinking on the risk of Alzheimer's disease," the study's lead author, Ana M. Garcia, from the University of Valencia's department of preventive medicine and public health, said in a news release.

This seems odd when initially thinking about the issue, but not really. Drinking effects the brain's function (ever had a conversation with a rational drunk?) and specially the chemistry. The study's authors point this out.

"Interactive effects of smoking and drinking are supported by the fact that both alcohol and tobacco affect brain neuronal receptors," Garcia explained.

The take home message from this study is scientists may know quite a few things about the human body, but a significant amount of study could still be completed on the things we don't know. The medical field has much to learn and research should be heavily funded.

Diet to lose weight?

First of all, Happy New Years y'all! This post is over a socially complex topic that needs addressing for the health of American citizens for decades to come. Overweight people in our society. This study based upon the effects of eating cheese on weight loss flies in the face of the prevailing wisdom often given to us by our medical doctors. High fat food that has the ability to reduce weight? It turns out that an individual's metabolism is increased through the ingesting of conjugated linoleic acid found in cheese. This does not surprise me that an element like this in a supposed bad food makes people thinner to a degree. Look at the French, they eat lots of rich foods and remain thin. The issue at hand has a weight loss diet competing with a healthy diet.

Fat in general has been labeled a negative factor ever since the Framingham Heart Study (began in 1948) identified a diet high in animal fats contributes to heart diseases. If you dig further into the topic, it specifically is saturated fat that contributes to heart disease and not unsaturated fats (mononunsaturated and polyunsaturated). Unsaturated fats are beneficial for humans and are necessary for life. The general name "fat" also gives us a visual impression of an overweight individual. Cheese is loaded with unsaturated and saturated fat, so the benefits from linoleic acid would not outweight the negative effects from fat. Here is the conflict. Yes, excessive amounts of fat in cheese could potentially (depends on individual) contribute to heart disease, thus, limiting the amount of cheese would be advisable.

What contributes to gaining weight is excessive calorie consumption in comparison to the body burning calories through physical activities. Excessive calories are stored by the body as human fat. Consumed fats (from food) are low in calories. The human body does not take in significant amounts of calories from food fats. Even though saturated food fat is not healthy, it will not lead to significant weight increase. Excessive calories tend to come from an overload in carbohydrates, i.e. sugars and breads. Here is the conflict within the layman's reasoning. The reality is a healthy diet may lead to weight gain. Other side of the coin is an unhealthy diet may lead to weight loss. Dr. Atkins diet, if not carefully intepreted, can result in a poor diet leading to weight loss. The conundrum of the French eating rich foods like cheese makes rational sense if analyzed in the proper manner.

Conquering the overweight American may require more studies similar to this cheese study and rethinking the way we view certain foods. Healthy and weight sensible are different. More factors than mentioned in this blog are at play. The final step would be to properly educate the public.

Dr. Coffee's Innovation Awards # 1, Have a Heart

This blog is new. I am quickly finding out that blog topics are easy to find. The amount of work required to put the ideas into words is significant though. As a way to keep the posts coming, I am going to have a blog series with common themes. This blog is the inagural post for Dr. Coffee's Innovation Awards. Basically, it will be a series of posts covering outstanding, contemporary discoveries or innovations.




This post comes from Yahoo News concerning a recent discovery involving a new type of human cardiac stem cells capable of growing heart tissue. According to the article, the stem cells can be used to create portions of working heart muscle outside of the human body within laboratory conditions. The future hope is using a heart attack patient's own cadiac stem cells to create new working heart tissue. It would then be possible to easily replace damaged tissue without biological rejection.

Now, if they could only find adult human brain stem cells.