Halloween: Sugar, Chocolate, and the Body

Seratonin, the opposite of dopamine, increases in the brain after eating chocolate. It's almost instantaneous. You feel slightly euphoric, like you could possibly do anything, and have the energy to try.

Sugar, a refined form of energy, does something similar but to a different effect. Sugar is a carbohydrate, in fact, makes up the majority of carbohydrates in processed foods. Carbohydrates give the body energy, but in today's 21st century society, we eat more than we use. This unused energy becomes stored as fat in the body. Those who do strength training can replace fat with muscle and can also burn that many more calories, even while sleeping. Unlike chocolate though, sugar let's the body down after the initial, and rather short-lived, high--way down. You begin to feel tired, even less than 40 minutes after you ate. And, because sugar or carbs were ingested, you feel hungry again in less than two hours (which is all it takes to process carbs--protein, however, can take up to four hours to digest).

Chocolate has been recently praised for its antioxidant content. This is probably not a good justification to over-indulge in this sweet treat. There is typically less antioxidants in milk chocolate, if any, and to really get the health benefit, you have to eat a great deal of the darkest form of chocolate-which also has a great deal of fat.

It's Halloween tonight. There will be sugar and chocolate aplenty. It would not matter if this was only one day out of the year, but then, there's Thanksgiving, known particularly for the pie-desserts, including pecan, nothing but sugar; and a month later, Christmas--cookie anyone?
Then a month and a half later is Valentine's Day--heart-shaped boxes full of chocolate, caramels, nougat, and toffee. Easter is April (though March 23rd in 2008--just over a month after Valentine's), followed closely by Mother's Day, Father's Day, and the Fourth of July.

It's not just one night--it's one night every month or so for twelve months each year for the rest of our lives. The average person gains one pound a year. Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Add that up over 15 years, 20 years, 25, 30 or more--now, it's not as benign anymore.

And why pass this on to our children? No one wants to be the stingy neighbor passing out trial-sized tubes of toothpaste but we have to work smarter not harder. How does society suffer from obesity? How does it affect our health care benefits? How does it affect our health? How does it affect our life span? Suddenly, a tube of toothpaste doesn't look so bad afterall.

I will be giving out candy--one piece to each child until the bag is gone. Then comes the toothpaste!

Be safe out there!

The Science of Love: A True Alchemy

Have you ever pondered, fellow Alchemists, the Science of Love? If ever a true alchemy existed, it is in this form.

Love twists you out of shape--you are delirious with joy, then just as easily, angry at that same person whom you "love." What is love? Such a question is not one that may be answered completely in the space of this blog....

In December 2006, the Journal of Neuroscience reported a study on how seeing another person smile, or hearing someone's laughter, activitated a certain area of the brain, causing the person on the receiving end to actually feel happier. Essentially, smiles and laughter are infectious. While we didn't need a medical journal to tell us this, what the study did confirm is how much we need each other. A HUGE factor in the Science of Love.

When we love, we have a constant-other, a companion whose every smile brings us equal happiness, whose ever laugh brings us equal joy. But what happens when that other frowns or crys, or perhaps worse, is blank--not acknowledging you or your needs, not contributing those essentials smiles, that essential laughter, to your life?

According to the journal article, hearing someone wretch or make unpleasant sounds did not seem to effect the study group. And yet, we know that when that person who is our life's center is not sharing joy with us, we feel sad, tremendously so.

The Science of Love is much like the science of super-string theory, an unpredictable entaglement at the sub-atomic level, the thing that has so many infinite dimensions, you never know where you really are.

And despite the topsy-turvy world of love, I still recommend it. My old heart is old enough to tell you that even miserable love is worthwhile. Being in love is glorious, even if it doesn't last. Never stop falling in love. There is no science that can really explain it in full--which is why I call the Science of Love the truest form of alchemy. It is like a magical stone that turns everything into gold, and is just as quickly shown to be untrue. It is taking the elements, using philosophy, and mapping out an intricate mandala for your life.

That person, the one you are in love with, holds your very heart in his (or her) hands. So easy for that person to crush it--but always remember, when you give your heart away no human can ever destroy your heart fully--except one...you.

Good night, you princes of alchemy, you queens of science! Until next we meet....

The Literary Scientist

Cancer Deaths Decrease, According to Latest Study

It's been all over the newspapers and news-shows--cancer deaths have dropped 2.1%!!!! Wow--time to buy a lollipop! What they don't tell you is that cancer deaths have dropped because of an increase in finding early colorectal cancers. See, when the media prints and discusses any kind of study, fellow Alchemists, you must remain skeptical. While general cancer deaths have dropped, the number of cancer diagnoses is on the rise--but you won't find that as a footnote on any news article. You want the truth? Go to the statistics listed on the American Cancer Society website. But only if you, or someone you know and love, doesn't have cancer--otherwise, you'll be very depressed.

Statistics are tricky--their best use is to get attention, however, sometimes that attention is then misdirected by the numbers. Probably why I like words better than numbers; everyone knows that words are meant to be deceptive--not so with numbers. Numbers have a hard and fast reputation for being solid, honest citizens...it's why there is such emphasis on them in these studies.

Well, duty knocks. Until next time, fellow Alchemists!

Howard Wolf and the Science of Personal Narrative

This weekend I had the pleasure of attending the fall New York College English Association conference held at Daemen College in Buffalo, NY. Dr. Howard Wolf, Professor Emeritas at SUNY Buffalo and Senior Academic Visitor at Wolfson College, Cambridge, UK, spun his poetic prose on the science, including Newtonian formulations, of personal narrative and bridging the fiction-creative nonfiction gap.

His talk was infectious, with personal insights sprinkled between theoretical and science masters like Satre, Einstein and Doctorow.

It was an intellectual treat to hear the words of a man who has traveled the middle east, including Turkey and Israel, lectured in India, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, and too many other places to mention! Look for his next work: Faraway Places: Lessons in Exile. His Education of a Teacher is also quite wonderful, as are his short stories based on the semi-fictional character of Ludwig Fried.

I will be posting an abstract of his talk on the e-zine I edit, NYCEA NEWS. If you're interested, fellow Alchemists, check out the site after November 1st for more:
http://www.nyceanews.org/

Until next time, fellow Alchemists, you princes of science, you queens of medicine.... :)

Medical Updates II

According to Bharat Aggarwal, PhD, a professor of cancer medicine at UTexas MD Anderson Cancer Center, curcumin (the anti-oxidant that gives curry it's color) has been shown to stop tumor growth and destroy cancer cells in recent lab results.

Unfortunately, fellow Alchemists, it is yet unclear HOW MUCH curry one should ingest in order to receive this life-saving benefit. But take heart! The studies continue, and so will the answers to the cancer quandry. In the meantime, Fitness recommends checking out 5 Spices, 50 Dishes by Ruta Kahate.

Good night, you princes of Alchemy, you queens of Medicine! Until next time....

Source: Fitness magazine. "10 New Super Foods for Women". Hallie Levine Skylar. September 2007. 134-137.

Did you know?

Mastication does the body good, according to an article in September 2007 Fitness (p.106):

Medical studies have found that chewing sugar-free gum for 20 minutes a day can:

-Help you burn 11 calories an hour which is equivalent to 11 pounds of body fat each year
-Help you suppress hunger
-Help blood flow to the brain, increasing your memory
-Help relieve stress...50% of study participants agree!
-Help neutralize plaque acids after eating, keeping cavities at bay

Keep chewing that gum, fellow Alchemists! My favorite is Eclipse--"fabulous!" :)

CHD5 and Cancer: The Future of Cancer Research!

CHD5 protein, a newly identified gene out of Cold Spring Harbor Labratory, and verified by collaborating Stanford University, is the cancer master switch. It's located on chromosone 1 (band 1p36); the gene, unlike others recently identified, has the ability to see over the activity of other genes, and is considered a tumor suppressor.In some of us, this gene is mutated or even missing, and this is bad news for everyone.

A lack of CHD5 is found in such cancers as brain tumors, breast, ovarian, prostate and colorectal. Studies in lab mice found that additions to 1p36 add to CHD5, causing existing cancer cells to stop growing, or even die.So why haven't we heard more about this seemingly amazing discovery? There isn't much to say beyond what we already know. The discovery, reported in February 2007 in the journal Nature, will certainly contribute to continuing cancer research. However, such research is funding-dependent--and if the States go to socialized medicine in 2009--funding will be scarce, and so will hope for a cure to a disease that affects 1/3 of the population in the U.S. EACH year. Scary, isn't it?What's perhaps even scarier is that the opposite of CHD5, a cancer-causing gene called the "Pokemon" gene, discovered in 2005 at Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan, also called an oncogene, does exist.

Research needs to continue on both genes to help stop the disease that will replace heart disease in the next two years as the number cause of death in America.We are in a War on Terror--it's just not in the Middle East--it's inside our bodies. Everyone is susceptible, but why? Look to the skies, look to the water, look to the soil--radioactive and toxic pollutants, combined with increased social stress (releasing cortisol, a hormone that helps cancer cells both grow and spread), must be the answer.

So what say you, fellow Alchemists? More to come--happy October!

Sources: Nature, February 2007 and Newsday.com 9 February 2007

The Literary Scientist

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