The Null Device

Research is showing that a compound found in cannabis has antipsychotic effects. The compound, cannabidiol, naturally occurs in cannabis, though it is perhaps no surprise that high-potency varieties of "skunk" now on the market, which have been bred for maximum THC (the psychoactive compound in cannabis, which has been linked to psychosis) have less cannabidiol than older varieties.

Which, IMHO, is an argument for legalisation and regulation of cannabis. Alcohol is regulated; relatively safe varieties are easily available, and those selling liquor with ingredients considered unsafe (from poisonous ethanol to excessive amounts of thujone) face prosecution. With cannabis-induced psychosis looming as a public health issue, perhaps a law restricting the ratio of THC to cannabidiol would ameliorate the crisis?

The other solution, and one infinitely more culturally appropriate for the Anglo-Saxon world, is the familiar zero-tolerance Reaganite war-on-drugs approach. Perhaps if we build more prisons, jail more users and dealers (and perhaps execute a few particularly bad apples for good measure to put the fear of God into potheads), and institute a regime of mass surveillance and appropriate abridgements to civil liberties to catch offenders, then maybe, just maybe, the damned horse can fly we'll eventually achieve a drug-free society.

(via Mind Hacks) ¶ crime drugs health marijuana society [no comments]

Studies have found that our water supplies are full of pharmaceutical substances, from antibiotics to antidepressants to birth control drugs. Not to worry, though; the heady pharmaceutical cocktail is far too dilute to have any immediate effects.

Of the 28 major metropolitan areas where tests were performed on drinking water supplies, only Albuquerque; Austin, Texas; and Virginia Beach, Va.; said tests were negative. The drinking water in Dallas has been tested, but officials are awaiting results. Arlington, Texas, acknowledged that traces of a pharmaceutical were detected in its drinking water but cited post-9/11 security concerns in refusing to identify the drug.

Contamination is not confined to the United States. More than 100 different pharmaceuticals have been detected in lakes, rivers, reservoirs and streams throughout the world. Studies have detected pharmaceuticals in waters throughout Asia, Australia, Canada and Europe - even in Swiss lakes and the North Sea.

Cattle, for example, are given ear implants that provide a slow release of trenbolone, an anabolic steroid used by some bodybuilders, which causes cattle to bulk up. But not all the trenbolone circulating in a steer is metabolized. A German study showed 10 percent of the steroid passed right through the animals.

¶ better living through chemistry drugs health pollution [2 comments]

Scientists have developed a vaccine against cocaine, which permanently reconfigures the immune system to attack and destroy cocaine molecules before they can reach the brain:

The developers of the new cocaine vaccine, known as 'TA-CD', are doing essentially the same thing by cleverly combining a deactivated cocaine molecule with a deactivated cholera toxin molecule. The deactivated cholera toxin is enough to trigger the immune system, which finds and adapts to the new invader.

If effective, you can see that some parents might want to vaccinate their non-addicted, perfectly healthy children, so they are 'immune' to cocaine. The difference here, is that once given, the 'immunity' may be permanent. In other words, you would make the decision that your child will never be able to experience the effects of cocaine for the rest of their life.

A vaccine against heroin may also be possible, though one wouldn't want to ever be in need of strong painkillers if one has had one of those.

(via Mind Hacks) ¶ a modest proposal authoritarianism cocaine control crime drugs health society [no comments]

In recent health-related news: a cure may have been discovered for the debilitating condition of unrequited love. Researchers in Alabama and Iran have found that a combination of the hormones of melatonin and vasotocin may alleviate the condition:

Intense romantic love is associated with specific physiological, psychological and behavioural changes, including euphoria, obsessiveness, and a craving for closeness with the target.

The key is the pea-sized pineal gland, which produces melatonin. This hormone plays a key role in the circadian cycle. It has also shown anti-dopamine activities in part of the brain, while a second hormone, arginine-vasotocin, also has a key role in romantic love. The researchers suggest that giving the two hormones may be a cure for non-returned romantic love.

Also in the same article: taking showers may cause a neurodegenerative condition associated with inhalation of manganese, keeping dogs may cause breast cancer and sunlight may increase violent impulses.

¶ alabama better living through chemistry health iran love religion science society unrequited love [1 comment]

Suffering from hayfever? You could always try having a good snog.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ health sex [2 comments]

A British woman has been denied permanent residency in Australia because she is too skinny.

They refused to grant—you have to clear certain things and part of it is health and they said that my BMI was too low and so they basically said that unless I put on near on 10 kilos that they were going to deport me.

(via NotW) ¶ australia health uk weight [no comments]

The ever-useful Boing Boing brings us more handy advice; this time, what to do if your eyeball pops out of its socket.

¶ advice bizarre eyeball health [no comments]

The next trend in lifestyle-enhancing medication could be oxytocin inhalers. The hormone enhances trust, confidence and sociability and can be nasally delivered, making it an instant treatment for the symptoms of everything from autism to anxiety disorders.

Of course, since oxytocin makes people more trusting, it could also be used surreptitiously to obtain compliance from unwitting parties, for anything from sex to salesmanship to outright robbery.

¶ better living through chemistry health oxytocin [no comments]

Michael Chorost, born partially deaf, completely lost his hearing in his mid-30s, depriving him of the pleasure of listening to his favourite piece of music (Ravel's Boléro; one of the few pieces which his condition allowed him to appreciate). He was fitted with a "bionic ear", an implant that processes sound and converts it into neural impulses, at a resolution just good enough to understand speech, though nowhere near enough to appreciate music. So he studied up on neurology, music and psychoacoustics, liaised with experts around the world and hacked the implant's firmware to let him enjoy music again:

When the device was turned on a month after surgery, the first sentence I heard sounded like "Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?" My brain gradually learned how to interpret the alien signal. Before long, "Zzzzzz szz szvizzz ur brfzzzzzz?" became "What did you have for breakfast?" After months of practice, I could use the telephone again, even converse in loud bars and cafeterias. In many ways, my hearing was better than it had ever been. Except when I listened to music.

About a year after I received the implant, I asked one implant engineer how much of the device's hardware capacity was being used. "Five percent, maybe." He shrugged. "Ten, tops." I was determined to use that other 90 percent. I set out on a crusade to explore the edges of auditory science. For two years tugging on the sleeves of scientists and engineers around the country, offering myself as a guinea pig for their experiments. I wanted to hear Boléro again.

I suggested rebooting and sampling Boléro through a microphone. But the postdoc told me he couldn't do that in time for my plane. A later flight wasn't an option; I had to be back in the Bay Area. I was crushed. I walked out of the building with my shoulders slumped. Scientifically, the visit was a great success. But for me, it was a failure. On the flight home, I plugged myself into my laptop and listened sadly to Boléro with Hi-Res. It was like eating cardboard.

Hold on. Don't jump to conclusions. I backtrack to 5:59 and switch to Hi-Res. That heart-stopping leap has become an asthmatic whine. I backtrack again and switch to the new software. And there it is again, that exultant ascent. I can hear Boléro's force, its intensity and passion. My chin starts to tremble. I open my eyes, blinking back tears. "Congratulations," I say to Emadi. "You have done it." And I reach across the desk with absurd formality and shake his hand.

In his studio, Rettig plays me Ravel's String Quartet in F Major and Philip Glass' String Quartet no. 5. I listen carefully, switching between the old software and the new. Both compositions sound enormously better on 121 channels. But when Rettig plays music with vocals, I discover that having 121 channels hasn't solved all my problems. While the crescendos in Dulce Pontes' Cançào do Mar sound louder and clearer, I hear only white noise when her voice comes in. Rettig figures that relatively simple instrumentals are my best bet - pieces where the instruments don't overlap too much - and that flutes and clarinets work well for me. Cavalcades of brass tend to overwhelm me and confuse my ear.

And some music just leaves me cold: I can't even get through Kraftwerk's Tour de France. I wave impatiently to Rettig to move on. (Later, a friend tells me it's not the software - Kraftwerk is just dull. It makes me think that for the first time in my life I might be developing a taste in music.)

(via bOING bOING) ¶ bionics boléro hacking health kraftwerk music science tech [no comments]

A BBC TV programme is using computer-based photo-aging technology to model the effects of decades eating junk food:

¶ aging bbc computer graphics health junk food [no comments]

It looks like Australia may be facing another tightening of its already notorious censorship laws, this time governing TV nudity; Australia's equivalent of the Janet Jackson nipple outrage is reality-TV-show contestants getting it on in a hot-tub, which has made it into Federal parliamentary debates:

"What we basically have is pornography and full frontal nudity on television at a time when children are watching. These people have an aspiration to be porn stars," Draper told Reuters.

At least Howard/Hillsong Australia c.2005 isn't quite as bad as Iran, where the government is microwaving its own population to save them from satellite-TV-borne "westoxication". The huge volumes of microwaves being pumped into population centres as Iran's elections approach are claimed to cause everything from migraines to birth defects or worse; though what are a few brain tumours compared to eternal salvation?

(via VM) ¶ australia cancer censorship health iran [7 comments]

The taller one is, a common belief goes, the better one's career and romantic prospects are. (There is some truth to this; studies (in America, I believe) have quantified the expected increase in income per inch of height to be in the order of thousands of dollars a year.) In China, this belief has reached its logical conclusion, with height-anxious Chinese investing in torture-rack-style stretching machines and Gattaca-style height-enhancement surgery.

(via chuck_lw) ¶ affluenza health height self-improvement status [1 comment]

If you're pop royalty in need of medical treatment, your celebrity can buy you a lot; such as, for example, a hospital ward to yourself:

Reports today suggested elderly heart patients at the Cabrini Hospital were moved from their beds to vacate an entire ward for [Kylie Minogue].

The night before Minogue arrived, patients were moved from their beds to give her a wing to herself with a security guard at the end of the corridor, the report said. Visitors to the hospital were made to enter through the intensive care unit, escorted by a nurse each time.

"Several people were severely inconvenienced. I was very surprised that eight beds were given to one patient with a non-cardiac condition."

"One of the (security) chaps that had a British accent said to me, 'You can't go there', and I said, 'Yes I can, I've visited my mother here for a week, I'm certainly going to see her tonight. "These guys escorted me back like a criminal.''

¶ celebrity health kylie minogue privilege [no comments]

More claims of the impending age of immortality, this time from the head of BT's futurology unit.

'If you draw the timelines, realistically by 2050 we would expect to be able to download your mind into a machine, so when you die it's not a major career problem,' Pearson told The Observer. 'If you're rich enough then by 2050 it's feasible. If you're poor you'll probably have to wait until 2075 or 2080 when it's routine. We are very serious about it. That's how fast this technology is moving: 45 years is a hell of a long time in IT.'

That may be too late for many people alive today, unless Aubrey de Grey is right and the whole growing-old-and-dying problem is solved within a decade. If he's only slightly right, they may solve it well enough that the nonagenerians of the late 21st century have minds still sufficiently undecrepit to be worth uploading. It would suck to die a few years short of becoming immortal.

(via MindHacks) ¶ bt futurology health immortality singularity [no comments]

New Scientist has a survey of ways of optimising the functioning of one's brain, covering everything from the effects of diet, sleep and various kinds of mental and physical exercise to the possibilities of smart drugs and technological augmentations:

According to research published in 2003, kids breakfasting on fizzy drinks and sugary snacks performed at the level of an average 70-year-old in tests of memory and attention. Beans on toast is a far better combination, as Barbara Stewart from the University of Ulster, UK, discovered. Toast alone boosted children's scores on a variety of cognitive tests, but when the tests got tougher, the breakfast with the high-protein beans worked best.

Say you're trying to master a new video game. Instead of grinding away into the small hours, you would be better off playing for a couple of hours, then going to bed. While you are asleep your brain will reactivate the circuits it was using as you learned the game, rehearse them, and then shunt the new memories into long-term storage. When you wake up, hey presto! You will be a better player. The same applies to other skills such as playing the piano, driving a car and, some researchers claim, memorising facts and figures. Even taking a nap after training can help, says Carlyle Smith of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario.

Neurofeedback grew out of biofeedback therapy, popular in the 1960s. It works by showing people a real-time measure of some seemingly uncontrollable aspect of their physiology - heart rate, say - and encouraging them to try and change it. Astonishingly, many patients found that they could, though only rarely could they describe how they did it.

(via MindHacks) ¶ brain health howto [no comments]

Some good news for Tube commuters: the air on the London Underground may be equivalent to smoking a cigarette every 20 minutes, but it's still healthier than the air up top. I'm not sure whether that's reassuring or worrying.

(via london-underground) ¶ health london london underground pollution [no comments]

You've probably read about the scientific studies proving that praying or being prayed for is beneficial to one's health. According to skeptic Michael Shermer, these studies are deeply flawed, suffering from faults such as failure to eliminate other factors (such as socioeconomic status, lifestyle differences, and people in poor health being less likely to attend church). There's also the small matter of one of the authors of one study being a fraudster. (via FmH)

¶ debunking fraud health prayer religion secularism [no comments]

A study in the Netherlands has found that the air in churches is a health hazard. Due to poor ventilation and the use of candles and incense, church air has 12 to 20 times the European allowed average concentration of carcinogenic particles. The study also found various types of free radicals in the air, including previously undocumented ones.

It'd be interesting to see whether cancer rates among frequent churchgoers are above the average, and if not, whether that is attributable to much-vaunted psychosomatic effects of religious faith (or, for the red-staters out there, the Almighty's miraculous protection of His flock).

¶ cancer health religion [1 comment]

Loud music can do more than damage your hearing; it can make your lungs collapse:

One man was driving when he experienced a pneumothorax, characterised by breathlessness and chest pain. Doctors linked it to a 1,000 watt "bass box" fitted to his car to boost the power of his stereo.

It is thought the intense pulses of low-frequency, high-energy sound causes the lung to rupture because air and tissue respond differently to sound. The usual risk factors for collapsed lungs are smoking, illness that has weakened the patient, chronic obstructive lung disease or use of drugs that depress alertness or consciousness, such as sedatives, barbiturates, tranquilizers, or alcohol.

(via darwin)

¶ darwin health music stupidity [2 comments]

Scientists have finally monetised the formerly un-monetisable, the benefits of a happy sexual relationship. According to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a healthy sex life is worth A$71,500 a year; or at least that's how much happier couples who have sex at least four times a month are than than those poor unfortunates who only get to do so once a month. Meanwhile, if you're a man, the more educated and intelligent you are, the less sex you have.

¶ health sex society stupidity [1 comment]

Intestinal worms may prevent bowel cancer; as such, a health drink containing whipworm eggs to replenish your body's supply of the parasites symbionts may soon go on the market in Europe. The worms will be the pig variety, which doesn't survive long in humans, and is less likely to cause complications. (via FmH)

I wonder how long until we all have personalised populations of genetically engineered ex-parasites, modified to eliminate potential health problems long before any symptoms would arise, in our bowels, bloodstreams and elsewhere.

¶ biology cancer health parasites [2 comments]

An article on how to reprogram your body clock, changing from being a night- to a morning-person or vice versa, for career purposes, romantic compatibility, or just to join a different time-zone tribe:

The body tells time with a master clock in the brain, a pinhead-sized cluster of neurons in the hypothalamus that takes cues from optic nerves that signal sunlight. By sticking people in isolation chambers, scientists discovered that most people's internal clocks run a bit longer about a half-hour on average than the sun's 24-hour cycle. That's why, for most people, it's easier to stay up later and compensate by sleeping in than to force yourself to sleep early and wake early, explains Dr. Eliza Sutton, an acting assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington. Morning larks are those rarer birds whose body clock is shorter than 24 hours, so they wake up raring to go.

If you're a night owl with sunrise envy, sleep doctors say you can reset your body clock by following these steps:

• Find out how much sleep you really need
• As soon as you wake up, get sunlight exposure for at least 15 to 30 minutes.
• Go to bed earlier (or later) each night
• Stick to your schedule

¶ body clock health howto sleep z? [no comments]

Tikka masala, Britain's national curry dish, has been found to contain carcinogenic dyes, often at illegal levels. The additives, tartrazine (E102), Ponceau 4R (E124) and the appropriately sinister-sounding Sunset Yellow (E110), add nothing to the flavour, but give the dish its distinctive yellow colour, without which many customers wouldn't eat it. (I wonder whether the tikka masala pastes/sauces you can buy in supermarkets are similarly carcinogenic.)

¶ cancer curry health tikka masala [2 comments]

Documentary film maker Morgan Spurlock set out to eat three meals a day at McDonalds for 30 days and document the effects of this diet on film. Within a few days, he was vomiting out of the window of his car, and doctors were horrified at how rapidly his body deteriorated:

"None of us imagined he could deteriorate this badly - he looked terrible. The liver test was the most shocking thing - it became very, very abnormal."

Spurlock, who says he ate at McDonald's only sporadically before his total immersion in the Mickey D's menu, says he even began craving fat and sugar fixes between meals. "I got desperately ill," he says. "My face was splotchy and I had this huge gut, which I've never had in my life. My knees started to hurt from the extra weight coming on so quickly. It was amazing - and really frightening."

Spurlock's documentary, Super Size Me, has been screened at the Sundance film festival; its website is here. (via jwz)

¶ health junk food mcdonald's morgan spurlock [3 comments]

Canadian researchers have claimed that nursery rhymes put childrens' health at risk by not conveying the consequences of characters (such as Humpty Dumpty or Jack and Jill) suffering major injuries without receiving proper treatment:

The team from Dalhousie University ridiculed the idea that all the king's horses and all the king's men should even try to put Humpty Dumpty together again. "What sort of EMS (emergency medical service) training and equipment did these first responders have?"

The paper proposes a medically correct nursery rhyme:

Little Johnny rode his bike,
No helmet on his head.
He took a fall and split his skull,
His mother feared him dead. She rushed him to the ER,
Where they checked his neuro signs.
They noted a blown pupil
And inserted IV lines. They called the neurosurgeon,
Who came in and drilled a burr.
Now Johnny's fine; he rides his bike,
But he's helmeted, for sure.

¶ bizarre children health nursery rhymes [no comments]

A new book from the Disinformation troublemakers: 50 things you're not supposed to know, with "irrefutable evidence" of factoids like "Nearly all American milk-cows are infected with Bovine Leukemia Virus", "Pope Pius II wrote a best selling erotic novel", and "One of the heroes of 'Black Hawk Down' was a convicted child molester". (via bOING bOING)

¶ catholic disinformation health paedophilia pope secret history secrets usa [2 comments]

Last year, scientific journal Science published a study which showed that just one dose of Ecstasy (MDMA) can cause irreversible brain damage and premature Parkinson's disease. The piece was picked up on to give impetus to laws prosecuting dance party organisers for not enforcing a drug-free environment. Now it emerges that the experiment was a sham; the substance injected into the hapless monkeys in the experiment was not MDMA but methamphetamine; the result of mislabelled test tubes. Oops! Though I bet that prohibitionist zealots and prison industry lobbyists will keep trotting this experiment out as "proof" that we need more draconian anti-drug laws, confident that the average voter isn't going to have a foolproof scorecard of just what has been discredited.

¶ drugs ecstasy health war on drugs [3 comments]

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University have found that assessing a community's cancer risk could be as simple as counting the number of trucks and cars that pass through the neighborhood. Another reason to encourage the development of public transport. Not that anybody's listening here, with the government falling over itself to spend billions of dollars on new freeways and spending only the most grudging pittance on public transport (which is next to useless outside of the inner city). (thanks, Toby)

¶ cancer cars health pollution public transport risks [no comments]

A long and very interesting article on the class of sleep disorders known as parasomnias; a set of bizarre conditions which range from night terrors to sleepwalking, sleep-eating, sleep-sex and more (one man even almost strangled his wife in his sleep, thinking she was a deer).

She had been eating in her sleep since her late teens, finding clues like chocolate frosting on her pillow or cherry pits and porkchop bones in the sheets. ''I thought I was the only person in the world doing this. I would wake up in the morning wondering, What did you do last night?''

Fifty-three minutes after falling asleep, the teenager gets out of bed and begins crawling on the floor, growling, his hands folded into paws. He seizes a corner of the mattress with his teeth and shakes it. After six and a half minutes, perspiring heavily, he collapses and becomes ''clinically unresponsive.'' When technicians ask him, he reports that he has been dreaming what he always dreams -- he is a large cat following a female zookeeper with a bucket of raw meat. Here's the strangest thing of all: this parasomnia is not technically a sleep disorder. Throughout the episode Cat Boy's EEG reports that his brain is ''awake.''

A man with REM behavior disorder appeared on the monitor fighting phantoms over his bed. A case of a person acting out a dream? ''Either he's acting out a dream, or possibly dreaming out an act. It could be that the brain makes up something to explain the movement created by motor-pattern generators in the brain stem.''

(via Slashdot)

¶ bizarre health medical parasomnias sleep sleep disorders sleepwalking [no comments]

An official investigation in Britain claims that commuting on trains is a health hazard, with the cumulative consequences of the stress of riding in overcrowded, unreliable trains resulting in high blood pressure, chronic anxiety and even fatal heart conditions for countless passengers. Britain's privatised trains are chronically overcrowded because it's cheaper for operators to pay overcrowding fines than to run longer trains.

Cary Cooper, professor of psychology and health at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, said: 'People develop a constant internal anger on crowded trains that they cannot easily displace.

'Then they hear that the train has stopped for 20 minutes for no apparent reason. If travel was cheap at least people could rationalise it.'

(Similar things could apply in Melbourne; especially with the new trams and trains which have fewer seats as to accommodate more standing passengers. Only here it's easier to drive everywhere, so everybody who can, does.)

¶ health railway uk [no comments]