Heart Disease

April 7, 2013

Culprit in Heart Disease Goes Beyond Meat’s Fat

By GINA KOLATA

 

Getty Images

In a study, meat eaters who ate steak showed a burst of a chemical that increases risk.

It was breakfast time and the people participating in a study of red meat and its consequences had hot, sizzling sirloin steaks plopped down in front of them.  For the sake of science, these six men and women ate every last juicy bite of the 8-ounce steaks. Then they waited to have their blood drawn.

Dr. Stanley Hazen of the Cleveland Clinic, who led the study, and his colleagues had accumulated evidence for a surprising new explanation of why red meat may contribute to heart disease. And they were testing it with this early morning experiment.

The researchers had come to believe that what damaged hearts was not just the thick edge of fat on steaks, or the delectable marbling of their tender interiors. In fact, these scientists suspected that saturated fat and cholesterol made only a minor contribution to the increased amount of heart disease seen in red-meat eaters. The real culprit, they proposed, was a little-studied chemical that is burped out by bacteria in the intestines after people eat red meat. It is quickly converted by the liver into yet another little-studied chemical called TMAO that gets into the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.
That, at least, was the theory. So the question that morning was:

1. Would a burst of TMAO show up in people’s blood after they ate steak? And 

2. would the same thing happen to a vegan who had not eaten meat for at least a year and who consumed the same meal?
The answers were: 

1. yes, there was a TMAO burst in the five meat eaters; and 

2. no, the vegan did not have it. And 

3. TMAO levels turned out to predict heart attack risk in humans, the researchers found. 

4. The researchers also found that TMAO actually caused heart disease in mice. 

Additional studies with 23 vegetarians and vegans and 51 meat eaters showed that meat eaters 

1. normally had more TMAO in their blood and that 

2. they, unlike those who spurned meat, readily made TMAO after swallowing pills with carnitine.

“It’s really a beautiful combination of mouse studies and human studies to tell a story I find quite plausible,” said Dr. Daniel J. Rader, a heart disease researcher at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research.

Researchers say the work could lead to new treatments for heart disease — perhaps even an antibiotic to specifically wipe out the bacterial culprit — and also to a new way to assess heart disease risk by looking for TMAO in the blood.

Of course, critical questions remain.: 

1. Would people reduce their heart attack risk if they lowered their blood TMAO levels? 

2. An association between TMAO levels in the blood and heart disease risk does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. 

3. And which gut bacteria in particular are the culprits?

There also are questions about the safety of supplements, like energy drinks and those used in body building. Such supplements often contain carnitine, a substance found mostly in red meat.

But the investigators’ extensive experiments in both humans and animals, published Sunday in Nature Medicine, have persuaded scientists not connected with the study to seriously consider this new theory of why red meat eaten too often might be bad for people.

Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health, called the findings impressive. “I don’t have any reason to doubt it,” he said, “but it is kind of amazing.”

Lora Hooper, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who follows the Paleo diet, heavy on meat, exclaimed, “Yikes!”

The study does not mean that red meat is entirely bad or that it is best to avoid it entirely, said Dr. Hazen, the lead researcher. Dr. Hazen is the chairman of the department of cellular and molecular medicine at the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic, a nonprofit academic medical center. Meat contains protein, for example, and B vitamins, which are both essential for health. But the study’s findings indicated that the often-noticed association between red meat consumption and heart disease risk might be related to more than just the saturated fat and cholesterol in red meats like beef and pork.

Dr. Hazen began his research five years ago with a scientific fishing expedition. He directs a study of patients who come to the Cleveland Clinic for evaluations. Over the years, there have been 10,000. All were at risk for heart disease and agreed to provide blood samples and to be followed so the researchers would know if any patient had a heart attack or died of heart disease in the three years after the first visit. Those samples enabled him to look for small molecules in the blood to see whether any were associated with heart attacks or deaths.

That study and a series of additional experiments led to the discovery that a red meat substance no one had suspected — carnitine — seemed to be a culprit. Carnitine is found in red meat and gets its name from the Latin word carnis, the root of carnivore, Dr. Hazen said. It is also found in other foods, he noted, including fish and chicken and even dairy products, but in smaller amounts. Red meat, he said, is the major source, and for many people who eat a lot of red meat, it may be a concern.
The researchers found that carnitine was not dangerous by itself. Instead, the problem arose when it was metabolized by bacteria in the intestines and ended up as TMAO in the blood.

That led to the steak-eating study. It turned out that within a couple of hours of a regular meat-eater having a steak, TMAO levels in the blood soared.

But the outcome was quite different when a vegan ate a steak. Researchers had hypothesized that vegans would not have as many of the gut bacteria needed to make TMAO, and indeed virtually no TMAO appeared in the vegan’s blood after he consumed a steak.
“We did not expect to see such a dramatic difference,” Dr. Hazen said.

Then researchers gave meat eaters doses of antibiotics to wipe out almost all of their gut bacteria. After that, they no longer had TMAO in their blood either after consuming red meat or carnitine pills. That meant, he said, that the effect really was because of gut bacteria.
Researchers then tried to determine whether people with high blood carnitine or TMAO levels were at higher heart disease risk. They analyzed blood from more than 2,500 people, asking if carnitine or TMAO levels predicted heart attacks independently of traditional risk factors like smoking, high cholesterol and blood pressure. Both carnitine and TMAO did. But upon further analysis, they discovered that the effect was solely because of TMAO.

The researchers’ theory, based on their laboratory studies, is that TMAO enables cholesterol to get into artery walls and also prevents the body from excreting excess cholesterol.

But what is it about carnitine that bacteria like? The answer, Dr. Hazen said, is that bacteria use it as a fuel.

He said he worries about carnitine-containing energy drinks. Carnitine often is added to the drinks on the assumption that is will speed fat metabolism and increase a person’s energy level, Dr. Hazen said.

Dr. Robert H. Eckel, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and a past president of the American Heart Association, worried about how carnitine might be affecting body builders and athletes who often take it because they believe it builds muscle.

Those supplements, Dr. Hazen said, “are scary, especially for our kids.”

Dr. Hazen, though, has taken his findings to heart. He used to eat red meat several times a week, about 12 ounces at a time. Now, he said, he eats it once every two weeks and has no more than 4 to 6 ounces at a time.

“I am not a vegan,” Dr. Hazen said. “I like a good steak.”


Link: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/gina_kolata/index.html

How to Avoid the Temptations o

How to Avoid the Temptations of Immediate Gratification

Neuroscience hints at the power of imagining the future

By Melanie Bauer

You know you want me. Image: iStock/Debbi Smirnoff

Happy New Year! It’s 2013 and you’ve vowed to cut sweets out of your diet. Despite your desire for a trimmer body, the sight of cupcakes in a café window overpowers your good intentions. You cannot resist the small, sweet reward even though the larger, delayed reward of a healthier body is ultimately more desirable.

What leads some of us to give in to our immediate urges, while others are able to endure the wait for bigger and better outcomes? Neuroeconomists are investigating the brain to answer this question. They are interested in comparing the brain activity of individuals who act impulsively—those who choose rewards now over later—to that of patient folks.

Traditionally, the assumption of researchers in this field, and the related field of behavioral economics, has been that impulsive people choose immediate rewards simply because they dislike waiting. In these prior studies, when presented with a hypothetical choice between, say, $50 now or $100 in a year, impulsive individuals went for the $50.  Additionally, they showed a greater brain response to the immediate $50 reward—in the part of the brain that represents how much you are enjoying a reward (the ventral striatum)—than did patient people. Researchers interpreted this brain response as the impulsive individuals’ preference for immediacy. So while impulsive individuals would claim “carpe diem” and “strike while the iron is hot” as their life mantras, the less quoted “carpent tua poma nepotes” and “good things come to those who wait” are patient individuals’ words to live by.

However, impulsivity may not simply be due to how long people are willing to wait for gratification. A recent study by a team of researchers at Washington University in St. Louis found that when people waited for a reward, patient people were seen—through the lens of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine—imagining the future. In more patient people, the researchers observed increased activity in the region of the brain that helps you think about the future (the anterior prefrontal cortex). The patient individuals, it seems, devoted more energy to imagining receiving their reward later.

What sets this Washington University study apart from previous studies is that researchers have never before focused on the brain responses of individuals after they make a decision and are waiting for their reward.  Instead, researchers have typically measured brain activity while people are making their choices. Prior researchers likely disregarded the waiting period because their studies used hypothetical rewards over long delays. Because people weren’t actually waiting in real time to receive a real reward, the researchers could not monitor the brain during this waiting period. This new study presented people with real rewards in the form of squirts of juice either immediately or at a delay of up to a minute. In fact, the researchers squirted the juice straight into the mouths of study subjects, in much the same way that animals have been rewarded in similar studies.

This future thinking, which is associated with the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC), has also been found in neuropsychological studies that focus on two different, but related phenomena: prospective memory—remembering to do something in the future, like fill up your gas tank on the way home from work—and episodic future thought—thinking about the future, such as imagining what you’ll cook for dinner later tonight.

Now, one more phenomenon can be added to the list of contexts in which people imagine a future outcome and activate their aPFC: imagining future rewards.

One problem with the future is its vagueness. While you are able to imagine in your mind going to the gas station or cooking dinner in general, the exact details of these activities are not clear. You don’t know which pump you’ll use at the gas station, or precisely what time you’ll remove the pizza from the oven. In this way, the future is fuzzy. This fuzziness can make the future less appealing. Remember the marshmallow experiment that tested the willpower of children to resist the temptation to eat a marshmallow placed on a table in front of them, so they could receive two marshmallows after they waited? Research suggests that if that one marshmallow was made more abstract—such as hiding it from view or just showing a picture of it—the reward would become less appealing and more similar in appeal to receiving two marshmallows at a future time. On the flip side, making the future less fuzzy by focusing on the details—eating double the marshmallows currently being presented—could also make the future marshmallows more attractive than the present singular marshmallow. In this way kids would have an easier time resisting the one marshmallow now in exchange for the two marshmallows in the future.

Perhaps a combination of this fuzziness research (i.e., delay of gratification research) with recent neuroeconomics research—linking impulsivity with a lack of future thinking—could be useful for clinicians who are developing treatment plans for impulsive individuals. Because the future is fuzzy and impulsive people have an especially hard time imagining it, clinical treatments could involve de-emphasizing the present, making it more abstract, and building a concrete image of the future. For example, while it may be quicker, easier, and cheaper to buy fast food for dinner—immediate rewards that are all very desirable—people could learn to visualize larger future rewards when deciding what to eat, such as avoiding ailments like obesity and Type-2 diabetes. They could also avoid driving past their favorite fast food restaurants and only stock their cupboards with nutritious foods so the most visually salient meal options are healthy ones. This could help shift the attractive light from being cast on the present desire for fast food to instead being on the future desire for a healthy body.

For impulsive individuals who repeatedly make decisions that satisfy their current desires at the expense of their future needs, the negative effects on their health can be significant. Given the host of public health issues that involve impulsivity, research in neuroeconomics could prove important. Future research could measure the effects of an intervention on the brain. Can we get impulsive people to produce activity in their brain that shows they’re thinking about the future in a concrete way, making them look and act more patiently in the laboratory? Do these interventions lead to real-life choices to invest in the future and not give in to present impulses? Not to mention, could adapting the mindset that the future is worth waiting for help the rest of us keep some of our New Year’s resolutions?

Are you a scientist who specializes in neuroscience, cognitive science, or psychology? And have you read a recent peer-reviewed paper that you would like to write about? Please send suggestions to Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter @garethideas.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Melanie Bauer is a graduate student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis studying cognitive aging. She will write her dissertation on informal science education, and has also contributed to The Open Notebook. Connect with Melanie at melaniesbauer.weebly.com or on Twitter @MelanieSBauer.

Source:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-to-avoid-the-temptations-of-immediate-gratification

 

 

To inspire Alzheimer’s research

XPRIZE, which in 2004 awarded $10 million for the first privately built, manned spacecraft launched into space twice in two weeks, may soon be setting its sights on effective treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

XPRIZE hopes to create a new Alzheimer’s XPRIZE to inspire the ingenuity of researchers and increase their interest in taking on the daunting task of stopping the disease. 

An Alzheimer’s prize was proposed by a team of experts co-directed by Eric C. Leuthardt, MD, associate professor of neurological surgery and biomedical engineering at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Dean Ornish, MD, founder and president of the nonprofit Preventive Medicine Research Institute and clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

The team’s proposal to tackle Alzheimer’s won a recent XPRIZE “Visioneering” workshop that drew proposals on topics of importance to society. 

“The presentation by Dr. Ornish and Dr. Leuthardt, and the vote of support by the Visioneering attendees, has certainly reaffirmed what we at XPRIZE deeply believe – that Alzheimer’s is one of humanity’s grandest challenges and that an innovative solution is urgently required,” said Eileen Bartholomew, vice president of Prize Development at XPRIZE. “We will continue to explore how an XPRIZE might catalyze such a solution.”

Leuthardt

Leuthardt, who treats patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children’s Hospital, said: “Basically, XPRIZEs are about making the impossible possible. They’re about giving innovators the incentive to achieve new breakthroughs that benefit society.”

A similar contest, known as the Orteig Prize, inspired Charles Lindbergh’s solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927, Leuthardt noted, and that led to the start of commercial air travel a short time later. 

At XPRIZE’s annual Visioneering event, more than 100 pioneering scientists, inventors, engineers, artists, philanthropists and business leaders met to propose new XPRIZE concepts.  

The attendees are divided into teams and assigned an area of research within which they create an XPRIZE proposal. The team led by Leuthardt and Ornish was given the topic of aging.

Noting that an epidemic of Alzheimer’s disease is on its way, the team compared the potential crisis to a meteor in space lined up to strike the Earth.

“Populations are growing older around the world, and Alzheimer’s risk increases significantly with age,” Leuthardt said. “This will affect not only the elderly but also their families and loved ones, and it will have devastating emotional and economic consequences.”

The details of what qualifies as a cure for Alzheimer’s would be established if the foundation raises funds for the prize. As in other XPRIZEs, the winners of the award would retain the intellectual property rights for their breakthrough.

“I think everyone is touched or will soon be touched by Alzheimer’s,” Leuthardt said. “I think that’s part of the reason why our proposal won — everybody in the audience had a family member affected by Alzheimer’s or knew someone with a family member affected by this disorder.”

Other XPRIZEs include or have included a prize for the first “tricorder” (a handheld device that can non-invasively diagnose 15 health conditions like the tricorders featured on Star Trek); a prize for the first group to sequence the DNA of 100 100-year-olds for identification of genetic factors linked to extended lifespans; and a prize for the first privately funded team to send a lander to the moon.

---

Washington University School of Medicine’s 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish andSt. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked sixth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.




SOURCE:  http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25468.aspx

Medical Marijuana

State Battles Federal Government for Independence in Medical Marijuana Case

04 Jul 2013   

Magistrate Maria-Elena James ruled that a cannabis dispensary in Oakland, CA, is free to stay open while local authorities fight federal prosecution to shut it down, reports Reuters.

The ruling came in on July 3rd, just under the wire for local supporters of the Harborside Health Center to celebrate their temporary medical marijuana freedom on the Fourth of July.

This long-standing court case between California and the US government is currently in an appeals stage, whereby the local government is contesting Magistrate James's February decision that the city has no right to interfere in a federal prosecutor's action to shut down or seize the property of the Oakland-based pot store.

Currently in the US, marijuana is not an approved drug according to the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), but rather an illegal narcotic. Still, the District of Columbia and 16 states have deemed cannabis to be legal if sold as a medicine prescribed by a doctor.

The medical world weighs in on marijuana

Outside of politics, the medical community has waged its own debate over the last decade about the health merits of marijuana. The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR), which is run by the University of California, has been conducting scientific studies for several years.

In one study involving effects of cannabis on pain from HIV-related peripheral neuropathy, the CMCR concluded that52% of patients who smoked marijuana had over a 30% reduction in pain, compared to 24% in the placebo group.

And in another study conducted by the CMCR and published by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), researchers found that smoked cannabis significantly reduced symptoms and pain associated with multiple sclerosis spasticity.

Cannabis for medical use is a polarizing issue

Still, the medical community is divided, with some professionals calling for more in-depth studies and research before medical marijuana is prescribed to patients.

A paper published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) suggests that:

"over the longer term cannabis may have unwanted systemic and psychoactive adverse effects that must be taken into consideration in chronic pain populations, who have high rates of co-occurring medical illness and co-morbid psychiatric and substance use disorders."

Whether a medical or political issue, medical marijuana has strong supporters who are either for or against it.

In an act of solidarity with the state's physicians, the Medical Board of California published standards for physicians who prescribe medical marijuana to patients.

According to a statement from the Board, physicians who prescribe cannabis will not receive any ill effects toward their physician's license, so long as they follow good medical practice during patient consultation, including:

• History and good faith examination of the patient
• Development of a treatment plan with objectives
• Provision of informed consent including discussion of side effects
• Periodic review of the treatment's efficacy
• Consultation, as necessary
• Proper record keeping that supports the decision to recommend the use of medical marijuana.

Though the case involving the fate of Oakland's medical marijuana dispensary has yet to be resolved, Cedric Chao, the attorney representing the city in the case, remains positive, saying:

"The court has recognized that Oakland has legitimate interests in protecting its residents' health, in promoting public safety, and in protecting the integrity of its legislative framework for the regulation of medical cannabis. Today's order, coming right before the July Fourth holiday, reminds us all that one of the strengths of our country is its independent judiciary."

The state of California and supporters of the Harborside Health Center may be on the verge of a metaphorical Boston Tea Party scenario with the federal government, but for this Independence Day, they can hold onto their tea.

Or even smoke it.

Written by Marie Ellis
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

---

References:

“California pot shop billed as world’s largest may stay open for now - judge”, Ronnie Cohen, Reuters, published online 3 July 2013.

“Cannabis for Treatment of HIV-Related Peripheral Neuropathy”, Donald Abrams, M.D., CMCR, published online. Link to Results.

“Medical Board Reaffirms its Commitment to Physicians Who Recommend Medical Marijuana”, Medical Board of California, published online 13 May 2004.

“Medical Marijuana: Clearing Away the Smoke”, I. Grant, J. Atkinson, B. Gouaux, B. Wilsey, Bentham Open, NCBI, published online 2012 May 4; DOI: 10.2174/1874205x01206010018

“Smoked cannabis for spasticity in multiple sclerosis: a randomized, placebo-controlled trial”, J. Corey-Bloom, T. Wolfson, A. Gamst, S. Jin, T. Marcotte, H. Bentley, B. Gouaux, CMAJ, published online 14 May, 2012, DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.110837

---

Citations:

Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

Marie Ellis. "State Battles Federal Government for Independence in Medical Marijuana Case." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 4 Jul. 2013. Web.
7 Jul. 2013.

APA

Marie Ellis. (2013, July 4). "State Battles Federal Government for Independence in Medical Marijuana Case." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262938.php.

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

---

Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read ourterms and conditions.

Find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/mntoday

Weekly newsletter e-mails available at: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/newsletters.php

Send your press releases to pressrelease@medicalnewstoday.com

Link: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/262938.php

Foie Gras: Delicacy of Despair

When the ducks quack, feed ‘em.

Foie Gras: Delicacy of Despair

    

 

Kate Winslet Exposes Foie Gras Cruelty

Kate Winslet narrates this shocking undercover footage of the torture that ducks and geese endure in foie gras production.

Category - Nonprofits & Activism

License - Standard YouTube License

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAzrSl0ztsQ

Study: Subway Sandwiches Are Worse Than We Think

We still underestimate how many calories we're getting at most fast food restaurants. The effect is most drastic at Subway, where a marketing "health halo" seems responsible.

James Hamblin, MD, is The Atlantic's Health editor.



PROBLEM: Under Obamacare, major fast food chains will be required to print calorie counts on menus. The idea presumes that we still don't really know what we're getting into with fast food. Don't we?


METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Dr. Jason Block at Harvard surveyed people at fast food restaurants across New England. They talked with 1877 adults, 1178 adolescents, and 330 children at places like McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts, KFC, and Subway, among others.

They asked customers to save their receipts, then estimate how many calories were in their meals. Most of the customers ended up being non-white, 65 percent of the adults and 57 percent of the school-age children were obese, and 40 percent reported eating at that same restaurant chain at least once per week.

RESULTS: The average meal was 836 calories for adults, 756 for adolescents, and 733 for kids. Two-thirds of people underestimated that. One quarter underestimated it by at least 500 calories.

The underestimation in adults averaged 175 calories and got larger as the number of calories in the meal increased. Subway was the most insidious, with adolescent estimates averaging around 500 calories on the low side. Adults and adolescents eating at Subway estimated 20 and 25 percent lower than those at McDonald's, respectively. Here's how the underestimation looked between restaurants:

Calories estimated minus actual calories [BMJ]

IMPLICATIONS: Most people eating at these restaurants were obese, and most underestimated how many calories they were actually taking in. So, maybe calorie-counts on menus are a good thing. The researchers also discuss Subway's branding as a sort of "health halo" of which to be wary.

Of course, calorie count isn't the only measure of foods' healthfulness -- a 230-calorie veggie sub is better than 230 calories worth of jelly donut -- it's just the only measure in this study.

A footnote: 41 people were excluded from the study as outliers because their meals exceeded 4000 calories.

The full study, "Consumers' Estimation of Calorie Content at Fast Food Restaurants" is published in the journal BMJ.

Smoking a cigarette while riding the Tour de France. 1920s

Alcohol Addiction Relapse

Alcohol Addiction Relapse Might Be Thwarted By Turning Off Brain Trigger

By Jennifer O'Brien on June 23, 2013

 
Researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco have been able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to memories that cause alcohol cravings in rats, a finding that may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions.

.
In the study, researchers were able to prevent the addicted animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse.

“One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by the memory by certain cues – like going into a bar, or the smell or taste of alcohol,” said lead author Segev Barak, PhD, at the time a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of co-senior author Dorit Ron, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology.
 
“We learned that when rats were exposed to the smell or taste of alcohol, there was a small window of opportunity to target the area of the brain that reconsolidates the memory of the craving for alcohol and to weaken or even erase the memory, and thus the craving”he said.
The study, also supervised by co-senior author PatriciH. Janak, PhD, a Gallo Center investigator and UCSF professor of neurology, was published online on June 23 in Nature Neuroscience.

Neural Mechanism That Triggers Alcohol Memorya 

In the first phase of the study, rats had the choice to freely drink water or alcohol over the course of seven weeks, and during this time developed a high preference for alcohol.
In the next phase, they had the opportunity to access alcohol for one hour a day, which they learned to do by pressing a lever. They were then put through a 10-day period of abstinence from alcohol.

Following this period, the animals were exposed for five minutes to just the smell and taste of alcohol, which cued them to remember how much they liked drinking it. The researchers then scanned the animals’ brains, and identified the neural mechanism responsible for the reactivation of the memory of the alcohol – a molecular pathway mediated by an enzyme known as mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1).
They found that just a small drop of alcohol presented to the rats turned on the mTORC1 pathway specifically in a select region of the amygdala, a structure linked to emotional reactions and withdrawal from alcohol, and cortical regions involved in memory processing.

They further showed that once mTORC1 was activated, the alcohol-memory stabilized (reconsolidated) and the rats relapsed on the following days, meaning in this case, that they started again to push the lever to dispense more alcohol.

“The smell and taste of alcohol were such strong cues that we could target the memory specifically without impacting other memories, such as a craving for sugar,” said Barak, who added that the 

Ron research group has been doing brain studies for many years and has never seen such a robust and specific activation in the brain.

Drug that Erases the Memory of Alcohol

In the next part of the study, the researchers set out to see if they could prevent the reconsolidation of the memory of alcohol by inhibiting mTORC1, thus preventing relapse. 

When mTORC1 was inactivated using a drug called rapamycin, administered immediately after the exposure to the cue (smell, taste), there was no relapse to alcohol-seeking the next day.
Strikingly, drinking remained suppressed for up to 14 days, the end point of the study. 

These results suggest that rapamycin erased the memory of alcohol for a long period, said Ron.

The authors said the study is an important first step, but that more research is needed to determine how mTORC1 contributes to alcohol memory reconsolidation and whether turning off mTORC1 with rapamycin would prevent relapse for more than two weeks.

The authors also said it would be interesting to test if rapamycin, an FDA-approved drug currently used to prevent organ rejection after transplantation, or other mTORC1 inhibitors that are currently being developed in pharmaceutical companies, would prevent relapse in human alcoholics.

“One of the main problems in alcohol abuse disorders is relapse, and current treatment options are very limited.” Barak said. 

“Even after detoxification and a period of rehabilitation, 70 to 80 percent of patients will relapse in the first several years. It is really thrilling that we were able to completely erase the memory of alcohol and prevent relapse in these animals. This could be a revolution in treatment approaches for addiction, in terms of erasing unwanted memories and thereby manipulating the brain triggers that are so problematic for people with addictions.”

The other co-authors of the paper are Feng Liu, PhD, Sami Ben Hamida, PhD, Quinn V. Yowell, BS, Jeremie Neasta, PhD, and Viktor Kharazia, PhD, all of the Gallo Center and UCSF Department of Neurology.

The study was supported by funds from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and funds from the State of California for Medical Research on Alcohol and Substance Abuse administered through UCSF.


The UCSF-affiliated Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center is one of the world’s preeminent academic centers for the study of the biological basis of alcohol and substance use disorders. Gallo Center discoveries of potential molecular targets for the development of therapeutic medications are extended through preclinical and proof-of-concept clinical studies.
 

Source: http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/06/107001/addiction-relapse-might-be-thwarted-turning-brain-trigger
  

Brain Freeze

Why do we get Brain Freeze? [Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia]

Posted on May 29, 2012 by Wiley Life Sciences Blog

Have you ever wondered why you get “brain freeze” when you eat something cold such as ice cream or a milkshake? That sudden pain in your forehead is known in medicine as sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

It is caused by having something cold touch the roof of the mouth (palate), or the total immersion in water that is generally below 15°C (or 10°C or even 5°C for some acclimated open water swimmers). It is believed to result from a nerve response causing rapid constriction and swelling of blood vessels or a “referring” of pain from the roof of the mouth to the head.

An ice cream headache is the direct result of the rapid cooling and rewarming of the capillaries in the sinuses. A similar but painless blood vessel response causes the face to appear “flushed” after being outside on a cold day. In both instances, the cold temperature causes the capillaries in the sinuses to constrict and then experience extreme rebound dilation as they warm up again.
In the palate, this dilation is sensed by nearby pain receptors, which then send signals back to the brain via the trigeminal nerve, one of the major nerves of the facial area. This nerve also senses facial pain, so as the neural signals are conducted the brain interprets the pain as coming from the forehead—the same “referred pain” phenomenon seen in heart attacks. 

Brain-freeze pain may last from a few seconds to a few minutes. Research suggests that the same vascular mechanism and nerve implicated in “brain freeze” cause the aura (sensory disturbance) and pulsatile (throbbing pain) phases of migraines.

How do we stop brain freeze? WikiHow explains.

Find more interesting stories on the official Neuroscience Facebook page

 

How do we stop brain freeze? WikiHow explains.

Find more interesting stories on the official Neuroscience Facebook page


Source:  http://wisciblog.com/2012/05/29/why-do-we-get-brain-freeze-sphenopalatine-ganglioneuralgia/

..................................................

Levity never hurts a person thus, this funny article is included here for your enjoyment.

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. 

— Lord Byron

FARM SANCTUARY WARNS OF UNSAFE AND INHUMANE FOOD PROCESSING

YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ this new Huffington Post blog by Farm Sanctuary’s Senior Advocacy Director Bruce Friedrich titled “USDA Inspector General: Food Safety and Humane Slaughter Laws Ignored With Impunity.” 

Basically, according to a new report released last week by the USDA Office of the Inspector General (OIG),contaminated pork is pouring out of slaughterhouses. Surprisingly, perhaps because of the Farm Bill, there hasn’t been even one sentence written about the report in the media, beyond a few meat industry Blogs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-friedrich/usda-inspector-general-fo_b_3333853.html

I hope you will consider writing about this extremely concerning report, or sharing a link to Bruce’s blog. Bruce Friedrich is available for interview any time.

Cheers,
Meredith

Meredith Turner

Media Relations Specialist

646-369-6212

Connect with Farm Sanctuary:

Facebook| Twitter | YouTube | FarmSanctuary.org

Factory Farming

Once the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.  Anon.


Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?  Abraham Lincoln


Quarrels would not last long if the fault were only on one side.  La Rochefoucauld


Friendship is like money, easier made than kept.  Samuel Butler


Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.  Aristotle



To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know
what to do with one’s freedom.  Andre Gide


The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau


There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it. George Bernard Shaw


The best thing about the future is that it only comes one day at a time.  Abraham Lincoln


Write down your injuries in dust and your benefits in marble. Benjamin Frank


The price one pays for pursuing any profession or calling is an intimate knowledge of its ugly side.  James Baldwin



Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Fosdick



There is truth in the high opinion that in so far as a man conforms, he ceases to exist.  Max Eastman


Great opportunities come to those who make the most of small ones.  Anon.


Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength. It is the interest you pay on trouble before it comes. CTBoom

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.  G.K. Chesterton




Wealth is a relative thing, since he who has little and wants less is richer than he who has much and wants more. C. Colton