Summertime, Cancer and Wine

WITH graduations through, and parties being held, there is more time for drinking alcoholic beverages. So it may be a downer to bring out a recent study that put this favorite Filipino drink into the spotlight. But needless to say, being forewarned is being forearmed.

In October 2009, the International Agency for Research on Cancer updated its 1988 classification of acetaldehyde (“probable carcinogen in humans”) to Group I human carcinogen (“carcinogenic to humans”). And that is not for insignificant bases.

Thirteen medical researchers conducted a study involving 818 heavy drinkers found that acetaldehyde cause defects in their genes for the enzyme acetaldehyde dehydrogenase.

Their findings came out in the November 2005 issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

If you should drink this summer, then let me share with you a recent study that evaluated the acetaldehyde content major groups of alcoholic beverages available in the market. This way you can choose those that pose the least health risk.

In 2008, DW Lachenmeier and his team made a large chemical survey of alcoholic beverages for their acetaldehyde content. They reported in the Food Chemical Toxicology that beer, for instance, contains... [Read more.]

(Photo courtesy of The Telegraph)

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 6 April 2011.

Comments

The "Lungs" of Our Homes

As trees slowly disappear with growing urbanization, the Rooseveltian lungs are replaced with more dangerous electrical lungs at home, many of which can damage the genetic materials of the human lungs. FRANKLIN Roosevelt said: “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” In Cebu today, however, people may have given up “fresh strength” for the material conveniences of an urbanized province. Even the more far-flung towns in the province of Cebu have already shown signs of urbanization. And it will not be long when even forests will cease to be. Nonetheless, the “lungs” have been replaced with electric air fresheners, with all the varied approaches to freshen the air—at least in the cities and the suburbs. But four Japanese researchers—three from the Iwate University (Ueda, Morioka, Iwate) Department of Veterinary Medicine and one from the National Institute of Health Services (K...

Dealing with TURP

As we age, a lot of things we easily can do when we were younger get harder to do as our bodily systems start to show problems in functioning. That's the case with TURP; and if you add the inevitable side effects of drugs used in treating it, you can only imaging how difficult old age can be. A CERTAIN practice has been common in synthetic drug treatments (so common it may be considered a cliché). You start taking a prescription for one health problem and you end up having a new one. Of course that is not true for all synthetic medications. But given lack of long-term studies in most pharmaceutical drugs today, who knows what’s going to happen in the next 20 to 30 years after taking a particular regimen. In history, many drugs have been pulled out from shelves because they later turned out to be potential killers, if not already one. The classic case is that of finasteride, a treatment used against certain complications that transurethral ...

Sex Industry Weathers Financial Crises

Varmus Christopher Forbes.com 12/29/08 14:00:05 GMT The sex industry traces back to 500 B.C., when traders from the Greek port of Miletus sold olisbos, an early version of the dildo. Today, the business of sex (including pornography) now runs into the tens of billions of dollars. (No official estimates are available; Wall Street analysts don't tend to track this stuff.) And while print and video sales are ebbing, as more free adult content has become available online, sales of un-reproducible sexual aids are still healthy. "Of course, there's concern about the economy, but right now our sales are growing," says Michael Trygstad, founder of Wet, a lubricant manufacturer in Van Nuys, Calif. "We've grown 30% this year alone. We've had to completely automate our factories to meet the tremendous demand. People are deciding to stay at home and engage in inexpensive entertainment.'' Slick marketing--and the ability to shop anonymously online--helps, too...

Breakthroughs Today

Search This Blog