Breakthroughs Today

When human nature fails to sustain sexual satisfaction, maybe a help from nature at large can do the trick. It is trickery though until safety concerns can be confirmed on the positive side. MOST likely, this new herbal aphrodisiac has not yet hit the town. But knowing the reputation of the Philippines in its love for natural food supplements with therapeutic claims, this new product may not take very long to reach us. The name of the herb is maca, or scientifically, Lepidium meyenii. It belongs to the mustard family, but it is commonly grown in the Peruvian mountains of the Andes. There, the herb had the reputation for enhancing fertility in humans and animals for centuries. A study in 2007 identified lots of plant estrogens in its roots, explaining its reputation as a fertility drug and an aphrodisiac. It contains macaridine, macamides, macaene and gluosinolates as well as an alkaloid and some nutrients. Last year, Byung-Cheul Shin of the Oriental School of Medic

Cebu Press Freedom Week kicks of this week to remind both readers and journalists on the essential role that the press plays in the local community. Breakthroughs joins the celebration with an inside look of health and science journalism as practiced in a developed country like the United States. There is not much difference in certain ways. LET us pause this week from hard medical science to join in the celebration of the Press Freedom Week. But don’t you know that health journalism is much like dancing? The relationship between the journalist and his or her source is much like an ever-unfolding dance. A sweat-breaking ballroom dancing, you might say. The sources seek access to the journalist to get their findings across; the journalist seeks access to the sources to do his job. Nowadays, huge stores of authoritative sources are available especially through the Internet. But the latest ones are mostly scientific reports that are hardly understandable to the average reader. The news

Breakthroughs Today and SunStar Cebu Breakthroughs will bring the darker side of health and medical science this November. From the exotic side of super-illnesses to bad dreams and dark faces of human relationships... all under the watchful eyes of science. Brace yourself for the Dark November!!!

Breakthroughs Today and the SunStar Cebu column Breakthroughs will go PINK this October with articles that may bring hope to women still suffering from breast cancer. Celebrate life this October with those who struggle to win over the threat to life that breast cancer poses. And there's something more to find out!  

Sometimes our mothers know things that later proved to be with scientific basis. This is one of those things. SINCE I was a kid, there was a question to which I did not find an answer. That is, until lately. So many years hence! And the question is: Why is it that in the evening mosquitoes tend to hover on certain persons’ head, and not on others? I asked my mother about this, and her reply was: “That will happen to children who have not taken a bath for a day.” I thought of that answer more as a persuasion to not resist taking a bath each day in the morning. But then after reading a research report published in PLoS One in December 2010, I have to admit that her answer makes scientific sense. Bacteria are instrumental in the production of human body odors. Newly secreted sweat is odorless. But the presence of bacteria on the human skin results in the formation of volatile acids with distinct, and oftentimes unique, smell. Have you ever wondered why no two persons smell much like t

This yellow powder can work wonders in your health. But if you know nothing else, that wonder may turn into nightmares. THE wonders of curcumin, the active ingredient in kitchen spice turmeric (Curcumin longa), work not only on stews but also in combating inflammatory bowel diseases. In a previous issue, Breakthroughs gave you the experimental doses that scientists use in their study on curcumin treatments for ulcerative proctitis (ulcer-causing inflammation of the rectum) and Crohn’s disease. Commercial curcumin, the yellow powders you find packed alone or mixed in powdered curries and mustards, contains 77 percent diferuloymethane (curcumin I), 17 percent demethoxycurcumin (curcumin II), three percent bisdemethoxycurcumin (curcumin III), and a still unknown level of the newly discovered cyclocurcumin. As promised in that earlier article (i.e. important precautions and contraindications), this week Breakthroughs will cover certain side effects of curcumin that merit the precauti