Breakthroughs Today

“WHEN you can stop you don’t want to, and when you want to stop, you can’t,” described Luke Davies in Candy on how addiction feels like. It may be surprising, or even unbelievable, but the overall addiction potential for cannabis has been found less than for caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, cocaine or heroin. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), considers cannabis use disorder (CUD) as a condition requiring treatment. As of 2012, no medication has proven effective for treating CUD. The US Food and Drug Administration approved no medication for it. Unlike opiate or alcohol dependence, it has far fewer treatment options. The review of novel medications for CUD, the Balter, Cooper and Haney Review published in Current Addiction Reports (June 2014), noted treatments that had been confirmed ineffective... [ READ MORE ] This article appears on Sun. Star Cebu newspaper on 15 July 2014.

It always pays to read more about food if you are concerned with your own health and well-being. Science and technology have brought us so much we have no means of learning them all. Despite that, the risk of ignorance can be costly in fact even to your life. The mysterious "un-sub" (unknown substance) we cover this week is one of these. OUR mysterious substance (sub) in drinks, particularly soft drinks, has no “satiety impact” despite its “being” a carbohydrate, as mentioned in a previous outing in Breakthroughs. That makes us suspect that this substance is not a natural carbohydrate because carbohydrates by nature fill you up.   The substance is not new to me. I often encountered it in labels but never suspected there is something more to it. The name is as innocent as any other simple sugar I encountered during my med-tech days. When I stumbled upon it in studies I reviewed lately, the study results surprised me. In (food) labels, the substance is cal

There are health conditions that can be horrible and unnerving as well as helplessly incurable at this time. And Tourette Syndrome is one of them. STARTING May 15, the world will be celebrating Tourette Syndrome Awareness Month. Breakthroughs supports this move with a special discussion of this inherited neuropsychiatric disorder.  Tourette usually starts to manifest in childhood (mostly between ages five and seven) with its characteristic multiple physical tics and at least one vocal tic.  Tics, according to the Leckman study published in Advanced Neurology (2006), are sudden, repetitive, non-rhythmic movements (e.g. throat clearing, eye blinking, and shoulder shrug) and utterances (e.g. involuntary shouting) that involve discrete muscles.  Although considered before as rare, studies through the years noted a prevalence of 0.4 percent to 3.8 percent usually among children ageing five to 18. Most patients experience peak symptoms before their mid-teen years, wit

In addition to its popular use as a mildly acidic juice, passion fruit has been found useful in providing both soluble and insoluble fibers to the body, a proven diet that brings down bad cholesterol from the body and consequently protects the person from circulatory diseases later on.  AT TIMES passion is a fruit of love. Although the same is true the other way around.  What I love about passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) though is the sweet citrus taste that is milder compared to regular orange or calamansi. Eating it, however, is another story.  I tried extracting the juice directly in my mouth the way I usually eat poncan oranges, pulp and all except for the seeds.  Yet passion fruit can be unwieldy that way. I ended up feeling less satisfied in relation to the effort I put in getting the juice into my mouth. Thus I decided to proceed the usual way: place sufficient amount of scraped juice-filled seed-sacs into a glass of water, add a small amount of water and s

The statistics are unmistakably clear. One out of two adult person you meet along the way has suffered from the itchy affliction, a 2012 study published at the International Journal of Cosmetic Science  found so.  A POPULAR Visayan song may have lyrics like this when it comes to flakes: “Dili tanang hup-ak kan-on; dili tanang kan-on hup-ak” (literally translated as “not all flakes you eat; not all you eat are flakes). Some carbohydrate-laden finger foods are flakes, like the traditional banana or cassava flakes (or chips) we know from childhood. Some so-called “junk foods” have also hit the store shelves as flakes, such as corn flakes. There are certain flakes though that you will not dream of eating, so gross to some even to imagine touching their lips. These flakes are often the itchy ones we call “dandruff.” Dandruff flakes or scales are actually dead skin cells that the scalp sheds off regularly and they stay cohesive with each other. Shedding is a normal daily proce

Through years of research, I came to appreciate the infinite complexity of the human body, its systems, and the varied interactions it performs with substances in nature even those the support its health and survival, including food supplements. And not understanding such interaction can be dangerous to your health. ELEMENTAL copper abounds in nature. Our regular diet may provide 5 mg per day, of which only 20-50 percent gets absorbed into the body, according to the Halfdanarson study in 2008 (published in the European Journal of Haematology).  Dietary copper can be found in whole grain cereals, legumes, oysters, organ meats (particularly liver), cherries, dark chocolate, fruits, green leafy vegetables, nuts, poultry, prunes, and soybeans. This abundance, and its low daily requirement level (copper is only a trace element), make acquired copper deficiency very rare indeed.  Copper is an essential cofactor in many enzymatic reactions vital to the normal function of the bl

There is much in advertising today that consumers must be wary about. Advertising can be seriously deceptive. And certain advertising outfits will not care on the truth of the message if the pay-off is great. Smoking cessation products today can be as dangerous as advertised. These ads can have believable messages... but with a dangerous twist. “THERE is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in his short fiction, The Boscombe Valley Mystery .  Apparently, only one of four emerging tobacco products now available in the American market had reached the Philippines. That product is popular as the “e-cigarette.”  An E-cigarette is actually an electronic nicotine delivery system (Ends), a category of products that deliver a vapor of nicotine and flavoring on inhalation. Flavors include a variety of tobacco, fruit and food (e.g. chocolate) flavors. Companies market it as a smoking cessation device and an alternative to cessation. Of those