A glimmer of hope for curing addiction, epilepsy, and memory diseases have surfaced thanks to research by the Johns Hopkins researchers.

They have discovered a new biochemical mechanism for memory storage, one that may have a connection with addictive behavior.

Previously, the long-term changes in connection were thought to only involve a fast form of electrical signaling in the brain, electrical blips lasting about one-hundredth of a second. Now, neuroscience professor David Linden, Ph.D., and his colleagues have shown another, much slower form of electrical signaling lasting about a second can also be persistently changed by experience.

They simulated natural brain activity by applying short electrical jolts to slices of rat brain and measuring the current flowing across the cells. After repeated jolting, the strength of the slow nerve signals had dramatically decreased and remained at a low intensity for 30 minutes after electrical jolts ceased.

These slow signals are produced by a nerve cell receptor called mGluR1, which has been associated with behaviors such as addiction and epilepsy. “Both of these conditions also involve long-term changes in the function of nerve connections,” says Linden. “So in addition to furthering our basic understanding of memory storage, our work suggests that drugs designed to alter mGluR1 are promising candidates for the treatment of addiction, epilepsy, and diseases of memory.”

How much your brains cells are connected to each other pretty much dictates how powerful your memory is, the more wired it is, the more retentive your memory will be. I just wonder if “memory enhancing” milk formulas both for infants, children and aging people work on this principle.

But because of this new find, medicines, medical techniques, even genetic engineering could then take advantage of the mGluR1 and its functions in the brain to help treat epilepsy, prevent addiction and really improve our memory.

Do you have allergies?

It’s a big bummer to see great food, especially the ones that really whet your appetite being served at the party or even at your own home but hold back on yourself with much regret because you are allergic to that food or a certain ingredient of it.

Often times, some people find out too late into the course of the meal about this and things well, just spiral down from there. To verify allergies, blood tests have been devised and now have become the most commonly used methods of determining allergies.

However, a stern word of caution comes from the Johan Hopkins Children’s Center. Food allergy blood tests are sometimes unreliable.

Blood tests are becoming an increasingly popular tool in the diagnosis of food allergies, but a study led by scientists at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center reports that some tests are more accurate than others and that too-heavy reliance on blood tests alone to predict allergic reactions may not be a good idea.

Unlike food challenge testing — in which people thought to have a food allergy are fed small amounts under a doctor’s supervision to directly measure an actual allergic reaction — blood tests measure IgE antibodies, immune system chemicals involved in allergic reactions.

In a study of the three most common commercial tests, the Johns Hopkins research concluded that “some tests are more accurate than others.”

In the study, researchers sent patient blood samples with already-known levels of antibodies to either soy or peanut to labs using the three most popular systems.

They discovered substantial differences in the tests’ ability to detect the antibodies, as well as to accurately measure the amount of antibodies, according to a report in the July 15 issue of Annals of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology.

This is not to say that blood tests are now to be avoided, but we are being warned not to rely on them too much. So the next time you worry about a loved one’s or a friend’s allergies, conducting food challenges or skin testing will give you results that are more reliable and accurate.

Another film, not by Hollywood, has been generating buzz in today’s times. Probably picking up from where Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”, Michael Moore’s “Sicko” puts into the spotlight another issue that affects everyone; health care.

Impeccable timing for Moore especially now that the political climate of the US has shifted towards the coming Presidential elections in 2008, Moore has once again pulled a fast one. Some are saying that the issue about the war in Iraq is old-news, global warming and now health care issues are now at the tips of the electorates’ tongues and so the politicians are having a hard time catching on.

After all, politicians are amongst the last to catch on the latest buzz out on the street. Ironic and funny when you think that these people are elected by the public, clothed, sheltered and well-provided for by the same public they were voted to represent. Maybe elections should be ditched and citizens just take turns in running the government, but that’s for another story.

Word on the street and in the world of new media is this; private or universal health care?

Pretty tough choices huh? Conservatives, liberals, neo-liberals, fake-liberals, the whole circus have started to weigh in on the issue.

Turtlebella says that universal health care is a right and a necessity, she even quips that it may be just what the doctor ordered.

So, what the hell is wrong with the US? Why are we the richest country in the world and yet so backward when it comes to health care? We appear to buy so wholeheartedly into the myth of rugged individualism where one is responsible for one’s self and no one else and too bad if someone can’t afford to get the health care they need or get denied by their insurance company, it’s not my fault or my responsibility. We so clearly believe that capitalism is so the right system, even for something like health care. The insurance companies are there to make money, not to help people. The doctors that work for insurance companies get bonuses if they deny more claims.

Now three words are very interesting in this issue, not at the forefront or center of the issue, but it’s still worth mentioning because the words “Cuba”, “United States” and “health care” present some jaw-dropping picture of reality. Sweetness and Light is irked by a story in Reuters, Cuban Health Care Better Than US.

This “lie” according to him should not be repeated otherwise it would become the truth. Which is quite strange, for the figures used in the Reuters story came from the WHO which is partly dominated by the US.

The opening of his post elicits an interesting question; “Who would you go for? The dictator who provides one of the best health care system in the world or the elected war-monger who rather kill people from other countries while leaving his own people at the mercy of corporate health care?”

Moving away from the Left-Right view of things, Ezra Klein espouses what is not so common among so many, common sense. In a nut-shell, Health Insurance is Not Like Car Insurance. Amen!

To end this column, Jo Swift presents a rich selection of articles about how “Free market” health care kills Americans by as much as 18,000 a year.

Instead of greeting the film with hosannas or challenging it head-on, however, the leading Democratic presidential candidates have sidestepped direct comment on Moore’s proposals.

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of South Carolina all have staked out positions sharply at odds with Moore’s approach. But none of them is eager to have that fact dragged into the spotlight.

If Moore’s fire-breathing proposal catches on among party activists, who tend to be suspicious of the private sector and supportive of direct government action, the candidates’ pragmatic, consensus-seeking ideas could look like weak-kneed temporizing — much the way their rejection of an immediate pullout from Iraq has drawn heated criticism from antiwar activists.

So the buzz goes on, private or universal health care? Which presidential candidate will have the guts to take a stand and actually run on it in 2008.

It’s time to give to give out some link loves to health bloggers and to provide you our dear readers of what’s the latest health buzz in the world wide web.

First up, an interesting commentary by Jill Filipovic on the Huffington Post about a condom ad by Trojan, telling us men to evolve! The ad itself though funny really focuses on the lusty, slutty (pardon the term) side of the oldest game in the planet; sex.

Wish they brought back those HIV/AIDS-awareness + condom promotion ads shown in MTV back in 2000, that’s what ads about contraceptives should be, emphasizing the health risks and benefits of using such contraceptives.

If you’ve been the naughty one, you’ve probably read at some time that sex is like – if not – the best over-all exercise for the body. It involves every single muscle group, your cardio-vascular system, it boosts your immune system and perpetuates our species. But like all forms of exercise, one must remember to do some stretching before hand.

Forgetting about sex, stretching and warming up before an exercise or any physically-intense activity will help you carry out that activity much easier, safer and with little worries to your body. Of course, don’t forget to cool down after you’re done.

Exercise of course is the best way to stay fit, healthy and you guessed it, losing some unwanted weight. Weight loss has been a great concern for many of us, from figure-conscious individuals to those who are at risk because they’re carrying too much excess baggage.

Weight-loss diets, pills and no-meat and no-fat diets really suck so it really is hard to go down on the path of weight-loss but don’t frown just yet. If you’re weight-loss program doesn’t allow meat you could still satisfy your hunger and craving with fish. You’d also be glad to know that thanks to fish scientists have found a new way of fighting obesity. They’ve done so by making zebrafish so obese, they’re using its biochemistry to study obesity really up close so that they’ll be able to come up with solutions that prevent obesity right inside our bodies instead of fighting it out with weight-loss programs, pills, drugs, and what nots.

Being fat and obese may become a nightmare for some but eating before going to bed does not only contribute to being overweight but it’s also one of the factors that cause nightmares. And here’s a bigger nightmare for men, impotence. It’s not only a big blow to one’s self-esteem and manhood (literally) but men who have this condition should be on alert as a new study has noticed that impotence indicates risk of heart disease.

Impotence is the result of problems with your blood circulation, and if you’re having circulation problems down there, it means you’re also having circulation problems elsewhere. That elsewhere could be your heart, your brain circulation etc. Stuff that could be more serious than failing to raise your pole.

Alright, most of us would enjoy a serving of fruit a day. A fruit salad, cocktail or even just picking one from the fridge whenever we feel the craving. As for vegetables, well it’s a different story. Especially for the kids and even more so, if they have been raised in the world of fast food.

The movie “Super Size Me” was no laughing matter. Experts say America is getting fat, too fat now that we have to do something about it. That perhaps explains why the contestants at the recently concluded Miss Universe pageant were so slim and thin. I wonder though, how many of them are in good healthy condition?

Aside from worrying about grease-loaded food and all the heart risks they carry with them, we also worry about another more serious disease; cancer. Reading the title of this post is a dead giveaway. Need I say it again?

Or perhaps you’d listen more to Dr. Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science who just recently found out that fruit peelings, particularly of apples contain dozens of natural compounds that are active in fighting cancer cells, and thereby preventing their development in the human body.

“We found that several compounds have potent anti-proliferative activities against human liver, colon and breast cancer cells and may be partially responsible for the anti-cancer activities of whole apples,” says Rui Hai Liu, Cornell associate professor of food science.

So it’s all in the skin, I mean in the peel? I remember when as a kid, whenever I’ll eat grapes I’d go through the trouble of peeling them one by one before eating them. My mother would tell me not to and eat the grapes with their peels intact as most of the good stuff can be found in the skin. She said the same about the other fruits that I was fond of peeling, apples and pears. It now turns out that my mom was right after all and Dr. Rui Hai Liu has just confirmed it.

In those peelings triterpenoids were the indentified compounds that do most of the anti-cancer work in the human body. Along with previously discovered compounds like the phytochemicals, these compounds are natural substances that help us prevent cancer and live longer healthier lives.

Photo by .imelda