YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond. Several interesting stories from the medical file today. Make sure you read the column title!

A group of scientists have recently published a paper based on their study of participants in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which is tracking the long term health and well-being of around 14,000 children born in 1991 and 1992.

They’ve found that a diet high in fats, sugars, and processed foods in early childhood may lower IQ, while a diet packed full of vitamins and nutrients may do the opposite. Parents completed questionnaires, detailing the types and frequency of the food and drink their children consumed when they were 3, 4, 7 and 8.5 years old.

Three dietary patterns were identified: "processed" high in fats and sugar intake; "traditional" high in meat and vegetable intake; and "health conscious" high in salad, fruit and vegetables, rice and pasta. Scores were calculated for each pattern for each child.

The children’s IQ was measured using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children when they were 8.5 years old. In all, complete data were available for just under 4,000 children.

The results showed that eating a diet of predominantly processed food at the age of 3 was associated with a lower IQ at the age of 8.5, even if the diet improved after that age. Every 1 point increase in dietary pattern score was associated with a 1.67 point fall in IQ.

On the other hand, a healthy diet was associated with a higher IQ at the age of 8.5, with every 1 point increase in dietary pattern linked to a 1.2 point increase in IQ. Dietary patterns between the ages of 4 and 7 had no impact on IQ.

Well, that certainly makes me worry about all the toddlers I see holding the bags of chips and sugared sodas. And the sugared sodas bring up another interesting point.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has very quietly removed saccharin, a common artificial sweetener, and its salts from the agency’s list of hazardous substances. Saccharin is no longer considered a potential hazard to human health.

Saccharin is a white crystalline powder found in diet soft drinks, chewing gum and juice. Saccharin was labeled a potentially cancer-causing substance in the 1980s. In the late 1990s, the National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer re-evaluated the available scientific information on saccharin and its salts and concluded that it is not a potential human carcinogen. Because the scientific basis for remaining on EPA’s lists no longer applies, the agency has removed saccharin and its salts from its lists.

So, instead of buying your toddler that bag of cookies she’s whining for, why don’t you buy her an apple instead? Or a diet soft drink? She might be smart enough to thank you for it later!

PEERING INTO THE FUTURE

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

You’ve probably noticed that smoking and cigarettes are in the news lately. One of the biggest stories involves what’s going on in Australia. They’re revamping the packaging for cigarettes. Instead of the familiar brand-name logos, all the cigarette names will be in the same-sized small print on the front of the pack.

Of course, the real news is what else will be on the pack. Graphic pictures of cancerous lungs, a foot rotting away from gangrene, a child on a ventilator. But that’s not what triggered the lawsuit.

Phillip Morris is suing the Australian government not for the graphic images but because their familiar red Marlboro logo can’t be used. Sort of says something about big tobacco companies, doesn’t it? They don’t care about the graphic images, they’re afraid you won’t buy their brand anymore because all the packages look alike.

The images are pretty horrible, especially the rotting foot, but a recent paper published by British researchers in the British Journal of Health Psychology shows that you may not need to be that graphic. The scientists used state-of-the-art morphing technology to show a group of women what will happen to their faces if they continue to smoke. The technology showed the women how they will age if they continue to smoke and if they stop.

Professor Sarah Grogan, who is the project leader and a Professor of Health Psychology, said: “Using state-of-the-art age progression software we have been able to take a picture of women’s faces and show them how they will age if they smoked and if they stopped. We found that women were very concerned about the impact of ageing on their faces in general and in particular the additional impact of smoking on their skin. Many experienced a physical shock reaction, including reports of nausea, to seeing how they would age if they continued to smoke. The women in the study reported being highly motivated to quit smoking as a result of the intervention and many said that they would take active steps to quit having seen how they would look if they continued to smoke.”

The study looked at 47 women between 18 and 34 years old. The technique has been so successful that over two thirds of participants in the project said they will quit smoking as a direct consequence of seeing how their appearance will change.

The scientists plan to retest the research participants, six months after they took part in the intervention, to determine whether they continued to smoke. But from the success of initial feedback, it is hoped the technology can be used more widely.

Professor Grogan said: “This is the first research investigating age-progression morphing software in this country, and we’re hoping that eventually the findings can be implemented in stop smoking services across the UK.”

So . . . you can show people pictures of rotten feet and sick kids, but what really hits home is what can happen to them personally!

I was a ‘social smoker’ back in the day, but I quit when I developed asthma. My doctor told me I’d already lost 10% of my lung capacity and that I would never pick up another cigarette. I listened and I never did. But I also remember a very famous poster of an old old woman with half inch deep wrinkles and sunken mouth who had a cigarette dangling from her lips. It made an impression on me!

TOBACCO GOES BUGGY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone and welcome to another edition of The Deep. I got an interesting phone call over the weekend. It was a survey by our local public health office and a couple of the questions they asked me were “Have you ever smoked?” and “Do you smoke now?”.

I told the lady that I did smoke at one time but that I quit many years ago. After we hung up, I thought about the two factors that made me quit. One was that I was an asthmatic and the doctor told me that smoking would only make it worse and the other was my houseplants.

I had a houseplant that I was particularly fond of and it wasn’t doing well. I noticed there were little white bugs in the soil of the pot. I asked a friend what kind of insecticide to use and she said “You don’t need to buy insecticide, just take a cigarette and shred out the tobacco into your pot and water the plant.”

I laughed but did it anyway. Hmmmm. No more bugs. And I thought “If the tobacco from a single cigarette can do that to a pot full of bugs, what are cigarettes doing to me?” Which brings us to our latest scientific news.

According to a report published in the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, tobacco which has been used on a small scale as a natural organic pesticide for hundreds of years, is getting new scientific attention as a potential mass-produced alternative to traditional commercial pesticides.

The researchers note that concerns about the health risks of tobacco have reduced demand and hurt tobacco farmers in some parts of the world. A pesticide industry based on tobacco could provide income for farmers, and provide a new eco-friendly pest-control agent, the scientists say.

They describe a promising way to convert tobacco leaves into pesticides with pyrolysis. That process involves heating tobacco leaves to about 900 degrees F. in a vacuum, to produce an unrefined substance called bio-oil. The scientists tested tobacco bio-oil against a wide variety of insect pests, including 11 different fungi, four bacteria, and the Colorado potato beetle, a major agricultural pest that is increasingly resistant to current insecticides. The oil killed all of the beetles and blocked the growth of two types of bacteria and one fungus.

Even after removal of the nicotine, the oil remained a very effective pesticide. Its ability of the oil to block some but not all of the microorganisms suggests that tobacco bio-oil may have additional value as a more selective pesticide than those currently in use, the report indicates.

Still interested in breathing in all that insecticide? If it kills bugs, what do you think it’s doing to you? I say let’s start growing the world’s tobacco for the bugs and NOT the people!

THE ODD DISCOVERY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

I know we did a medical story last week but I wanted to share a discovery about the human body that has me and a lot of other people scratching our heads. I always tell the kids that one of the things I like about my field is that it changes all the time. What we thought last week may not be what we think tomorrow. This story definitely proves THAT scientific theory.

We all know about taste buds and the science behind how we enjoy that empanada, but there have been several interesting changes lately in our understanding of taste receptors. For one thing, the Japanese have discovered a new taste receptor in addition to sweet, sour, bitter and salty. They called it umami. And more recently, we’ve been told that the diagram we all saw in biology that isolated the different taste receptors to different parts of the tongue is wrong. Your taste buds for the different flavors are actually scattered all across the tongue.

But now, scientists have come up with a real shocker. You have bitter taste receptors in your lungs. And we still don’t know why. But what the researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore learned about the how these receptors work could give us a new and effective treatment for asthma and other lung diseases.

The finding was so unexpected, the doctors didn’t even believe it themselves when they first identified the taste receptors on the lung bronchi. The receptors were found by accident when the doctors were looking for muscle receptors that regulate the contraction and relaxation of the lung airways. In asthma, the smooth muscles of the airways contract, which diminishes the flow of air.

The taste receptors they found in the lungs are the same as those on the tongue. The tongue’s receptors are clustered in taste buds, which send signals to the brain. The researchers say the taste receptors in the lung are not clustered into buds and they don’t send signals to the brain, but they do respond to substances that have a bitter taste.

Since most plant poisons are bitter, the researchers figured that the lung airways would contract as a warning when a bitter substance was detected. Instead, much to their surprise, the bitter compounds worked in the exact opposite way. They caused the smooth muscle to relax and opened the airway better than any known drug used for asthma.

Quinine and chloroquine have been used to treat completely different diseases (such as malaria), but are also very bitter. Both of these compounds opened contracted airways profoundly in laboratory models. Even saccharin, which has a bitter aftertaste, caused the airways to relax.

The researchers think that it’s unlikely that eating bittermelon will help your asthma, but they do think that bitter compounds could be made into aerosols and then used in an inhaler.

So why do the lungs have bitter taste receptors? No one knows, but it’s the perfect example of the great advances in science being made when someone says “Hmmm . . . . .that’s odd . . . . . “

This is a slide of lung taste receptors through a microscope. Red bands are receptors, blue dots are nuclei. (Credit: University of Maryland School of Medicine)

JUST ANOTHER NAIL

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

There’s not much interesting happening in the sky tonight as far as satellites go and since the medicine file is bulging, I thought we’d do a health story.

So . . . you’re still smoking, eh? The lung cancer, the colon cancer, the strokes , the heart disease, none of that is enough to stop you. Because everybody dies, right? But wouldn’t you like to live out your last years and NOT be a dribbling vegetable?

According to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, heavy smoking in middle age is associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia two decades later.

Smoking is responsible for several million deaths per year from causes such as heart disease and cancer, according to background information in the article. Researchers in Finland analyzed data from 21,123 members of a health care system who participated in a survey between 1978 and 1985, when they were 50 to 60 years old. Diagnoses of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia were tracked from Jan. 1, 1994 (when participants were an average of 71.6 years old), through July 31, 2008.

A total of 5,367 participants (25.4 percent) were diagnosed with dementia, including 1,136 with Alzheimer’s disease and 416 with vascular dementia. Those who smoked more than two packs per day in middle age had an elevated risk of dementia overall and also of each subtype, Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia, compared with non-smokers. Former smokers, or those who smoked less than half a pack per day, did not appear to be at increased risk. Associations between smoking and dementia didn’t vary by race or sex.

Smoking is a well-established risk factor for stroke, and may contribute to the risk of vascular dementia through similar mechanisms, the authors note. In addition, smoking contributes to oxidative stress and inflammation, believed to be important in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. "It is possible that smoking affects the development of dementia via vascular and neurodegenerative pathways," the authors write.

"To our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the amount of midlife smoking on long-term risk of dementia and dementia subtypes in a large multiethnic cohort," they conclude. "Our study suggests that heavy smoking in middle age increases the risk of both Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia for men and women across different race groups. The large detrimental impact that smoking already has on public health has the potential to become even greater as the population worldwide ages and dementia prevalence increases."

New research finds that heavy smoking in middle age appears to be associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia two decades later. (Credit: iStockphoto/Mark Fairey)

So what are you waiting for? Stub out that coffin nail and make it your last one!