Many’s the time we’ve walked home, hunched against the etiolating winds of loneliness with only a sliver of something transient to warm our rapidly enervating souls.
And that something is beer. It also just so happens that Oregon State University scientists have discovered that super-high doses of niacin – present in beer, bread and yeast extracts like Marmite or Vegemite – can potentially ward off superbugs like MRSA. Apparently, niacin can turn on anti-microbial genes which assist the immune system in fighting off bacteria. We’re off to sink loads of the oral vaccine immediately.
But we’re staying off wine, because apparently this week it is bad for you.
A study by Petah Tikva’s Sharon Hospital did find that resvertarol, an active ingredient in grape skins, slowed cancer cell growth in cultures of large intestine cells, but the amounts required were so huge that if you ate the amount of grapes needed – 3 kilograms – you’d be in danger of gaining loads of weight and more susceptible to diabetes. And then of course the spoilsports noted that drinking the equivalent amount of wine would be unlikely at best and incredibly unhealthy at worst. Curse you, science, with your facts!
Hooray for science!
But bless you, science, with your facts, too. A 25-year study of rhesus monkeys conducted by the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland indicates that drastically cutting calories doesn’t mean you’re going to live longer. Mostly if you’re a rhesus monkey, but they’re pretty close cousins to us shaved apes.
The dieting monkeys had 30 per cent fewer calories than their control group counterparts, but both groups had more or less the same longevity. This contradicts a previous, 2009 study from Wisconsin Primate Research Center where 13 per cent of the dieters died of old age rather than 37 per cent in the control group. But now it’s reckoned that because both groups were eating unhealthy foods that had an effect – the dieting monkeys just ate less crap, basically.
So things are a little more complicated than boffins first thought and genetics are now pegged as making the difference, alongside a nicely balanced diet. Weekender’s got one of those: a chip on each shoulder.
And to round things off on a lovely note, we’ve all got spiders living in our faces. Yep, according to New Scientist magazine, Demodex mites colonise everyone’s face pores as teenagers and eat hair follicles and facial oils. Even worse, these tiny arachnids come out at night to mate, then crawl back into our faces to lay their eggs and die. And because the critters have no way of expelling their droppings their abdomen gets huge until the spider dies and literally explodes its faeces into our pores. So when there’s enough of them, this can trigger an immune reaction, resulting in rosacea – a chronic skin disease. Enough to drive anyone to the bottle, isn’t it?
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