Webs’ Random Ideas

First off I would like to link to DOFs Science Friday he had last week. He is actually posting on a very important topic, one that could actually make a difference and hopefully will. His Science Friday is on math and how an understanding of math is important to understanding the world we live in. But just as important, how we can make math class better. Please check it out and answer his three questions.

Next I have a post on the FDA and depression pills.

In a study of more than 100,000 patients treated for depression, suicide attempts declined during the first month of treatment — whether that treatment consisted of medication, psychotherapy, or both. The findings, published by Group Health researchers in the July American Journal of Psychiatry, show a similar pattern for populations of adolescents and young adults (up to age 24) as for older adults.

The study sheds new light on the “black box” advisory that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) placed in 2004 and has revised since then, said Greg Simon, MD, MPH, the Group Health psychiatrist who led the study.

In the study, suicide attempts were about twice as common among patients up to age 24 as among older adults. However, the time pattern was the same for both age groups, regardless of the type of treatment they received: Suicide attempts were most likely during the month before treatment started, falling by at least 50 percent in the month after treatment began, with steady declines thereafter.

Basically the link is a scathing review of an over-bureaucratic organization, the FDA. I am also not a fan of the FDA but that is something for another post.

Then there’s Sleep Deprivation:

In all animals, vertebrate and invertebrate alike, one of the defining features of sleep is the “rebound”, i.e., the making up for sleep debt after an acute sleep deprivation event. However, the problem of modern society is a chronic sleep loss in humans – when you loos a couple of hours of needed sleep every day.

From the article posted in the article I linked above:

Even though animals and humans may be able to adapt their sleep system to deal with repeated sleep restriction conditions, there could be negative consequences when this pattern is maintained over a long period of time, said Turek. This brings us back to the idea that repeated partial sleep restriction in humans has been linked to metabolic dysfunction and cardiovascular disease.

So there you go, get your sleep! If you need more information that what the link provides, just read the book I am currently reading. I highly recommend it!

On an unrelated topic,
Autism and Vaccinations:

At the recent 12-day hearing into theories that vaccines cause autism, the link between the disorder and the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine came across as shaky at best. As for the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal, which was used in other vaccines, witnesses showed that in all known cases of actual mercury poisoning (none of which caused autism), the dose was hundreds or thousands of times higher than what kids got during the 1990s. Powerful population studies showed no link to either MMR or thimerosal-containing shots.

Credible study after study has showed time and again that there is no link. In fact if there is any link at all is derives from hysteria and not any scientific evidence. I know that learning your kid has autism (coincidently after starting vaccinations) is hard and you want to search for answers. But it does no good to create a straw man and start with conspiracies. Scientists are still baffled by autism and what starts it. There are theories out there, but it may take time before we fully understand. Unfortunately sometimes science is slower than we may want it to be. But what slows it down more are conspiracies like this one.

Now that Google scholar is readily available there is no reason people can’t do a quick search and find some peer reviewed information. Or even quicker, just search at Scienceblogs about it. A few posters there have written on the subject, with some good links.

Then my favorite piece of info this week, Small doses of Dark Chocolate may lower blood pressure:

In this spirit, I bring you wonderful news from Germany, where researchers found that eating just a quarter of an ounce of dark chocolate daily (about 30 calories’ worth) for 18 weeks lowered the systolic and diastolic blood pressures of hypertensive persons by 3 and 2 points, respectively.

This reduction, while seemingly trivial, would result in an estimated 5% reduction in the overall risk of death from cardiovascular causes if propagated throughout the population.

If you wanna know why follow the link. But this doesn’t surprise me much because good quality chocolate (made from decent cocoa plants) is going to have a good amount of antioxidants in it. And antioxidants are good things to have. Again you can read the book I am currently reading if you would like to know more.

And just for fun…

When you book an appointment with Mexican Dental Vacation, you can take advantage of prices for dental work in Mazatlan that are up to 80% less than you would pay in the US or Canada

See they call it Mexican Dental Vacation because “Coming down to Mexico for cheap dental work” doesn’t sound as fun or appetizing. Which I just find frekkin hilarious!