Years ago I was interviewing a scientist who was part of the team trying to crack the human genome, the so-called ‘blue print’ of our body. He talked about the small amount of the genome that coded for proteins that help determine our genetic profile. He then dismissed the other more than 90% as ‘junk DNA”. I asked him why he called it junk and he said because it doesn’t do anything. I asked if maybe it does actually have a role but we just haven’t figured it out yet. He looked at me as if I were an idiot.

Now, I may well be an idiot but in this case I wasn’t wrong. Today scientists acknowledge that non-coding DNA does seem to have some biological role or function – even if we haven’t figured it all out. So, much like antiques, what was considered junk yesterday is today seen to have value.

Bad reputation

Saints and sinners

The same may well be true of the much-maligned LDL, or so-called ‘bad cholesterol”.

A new study says bad cholesterol may not be all bad at all, and that in fact it may play an important role in our bodies, helping warn us when things are going wrong.

LDL got its name because it tends to build up in the walls of our arteries and slowly, over time, clog them up, increasing our risk of a heart attack. HDL – its blue-eyed, blond haired cousin – is known as ‘good cholesterol’ because it helps remove LDL from our ateries and clean up the mess that LDL left behind.

But now, a study in the Journal of Gerontology, says that LDL may have had a bad rap and that it might be needed to help us build stronger muscles and develop muscle mass, and that a lack of LDL – while seemingly good from a heart-protective perspective – might be bad for our overall health. In fact, in the news release accompanying the study the lead researcher – Steve Riechman of Texas A&M University – says “You simply can’t remove all the “bad” cholesterol from your body without serious problems occurring. It acts as a warning sign that something is wrong and it signals the body to these warning signs.”

Building up a strong argument

Riechman and his colleagues worked with more than 5o adults between the age of 60 and 69. These folks were in reasonable health but had not been physically active and none of them worked out regularly. The researchers put them through a series of fairly tough workouts and then measured their muscle mass and compared it to what it was before the workouts. They found that the folks who gained the most muscle mass also happened to have the highest levels of LDL.

Having strong muscles, particularly as you age, is important because without that you tend to be more vulnerable to falling, to breaking a bone, or just to being stuck indoors, unable to do anything fun. LDL seems to play a role in helping us develop those muscles, so while we need to make sure we keep our LDL under control to keep our hearts healthy, we shouldn’t go so overboard that it interferes with its ability to help our bodies in other ways.

Riechman says that people often say they want to get rid of the bad cholesterol “But the fact is, if you did so, you would die.”

Maybe bad isn’t so bad after all.

Just like our genome, maybe it’s not the DNA that’s junk, maybe it’s the science – or even the scientists.

Shirley and I went for a walk the other day. It was a lovely cool, sunny day and we had gone out for a cup of coffee early in the morning and we just kept going. We ended up walking from San Francisco over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito. It was a beautiful walk, probably ten miles in all, and even though we didn’t carry anything with us other than a purse and a couple of magazines, somehow, we didn’t die of dehydration!

A miracle.

Wet idea

Well, it felt like it because all the way along the way we saw teeming hoardes of runners passing us and most of them seemed to be carrying bottles or water or had several smaller bottles of water on belts around their waist.

Now, it wasn’t a hot day and most of these runners weren’t setting what you might call a fast pace, yet they all seemed to feel the need for regular hydration.

The best Shirley and I managed was to stop at a cafe along the way and get another cup of coffee. Yet new research shows this may have been all we really needed.

A most refreshing beverage

The research, published in the journal Food Technology, says that when it comes to recovering from a tough workout or ensuring you are properly hydrated you can skip the fancy sports drinks and enhanced waters that are now all the rage, instead all you need are some old school beverages, tea and coffee!

That’s right. Tea and coffee. They’ve been around for hundreds of years and are probably the most widely studied drinks in the world and most of that research points to them both having big health benefits.

Tea is packed with anti-oxidants and other compounds that can have a beneficial impact on the immune system. Studies have shown that regular tea drinking can reduce your risk of diabetes and cancer.

Coffee has a similar pedigree, helping reduce your cholesterol and risk of gall stones and may even be able to help reduce the risk of you developing Parkinson’s disease.

The cup that cheers

Nice cup of tea

Of course, there’s no giant marketing campaign to position a nice cuppa tea as the best way to bounce back from a punishing game of tennis, or a coffee as a restorative beverage after a vigorous yoga workout, so I’m sure people will continue to spend billions of dollars every year on vitamin-water or some other new gimmicky drink and ignore the fact that the healthiest of drinks have been around for hundreds (in the case of tea for thousands) of years.

But it’s given me an idea for a whole new line of sports drinks. Instead of  having a belt with water bottles attached I want to create one that has a pot of tea on one side, a cup, milk and sugar on the other so that you can stop and make yourself a nice cuppa along the way. It may not improve your speed but it will certainly help you look more elegant as you sip while you jog.

What makes you laugh? For some people it can be something as basic as watching someone slip on a banana peel or get a pie pushed in their face; for others, they like their humor a bit more sophisticated, or a lot raunchier. But whatever makes you laugh try and get a lot of it. Because a new study shows it could be really good for your health.

The study, by a group of jolly japesters at Loma Linda University, suggests that repetitive laughter could help stimulate a person’s appetite, and have other impacts on the body that are similar to the effects of repetitive exercise.

Does that mean that instead of going for a 5 mile run you can just put on an old episode of “Seinfeld” and get the same benefit? Well, let’s take a look at what the researchers did and what conclusions they came to.

The researchers got 14 volunteers and had them watch one 20 minute video that was considered stressful or distressing, and another one that was considered funny. After each one they measured the volunteers blood pressure and took blood samples and examined them for levels of  leptin and grehlin, two hormones associated with appetite.

The distressing video the volunteers were shown was the first 20 minutes of the movie “Saving Private Ryan”. If you have seen that you’ll know just how stressful it is, watching American soldiers fighting their way up the beaches of Normandy on D-Day in World War 2. It’s an amazing scene and one guaranteed to leave you exhausted.

For the funny video the volunteers were able to choose a movie clip they found hilarious, such as a Marx Brothers comedy, or a performance by their favorite stand-up comedian.

The researchers found that when the volunteers watched the distressing video their pre and post-viewing blood hormone levels were pretty much the same. But after watching the funny video their blood pressure was lower, their levels of leptin decreased and levels of ghrelin increased.

What does that mean? Well, those changes in blood pressure and hormone levels are very similar to what you would see in someone who exercised regularly, namely that exercise makes you hungry.

How is that useful? Well, some older patients suffering from a condition known as “wasting disease” are depressed and uninterested in eating. Because of their age they aren’t able to stimulate their appetite through exercise (and of course being depressed they may not feel like working out) but this study suggests that finding a way to make them laugh could help break the cycle, not just of lack of appetite but depression as well.

Sound far fetched?Well, this is just the latest in a long string of studies that show that laughter has some big, beneficial effects, everything from increasing the activity of T cells (which boosts your immune system) to decreasing the levels of stress hormones coursing through your veins.

Whatever the outcome, a good belly laugh is a heck of a lot more fun than taking a pill isn’t it?

So we went out and asked people what made them laugh. Check in tomorrow and we’ll show you what they said made them laugh. Unless you are Elyse’s boyfriend, you might not want to watch this.

Some things just make sense. You don’t need a meteorologist to tell you what the weather is like if you look out the window and see that it’s raining. Your opinion may be anecdotal and unscientific but it’s good enough for me under those circumstances.

In the same way, you know that if you raise the price of a product the odds are good that sales will go down (not always though – some wineries have found that by jacking up the cost of some of their high end wines they sell out faster, there’s a snob element involved you see).

But our friends the research scientists can’t leave anything to chance so now there are two new studies out that show that if you raise the price of fast food, then people will eat less of it. Not exactly rocket science, but it does have a couple of other findings that make it more than just another example of  “no duh” research.

The two studies, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that as the cost of pizza and soda rose, so the level of consumption fell. Like I said, no big surprise. But what was interesting about these studies is that the first one found that as consumption of pizza and soda fell, so did the individual’s weight. In other words, they weren’t simply switching to some other junky diet and packing on the same amount of pounds just by consuming other crappy foods.

The second study found that as the price rose and consumption fell, so did the individual’s weight and their risk for diabetes. Again not a huge surprise, but nonetheless a delightful finding.

The increase in cost wasn’t huge either, just about 10 percent, but it was enough to get people to cut back consumption by up to 11.5 percent.

In short, this means that raising the cost of crappy foods could help get people to change their eating habits, and that they won’t necessarily just switch from their old favorites to new fast foods. That’s encouraging news for a nation that needs to raise some cash in a hurry to pay off its debts, and for a nation struggling to cope with rising obesity levels and the health care costs and consequences of a diet too heavy in fat and sugar and salt.

Little Children Lotta Calories

The problem with so many weight loss programs is that they don’t really start until the problem has been building up for years. Bad habits that began in childhood are so much harder to break, and the weight they helped pack on so much harder to lose, if you wait until you are an adult to try.

A new study shows that for the last few decades our children have been developing some awfully bad habits indeed.

The study, by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and published in the journal Health Affairs, tracked the eating habits of 31,337 children between the ages of two to 18, from 1977 to 2006. They found that the number of kids who snacked between meals rose from 74 percent in 1977 to 98 percent in 2006.

They also found that by 2006, the average kid was snacking three times a day, consuming an extra 600 calories on top of what they got from their regular meals. That meant they were getting, on average, an extra 168 calories a day just from snacks, compared to 1977.

Now you might think that 168 calories isn’t a lot. And by itself it isn’t. But if you have 168 calories on Monday, then again Tuesday, then again every other day of the week, every other week of the month, every other month of the year, year after year. It adds up. Let’s do the math. There are 3500 calories in a pound, so if you are eating an extra 168 calories a day then in just 21 days you’ll have added an extra pound. 21 days, three weeks. Not long is it!

The end result is a person who is carrying 20, 30, 40 or more pounds than they might otherwise be hauling around with them, if they hadn’t snacked as much when they were younger.

So parents, take note. A sweet treat today is fine. But when it becomes a daily routine, several times a day, then it’s no longer a treat, it’s a threat. That extra ‘h’ makes all the difference to the future health of your child.

Sometimes something seems so obvious you don’t even need to point it out. But not apparently if you are a medical researcher. It seems that nothing is so patently clear that they can’t find some pretext to get research dollars to tell us what we already know.

For instance, a new study in the journal Spine says that heavy backpacks put a lot of extra weight on a child’s spine, and the heavier the backpack the more weight and the greater the potential for pain. No kidding! And they needed a study to tell us that?

They could just have gone to any school and seen the kids coming out, doubled over like a fourth grade Quasimodo as they struggle to make it home or to their parent’s car with the equivalent of a small cow on their back. Now, maybe that’s not as thoroughly scientific as doing a randomised control study with complex statistical analysis but you know what, it’s just as true. Or they could just have asked the kids. That would work too.

Here’s my current favorite study. Those lovely people at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that antibiotics that can cause hearing loss in people can actually, when given in extended low doses, protect the hearing of young mice.  You read that correctly, young mice.

Why is this important? Is there a big problem among the adolescent mouse population regarding hearing loss that we need to get to the bottom of (too many mice wearing their iPods too long at high volume no doubt). Are juvenile rodents walking around with ear trumpets so they can hear the delighted squeals of their brothers and sisters who have found a lump of cheese. Who even came up with the premise for this study and thought “hmm, I wonder if this antibiotic which causes hearing loss in people could help protect some other mammalian species?”

Or was it just the pharmaceutical company that makes the antibiotic looking for another market because clearly the human market for a drug that makes you deaf is going to be rather small. But think of the consequences. Now all this mice will be able to hear us setting mouse traps or putting down poison so they know to avoid them. Pretty soon our homes and our cities will be overun with mice spreading plagues and disease and all manner of unpleasant things.

The young mice of the world thank you Professor William W. Clark, PhD. The rest of us, well, we’re not so keen on it.

Hands up anyone who whiled away a really boring time at school doodling on a pad? Come on, I bet there isn’t one person who didn’t spend at least one chemistry or physics or comparative literature class making odd sketches in their notebook.

Well now it turns out that you weren’t just wasting time, you were actually harnessing the power of your brain to improve your recall of the material that you were listening to. Of course if you really weren’t listening to the teacher but were thinking of that dreamy girl or boy in your gym class then this doesn’t matter. But for the rest of you – and I’m guessing that’s a much diminished number – here’s the reason why.

A study in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology found that doodling could help improve your memory.

Researchers at the University of Plymouth in England made 40 people listen to a 2.5 minute recorded message to identify the names of people attending a party.

Half the group were told to doodle while listening to the message and writing down the names of the party goers, the other half were told to just write down the names. None of them knew what the purpose of the test was or that it was a memory test.

Afterward the participants were all asked to try and recall the eight names of the people going to the party. The group that was asked to doodle did almost 30 percent better at recalling names than the group that didn’t doodle.

The researchers are not sure why this is so but speculate that doodling in an idle way (in this case just shading in shapes on the paper) may stop them daydreaming about other things and so help them focus more closely on the matter at hand.

So, next time someone sees you doodling – whether at school or at work – tell them you aren’t goofing off, in fact, quite the opposite.

Don’t you love how the brain works. Or at least how we think it works. Or at least how we think today that it works. Things that we think are just idle thoughts, lazy ways of doing things may actually be terribly important mechanisms for our brains in terms of storing knowledge and memories.

But don’t get too caught up in it. Chances are we’ll discover something else tomorrow that will completely contradict what we thought we knew for certain.

That’s the beauty of all this. We know that 30 percent of what we know is rubbish. We just don’t know which 30 percent! Reassuring ain’t it!

A scientist was doing an incredibly complicated experiment involving lots of different liquid chemicals, some of them very toxic. He had been struggling with the experiment for years and couldn’t quite make it work. Then he fell into the vat and became part of the solution.

Schools are supposed to be institutions that feed children’s minds, filling them up with thoughts and reasoning. Instead too many schools seem to be places where children fill up their up bodies with junk and candy and “crap” from vending machines. And that investment in vending machines is undermining the investment in kids brains.

We need to ban vending machines from schools. I know they make money for schools, helping them pay for supplies and even some classes, but they undermine the school’s basic mission, namely to educate the next generation.

Think about it. Vending machines are a form of attractively packed, well-designed drug delivery system. They’re helping kids pump crap into their bodies, junk that undermines children’s  ability to get the stuff they really need, knowledge, into their brain.

Candy, sodas, chips, all the stuff you find in vending machines have an impact on the brain, impairing its ability to think clearly. A study by researchers at the University Laboratory of Physiology in Oxford, England found that transfats, a common ingredient in a lot of junk food, push out the essential fats that children’s brains need, and interfere with the way the brain sends and receives signals. In short, it clogs up the machinery of the mind.

All that fat and sugar and salt is having a direct impact on children’s performance in the classroom. A study by the New School Food Trust in the UK, found that children who eat a healthy diet do better in school, are more focused in the classroom and better able to learn, and they achieve better exam results compared to children who eat a poor diet, one heavy in sodas, chocolate and chips.

If a school’s primary purpose is to improve the minds of its charges then what possible justification can there be for having machines around that directly undermine that goal. It seems ridiculous to have something in the school corridor that makes it hard for the teacher to do their job properly in the classroom.

It doesn’t have to be that way. California has already banned soda vending machines in elementary and junior high schools and two schools in Orange County, California (Heritage Oak Private School and Whittier Christian High School) have replaced their junky vending machines with ones containing healthier snacks, without seeing a drop in income.

It can be done. You just have to put your mind to it. Of course, if that mind is addled by fat and salt and sugar courtesy of a vending machine, it may not be able to think fast enough or clearly enough to do what it should have done a long time ago.

Schools need money, but not at the expense of undermining their basic mission. If it comes to a choice between school supplies and children’s brain, it’s an easy one to make.

I used to work with a doctor who did a stint in the local county hospital, San Francisco General. It’s an amazing place filled with extraordinary doctors, nurses and other staff. And they need to be, they see some of the toughest cases, the worst injuries and the most difficult of patients – some of whom have drug problems, some alcohol problems, some mental health problems, and some all three combined.

My friend told me that one of the most effective medications they had for treating some of the hardest cases, where no other drugs had worked, was a thing called Obecalp. He says it was almost something of a miracle drug, helping people battling multiple issues.

Unfortunately after a while the ethics committee at the hospital told them they couldn’t prescribe Obecalp anymore because it was unethical. You see, Obecalp is just placebo spelled backwards, so what they were really giving these patients was a sugar pill of sorts.

Now, the fact that it worked where others didn’t was in itself amazing. The fact that there was nothing in the pill but the power of the patient’s imagination and belief that it would work is even more incredible.

I often think of that when I read studies that say vitamin C doesn’t work for preventing colds, or that taking a multivitamin won’t reduce your risk of cancer or heart disease or even death from any cause.

Despite the scientific evidence to the contrary millions of Americans take vitamins every day, in fact a growing number of people are turning to supplements for their health, often because they have lost their job or don’t have health care coverage and they consider a daily multivitamin supplement a lot more affordable form of health insurance than supplementary insurance.

Many people swear that since they started taking vitamins they feel healthier, look better, have more energy. Science may say “nuh uh” but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. And while these may just be a series of individuals talking about their own health, what science calls anecdotal evidence, taken collectively it’s hard to dismiss what they have experienced.

Science has to ask the big questions such as ‘does this work’ or ‘is it safe’ or ‘how does it work and for who’. But perhaps the more important question, at least from the individual’s perspective, is ‘does it matter’. Maybe as long as something is safe then the individual’s experience is more relevant in helping them decide whether to take a supplement or not.

Whether it works because of some internal biochemical mechanism we haven’t yet figured out, or whether it works because of the placebo effect, doesn’t really matter. Just as long as it works.

It all reminds me of the line from a song in the musical Mary Poppins “Just a spoonful of sugar  helps the medicine go down”. In this case the spoonful of sugar is the medicine. Good health never tasted so sweet!

Every so often you come upon a study that leaves you asking “and they managed to get money to do that research?” It’s not that the findings are so shocking and provocative, more that they are so bloody obvious that you didn’t really need to do a study to find it out – such as if you drink more alcohol you are more likely to end up drunk than if you don’t drink at all.

Sounds silly I know but here are real life examples that shows just how absurd some of these studies are.

Such as the latest research from those fine folks at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. They came to the groundbreaking conclusion that homeowners who are in foreclosure are more likely to suffer from a major depression than homeowners who are not in foreclosure. Really! You mean if the house you bought and loved and cared for is about to be sold from underneath you and your family you are more likely to be miffed about it than if you are not about to lose your home. Wow, that’s some pretty rigorous scientific inquiry.

An article in the journal Particle and Fibre Toxicology – what do you mean you stopped your subscription! – had some helpful research for people wishing to avoid smog and dirt in the air. After extensive study they advised people to wear a face mask. Gasp! The researchers thoughtfully went into some detail as to why this would be helpful, explaining how covering your nose and mouth can reduce the amount of particles that get in there. Thanks lads, don’t know what we would do without you.

Cheating on college tests is apparently becoming increasingly common, with students smuggling all manner of electronic devices into exams to help them ace the test. But which students are most likely to cheat? Well, a study from Ohio State University found that dishonest students are more likely to cheat than honest ones. No, honestly they are. The researchers gave students a questionnaire and those who registered lower on measures of honesty were more likely to cheat than those who registered higher. Now we know we can just administer an honesty test before the real test to weed out the bad boys and girls. But what if they cheat on that one too! Hmmmm.

And here’s a good use of research dollars. A study of some 1,341 European clubgoers (what, couldn’t they find any in the U.S.?) found that one third of men between the ages of 16 and 35, and one quarter of women in the same age group, drink alcohol and smoke marijuana to increase their chances of having sex. Apparently drinking and smoking reduced their sense of inhibition so they were more likely to pursue the object of their lust. And presumably if the object of their lust was also drinking and smoking they were more likely to be receptive to those advances. What wonders will science reveal to us next, that better looking people get more sexual interest from the opposite sex than ugly folks!

And finally, a word of warning to all those boys and men who have been hitting the bottle before hitting the bars – those girls that are smiling at you are probably just being friendly, they don’t necessarily want to leap beneath the sheets with you. But don’t take my word for that, thanks to an article in the journal Psychological Science, researchers are able to explain that men sometimes mistake a friendly gesture – such as a smile or making eye contact – with a sexual come on. Apparently boys in heat don’t read body language very well and mistake anything short of a slap in the face as a sign that “she really likes me”.

With research like that out there it’s no wonder that this year’s class at the University of Duh is once again over subscribed.