Free-Floating Hostility

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Posted by Anna at 9:57 PM | Permanent Link to this Post


Fat Rats and Other Breaking News

Well, Mike is away on a business trip again, and I am left scratching my head for good posts. As yet, no good posts have fallen out. Gigi recently alerted me to an amusing article in Marie Claire written by the winner of a masturbating marathon, but there's no online version of the article, or at least none I want badly enough to wade through all the links that come up when you type "Marie Claire" and "masturbate" into Google. Instead I'm linking you to a less titillating article on a study of "trans" fats. In rats, a diet high in trans fat caused Alzheimer's-like symptoms, making them (the rats) five times worse at mazes than rats fed on a diet high in general fat but low in trans fats. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that it sucks to be a rat, even a smart one.

2 Comment(s):

  •   Posted by Blogger BrooklynDodger at January 16, 2005 8:07 AM | Permanent Link to this Comment

    • Is there a connection between the memory lane post above, and this reference to Alzheimer's?

    This post may be more appropriate for BrooklynDodger1. However, the near-ADD free association over from trans fats medline yielded the following.

    Summarizing the abstract [find full abstract on medline to check for editorial distortion]: A cohort of 980 elderly persons from from the upper west side of New York City without dementia at baseline and with data on alcohol intake were followed annually. After 4 years of follow-up, 260 individuals developed dementia (199 AD, 61 DAS). [Actually a daunting number, alcohol or no.] Only intake of up to three daily servings of wine was associated with a lower risk of AD (hazard ratio=0.55) Intake of liquor, beer, and total alcohol was not associated with a lower risk of AD.

    J Am Geriatr Soc. 2004 Apr;52(4):540-6.

    Alcohol intake and risk of dementia.

    Luchsinger JA, Tang MX, Siddiqui M, Shea S, Mayeux R.

    Taub Institute for Research of Alzheimer's Disease and the Aging Brain, and Department of Medicine, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.

  •   Posted by Blogger Anna at January 16, 2005 4:18 PM | Permanent Link to this Comment

    • Well I'm not worried about you getting Alzheimer's.

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