Pharmacology
vongehr |
“I am going Nuts” introduced a misunderstood gem, the Nutmeg, and mentioned the problem of the nuts being very diverse, as you can see in the picture below, and thus a little difficult to dose. One solution is to produce liquor, or in other words, perform an extraction.
Halved nutmeg nuts: Size, oil content, and so on, differ a lot between nuts. Also notice the very black, gray and extremely white nuts, who seem to have different kinds of fungi attacking them. The nuts look pretty much the same from the outside!
Pure myristicine without safrole, elemicin, and very likely unknown molecules…
vongehr |
“I am going Nuts” introduced a misunderstood little gem, the Nutmeg, and expounded a little on its preparation.
Pure myristicine without safrole, elemicin, and likely unknown ones inside nutmeg, does not result in the same effects as freshly ground nutmeg. Ground powders lose their best molecules to evaporation and oxidation in air. Thus, it is best to use fresh nuts.
Some people asked to be more specific about the preparation. The remarks on reddit.com (beats me why redditors never comment here but stay on reddit?!?) also reveal difficulties with grasping that mood lifting dosages of a…
vongehr |
Over all that quantum physics lately, I have totally neglected a much more important issue: our happiness. And I mean true happiness of course, not the fake stuff you get from a loving family and friends as the slave drivers try to make you believe is what you must settle for. True happiness, that we scientists surely can all agree on, needs chemicals, like serotonin, THC, and so on.
One totally misunderstood little gem in this arena is the Nutmeg, a fruit (nut ?) harvested from the Myristica fragrans tree. Therefore the title, get it? No, it wouldn’t mean anything else – what could it…
A pair of studies presented Saturday and today at the American Diabetes Association's Scientific Sessions in San Diego suggest diet sodas may be a dietary head fake for the body.
Epidemiologists from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio reported data showing that diet soft drink consumption is associated with increased waist circumference in humans. Whatever, associated is not caused - people drink diet sodas more after they put on weight, not when they are still thin - but a second study that found aspartame raised fasting glucose (…
Hank |
Addiction is a beast, I am told. Perhaps I am addicted to coffee - I have given it up on occasion for a few months, like I have meat, pastas and breads, but never quit like people quit smoking or heroin. If it's my only vice, and it would seem to be, that is likely not so bad.
Pathology is something else. Some people say addiction is a disease, as in people who pathologically lie. What about pathological coffee drinking?
Stieg Larsson died early, at age 50, after climbing some stairs. To most in medicine, deaths like that are exculpatory and some…
Maybe your need to feel like a Hollywood celebrity outweighs the long-published perils of cocaine use and you just need a little something to push you back over the edge to sanity - if so, crusty, purplish areas of dead skin that are extremely painful and can open the door to nasty infections might do the trick.
The condition is called purpura, usually a range of rare disorders, but increasingly associated with the use of cocaine, specifically cocaine that has been increasingly contaminated with a de-worming drug used by veterinarians. The drug, called levamisole, was found in 30…
Using living cells as more efficient tools for delivering medicines to diseased parts of the body has gotten a little closer.
In a new report, Dayang Wang and colleagues explain that the human body's efficiency in getting rid of foreign substances can also be an obstacle. Some foreign substances, such as viruses, are harmful and should obviously be removed, but the body also considers drugs and nanoparticles — meant to treat diseases and allow physicians to see cells and organs — to be foreign objects, and they are also quickly removed.
To help these substances stay…
Does high-fructose corn syrup, a common ingredient in soft drinks and snacks and too many products to count, make you fatter than sugar? The Sugar Association, Inc., which represents sugar growers, certainly wants you to think so.
But, like cultural pundits who insist Ronald McDonald makes kids fat, there needs to be more than one study funded by an interested party to make the case. A review of studies analyzing research on High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and other sweeteners found there is no evidence of any significant variation in the way the human body metabolizes…
Hank |
There are perennials in the plant kingdom, flowers that bloom each year, and in culture as well. Each year, for example, there will be a new go-to cliché in football. Many of us who have watched for a long time can even tell you what year a broadcast was made by which cliche was in use.
Quiz: If I say they play "smash mouth football", what year was I thinking?
Of course, some make less sense. "He's not just fast, he's quick" will get non-scout heads scratching. We know they are slightly different words, but really, a slow quick football player makes…
Thrombolytic agents, commonly called "clot-busting" drugs, are frequently used in the treatment patients with blood clots in the lungs but a new study says clot-busting drug are no more effective than traditional blood thinners for the majority of the patients who get them. Thrombolytic agents also appear to increase the risk of death in patients with normal blood pressure.
The study utilized data from patients enrolled in the Registro Informatizado de la Enfermedad Trombo Embólica (RIETE registry), a computerized registry of patients who have blood clots, including pulmonary blood clots. The…