Monday, July 31

Why doesn't a hangover occur the night before?

Alcohol ingestion can alter the normal daily rhythm of various body functions. After the assault upon the body from too much alcohol occurs, it takes time for the body to respond to the stress and eventually get back to normal. Thus a hangover is not immediate.

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Itching for Answers to a Mystery Condition

Dr. Gregory Smith wants people to know it's not all in his head. White fibers have been burrowing into his skin for the past two years, making him feel like he's under constant bombardment from insects or cactus needles. Shine a black light on these fibers and they'll fluoresce blue, he says, just like something you'd see in The Twilight Zone.

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Electricity Speeds Wound Healing by up to 50%

preliminary lab tests, researchers showed that by controlling the weak electrical fields that arise naturally at wound sites, they could direct cells to either close or open up a wound at the flick of a switch. By making the cells move faster, they were able to speed up wound healing by 50%.

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Study: AIDS Virus Hides in Gut

From the Journal of Virology: the AIDS virus hides out inside people's intestines. The virus replicates in the lining of the gut and does much of its damage to the immune system there. We need to be focusing our efforts on improving treatment of gut mucosa, where massive destruction of immune cells is occurring.

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Friday, July 28

Vegan diet reverses diabetes symptoms, study finds

People who ate a low-fat vegan diet, cutting out all meat and dairy, lowered their blood sugar more and lost more weight than people on a standard American Diabetes Association diet, researchers said on Thursday.


They lowered their cholesterol more and ended up with better kidney function, according to the report published in Diabetes Care, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association.

Participants said the vegan diet was easier to follow than most because they did not measure portions or count calories. Three of the vegan dieters dropped out of the study, compared to eight on the standard diet.

"I hope this study will rekindle interest in using diet changes first, rather than prescription drugs," Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine, which helped conduct the study, told a news conference...more