Zohnerisms and anti-Zohnerisms
Dihydrogen monoxide is colorless, odorless, tasteless, and kills uncounted thousands of people every year. Most of these deaths are caused by accidental inhalation of DHMO, but the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide do not end there. Prolonged exposure to its solid form causes severe tissue damage. Symptoms of DHMO ingestion can include excessive sweating and urination, and possibly a bloated feeling, nausea, vomiting and body electrolyte imbalance. For those who have become dependent, DHMO withdrawal means certain death! Learn more about DHMO here!
This is one that comes around every April, so I thought I’d talk about it in September. Just in case you hadn’t cottoned on, DHMO is an urban legend. It’s an alternative chemical name for water.
Last spring, Nathan Zohner, an enterprising 14-year-old student at Eagle Rock Junior High School in Idaho Falls, Idaho, conducted his science fair project on just this theme. Nathan distributed a tongue-in-cheek report that had been kicking around the Internet, “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer” (from which the quotes above are drawn), to 50 of his classmates.
These are smart kids who had studied chemistry; many of them, like Nathan, have parents who work at the nearby Idaho Nuclear Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Nathan simply asked them to read the report (which is completely factual) and decide what, if anything to do about the chemical. They could even ask the teacher what DHMO was, but none did.
In the end, 43 students, or 86 percent of the sample, “voted to ban dihydrogen monoxide because it has caused too many deaths,” wrote Nathan in the conclusion to his project, adding that he “was appalled that my peers were so easily misled. . . . I don’t feel comfortable with the current level of understanding.” Dihydrogen Monoxide: Unrecognized Killer
Writes James Glassman in the above 1997 Washington Post article, “The implications of Nathan’s research are so disturbing that I’ve decided to coin a term: ‘Zohnerism,’ defined as the use of a true fact to lead a scientifically and mathematically ignorant public to a false conclusion.”
What a fantastic phrase, one might think, until they read the next line in this Washington Post article: “Environmental hysterics — Vice President Al Gore springs to mind — and ideologues in such fields as race, women’s issues and economics are adept at using Zohnerisms, with help from the media, to advance their agendas.”
Sort of ironic now the tide of opinion in the US is turning, really.
Zohnerisms are commonly used by media and politics to create sensationalism and distort the real facts. Raw milk is currently under threat yet again in the US because some E. coli recently contaminated some spinach (the leap of logic here is obviously beyond me). But just how common is the opposite scenario, the anti-Zohnerism? How many times have we heard public health officials deny there is anything wrong with the food supply, only to eat their words? I for one am sick of hearing about how safe aspartame, MSG and other additives are.
This 1999 CSPI review on the safety of additives [pdf] has a word or two on the subject:
The FDA is the federal agency responsible for ensuring that synthetic food colors and other additives are properly tested for safety. In 1993, the FDA published “in cooperation” with IFIC a pamphlet entitled “Food Color Facts.” Actually, the pamphlet was written by IFIC and only edited by the FDA. IFIC is an organization directed by officials of, and funded by, many makers of food additives and processed foods, such as General Mills, Kraft, Procter and Gamble, Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola, Monsanto (maker of aspartame), and Ajinomoto (maker of monosodium glutamate).
The pamphlet states:
Q. Do food color additives cause hyperactivity?
A. Although this theory was popularized in the 1970s, well-controlled studies conducted since then have produced no evidence that food color additives cause hyperactivity or learning disabilities in children. A Consensus Development Panel of the National Institutes of Health concluded in 1982 that there was no scientific evidence to support the claim that colorings or other food additives cause hyperactivity. The panel said that elimination diets should not be used universally to treat childhood hyperactivity, since there is no scientific evidence to predict which children may benefit.
Says the CSPI: “The pamphlet has rewritten history.”
Salicylates, bacteria, and skin conditions
Salicylates increase the resistance of bacteria to antibiotics: pseudomonas cepacia, staphylococcus aureus.
Mmm. Pseudomonas and staph, really nice bacteria. Those can both become very bad dermatological infections.
Staph has been linked closely with eczema and atopic dermatitis. “These findings indicate that atopic dermatitis patients have an impaired immune response that prevent them from producing adequate amounts of antimicrobial peptides in their skin. [...] Two immune hormones secreted by their skin cells, IL-4 and IL-13 suppressed the production of at least one of the peptides.”
Salicylates inibit or affect the production of the aforementioned IL-13 and IL-4 (interleukin-13 and interleukin-4) in human beings, the mechanisms by which our skin is protected from these infections.
Yet salicylates ARE a kind of antimicrobial in plants, and have apparently been shown to reduce virulence of staph.
Salicylates disorganise the immune system. Salicylates increase the resistance of staph to antibiotics. Salicylates are linked to eczema and dermatitis. Staph is linked to eczema and dermatitis. Yet, salicylates are supposed to kill staph?
I’m confused.
Natural polyamines and cancer
13/03/2002 – Scientists have known for some time that certain components of some foods, called amines, possess biological activity. Amines are formed during normal metabolic processes in living organisms and are present in everyday food products.
The characteristics and biological functions of amines are very diverse; they may have beneficial or harmful effects. In general, amines can be described as ‘biogenic amines’ (such as serotonin, cadaverine and histamine) or ‘natural polyamines’ (such as spermidine and spermine).
Both polyamines and biogenic amines are present in food, but, while polyamines appear to be essential (through their involvement in growth and cell proliferation), biogenic amines are mainly detrimental (having the potential to lead to nausea, hot flushes, sweating, headaches and hyper- or hypotension). The biogenic amine content of food should therefore be kept at a very low level.
An interdisciplinary, joint European effort – a COST action – has been put together to clarify the physiological functions of biogenically active amines. In addition, the COST action includes an investigation into medical applications, such as the formation of a low-polyamine, anti-cancer diet to provide a better quality of life for patients with cancer, and the development of provision of nutritional advice to people on certain types of medications. Some of these medications, such as monoamine oxidase inhibitors, MAOI, which is used in some depressive illnesses, can make patients sensitive to biogenic amines (specifically tyramine) found in foods such as some mature cheeses, fermented foods, e.g. sauerkraut and fermented soya products, yeast extracts, pickled fish and red wine.
The project has 5 working groups concentrating on: physiology and metabolism of biologically active amines; polyamines and tumour growth; transgenic plants (with modified amine content); biologically active amines in food processing; production of biologically active amines by bacteria. FoodNavigator.com
I was unaware that a low-polyamine diet was being investigated as an anti-cancer diet. I wonder how they’re getting on?
This review of polyamines and cancer [pdf] suggests it’s difficult to avoid polyamine formation once the cancer is established, but what about the avoidance of polyamines for cancer prevention? This seems more promising.
Along with this is the fantastic research being carried out by Dr. Seyfried on the ketogenic diet as an anticancer diet [pdf], particularly brain cancer, I think cancer diets are at last making a huge leap beyond the juice fasting/chemotherapy paradigms we saw in the last century – and in my opinion, the faster we can ditch all forms of chemotherapy and juice fasting for genuinely targetted treatments the better.
Gone bananas
In his fantastic anthropological books “Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches”, and “Cannibals and Kings”, Marvin Harris provides descriptions of the Yanomamo people.
The Yanomamo are a people who live in the forests along the border between Brazil and Venezuela near the headwaters of the Orinoco and the Rio Negro rivers. They are continually at war with one another. Male bravado and supremacy rule the Yanomamo culture. Polygyny, frequent wife beating, and gang rape of captured female enemies are a normal way of life. Women serve their men’s every needs. Female infanticide is common, with the sex ratio of male to female children being distorted by as much as 260:100 in some particularly war-like tribes.
It seems the Yanomamo are always fighting about something. The men regularly get into fights over their women, in fact they regard fights over women as their primary cause of wars. One third of Yanomamo male deaths are caused by wounds received in battle. Fighting is a normal way to resolve disputes, and villages regularly erupt into punch-ups over trifling matters that are usually resolved by thwacking each other violently with long wooden poles until someone falls down bloodied, injured, or even dead.
Things have not always been this way. The Yanomamo used to be distant forest tribes that survived by hunting in the peripheries, whilst the Orinoco and Rio Negro rivers were occupied by civilised river Indians like the Arawak and Carib groups, whose sophisticated dwellings stretched for miles and miles along the edges of the rivers. The river Indians lived largely by fishing. But white traders bringing infections, invaders and a reduced food supply killed this civilisation off, leaving the land empty for the Yanomamo to occupy.
Unlike the river Indians, the Yanomamo never learned to fish. Their population only took off about a hundred and fifty years ago when they began to obtain steel axes and machetes from contact with other Indians and white traders. Most Amazonian Indians traditionally relied on manioc (cassava) for their starchy carbohydrate supply, but the Yanomamo learned how to cultivate bananas and plantains, which entered the new world from Asia and Africa in the post-Columbian period. Banana and plantain cultivation has taken over from manioc, perhaps because they produce a more abundant crop, or require less post-harvest processing (manioc must be carefully cooked to ensure that the cyanogenic glycosides in it are neutralised – they turn into cyanide in the presence of linamarase, a naturally occuring enzyme in the plant).
The Yanomamo men regularly gather and imbibe hallucinogenic and other psychoactive drugs from the plants in the forest. Psychoactive drugs produce behavioural problems, including aggression, anger, and irritability as a matter of course, and the Yanomamo are very good at taking psychoactive drugs.
The Yanomamo diet is made up of at least 90% bananas and plantain. Hunting in the forests is very scarce. Harris reports that the average animal protein intake per capita per day for tropical-forest village groups averages 35 grams, and the Yanomamo appear to get even less than this due to population pressure. Is 35 grams of protein per day sufficient? I am an individual of small size and weight, and my RDA for protein is around 50 grams. Whilst 35 grams is enough to prevent outright clinical deficiency, is it enough for optimal development? Protein deficiency, it has been observed, produces aggression and even cannibalism in otherwise good-tempered, gentle animals. Even mice become aggressive and kill and eat each other when fed a diet of nothing but fruit.
Bananas and plantains are extremely low in protein and fat, and extremely high in carbohydrate. An average 7″ banana contains around one gram of protein, and bananas are low in every single essential amino acid with the exceptions of glutamic acid, aspartic acid and histidine, which is present in vast quantities. Bananas also contain the biogenic amines, histamine, tyramine, serotonin, and dopamine – neurotransmitters that can produce a variety of mental effects. Nutritionally a diet of bananas is a recipe for disaster. Glutamic acid and aspartic acid are used as excitatory neurotransmitters in the brain. The high quantities of histidine break down into the pro-inflammatory compound histamine as the fruit ripens. The carbohydrates present are digested quickly, impact blood sugar, and are not kept in check by protein, fat, or fibre. The diet is high in phytosterols, lacks vitamins A, most B complex (but is grotesquely high in B6 including the b6 blockers pydridoxine glycosides), D, E, calcium, iron, selenium, zinc, sodium, and essential fatty acids.
In short – the Yanomamo, who are considered the most aggressive, violent tribe in the world, are also on the diet most likely to produce aggression and violence. It would be interesting to see how different the Yanomano diet is from the diet of the worst deprived, most criminally inclined groups in Western society.
Mass poisoning
“What do you get if you dump 400 tonnes of petrochemical sludge into open tips around one of west Africa’s largest cities?” Asks this week’s edition of the New Scientist, reporting that a Dutch company has dumped toxic waste close to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. “The company says the waste is tank washings from a gasoline tanker, and as it originated aboard a ship rather than on land Trafigura claims it is exempt from the EU ban [on waste dumping]. But it admits the waste contains hazardous material that is subject to the Basel treaty, so the Dutch authorities say the exemption doesn’t apply.”
“The main poison seems to have been hydrogen sulphide – rotten egg gas – with lacings of mercaptan, another sulphureous poison.” The result? “At least seven deaths and up to 40,000 people complaining of vomiting, rash, breathing difficulties and headache.” New Scientist
Raw meat
On the subject of Palaeo, I’m no longer convinced that our current notion of a Palaeolithic diet is genuinely Palaeolithic. The fruit and vegetables we get today are Neolithic, they’ve been through a long period of alteration and cultivation in order to increase their sugar content and make them more resistant to the pests attracted by large monocultures. Wild strawberries are tiny and extremely sour, you really wouldn’t want to eat that many of them – and probably wouldn’t be able to find many of them anyway!
Many people describe themselves as ‘Palaeo’ when in fact they still eat cooked vegetables and drink tea and coffee. I equate this to ‘vegetarians’ who eat fish – they’re sort of pretending to go along with the principle. I wonder what percentage of ‘Palaeo’ eaters are actually truly Palaeo? How long we have been cooking all of our meals is still a matter for debate, but the fact that we cannot eat most vegetables raw – because of the toxins and indigestible starches they contain, is surely a clue that such vegetables shouldn’t form a significant part of a Palaeolithic diet.
The other week I found a ‘Palaeo’ recipe in a magazine – it was a mixed green leaf salad with a dressing of pine nuts, olive oil, lemon juice, and black pepper and mustard seasoning. I can just imagine Palaeo woman putting on her pinny and getting out her matt-effect steel pepper grinder, walnut wood bowl and matching Habitat salad tossers to throw that one together.
I find it quite amusing to consider that cashew nuts are such a hot topic of debate in Palaeo forums (because they need to be cooked), when that timeless Palaeo quote – that one should only eat what one can find or catch on the Savannah with a sharp stick, pretty much rules out everything from cauliflowers to carrots to green tea to noni juice!
Is eating three meals a day every day truly Palaeo? I think not. Michael Eades advocates intermittent fasting for its health benefits. I’m a fan, I’ve been skipping lunch or tea, undereating or overeating, or mixing up when I have my main meal for a few months now, and it definitely helps weight loss, and is even energising.
Is eating a Palaeo diet composed entirely of cooked meat truly Palaeo? I’ve been eating a little raw meat. It took a bit of courage. I am of course besieged by all the irrational fears about getting worms (it’s not actually the having of worms that is terrifying, more the having to go to the doctor to get rid of them aspect). Having done a little research I’ve learned from the Palaeo/raw messageboards that it’s pretty difficult to get worms from beef, especially when it’s been frozen for a couple of weeks.
Raw meat is tasty. It’s tastier than cooked meat. I’m not at all repulsed by the look or texture of it. I’ve been mincing it and eating it with raw egg yolk and plenty of salt, sometimes adding in a crushed garlic clove, or I’ve eaten raw minute steak. I actually seem to tolerate it better. Sometimes too much fried meat makes me crave sugar, but raw meat doesn’t. The other thing I’ve noticed, is specifically on mornings after eating raw meat the night before, the permanent dark circles I’ve had under my eyes since being a child almost disappear. Now I know they aren’t “allergic” shiners – but perhaps a curious sulphate-deficiency related kind of anaemia. Vitamin supplementation has never worked.
I’ve been eating a lot of beef lately. I guess I’ve been eating about 4 ounces per day, for about five days per week. Based on the statistics I published a few months ago, the average beef steer yields 568 lbs or 9088 ounces of meat. This means at my current rate of 20 ounces per week, I will consume about 1040 ounces per year, so it will still take me 8.73 years to eat my way through one beef steer. I also average around three eggs per day every day. In the same period of time I will work my way through 9559 eggs. Someone who eats one fish five days per week would get through about 2270 fish.
Honourable mentions
Rob from Zero Carb Daily gave me a link to my article on why meat prevents scurvy! Thanks Rob! “I don’t eat any veggies primarily because they taste like absolute crap,” he says. It sounds like Rob is a supertaster. I understand Rob, as only other supertasters can understand! Around 25% of people can taste a chemical that acts as a goiterogen that is in many vegetables. This is an evolutionary mechanism to prevent us from getting goiter. I tried for years to make myself like fruit and vegetables, but all of those salads and greens I started eating when I went on Atkins just left me feeling like I was chewing on animal fodder. I now contend that salads are completely pointless.
Raw Paleo John has left a few comments on my blog too:
It is really fascinating that there is a connection between skin condition and salicylates. I remember a period, maybe a year or two ago, when I was eating a paleo diet (including cream) with no coffee, and still had small pimples on my forehead and sometimes around my nose. I thought I was following a perfect diet, being such a good paleo-man and eating 200-400 grams of berries each day for my anti-oxidants… Strawberries, raspberries, currants, lignonberries, cherries etc. I must say it was completely confusing to have pimples while following a perfect diet. Interestingly, I had a period before this, with the same diet (also no coffee) with one exception: I was eating tomatoes instead of berries. The result: No pimples. Tomatoes are low in salicylates, and berries are high in them. I believe salicylates might be the explanation for the pimples…
I’ve been there John! I tried Palaeo, swapping cheese for nuts and berries, and because I’m such a strong salicylate responder my dermatitis got worse and my face was very flushed. I was also starving because I couldn’t figure out where to get enough fat from!
Prevalence of chronic food chemical induced asthma
I like this study abstract so much I’m going to repeat it:
Allergic-like reactions to chemical components of foods and medicines may be common. The prevalence of idiosyncratic reactions to aspirin, salicylate, metabisulfite and tartrazine is not known. We used a tertiary referral clinic population to estimate safe exposure doses for epidemiological studies. A 15% decrease in the amount of air expired in one second was defined a positive response. The median effective molar doses of the agents were remarkably similar: metabisulfite 0.19 mM, 34.4 mg [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.14, 0.27 mM]; tartrazine 0.10 M, 55.0 mg (95% CI 0.05, 0.21 mM); aspirin 0.09 mM, 16.5 mg (95% CI 0.04, 0.19 mM); and salicylate 0.11 mM, 15.3 mg (95% CI 0.05, 0.27 mM). Doses to which the most sensitive (5%) and practically all (95%) susceptible persons might respectively respond are: metabisulfite 4.6 mg, 255.8 mg; tartrazine 3.4 mg, 885.6 mg; aspirin 0.8 mg, 332.3 mg; and salicylate 2.6 mg, 89.9 mg. Doses within these ranges can be used in epidemiological studies. Aspirin, salicylate, sulfite and tartrazine induced bronchoconstriction. Safe doses and case definition in epidemiological studies. Corder EH, Buckley CE 3rd, J Clin Epidemiol 1995 Oct;48(10):1269-75
This is absolutely fantastic because it gives us a good overview of the problem. People have very different levels of enzymes in their bodies.
| Food Chemical | Most Sensitive (5% of population) | Median Sensitivity (50% of population) | Least Sensitive (95% of population) |
| Metabisulphite | 4.6 mg | 34.4 mg | 255.8 mg |
| Tartrazine | 3.4 mg | 55.0 mg | 885.6 mg |
| Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) | 0.8 mg | 16.5 mg | 332.3 mg |
| Salicylate | 2.6 mg | 15.3 mg | 89.9 mg |
According to a study run by the RPAH:
The role of a commonly ingested food additive, the preservative sodium metabisulfite (MBS), and aspirin (ASA), in chronic asthma has been studied in 29 children. After 1 week on a strict elimination diet, all 29 children were challenged, in a single-blind fashion, in the pulmonary function laboratory on three consecutive days with placebo, MBS (capsule form and solution), and ASA. Children with a positive response to MBS were prescribed a diet that excluded foods containing MBS. Patients with a positive response to ASA were prescribed a diet excluding medications containing aspirin and natural salicylates. After 3 months on these restricted diets, the children were reassessed to determine whether there had been any therapeutic response. There was a 66% (19/29) incidence of positive challenge (greater than 20% decrease in forced expiratory volume in one second) with MBS and a 21% (6/29) incidence of positive challenge with ASA. None of the children reacted to MBS in capsule form (maximum dose = 100 mg), but 19/29 reacted to MBS in solution with 30 mL of 0.5% citric acid. After 3 months on the restricted diet, four of 19 children on the MBS-free diet and one of six on the salicylate-free diet had objective signs of improvement, namely, reduction in asthma medications and/or improvement in lung function. Unfortunately, compliance with the restrictive diet during this 3-month period was poor, particularly with the ASA-sensitive children. Role of acetyl salicylic acid and sodium metabisulfite in chronic childhood asthma. Towns SJ, Mellis CM, Pediatrics 1984 May;73(5):631-7
So, according to this study, 66% of asthmatic children reacted to metabisulfite, and 21% of asthmatic children reacted to acetylsalicylic acid (ASA/aspirin).
Bearing in mind that the population distribution for reactions to acetylsalicylic acid exhibits much broader variance than the distribution for individuals reacting to salicylate (0.8-332.3 mg for ASA, 2.6-89.9 mg for salicylate), the RPAH may have underestimated the number of individuals who respond to salicylate in this challenge, by presuming ASA and salicylate to be equal in effects.
The reason for this variation might be because acetylsalicylic acid is acetylated and salicylate is not, requiring slightly different detoxification pathways. Most chemicals, including aromatic ring structures, are detoxified by multiple pathways in the liver, and by other non-liver methods like sweating too. Intolerance reactions occur when we have exceeded our total, overall capacity to detoxify these chemicals. Acetaldehyde dehydrogenase is one enzyme that varies vastly in capacity across populations, some people have very poor clearance – making them susceptible to “hangover” symptoms after alcohol consumption, whereas others, having better capacity, have never experienced a hangover in their life. A genetic mutation in the acetaldehyde dehydrogenase gene is responsible for the alcohol flush reaction seen in many East Asians. Many rosaceans experience alcohol-related flushing too.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about the first set of statistics is that the doses at which 50% of the population react to salicylates (15.3 mg) are much lower than both metabisulphite (34.4 mg) and tartrazine (55.0 mg)!
As one aspirin tablet contains 300 mg of acetylsalicylic acid, it’s obvious that the vast majority of the susceptible population – in this case individuals with asthma – are going to experience food intolerance related bronchoconstriction to painkillers. But rarely do sensitive individuals associate wheeziness with the painkillers they took the day before. Occasionally one might be lucky and have instant reactions to medications, like my younger sister, who figured out for herself that ibuprofen tablets (similarly structured to aspirin) induce asthmatic wheezing.
Now, if we suspend disbelief for a moment and pretend that fruit and vegetables only contain salicylate and do not contain acetylsalicylic acid, all that those 5% of the susceptible population have to do in order to react to food chemicals, is to eat one apple, drink one cup of coffee, have some mixed salad for lunch, and some broccoli for dinner. Those are relatively low salicylate choices! Alternatively they might just drink a cup of tea. The result is chronic food-induced asthma that dogs an individual through childhood and is only slowly reduced during the teen and adult years in response to an increased dominance and capacity of the glucuronidation detoxification system over the sulphation system.
It would be nice to see the Gaussian distribution for these sensitivities, because we are not looking at an even, bell curve shape. The article quotes median sensitivity levels for ASA as 16.5 mg and salicylate as 15.3 mg. In terms of food this is one cup of tea, or two 100g servings of olive oil, honey, raspberries, plums, dates, grapes or dried grape derivatives, or mints, or three 100g servings of almost all fruits. Now we are starting to see why salicylate-induced chronic asthma is so common.
I doubt very much that the government was even aware of asthmatic sensitivity to salicylates in its “five a day” fruit and vegetables policy (if it was, the policy is immoral). Additives aside, implementing such a policy on asthmatic children would grossly increase the likelihood of an asthma attack. Most 100g servings of vegetables contain between 0.5-1.0 mg of salicylate. Most 100g servings of fruits contain between 2.0-7.0 mg of salicylate. It is entirely possible to get a dose of between 15-35 mg on such a bulky, plant-based diet, a dosage to which at least half of all asthmatics – somewhere around 5-10% of the general population – would react.
Asthmatics are only one subgroup who have been shown to be food chemical intolerant. Asthma is a result of interactions between genes and the environment. The few genes which have been discovered for asthma are not directly related to food intolerance or liver enzymes, rather to a particular propensity for irritation in the lungs. This implies that asthmatics may not be disproportionately affected by food chemical intolerance, rather they show their vulnerabilities more readily than other groups, who may experience food chemical intolerances in different ways according to their own genetic or congenital susceptibilities – for depression and bipolar disorder, migraines, ADHD, eczema, ear and eye problems, tourettes, digestive ailments, epilepsy, or other conditions. The implications for the population at large are staggering, and it is about time someone took on the task of performing an elimination/challenge diet on members of the general adult population to establish a few statistics.
Media claims anger damages lung function
One of the first, most basic rules of science is this: correlation does not equal causation! This little vignette has been posted all over the internet in the last couple of days:
An eight-year study of 670 men aged 45 to 86 showed that anger and hostility can speed up the rate at which lung power declines with age.
Men with higher levels of long-standing anger at the study’s beginning had significantly poorer lung function by the end.
The researchers rated anger levels with a scoring system. Lung power was tested three times over the course of the study.
Even after taking into account other factors, such as smoking, the hostility and anger affected lung function.
Anger, hostility and stress have previously been associated with heart disease, asthma and other illnesses. The emotions may change biological processes, disturbing the immune system and causing chronic inflammation. Anger can damage your lungs
Anger can damage your lungs? Please. Let’s find out more about what the media are saying:
LONDON (Reuters) – Lung power normally declines as a person ages but being angry and hostile can speed up the process, researchers said on Thursday.
In a study of 670 men ranging in age from 45 to 86, they found that males who had higher levels of long-standing anger at the start of the eight-year project had significantly poorer lung function at the end of it.
“This study is one of the first to show prospectively that hostility is associated with poorer pulmonary function and more rapid rates of decline among older men,” said Dr Rosalind Wright, of Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, in a report online in the journal Thorax.
The scientists used a scoring system to measures the levels of anger of each of the men and they tested their lung power three times during the study.
Even after taking account of other factors such as smoking that can also have an impact on lung power, hostility and anger had a negative effect.
Anger, hostility and stress have also been associated with heart disease, asthma and other ailments.
Wright and her team suggested that the negative emotions could change biological process and may disturb the immune system and cause chronic inflammation.
“Stress-related factors are known to depress the immune function and increase susceptibility to or exacerbate a host of diseases and disorders,” said Dr Paul Lehrer, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in an editorial in the journal.
He added that it is unknown how chronic anger contributes to physical deterioration but said the researchers established a link between chronic anger and age-related deterioration in lung function.
“The next step is to determine the exact pathway by which this happens,” said Lehrer. Anger speeds up deterioration of lungs: study
So this seems pretty damning: boffins say anger damages the lungs. But two weeks ago this article appeared on the BBC news site:
[...] The volunteers had had their levels of hostility measured in 1986 through a series of questionnaires, which indicated their longer term emotional state, the researchers said.
Their lung function was also measured and then analysed at routine intervals over an average period of just over eight years.
Dr Rosalind Wright of Harvard Medical School, who led the research, said: “The men with higher levels of hostility had lower lung function at this baseline point in 1986, but they also showed a more rapid rate of decline over time.”
Other studies had shown that a rapid decline in lung function was linked to increased susceptibility to debilitating lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and cardiovascular disease, and increased mortality.
But she said that, because the group were all ex-military, mainly white and of a lower socio-economic status, the findings could not be applied to the wider population.
The researchers believe that anger and hostility could be affecting neurological and hormonal processes, which in turn could cause chronic inflammation in some of the body’s systems, such as the lungs.
However, Dr Wright said the study showed an association between anger and lung disease, rather than a cause and effect relationship.
She said: “Healthcare providers should be aware that your emotional state can play a role in lung health over time.
“It could change the way we think about screening for risk factors and could inform different types of interventions – such as cognitive behavioural therapy.
Dr John Moore-Gillon, a lung specialist and spokesman for the British Thoracic Society, said: “This is a fascinating piece of work.
“There does seem to be a link between long-term anger and hostility and decline in the functioning of the lungs.
“Whether the decline is actually caused by the emotion or whether they are both caused by a third, unrecognised factor is not yet certain.
“The research highlights our growing awareness of the close links between the mind and the body, and the years to come may lead to further important insights.” Anger ‘compromises lung function’
Did you catch those throwaway lines in the middle of this article? However, Dr Wright said the study showed an association between anger and lung disease, rather than a cause and effect relationship. [...] “Whether the decline is actually caused by the emotion or whether they are both caused by a third, unrecognised factor is not yet certain.”
If we go back to the study abstract, the study draws no such conclusions that “anger damages lungs”:
Background: Hostility and anger are risk factors for, or co-occur with many health problems of older adults, such as cardiovascular diseases, all-cause mortality, and asthma. Evidence that negative emotions are associated with chronic airways obstruction suggests a possible role for hostility in the maintenance and decline of pulmonary function. This study tests the hypothesis that hostility contributes to faster rates of decline in lung function among older adults.
Methods: This study prospectively examines the effect of hostility on lung function change over time. Data are from the V.A. Normative Aging Study, an ongoing cohort of older men. Hostility was measured in 1986 in 670 men who also had an average of 3 pulmonary function exams, obtained over an average of 8.2 years of follow-up. Hostility was ascertained using the 50-item MMPI-based Cook Medley Hostility Scale. Pulmonary function was assessed using spirometric tests to obtain measures of forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1) and forced vital capacity (FVC).
Results: Baseline pulmonary function differed across high and medium/low hostility groups (percent predicted FEV1 88.9 + or – 18.5 vs. 95.3 + or – 16.9 and FVC 92.5 + or – 16.5 vs. 98.9 + or – 15.9 respectively; p’s Angry breathing: a prospective study of hostility and lung function in the Normative Aging Study
So if anger is not playing a causative role, what could be the third, unrecognised factor? Here’s a clue: “Anger, hostility and stress have previously been associated with heart disease, asthma and other illnesses.”
Now, what could possibly on this planet cause a correlation between asthma and anger? Could it – shock horror – have something to do with most asthmatics being sensitive to food chemicals? That common emotional reactions to food chemicals include anger, hostility, and depression? Give me strength! How are we ever to join up the dots when our medical researchers are so specialised in their knowledge that they don’t even know which search words to type into medline in order to get out a sensible answer?
Allergic-like reactions to chemical components of foods and medicines may be common. The prevalence of idiosyncratic reactions to aspirin, salicylate, metabisulfite and tartrazine is not known. We used a tertiary referral clinic population to estimate safe exposure doses for epidemiological studies. A 15% decrease in the amount of air expired in one second was defined a positive response. The median effective molar doses of the agents were remarkably similar: metabisulfite 0.19 mM, 34.4 mg [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.14, 0.27 mM]; tartrazine 0.10 M, 55.0 mg (95% CI 0.05, 0.21 mM); aspirin 0.09 mM, 16.5 mg (95% CI 0.04, 0.19 mM); and salicylate 0.11 mM, 15.3 mg (95% CI 0.05, 0.27 mM). Doses to which the most sensitive (5%) and practically all (95%) susceptible persons might respectively respond are: metabisulfite 4.6 mg, 255.8 mg; tartrazine 3.4 mg, 885.6 mg; aspirin 0.8 mg, 332.3 mg; and salicylate 2.6 mg, 89.9 mg. Doses within these ranges can be used in epidemiological studies. Aspirin, salicylate, sulfite and tartrazine induced bronchoconstriction. Safe doses and case definition in epidemiological studies. Corder EH, Buckley CE 3rd, J Clin Epidemiol 1995 Oct;48(10):1269-75
Why meat prevents scurvy
Roald Amundsen was a polar explorer in the early part of this century. Unlike Robert Falcon Scott on his ill-fated expedition to the antarctic, Amundsen’s philosophy was to eat what the native eskimos ate. Whilst Scott took tinned food and biscuits on his expedition, Amundsen ate pemmican, cloud berry jam, and slaughtered half of his huskies for fresh meat when they were no longer required to pull supplies. Scott’s rations were not calorically adequate for the journey and his team lost a lot of weight. Despite taking lime juice with them, they died, disasterously of malnutrition and scurvy.
Fresh raw meat contains very small quantities of vitamin C. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, another polar explorer who ate like the eskimos, was never troubled by scurvy. When two of his team became sick with scurvy, he discovered they had been secretly eating a cache of Western foods like biscuits. He cured them on an all meat diet. Stefansson was the original carnivore – after his expeditions in the arctic, he became convinced it was entirely possible to live on a diet of nothing but meat, and remain in excellent health, and in fact negate many of our common health problems like headaches and aches and pains (sound familiar?). Stefansson – whose diet included such delicacies as raw calves’ brains and other organ meats, checked himself into the Bellevue hospital for a year to be observed in order to prove an all meat diet to the world. He succeeded, and spent the rest of his life eating a diet of meat. In his old age, he married a younger woman who tempted him with sweet desserts. He gave in to her persuasions, and suffered a stroke. Having had this setback in health, he went back to his all meat diet and lived for over another decade, into his eighties.
Meat contains virtually insignificant amounts of vitamin C, yet arctic explorers have long known its ability to prevent scurvy. The average sailor’s diet, by contrast, consisted largely of carbohydrate in the form of biscuits, and little protein – weevils not withstanding – as well as significant amounts of alcohol, all factors known to increase the risk of developing scurvy.
Despite the fact that fresh meat was well-known as a practical antiscorbutic among civilian whalers and explorers in the Arctic, at the time of Scott’s mission to the antarctic, the prevailing medical theory was that scurvy was caused by “tainted” canned food, and it wasn’t until 1932 that the connection between vitamin C and scurvy was established.
I have read many passages here and there extolling the virtues of fresh meat in preventing scurvy, one is even quoted in Nourishing Traditons, where this capacity is attributed to “some unknown factor” in the meat.
In fact, meat not only prevents scurvy because it contains tiny quantities of vitamin C, it prevents it because it bypasses the need for vitamin C.
Vitamin C is required to form collagen in the body, and it does this – despite being described everywhere as an antioxidant – by oxidation. Vitamin C’s role in collagen formation is to transfer a hydroxyl group to the amino acids lysine and proline. Meat, however, already contains appreciable quantities of hydroxylysine and hydroxyproline, bypassing some of the requirement for vitamin C. In other words, your vitamin C requirement is dependent upon how much meat you do not eat.
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