Permafrost permayouth

You might have heard about people consuming pills of dried shark cartilage as nutritional supplements.  They're still widely available, in fact.  It's supposed to be anti-carcinogenic.  Why, you might ask, did people get this idea?

Because, the purveyors of shark cartilage pills say, sharks don't get cancer.  So if you grind up shark parts and consume them, you won't get cancer either.

There are just two problems with this practice:

• Sharks actually do get cancer, something that has been known since at least 1908.
• Shark cartilage has been tested and found to have no beneficial therapeutic value whatsoever.  It is, however, kind of critical for the shark itself, and the practice of killing sharks for their cartilage has led to widespread decline in sharks in many parts of the world.

This did not stop two of the most prominent cartilage shark spokespeople, I. William Lane and Linda Comac, from writing a book called Sharks Don't Get Cancer.  When the book was completely trashed by scientists and other reviewers, Lane responded by writing a second book four years later called Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer.

His publisher wisely recommended that Lane eliminate the subtitle he was planning to use, which was So Take That Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah pfffttptbtbtbtbtb.

As usual, we have people who aren't letting little things like evidence and facts stand in the way of their claim.  You can still buy shark cartilage pills in many pharmacies, including a brand called, I kid you not, "BeneFin."

I bring all this up because yesterday I ran across a story about a woman who is doing something even stupider than consuming shark cartilage to prevent cancer; she is injecting herself with bacteria so she won't age.

It's not just ordinary, garden-variety bacteria, either.  These are bacteria that had been frozen in the permafrost of Siberia for, by some estimates, 3.5 million years, and now have been resuscitated by the thaw.  A Russian professor of geology named Anatoli Brouchkov noticed that the Yakut people who live in the area have a reputation for long lifespans, so he decided that (of course) it had to be because they were drinking melted permafrost water that had the bacteria in it.

Couldn't be genetics, or diet, or anything.

So he treated some plants, fruit flies, and mice with the bacteria, which has been dubbed "Bacillus F."  Brouchkov that they "seemed to have a rejuvenating effect," although gives no details about how he knew.  How do you distinguish between a rejuvenated houseplant and a tired, listless one?  Do non-rejuvenated fruit flies fly about in a dejected fashion?

Be that as it may, Brouchkov is certain enough of his claim that he's drinking water with Bacillus F in it himself.  But an actress who calls herself "Manoush" has gone a step further; she is now injecting herself with the bacteria.

Manoush, best known for such A-list blockbusters as Zombie Reanimation, The Shrieking, Philosophy of a Knife, and The Turnpike Killer, says she started taking the bacteria because like many of us, she's not so fond of the idea of getting old.  "Aging is a disease," she says.  "It is a genetic flaw to me.  Even as a teenager I could never accept the concept of getting older one day.  I don’t care what people think. I will stop at nothing to look and feel younger.  Nothing."

Which, I think we could all agree, would leave us with no option other than injecting 3.5 million-year-old Siberian permafrost bacteria directly into our bodies.

Manoush is absolutely convinced she's now aging backwards.  Me, I'm not sure.  I'm not fond of the gray hair, stiff joints, and crow's feet I've gotten in the past few years, but I don't think the answer is to jump on some loopy idea about anti-aging bacteria.  In fact, injecting bacteria into yourself is kind of a bad idea in general; perfectly normal, ordinary skin bacteria become a serious problem if they get into your bloodstream.  A friend of mine's father, in fact, almost died of a Staphylococcus aureus infection when his thumb got skewered by a rose thorn.

Staphylococcus aureus, I should point out, is a ubiquitous part of our skin flora.  On the surface of your skin, it's harmless.  Inside you, it can result in blood sepsis, which is a quick and spectacularly nasty way to die.

Staphylococcus aureus [image courtesy of the National Institute of Health]

So as much as I'd like perpetual youth, I'm not going to get in line behind Manoush for my bacteria injection.  I'll put up with the gray hair, which I'm told makes me look "distinguished," which isn't as good as "drop-dead sexy," but I guess I'll deal.

Bleach supplement

New from the A Little Bit of Knowledge Is Dangerous department, we have a guy in the UK who is selling a health supplement that contains "stabilized negative ions of oxygen."

The product is named, with no apparent irony intended, "Aerobic Oxygen."  Presumably to distinguish it from all of that anaerobic oxygen floating around out there.  The company that produces it, Vitalox, says that their product is "the foundation of good health," and that sixty drops of their product consumed per day, "in any cold drink," plus another few added to your toothpaste and mouthwash, will bring you to the peak of health.  "Cellulite," we're told, is what happens "when fat cells are starved of oxygen."  (Never mind that "cellulite" is simply fat in which the connective tissue surrounding it has developed minor hernias, but otherwise is indistinguishable from regular old fat.  But why start trying to be scientifically accurate now?)

Oh, and consuming "Aerobic Oxygen" will reduce your likelihood of developing cancer, heart disease, and high blood pressure.

You might be wondering what's in this miracle drug.  I know I was.  The ingredients list reads as follows: "Contains purified ionised water, sodium chloride 1.6 micrograms per serving, Stabilised Oxygen molecules."  Which doesn't tell us much beyond what their sales pitch said.  What sort of additive would provide "stabilized oxygen?"  It's not simply dissolved oxygen; that would diffuse out as soon as you opened the bottle, and in any case the solubility of oxygen in water is low enough that you can't dissolve enough in it to make a difference to anyone but a fish.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

So a chemist named Dan Cornwell, from Kings College - London, decided to test "Aerobic Oxygen" to see what was really there.  And what he found was that the "stabilized oxygen" in the solution is coming from a significant quantity of either sodium chlorite or sodium hypochlorite.

For the benefit of any non-chemistry types, sodium chlorite is not the same as sodium chloride.  Sodium chloride is table salt.  Sodium chlorite (and sodium hypochlorite as well) are highly alkaline, reactive compounds whose main use in industry is as a bleach.  Cornwell found that not only is "Aerobic Oxygen" a bleach solution, it has the same pH as Drano.

"The two main conclusions I can draw is that the Vitalox solution has a pH of about 13, putting it in the same region as concentrated household bleach – which contains sodium hypochlorite and sodium hydroxide – or an oven cleaner," Cornwell said.  "And when it combined with the potassium iodide it produced iodine, which shows that there’s a strong oxidizing reaction.  I’m not 100% sure of the nature of the oxidizing agent, but since it has a basic pH and gave a positive result with the iodine test it’s reasonable to say it’s probably sodium chlorite or something similar."

David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College - London, was even more unequivocal. "You don’t absorb oxygen through your stomach," Colquhoun said.  "There’s not the slightest reason to think it works for anything...  A few drops in a glass of water probably won't actually kill you, but that's a slim marketing claim."

But don't worry if the "Aerobic Oxygen" doesn't quite live up to its claims; Vitalox also has a "Spirituality Page," wherein we find out that "Our spirit is real and we all have one, like it or not.  Recognise it or not.  It needs feeding too or it will get sick and may even die."  One of the features of the "Spirituality Page" is a "A Radio Stream to Wet [sic] Your Appetite," which is an odds-on contender for the funniest misspelling I've seen in ages.

So the whole "Aerobic Oxygen" thing is not only bullshit, it's potentially dangerous bullshit.  The site boils down to "drink our expensive bleach solution, and even if it doesn't kill you, your spirit won't be sick."  The take-home message here is, don't be taken in by fancy-sounding sort-of-sciencey-or-something verbiage and fatuous promises.  Do your research, and find out what you're thinking of ingesting before you buy it.  And that goes double when someone tells you they're selling you "aerobic oxygen."

In vino veritas

In some ways, it's no wonder that people these days distrust everything coming out of the media.

Look, for example, at the whole thing about "antioxidants."  To a lot of folks who are "natural medicines" aficionados, antioxidants seem like the next best thing to an immortality pill.  Consider some of the claims made about resveratrol, an antioxidant that occurs naturally in grape skins (and therefore in red wine).

From Fit Day:

The... health benefits from drinking wine have been proven to be from poly-phenolic flavonoids, which are better known as antioxidants. These antioxidants are found in grapes that are used in wine. More antioxidants exist in red wines than in white wines because grape skins, which are rich in antioxidants, are included in fermentation in red wines. The antioxidants that are most active in wine are resveratrol, quercetin, and the catechins.

These antioxidants neutralize harmful free radicals in your body, which can cause certain types of cancer, heart disease, stroke, immune dysfunction, and degenerative disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer's disease. Harmful free radicals are everywhere in our environment, but mostly caused by exposure to pollution, chemicals, radiation, pesticides, alcohol, unhealthy food, and even sunshine.

From WebMD:

A new study shows an antioxidant found in red wine destroys cancer cells from the inside and enhances the effectiveness of radiation and chemotherapy cancer treatments.

Researchers say the antioxidant found in grape skins, known as resveratrol, appears to work by targeting the cancer cell's energy source from within and crippling it. When combined with radiation, treatment with resveratrol prior to radiation also induced cell death, an important goal of cancer treatment.

From Wine Folly:

While your health-freak friends spend hundreds of dollars on weird miracle fruit juices, you can sit back and relax. As it happens, your red wine habit might just be the key to staying young longer.

The health benefits of red wine are greater than you might think. Besides having antioxidants, fermented foods are good for digestion and alcohol itself has also shown some surprising traits over long-term moderate use. Discover the health benefits of red wine and how much you should consume to live well.

Sounds pretty good so far, doesn't it?  Far as we can tell, the key to a long, healthy life might be inside your next bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Dig a little deeper, though, and you begin to find that despite the hoopla about antioxidants in general, and red wine in particular, there is far from consensus on the subject.

From a study at the University of Copenhagen:

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen followed 27 men with an average age of 65 who were in good health.  Over an eight-week period, all of the study’s participants performed high-intensity exercises, but half received 250 milligrams of resveratrol each day, while the other half received a placebo.

For the men taking resveratrol supplements, it seemed as though the benefits they received from exercising had been reduced.

"We found that exercise training was highly effective in improving cardiovascular health parameters, but resveratrol supplementation attenuated the positive effects of training on several parameters, including blood pressure, plasma lipid concentrations and maximal oxygen uptake," said Lasse Gliemann, a researcher who worked on the study.

From an article by Harriet Hall, in the online magazine Skeptic:

What happens when we ingest more antioxidants than we need? Is the excess excreted? Does it just sit there doing nothing? Does it do something we didn’t intend? It would be nice to know.

There is good evidence that people who eat more fruits and vegetables are less likely to develop cancer, heart disease, and other ailments—and are likely to live longer. It’s easy to assume that the antioxidants in fruits and vegetables are responsible, but that might not be true. Other components of these foods (such as flavonoids) or the mixture of components in the diet might be responsible. Or maybe people who eat less fruit and vegetables are eating more of something else that causes those diseases.

If antioxidants in food do reduce the incidence of those diseases, it’s only logical to think that antioxidant supplements would reduce the incidence even more. Unfortunately, controlled studies have consistently shown that they either have no effect or make things worse. It’s not the first time reality has rudely intervened to spoil a great idea. Study after study has shown no benefit of antioxidants for heart disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or longevity.

Well, I don't know about you, but I find that kind of disappointing.  I love red wine (I think it's in my genes, being of French ancestry), and it was nice to think that I wasn't just drinking it because it tastes good, but that it was doing something positive for my health.  Now, it seems like I might have to reevaluate my rationalization for my oenophilia (and yes, that's the real word for the love of wine).

The bottom line is, it's hard to establish health claims with any certainty, simply because human health is so complicated.  We do need some antioxidants; they break down free radicals (also called reactive oxygen species), natural metabolic byproducts that, left unchecked, can damage tissue.  But we not only get antioxidants in our diet, we produce them -- three well-studied ones are peroxidase, catalase, and superoxide dismutase.  Even if we did get some benefit from the antioxidants in red wine, how would we tease that out from the effects of other antioxidant chemicals in our diet (such as vitamin C and lycopene), and the action of our own self-generated antioxidant enzymes?

Not a simple task.  Which is why, unfortunately, the media has tended to cling desperately to the simple answer -- "red wine is good for you."

But it's understandable why this is a popular position, isn't it?

The truth, as usual, is far more complex than that.  And despite my doubts that red wine has any significant benefits to my health -- which is my conclusion, after having read a good bit of the research on the topic -- I'm not going to give up drinking the stuff myself.  I'm of the opinion that a glass of bold California Syrah next to a rare t-bone steak is just about one of the finest things in the world.

Whether or not it extends my life.