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July 05 2011
Why Can’t We Can’t Stop Snacking? Maybe Because of Pot-Like Chemicals
Have you ever eaten a single potato chip or French fry that sent you spiraling into nearly uncontrollable gluttony? Scientists are now saying that these sober binges are actually quite similar to pot smokers’ notorious bouts of the munchies: fatty foods cause your body to release marijuana-like chemicals called endocannabinoids, and this likely compels you to continue stuffing your face.
In a study to be published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Daniele Piomelli and his colleagues at UC Irvine investigated the connection between fat intake in rats and their production of endocannabinoids, natural compounds similar to THC, the main active ingredient in marijuana. They allowed the rats to sip on several types of drinks, including ones high in sugar, protein, or fat, and monitored the rats’ endocannabinoid levels.
The researchers learned that the high-fat drinks sparked the release of endocannabinoids, but the sugar and protein beverages did not. When a rat tasted a fatty drink, signals traveled from the rat’s tongue to its brain. The vagus nerve bundle in the brain then routed the message to produce endocannabinoids down to the rat’s gut. The researchers believe ...
May 11 2011
If Drug-Slathered, Erection-Enhancing Condoms Won’t Lead Men to Safe Sex, Nothing Will
For men who find that condoms sometimes, um, lessens their enthusiasm, some good news: Durex may soon be selling erection-enhacing condoms with a pharmaceutical boost.
The condoms, developed by UK biotech company Futura Medical, are lined with a gel that increases blood flow. The gel’s active ingredient, glyceryl nitrate, has been used for as a vasodilator for over a century. The tricky part was getting the gel to stay in the condom without degrading the latex, but the company found a way (and quickly patented it).
Men who enrolled in the clinical trial took the condoms home and gave them a test run (the things we do for science!). Both they and their partners reported longer, larger, and harder erections, presumably while grinning.
The condoms are now being reviewed by European regulators, and if approved, they could be on shelves there later this year. The product is meant specifically for men who have trouble maintaining an erection while wearing a condom, but there’s no prescription required, so anyone will be able to pick up a box from the nearest drug store. No such luck for American consumers, who will be ...
February 16 2011
In Future Surveillance States, Will Honeybees Narc on Pot Growers?
If one London art gallery is correct in predicting the future of police surveillance, we may have to redefine the meaning of ‘sting’ operation: one artist’s mock-interview with a (fake) beekeeping police officer describes how bees can be used to track down growers of illegal plants–and the scary thing is that this art video is only a hop and a skip from reality.
An exhibition called “High Society: Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture” at London’s Wellcome Collection features a short film by artist Thomas Thwaites, entitled “Policing Genes,” in which a mock police officer explains the latest in surveillance trickery. Essentially, the police officers tend bee hives, and when the bees return from their daily pollen-hunt, the officers not only check the bees for pollen from such plants as marijuana, but can also use software to decode the dance of the honeybee. And since pollen-laden bees dance to tell the other bees where they found the pollen, decoding the dance would tell the police the exact location of the illegal plants.
As the officer says in the video, using bees allows the police to ...
September 10 2010
Ancient Greek Pill-Poppers Dosed Themselves With Carrots and Yarrow
Pill-popping ancients liked a good dose of vegetables, archaeobotanists have found after analyzing plant DNA in Greek-made pills from a 130 BC shipwreck.
Though archaeologists have known about the ship since the 1980s, this is the first time researchers have had a crack at analyzing the drugs found onboard. Using the GenBank genetic database as their guide, they have found that the pills appear to contain carrot, parsley, radish, alfalfa, chestnut, celery, wild onion, yarrow, oak, and cabbage.
Geneticist Robert Fleischer of the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park says that many of the ingredients match those described in ancient texts, New Scientist reports. Yarrow was meant to slow blood coming from a wound, and carrot–as described by Pedanius Dioscorides, a pharmacologist in Rome–was thought to ward off reptiles and aid in conception.
Fleischer and colleagues presented these first results yesterday at the Fourth International Symposium on Biomolecular Archaeology in Denmark, and Nature’s blog The Great Beyond reports that the pills also contained some surprises. For one, researchers found sunflower or helianthus believed to be a New World plant unknown to the Europeans until the 1400s. Now researchers must determine if the ancient Greeks really prescribed sunflower concoctions or if the some modern, ancient drug handlers contaminated the find. They also hope to find “therian,” a medicine described in ancient texts as containing 80 different plants–a pill to put the modern health drink V8 to shame.
Related content:
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80beats: Next Global-Warming Victim: Centuries-Old Shipwrecks
Image: Wikimedia Commons / Dioscorides: Materia Medica.
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