The Brain in Your Kitchen

My latest book, "The Brain in Your Kitchen" is now available in e-book format. (That link goes to Kindle, but it's also on iTunes.) Here's the promo:

Every day, we’re faced with choices about what to eat, wear, and purchase. Blinded by a tsunami of information—some good, some bad, some intentionally misleading—often our brains are too overwhelmed to examine all the details. So how do we know we’re making the best decisions for us?

Author and science journalist David DiSalvo asks what’s best for our brains instead.

The Brain in Your Kitchen sifts through the good and bad information on the things we buy, the foods we eat, and the medicines we take. Using findings from cutting-edge science, DiSalvo divulges terrifically useful and little-known facts—each grounded in credible research—about everything from how gluten to cats affect your brain. Learn how we can trick our minds into helping us lose weight, what placebos are costing us big bucks with no results, and what caffeine is actually doing inside your head to give you that extra pep.

Disalvo cuts through frantic media sensation and consumer marketplace babble and gives you the knowledge to distinguish hyperbole from truth so you’re ready next time you sit down for dinner.

Need a Self-Control Boost? Gargle with Sugar Water!

If you're struggling to keep your self-control on track, keep a bottle of lemonade made with real sugar handy. You won't have to drink it,  just swish and gargle when you're feeling like giving up.

That's the finding of new research published in the journal Psychological Science. Researchers from the University of Georgia recruited 51 students who performed two tasks to test self-control. The first task, which previous research has shown to deplete self-control, was tediously crossing out all the Es on a page from a statistics book. Then, participants performed what is known as the Stroop task where they were asked to identify the color of various words flashed on a screen, which spell out the names of other colors. The Stroop task's goal is to turn off the student's tendency to read the words (which is easy to do) and instead see the colors (which is harder to do).

Half of the students rinsed their mouths with lemonade sweetened with sugar while performing the Stroop test, the other half with Splenda-sweetened lemonade. Students who rinsed with sugar, rather than artificial sweetener, were significantly faster at responding to the color rather than the word.

Why?  It seems that the glucose in the lemonade triggers the brain's motivational centers simply by touching the tongue, giving the participants the extra push to complete the harder task.

"Researchers used to think you had to drink the glucose and get it into your body to give you the energy to (have) self control," said UGA psychology professor Leonard Martin, co-author of the study. "After this trial, it seems that glucose stimulates the simple carbohydrate sensors on the tongue. This, in turn, signals the motivational centers of the brain where our self-related goals are represented. These signals tell your body to pay attention."

Since glucose is the brain's primary energy source, it makes sense that a quick shot of sugar would crank up attention. But according to the researchers, this study suggests that the sugar is providing more than a simple energy boost.

"It doesn't just crank up your energy, but it cranks up your personal investment in what you are doing. Clicking into the things that are important to you makes those self-related goals salient," said Martin.

The theory behind Martin's statement is called "emotive enhancement," in which something (in this case sugar) leads a person to pay attention to their goals and not automatically act on an urge to stop investing self-control when they're feeling depleted. An example might be staying an extra half an hour at the gym when you're feeling like calling it quits.

"The glucose seems to be good at getting you to stop an automatic response such as reading the words in the Stroop task and to substitute the second harder one in its place such as saying the color the word is printed in," he said. "It can enhance emotive investment and self-relevant goals."

Not convinced?  Well there's an easy way to test the findings and see if they hold up -- just get a bottle of lemonade with real sugar and try gargling the next time you're ready to tap out.  If you give it a try, please let us know how it turned out in the comments section.

Can Energy Drinks Cause Heart Attacks?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says it's investigating reports of five deaths and a non-fatal heart attack linked to Monster Energy drinks, one of the multitude of highly caffeinated drinks on the market.  FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess was careful to add that these reports don't prove that the drinks caused the deaths.

The FDA likely felt compelled to report its investigation following a recent filing in California of a wrongful death suit by the parents of a 14-year-old, Hagerstown, Md., girl who died after drinking two, 24-ounce Monster Energy drinks in 24 hours. An autopsy concluded she died of cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity.  She had an inherited disorder that can weaken blood vessels. [Source: AP News]

Ingesting that much caffeine in a relatively short period would be a lot for most people, and certainly having a preexisting blood vessel disorder should be taken into account. Nevertheless, these investigations spark an interesting question about what we're doing to our bodies by slamming energy drinks like water.

The website EnergyFiend provides an exhaustive list of energy drinks/shots and their caffeine content (along with coffee, tea and soda).  Here's just a sample of the most popular drinks:

16 ounce Monster Energy Drink: 160 mg of caffeine (the 24 ounce version has 240 mg)

16 ounce NOS Energy Drink: 260 mg

8.4 ounce Red Bull: 80 mg

16 ounce Rockstar: 160 mg

16 ounce Rumba Energy Juice: 180 mg

2 ounce 5 Hour Energy shot: 138 mg

8.3 ounce AriZona Extreme Energy Shot: 100 mg

Now let's see how those drinks compare to a few popular coffee brands:

10 ounce Dunkin' Donuts Coffee:  132 mg

16 ounce Starbucks Grande Caffe Americano: 225 mg

16 ounce Starbucks Grande Coffee: 330 mg

16 ounce McDonald's Coffee (large): 145 mg

16 ounce Einstein Bros Coffee: 206 mg

And to a few soda brands:

12 ounce Coca-Cola Classic: 34 mg

12 ounce Diet Coke: 45 mg

12 ounce Dr Pepper: 41 mg

12 ounce Mountain Dew: 54 mg

What's clear is that energy drinks, shots, and coffee have much more caffeine per serving than soda -- but, the more important stat to focus on is the cumulative amount of caffeine someone could ingest in a day if they swig any combination of these beverages.

Let's say you start out your day with a Starbucks Grande (330 mg), and around lunch you have a Coke (34 mg), and then before you hit the gym you drink a Monster (160 mg). Just in those three drinks you're at 524 mg of caffeine, which according to the Mayo Clinic puts you in the "heavy use" zone. The conventional recommendation is to keep daily levels of caffeine below 500 mg.

When do you approach the "caffeine poisoning" level?  According to Medscape, 10 or more grams of caffeine can be fatal in adults.  However, of the 3343 cases of caffeine poisoning reported to the The American Association of Poison Control Centers' National Poison Data System (AAPCC-NPDS) in 2009, no deaths were noted.  1249 of the caffeine poisoning cases were in children younger than 6 years, with the remainder of the cases distributed almost evenly between patients aged 6-19 years (942 cases) and patients older than 19 years (985 cases).

All of this data leads to a few conclusions:

• Given the amount of caffeine in energy drinks and coffee, combined with soda, it's very easy to become a clinically defined "heavy user" and experience some unpleasant side effects like insomnia, irritability, stomach upset, muscle tremors, and quickened heartbeat.
• Caffeine poisoning is certainly possible, but for most people (without a preexisting heart condition) it would require drinking a massive amount of caffeinated beverages to reach that level. Hitting the adult redline of 10 grams would take a concerted effort.
• Having said that, the stats show that most caffeine poisoning occurs in children younger than 6 years, most of which is attributable to accidental overdose.
• And the latest stats we have on caffeine poisoning indicate that it's rarely fatal; not a single death reported as of 2009.

These conclusions lead me to believe that deaths associated with consuming energy drinks (if the FDA concludes that such an association exists in the five cases it's investigating) are the result of caffeine triggering a preexisting condition.

So, the answer to the headline question is Yes, theoretically energy drinks (or coffee for that matter) can cause heart attacks, but there isn't any evidence--at least so far--to demonstrate that they can do so in healthy people not suffering from a cardiovascular condition they may or may not know about.

Meet the "SuperAgers": Elderly People Whose Brains Don't Age

Over at the excellent British Psychological Society Digest, psychologist Christian Jarrett introduces us to a group of 12 elderly folks whose brains appear to be immune to the physical effects of aging.

This remarkable dozen (average age 84) was identified by a research team led by Theresa Harrison at the Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease Center at Northwestern University who measured the SuperAgers' exceptional mental performance. Quoting from the article:

They outperformed 10 typical healthy older folk (average age 83) on a test that involved recalling lists of words, and they matched the performance of 14 healthy middle-aged volunteers (average age 58). The SuperAgers also matched the middle-aged on tests of naming things, attention and task switching, and identifying drawings by category.

The researchers used a structural brain scanner to examine the SuperAgers' brains, and were astounded to find that somehow their brains have resisted the typical erosion nearly all of us suffer over time.

Whereas the typical older participants had thinner cortices and smaller average brain volumes (244mm cubed average) than the middle-aged (306mm cubed), the SuperAgers' brain surfaces were just as thick as the middle-aged and their brain volumes (288mm cubed) not significantly different in statistical terms. Moreover, there was one brain region - the left anterior cingulate - that was actually thicker in the SuperAgers than in the middle-aged....across the groups, brain volume correlated with episodic memory performance.

The question is, why are the SuperAgers' brains able to thwart the advance of time, and are there behaviors that others can engage in to keep their brains young as well? None of this is clear, at least not yet.

The first round of this study didn't dig into lifestyle differences, and it's not clear what role genetics plays in the SuperAgers' super-brains either.  But you can be sure that this group will be the subject of several more studies attempting to answer those questions -- with particular focus on what the answers might reveal about defeating Alzheimer's disease. Quoting from the article:

"Identifying the underlying factors that promote this trajectory of unusually successful cognitive aging may lead to novel insights for preventing age-related cognitive impairments or strategies for evading the more severe changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease," the researchers said.

H/T BPS Research Digest

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What Exactly is Kratom?

By now you've heard about "Bath Salts" (psychoactive stimulants) and "Spice" (synthetic marijuana) -- drugs that were until recently easily found and bought at gas stations and tobacco shops across the nation.  The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)  has cracked down on these and other variations of these drugs by labeling the main ingredients as controlled substances. Producers of the drugs keep finding ways to skirt those regulations, but overall it's much harder to buy them now than it was just a year ago.

But, have you heard of the latest legal drug craze to hit a gas station near you?  It's called Kratom, and unlike bath salts, Spice or any of the synthetic, formerly "legal" drugs on the DEA hit list, this one is entirely organic, and so far not listed as a controlled substance.

Kratom is another name for the leaves of the mitragyna speciosa tree, which look like large, smooth, oval mint leaves. The trees are indigenous to Southeast Asia and their leaves have been used as a traditional medicine in Thailand and Asian countries for centuries. Kratom is not new to the United States. It's been floating around the herbal marketplace for decades, sold as a tonic for a variety of uses, but in the last few years it has steadily gained traction as one of the leading legal drugs of choice among the Bath Salt, Sativa, Spice crowd.

The effect of the drug mimics that of opiates, ranging from sedation to pain reduction to euphoria. It also carries with it a host of opiate side effects, including nausea, dizziness, constipation, and in worst cases hallucinations and delusions.

Kratom is sold as raw or crushed leaves that can be smoked or steeped for tea, and also in gel caps. Potencies and strains vary, as do prices (generally $15 to $50 per five-gram packet, or $18 to $25 for about 50 capsules). Doses generally range from two to 10 grams.

The DEA lists Kratom as a "Drug and Chemical of Concern."  In several other countries, however, it has been banned outright, including  Bhutan, Australia, Finland, Denmark, Poland,Lithuania, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand, where it is reportedly the third most popular drug, behind meth and marijuana.

Until recently it wasn't even possible to identify Kratom in drug tests, but a new urine test just became available that is able to isolate key compounds in the drug.

Kratom is not without its supporters, who argue that the substance has been used for centuries as a safe means to alleviate pain, boost energy and reduce anxiety.  You can visit the Kratom Association to learn much more about the drug and why its supporters fervently defend it.

The drug's supporters argue, for instance, that there is no credible proof that Kratom is an addictive substance. This is not entirely true.   A 2004 study on the tolerance and withdrawal effects of kratom in mice conducted jointly by the Josai International University in Japan and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand concluded that tolerance to 7-hydroxymitragynine (the chemical in Kratom thought to possess addictive properties) developed "as occurs to morphine," and there was evidence of cross-tolerance to morphine, as well. Withdrawal symptoms also were observed. [Phoenix New Times, August 4, 2011].

And as MSNBC reported earlier this year, Kratom use is making its presence known in more and more hospital emergency rooms.

To be fair, caution is warranted before throwing Kratom into the same basket as Bath Salts and Spice. At the very least, it's a relatively "clean" drug compared to the others, which are mixtures of synthetic chemicals, many known to be toxic.  But whether or not Kratom deserves a  DEA-exempt existence among legal substances in the marketplace remains to be seen.

If you have had experience with Kratom, or would simply like to voice your opinion about this or related drugs, please do in the comments section. Click this link for information on the best rehabilitation center in your area.

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