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In the Fact File section we bring you a new collection of quick facts each week. (Click on the links below for more facts)

 
 

2461/ Chemist Eric Block of the State University of New York, Albany, examined the contents of garlic with an atomic emission detector. He and his colleagues found several selenium compounds that are known to reduce atherosclerosis in animals and blood lipids in humans. The bad news is that the useful selenium compounds are closely associated with the sulfur compounds that give garlic its characteristic odor. That means that scent-free garlic pills are also free of the possibly health-enhancing selenium compounds.

2462/ A gene is a sequence of DNA that codes for a protein and passes on inherited information; a genome is the complete set of genetic information for a species.

2463/ Thalidomide then was a popular sedative in Europe and Japan, where it was often prescribed for pregnant women because it eased symptoms of morning sickness. Taken early in pregnancy, the drug stopped limb growth in human embryos. Nearly 10,000 so-called "thalidomide babies" were born with malformed or virtually nonexistent legs and arms. Thalidomide was taken off the market, and became a nightmarish example of medicine gone awry.

2464/ Adults lose nearly one percent of their natural ability to mend genetic damage with each year that passes. The older you are, then, the less able your system is to fix the cell errors that lead to cancer. It has also been found that young people with skin cancer have the repair capacity of people 30 years older.

2465/ Older women, those past menopause, retain 25 to 30 percent more skin repair capacity for their age if they are receiving estrogen-replacement therapy.

2466/ A mature yew (if stripped) will yield between five and 20 pounds of bark.

2467/ William Anderson, a scientist and surgeon for Captain Cook, could diagnose but not cure his own fatal tuberculosis; he was buried at sea off St. Lawrence Island in 1778.

2468/ TB is the leading cause of death from infectious disease worldwide: 2.9 million people each year die of tuberculosis.

2469/ Blood taken from Polar Bears during the seal-free season showed levels of cholesterol nearly 25 percent higher than blood taken while the bears had plenty of seal blubber to eat.

2470/ A well-fed polar bear's blood has 10 times more omega-3 fatty acid-- than in a fasting bear. Studies with human volunteers have shown that omega-3 fatty acids in the diet reduce cholesterol in the blood stream.

2471/ Heart disease amongst the Canadian Inuit population is only one-fourth that of the Canadian population as a whole.

2472/ Melanoma occurrence increased in Scotland by 82 percent between 1979 and 1989.

2473/ In the U.S. diabetes is the leading cause of adult blindness and leads to a third of all kidney failures.

2474/ Research with mice and rats has shown that if young rodents are put on severe diets, given enough essential nutrients with 30 to 40 percent less food than normal, they will live half again as long as rats fed standard amounts.

2475/ Crowded together, 200 to a cubic-foot cage, male houseflies die after about 16 days. With 100 flies in the same cage, they are less agitated by their cagemates, fly about less and live 20 days. Put into a vial by themselves, the solitary (and probably bored) flies last 50 days.

2476/ Temperature also can affect longevity. Take that housefly and chill its vial down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit, and the fly will live more than six months.

2477/ Linus Pauling, a distinguished chemist and Nobel laureate, did much to popularize vitamin C’s therapeutic benefits. Pauling advocated big doses, up to 300 times the daily amount deemed necessary by dieticians, for helping stave off disease.

2478/ A study in which a dozen healthy women exercised on treadmills for 45 minutes on each of two successive Sundays showed a 6.2 percent elevation in their measured HDL (good cholesterol) which was considered a small but significant effect, and lasted about 90 minutes after the exercise.

2479/ In a healthy person, clusters of specialized cells---islet cells---in the pancreas gland manufacture insulin, a protein hormone essential for metabolizing carbohydrates. In a person with diabetes, these islet cells degenerate and die, no longer providing the necessary insulin.

2480/ The first accurate account of hay fever entered medical annals only in 1819,when a London physician described his own "unusual train of symptoms." The first American description of hay fever didn't appear until 1852. In Japan, it was virtually unknown before the 1950s.

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