Distilling between scent and sensibility
From: The ABC News Health Insider Blog
Distilling between scent and sensibility
October 23, 2008When Sex Leads to Stroke
October 23, 2008While Uncommon, a Heart Defect and Sexual Activity Can Increase Risk
By AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
Sept. 15, 2008—
Dr. Jose Biller treats hundreds of stroke patients each year. But few cases were as baffling as the one he received late one afternoon on Dec. 3, 2007.
What puzzled Biller, chairman of the department of neurology at the Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago, was that this patient didn’t fit the profile of a typical stroke sufferer. The patient was a 35-year-old woman with no known cardiovascular risk factors. In short, she was a young, healthy, nonsmoking woman.
But for some reason, on this day, she suffered from a stroke under very unusual circumstances; only minutes after having sexual intercourse with her boyfriend, the woman began complaining of numbness on the left side of her face, her speech became slurred, and her left arm became weak.
“She was in a real state of panic,” Biller recalled. “The family, the boyfriend, everyone was very disturbed.”
In this case, which was released Monday in the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease, it’s likely that the patient’s sexual activity triggered her stroke. What made the case Biller faced even more puzzling was the lack of typical risk factors that usually accompany the onset of stroke. Typically, men face a higher risk than women, and it is usually a condition that affects those in their later years.
But it turns out that a defect in the patient’s heart predisposed her to the condition. And oddly enough, cases like these are not as rare as one might think.
“I have seen this sort of thing on several occasions and treated many patients — male and female — sometimes with success and sometimes without,” said Dr. Pat Lyden, medical director of the UCSD Stroke Center.
Fortunately, according to stroke experts, sexual intercourse, in of itself, is not likely to trigger a stroke without accompanying risk factors.
“There is nothing about sex that should be reported to increase stroke risk,” Lyden explained. “Stroke can occur any time: in the shower, on the toilet, working out in the gym or during a class. I have seen patients [who suffered a stroke] with each of these scenarios.”
Deciphering a Medical Mystery
According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, more than 700,000 Americans suffer a stroke each year and about 160,000 of them die. Survivors often face serious disability as a result of the stroke.
Though hopeful about the recovery of his young stroke patient, Biller still faced a much larger dilemma to solve: What was the cause of this patient’s stroke, and what could be done to prevent her from having another one?
The only potential risk factor this patient had for developing a blood clot was the fact that she was on birth control pills — a medication known for increasing one’s risk for developing blood clots. But were birth control pills alone to blame for the stroke? In order to find the answer, Biller and a team of neurologists began investigating the patient’s medical history and testing the patient’s heart function.
Shortly after, they found the source of the problem: This patient had a hole in her heart that had not been previously detected.
Biller and his team immediately pursued the possibility of a blood clot elsewhere in the patient’s body that, when teamed up with a hole in the heart, might be the culprit for the cause of her stroke. Soon after, they found that the patient had a blood clot in one of the main veins in her right leg.
“Most likely what happened was that the clot that was in the venous system traveled to the heart, and because she had that hole, due to the pressure changes that occurred during intercourse, most likely the clot migrated from the right to the left chambers of her heart, and then from the left chamber of the heart and into the brain,” Biller explained.
Biller prescribed the patient aspirin and a blood thinner, advised her to stop taking birth control pills on account of her present risk factors, and scheduled her for a surgery to repair the hole in her heart.
Within four days of being treated, the patient was released from the hospital with only one lingering symptom of her stroke: The facial muscles on her left side were slightly weakened.
Stroke Can Still Strike the Young
Although stroke is highly uncommon in young and otherwise healthy individuals, stroke experts stress that unidentified cardiovascular abnormalities such as this patient’s hole in her heart are not as rare as many might think.
A study published in the journal Archives of Neurology in 2004 found that about one out of every four people has a hole in the heart without knowing it.
According to stroke experts, it is not too uncommon for young people with this defect — properly known as patent foramen ovale — to suffer a stroke during sexual intercourse, or any other activity that could introduce pressure changes in the heart.
“In some respects, to a stroke specialist there is nothing surprising about this case,” said Dr. Eric Aldrich, medical director of the Stroke Service at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Although most strokes occur in older people, and are typically due to atherosclerosis, approximately 25 percent of strokes occur in people less than 60 years old.”
Although the risk of stroke in a young person is still extremely low, Aldrich added that a “classic cause of a ‘young stroke’ is a PFO.”
“Patients with the same heart condition as this lady are at risk for stroke, and that stroke can occur any time,” Lyden said.
According to Lyden, other risk factors for stroke in young people include migraine, drug use, diseases of coagulation and athletic injuries that cause a tear in the neck arteries.
Still, some stroke experts stress that even with such risk factors present in an individual the chances of a young person suffering from stroke are extremely small.
“I cannot stress enough that even with these major risk factors present, the risk of stroke in a 30-year-old woman is still very, very small,” said Dr. Robert Wityk, associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Brain Games Popular; Experts Remain Skeptical
October 23, 2008Brain Games Popular; Experts Remain Skeptical
Evidence Remains Scant on Games Touted to Improve Cognition; Some Users Swear by Puzzles
By AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
July 10, 2008—
Max Goldberg recently tried to remember the name of a venture capital firm in California that was mentioned during a business meeting he had attended about a year ago.
There was no reason why Goldberg, 38, should have been able to remember the company. “I hadn’t heard the name of the company or even thought about the company in over a year,” he said.
But after only about 15 seconds of thinking, Goldberg had his “Aha!” moment: He remembered the company’s name.
To most people, the idea of recalling an obscure company name that they hadn’t thought of in more than a year seems nearly impossible — especially for someone older than 30. But Goldberg says he has a secret tool that has aided his memory-recall abilities: He calls it “brain games.”
For 10 minutes every morning for the past 40 days, Goldberg has been playing what is called “brain fitness games” on the Web site Lumosity.com. He says the small daily commitment to brain fitness has allowed him to improve vastly his day-to-day memory recall ability.
“I was having memory problems just like everyone else has at my age,” Goldberg explained. “Using these games has given me a dramatic improvement in my memory. I’m able to recall names, places and companies that I couldn’t remember in the past. And it surprises me I can remember these things and it’s given me much greater confidence.”
And, according to a recent Associated Press report on “brain fitness” games, Goldberg has plenty of company.
The brain fitness market has boomed in the past few years, growing in revenue by about $125 million between 2005 and 2007, according to a report released this year by SharpBrains, a research and advisory firm.
Web sites, books and computer and video games featuring brain fitness tools and games have spread like wildfire in recent years. Most of the products carry claims that using the brain fitness games can “improve memory and attention,” or even “ward off Alzheimer’s and dementia.” But do they really work?
Most brain experts don’t think so; they say there isn’t much chance that any brain game or memory technique will people from developing Alzheimer’s or dementia.
“For those who enjoy such games, fine,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University. “But there is no valid evidence that they preserve memory, and certainly no evidence that they ward off dementia.”
Others have a much more negative view of such games. “This is a money-making scam, as far as I am concerned, when it comes to Alzheimer’s and dementia,” said Jo Ann O’Quinn, professor in the school of applied sciences at the University of Mississippi. “These are brain disorders that affect the most intelligent and mentally active people I have ever known, and I think it is an insult to many, to think that if they had done more brain exercises they might have been able to stave off the ravages of the disease.”
Hard Evidence Lacking
There is no randomized, double-blind study to prove (or disprove) that these brain games can ward off cognitive decline, or even improve one’s day-to-day ability to think and remember.
“When [customers] ask, ‘Does it work?’ what they really mean is ‘Does this prevent Alzheimer’s or delay the aging process?’ and these are questions that no one can really answer yet,” said Michael Scanlon, chief science officer of Lumos Labs, the company behind Lumosity.com. “We stay away from that because there’s not sufficient evidence to say any game or brain training can prevent Alzheimer’s.”
So how can it be that brain game users such as Goldberg are reporting vastly improved memories? The answer to that question might not be a simple one, many experts say.
“The easiest way to explain it to lay people is to say something like: ‘Just like a pianist needs to practice to remain a good performer, so does everyone else,’” said Dr. George Bartzokis, professor of neurology at UCLA. “The medical explanations are more complex.”
But what experts do know is that the brain is malleable, and it can, in some ways, be trained to improve cognitive function and maybe even memory-recall. So some experts say that the brain games might actually improve one’s memory.
“It is likely that brain exercises have some effect in the realm of annoying age-related changes in memory and concentration, but these are transient and do not generalize,” said Dr. Myron Weiner, clinical professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. “There is evidence that new brain cells continue to be born in the part of the brain most important in the encoding of memory. There is also evidence that synapses are strengthened with use, a phenomenon known as long-term potentiation.”
Still, most experts say that learning a new skill or taking on a new hobby is probably more beneficial to improving memory and strengthening synapses than any brain game. The problem with brain games, experts say, is that once you learn how to solve a problem you are no longer doing any of the problem-solving type of thinking that can strengthen your brain’s synapses.
“Probably the best exercise for the brain is to learn new things, [for example] learn a foreign language, learn to type or paint of sculpt, learn to use or program a computer, learn a musical instrument, and so on,” said Dr. John Messmer, associate professor at Penn State’s College of Medicine. “Rote memory tasks probably will not help much if you can’t figure out how to solve a problem.”
Some Users Loving the Games
But Goldberg said he tried that, and he didn’t notice nearly as much of an improvement in his cognitive ability as he did after he started his brain training exercises on Lumosity.com.
“I speak a foreign language, Spanish, and I do crossword puzzles,” Goldberg said. “But through speaking Spanish and doing the crossword puzzles, I never felt the improvement in my memory like I do with the brain games.”
Lumosity.com’s Scanlon said the experiences of brain gamers like Goldberg further support the notion that many of these games — at least the ones that neurologists help develop — do have some positive effect on cognition.
“Another question [about our brain games] is, ‘Does it improve memory and cognitive abilities?’ and that we can say with a lot more certainty that it does,” Scanlon said.
Why Nice Guys Finish Last
October 23, 2008New Research Points to Biological Reason Why Girls Like Bad Boys
By AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
June 19, 2008—
Ricky Menezes, a 22-year-old from Marlborough, Mass., says he knows he will hook up with “about 20 girls” in the next month.
How does he know this, you ask? Ricky knows this because he’s what we call a “bad boy” — the type of guy who knows exactly how to act, what to say and how to manipulate women into giving him what he wants.
“It all started in high school,” Ricky said. “I started being the outgoing, crazy, funny kid that everyone thought was fun and wanted to hang out with.”
After being validated by his peers in high school, Ricky said he has more or less mastered the art of being a bad boy, and has done so with one overriding goal in mind — sexual conquest.
“I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not,” Ricky said. “I’m honest and outspoken. I say that I’m just looking to hook up. … I’m not afraid to go for it, and I rarely get rejected.
“Oh, and I’m in a band. You have to be in a band. Girls love guys in bands,” he added.
Most everyone knows — or at least knows of — a stereotypical “bad boy” like Ricky. The guy with such high self-esteem he could aptly be called a narcissist. The guy who wins women over with deceit, callousness and impulsive behavior. Basically, the type of guy who resembles a real-life version of Hugh Grant’s character in “Bridget Jones’ Diary.”
The success of Ricky and so many other “bad boys” with women seems to add weight to the popular saying “good guys finish last.”
And there might be more than just a grain of truth in these mantras about bad boys; new research suggests they might actually be attracting more women than their “nicer” counterparts.
The Positive Side of Negative Traits
Researchers at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces gave 200 college students personality tests to see how many of what psychologists call “dark triad traits” they possessed. These traits include callousness, impulsive behavior, extroversion, narcissism and various other anti-social traits for which “bad boys” are known.
The researchers also asked about the student’s sex lives, their feelings about sexual relationships, their number of sexual partners, and what they are seeking in sexual or romantic relationships.
According to Peter Jonason, lead study investigator, although society tends to look down upon these “negative” dark triad personality traits, there seems to be quite an upside to being a bad boy.
“We would traditionally consider these dark triad traits to be adverse personality traits, and we think women would avoid these kinds of men, but what we show is counterintuitive — that women are attracted to these bad boys and they do pretty well in terms of sheer numbers of sexual partners,” Jonason explained. “They’re taking quantity over quality as their sexual agenda, being serially monogamous and having multiple partners or one-night stands.”
Jonason compared the type of “dark triad bad boy” that the study refers to as a modern-day James Bond figure — a man with little empathy for others, a penchant for fast cars and even faster women, and a seeker of short-term rather than long-term goals — especially concerning the opposite sex.
And because these characters appear in this study to be successful at achieving their short-term goals — which, in this case, is a short-term sexual relationship — Jonason believes such character traits have persevered in so many people because they seem to be evolutionarily successful.
“Dark triad traits are useful in pursuing our agendas at any given time,” Jonason explained. “If you like someone and want to meet them and date them, people who have the dark triad traits appear to be more successful at facilitating short-term mating.”
Jonason validated this point with a comparison to the popular VH1 show “The Pick-Up Artist,” wherein nerdy, nice guys meet with a typical bad boy to learn how to pick up more of these dark triad traits — and also more women.
Nice Guys Win in the End
But some experts say it might not be so simple.
Heather Rupp, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, believes that the reason women may be drawn toward the “bad boys” is more because of physiology more than psychology.
“I think it goes back to the physiological underpinnings of such an attraction,” Rupp said. “For instance, testosterone is a hormone that in men is linked to more dominant personality traits — outgoing personalities and charm and things like that. And men with higher testosterone are rated by independent observers as being more outgoing and charming than others.”
Some experts, however, believe that these narcissistic males tend to embellish the self-reported tales of their own sexual conquest, leading others to believe they are more sexually successful than they really are.
“People high in dark triad traits tend to say what they think others want to hear,” said Everett Worthington, professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Moreover, Worthington notes that while some of these males may be more successful at short-term sexual relationships, their overall success with long-term relationships is often compromised by their dark triad traits.
“The manipulative ‘It’s all about me, so tell ‘em anything to get sex’ behavior is likely to have more short-term sexual success,” Worthington said. “A strategy of building trust and intimacy and commitment is, by nature, going to take longer. Thus, the payoffs are likely to be greater in the short term. However, long-term relationship survival is likely to be strongly disadvantaged in people with dark triad traits.”
So maybe good guys don’t always finish last.
MRIs may drive more women to mastectomy
October 23, 2008MRIs may drive more women to mastectomy
Some Doctors Fear More Sensitive Imaging Fuels Women’s Cancer Fears.
By AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
May 16, 2008—
Women with breast cancer are increasingly opting for mastectomies over lumpectomies, a surgical procedure that removes only the cancerous tumor inside the breast, say researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
The possibility that the growing use of magnetic resonance imaging for diagnosis is partly responsible for this increase is raising new concern over whether women are getting mastectomies needlessly. One leading breast cancer specialist called the MRI-driven boost in mastectomies “alarming.”
Mayo Clinic researchers evaluated mastectomy rates at their institution between 1997 and 2006 in relation to the use of preoperative MRI — a screening tool that is more sensitive than traditional mammography but also more likely to result in false positives for breast cancer.
Researchers sought to answer the question of whether the more sensitive MRI screening test would cause more breast cancer patients, frightened by the lumps and bumps this test picked up inside their breasts, to have the whole breast removed rather than just those lumps that were determined to be cancerous.
They found that among 5,464 women who had surgery for early-stage breast cancer, the mastectomy rates rose between 2003 and 2006, when the number of patients receiving an MRI doubled from 11 percent in 2003 to 22 percent in 2006.
The researchers reported that the number of mastectomies performed at their institution have increased by 13 percent over a period of three years. In 2003, researchers reported that mastectomy accounted for only 30 percent of early-stage breast cancer surgeries. The number rose to account for 43 percent of all breast cancer surgeries in 2006.
Moreover, researchers found that women who received an MRI to screen for breast cancer were significantly more likely to choose a mastectomy than those who did not receive an MRI. More than half of the patients who received an MRI — 52 percent — chose to undergo a mastectomy, compared with 38 percent of patients who did not have an MRI.
Technology Influencing Patient Decisions?
Dr. Matthew Goetz, one of the researchers involved in the study and assistant professor of oncology at the Mayo Clinic, said that although the study cannot confirm precisely why so many more women are opting for mastectomies at the Mayo Clinic, it undeniably ties the increase in mastectomy rates to the increased use of MRI.
“New imaging modalities like MRI … have influenced [the patients'] decision to get a mastectomy,” Goetz explained. “For patients who had preoperative MRIs, the mastectomy rate was significantly higher over the whole four-year period.”
Many doctors worry that because the MRI test is more sensitive but less specific, it may be responsible for unnecessary surgery to have benign lumps removed and perhaps unnecessary worry.
Dr. Henry Kuerer, professor and director of the Breast Surgical Oncology Training Program at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that his own experience has not suggested an increase in mastectomy rates.
“We are not seeing an increase in our mastectomy rates but are seeing increasing women referred to us from the community who are scared to death by frightening MRI reports without appropriate biopsy,” Kuerer said.
“The study is alarming, and it has always been our worst fears that breast MRI might result in increasing use of mastectomy for breast cancer,” Kuerer added. “However, the key take-home message for women and their doctors is to insist that any suspicious findings on MRI be biopsied before the decision to undergo mastectomy is made.”
Moreover, a study published in the January 2008 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology showed that use of an MRI did not improve breast cancer recurrence rates.
Traditionally, MRI was used only on women with dense breasts or those in a very high risk bracket for developing breast cancer. But today, many experts say that the use of MRI is on the rise, and is having an undeniably detrimental effect on patient outcomes without having any benefit for disease outcomes.
“I am very concerned about this,” said Dr. Michael Sabel, associate professor of surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology at the University of Michigan. “Here you have doctors ordering MRI on every breast cancer patient, leading to more mastectomies and not decreasing the local recurrences seen in the women having lumpectomy. That means MRI is detrimental.”
“As it is being used right now, it is hurting more women than it is helping,” Sabel said.
Mastectomy a Growing Choice
Such a trend first entered into the public eye when former first lady Nancy Reagan opted for a full mastectomy over a lumpectomy in 1987 — a time when nearly every woman with breast cancer wanted nothing more than to conserve her breasts.
Today, more and more women seem to opt for mastectomy over breast conservation. Goetz said he believes one reason for this might be the plethora of new breast reconstruction options that women have available after losing one or both of their breasts with this surgery.
And although there is currently no data to support the idea that this trend in increased mastectomy rates is occurring nationwide, many experts said they have witnessed the increase in their own practice.
“I have definitely seen that trend in my practice,” said Dr. Christina Finlayson, director of the Dianne O’Connor Thompson Breast Center at the University of Colorado Hospital.
According to Finlayson, her own experience has lead her to believe that part of the reason for the increase in mastectomy rates is because of the increased use of MRI, but patient preference also accounts for a large part of it.
“I think that 20 years or so ago, when women were given the option of breast conservation, there was a huge interest in not ‘having to have a mastectomy,’” Finlayson explained. “Now I think the pendulum is shifting toward — ‘I don’t ever want to have to think about this again,’ and ‘I want to do everything possible’.”
Because mastectomy, and particularly bilateral mastectomy — the removal of both breasts rather than one — obviates the need for future mammography and biopsies, many more women seem to be choosing mastectomy out of the belief that it will allow them never to have to worry about another breast cancer scare again.
“The problem, however, is that the data doesn’t support any improved outcomes with mastectomy over breast conservation,” Finlayson said. “It is very hard, however, to alter emotion with data.”
Nova goes an extra 26.2 miles
October 23, 2008
Nova had a dozen HD cameras at the Boston Marathon, watching its own team of yellow-clad runners. Pictured: Presidential cousin Jonathan Bush. (Photo: Joel Laino forNova.)
Nova goes an extra 26.2 miles
Marathon drama comes with physiological surprises
Originally published in Current, June 11, 2007
By Audrey Grayson
If you had seen Daniel Williams only nine months before he crossed the Boston Marathon finish line, you probably wouldn’t have expected him to enter such a grueling race, much less run all 26.2 miles.
“I was definitely one of those people who thought they could never run a marathon, but I think when people see the success I had in training for this, it will challenge a lot of their beliefs about the ability of an average person to go from relatively inactive to marathon-runner,” Williams said.
Williams, a 39-year-old college administrator, was one of the 13 inexperienced runners handpicked by producers of the upcomingNova documentary “Marathon” to train for the April 16 Boston Marathon through the Tufts University President’s Marathon Challenge, a prestigious training program for first-time marathoners.
The producers cast Williams and a dozen other sedentary people of different ages, body types, backgrounds and medical histories to demonstrate the body’s surprising adaptability. Among the runners was Jonathan S. Bush, a first cousin of President George W. Bush. Cameras followed Team Nova members through nine months of training, medical exams and interviews to capture the physical and emotional effects of all that exercise.
The Nova episode, scheduled by PBS for Oct. 30, not only presents a curriculum of past scientific findings but also may add some unanticipated results from what became an on-camera mini-study in exercise physiology.
“Part of what we’re dealing with at this point,” said episode producer Hillary Wells, “is that the expectations of what we were going to say [in ‘Marathon’] didn’t play out the way we thought they would.”
Challenging the science
Nova producers hatched the idea for “Marathon” approximately three years ago to teach people “about issues that are very much a concern to them—like weight loss, cholesterol, heart disease and wellness—through some very interesting and important human stories,” said Paula Apsell, senior executive producer of the series and director of the WGBH Science Unit.
To pull off the experiment in the midst an enormous road race required collaboration with the marathon’s sponsor, the Boston Athletic Association. The association, which ordinarily keeps photographers off the course, gave Novaunprecedented access.
Starting out, the other team members were as inactive as Williams or worse, he said. “One runner was recovering from a surgery to remove tumors,” he said. “. . . Others had something in their religious belief systems that made their training a challenge.”
Team Nova had elite coaching and training guidance from Tufts Marathon Challenge Coach Don Megerle, nutrition scientist and author Miriam Nelson and three-time Boston Marathon winner Uta Pippig. Exercise and nutrition specialists at the university monitored the participants’ physiological transformations during training.
“This is a little experiment by itself, in the sense that we tested the runners before . . . and after they had run the marathon,” Apsell explained. “We actually did find some very interesting changes that took place within the body, so in some sense this is our own proof, individual proof, that exercise can have [an] effect. . . . I think this will question, if not quite overturn, some of the established notions about the impact of exercise on the body and what happens to the body while you’re running.”
The film supports recent research that contradicts the conventional wisdom about exercise on several points. Lactic acid, for instance, is no longer believed to be the wholly negative force that’s widely blamed for muscle fatigue.
Keeping up with the runners
It was not an easy shoot, even during the months of training.
“People don’t film running sequences too often because it’s hard,” said director Dan McCabe, “but on top of that we wanted to talk to people, even as they were running. We had to try a lot of different contraptions.”
McCabe’s favorite camera platforms were the electric golf carts that the crew used for every Sunday run, but the race sponsor objected that the carts would be too big to be used on Marathon Monday. For the race, Nova put its cameras on three tiny Honda Ruckus scooters, with rear-facing seats added for camera operators. At the finish line, aNova camera operator rode the motorcycle used for live coverage of the winners earlier in the day.
Out of shape a few months ago, a dozen Team Nova runners were ready to race on Marathon Monday. Pictured: pre-race huddle in the rain.
The program’s workforce and costs peaked on the day of the marathon with 50 crew members and volunteers and 12 cameras, mostly Panasonic high-definition VariCams, supplemented by a few lower-cost HDV camcorders.
Because narrow stretches of the course often become congested with runners, each camera operator on a scooter could capture only a few of Team Nova’s runners. The runners in the most crowded time divisions, including Williams, were filmed as they passed stationary cameras; they narrated the experience into three-ounce Roland Edirol MP3 recorders hanging from their belts.
Nova producers don’t want to discuss any surprises in the story line or reveal how many Team Nova runners finished the race, but all but one of the 13 were ready for the marathon and a number of others finished.
That may support the controversial views of Daniel Lieberman, a Harvard professor of biological anthropology and a commentator in the film. Lieberman contends that humans adapt readily to endurance running because, back in Mother Africa, their distant ancestors evolved to have an amazing ability to run long distances in pursuit of four-legged dinners, despite the heat that slowed their prey.
Some of Team Nova’s bodies did indeed adapt to the demands of training.
Despite the film’s elaborate logistics, Apsell said she has no regrets that the runners, and the producers as well, went so far to demonstrate dramatically what the human body can do when pushed.
“This is not easy for anyone. Everyone had to joust with their own personal demons to make this happen, and that’s going be the most important thing about this [documentary],” Apsell said. “A lot of viewers will walk away from this very inspired, as I am.”
College parties getting hotter, boozier
October 23, 2008College parties getting hotter, boozier
Researchers Find Women Drinking More, Wearing Less at College Parties
By DAN CHILDS and AUDREY GRAYSON
ABC News Medical Unit
Jan. 7, 2008 —
One might say Megan Holmes was a regular on the southern California college party scene.
“Some nights we were out till 2 in the morning, but some were short,” she said. “On average we went to at least three or four a night.”
But amid the crowds of young women in revealing themed costumes and free-flowing kegs, Holmes may have been the only one at these alcohol-drenched gatherings without a drink in her hand. Instead, she carried a stack of clipboards and a Breathalyzer.
Holmes, who is now working on her doctoral degree at UCLA, was part of a team of researchers who sought to take the study of college drinking to the next level by venturing inside a total of 66 college parties to see what was really going on. The research was published Thursday in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
“It wasn’t shocking to me because I had just graduated college so I had seen most of this stuff going on before,” Holmes said. But she adds that there were some surprises.
“Most shocking to me was that women at themed parties kept dressing less and less,” she said. “When I was in college there were themed parties, but I never saw girls just wearing lingerie or just a bra and panties, and that was pretty common at the themed parties I saw.”
These observations along with dozens of Breathalyzer readings and surveys completed on the scene by college partygoers defied the typical methods of research on college drinking, which normally use questionnaires administered days or months after the bottles have been cleared and the music has stopped.
Parties Getting Wilder?
The researchers had some sobering findings, among them that revelers at smaller parties tended to drink more. This could be explained by simple mathematics; the fewer drinkers on hand, the more booze there is to go around, they said.
But lead study author John Clapp, director of the Center for Alcohol and Drug Studies and Services at San Diego State University, says the behavior of women drinkers at themed parties was particularly notable.
“One of [the] most surprising things to us was the theme-party finding that women drank more at these,” he said. “We started going to theme parties like toga parties or costume parties, with highly sexualized themes and with the women wearing not very much.”
“What was surprising was it was one of few places that we know of that women actually outdrank men; we’re not exactly sure why. It could have something to do with fact that they aren’t dressed.”
Not everyone feels the findings are a surprise. As for whether young women drink more during sexualized theme parties, Peter True, a senior at Boston University, said, “Definitely. They have to be that faded to go out wearing those ridiculous clothes, I’m 100 percent sure.”
“There’s a direct inverse relationship between how revealing their theme is and how drunk they get,” he told ABC News. “At lingerie parties they drink the most. & They have to drink more if they wear less because they have to lower their inhibitions to be seen wearing that out.”
The findings of the study seem to point to a combination of sexually charged themes and the presence of alcohol an interplay that seems to result in a daringly permissive atmosphere.
The results of the surveys that the partygoers completed as part of the study showed that while 61.3 percent of respondents reported being at the party to socialize, and 45 percent reported having fun as a main motivation, nearly 40 percent of all respondents said they were at the party to get drunk. More than 21 percent said they were there to try to meet a sexual partner.
And the graduate students involved with the research say they feel college parties could be getting even sexier and less inhibited.
“The most surprising thing that I’ve seen was how sexualized the theme parties are, kind of like the way Halloween parties have changed, the kind of costumes girls wear now,” said Julie Ketchie, a doctoral student researcher who is now working with Clapp on similar research. “There are these girls walking down the street, and you can see their butts hanging out of their skirts.”
“The theme parties, it’s kind of like ‘Spring Break: Girls Gone Wild’ all the time.”
Drugs, Alcohol Ubiquitous Threats
Of course, not all of the gatherings the researchers attend are out-of-control, inebriated blowouts.
“Some parties can be chill 10 to 15 people watching football game and it’s a BYOB thing, versus a larger party where they have kegs and drinking games,” Ketchie said.
But Clapp notes that at the most lively parties, the breath tests from some students showed that they were putting themselves at risk.
“The alcohol levels we got from Breathalyzer tests were fairly high; it would meet the definition of legally drunk at pretty much every stage,” Clapp said. “We had a range, with some people really, really drunk.”
Clapp and his team report that in the surveys completed by partygoers, 32 percent reported playing a drinking game, and more than 70 percent report having access to illicit drugs. While the researchers were only able to confirm the availability of illicit drugs at 12 percent of these parties, alcohol remained a major factor; nearly 90 percent of all of the party guests who took a Breathalyzer test were intoxicated, with average scores near 0.08 percent blood alcohol concentration.
And Clapp adds that the location of a party can often play a big part in how intoxicated its guests become. When drinking takes place at a bar, he says, the controlled nature of the establishment goes a long way in terms of keeping drinking behavior in check. But at house parties, discretion often goes out the window a point to which college senior True can personally attest.
“People get pretty messed up at most places, but at bars there’s actually a sort of limit to how much you can drink because of price, and good bartender will cut you off, whereas a good frat bro probably won’t,” he said.
And when it comes to this type of celebration, True says he believes young men and women are equally affected by alcohol-soaked parties.
“I think guys can at least on the whole hold more alcohol,” he said. “But in terms of how drunk you’re getting I’d say it’s about even; you see a wrecked girl throwing up in [the] street and a bro passed out on the couch pretty equally.”
