Why Coca-Cola is bad for you and other health cornucopia

I was just reading up about water purification systems when I learned that Jessica Hamzelou says that many clean water systems designed for the poor do not work at all because their benefits may be overstated.

The relevant excerpt listing such water purification systems is as follows. "....Most of these systems work either by disinfecting the water – using chlorine tablets or by allowing the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight to purify stored water – or by passing it through ceramic or sand filters to remove microorganisms......"

A below second excerpt emphasizes the fact that the root cause of human diarrhea lies in food-borne bacteria and not in the water-borne variety.

"....Meanwhile Cairncross says the spread of diarrhoea-causing bacteria through water shouldn't be the main focus of research. "Food is a more important carrier of bacteria than water," he says. "Faecal bacteria are in heaven in cooked food – they can multiply very easily, which doesn't happen in water." Funding should be diverted towards this cause of diarrhoea, he says....."

Now, about that Coca-Cola and similar pop or sugared drinks.... In discussing the potability of Martian and lunar water, Daniel Engber reveals that any drink with a pH level or reading below 5.5 will eat away your teeth in the long run.

The most relevant excerpt is as follows. ".....That's not the only reason to think the space water would be unpalatable. Mineral specimens collected by the Mars rovers (on other parts of the planet) have turned up significant quantities of jarosite, a salt deposit that tends to form only in very acidic solutions. Researchers guess that the jarosite precipitated from a liquid with a pH of between 0 and 4. For comparison, a human can handle an acidic beverage like Coca-Cola, which has a pH of about 2.4, but more concentrated acids will cause mucosal injuries to the esophagus, stomach, and intestines......"

Did you know that teeth grinding is called bruxism? I can really guess that Jesus Christ gave the Pharisees a good dose of that as his preaching gave them many anxious moments of gnashing of the teeth. Ha-ha...

Anyway, according to this BBC article about Grindcare, a biofeedback device made in Denmark and currently being tested in Britain, small electric shocks are sent out to the sleeping patient at the onset of tense moments and tensed muscles.

What are the benefits? Well, apart from not having to wear plastic dental covers at night and the absence of "....headaches and stiff necks, as well as [not] irritating a sleeping partner.....", the main advantage is that the possibility of using an overdose of painkillers is eliminated.

Very soon, all things being equal, Fred will get you out of any emergency situation at the touch of a button.

Who's FRED? Paul Marks says that FRED is a hand-held satellite-radio which uses several technologies to get out a distress call or to help you dial for help.

The most relevant excerpt about the European Fast Response Emergency Device is as follows. "....Using 3G, GSM and Iridium phone technology, alongside GPS and Galileo satnav receivers, FRED will do its utmost to alert a rescue centre of your plight...."

According to this Washington Post article by David Brown, the major difference between the death toll from seasonal flu and swine flu is that swine flu attacks younger people below 18 years of age, while seasonal flu affects mainly older people above 65 years of age.

However, those figures are not cast in stone, as revealed in the excerpt below. "....

The total number of people who have been hospitalized is 98,000, with 36,000 of them age 17 and younger. The vast majority of deaths -- about 2,920 -- have been in people age 18 to 64.

In an average flu season, the seasonal virus contributes to the deaths of about 36,000 people -- 90 percent of whom are 65 or older. Many are close to death, with flu being only one factor leading to their demise. That is not the case with H1N1's victims, most of whom are much younger, and about 20 to 30 percent of whom were healthy before contracting the virus.

All of the estimates come with substantial uncertainty. For example, total H1N1 cases in the United States range from 14 million to 34 million, and total deaths from 2,500 to 6,100.

The CDC had previously said 129 people younger than 18 had died from H1N1 flu. That is compared with 88 deaths from seasonal flu in 2007-08 and 78 deaths in 2006-07 -- the most recent two flu seasons before the H1N1 strain emerged.

The new estimate includes deaths that occurred outside hospitals, patients who tested negative for H1N1 but almost certainly had it, and other overlooked cases....."

Finally, before I end this post, I must mention that Christopher Shay has raised an alarm about a rogue strain of malaria that may render artemisinin impotent in treating the viral disease caused by Plasmodium falciparum - the deadly strain that affects the brain of sufferers.

The major relevant excerpts are as follows. "....Globally, only 3% of malaria patients receive the proper artemisinin combination therapy....It's not random that dangerous new strains of malaria continue to crop up on the Thai-Cambodian border. In addition to having longer years of exposure to the miracle drug, residents like the gem-mine workers rely on an unregulated, informal health sector, rife with cheap counterfeits and improper treatments. ..... Even for experts, it can be impossible to tell the difference between the fakes and the real article just by looking at them. What's so important about this is that when you have thousands of people taking improper or low dosages, the malaria parasite develops resistance more quickly......Modeling by the Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit published in the Malaria Journal in February predicts that if nothing is done in the next two decades, "resistance to artemisinins will be approaching 100%." And if that happens, it won't be long until the resistant strain spreads from Cambodia's precious gem mines to Africa, putting half the world's population at risk of catching what would be an untreatable, deadly disease......."


Well, I say that climate change should have been factored into that vaunted model. Mosquitoes cannot survive in cold environments; so, perhaps, if the tropics became more temperate in weather, malarial parasites would have to find a new home or just lay down and die....

Cheers, to that hopeful future!