Word: acidity
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...them last weekend was a bit jarring. I juxtaposed my memories of two summers past with the current reality. Anne, who had wanted to experience all the pleasures and beauty of life, has since become seriously involved with drugs. About a year ago, she overdosed on acid at a Phish concert and had her stomach pumped. The situation terrified Kim. Since then, Anne has gravitated toward the druggies; Tim, her current and first serious boyfriend, is a former dealer and a yo! boy. As a pale, blond, blue-eyed, non-Dead Head, Tim is the opposite of everything Anne ever...
Last week, however, the dead Norwegians made the evening news. What all of them had in common, in addition to sickly hearts and premature deaths, was elevated levels of an amino acid called homocysteine. The patients were part of a study, published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, that shows an almost lockstep correlation between high homocysteine levels and coronary-disease mortality. And that paper follows more than 50 less publicized studies since 1992 suggesting similar connections...
...knows for certain what causes some individuals and not others to overproduce homocysteine. But the evidence points to a shortage of vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folic acid, all of which work to convert the amino acid into a molecular form the body can use. The answer for people concerned about cardiac health would seem to be for them to keep their intake of the protective vitamins high. The Harvard Health Letter has recommended increasing consumption of a range of foods--including leafy green vegetables, beans, peas, grains and certain meats and dairy foods--to keep homocysteine in check. Many...
...everyone is sold on such a simple prescription. Even if homocysteine is behind some cases of heart disease, it's unlikely to be behind them all, and there's no guarantee that managing the amino acid will decrease the risk of cardiac trouble. Regardless of circulating homocysteine levels, smoking and obesity will still ravage the cardiovascular system, and a poor diet will still choke the blood with fats. Cardiologist Roger Blumenthal of Johns Hopkins University estimates the share of all cardiac cases attributable to homocysteine at fewer than...
...Jean-Marie Le Pen laughing? Because the truculent, acid-tongued far-right leader sees himself as the real winner of France's parliamentary elections. The snap vote, called by Gaullist President Jacques Chirac in a disastrous blunder, not only ousted a center-right majority that Le Pen reviles, it also vastly increased the clout of Le Pen's anti-immigrant National Front, which polled nearly 15% in the first round of voting and played a decisive role in the June 1 runoff. Though only one party member was elected, because of the mechanics of France's majority voting system...