Om man er innom et apotek, en helsekostforretning, eller tilogmed en dagligvareforretning nå og da kan man ikke unngå å legge merke til de uendelige hyllemetrene med kosttilskudd av alle mulige slag. Vitaminer, mineraler, antioksidanter, urte- og bærekstrakter, you name it.
Lite provoserer meg mer.
Det er opplest og vedtatt at jo flere vitaminer og mineraler og særlig antioksidanter man får i seg, jo sunnere og friskere blir man. For det sier jo forskerne. Eller sier de nå det? Svaret er faktisk NEI. Inntak av en lang rekke vitaminer, mineraler og antioksidanter i pilleform har i beste fall ingen effekt, og kan i verste fall gjøre skade og øke dødeligheten i enkelte befolkningsgrupper. I bunn og grunn bør man kun ta kosttilskudd om man har en dokumentert mangel eller er i en risikogruppe... det vil si, kun i samråd med lege.
Artiklen The antioxidant myth: a medical fairy tale tar for seg historien til bruk av vitaminer og antioksidanter som kosttilskudd.
Hele ideen om at antioksidanter er bra for kroppen er i utangspunktet en spekulasjon basert på den gode gamle legge-sammen-to-og-to-metoden. Det er grundig dokumentert at et kosthold rikt på frukt og grønnsaker (antioksidantrik mat) reduserer sannsynligheten for å få en lang rekke sykdommer (kreft, hjerte-karsykdommger, alzheimers etc.). På den andre siden vet man at frie radikaler (på ett eller annet vis) er involvert i en lang rekke skader og sykdommer (inkludert kreft, hjerte-karsykdommer, alzheimers etc.). Man vet også at antioksidanter nøytraliserer frie radikaler i laboratorieeksperimenter. Dermed var det helt logisk å slutte at antioksidanter beskytter mot sykdom ved å motvirke frie radikaler. Det er en kjekk idé det... dessverre spredde idéen seg ut til massene (og kosttilskuddsfirmaene) før man rakk å teste den ut.
De første antioksidantene man begynte å innta i bøttevis på 90-tallet var A-vitamin/betakaroten og E-vitamin. Parallellt testet man ut effekten av disse i store kliniske undersøkelser. Interessant nok viste studiene ikke bare at disse to vitaminene inntatt i store mengder har så godt som null gunstig effekt, men tvert imot kunne de øke dødeligheten. Et eksempel er en studie hvor man ga betakaroten til mennesker som var i risikogruppen for å utvikle lungekreft (røykere og asbest-arbeidere). Blant de som fikk betakaroten gikk lungekreft-raten opp med 28% og dødeligheten opp med 17%!!! Man har testet og testet og testet seg halvt ihjel, men ingen er i stand til å finne noe som helst belegg for at å innta antioksidanter som tilskuddsform har noe som helst gunstig helseeffekt.
The conclusion is becoming clear: whatever is behind the health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, you cannot reproduce it by taking purified extracts or vitamin supplements. Just because a food with a certain compound in it is beneficial, it does not mean a nutraceutical with the same compound in is
Av en eller annen merkelig grunn har aldri disse resultatene nådd ut til folket. Jeg gjetter på at grupperinger med økonomiske interesser innen feltet har jobbet beinhardt med å holde myten i live. Kosttilskuddsbransjen er jo åpenbart en enorm gullgruve.
Så, jeg anbefaler alle å sette vitaminpillene på hylla og heller fokusere på å få i seg massevis av frukt og grønnsaker, helseeffekten av det er veldokumentert. Jeg har faktisk snakket med en professor i ernæringsfysiologi som meget gjerne skulle endret 5 om dagen til 10 om dagen. Så. HIV INNPÅ.
Five science fiction movies that get the science right
...fordi det ikke finnes noe mer irriterende enn håpløs fremstilling av vitenskap på film (eller CSI for den saks skyld)!
Kjekk låt fra Modest Mouse. Passer med pils, solbriller og deilig vårvær.
Dashboard
Dette er egentlig meget gammelt nytt, men det er jo kjekt at folk flest får det med seg også. Absint er ikke hallusinogent, det inneholder ikke andre rusmidler enn etanol i vesentlige mengder. Man har lenge beskyldt nervegiften thujon for å være ansvarlig for de såkalte absint-psykosene som herjet blant bohemene på slutten av 1800-tallet. Men som det rapporteres nå inneholder ikke original absint noe mer thujon enn dagens lovlige 'ufarlige' absint. (Forøvrig er det ingenting som tyder på at thujon har noen hallusinogen effekt, så hvor myten kommer fra er vanskelig å si). Derimot inneholdt den gamle absinten meget store mengder etanol. Det eksisterer også teorier om at de mentale og fysiske forstyrrelsene absintdrikkerne opplevde kan skyldes blyforgiftning. Gamle krystallglass kan ha meget høyt innhold av bly, og løsninger med høy etanolkonsentrasjon har blitt foreslått å løse ut litt av dette blyet. Bly er som kjent ikke noe særlig for helsen.
Uansett. Absint er og blir en ekstremt vond sterk alkoholdrikk. Ikke noe mer muffens enn som så.
I kjølvannet av Albert Hoffmanns død våkner interessen for bruk av psykotrope stoffer medisinsk:
BBC: LSD, Ketamine and Cannabis could treat conditions from headache to diabetes
....på MAPS ligger det et knippe nekrologer for Albert Hoffmann...
Albert Hofmann, 11 January 1006 – 29 April 2008
An Obituary by Dieter A. Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmüller
At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.
He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times. He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary critical of contemporary culture.
Until his death Albert Hofmann remained active. He communicated with colleagues and experts from all over the world, gave interviews, and showed great interest in the world's affairs, although he decided to retire from public life already a few years ago. Nevertheless he welcomed visitors at his home on the Rittimatte, and opened the door for late in the evening.
He managed to keep his almost childlike curiosity for the wonders of nature and creation. In his "paradise," as he would call his home, he enjoyed being close to nature, especially to plants. During one of our last visits he said to us with luminous eyes: "The Rittimatte is my second most important discovery." It was always a unique experience to stroll with him over his meadows and to share his enjoying the living nature all around.
Gratefully and lovingly we grieve for an outstanding scientist, an important philosopher, a dear and true friend, and our member of the board.
Albert Hofmann was born on January 1906 in the quiet small town of Baden, Switzerland, as the eldest one of four children. His father is a toolmaker in a factory where he meets Albert’s mother-to-be; when he falls seriously ill, Albert has to support the family. That’s why he decides for a commercial apprenticeship. At the same time he starts studying Latin and other languages, since he wants to take his A-levels, which he succeeds in at a private school, paid for by a godfather.
In 1926, at the age of twenty, Albert Hofmann begins to study chemistry at the University of Zurich. Four years later he does his doctorate with distinction. Subsequently he works at the Sandoz pharmaceutical-chemical research laboratory in Basel, a company to which he proves his loyalty for more than four uninterrupted decades. (In 1996 Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy merged to become Novartis.) That’s where he mainly works with medicinal plants and mushrooms. He's specifically interested in alkaloids (nitrogen compounds) of ergot, a cereal fungus. In 1938 he isolates the basic component of all therapeutically essential ergot alkaloids, lysergic acid; he mixes it with a series of chemicals. He then tests the effects of the thus derived lysergic acid derivatives as circulatory and respiratory stimulant – among others LSD-25 (Lysergic acid diethylamide). Because the effects observed fell short of expectations, however, the pharmacologists at Sandoz quickly lose interest in it.
Five years later, following a "peculiar presentiment," Albert Hofmann devotes himself again to LSD-25. On 16 April 1943, while synthesizing, he is overcome by unusual sensations – "a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness," – which prompt him to interrupt his laboratory work. "At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxication like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight too unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away."
Three days later, on 19 April 1943, Hofmann sets out for the first voluntary LSD trip in the history of man. Because he cannot yet judge the enormous efficacy of the drug, he takes, at 4:20 pm, with 250 microgram a relatively high dose – and gets to know the hallucinogenic power of the substance with all its intensity.
With his discovery of LSD Albert Hofmann has caused a snowball effect, which turns into an avalanche in no time. It influences the late second millennium – at least in the Western world – to an extent, comparable only to the "pill". Consciousness researchers respectfully spoke of an "atom bomb of the mind."
To worldwide setting-in research Albert Hofmann makes essential contributions. So he is, in 1958, the first one to succeed in isolating the psychoactive substances psilocybin and psilocin from Mexican magic mushrooms (Psilocybe mexicana); in Ololiuqui, the seeds of a climbing plant, he finds substances related to LSD. He isolates and synthesizes substances of important medicinal plants in order to study their effects. His basic research blesses Sandoz with several successful remedies: Hydergine, an effective one in geriatrics, Dihydergot, a circulation- and blood-pressure stabilizing medicament, and Methergine, an active agent applied in gynecology. Hofmann stays with Sandoz until his retirement in 1971, last as head of the research department for natural medicines. From then on he devotes more and more of his time to writing and lecturing. He increasingly wins recognition for his scientific pioneering ventures: he is given honorary doctorates by the ETH Zurich, the Stockholm university, and the Berlin Free University; and he is called into the Nobel Prize Committee.
Here, outstanding contributions to research were honored – but Albert Hofmann's life's work comprises much more. From the start he took a favorable view of efforts by physicians and psychotherapists to include LSD into new approaches for the treatment of manifold chronic diseases. But LSD isn't only useful with special diagnoses – it's Hofmann's firm belief that the "psychedelic" potential of this "wonder drug" could be beneficial to all of us. In LSD-induced altered states of consciousness its discoverer doesn’t only see psychotic delusions of a chemically manipulated mind, but windows to a higher reality – true spiritual experiences during which a normally deeply buried potential of our mind, the heavenly element of creation, our unity with it reveals itself. "The one-sided belief in the scientific view of life is based on a far-reaching misunderstanding," Hofmann says in his book Insight – Outlook. "Certainly, everything it contains is real – but this represents just one half of reality; only its material, quantifiable part. It lacks all those spiritual dimensions which cannot be described in physical or chemical terms; and it’s exactly these which include the most important characteristics of all life."
It’s not the single consumer alone who profits from chemicals which help to understand these aspects of the world; for Hofmann it could help to heal deficits the Western world chronically suffers from: "Materialism, estrangement from nature (...), lack of professional fulfillment in a mechanized, lifeless world of employment, boredom and aimlessness in a rich, saturated society, the missing of a sense-making philosophical fundamentalness of life." Starting from experiences as LSD conveys them, we could "develop a new awareness of reality" which "could become the basis of a spirituality that's not founded on the dogmas of existing religions, but on insights into a higher and profounder sense" – on that we recognize, read, and understand "the revelations of the book which God's finger wrote." When such insights "become established in our collective consciousness, it could arise from that, that scientific research and the previous destroyers of nature – technology and industry – will serve the purpose of changing back our world into what it formerly was: into an earthly Garden of Eden."
With this message the genius chemist turns into a profound philosopher of nature and visionary critical of contemporary culture. The critical distance from the LSD euphoria of the hippie- and flower power-driven ones Albert Hofmann has never given up, however; that he has fathered a "problem child" he already emphasizes with the title of one of his most known works. He always underlines the risks of an uncontrolled intake. On the other hand he never tires of emphasizing what's the basic difference between LSD and most of the other drugs: even if used repeatedly, it doesn't make addictive; it doesn't reduce one's awareness; taken in a normal dose it’s absolutely non-toxic. The total demonizing of psychedelics, as pursued by the mass media, conservative politicians, and governments from the sixties onward, he never could understand; for him, there is no reason why mentally stable persons in the right set and setting shouldn't enjoy LSD. All the more disappointed Albert Hofmann was when, in the late sixties, he had to see it happen that the use of LSD was worldwide criminalized and prohibited – even for therapeutic and research purposes
The impetus for a change emanating from the impact of the international Symposium "LSD – Problem Child and Wonder Drug" in 2006 in Basel, at the occasion of his 100th birthday, quickened him to say that "after this conference my problem child has definitely turned into a wonder child," and he regarded this development as his most beautiful birthday present.
And after just shortly before his 102nd birthday, he enjoyed taking notice that the first LSD study with humans has received the permission from the Federal Office of Public Health in Bern, which he called the "fulfillment of my heart's desire."
His life has become an ideal for many for how we can reach a great age in mental and physical vigor by retaining a childlike curiosity.
Albert Hofmann repeatedly expressed his conviction, that his mystical experiences and his trips into other worlds of consciousness, which he experienced first spontaneously as a child and later during his experiments with psychedelic substances would be the best preparations for the last journey which everybody has to go on at the end of her or his life. He has retained his curiosity for himself for his last journey.
