The Thin End

Invented around 1908, it fundamentally changed our drinking habits - the teabag.  But it wasn't actually 'invented.' The teabag was an accident rather than design.  A New York tea merchant, John Sullivan, started sending tea to customers in small silken packets for convenience.  Many of his customers, thinking they were intended to be convenient infusions, placed them in their teapot.  The teabag was born.  Sullivan went on to make the bags from gauze, making them more suitable for infusion, and their use swept across the USA.  In 1953, Tetley introduced the teabag to tea drinkers in the United Kingdom, where now they are used in 96% of tea consumption.  So, what are they?  Here the story is both environmentally good and potentially bad. Not all tea bags are made of the same stuff.  Many tea bags are made with added plastic, which is neither biodegradable nor recyclable.  Some types of teabag leak millions of plastic particles ...

Is compulsive alcohol consumption wired differently in the brain?  Social drinking can be defined by the level of choice and the nature of the choice to drink alcohol.    Social drinkers drink with others.  It involves parts of the brain that underpin habits, but allow us to make free choices. But what about compulsive drinking?  Are different areas of the brain activated in compulsive drinkers?  The answer it seems is yes. Visual alcohol cues for heavy drinkers activate an area of the brain called the dorsal striatum.  In social drinkers it is the ventral striatum that is activated.  This suggests different brain circuits are at work in heavy, compulsive alcohol drinkers. Heavy alcohol drinkers attempt to acquire alcohol despite the threat of a negative consequence more so than light drinkers, a study  published in the journal  Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging has found, and this behaviour is associa...

Events in childhood influence profoundly how we cope with poor health as adults.  Now, a new study shows that those who experienced childhood trauma are more likely to have advanced cancer in later life. Among individuals with head and neck cancer, those who experienced childhood trauma were more likely to have advanced cancer, to have higher alcohol consumption, and to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression. Published early online in CANCER , a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that childhood trauma history should be considered during treatment for head and neck cancers. Stress, anxiety and depression Individuals may experience high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression during and after cancer diagnosis and treatment.  Because human social interaction and emotional expression depend largely on the structural and functional integrity of the head and neck region, the diagnosis and treatment of HNC have...