Health & Science

Beware the high-estrogen woman

The femme fatale really exists, and it’s unusually high levels of estrogen that make her dangerous, says New Scientist. Evolutionary psychologists at the University of Texas found that some young women have very high levels of an estrogen compound called estradiol, and that it has a major impact on their behavior toward men. Women with high estradiol levels rated themselves as more attractive than other women (men agreed with this assessment), and had dated more men. They were also more likely to have cheated on partners or to have dumped a boyfriend for someone they deemed better. Study author Kristina Durante says that high estradiol levels may be an evolutionary adaptation, conferring a reproductive advantage on women who are very attractive and not particularly faithful. “These women are not easily satisfied by long-term partners, and are willing to trade up when the opportunity arises,” says Durante, naming Angelina Jolie as an example. “She doesn’t need Brad Pitt long-term.”

Caffeine can make you nuts

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

You don’t need to drop LSD to experience a hallucination, say British researchers. A far more popular hallucinogenic drug is as close as your neighborhood Starbucks. Psychologists at Durham University in the U.K. questioned 200 people about their daily caffeine consumption and whether they’d ever had a hallucinatory experience. They found a telling link: Hard-core coffee drinkers (those who consume an average of seven cups daily) were three times more likely to report seeing things that weren’t there, hearing voices, and feeling as if they were floating above their bodies. “Extremely high doses—overdoses—of caffeine can produce sensory disturbances,” Harvard pharmacologist Jack Bergman tells National Geographic News. “In some cases, it may get more complex than just ‘seeing stars’ or ‘hearing noises.’” Though the correlation is a strong one, scientists can’t yet conclude that caffeine causes hallucinations. It may be that people who are prone to anxiety and delusions tend to use more of the drug, or that big-time coffee addicts are drawn to other, more harmful substances as well.

A new perspective on autism

Fetuses that are exposed to high levels of testosterone in the womb are more likely to exhibit characteristics of autism as children, says Nature News. Researcher Simon Baron-Cohen of the Autism Research Centre in the U.K. has long theorized that the developmental disorder results from children being born with an “extreme male brain.” The traits we associate with autism, he says, tend to be exaggerated versions of male characteristics: an emphasis on things rather than people, a penchant for systematizing the world, and an inability to understand what others are thinking and feeling. The new findings, based on tests of amniotic fluid and follow-up studies over nine years, lend some credence to Baron-Cohen’s theory, with children who were bathed in high levels of testosterone in the womb being less likely to make eye contact and more likely to be inwardly focused. Baron-Cohen notes that four out of five autistic kids are male. Other autism researchers, however, say the theory remains unproven. “The broader scientific community hasn’t accepted the idea of the extreme male brain,” says psychologist Kate Plaisted Grant.

Avoiding colds

There’s still no cure for the common cold. But there is one very simple way to keep yourself from catching one: Get at least seven hours of quality sleep every night. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University purposely exposed 153 people to a cold virus, then waited to see if they’d get sick. They found that when a study subject slept less than seven hours a night, he or she was three times more likely to fall ill from the virus. If the subject was getting low-quality sleep, waking up many times over the course of a night, that subject was five times more likely to get sick. This study isn’t just about colds, says Dr. David Katz of Yale University. It’s a wake-up call for all those who shortchange themselves on sleep, which keeps the immune system in tip-top shape. “Time invested in sleep,” he says, “will almost certainly be paid back in dividends of better health—fewer colds and greater productivity.”

A medical solution to divorce

In the not-too-distant future, married couples will be able to ride out their midlife crises on a cocktail of love drugs, says John Tierney in The New York Times. Scientists have already established that doses of the hormone oxytocin may promote bonding, and even love, between two people. Regular doses of oxytocin, administered by a marriage counselor via a nasal spray, for example, could help estranged married couples to re-bond with each other. But even more intriguing is the idea of an oxytocin blocker, a chemical “love vaccine” that could inoculate the happily married against ill-advised dalliances. If we could stop the body from reacting to a new love interest, Tierney says, we could prevent midlife affairs from breaking up good marriages. If elderly widowers were on oxytocin blockers, he says, they “might consult their lawyers before marrying someone resembling Anna Nicole Smith.”