Health & Science

Slowing down aging with red wine

A natural anti-aging compound found in red wine is even more potent than scientists originally thought, says The New York Times. Last year, scientists found that the compound resveratrol, a plant polyphenol found in grape skins, wine, and pomegranates, had startling effects on the bodies of mice. Large doses of resveratrol, researchers found, enabled mice to live longer, lose weight, and run faster. Unfortunately, mice were given such a concentrated dose of the chemical that scientists said a person would have to drink about 750 bottles of red wine per day, or take huge quantities of untested supplements to get the same effect. But a University of Wisconsin team working with gene expression technology has found that a much smaller dose—the equivalent of four glasses of wine a day—could be enough to be effective. Scientists believe that resveratrol works by triggering some of the same DNA repair proteins that are activated when people restrict themselves to very low-calorie diets. “Resveratrol at low doses can retard some aspects of the aging process, including heart aging,” says researcher Tomas Prolla. Though many scientists argue that the compound needs more testing, supplements containing it are already being sold by a number of companies. Those supplements are currently being tested in long-term studies on rhesus monkeys.

Dieting pressure backfires

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Parents who nag their chubby teens about their weight are just driving them toward the cookie jar, says a new study. When researchers at the University of Minnesota tracked the bodies and behavior of overweight adolescents and their parents for several years, they found that 57 percent of moms and dads regularly pressured their kids to lose weight. But the strategy backfired: Kids who were pressured to diet were three times as likely to still be overweight five years later. When it comes to weight management, says Dr. Dianne Neumark-Sztainer, parents should keep their mouths shut and lead by example. “Serve more fruits and vegetables, have more family meals, find ways to be more physically active, turn off the TV,” she tells MSNBC.com. Kids who diet instead of adopting healthier eating and exercise habits, she says, become too emotional about food, wind up skipping meals out of guilt, and then binge-eat to compensate.

A new weapon against acne

In the future, your drugstore’s shelves will be stocked with a different kind of pimple remedy: a zit cream laced with viruses. Certain kinds of viruses, called bacteriophages, target and kill bacteria. Microbiologist Michael Davis of Connecticut State University has isolated several of these viruses that are attracted to P. acnes, the bacteria strain that causes acne. By blending millions of virus cells into a lotion, he says, scientists will be able to clear people’s skin of acne blemishes without drying it out or harming the benign bacteria that also live there. He’s now working to develop strains that will aggressively pursue a seek-and-destroy mission against P. acnes. “We want to come up with bacteriophages that have a 100 percent kill rate,” Davis tells NewScientist.com.

Go ahead, repress yourself

Conventional therapeutic wisdom would have us believe that a person who “bottles up” his feelings is setting himself up for explosive consequences down the road. But everyone deals with trauma in his or her own way, says a new study by psychologists at the University of Buffalo. In fact, researchers found, people who never vocalized their feelings about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are happier today than those who sought catharsis. There’s an “assumption in popular culture, and even in clinical practice, that people need to talk in order to overcome a collective trauma,” researcher Mark Seery tells LiveScience. But those who prefer not to dwell on their pain, he says, should not be pressured to talk. “They can cope quite successfully and, according to our results, are likely to be better off than someone who does want to express his or her feelings.”

Stuck in our routines

Most people are as fixed in their habits and unadventurous as worker ants, staying close to home and following the same routes every day, says a new study. For six months, researchers from Northeastern University in Boston used personal cell phone signals to track the movements of 100,000 Europeans who had no idea they were being tracked. The goal was to plot the average person’s daily comings and goings. Most people, the study found, rarely leave the vicinity of their home or office, remaining within a 20-mile radius almost all the time. The subjects in the study visited the same places over and over, and could usually be found in the same spot at the same time. “We think of ourselves as spontaneous and unpredictable,” study author Albert-Laszlo Barabasi tells Discovery News. “But we do have our patterns.” Knowing people’s patterns, scientists said, could be useful in trying to stop the spread of contagious diseases such as avian flu. Critics objected to the study, arguing that personal cell phone calls and messages—which are routed through the closest cell tower and thus divulge geographic information—were used without the subjects’ consent. But researchers say they never knew the names of any of those studied, identifying them only by a number. They concede, though, that cell phone users generally have no idea how easily they can be tracked. “In the wrong hands, the data could be misused,” researcher Cesar Hidalgo says.