From the Shangri-La Diet forums:

I stumbled on SLD when I, after a sinus-infection, lost my ability to smell and therefore also taste the flavor of the food I was eating. I could only tell if the food was sweet, sour or salty. I was devastated especially after reading that it could very well be permanent. During those days I noticed how much the flavor of the food means to me but also how my appetite was affected. I just didn´t want to eat. After 3-4 days my ability to smell started to return slowly slowly to my great joy and so did my appetite.

After lung and stomach cancer, liver cancer is the third largest cause of cancer deaths in the world. A new study on the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) confirmed that there is an inverse association between coffee consumption and HCC.

At least eleven studies conducted in southern Europe and Japan have examined the relationship between coffee drinking and the risk of primary liver cancer. The current study, led by Francesca Bravi of the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri in Milan, Italy, was a meta-analysis of published studies on HCC that included how much coffee patients had consumed.

Forsyth Institute scientists have discovered an important mechanism for controlling the behavior of adult stem cells.

Research with the flatworm, planaria, found a novel role for the proteins involved in cell-to-cell communication. This work has the potential to help scientists understand the nature of the messages that control stem cell regulation ¯ such as the message that maintain and tells a stem cell to specialize and to become part of an organ e.g.: liver or skin.

In recent years, planarians have been recognized as a great model system to molecularly dissect conserved stem cell regulatory mechanisms in vivo. Planarians have powerful regeneration capability that makes them ideal for studying this process.

Stars don’t shine forever. How long a star lives depends on how big and heavy it is. The bigger the star, the shorter its life.

When a star significantly heavier than our sun runs out of fuel, it collapses and blows itself apart in a catastrophic supernova explosion. A supernova releases so much light that it can outshine a whole galaxy of stars put together. The exploding star sweeps out a huge bubble in its surroundings, fringed with actual stellar debris along with material swept up by the blast wave. This glowing, brightly-coloured shell of gas forms a nebula that astronomers call a ‘supernova remnant’.

Scientists from the Animal Ecology and Cell Biology Institute of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover were able to develop a many-headed jellyfish when Cnox genes were deactivated.

These genes are closely related to the Hox genes of the “higher” animals and are responsible for forming the body along the main body axis, from the anterior to the posterior.

Multiple-headed animals were recognized as a rare developmental anomaly of unknown origin in various animals. Now for the first time, having many heads is shown to be an inducible and reproducible development when a single regulatory gene is experimentally deactivated.

Disorders of arousal (i.e., sleepwalking, confusional arousals and sleep terrors) have sometimes been associated with violent behaviors against other individuals. A preliminary review of possible triggers for violence during disorders of arousal finds that violent behavior most frequently appears to follow direct provocation by, or close proximity to, another individual.

The review, authored by Mark R. Pressman, PhD, of Sleep Medicine Services at Lankenau Hospital in Wynnewood, Penn., was based on a review of 32 cases drawn from medical and legal literature.

The concept of the memory of water goes back to 1988 when the late Professor Jacques Benveniste published, in the international scientific journal Nature, claims that extremely high ‘ultramolecular’ dilutions of an antibody had effects in the human basophil degranulation test, a laboratory model of immune response.

In other words, the water diluent ‘remembered’ the antibody long after it was gone. His findings were subsequently denounced as ‘pseudoscience’ and yet, despite the negative impact this had at the time, the idea has not gone away.

The concept of memory of water is important to homeopathy because it offers a potential explanation of the mechanism of action of very high dilutions often used in homeopathy.

A variation in a gene called GRIK4 appears to make people with depression more likely to respond to the medication citalopram (Celexa) than are people without the variation, a study by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) has found.

The increased likelihood was small, but when people had both this variation and one in a different gene shown to have a similarly small effect in an earlier study, they were 23 percent more likely to respond to citalopram than were people with neither variation.

The finding addresses a key issue in mental health research: the differences in people’s responses to antidepressant medications, thought to be based partly on differences in their genes. Some patients respond to the first antidepressant they attempt, but many don’t.

The major active component of marijuana could enhance the ability of the virus that causes Kaposi’s sarcoma to infect cells and multiply, according to a team of researchers at Harvard Medical School. According to the researchers, low doses of Ä-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), equivalent to that in the bloodstream of an average marijuana smoker, could be enough to facilitate infection of skin cells and could even coax these cells into malignancy.

While most people are not at risk from Kaposi’s sarcoma herpes virus (KSHV), researchers say those with lowered immune systems, such as AIDS patients or transplant recipients, are more susceptible to developing the sarcoma as a result of infection.

Fibromyalgia has emerged as a common yet difficult to treat disorder. A group of investigators of the University of Basel has proposed a new modality of treatment; mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).

Studies suggest improvements in general aspects of well-being, including quality of life (QoL), coping and positive affect, as well as decreased anxiety and depression. A quasi-experimental study examined effects of an 8-week MBSR intervention among 58 female patients with fibromyalgia (mean, 52 ± 8 years) who underwent MBSR or an active social support procedure.