Teenage drinking - rats!, and , GAS

[dieseltaylor]

The Consequences of a Boozy Youth

By Greg Miller

ScienceNOW Daily News

21 September 2009

Boozing it up in adolescence contributes to risky behavior in adulthood, according to a new study with rats. Some researchers suspect that the same is true for people, but they've had a hard time establishing whether adolescent drinking makes people prone to risk-taking or whether risk-prone people are simply more likely to start drinking as teenagers. Although the new work doesn't settle the issue, it bolsters the case that early alcohol use can cause lasting changes in behavior. Some of the best data available show that people who start drinking as adolescents and drink more heavily then are more likely to have problems with alcohol and drug abuse later in life, says Ilene Bernstein, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the senior author of the new study. But those studies have fallen short of determining cause and effect, Bernstein says. To get around this pitfall, she and her colleagues turned to rats, assigning individuals from a genetically identical strain to either drinking or teetotaling groups.

Although rats don't voluntarily like to drink alcohol, the researchers found they could entice the rodents with spiked gelatin--the murine equivalent of the Jell-O shots beloved by college students everywhere. Adolescent rats assigned to the drinking group had access to the stuff for 20 days. They consumed the equivalent of "multiple, multiple drinks" a day but spread their drinking over many hours and never appeared visibly drunk, Bernstein says.

To test the rats' propensity for risk, the researchers adopted a gambling task used by psychologists to study risk-taking in people. The animals learned that pressing one lever produced small but certain rewards in the form of small sugar pellets and an adjacent lever yielded bigger rewards--more pellets--but paid off less frequently. The researchers rigged the game so that in some testing sessions choosing the certain reward was the best overall strategy, while in other sessions the "risky" lever yielded the greatest overall payoff.

Teetotaling rats figured out the game over the course of a testing session and adjusted their strategy accordingly. Rats in the alcohol group also quickly learned that pressing the levers could lead to food, which Bernstein says argues against a general learning impairment. But 3 months after their last drink, they always preferred the risky lever, even when they payoff was poor, the researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"It's a good step forward," says Martin Paulus, a psychiatrist who studies addiction and decision-making at the University of California, San Diego, and the Veterans Affairs San Diego Health Care System. Paulus says the findings provide solid evidence that alcohol use in adolescence can cause lasting effects on adult behavior. He notes that the genetic and environmental influences at play are far more complex in people, but he thinks the study will facilitate further investigation of how early alcohol exposure could alter decision-making circuitry in the brain.

One possibility, Bernstein says, is that brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, which plays an important roles in decision-making and is still maturing in human teenagers, are particularly sensitive to the effects of adolescent drinking: "Alcohol for some reason is very toxic to developing nervous systems."

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/921/1?etoc

Certainly ties up with my prejudices. Or possibly my prejudices are derived from a gut feeling against excess : )

And just for fun with chemicals into the body a 2 litre [3.6pt uk = 72oz] bottle of coke contains 8.6 litres of carbon dioxide when manufactured.

Thats according to the UK Coca-Cola Press Office.

Which raises the interesting point as to when was carbon dioxide declared a suitable product for ingesting in its raw form - or pressurised [pressurized in the US]

[Michael Emrys]

...a 2 litre [3.6pt uk = 72oz] bottle of coke contains 8.6 litres of carbon dioxide when manufactured.

Not surprised. It's always been my opinion that they put way too much of that stuff in. Seems to me that they do it to cover up how flat the actual taste of the beverage is, due to shorting us with the cola extract, etc. They also dump a hell of a lot of corn syrup into it too for much the same reason. Just look at the calorie count. If I could buy cola syrup somewhere, I'd make my own drinks and never buy another bottle of Coke.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

We drink diet coke around here by the gallon. My wife survived Chernobyl and I survived the nuclear tests of the '50's (I was living at Ft. Carson, near Denver, and saw the horizon light up all the time with them) so we figure there's nothing the DC can do to us any worse that what we've been exposed to already.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/921/1?etoc

Which raises the interesting point as to when was carbon dioxide declared a suitable product for ingesting in its raw form - or pressurised [pressurized in the US]

What harm do you think the carbon dioxide might cause?

[Sergei]

Increased belching?

[dieseltaylor]

Its funny but most food items are tested for adverse effects - but I wondered if because it has been around for ages it is assumed to be safe but no-one knows. There is a theory that the phosphoric acid in sodas was was stripping calcium from bones leading to higher rates of osteoporosis ..... but then that has been a drink additive for a hundred years.

I just picked this out :

According to a report published in the March / April [2007] edition of General Dentistry, phosphoric acid in soda causes tooth enamel erosion, even with minimal exposure. While some consumers may believe that sugar is the only culprit of soda's adverse effects on dental health, enamel erosion occurs whether the soda is sweetened with sugar or artificial sweeteners.

"Drinking any type of soft drink poses risk to the health of your teeth," said Kenton Ross, a dentist and spokesman for the Academy of General Dentistry.

"My patients are shocked to hear that many of the soft drinks they consume contain nine to 12 teaspoons of sugar, and have an acidity that approaches the level of battery acid," Ross said.

Americans drink more than 50 gallons per capita of carbonated soft drinks each year, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation, which tracks beverage consumption in nine areas: bottled water, coffee, fruit beverages, milk, tea, beer, wine, spirits and "CSDs" or carbonated soft drinks. Of the nine, carbonated soft drinks make up the largest segment of beverages consumed. The United States has the highest per-capita CSD consumption in the world.

Soft drinks are infused with phosphoric acid to add a tangy flavor. In nature, this type of flavor can be found in ginger or lemon. Inexpensive and widely available, phosphoric acid is also used in fertilizers and detergents, including industrial cleaners. Even "food grade" thermal phosphoric acid is known to sometimes contain arsenic.

"Phosphoric acid is used in shipyards to remove rust from aircraft carriers and transport ships," explained Mike Adams, author of The Five Soft Drink Monsters, a book that teaches consumers how to beat their addiction to sugary sodas. "Consuming highly acidic substances is not only bad for your teeth but also terrible for bone health and can promote a deterioration of the jawbone, pelvis and femur. Essentially, drinking phosphoric acid dissolves away your skeletal system," Adams said.

http://www.naturalnews.com/021774.html

For a more mainstream informant:

http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/features/soda-osteoporosis

I sure hope gunner you and your wife have milk when having your oats : )

[Michael Emrys]

We drink diet coke around here by the gallon. My wife survived Chernobyl and I survived the nuclear tests of the '50's (I was living at Ft. Carson, near Denver, and saw the horizon light up all the time with them) so we figure there's nothing the DC can do to us any worse that what we've been exposed to already.

And you save a small fortune in night lights.

Michael

[gunnergoz]

And you save a small fortune in night lights.

Michael

That's Michael's attempt at glowing praise... :D

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

...soft drinks ... have an acidity that approaches the level of battery acid

Holy moly.

Stupid comparisons like this probably result in several hundred unreported darwin awards every year.

[dieseltaylor]

Well I suppose no one would like to see the statistics then - here : : )

http://www.dentalgentlecare.com/diet_soda.htm

If you scroll down there is many soda and even further down more reports from science on associated problems. Quite eye-opening.

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

pH is a log scale so if battery acid were 1 as in your website and pepsi 3 it´s 100 times more acidic.

The actual pH of battery acid (6M sulfuric acid !!!) is much lower than 1.

[dieseltaylor]

Thanks for that Yossaian - I only got one year of science at school. Wiki is fun on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph_Scale

Vinegar is less acidic than sodas! Thats a laugh.

Anyway as to phosphoric acid:

Teenagers and bone health

...a recent study found that carbonated beverages were associated with bone fractures in physically active teenage girls. The cause of this association (caffeine, phosphorous content, low calcium intake) is not known.

Dr. Greenspan points out that calcium intake among young people has changed a lot in the last 10 to 15 years. "Children and teenagers used to drink much more milk. Unfortunately, we won't know what effect this lack of calcium will have on today's teenagers for another 30 to 40 years, but it is likely to lead to a dramatic increase in osteoporosis and fractures," she says.

-- healthjournal.upmc.com/0505/BoneHealth.htm

You need vitamin D in order to absorb calcium from the diet.

Phosphorus: Phosphorus participates in the energy cycle by turning the food we eat into fuel the body can use. Like calcium, phosphorus is also involved in muscle contraction and nerve transmission, and we need phosphorus to make body proteins. Phosphorus is part of your DNA, which controls heredity. As part of cell membranes, phosphorus plays a protective role by regulating what comes in and goes out.

Phosphorus deficiency can result in neuromuscular, skeletal, blood, and kidney abnormalities, and extreme deficiency can be fatal. Phosphorus deficiency is frequently seen in individuals who are on long-term total parenteral nutrition (also called "TPN") or who use phosphorus-binding antacids to excess.

There is a relationship between calcium and phosphorus. For optimal absorption of each, the relationship should be one to one. Too much phosphorus causes poor absorption of calcium. In a study that compared female athletes who drank carbonated beverages -- a rich source of phosphorus -- with those who didn't, those who drank the soda had more bone fractures. Unless you are on TPN or taking phosphorus-binding acids, the chance of a deficiency is rare. This is one mineral that you are more likely to get too much of rather than too little, especially if you take supplements or drink carbonated beverages to excess. Too much phosphorus can cause calcium deficiency, leading to osteoporosis.

-- thebody.com/bp/jun99/nutrients.html