Cocoa as sunscreen? Public relations firm shamelessly Hypes tiny study

the following is a guest post by Kevin Lomangino , one of our analysts in HealthNewsReview.org. He is a medical journalist and independent editor that is currently Editor-in-Chief of clinical nutrition Insight, a monthly newsletter on the basis of evidence that analyzes the scientific literature on nutrition to doctors and nutritionists. He tweets as @ Klomangino.

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With the summer beach season in full swing, it's time to start thinking about ways to reduce your exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation of the Sun. Fortunately, public relations personnel Draznin is ready to educate you about a new strategy important to protect the skin from sun damage: eat more cocoa!

In a recent press release, Draznin offered to me on the track to the findings of a "featured" experimental adds the "mountain of studies on the benefits of cocoa". The results show that a certain type of antioxidant-rich cocoa "protected the skin from sun damage caused by exposure to UV rays," according the Draznin.

I thought I was above all the latest claims about cocoa-based products, encourage (but far from conclusive) cardiovascular effects of frankly dubious notion that chocolate is some sort of weight loss help. But chocolate as sunscreen? I don't see how this could work unless you were spotting it across your skin like Coppertone. (Not a look that I recommend).

For most of us, cocoa is something that we like to curl up with beside a warm fire on a cold winter night. Draznin now want to pack it in your beach bag along with the floppy hats and parasols.

As you can see, the enthusiastic Draznin claims are based on a study of 6 years of age, involving only 24 women, which was partially funded by the Mars Corporation. The researchers randomly assigned women receive a cocoa drink that was high in certain antioxidants known as flavanols (326 mg/d) or low flavanols (27 mg/d).

At the beginning of the study and after 12 weeks, women were exposed to a solar light Simulator and the redness of the skin was evaluated. Women high-flavanol Group had 25% less redness after 12 weeks than they did on the baseline, while the women in the Group of low-flavanol had no change in redness.

Interesting finding? Absolutely. And I'm not dismissing the idea that your diet can play a role in helping him to resist the adverse effects of exposure to the Sun, but as readers of this blog know, a tiny, short-term study, funded by the manufacturer is not proof of anything when it comes to health outcomes of the real world. And yet that did not prevent the Draznin of blatantly extolling the results.

The "argument" of this study, according to Draznin, is that cocoa consumption "should be part of your daily skin protection strategy and throughout the year."

Not surprisingly, Draznin also volunteered to tell me more about a particular line of supplements that contain cocoa flavanols claimed to be protective.

As far as I'm concerned, the only "takeaway" here is ludicrous lengths to which some public relations companies will promote a product. It is also a reminder that some companies will stretch any shred of evidence to give your product a veneer of scientific credibility.

One more reason for journalists and consumers to look critically for health claims and especially to seek an independent perspective on the importance of supporting research. HealthNewsReview.org has a very useful Toolkit-a great place to start working with this type of analysis.

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Editor's Note: such efforts sometimes PR hit their targets. The Minneapolis Star Tribune is one of the largest newspapers in the country, and they put this piece of fluff in your website in the section "health".

 

NLM Announces public release of papers of John b. Calhoun, NIH researcher noted social crowding and aggression

The history of Medicine Division, national library of Medicine (NLM) announces the public release of documents from John b. Calhoun (1917-1995), a researcher of behavioral sciences noted at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), a component of the National Institutes of Health. From the 1950s through the 1980s, Dr. Calhoun has studied the behavior of mice and rats in conditions of extreme overcrowding. He, along with other social scientists, politicians and pundits, readily extrapolated his work to comment on Human crowding in urban environments, just as the country was undergoing a massive redevelopment of its urban structures. His conclusions have found a ready audience among those who saw the world's overpopulation as not only a problem of resources, but of social cohesion.

In a statement, Calhoun's work with rats inspired 1971 children's book, Mrs. Frisby and the rats of NIMH by Robert c. O'Brien, which was adapted into an animated film of 1982, the secret of NIMH.

John b. Calhoun was born in Elkton, Tennessee, in 1917. After his undergraduate education at the University of Virginia (B.A., 1939) and postgraduate work in zoology from Northwestern University (PhD, 1943), post-graduate work and Professor at Emory University, Ohio State University and the Johns Hopkins University School of hygiene and public health, studying sociology and ecology of Norway rats. After further work at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory, Bar Harbor, Maine and the army Graduate School at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in 1954 he joined the section on perception in psychology laboratory at NIMH. He spent the rest of his career.

Study rats in conditions of overcrowding, Calhoun observed what he termed the "behavioural sink". This aberrant behavior as indicated hyperaggression, inability to reproduce normally, infant cannibalism, increased mortality and aberrant sexual models in such situations of overcrowding. His general conclusion was that "the space itself is a necessity". In the 1960s, his research switched in the field of evolution and behavior, which informs the current field of evolutionary psychology. In 1963 he formed and was the first Director of the NIMH for behavioral systems research (URBS) in the laboratory of brain evolution and behavior (LBEB). There he observed the effects of crowding on a community of mice that have been permitted to overpopulate, seeing a complete end to play, with the entire population died. Calhoun coined the term "Autism" to describe the behavior of the Group at that point finale, how I became incapable of social interaction is essential for survival. In the mid-1970s, his research moved to turn to cultural ways that rats acquired to counteract the effects of overcrowding.

Calhoun retired from NIMH in 1984, but continued to work on his research results until his death on September 7, 1995.

The collection, "MS C 586," comprises 196 linear metres of records mostly material from 1954 to 1986. It was donated in 1997, as a gift from Edith Calhoun, his widow. In addition to laboratory notebooks and drafts of articles, the collection is particularly noteworthy for the film, video cassettes and spools audiocassettes that Dr. Calhoun used to document his experiments.

Calhoun cards form one of the collections of research described almost 600 of modern manuscripts of the library program. I am one of a vast number of human development and behavioral sciences; others include the papers of Bertram Brown, Wayne Dennis, Lawrence k. Frank, Paul MacLean, Lois Meek, Lois b. Murphy and Herbert Rowell Stolz, as well as the records of the Society for Research in Child Development and Child Guidance Clinic and child psychiatry movement interview collection.

Calhoun materials can be found in the history of Medicine Division reading room, National Library of Medicine, open Monday to Friday, from 17: 8:30 to 0, except for Federal holidays on the first floor of the building on 38 NIH campus, Bethesda, Maryland. No appointment is necessary. Finding aid for the collection can be found at http://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=nlmfindaid;idno=calhoun586.

The National Library of Medicine, the largest medical library in the world, is a component of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. John b. Calhoun points to two injured mice tail on her arm from Universe 17, 102. November 1969.

A view of the universe mouse 33, showing four group cells 01 week 162 of an experiment, study possibly 133. C. 1975.

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