Remember when medical science told us that taking an aspirin every day reduced the risk of heart attack and reduced the severity of a heart attack if you had one anyway?

The American Heart Association recommends aspirin use for patients who’ve had a myocardial infarction (heart attack), unstable angina, ischemic stroke (caused by blood clot) or transient ischemic attacks (TIAs or “little strokes”), if not contraindicated. This recommendation is based on sound evidence from clinical trials showing that aspirin helps prevent the recurrence of such events as heart attack, hospitalization for recurrent angina, second strokes, etc. (secondary prevention). Studies show aspirin also helps prevent these events from occurring in people at high risk (primary prevention).

(From the AHA site) Now they say,

Regular use of painkillers such as aspirin, ibuprofen and paracetamol is linked to greater risk of stroke and heart attack from higher blood pressure, research published today shows.

But,

Dr Gary Curhan, who also worked on the study, said men who were advised by a doctor to take an aspirin a day to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke should continue to take them. “The benefit outweighs the risk,” he said.

So just what am I to believe here - about aspirin and heart health specifically or about scientific reliability generally?

Dutch police search for man with broken neck:

Amsterdam police are seeking a British man who has a broken neck and may be in risk of severing his spinal cord but doesn’t know it.

The man, identified as 29-year-old Benjamin William O’Connor, was involved in a traffic accident on Saturday in Suffolk, where he lives, police said.

He was released from hospital, but later that day, doctors later examined his X-rays and realised the dangerous nature of his injury – but couldn’t contact him.

British authorities investigating his movements found he had already departed for the Netherlands.

“He is in danger of serious injury or death,” said a spokeswoman for Amsterdam police.

Amsterdam police have published a photo of O’Connor, hoping someone will recognise him and alert him to contact police and seek immediate medical treatment.

Let’s pray authorities find poor Mr. O’Connor quickly. As for the rest, well, there ya go. nationalized health care at its ordinary.

Okay, it’s a matter of taste. The health wires have been all gaga in recent days or weeks about the benefits of drinking a small amount of red wine every day. Researchers say that chemical compounds in the wine benefit the cardiovascular system and medical chemists have been working to isolate what those compounds are. The answer? Compounds belonging to the flavenol antioxidant family, particularly procyanidins. But not all red wines are created (that is, fermented) equal:

Procyanidins, compounds commonly found in red wine, are good for your blood vessels and are probably one of the factors contributing towards the long life spans of the people from the southwest of France and Sardinia, say researchers from the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary, University of London. …

The researchers also found that levels of procyanidins are not the same in all wines. Wines from southwest France and Sardinia, where it is still made in the traditional way, tend to have higher levels of the compound - in some cases their levels were 10 times as high as wines from elsewhere.

People should bear in mind that the daily glass of wine could have varying degrees of benefit, depending on where it came from. The researchers specifically noticed the higher levels of procyanidins from the Nuoro area in Sardinia and the Gers region, Midi-Pyrenees, south west France. On average, the scientists found those two areas had procyanidin levels five times higher than wines from Spain, South America, the USA and Australia.

The difference seems to be how and how long the grape juice was fermented. The longer the better, and wines from the identified regions are fermented for 3-4 weeks. Other wineries tend to push the feremntation process to make it last only a week or less. If you like Cabernet Sauvignon, you’re in luck. Those grapes and Nebbelio grapes “made the wines with the highest levels of procyanidins.” How much wine does it take to ingest an effective amount? About a quarter-liter per day, call it one and a quarter cups.

As for the much-ballyhooed compound resveratrol,

“There are some fascinating effects of resveratrol in animal systems,” notes plant biochemist Alan Crozier of the University of Glasgow. “To get similar doses into humans through red wine, you would have to consume more than 1,000 liters of red wine a day.”

I called a local wine store to shop prices. Some labels of Cabernet Sauvignon are pretty expensive, well over $100, and the store I called had them. But the lady said Blackstone Cabernet Sauvignon was very good, and cost only $20 per liter. So that’s $5 per day for the recommended dose of procyanidins. That makes an annual cost of $1,825, which is my ledger is major coin for only one element of a meal.

As it turns out, though, procyanidins are found in a fair number of foods other than red wine, such as walnuts, some berries and apples. But the world champion concentrator of procyanidins is chocolate. The linkage between chocolate and heart health has been well known for years. Like wine, though, not just any chocolate will do. The form of chocolate with the highest concentration of procyanidins is cocoa powder. This does not include hot chocolate mix or any kind of powder (or solid) processed with alkali. Cocoa powder is very bitter, of course, which is why chocolate products are cut with sweeteners of one kind or another, sugar being the most common, of course.

Milk is another, and that’s why milk chocolate is a poor source of procyanidins. The higher content of cocoa is found in dark chocolate, the darker the better. Let’s take, for example, Hershey’s Extra Dark, which is so high in procyanidins (60 percent cocoa content) that Hershey’s has a special logo for it.

In terms of ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity), which is a measure of the amount of antioxidant capacity in a food or substance, a standard serving of dark chocolate (37g) provides more antioxidant power than the standard servings of many other well-known antioxidant-containing foods, including blueberries, walnuts and raisins.

Hershey says that 37 grams of its Extra Dark chocolate provides the same antioxidant content as four ounces of red wine. But four ounces of wine is only 40 percent of the amount you need per day. How much chocolate would you need to eat the equal 250ml of Cabernet Sauvignon or like wine?

One serving of Extra Dark is four pieces, equaling 39 grams of chocolate. That works out to just under 10 pieces to compare to a quarter-liter of wine. (That’s a lot of chocolate to eat every day.) Amazon sells 12 boxes of 17 pieces each for $30.89. Ten pieces per day therefore costs $1.51, a lot cheaper than the $5 per day that Cabernet Sauvignon costs. But the cost in calories is high. Ten Extra Dark gives you more than 500 calories, too. Per day.

What about higher concentrated chocolate? Well, it’s hard to see how you can get higher than 99 percent cocoa content. That’s what Michel Cluizel Noir Infini has. It costs $67.95 on clearance for a 1-kilogram box (2.2 pounds). That makes it 1.65 times as concentrated in cocoa as Hershey’s Extra Dark. So I would presume you’d have to eat 1.65 times less to attain the same amount of procyanidins as 390 grams of E.D. That’s 236 grams per day, or bascially one-fourth box per day, coming to a daily cost of $16, a lot more than the Cabernet Sauvignon’s $5 cost.

But wait! Lindt makes a bar with 85 percent cocoa, 100 grams (3.5 oz.) listing for only $2.69. I bought one at Target today for $1.99. It is 1.42 times as concentrated as Extra Dark. To ingest the equivalent of 250ml of red wine would take 274 grams of Lindt per day. That costs $5.45 per day at Target, still more than the Cabernet Sauvignon.

The principal - or at least most public - face behind all this research is Professor Roger Corder, a Brit who got on my good side right away by observing,

“We’ve got to stop treating people as stupid, which is what the Government loves to do. People are quite clever but they need to be educated and understand what it is about their health and lifestyle that’s important for a longer life. They must stop expecting a safety net - the National Health Service - to do everything, and actually start looking after themselves.”

Amen to that! As for chocolate, Corder “eats about one 100-gram bar a week, usually Lindt’s 85 per cent. He recommends no more than 25gm, or 2.5 squares, a day.” Of course, Corder has a book:

I heard a blip about this on NPR the other day. It seems a claim has been made that sauerkraut is a possible prophylactic or even treatment of avian flu.

MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 4 (UPI) — After a Minneapolis media report that said sauerkraut might help guard against avian flu, there was a 850 percent spike in sauerkraut sales in the city.

A Minneapolis CBS affiliate aired its story on the possible benefits of sauerkraut avian flu, after a BBC report that said scientists at Seoul National University fed an extract of kimchi, a spicy Korean variant of sauerkraut, to 13 chickens infected with avian flu. A week after the birds were fed the sauerkraut, 11 of the birds started to recover.

Ryan Downs, owner and general manager of Great Lakes Kraut Co., said more extensive scientific research obviously was needed to prove any curative link to avian flu, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Friday. However, he said sauerkraut as a healthy part of any diet.

Earlier this week, the University of New Mexico reported Polish women who ate four or more servings of sauerkraut and cabbage per week during adolescence were 74 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than those who ate 1.5 or fewer servings per week.

I’ve had kimchi and lemme tell you, it’s plenty spicy. At least the portion I had was. I didn’t like it. I’m not sure that eating heaping portion of kimchi every day would be preferable to having the flu.

I pointed out in the last day or two that a head cold has clobbered me this week. Head colds usually do since I have a bad right-middle ear and all those pipes are connected. I got an email yesterday from reader Harold Hamblet:

It’s been almost three years now that I haven’t suffered from colds. Two words- nasal irrigation. Google search them, and you’ll find a wealth of information.

I started doing it for allergies. The cold and allergy industrial complex hasn’t seen a dime of revenue from me in the time I’ve been doing it..

Have I had colds? yes. Has one last week. I could tell because of what ran out during the rinse. (Talking about nasal irrigation can get gross.) But, I just rinsed three times a day instead of two. No problem. No breathing difficulties. And symptoms gone completely in three days.

Jerry Pournelle advertises one system on his website from time to time. I got my nasal irrigator attachment from waterpik.com and use my waterpik. 1/2 tsp of baking soda and one tsp salt per pint of lukewarm water is the formula I use. If you don’t use the the baking soda, your nose burns, leave out the salt, it hurts, leave out both, it hurts a lot.

Iit is obvious how it works for allergies- it simply washes the allergens out. (I was introduced to the process by a young lady I worked with who was on five different allergy medications when we first met. And hadn’t taken any for half a year when she told me about it.) As for colds, I have a theory. Any virus, including the cold virus, is in a race with the body’s immune system. The virus gets in, starts to multipky. Its got a head start. the virus population gets bigger. The immune system notices, but starts out behind. In the meantime, while the immune system catches up, you get miserable. Well, when you rinse out, you’re knocking down the virus population that’s trying to spread. Thus, helping the immune system catch up faster and overwhelm the virus. Each time you rinse- Pow! - another generation of virus rinsed away. And the immune system is still hard at work.

Anyway, give it a try.

If you’re miserable enough, you’ll try almost anything. I haven’t bought a nasal irrigation system, but I did Google it as Harold suggested and found a wealth of information, including “Nasal Irrigation Makes Comeback as Cold Remedy” from NPR’s Morning Edition of Oct. 12. See what you think. Any medical types out there with advice?