Educate to Elevate

DECAFFEINATED COFFEE AND THE CANCER SCARE  Image Courtesy: Google Search Animal studies showing that methylene chloride becomes a carcinogen when inhaled caused some concern because methylene chloride was the solvent used to extract caffeine from coffee beans in the manufacture of decaffeinated coffee. However, when methylene chloride was added to drinking water fed to laboratory rats and mice, researchers found no toxic effects. They observed no toxicological responses of any kind either in rats that had consumed an amount of methylene chloride equivalent to the amount that would be ingested by drinking 120,000 cups of decaffeinated coffee per day or in mice that had consumed an amount equivalent to drinking 4.4 million cups of decaffeinated coffee per day.  In addition, no increased risk of cancer was found in a study of thousands of workers exposed daily to inhaled methylene chloride studies done on humans do not always agree with those done on animals. Because of the initi...

HAIR: STRAIGHT OR CURLY? Hair is made up of a protein known as keratin. Keratin contains an unusually large number of cysteine residues (about 8%), which give it many disulfide bridges to maintain its three dimensional structure. People can alter the structure of their hair (if they feel it is either too straight or too curly) by changing the location of these disulfide bridges. This is complished by first applying a reducing agent to the hair to reduce all the disulfide bridges in the protein strands. Then the hair is given the desired shape (using curlers to curl it or combing it straight to uncurl it), and an oxidizing agent is applied that forms new disulfide bridges. The new disulfide bridges maintain the hair's new shape. When this treatment is applied to straight hair, it is called a " perinanent ." It is called " hair straightening " when it is applied to curly hair.