Tough-Talking Toothpaste

From the Health section mailbag, our picks for the most, um, creative health product announcements of the past few months:

* Toothpaste containing Coenzyme Q10, the antioxidant chemical that is the “molecular sparkplug that enables cells to produce the energy they need to live and remain healthy.” Brushing with Q-Dent “energizes gum tissue while providing a powerful antioxidant to suppress free radicals,” say its makers, Q-pharma Inc. They don’t quite tell you that the product will halt--nay, reverse--gum disease, but they confidently declare that the company “intends to prove” it someday. Until then, we at Health will retain our proper, journalistic skepticism: After all, how potent can a toothpaste be if it doesn’t have stripes?

* The Appetite Control Button. Pin it on your clothes, and its minty odor quashes your lust for candies and chocolate, claims Evergreen Research, the pin’s manufacturer. True, some studies have found that certain smells, including peppermint, can affect food cravings. And company spokesman Bob Albert said he totally lost his appetite after sorting through boxes of the buttons for an hour and a half. We, however, can think of other odors--smelly socks, for starters--that might act more potently than mint.

* Elsie to the Rescue! Colostrum is the clear liquid that comes from a new mother’s breasts before her milk starts flowing; it helps impart immunity to the baby. And if good for babies, why not for all ages, says Symbiotics, an Arizona company that is including cow colostrum in its snack bars, protein drinks and “great tasting pineapply flavor chewable tablets” for kids. Symbiotics claims that colostrum can boost your immune system, elevate your mood, burn fat, build lean body mass, help heal wounds and increase your vitality and stamina. We ask: Is it worth it?

Cherry Burgers, Anyone?

We don’t know quite how the discovery was made. Was a scientist flipping burgers too near the fruit bowl one day? At Michigan State University, researchers report that mixing cherry pulp into hamburger meat cuts down on the number of evil chemicals called HAAs that are produced when a burger is cooked. HAAs (also known as heterocyclic aromatic amines) cause cancer in some animals and are suspected human carcinogens.

Natural antioxidants in the cherries could well be reducing the HAA count, say the scientists, who reported their finding in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Cherry pulp also protects burger meat from freezer burn and imparts juiciness, they say. What’s not to like, except the taste? “There’s not much cherry in there,” insists food scientist Al Booren, a study coauthor. “They still taste like burgers, not cherry pie.”

Rhymin’ Rheumatologists

It’s just possible that Santa neglected to slip a copy of “Blood & Bone” into your stocking this Christmas. And thus, you may not realize what a sensitive soul your doctor is. Capable of scribing lines like this:

I know the colour rose, and it is lovely,

but not when it ripens in a tumour;

and healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,

in limbs that fester are not springlike.

Or yet this:

on my way to the car

loaded with vegetables

I keep thinking of seven years ago

when you bled in my hands like a saint.

Just a small sampling of the poems you can enjoy in a slim volume of verse published by the University of Iowa Press, and recently reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Thirty-two physicians, from rheumatologists to psychiatrists, bare their souls within its pages. From the stark hyper-realism of “Chest X-Ray” and “Vermont Has a High Suicide Rate” to the wildly fantastical “He Makes a House Call,” there is enough in these 160 pages to see you through at least one waiting-room stint at your doctor’s, if you’re lucky.