Love life like yourself ?!?!?

Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officials were rattled last Thursday by the discovery of over 400 bottles of illegal booze, each containing a 10-inch rattlesnake in the bottle, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

After receiving a tip several weeks ago, TABC agents raided Bayou Bob’s Brazos River Rattlesnake Ranch in Palo Pinto County after the reptile-infused vodka was sold to undercover agents, the paper reported. 411 bottles of the serpent sauce were seized.

“In my 20 years with the TABC, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sgt. Charlie Cloud told the Star-Telegram.

TABC officials told the Star-Telegram that they plan to file charges this week for the sale of alcohol without a permit and possession of alcohol with the intent to sell. Penalties for those charges include up to a year in the county jail and fines up to $1,000 upon conviction.

Infusing alcohol with snakes or scorpions is believed to possess aphrodisiac properties, TABC officials told the paper. The practice, in which alcohol is poured over the body of a snake or scorpion, is popular in Asian cultures.

Taken From: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338900,00.html

Higher serum vitamin D concentrations are associated with longer leukocyte telomere length in women^1,2,3

J Brent Richards, Ana M Valdes, Jeffrey P Gardner, Dimitri Paximadas, Masayuki Kimura, Ayrun Nessa, Xiaobin Lu, Gabriela L Surdulescu, Rami Swaminathan, Tim D Spector and Abraham Aviv ¹ From Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology, St Thomas’ Hospital, King’s College, London School of Medicine, London, United Kingdom (JBR, AMV, DP, AN, GLS, and TDS); the Center of Human Development and Aging, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, NJ (JPG, MK, XL, and AA); and the Department of Chemical Pathology, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, United Kingdom (RS)

Background: Vitamin D is a potent inhibitor of the proinflammatory response and thereby diminishes turnover of leukocytes. Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is a predictor of aging-related disease and decreases with each cell cycle and increased inflammation.

Objective: The objective of the study was to examine whether vitamin D concentrations would attenuate the rate of telomere attrition in leukocytes, such that higher vitamin D concentrations would be associated with longer LTL.

Design: Serum vitamin D concentrations were measured in 2160 women aged 18–79 y (mean age: 49.4) from a large population-based cohort of twins. LTL was measured by using the Southern blot method.

Results: Age was negatively correlated with LTL (r = –0.40, P < 0.0001). Serum vitamin D concentrations were positively associated with LTL (r = 0.07, P = 0.0010), and this relation persisted after adjustment for age (r = 0.09, P < 0.0001) and other covariates (age, season of vitamin D measurement, menopausal status, use of hormone replacement therapy, and physical activity; P for trend across tertiles = 0.003). The difference in LTL between the highest and lowest tertiles of vitamin D was 107 base pairs (P = 0.0009), which is equivalent to 5.0 y of telomeric aging. This difference was further accentuated by increased concentrations of C-reactive protein, which is a measure of systemic inflammation.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that higher vitamin D concentrations, which are easily modifiable through nutritional supplementation, are associated with longer LTL, which underscores the potentially beneficial effects of this hormone on aging and age-related diseases.

^{Taken From : http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/86/5/1420}