Viagra, East of Java

I read today of a study in hamsters showing that a low-dose of Viagra (sildenafil) helps to reduce the effects of jet lag -- but only when traveling eastward! That is called a phase advance, when the new time is earlier than your body's clock.

No, they didn't put the hamsters on Hooters Airlines... they just woke them up early:

The team observed how easily the hamsters adjusted by noting how soon the nocturnal animals began running on their exercise wheels when the lights went out.

They found that sildenafil boosted the ability of hamsters to recover 25 to 50 per cent quicker than untreated animals. Sunlight is thought to be a key influence on the body clock by its involvement in a neurochemical pathway in which cGMP is involved, and in this way the drug is thought to make the brain more sensitive to the effects of light, Dr Golombek said.

However, the drug only worked when applied before an advance in the light/dark cycle, equivalent to an eastbound flight.

Encouragingly, Viagra worked at doses low enough not to trigger erections, though Dr Golombek stressed that human tests would be needed to confirm that this was also true for people.

How did they measure hamster hard-ons, I wonder.

The scientists believe that frequent fliers and shift workers may well benefit from moderate doses of sildenafil, with passengers probably taking it during flights.

"Shift work and chronic jet lag reduce mental acuity and increase the risk of a number of medical problems," Dr Golombek said.

"A potential jet-lag treatment for advancing cycles could also be important for the safety of counter-clockwise rotating shift work and the potential long-term health consequences for airline crews regularly crossing time zones."

So now there may be a whole 'nother mile-high club... just for jet-lagged shift-workers traveling eastward. (Maybe one would use depo-provera for westward jet lag, huh?)

Makes me think of the B-52's song, Lava:

My body's burnin' like a lava from a Mauna Loa
My heart's crackin' like a Krakatoa
Krakatoa, east of Java, molten bodies, fiery lava

Fire, fire, burnin' bright
Turn on your love lava
Turn on your lava light
Fire, oh volcano, over you
Don't let your lava love turn to stone
Keep it burnin'
Keep it burnin' here at home

Quack: More Than I Wanted To Know

This New York Times article from May 1st on Duck Genitalia (no, I'm not kidding) caught my attention and I thought I'd share it here. Apparently the duck's phallus can be as long as his whole body. Funny, all those rubber ducky guys look so innocent.

[Clink: This post is for Gerbil, who doubted our ability to re-use the label MNP]

It's A Tough Job But Somebody's Gotta Hew It

Human Sacrifice, Power, and Ritual in Moche Society and Visual Culture

[Note: Roy beat me to this topic by a few mere seconds.]

My fellow bloggers are such good friends. They didn't even blink when I invited them to go to a lecture on human sacrifice with me. It was fascinating. The speaker, Steve Bourget, worked for several years on an archeological expedition in Peru involving the Moche people who practiced human sacrifice from 200 to 700 A.D.

Human sacrifice was used to reinforce the political power of rulers by linking them with gods and the priest caste who led the sacrificial ceremony. The victims were prisoners-of-war, sometimes hundreds at a time, who were led nude to the ceremonial site. They were killed by blunt head trauma using a club-like tool or by throat laceration. Many murals and other forms of Moche artwork depicted the killing as being done by humans dressed like animals (foxes or feline characters---like Tony the Psycho kitty?) who would collect the blood in a cup and pass it to the ruler god-figures. The corpses of the victims were defleshed and the skeletons were laid out symmetrically in patterns that seemed to hold some unknown meaning for the culture. Bourget theorized that the sacrifices were used to reset the natural order of the Moche world, particularly during times of heavy El Nino storm seasons when mud would flood the temples and the seas would team with creatures not usually seen in the region.

And then there was the penis issue. (C'mon, it's a psychiatry blog. You're going to see the word 'penis' eventually.) All of the sacrificial victims were men who were depicted on ceramic ceremonial vessels and on murals as being led to the slaughter with erect penises. Guys, correct me if I'm wrong but I would expect imminent death to be a bit of a challenge to the performance issue. I'm guessing the pottery artists were taking a bit of license here. Anyway, after the sacrifice the pottery vessels with the victims' depictions were broken and the fragments scattered about the burial site. The only parts of the vessel left intact were the little pottery penises. Being good academicians, these were counted and reported as the MNP (minimum number of penises) for each archeological site. Roy seemed particularly fascinated by this. Dinah and I were too busy chortling.

Women were nowhere to be seen anywhere in the sacrificial scenes or ceremonies. Bourget explained the female role was largely featured in the fertility iconography, which made sense. We didn't stay through the whole question-and-answer session to learn if this involved any little ceramic breasts.

So that's how we spent the afternoon. I'm grateful to my friends for sacrificing their time to be with me. Especially Roy. After today I think he may not mind being under the floorboards with all of his ceramics intact.