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AmP Countdown: Time left to vote for me ("Thomas Peters") in the 2008 Student Blogging Contest: 2008-11-20 23:59:59 GMT-05:00


Sunday, July 13, 2008

Report: Does incense make you high?

Of course not, but that doesn't prevent scientists from issuing research papers with titles such as this (I'm not making this up): "Incensole Acetate, an Incense Component, Elicits Psychoactivity by Activating TRPV3 Channels in the Brain."

MSN's Health & Fitness gives us the popular treatment:

... Frankincense—the incense traditionally burned in religious ceremonies—can act on the brain to lower anxiety and diminish depression.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Hebrew University administered incensole acetate, a component of frankincense, to lab mice and learned that it lit up areas of their little mouse brains that control emotion, including nerve circuits affecting anxiety and depression.

Now, as soon as the author strays from the science his commentary gets fairly useless very quickly.

I wonder, however, if these sorts of findings could be used as backdoor argument to convince liberal parishes and liturgy commissions to allow incense back into the celebration of Mass? Hmm....

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