Kombucha: It tastes nasty so that means it's good for you, right?

 I had thought that after reading several research articles on Kombucha, I could make a conclusion as to whether or not it was beneficial to my health. But the truth is, the only conclusion I've come to after reading so much about the drink is that more research is needed to say if Kombucha is a true health drink or just an overpriced tea.

Glasses of Kombucha
CC BY 2.5 ~Twon~

Kombucha is a tea, usually black, that has sugar and the Kombucha “mushroom” added [2-5]. The “mushroom,” which ferments the tea, is really a colony of yeast and bacteria [2].

The health claims for Kombucha are numerous, including cancer prevention, aiding in digestion, getting rid of headaches and toxin eradication [2, 5]. However, a lot of these claims seem to stem from research done in the early 20th century in Russia, with methodology unknown [4].

One of the oldest claims to fame for Kombucha is that the helpful bacteria in the drink (probiotics) can help aid in digestion. Unfortunately, this claim lacks sufficient evidence [4].

There is some interesting research on the effects of Kombucha and glucose absorption on mice with diabetes [1]. However, that was only one study. My former statistics teacher would argue that since their p-values were p < 0.05, the researchers would have a 50/50 chance of getting a similar result if they repeated the study. Thus, as she was fond of saying, “treat the results as interesting, but not conclusive.”

Kombucha "Mushroom"
CC BY 2.5 ~Twon~

There is also some evidence that Kombucha may have the ability to detoxify the body because it contains glucuronic acid [5]. Although, some people debate if there is glucuronic acid in Kombucha or if it is just 2-keto-gluconic acid [5]. Patients suffering from cancer lack L-lactic acid in their connective tissue and can have a high blood pH. Kombucha may be able to re-balance the lactic acid concentration [5]. The catch being that The American Cancer Society does not recommend people with suppressed immune systems drink Kombucha [4].

On the other hand, if you have normal blood pH, drinking something that acidifies your blood would not be good. In 1995, the CDC did a case study in Iowa on two women who were hospitalized because of acidosis, or high acidic levels in the bloodstream. Both women drank Kombucha, their starters “mushrooms” coming from the same parent. The CDC was unable to conclusively link their illnesses to Kombucha use [3]. Negative side effects from drinking Kombucha have been reported, such as stomach ache, allergic reaction (especially for people who are sensitive to acids), and yeast infections [2, 5, 6]

Kombucha with "Mushroom"
CC BY 2.5 ~Twon~

The only finding that does seem to be clear is that Kombucha can be very dangerous if brewed and stored improperly. If Kombucha is made or stored in ceramic or lead crystal containers, the lead in the container can leach into the drink, causing issues with heavy metal poisoning [2-4].

Now, after all of this, Kombucha has been ingested since the Tsin Dynasty (220 BC) [5], and people have seemed not to kill themselves off en masse by consuming it, or at least no report of such that I could find. As Crawford says, “when consumed in moderation, Kombucha is probably safe to drink” [4]. Please keep in mind though, that a daily dose is considered to be 4 ounces [3]. I think after all my research, I side with Dr. Bauer; there seems to be little to no evidence on Kombucha's health benefits, and some pretty nasty side effects. I personally will not be buying Kombucha any time soon, mostly because the possible negative side effects scare me.

**Note: I am not a doctor. This is not meant to be medical advice.

1. Aloulou, A., Hamden, K., Elloumi, D., Ali, M. B., Hargafi, K., Jaouadi, B., Ayadi, F., & Elfeki, A. (2012). Hypoglycemic and antilipidemic properties of kombucha tea in alloxan-induced diabetic rats. BMC complementary and ALternative Medicine, 12(63), doi: 10.1186/1472-6882-12-63

2. Bauer, B. (2011, June 25). What is kombucha tea? does it have any health benefits?. Retrieved from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/kombucha-tea/AN01658

3.CDC. (1995, December 08). Unexplained severe illness possibly associated with consumption of kombucha tea --iowa, 1995. Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00039742.htm

4. Crawford, N. (2011, July 03). Is kombucha safe to drink?. Retrieved from http://www.livestrong.com/article/483783-is-kombucha-safe-to-drink/

5. Dufresne, C., & Farnsworth, E. (2000). Tea, kombucha, and health: a review. Food Research International,33, 409-421.

6. Gharib, O. A. (2009). Effects of kombucha on oxidative stress induced nephrotoxicity in rats. Chinese Medicine, 4(23), doi: 10.1186/1749-8546-4-23

7. Kallel, L., Desseaux, V., Moktar, H., Stocker, P., & Ajandouz, E. H. (2112). Insights into the fermentation biochemistry of kombucha teas and potential impacts of kombucha drinking on starch digestion. Food Research International, 49, 226-232.

8. Morshedi, A., & Dashti-Rahmatabadi, M. H. (2010). Chronic consumption of kombucha and black tea prevents weight loss in diabetic rats. Iranian Journal of Diabetes and Obesity, 2(2),

Radioactive Bowl

Radioactive Bowl in Lead Sheets. Doesn't look scary does it?

Being married to a computer/science geek offers me many learning opportunities. For example, since being married to my husband, I've seen people shrink quarters with lots of electricity and some copper wire, I know some bits and pieces about Linux and why it is better than Microsoft, I also know many different ways to put out a fire.

Recently, a friend of my husband's, we'll call him Gary, was shopping at an antiques store. After some time spent rummaging around the store, looking through loads of useless and uninteresting items, he spotted something that made his geek brain jump for joy, releasing large quantities of dopamine, seratonin, and any other happiness neurotransmitters that just happened to be lying around. (Or so I imagine, I wasn't there).

What was the object, you may ask.

An old radio? An antique cell phone the size of a brick? A dilapidated computer?

No, none of these things.

What he found was a red bowl created by the Fiesta company.

Now, before this experience, I would have never guessed that a computer/science geek would have any interest in old ceramics, but I would be, and was, wrong.

You see, in the 1940s Fiesta glazed their dining ware with Uranium oxide, specifically the colors red and ivory. Not only is uranium oxide highly radioactive, it also causes heavy metal poisoning. On dish wear. Which you eat off of. (In a side story, the US government eventually took Fiesta's stores of Uranium oxide, not because it was toxic and they were putting it on dishes, but so that the government could build the atomic bomb).

So, with this knowledge and the desire to impress his friends, Gary bought the red bowl.

A few days passed, and Gary decided to show off his new purchase to a group of friends. The friends, all being geeks themselves, viewed the bowl with a mixture of awe and trepidation. (Again, I wasn't there, so this is just how I imagine it going).

Quickly, a Geiger counter was pulled from one of the numerous shelves. It beeped in alarm, warning the gaggle of geeks that this bowl has high levels of radiation. Higher than say, normal background radiation, which we all experience on a day-to-day basis.

Another gadget was pulled from the shelves. This one to indicate the amount of alpha particles the bowl emits. Normally, around low level or background radioactive items, this gadget would not beep at all, or if it did, not very often. Around the bowl, however, it beeped about twenty-five times a second. This is exciting for many reasons, one because it means that there is a lot of radiation on the surface of the bowl and that anyone near the dish is being exposed to high levels of radiation. Secondly, Uranium decays into a large number of fun elements, Radon being one of them (see decay chain of Uranium 238 here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238#Radioactivity_and_decay). Did I say exciting? Read disturbing.

Alpha particles being detected with a Ludlum 1" Alpha Scintillator 

“I'm not comfortable with that in my house.” One of the wise geeks proclaims.

My husband, being young and apparently unafraid of radiation says, “Can I take it to work and analyze it?”

The wise geek whose house they were at tried to convince my husband that he would not be able see much, even with more advanced meters and detectors.

My husband was unmoved.

Gary tried to hand my husband the bowl, at which point he jumped back, his hands up so as not to come into contact with the dish.

“I'm not touching that. Put it in a plastic bag.” My husband's logic to this statement, as he told me later, is that alpha particles can not go through paper, and therefore are unlikely to go through plastic.

It is at this point in the story where I must stop and contemplate my wedding vows. I have to wonder if normal run of the mill wedding vows are sufficient for men and women marrying computer/science geeks. Should there be addendum? Something like, I promise to love, honor, and obey. May be void if you build sex robot to replace me, blow up the kids, or bring home highly radioactive material (see bananas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose) for definition on “high radioactivity”). Anyway, I digress.

Because it's fusion.

My husband takes the bowl to work, with much the same result, only this time his manager insists that someone immediately wrap the bowl in lead sheets. According to my husband, the manager offers himself up, because he's older and has less to lose than say, my husband, the one who has been touting the dish around all day.

The night after my husband took the bowl to work, we are driving to dinner.

“Oh,” he casually mentions, “did I tell you about the radioactive bowl?”

“Radioactive bull?”

“No,” he scoffs, as if I'm the one being ridiculous, “radioactive bowl.”

“Oh. No you didn't.”

He then fills me in on the previous day's events.

One question, and really only one question matters after he tells me about his friend's cool find. “Where's the bowl now?”

“At home in the garage.”

“You mean where I park my car?”

“It's okay. It wrapped in lead sheets! Perfectly safe!”

My husband, it seems, has missed the point.

“Uhh, sweetheart, next time you decide to bring home something with higher than background radiation, at least give me a heads up. Okay?”

“Okay.”

As much as I love my husband, and I do love my husband, sometimes I just have to take a breath, smile, nod, and walk away. And in this instance, if I didn't walk away I might go the way of Marie Curie.

Please tell me I'm not alone in this strange world of geekdom, and other readers who are romantically involved with geeks have bizarre stories like mine. Submissions of the same may be left here (of course, don't forget to wrap them in lead sheets....).

Gluten-Free Dairy-Free Graham Cracker Recipe

Yummy Graham Crackers and Milk

I love to bake. Cookies. Cakes. Pies. Obscure desserts that no one had ever heard of except French pastry chefs. The more challenging the better. In high school, if ever there was an event where I could make a multi-layer dark chocolate truffle cake coated in ganache, I was there, cake in hand, ready to push a giant slice on anyone who would try it.

I love baking so much that for my 19^th birthday I decided I, and I alone, would make a three course meal for twelve people. No small feat considering I wanted it to be challenging and gourmet. I made Parmesan bowls filled with a pear and honey salad, balsamic chicken with broccoli and rice, and a faux cheese burger with a strawberry milkshake and mango steak fries. (The bun was two homemade donuts, with white chocolate for the cheese, a brownie for the burger, and raspberry puree for the ketchup). Dinner, while delicious, was by no means prompt, and by the end of the night, I was exhausted.

As I got older I continued baking and learning new things. I've had several friends with severe allergies or dietary restrictions, not that those stopped me from trying to make them delicious desserts. Dairy free cheesecake or coconut creme brulee anyone? Sure, sometimes I completely and totally bombed, but others were a success, and I always learned from my mistakes.

However, out of all of my friends and loved ones with allergies, my little nephew takes the cake, or in his case, the dairy-free gluten-free soy-free cake. Yes, three allergies. I've found that it's fairly easy to adapt a recipe when dealing with only one allergy, but the more allergies you have the harder it becomes.

So, one day hearing that he loves graham crackers, but can't eat them due to his allergies, I decided to try my hand at making some gluten-free dairy-free graham crackers. The vegan butter we use is made with soy, but he doesn't have a reaction to it like he does with soy milk.

I started out by trying a gluten-free graham cracker recipe that I found online. Now, here is a good point to interject that there are a lot of good gluten-free recipes online. I helped do a gluten-free bridal shower a year or so ago, and all the gluten-free bread recipes I made I got off of blogs. They all turned out great, and everyone, even the people who didn't normally eat gluten-free, loved them. The graham cracker recipe, however, was not one of the good ones. It tasted like cardboard sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Keep in mind that I followed the recipe exactly; I hadn't even tried taking out the dairy yet.

To be honest, I should have known. My fabulous baker friend who has her own gluten-free bakery in Seattle (website here) told me that many online gluten-free graham cracker recipes weren't up to par. She told me she had to experiment a lot to get her graham cracker recipe just right, and said in no uncertain terms that she would never share her recipe, because she had spent too much time perfecting it.

Thus, being someone who enjoyed a baking challenge, I decided I would make my own gluten-free graham cracker recipe. I browsed through the book “Gluten-Free Baking Classics,” by Annalise G. Roberts (details here), a wonderful book on gluten-free baking.

I thought about the texture and taste of a graham cracker. It is, despite its name, a cookie with the texture of a pie crust, so I started there. I mixed two of Mrs. Robert's recipes, the pie crust and the shortbread cookie.

It was alright.

My husband complained that it wasn't nearly sweet enough and the texture wasn't flaky at all.

On my second adaptation, I added honey and molasses on my baker friend's recommendation. They were a hit! Everyone in my family liked them, and my nephew couldn't stop asking for them.

However, I still wasn't done perfecting my recipe. I made it a third time, this time making the crackers a little bit thicker, they are a little on the cakey side for graham crackers, but everyone agreed that thicker was better.

So, if you are like my nephew, and in need of a gluten-free, dairy-free graham cracker recipe, here is one for your pleasure. Let me know what you think.

• 18 tablespoons of vegan butter (you can use regular butter if you're not allergic to dairy)
• 1 ½ cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup honey
• ¼ cup molasses
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups brown rice flour, minus 1 tablespoon
• ½ cup and 2 tablespoons potato starch, this is not the same as potato flour
• ¼ cup and 1 tablespoon tapioca flour
• 6 tablespoons sweet sourgum flour
• 1 tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoons xanthum gum
• ½ teaspoon salt
• cinnamon sugar for the top of the crackers

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit

1. In a bowl, mix sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, honey, and molasses together. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, mix brown rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, sweet sourgum flour, cinnamon, baking powder, xanthum gum, and salt together. 
   
   
   
3. With a fork, potato masher, or food processor mix the butter into the flour mixture, 6 tablespoons at a time, until all the butter is incorporated. 
   
   
   
4. Add the egg mixture into the flour mixture and stir until well combined.
   
   
   
5. Cover the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
6. With a rubber spatula, spread the batter over two greased cookie sheets so that the dough is about a ¼ of an inch thick. It will be sticky and hard to get completely smooth, I know. Don't worry about it. It will be delicious all the same, even if it isn't perfectly level on top.
   
   
   
7. Cover the top of the cookie with cinnamon sugar.
8. Bake for 20-30 minutes
9. Let cool completely, before cutting into squares.
10. Enjoy. 

Note: on the Graham crackers shown, I made them a little too thick. If you do this, don't fret, they are great for making cheesecake crust, but a little bit more difficult for making s'mores.

How to Scare and Annoy Your Partner

I am, in many ways, a paranoid person.

It's not that I don't trust people; I do. I intrinsically want to trust most people I meet. However, I have my reasons for being skeptical and paranoid. I have a husband who is a computer geek, and thus we frequent many computer/security conferences. I have been a volunteer at several domestic violence shelters all over the country, and have heard countless stories about stalking, abuse, and the like.

Thus, when my husband told me that our locks on our apartment looked different, my heart fell to the pit of my stomach.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes.”

My eyes squinted and my gaze darted from one side to the other. “Really?”

“Yes!”

I let this information sink into my brain, while he explained what exactly looked different and how. My husband is, by many accounts, a statistical anomaly—really, he is. His guesses on multiple choice questions are statistically more accurate than chance. Not only that, but he is also very observant. Not Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Homes observant, but he could tell you every continuity error in the show as you watch it, complain each time a wall moves when the slightest weight is put on it, and detail every car that he saw in the show. Therefore, when my husband says that the locks on our apartment look different, I tend to believe him.

CC-BY-2.0 Fat Les (bellaphon) from London, UK (Flickr) 

“Okay.” I say, still processing this new information.

“It was probably the management company, and they just forgot to inform us.”

“Probably?”

“Well, it could be that someone broke into our place and damaged the lock so they replaced it.”

“Seems like a lot of work not to mention expense if someone is breaking in.”

“Well, if they did that, it wouldn't be a typical break in. Whoever would do that wouldn't want their presence to be known to us. In addition,” he offers, “they could have decoded the lock to make a duplicate of our key so that they could enter our place any time they want.”

“Okay...why? Pin and tumbler locks are easy to pick, not to mention, it takes all of two seconds to bump open a regular lock. Why go to all that hassle of replacing a lock?”

Remember, security conferences.

My husband shrugs. “Yes, but it may look less suspicious if they had a key than if they sat there picking a lock every time they wanted in.”

Needless to say, this conversation took up the remainder of our lunch together. We discussed all the possibilities, one of them being that my husband was simply wrong, but this argument didn't get much support from him. In our list of possibilities, the most likely was that the management company had changed the locks, and simply forgotten to inform us. Therefore, it was my responsibility, upon arriving home, to check in with them. If they hadn't changed the locks, I would inquire about getting new locks put in, the cost, and how soon it could be done. 

If the management company said they didn't change the locks, then I was to check to see if a false lock was put in. A false lock, as it was explained to me, is a lock that had pins specifically cut so that any key inserted would open the door. This would be evidence that our apartment had been broken into.

Finally, I was to check to see if anything was amiss.

We finish eating lunch, and I practically ran out of the restaurant to check in with the management company, who, of course, had done nothing to our locks. I told them about my husband's suspicions, and asked how much it would cost to get a new lock put in.

The woman at the desk was polite, and she kindly told me that she needed to get back to me.

Which left me to check my house.

I have nightmares about being alone in my house with an intruder.

The thought has kept me up at night before.

I have absolutely no idea how to act. Do I get a knife from the kitchen? No. Most weapons used by the victim are turned against him/her, and I didn't exactly feel like being knifed.

Do I sneak around?

Sounds like a good way of surprising whoever is in your house and getting shot.

I have, on one occasion, called the police on the suspicion that there was someone in my house. It was the most humiliating thing. The police showed up, my underwear and other dirty clothes lying on the floor, and not an intruder in sight.

I too, looked at the lock. My husband's suspicion gained credence when I noticed how new and shiny it looked compared to all the other locks of the house. Many of our locks have some scratch here or there, but not this one. It looked polished and new.

I quietly (and calmly) searched my house. I went through all of my things, checking my jewelry, my books, my knives, my clothing, everything was in its proper place. Nothing had been moved.

I was a little bit relieved, as I tried to convince myself that my husband is just being hyper-paranoid.

Two tense hours pass for me in the apartment, as I analyze every sound that I heard, every creak, every car passing by. I was more than just a little relieved when I needed to leave for class.

I came home from class to find my husband with a screwdriver and flashlight.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Checking for bugs,” he whispers in my ear after a kiss.

We are crazy. We're crazy people. We have gone over the deep end. I know it. We, while interesting and unique, are not that interesting! We are on no government watch list, that I know of, we have not recently threatened any political leader, or joined any radical groups. This is insane!

Still, I told myself, better safe than sorry.

My husband continues his search, and ends the evening by talking with his friend who is a physical security expert.

I go to bed, half of my mind made up that we are mad, the other half, thinking every move I make is being watched.

It was difficult to fall asleep, to say the least.

I wake up the next morning to a text from my husband.

“I was wrong. Lock looks different in low light. We're good.”

I roll over, putting my face in my pillow, and remind myself that a little bit of chaos keeps life interesting.

At least this way I will have a good story.