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Between You and Me

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

In an attempt to make Ukraine more real for all of us, this country on the far side of Europe, I am including the information below that was taken from Wikipedia on the internet. I hope it helps us visualize what the situation is there. 

Ukraine is an important agricultural country and can meet the food needs of 600 million people.

• 1st in Europe in terms of arable land area;

• 3rd place in the world by the area of black soil (25% of world’s volume);

• 1st place in the world in exports of sunflower and sunflower oil;

• 2nd place in the world in barley production and 4th place in barley exports;

• 3rd largest producer and 4th largest exporter of corn in the world;

• 4th largest producer of potatoes in the world;

• 5th largest rye producer in the world;

• 5th place in the world in bee production (75,000 tons);

• 8th place in the world in wheat exports;

• 9th place in the world in the production of chicken eggs;

• 16th place in the world in cheese exports.

It is the second-largest country by area in Europe and has a population of over 40 million — more than Poland.

Ukraine ranks:

• 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores;

• 2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves;

• 2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves);

• 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons);

• 2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves;

• 3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters)

• 4th in the world by the total value of natural resources;

• 7th place in the world in coal reserves (33.9 billion tons)

Ukraine is an important industrialized country and ranks

• 1st in Europe in ammonia production; Europe’s 2nd’s and the world’s 4th largest natural gas pipeline system;

• 3rd largest in Europe and 8th largest in the world in terms of installed capacity of nuclear power plants;

• 3rd in Europe and 11th in the world in terms of rail network length (21,700 km);

• 3rd in the world (after the U.S. and France) in production of locators and locating equipment;

• 3rd largest iron exporter in the world

• 4th largest exporter of turbines for nuclear power plants in the world;

• 4th largest manufacturer of rocket launchers, in clay exports and in titanium exports

• 8th in exports of ores and concentrates;

• 9th in exports of defense industry products;

• 10th largest steel producer in the world (32.4 million tons).

Ukraine matters.

These are some reasons why its independence is important to the rest of the world.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

If it was President Vladimir Putin’s intention to be the center of global attention, he has certainly succeeded. Not much can push the latest COVID news off the top spot. Maybe inflation and how it is affecting the average resident can, but that’s nothing compared to the dominance of the situation in Ukraine and the speculation about what Putin’s next move will be. There seem to be numerous Putin specialists who profess to have studied the Russian dictator’s every move for many years and know what his plan is. Or, does he have a plan? Is this a story that he is writing as he goes along? This makes for lots of rhetoric among the pundits. 

One thing is sure. The serious possibility of Russian aggression has caused North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to stand together and reaffirm their alliance. Perhaps this was Putin’s test. There was little reaction when the Russians invaded and took over Crimea in 2014. Would anyone really care if they took over all of the Ukraine?

Well, the answer to that question is decidedly YES. And the United States has stepped forward to reaffirm it alliance with and leadership of NATO by organizing the threat of severe economic sanctions against Russia, sending military equipment to Ukraine and finally sending a symbolic number of troops to NATO countries that border on Ukraine, namely Poland and Romania. A small number of soldiers also went to Germany, perhaps to bolster the resolve of the newly elected German leader, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, to honor its alliance. 

Germany has the most to lose as far as its energy supply goes. Some 38% of the European Union’s natural gas comes from Russia, according to Eurostat, the EU’s statistics office. Much of it is imported by Germany to heat homes in winter and enable factories to operate. The loss of that source of energy would certainly cause economic pain to Germans and other European residents, who would have to pay more for significantly less supply. And of course, that furthers the impact of inflation.

Russia’s overt demands include halting NATO’s expansion and reducing its military exercises and presence in Eastern Europe. Specifically, Putin wants guarantees that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO, which its current leadership has indicated it would want to do in the future. However, noted globalist and New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman, suggested in the issue of February 16, that Putin’s fear is that “Ukraine becomes Westernized. He fears that one day Ukraine will be admitted to the European Union.” If  such an event were to happen, which Friedman believes young Ukrainians dream about, they feel it could “lock in their frail democracy and lock out corruption and Putinism.”

Friedman goes on to point out that “Putin seized Crimea and first invaded part of Eastern Ukraine in February-March 2014. What else was happening then? The European Union’s 28 member states were forging a new E.U.-Ukraine Association Agreement to foster closer political and economic ties, signed on March 21, 2014.” Putin’s greatest fear, according to Friedman, “is the expansion of the E.U.’s sphere of influence and the prospect that it would midwife a decent, democratic, free-market Ukraine that would every day say to the Russian people, ‘This is what you could be without Putin.’” 

Meanwhile, Putin is deciding, according to Friedman, “If  I go ahead with a full scale invasion and it goes bad — wrecking Russia’s economy and resulting in Russian soldiers returning home in body bags from a war with fellow Slavs —could it lead to my own downfall?”

Whatever Putin’s thoughts are, he has used the threat of military force to bring the Western leaders to the table for extensive talks. Perhaps the diplomats will remake the Eastern European map without resorting to war. 

Until there is some sort of resolution to this stand off, what can we, here in America, expect? We will have to deal with the possibility of growing shortages and accompanying inflation, which in fact we are already experiencing at the gas pumps. 

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Maybe it is a Hallmark holiday, but with St. Valentine’s Day approaching, love is definitely in the air. Perhaps Chaucer started it with his poetry about Valentine’s Day in the 14th century. There have been many iterations since. At the least, it’s a time to reflect on the loves in our lives. And there are many. Let us count them together.

Saint Valentine’s Day has traditionally been associated with romantic love, as people—give each other material declarations of their affections. These start with cards, some of them originally composed and handwritten, others store bought and ceremoniously delivered. Red roses are the usual accompaniment and perhaps even generous amounts of chocolate. All of that helps to endure a cold winter’s day and night. It certainly helps the local economy.

So many other loves exist, some of them deeply in our hearts. The love we bear for our children makes for family bonding. It has been said that if children loved their parents as much as parents love their children, the human race would end because the children would never leave their homes. From the marvel at first sight of those tiny fingers and toes to the day we walk them down the aisle to start their own families, we love them, disregarding all the aggravations that happen in between. For most, this is an indissoluble love.

And yes, most of us truly love our parents, the mother who taught us to read, the father who taught us to swim. We go from thinking they are all-knowing demigods to wondering if they are the stupidest humans on earth, and ultimately to respecting them for all they have given us despite their various shortcomings. We are awed by their indestructible love for us and at the same time acknowledge that they are but human. 

We have been impressed with the number of entries for our Love My Pet section that is running in the newspapers and on the website and social media this week. We certainly love our pets, maybe because they can’t talk. And they are unfailingly loyal and forgiving. Well, dogs, are. I’m not so sure about cats. In some cases, we regard them almost as our children. 

A carpenter of undetermined ethnicity, who was doing some work in our house, once pointed to our golden retriever and proclaimed, “In my next life, I want to come back as an American dog.” 

We love our true friends, those who are there to prop us up when we fall as well as those who share our good times. We can also genuinely love our teachers. A caring teacher can make a profound difference in the direction of a child’s life. For example, my sixth grade teacher, in an unexceptional neighborhood elementary school in New York City, stayed after hours, for a few weeks, to coach half-a-dozen of us so that we might pass a citywide test for an exceptional junior high school. Two of us did, and to this day I love that woman, though after that year, I never saw her again.

We can love members of our clergy, who are predictably there for us with advice at critical times and with solace at times of deep loss. Yes, that is their job, but some do their jobs beyond measure. We can love our doctors, who take an oath to watch over our health, but again, some are deeply caring. For these people, we are more than grateful. They love us, and we love them back.

We can love the natural world around us, a world that is filled with songbirds and butterflies, squirrels and foxes, wild turkeys and seagulls to delight the senses. We love the first sight of crocuses announcing the beginning of spring and the early flowering magnolia trees. 

If we are lucky, we can truly love our jobs. For us, they are more than a source of livelihood, more even than a career. They are a calling. They propel us out of bed in the morning and often are the subject of our last thoughts as we go to sleep at night. They coax out the best in us and provide us with unique satisfaction.

Finally, we need to love our lives. Sometimes to do so takes re-contexting and perhaps re-adjustment. That love seems like a worthy goal. 

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The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Here comes Russia again. I am of the generation of children that took refuge from an imaginary atomic bomb attack from Russia by pulling our coats over our heads and crouching under our desks. We grew up with the Cold War always threatening Soviet aggression on both foreign and domestic soils. Were there Communist cells, funded by Russia, hidden among us that could erupt at any time? McCarthy whipped the nation to a fever pitch. The United States and the Soviet Union raced each other to influence governments and people, ideologically and financially, all over the globe. 

I still remember the relief I felt, going to the old Metropolitan Opera House in 1959, to view a performance by members of the Bolshoi Ballet, who came to America bringing not only the most breathtaking dancers but also tangible evidence of detente. And then the Berlin Wall came down. I was there. At least I was there in 1989, six weeks before they broke through to West Berlin. I walked No Man’s Land, the barren stretch between East and West Berlin, with cameras trained on anyone who would start the crossing between those two universes, seeking permission from the guards to go behind the Iron Curtain. 

I was in the Russian Embassy in Washington D.C. in 1991 with a small group of journalists, being feted with caviar and blinis, when word came that the Soviet Union had crumbled, and then the embassy personnel cried. “The end of a dream,” they sobbed. The end of a nightmare, I thought, as they led us to the exits and fell upon the sumptuous food we left behind. Mikhail Gorbachev won the Nobel Prize, the Russian people were real, not just the Evil Empire, and co-existence was finally possible. In a couple of years our attention turned to jihadists.

Now Russia is dramatically back in our lives. The Russia that for centuries had sought warm water ports and had ruled Crimea for 134 years until 1917. The Russia that again annexed Crimea, a part of Ukraine since 1954 and of an independent Ukraine since 1991, with armed intervention in 2014. The Russia that has now lined up reputedly over 100,000 troops on three sides of the Ukraine border, and with aggressive leadership is making demands.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is insisting that Ukraine not be allowed to join NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization initially formed after WWII as a protection against potential Soviet aggression, that has grown as more Eastern European countries have joined. Putin insists it is a security issue to have bordering Ukraine a NATO member. He also wants military exercises in nearby NATO states to cease and for offensive weapons to be removed from those NATO countries.

So where do we come into the picture?

“It seems to me that the United States does not care that much about Ukrainian security—maybe they think about it somewhere in the background,” Putin said in his news conference. “But their main task is to restrict the development of Russia.”

By “development,” the concern is that Putin wishes to restore the former Soviet empire and that, after Crimea, Ukraine would be the next step. Students of history will remember the lessons of the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and the “spheres of influence” imposed by the Yalta Conference (in ironically Crimea). Meanwhile, Putin, with his soldiers and weapons at the ready, is accusing the U.S. of threatening Russia. White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, likened Putin’s comments to “when the fox is screaming from the top of the henhouse that he’s scared of the chickens.”

Now, as of yesterday, the decision has been made to send several thousand troops to Poland, Germany and Romania. Presumably they are meant to show support for NATO and for the principle that countries may decide which alliances they will enter.

Meanwhile everyone concerned, including Putin, has embraced the idea of diplomacy as a path to a Ukrainian solution. For the moment, at least, the spotlight has moved away from constant COVID.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Feeling overwhelmed by all the news of the past few days? 

The latest numbers for COVID victims, the mask debates, the possibility of another COVID variant emerging, the Russians military massed around the Ukraine, NATO and its cohesion and response, the Islamic State re-emerging in Afghanistan, North Korean test missiles, escalating inflation, climate change’s latest effects, how the USA is severely divided, the inactions of Congress on voting regulations, death in the NYC subways, and even whether Brady will finally retire, those items and more could do that to you.  

“A newspaper is a mirror. Each day it reflects some segment of the world’s activities.” 

I am quoting Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, former publisher of The New York Times, but the metaphor has been offered by many others. We in the news business capture the events of the moment and provide contemporaneous information, largely without interpretation, for historians to analyze and history voyeurs like me to look back and see who was making news then.

So, in an effort to escape the daily barrage, I checked to see what was happening 100 years ago, at the beginning of 1922. I used as my source front pages from The NYT, compiled by them in a book called, “Page One.” Here is what I found.

“Pope Benedict XV Passes Away Early This Morning; Lingers Hours After World Gets Report of Death; Tributes Paid to the Pontiff by Men of All Religions,” reads the three-tiered, all capitalized headline of the Sunday, Jan. 22, 1922, issue. Other articles on the front page cover different aspects of the main story, including “Men of All Faiths Eulogize the Pope, Protestants Unite with Catholics in Praise of his Great Service to Humanity, and World is Misled by Premature Report of Death; Berlin Started Rumor, Cardinal’s Aide Spread It.”  Immediately notable about the headlines from today’s perspective is, of course, the mention only of men. Women had gotten the right to vote with the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution less than two years earlier. I guess they had not registered on the country’s radar yet as part of the general population. Also on the page is a report that Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister, looked to the coming Genoa Conference as setting the stage for the world’s path to peace and recuperation, but only if the United States attends and actively participates. He was clearly and correctly concerned about our move toward isolation after WWI. 

Also mentioned in another article was the storm of protest that ensued in France when General Pétain, a military hero of WWI, was appointed to the cabinet of Premier Poincare as inspector general of the Army. The fear was that his influence on the government’s future direction would be too militaristic. Petain, we know from our vantage point, went on to become the chief of state of infamous Vichy, France, during WWII. Ireland too made the front page in a story of mutual consent by Michael Collins, head of the Irish Provisional Government and Sir James Craig, premier of Ulster, abut boundaries between North and South that predicted ultimate agreement.

In the issue of Feb. 22, 1922, the three-tiered headline featured the fate of the Army dirigible. “Giant Army Dirigible Wrecked; 34 Dead. 11 are Saved; Victims Perish When Roma Bursts into Flames After Fall; Collapse of Rudder Causes Tragedy On Short Trial Flight.” Roma, 410 feet long, was built by Italy for the United States. The subheads go on to explain, “Hits High Tension Wires, Hydrogen Ignites in Norfolk Flight and Flames Sweep Huge Structure. Few Saved by Leaping, One Lieutenant Breaks Neck in Jump—Other Victims Buried in Wreckage, Rescuers Baffled by Intense Heat — Commander Mabry Stuck to Wheel Till Death Came.” This was the greatest disaster that ever befell American military aeronautics, according to the newspaper.

In going back and reading these news articles, we can see how the stage was set for so many future events. Especially interesting to me is to learn of the roles of individual players in what would become world history.

 

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Stock photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

There has been a lot in the news recently about COVID testing. We can request at-home test kits, and the government promises to send them to us through the mail. Also, we can shortly obtain N95 masks, the most efficient at filtering out microbes from the air, from pharmacies and other health centers. Those should be available to us by the end of next week.

Here is a new angle for consideration. Testing thus far has focused on using swabs inserted up the nose. But there is, perhaps, a more comfortable and more accurate possibility: spitting into a tube. “The virus shows up first in your mouth and throat,” according to Dr. Donald Milton, an expert on respiratory viruses at the University of Maryland who was quoted by The New York Times last Saturday. This means that testing saliva or swabbing the inside of the mouth could help identify people who are infected days earlier, some research suggests. 

Here are some findings from Dr. Milton and his associates. Three days before symptoms appear and for two days after, “saliva samples contained about three times as much virus nasal samples and were 12 times as likely to produce a positive P.C.R. (gold standard) result. After that, however, more virus began accumulating in the nose …” The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now authorized numerous saliva-based PCR tests which work well for screening students at schools.

“Saliva really has turned out to be a valuable specimen type and one that has increasingly been advocated as a primary testing sample,” said Dr. Glen Hansen, of the clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics laboratory at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minnesota. 

Since Omicron “appears to replicate more quickly in the upper respiratory tract and have a shorter incubation period than earlier variants,” if attention to the mouth and throat would be able to detect the virus earlier it would be particularly valuable, according to Emily Anthes, the NYT reporter.

Further, researchers in South Africa, where Omicron was first identified, have determined that saliva swabs of that variant were better indicators of infection than nasal swabs in the P.C.R. tests, although the opposite was true for the Delta variant. But other research studies have had mixed results. As is usual, more research is needed.

There are also other aspects to saliva tests. It is possible that while highly sensitive tests like PCR might identify infection in saliva days earlier, less sensitive tests like the antigen test in the at-home kit, might not. And there are other considerations. What else has passed through the mouth before the test is given? And how will that affect the pH and the result? Also, saliva can be “viscous and difficult to work with,” especially when patients are sick and dehydrated, according to Dr. Marie-Louise Landry, director of the clinical virology laboratory at Yale New Haven Hospital, who is also quoted in the NYT.

In Britain, some at-home tests require swabbing both the throat and the nose. Multiple site testing would seem to offer an advantage. But test manufacturers would have to reconfigure their tests accordingly. Throat swabs need to be bigger. And most importantly, the at-home rapid antigen tests would have to be authorized for mouths or throats, which they currently are NOT. The biochemistry of the mouth is different from that of the nose and may yield a false positive.

Ultimately a variety of test options to meet a variety of situations would seem the best result. For those who have symptoms for several days, a nasal swab might be the choice. Saliva tests might work better for large-scale surveillance of asymptomatic people.

Meanwhile making at-home antigen tests available for everyone is a positive step.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

It’s a new year and I have a new suggestion for our readers. Inspired by The New York Times column that is published on Sundays, called Metropolitan Diary, we would like to offer a similar feature. The Diary is made up of short vignettes, sent in by readers, of anecdotes and interactions that occur as part of city life. Each week, while individually interesting, they also reflect the unique tone of what it is like to live in New York City.

We would like to start a Village Diary, perhaps to run once a month, which would be fun to read and also speak of our existence here in Suffolk County. We would have to depend on you to do this because it would consist of stories and conversations you would like to share. They could be anything exemplifying, “Would you believe this!” to “Why I am proud of the place in which I live,” or “This is what my wife said to me at breakfast this morning,” or even “What they yelled at the umpire.”

As an illustration, I can tell you one of my favorites from the NYT about life in the Big Apple. Two couples were sharing a cab ride to the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center. The older couple was taking the younger one to their first opera, Verdi’s Otello. The older man was seated in front, and as they rode along, he draped his left arm over the back of the seat and was telling the plot to those in the back. Just as he got to the part of Iago, his green-eyed jealousy, and the misplaced handkerchief, they pulled up in front of Lincoln Center, and he reached over to pay the fare. To his surprise, the cab driver blocked his arm and said, “Nobody leaves this cab until I hear the end.” 

There are a couple of encounters I have thought to send in. One involves parking my car in the theater district. Because I have special plates, I usually park on a block west of the district that has four spaces reserved for those cars. This time, when my friend and I pulled up at the usual place, the spots were taken by cars without proper plates. “Where else can you park?” asked my friend.

As I sat there, my head down, trying to think of alternatives, there was a knock at my window. Surprised, I turned to see a smiling man in an orange jumpsuit. When I opened the window, he asked, “Want a parking space? Wait two minutes and you can have four.” I looked back and there was a long, flatbed truck with a huge hook on the end.

True to his word, he had pulled the illegally parked cars onto his truck in a couple of minutes, and with a wave, he and his load were off. I now had my choice of spot. “You are lucky I am here as a witness,” commented my friend. “No one would believe this story.”

Another such incident involved a friend who was visiting from Boston and was driving us both into the city. Only when she had stopped alongside the electronic machine of the EZ Pass lane at the entrance to the tunnel, did she realize she was not driving the car with the pass on the windshield. “You can’t back up,” I yelled. “Oh my gosh, here comes a cop,” she shouted. Indeed, a police officer was bearing down on us from the next lane, a ticket book in his hand and a deep scowl on his face.

“Whatsa matter wit chou?” he yelled as he reached us. “Don’t ya know hadda drive?”

“I’m so sorry officer,” my friend replied. “I thought I had the other car.” Only she didn’t say “car” but rather “cahhr,” revealing her origin.

“Cahhr? Cahhr?” the policeman repeated. Then, “Go on, get odda here,” and he waved us through the raised gate. We never paid the toll.

Please send any such local stories to [email protected]. We will gladly print them.   

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By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

As the year draws to a close, I think of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” That would seem an apt description of the times we are living through today. Why do I say that? Let me count the ways.

For one, we have been tricked by the coronavirus. As spring faded into summer this year, we thought the pandemic was ebbing. We gathered in groups again, even without masks, visited relatives, returned to restaurants, went on vacations. Surprise! By the end of October, the virus started making itself felt again, by November, it was led by the new variant, Omicron, and now it commands the front page of newspapers and the top of the network and cable newscasts.

Yes, we have made impressive progress with vaccines and precautions, but society is still in the grip of the disease, still with some 30 percent of the population unvaccinated, still with those refusing to don masks, and now lined up not for inoculating but for testing. Testing and boosters are the new battle cry. Just as our grandparents, who were living through it, didn’t know when WWII would end, so we who are at war with the virus don’t know when the pandemic will fade into just another annoying wintertime contagion.

For another unprecedented way in recent memory that times are interesting, we have a country so divided and vehemently at odds that neighbors, friends and family members are afraid to talk politics with each other. It is such a contrast with the 9/11 era, when we all held doors open for each other, flew the American flag together and identified as one nation. “Democracy is at risk” is the new battle cry. And the threat of political violence and random shootings simmers just beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, worthy issues involving any sort of social safety net and how to provide money for them, like pre-school education and acceptable child care enabling parents to work, lie undebated in a symbolically divided Congress. It’s no wonder that the national birthrate for this past year is the lowest since 1979. That’s not just due to the pandemic but has been a trend for the last six years.

Climate change is another subject that has driven itself to top of mind this past year. Fires, the likes of which never before seen, also floods, tornadoes and melting ice caps have changed the face of the nation and have killed many residents.

And then there is racism, the shadow that has always loomed over the United States since its inception and has burst forth to claim attention across the country, spawning marches and protests. Is it better for bigotry to come out of the woodwork and be viewed in all its aspects in the clear light of day? Perhaps that is a necessary step for it to be ultimately eradicated. Until then, the atmosphere is bitter with recriminations.

There are some bright spots. Although the possibility of spiraling inflation has lately been a concern, unemployment is decidedly low and the economy has been growing. So has the stock market, while not the economy, is nonetheless a telltale of how their financial standing is perceived by residents. Stimulative monetary policy on the part of the Federal Reserve and equally generous fiscal action by the administrations of both presidents and Congress have kept civil unrest at bay. Savings rates are at a high. And the kinks in the supply chain, although most apparent now with the gift-giving demands of the holidays, will eventually be straightened out.

Furthermore, Dec. 21 is one of my favorite days because it brings with it the longest night of the year. After that, each day has a bit more light. So I hope for whatever darkness we are presently living through to lift, and I am optimistic that it will.

Until the new year, wishing you all healthy holidays filled with devotion and love.

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Pixabay photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

All of you devoted coffee drinkers, and that includes me, might like to know the information in an article in The New York Times headlined, “Why does coffee make me poop?” Written by Alice Callahan and published on Dec. 7, the story explains cause-and-effect, providing some understanding of what is happening in our bodies when we drink java. (That’s where it originally came from, hence the name.)

Not much is known about the precise mechanism of how coffee affects the gastrointestinal tract, but we do know that it can be a laxative.

“Coffee is a complex beverage containing more than 1000 chemical compounds, many of which have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties,” according to The Times. This is also why drinking coffee is generally encouraged since it is considered to be a healthy beverage in moderation.

A gut reaction to the intake of coffee can surprisingly happen in a matter of minutes. How does drinking coffee on one end stimulate the other end of the GI tract so quickly? The answer is that a signal probably goes through the gut-brain axis, meaning that the arrival of coffee in the stomach, which happens in 4 minutes, stimulates the brain to send a signal to the colon to empty itself. The coffee actually takes an hour to travel through the small intestine and reach the far end of the colon.

“This communication between the stomach, brain and colon [is] called the gastrocolic reflex [and] is a normal response to eating,” according to The Times. 

But coffee has an outsized effect, stimulating colonic contractions as if a full meal had been consumed. The messaging is thought to be caused by one or more of the chemicals in coffee, and may be aided by some of our own hormones. Examples of such hormones are gastrin and cholecystokinin, which can spike after coffee drinking. 

Pixabay photo

It is not the caffeine that is the stimulant, however, because those who drink decaffeinated coffee can experience the same stimulatory effect on the colon. This makes coffee a useful tool in dealing with chronic constipation, along with eating more fruits and vegetables, which are high in fiber, drinking more fluids and getting more exercise. Incidentally, a brewed cup of coffee contains a small amount of fiber, one gram for an 8-ounce cup. Fiber is necessary for good gastrointestinal activity.

I have always been a coffee drinker, although my parents wouldn’t let me have some, saying it wasn’t good for children. But I found the smell of it irresistible and began drinking it in college, especially to facilitate those late-night assignments. But right around the time my second child was born, I started getting migraines that were triggered by the caffeine in coffee. This would suggest that a heightened state of hormones plus coffee with caffeine were upsetting my colon and causing trouble along my gut-brain axis. I have satisfied my coffee desires with decaf, but I will tell you what many of you decaf drinkers know: the taste and the effect are not the same. I do miss that lovely surge of energy to start off the morning.

It’s surprising how little we know about how coffee affects us. The most valuable study of digestion, in general, was done between 1822 and 1833 by William Beaumont, an American Army surgeon, on the French Canadian, Alexis St. Martin, a boatman employed by a fur company. St. Martin was shot in the abdomen on Mackinac Island in a near-fatal accident, and the wound did not heal properly, leaving a hole in his stomach. This provided a window of sorts for Beaumont to watch the digestive process. He learned much about the stomach, gastric juices and how digestion works, and he published those observations. But he doesn’t seem to have advanced our understanding about coffee’s effects. Perhaps neither man drank coffee.

To this day, I still say that the best part of coffee, regular or decaffeinated, is its smell.

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METRO photo

By Leah S. Dunaief

Leah Dunaief

Among the many preparations we made for our family Thanksgiving gathering this year, was carefully considering how to prevent any intrusion by COVID-19, a most unwelcome guest. The children and grandchildren were coming from six different states, so the potential exposure was widespread.

We agreed that everyone would have the appropriate vaccinations, two and a booster if possible. Each member also bought an Abbott BinaxNOW antigen self test result that they took before starting out on their trips. Everyone tested negative, so we were full steam ahead.

Thanksgiving Day was filled with hugs, laughter and love. We had not been all together in almost two years, and much conversation resulted, including how the youngest one had grown. After the traditional sumptuous dinner, we went around the table and spoke about what we were most grateful for in the past year. This is of special value to me, in addition to the lovely feelings of gratitude evoked, because it gives me a chance to catch up on their various activities.

The next day, Friday, we talked, walked, played games and ate some more. I almost didn’t register when one of my grandsons came to the dinner table a little late because he was feeling “achy.” But when he asked for an Advil the next morning, I got out the At-Home rapid test, and in 15 minutes we knew he was positive. Thinking it might be a false positive, we drove him to Stony Brook University Hospital, where he was given a PCR test, the gold standard, and in four hours we had the result.

Somehow, in spite of our careful efforts, the pathogen had found us. We then went to the next step and self-quarantined, but we are still trying to figure out where the hole in our defenses lies. As nearly as we can conclude, a negative test does not check for viruses in low numbers that are just beginning their infection in the nose, for example, and are still too few to register. With no symptoms, there is no way to detect their presence. It typically takes at least three days before the alarm goes off. So even weekly testing, which is so often done by institutions and employers, is not foolproof, especially if the patient is asymptomatic.

Fortunately, because my grandson was doubly vaccinated, the illness was of short duration, although he did lose his sense of taste and smell for a bit. The rest of the family members are fine. But what does that mean for all of us? The potential for infection is there, still with us despite how much we would like to leave it behind and despite all precautions. Gatherings of almost any size carry some risk, especially when we remove our masks to eat together, and we cannot be mindless of the threat.

There may be some good news, however. Omicron, the latest variant to be identified, seems to cause a milder version of the disease, at least so the early evidence indicates. And there are now two different pills that appear to hold back the most harmful effects of the virus if taken within five days of onset. One is from Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, called molnupiravir, that reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 30%. It should be receiving FDA approval soon, even though it can cause serious side effects. The other is Paxlovid from Pfizer and so far appears to be 85% effective, perhaps to be authorized by year’s end. Made of a different formulation, it probably would not cause the same side effects as Merck’s but could cause others. Both pills could turn out to be a stop gap if the vaccines prove ineffective against new variants. And both may be more powerful if given together, as research against the virus that caused AIDS proved at that time. According to Dr. Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, who oversaw combination therapy for HIV years ago, such a clinical trial could be quickly done.

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