Quercetin May Cause Red Wine Headaches | Worsening Wildfires Are Undoing Air Quality Progress
It’s a common experience: After a glass or two of red wine, relaxation can turn into a pounding headache. This isn’t the same thing as a hangover, as the dreaded red wine headache kicks in between 30 minutes and three hours after imbibing.
For years, there have been different theories about what causes this phenomenon. But neither sulfites or tannins have been proven to be the culprit. A new theory published in the journal Scientific Reports posits that quercetin, an antioxidant in grape skins, could create a toxic byproduct that leads to headaches.
Dr. Morris Levin is one of the authors on this paper. He’s the director of the Headache Center at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, and has spent his career treating patients for migraines and other headache experiences. But Levin says there’s not nearly enough funding for headache research as a whole, which leaves a lot of unanswered questions about the origins and meanings of this common ailment.
Levin joins guest host Flora Lichtman to discuss red wine headaches, as well as the remaining mysteries of headaches.
Worsening Wildfires Are Undoing Air Quality Progress In The USThe Western US has seen both more frequent and more intense wildfires over the past couple decades, leading to lower air quality and increased deaths in the region between 2000 and 2020, according to a new study published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal. While the EPA has made progress in improving air quality in the country, those gains are being undone by smoke from wildfires.
The study looked at particulate matter called PM2.5 and a toxic component of it, black carbon. The researchers found that after years of trending downward nationally, the concentration of PM2.5–and the proportion of black carbon within it–began to increase in the West in 2010. This shift was linked to an increase of 670 premature deaths per year in the region.
Joining Ira to talk about this and other science news of the week is Rachel Feltman, host of the podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. They also discuss a surprise found in the oldest known mosquito fossil, why a national plastic bag recycling program was shut down, and why dwarf planet Eris’ surface is a little squishy.
Transcripts for each segment will be available the week after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.
Subscribe to this podcast. Follow our show on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Bluesky @scifri and sign up for our newsletters. Got a science question that’s keeping you up at night? Call us: 877-472-4374
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Available Results
Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.
Choose Template
Pick the result you want. You can review provider and model before generating.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.
A concise first-pass summary for understanding the episode quickly.
A detailed readable summary organized by chapter or topic.
A navigable map of subjects, topic flow, and suggested chapters.
A comprehensive, source-grounded extraction of the reusable knowledge in an episode.
Reusable atomic knowledge units extracted from the episode.
A comprehensive extraction focused on health practices, protocols, claims, and safety caveats.
A comprehensive extraction focused on opportunities, strategy, markets, and company building.
Scientific findings, mechanisms, studies, hypotheses, and the limits of the evidence discussed.
Technologies, AI models, technical methods, capabilities, limitations, and adoption implications.
Investment theses, assets, catalysts, valuation reasoning, time horizons, and risks.
Chronologies, actors, causes, consequences, turning points, and competing historical interpretations.
Policies, proposals, stakeholders, arguments, implementation constraints, and predicted effects.
Career paths, skills, hiring signals, workplace decisions, transitions, and limitations of the advice.
Behavioral mechanisms, biases, motivation, habits, emotions, interventions, and evidence limitations.
Economic mechanisms, incentives, indicators, market structure, forecasts, and uncertainty.
Leadership principles, team systems, organizational design, culture, feedback, and failure modes.
Audience, positioning, messaging, acquisition, retention, experiments, metrics, and failed approaches.
Teaching methods, learning strategies, practice, feedback, assessment, and effectiveness evidence.
Theses, premises, arguments, objections, values, thought experiments, and unresolved questions.
Communication patterns, conflict, boundaries, expectations, repair methods, and contextual limitations.
Books, papers, authors, courses, and other learning resources mentioned in the episode.
Repeatable methods, frameworks, mental models, processes, and systems.
Explicit actions, next steps, habits, recommendations, and things to avoid.
Memorable statements and important claims with attribution and source context.
A dedicated inventory of concrete resources named in the episode.
A dedicated analysis of warnings, limitations, trade-offs, weak evidence, and uncertainty.