BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters

Subject: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 May 07 - 04:02 AM

Viagra helps jet-lagged hamsters

But researchers had to turn down dosage to shrink a certain side effect

Reuters
Updated: 10:20 a.m. CT May 23, 2007

WASHINGTON - The male impotence drug Viagra may be useful for treating jet lag as well, according to Argentine researchers who gave it to hamsters made to feel like rodent globe-trotters.

The researchers manipulated the schedule of turning lights on and off to induce jet lag in the laboratory animals, they reported on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Adult male hamsters given Viagra, also called sildenafil, recovered from jet lag up to 50 percent faster than hamsters that were not given it, the researchers said.

The scientists stopped giving the hamsters the highest dose they had been using in the experiment due to a certain side effect.

"However, we used the intermediate dose for the rest of the experiments because at that dose animals did not manifest the effects of sildenafil-induced penile erections," they wrote.

UNFORTUNATELY - the sildenafil treatment only worked on hamsters travelling eastward, and had no effect on those going to the west.

More research urgently needed.

StompStamp out droopy jetlagged hamsters.

(Was this government sponsored research?)

John

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 25 May 07 - 04:22 AM

Why would anyone spend money giving viagra to hamsters?

The little buggers will shag anything!

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 25 May 07 - 04:52 AM

Given that most such tests require a "proposal" that predicts a plausible effect that can be verified or refuted by the test before the testing begins, one wonders what made these researchers think that Viagra® would help with jet lag.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 25 May 07 - 05:16 AM

My hamster is dead so is already stiff

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Becca72
Date: 25 May 07 - 08:38 AM

Where on earth were these hamsters traveling?? And how did they get those metal running wheel-thingies through security?

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Rapparee
Date: 25 May 07 - 08:49 AM

I thought this was about Travelers' Aid, and here it's just another spam ad for Viagra.

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 25 May 07 - 09:07 AM

If it doesn't help with jet lag it stops your rolling out of bed...

Sorry, I'll get my coat.

:D

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 May 07 - 09:53 AM

I hadn't opened this one thinking it was a LIttle Hawk spin-off of Naemanson's travel planning thread! Pretty funny anyway!

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: skipy
Date: 25 May 07 - 09:56 AM

Keep the speed down, see what happened to Richard Hammond!
Skipy

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 25 May 07 - 09:57 AM

Presumably it is easy to tell when a hamster is jetlagged.

I like the rolling out of bed one!

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: MMario
Date: 25 May 07 - 10:06 AM

one of the symptoms of jet lag is blood pressure related - and viagra is used in various blood pressure disorders - so there is some logic here.

Wonder if Corridus was part of the study? He's an experienced travelr - though he usually takes his private plane.

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 May 07 - 12:17 PM

I would think that the cause and the result could be attributed to something else: With a penile election, mightn't the animal - and by extension, the human male - mind turn to copulation, thereby distracting him from his misery?

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Little Hawk
Date: 25 May 07 - 12:24 PM

Copulation is an excellent way to distract oneself from one's misery. That's one reason that poverty-stricken people tend to have a much higher birthrate than those who are well off. Hamsters, fortunately, don't use money at all. Thus they are completely free of poverty.

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Ebbie
Date: 25 May 07 - 02:00 PM

Doesn't it take just 18 days for hamster gestation? What would their birth rate be like if they had money?

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 25 May 07 - 02:11 PM

Apropos onf nothing - an office mate of my husbands once found a hamster running across fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. He bundled him up, took him to the office and outfitted him in grand hamster style. He was named hatchet since the film company was then producing horror movies. Within a few monhts, my husband discerned that the hamster was lonely over the weekends (and no he did not give him a girl hamster and some viagra) - so he brought him home to live with us.

Darn if that little guy didn't live for four and a half years. Who knew how old he was when he escaped his original domicile and booked across Fairfax. the non-PC type folks in his office referred to him as The Wandering Hamster and wanted to call him Ahasuerus becuase Fairfax is known as the Jewish District of LA. Sadly, he wasn't immortal. he was a very good little hamster, a dwarf teddy bear hamster. I still miss him.

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: katlaughing
Date: 25 May 07 - 02:48 PM

penile election

Ebbie...is that what we had last election?**bg**

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 25 May 07 - 02:52 PM

Four and a half years plus is a very good age for a hamster.

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 25 May 07 - 05:15 PM

yeah and who knows how many years or months he lived BEFORE he was found waddling across that street! he was fully grown and certainly an adult when my husband brought him home a few months later. he might well have been over 5 years old.

Up until he died from obvious old age (he lost lots of his fur and some of it actually turned grey!), I had a theory that he was a magic hamster who escaped every few years and allowed himself to be found by a new person of his choosing. He was such a swell hamster and he even did tricks. He was an accomplished gymnast! I had this basket with a handle that he liked to climb in. He'd shimmy up the handle and proceed to do flips around the bar of the handle like a male olympis gynmnast. We'd take him out of his cage when company came over and he'd amazone one and all with his daring feats of hamster grace and strength. Oh how I miss poor little Hatchet.

Maybe he'd have lived a little longer if we had thought to grind up some viagra and sprinkle on his chooped apple and strawberries. (his fave fruits)

Subject: RE: BS: Help for Travelling Hamsters
From: GUEST
Date: 25 May 07 - 06:45 PM

Ebbie...is that what we had last election? katlaughing

No. That was the last erection. *G*