WHEATLEY PUPPET

The philosophers tell us that everyone has, at some point in their life, given or received a handjob*. Science bears this out. Thing is, though, that handjobs just aren't that great.

Nobody really likes giving them, and, save for a pretty good half-second towards the end, nobody really likes receiving them. If you think otherwise, you are fooling yourself. At their core, they are fundamentally flawed:

Someone else is just never going to be able to do you as well as you can do yourself**. So thank your partner kindly, zip up your fly, and say no to handjobs. Here's why:

Tests on fruit flies found that those given curcumin, the key chemical in turmeric, lived 75 per cent longer.The findings, published in the journal PLoS One, could help explain why rates of dementia are lower among the elderly in India than in their Western peers.

Alzheimer's is linked to the build-up of protein in the brain called amyloid plaques damaging the wiring. Curcumin did not dissolve the plaque, but accelerated the formation of nerve fibres by reducing the amount of their precursor forms, known as oligomers, from which they were formed.

Prof Per Hammarstrom, of Linkoping University in Sweden, said: "The results confirm our belief that it is the oligomers that are most harmful to the nerve cells. We now see small molecules in an animal model can influence the amyloid form. To our knowledge the encapsulation of oligomers is a new and exciting treatment strategy."