Posts Tagged ‘health’
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”*…
The wages of anxiety…
A large Swedish study has uncovered a paradox about people diagnosed with an excessive fear of serious illness: They tend to die earlier than people who aren’t hypervigilant about health concerns.
Hypochondriasis, now called illness anxiety disorder, is a rare condition with symptoms that go beyond average health worries. People with the disorder are unable to shake their fears despite normal physical exams and lab tests. Some may change doctors repeatedly. Others may avoid medical care…
The researchers found that people with the diagnosis have an increased risk of death from both natural and unnatural causes, particularly suicide. Chronic stress and its impact on the body could explain some of the difference, the authors wrote…
“In hypochondria paradox, Swedish study finds a higher death rate in those who fear serious illness,” by @CarlaKJohnson in @AP.
* Joseph Heller, Catch-22
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As we stew over self-fulfilling prophecies, we might recall that it was on this date in 2021 that Paul E. Marek, et al. published a paper in Scientific Reports reporting the discovery of the first millipede species that lived up to its name. Although called millipedes, meaning 1000 legs, never before had a species been found with truly that many legs.
In fact, the new species, Eumillipes persephone has 1306 legs. This diminutive animal has a greatly elongated, thread-like body (0.95 mm wide, 95.7 mm long) with 330 segments, a cone-shaped head with enormous antennae, and a beak for feeding. It was found 60 m below ground in a drill hole created for mineral exploration in Western Australia. Living as a troglobite, it lacks eyes and pigmentation.
“We’ve co-evolved with our microbes”*…
Allergies seem more prevalent and more severe these days because they are. Theresa MacPhail explains…
… Although allergy researchers may disagree on definitions, symptoms and methodology, all agree on one thing: Allergies have grown worse over the last few decades, and the staggering numbers of allergy sufferers worldwide is likely to continue growing. An estimated 235 million people worldwide have asthma, and anywhere from 240 to 550 million people globally may suffer from food allergies. Drug allergy may affect up to 10% of the world’s population.
There’s a consensus, looking at the last century’s data, that U.S. hay fever rates increased in the mid-20th century. Data suggests that the incidence of asthma increased beginning in the 1960s, peaking sometime in the 1990s. Since then, asthma rates have remained fairly constant. Respiratory allergic diseases and atopic sensitization (or skin allergy) have likely increased over the last few decades. But the most dramatic and visible increase has been the rise in global incidence rates for food allergies, which began in earnest in the 1990s and has grown steadily ever since.
There are, unsurprisingly, multiple theories about the cause. The hygiene hypothesis is one front-runner, positing that people who are “too clean” develop allergies. Many others think it’s our diet, that changes in the way we grow and prepare food have altered our gut microbiome, fueling allergies. Still others argue that manmade chemicals and plastics we encounter daily are making our immune systems more irritable.
What everyone agrees on is that the environment’s influence on our genes, or epigenetics, has played a large role in the rise of allergies, as does the makeup of our nose, gut and skin microbiomes. In the end, it appears, we are at least partially doing this to ourselves. Modern living is likely at the root of the recent rise in allergies…
Our very old immune systems can’t keep up with modern lifestyles and diets, leading to increases in all sorts of chronic health problems like allergies and obesity: “How Modernity Made Us Allergic,” from @TheresaMacphail in @NoemaMag. Eminently worth reading in full.
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As we stifle a sneeze, we might send infectious birthday greetings to Alfred Hershey; he was born on this date in 1908. A bacteriologist and geneticist, investigate bacteriophages, or phages—viruses that infect and replicate inside bacteria. In 1952, he and Martha Chase conducted the famous Hershey–Chase, or “Waring Blender” experiment. Their work confirmed that DNA, not protein, was the genetic material of life.
Hershey’s work with bacteriophage earned him a share of the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Max Delbrück and Salvador Luria, “for their discoveries concerning the replication mechanism and the genetic structure of viruses.”
“Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed”*…
Colonoscopies are a right of passage into late middle-age. One dreads getting a “surprise”– the finding of a polyp. But one doesn’t anticipate other kinds of surprise…
Doctors in Missouri were baffled to spot a fly inside a man’s intestines during a routine colon screening.
Images taken during the colonoscopy and published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology show the intact fly inside the man’s colon.
Matthew Bechtold, the chief of Gastroenterology at the University of Missouri, told The Independent that he had prodded the fly and confirmed it was dead.
The 63-year-old patient told doctors that he had only consumed clear liquids the day before the procedure and had no idea how the fly had gotten into his colon.
He said he had eaten pizza and lettuce for dinner two days before the procedure but did not remember a fly being in his food.
The finding was described as “a very rare colonoscopy finding and mystery on how the intact fly found its way to the transverse colon.”…
Wonder never cease: “Bizarre Discovery of Intact Housefly in Man’s Intestines Shocks Doctors,” in @ScienceAlert, via @BoingBoing.
* Charles de Lint
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As we investigate intrusive insects, we might spare a thought for Seymour Benzer; he died on this date in 2007. A physicist, molecular biologist, and behavioral geneticist, he developed a method for determining the detailed structure of viral genes, did much to elucidate the nature of genetic anomalies (called nonsense mutations), and identified mutant genes useful for studying Creutzfeld-Jacob (CJ) disease and other human brain degenerative disorders… all using the ubiquitous cousin of the housefly– the fruit fly– as a research subject.
Benzer was awarded the National Medal of Science (in 1982), among many other major awards and recognitions.
“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once”*…
Our lives are spread across range of ways that we spend our time. A newly-published study tracks time-use around the world…
How do you spend each day? Researchers sought answers to that basic question from people of various ages living around the world. They report that on an average day, people spend more than a third of their time focused on matters of health, happiness and keeping up appearances.
“We found that the single largest chunk of time is really focused on humans ourselves, a little more than 9 hours,” explained study author Eric Galbraith, of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “Most of this—about 6.5 hours—is doing things that we enjoy, like hanging out, watching TV, socializing and doing sports,” he said. Reading and gaming also fall within this rubric.
The other 2.5 hours (out of the 9) are spent on hygiene, grooming and taking care of our own health and that of our kids, said Galbraith, a professor in the department of earth and planetary sciences.
Sleep and bedrest occupy the next largest chunk of time: more than 9 hours on average. That sounds like a lot of shut-eye, but Galbraith stressed this number reflects the average across the full age span, so it includes kids who might sleep up to 11 hours a day. “It also includes time in bed and not sleeping, which can be as much as one hour per day,” he said…
The remaining minutes? They seem to go toward getting organized, moving about or producing, creating and maintaining things and spaces…
For more findings and background on the methodology: “Sleep, cleaning, fun: Research reveals the average human’s day worldwide,” in @physorg_com.
* Albert Einstein
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As we contemplate chronology, we might recall that it was on this date in 2011 that the Swedish game design house Mojang Studios released the first full version of Minecraft. A sandbox game created by Markus “Notch” Persson, it has become the best-selling video game in history, with over 300 million copies sold– and countless hours consumed…
“The most outstanding feature of life’s history is a constant domination by bacteria”*…
Jennifer Kahn interviews biochemist Jennifer Doudna (who won the Noel Prize for the gene-editing engine Crispr) on her new focus– our microbiomes, tackling everything from immune disorders and mental illness to climate change—all by altering microbes in the digestive tract…
… what isn’t the microbiome responsible for? It’s been all the rage for the past few years, with scientists hoping it could help treat everything from immune disorders to mental illness. How exactly that will work is something we’re just starting to explore. This spring, the effort got a boost when UC Berkeley biochemist and gene-editing pioneer Jennifer Doudna, who won a Nobel Prize in 2020 for coinventing Crispr, joined the pursuit. Her first order of business, spearheaded by Berkeley’s Innovative Genomics Institute: fine-tuning our microbiome by genetically editing the microbes it contains while they’re still inside us to prevent and treat diseases like childhood asthma. (Full disclosure: I teach at Berkeley.) Oh, she also wants to slow climate change by doing the same thing in cows, which are collectively responsible for a shocking amount of greenhouse gas.
As someone who has written about genetic engineering in the past, I have to admit that my first reaction was: No way. The gut microbiome contains around 4,500 different kinds of bacteria plus untold viruses, and even fungi (so far: in practice we’ve only just started counting) in such massive quantities that it weighs close to half a pound. (Microbes are so tiny that 30 trillion bacteria would weigh roughly 1 ounce. So half a pound is a lot.)
Figuring out which ones are responsible for which ailments is tricky. First you need to know what’s causing the problem: like maybe something is producing too much of a particular inflammatory molecule. Then you have to figure out which microbe—or microbes—is doing that, and also which gene within that microbe. Then, in theory, you can fix it. Not in a petri dish, but in situ—meaning in our fully active, roiling, squishing stomach and intestines while they continue to do all the stuff they usually do.
Until recently, it would have seemed insane—not to mention literally impossible—to edit all the microbes belonging to a species within a vast ecosystem like our gut. And to be fair, Doudna and her collaborator, Jill Banfield, still don’t know quite how it will work. But they think it can be done, and in April, TED’s Audacious Project donated $70 million to support the effort. My own gut feeling (right?) was that this was either brilliant or terrifying, or possibly both at once. Brilliant because it had the potential to head off or treat diseases in an incredibly targeted and noninvasive way. Terrifying because, well, you know … releasing a bunch of inert viruses equipped with gene-editing machinery into the vital ecosystem that is our gut microbiome—what could go wrong? With that in mind, I invited Jennifer Doudna to my house for a chat about the future of microbiome medicine…
Fascinating– and encouraging: “Crispr Pioneer Jennifer Doudna Has the Guts to Take On the Microbiome,” in @WIRED.
(Image above: source)
* Stephen Jay Gould
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As we investigate our intestines, we might spare a thought for Guido Pontecorvo; he died on this date in 1999. A geneticist, he discovered the process of genetic recombination in the common soil fungus Aspergillus— and as a result the parasexual cycle— in what became the model for the genetic studies in many other fungi. This cycle gives rise to genetic reassortment by means other than sexual reproduction; its discovery provided a method of genetically analyzing asexual fungi…. which, as noted above, populate our microbiomes.
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