Interesting

Medical Mysteries: What was causing a woman’s chronic digestive distress?

Small intestine bacterial overgrowth can apparently be detected by breath tests.

Maybe that's what those narcolepsy diagnosing dogs are smelling...

The Guinea Pig Generation

Obesity risk rises if antibiotics given before age two

More than two thirds of the kids studied were exposed to antibiotics before age two. The increase in obesity risk ranged from two to 20 percent and was seen particularly in children who had been treated with antibiotics four or more times by age two.
Those given broad-spectrum antibiotics, which target a range of bacteria, were also at higher risk of weight problems in childhood.

Cha Ching Cha Ching Cha Ching!!!

Hypothalamic orexin prevents hepatic insulin resistance via daily bidirectional regulation of autonomic nervous system in mice

Circadian rhythm is crucial for preventing hepatic insulin resistance, although the mechanism remains uncovered. Here we report that wake-active hypothalamic orexin system plays a key role in this regulation. Wild-type mice showed a daily rhythm in blood glucose levels peaked at awake period; however, the glucose rhythm was disappeared in orexin knockout mice despite normal feeding rhythm. Central administration of orexin A during nighttime awake period acutely elevated blood glucose levels but subsequently lowered daytime glucose levels in normal and diabetic db/db mice. The glucose-elevating and -lowering effects of orexin A were suppressed by adrenergic antagonists and hepatic parasympathectomy, respectively. Moreover, the expression levels of hepatic gluconeogenic genes, including Pepck, were increased and decreased by orexin A at nanomolar and femtomolar doses, respectively. These results indicate that orexin can bidirectionally regulate hepatic gluconeogenesis via control of autonomic balance, leading to generation of the daily blood glucose oscillation. Furthermore, during aging, orexin deficiency enhanced endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress in the liver, and caused impairment of hepatic insulin signaling and abnormal gluconeogenic activity in pyruvate tolerance test. Collectively, the daily glucose rhythm under control of orexin appears to be important for maintaining endoplasmic reticulum homeostasis, thereby preventing insulin resistance in the liver.

Mercy mercy me.  What a day.   That is the most beautiful thing I have seen since late last night.    And published by the ADA no less.
Thanks Japan!  I love you guys!!!!

Cha Ching!

Pneumonia-induced multiple organ dysfunction syndrome: an experimental mouse model of gram-positive sepsis.

Streptococcus pneumoniae, a gram-positive bacteria, is the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia. It is a common cause of septic shock with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) resulting in significant mortality. Gram-positive mouse models of sepsis with MODS are required to examine mechanisms of immune responses in severe sepsis. To assess whether lung infection due to S. pneumoniae in a nonventilated mouse model can induce multiple organ dysfunction.
...
S. pneumoniae-induced pneumonia resulted in neutrophil infiltration into the lungs and increased lung bacterial load. Although relatively few bacteria gained access to the blood stream, the pneumonia was accompanied by increased intestinal epithelial barrier permeability, increased plasma creatinine, and decreased cardiac output and stroke volume. These data clearly show that intratracheal S. pneumoniae induced not only pneumonia but also MODS, despite the fact that few organisms gain access to the blood stream. This model can be used as a good gram-positive model of sepsis and MODS for further studies.

Now THAT is what I am talking about.
Drops microphone.  Goes to bed.

Just Because

Nice pictures of people sleeping.

Pet Zombies

Fun with Science

Meet the animal that refuses to die

A new video from NPR reporters Robert Krulwich and Adam Cole profiles the seemingly immortal Hydra.

Told Ya

BRCA Gene Mutations Linked to Salivary Gland Cancer

The genetic mutations that put people at high risk for breast cancer may also be linked with an increased risk of salivary gland cancer, a new study suggests.
Researchers analyzed information from 187 people with breast cancer who had mutations in the BRAC1 and BRAC2 genes — which are linked with a high risk of breast and ovarian cancer. The researchers also examined several generations of patients' close relatives, some of whom had also been tested for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations.
Of the 5,754 people in the study, three had salivary gland cancer, and all three were relatives of the breast cancer patients. The overall rate of salivary gland cancer in the study families was 0.052 percent. This is much higher than the rate of salivary gland cancer in the general population, which is three cases per 100,000 people, or 0.003 percent, the researchers said.       citation

  uh huh.

As I was saying

Why Don't We Treat Teeth Like the Rest of Our Bodies?

Dental care is excluded from most insurance plans for a bizarre and antiquated reason, and millions of people suffer as a result. 

Gotta flag this quote:  "It’s not like antibiotics or insulin."

So backwards it actually makes me dizzy just thinking about it.

"Non Communicable" Diseases

Severe periodontitis: Sixth most prevalent health condition in the world

In 2010, severe periodontitis was the sixth most prevalent condition in the world affecting 743 million people worldwide. Between 1990 and 2010, the global age-standardized prevalence of severe periodontitis was static at 11.2%.

Apparently those numbers have never been calculated before.  Puts them in the top ten.

The most prevalent conditions, as established by the World Health Organization: iron-deficiency anemia, hearing loss, migraine, low vision, asthma, diabetes mellitus, osteoarthritis (OA), and unipolar depressive disorders.

Not to put too fine a point on this- but all of those can be caused by chronic periodontal infection.   Which is communicable dammit.

Go Figure

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un 'has illness'

An anonymous source - said to be "familiar with North Korea affairs" - quoted by the South Korean news agency Yonhap, said he understood Mr Kim was "suffering from gout, along with hyperuricemia, hyperlipidemia, obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure".
The agency said some people attribute the deterioration in Mr Kim's health to frequent drinking and overeating.
But its source said gout runs in Mr Kim's family, with his grandfather Kim II-sung, his father Kim Jong-il and his elder brother Kim Jong-nam all suffering from the disease.

I am shocked, shocked to think that man has a sugar metabolism problem.

Brain Eating Zombies of the Day

Why Posttraumatic Stress Could Make Women More Susceptible To Food Addiction

Previous studies have found that people with PTSD are at increased risk for obesity, and the new study provides one explanation for that link: People with PTSD may use eating to cope with psychological distress, the researchers said.
"Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that observed links between PTSD and obesity might be partly explained by a tendency to use food to self-medicate traumatic stress symptoms," the researchers, from the University of Minnesota, wrote in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

Ummm. No.  CDNIC.  (correlation does not imply causation.) Neither one of these causes the other.
This is the expected behavior of someone with chronic infectious illness.   Infection causes hyperinsulinemia and an increased stress response.  This manifests as anxiety and weight gain. 

Making an Effort

Things that caught my eye-

New Tracking Technologies Aim to Prevent Sloppy Handling at U.S. Biolabs
Thank you, thank you very much.

Artificial sweeteners linked to abnormal glucose metabolism
Maybe.

Meet the man who refuses to shower for 128 days
The circle of insanity.


A mycotoxin present in many types of food deteriorates neuroregeneration

Researchers at the Institute for Biomedical Sciences at CEU-UCH, in cooperation with colleagues of University of Valencia, showed through in vitro as well as in vivo experiments on lab animals the potential negative effect on neuroregeneration caused by Ochratoxine A, a mycotoxine found in many types of food, especially cereals and their derivatives. The study showed that Ochratoxine A deteriorates the formation of new neurons in the brain, a process called neurogenesis that, in particular, takes place in the subventricular zone, which in the adult brain is the largest of the neurogenic zones.

How pneumonia bacteria can compromise heart health

Mice with severe invasive pneumococcal disease showed elevated levels of troponin, a marker for heart injury, in their blood. They also had abnormal EKGs. When the researchers examined the hearts of the mice, they found microscopic sites of injury (called microlesions) in the heart muscle. S. pneumoniae were found within these microlesions, indicating the bacteria were able to invade and multiply within the heart. Looking in more detail, the researchers identified dying heart muscle cells in the tissue surrounding microlesions.

Home Improvement

Sorry I have been slacking off here lately.  Been working on my kitchen.
I don't know why, but I keep ending up with pink houses.   The last one had 1600 sq ft of pink carpet and a pink fireplace- this one has pink countertops.

I don't feel like ripping out this kitchen right now though.   Been there, done that.
After much research into tiling over the counter, I decided I don't like these cabinets enough to put that much time and money into the counter either.
So I did a bunch more research into coating it.  There are some products for that, but I don't like the look they produce.
But I did find this related product for wall tile that I did like...
So I decided to color outside the lines a bit and experimented with that in my coffee zone.

It was pretty simple, didn't make a huge mess, but did take a few days to wait for all the coats to dry and me to obsess on every speck.  But it turned out so great I can hardly stand it.   It's pretty and seems durable.  It makes me so happy to think there's an easy and affordable solution to my pink dilemma.  
I'm posting the pictures immediately without even finishing the rest... (gotta paint those sad cabinets!)
I love a product that does exactly what it says it will.

update:

The Spreadstone product is kind of expensive considering how little you get.  I think that if you're crafty, the same thing can be done on your own for half the price.   After many years of wearing paint on my clothes and skin- I'm pretty sure it's just acrylic paint with something white in it for texture.   It doesn't set up like concrete or plaster though.   After some research, I think it's lightweight joint compound.  It wasn't much thicker than paint though, so there wasn't very much in it.  Had I known, I could have used a bunch of my extra brown and tan paint instead...  If you're curious, do some experiments on a piece of wood or something. 

The technique was one base coat using a smooth fabric roller.
Then two highlight colors very gently applied using a sponge roller.  if you don't like it, you can sand it or sponge over with another color.   I also sponged by hand and used small art brushes to nitpick.

I still have to figure out what that first waterproof bond coat is.   It must be available.   Ooh, here.  Topcoat Sealers are available everywhere.

The key really was the prep.   Making sure everything was taped off, repaired, sanded and clean.

The American Dream

The Stained Glass Sleeper Driverless Car of the Future

Yep, one of those, and one of these... and some drive-thru restaurants...

Exhibit B

See the progressive pathology. 

Grandmaster Clash
One of the most amazing feats in chess history just happened, and no one noticed.

As the tournament began on Aug. 27, Carlsen was mired in an ongoing faceoff with FIDE, the international governing body of chess. There are a few things you should probably know about FIDE—or the Federation Internationale des Echecs, if you’re feeling continental. FIDE is, by all accounts, comically corrupt, in the vein of other fishy global sporting bodies like FIFA and the IOC. Its Russian president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has hunkered in office for nearly two decades now, was once abducted by a group of space aliens dressed in yellow costumes who transported him to a faraway star. Though I am relying here on Ilyumzhinov’s personal attestations, I have no reason to doubt him, as this is something about which he has spoken quite extensively. He is of the firm belief that chess was invented by extraterrestrials, and further “insists that there is ‘some kind of code’ in chess, evidence for which he finds in the fact that there are 64 squares on the chessboard and 64 codons in human DNA.”

Long but Good Article by an obviously obsessive observer.

Nobody Could have Predicted

Crest 'microbeads' might cause gum disease
Dentists say it gets trapped under people's gums

Shoppers Ditching Colgate Total Amid Triclosan Fears

Been There, Done That

It’s All Connected

What links creativity, conspiracy theories, and delusions? A phenomenon called apophenia.
...
In statistics, a problem akin to apophenia is a Type I error, or false positive. It means believing something is real when it isn’t, based on a misleading pattern in the data. The equal and opposite misstep, a Type II error, involves attributing a true relationship to chance.

Oh, something snarky about the delusional idea of voices coming from dental fillings seems appropriate here...

Yeah

Smoking, schizophrenia linked by alterations in brain nicotine signals

Schizophrenia is associated with increased rates and intensity of tobacco smoking. A growing body of research suggests that the relationship between schizophrenia and smoking stems, in part, from an effort by patients to use nicotine to self-medicate symptoms and cognitive impairment associated with the disease.

 Uh huh.

"This finding adds to evidence that brain nicotine-related signaling might play a role for new medications developed to treat schizophrenia."

Ummm, what about nicotine- since it's so effective?  Like Ecigs?   That is the obvious direction this conversation should have gone.   Oh, that goes against all your "health directives" and is not patentable...  I see...

Offhand Hypothesis

Whatsamatter with people in Arizona?

Dehydration of the nose and mouth.
In the winter it's really dry outside, but in the summer when it's humid, everyone stays inside with their air conditioning on, which really chaps your skin.
All our old white heads are crispy on the inside. No wonder we're cranky.

Christina will have to figure out Florida.  I'm not going there.

Kills the Germs Too

11 Successful Products Originally Invented for Something Else
omigod. number 5...

Breakfast of Champions

Shocking Amounts of Sugar People Eat Around The World
2 min video from Buzzfeed.

Pig Lipstick

FDA approves diet pill made from old medicines

Contrave, for better or worse, is a combination of two drugs that have been around for a long time. One is bupropion, an antidepressant sold as Wellbutrin, that’s also been used to help people stop smoking. The other is naltrexone, a medicine that’s prescribed to help people stay off drugs and alcohol.

Just another excuse for a patent.
Just another way to take your money until you qualify for lapband surgery.

Fascinating

Tipping the balance of behavior: Neurons found that control social behavior may have implications for autism

Anderson and his colleagues discovered two intermingled but distinct populations of neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is involved in innate social behaviors. One population promotes social behaviors, such as mating, fighting, or social grooming, while the other population controls repetitive self-grooming -- an asocial behavior.
Interestingly, these two populations are distinguished according to the most fundamental subdivision of neuron subtypes in the brain: the "social neurons" are inhibitory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid), while the "self-grooming neurons" are excitatory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter glutamate, an amino acid).

That is not at all what I would expect... need to think about that some more.

But I am guessing the switch has something to do with immune response.
Healthy animals are social, unhealthy animals are not.

The Circle of Insanity

Man Builds 100 Yards of Catwalks into His House

Thereby Insuring Maximum Spore Dispersal.

Microbial Whak-a-Mole

Intestinal bacteria needed for strong flu vaccine responses in mice

Mice treated with antibiotics to remove most of their intestinal bacteria or raised under sterile conditions have impaired antibody responses to seasonal influenza vaccination, researchers have found.
The findings suggest that antibiotic treatment before or during vaccination may impair responses to certain vaccines in humans. The results may also help to explain why immunity induced by some vaccines varies in different parts of the world.