A piece of my mind

The test is coming

2011-05-21T19:37:00.002+03:00

The test for which I have studied for the last 6 months is near so I decided to put blogging to side for the last days. Don't worry, I'll be back after 25.5. WISH ME LUCK!

Osteoporosis

2011-05-15T18:10:00.000+03:00

Is a disease of bones that includes an increased risk of fracture. The disease is stated when the mineral density of the bone (BMD) is significally reduced. To be spesific when a bone mineral density is 2.5 standard deviations or more below the mean peak bone mass (average of young, healthy adults) as measured by DXA.

Osteoporosis is an increasing health concern and to prevent it you'll have a few main things you can do. First: Quit smoking. Smoking greatly builds up the risk of osteoporosis. Second: Exercise. This increases the bone density. Third: Get enough the mighty vitamin D. It stimulates the absorption of calcium and therefore strenghtens your bones.

Being sick sucks

2011-05-11T14:10:00.001+03:00

I have been sick for the last few days so I don't really have the energy to come up with new posts at the moment. I'm having fever and hopefully it will go away soon.

Just to keep up your interest I'd like to point out the difference between a disease and sickness. A person can have a disease without feeling sick. And a person can feel sick without having a disease. So it's sometimes up to you whether you really are sick or not.

Feeling sick already?

Folic acid

2011-05-07T12:15:00.002+03:00

Also known as vitamin B₉ is essential to us. The human body needs folic acid to synthesize DNA, repair DNA and as well as to act as a cofactor in biological reactions involving folic acid. It is especially important in aiding rapid cell division and growth, such as in infancy and pregnancy. Children and adults both require folic acid to produce healthy red blood cells and prevent anemia.

Folic acid is much recommended if you're pregnant because it can prevent the baby of having neural tube defects (NTDs). Which are serious birth defects of the spine and brain; two of the most common NTDs are spina bifida and anencephaly. Taking 400 micrograms (mcg) of folic acid daily can help prevent these major birth defects.

White fat to brown fat

2011-05-06T10:19:00.002+03:00

Scientists say they have found a way to turn body fat into a better type of fat that burns off calories and weight.

Modifying a protein linked to appetite not only reduced the animals' calorie intake and weight, but also transformed their fat composition. "Bad" white fat became "good" brown fat, Cell Metabolism journal reports. Brown fat is abundant in babies, which use it to generate body heat, expending calories at the same time.

The brown fat has this protein called thermogenin, which decreases the proton gradient generated in oxidative phosphorylation by increasing the permeability of the inner mitochondrial membrane, allowing protons that have been pumped into the intermembrane space to return to the mitochondrial matrix producing heat, not ATP.

But as we age our brown fat largely disappears and gets replaced by white fat, which typically sits as a spare tyre around the waist. Experts have reasoned that stimulating the body to make more brown fat rather than white fat could be a helpful way to control weight and prevent obesity and its related health problems like type 2 diabetes.

You can view this piece of news here.

Waist fat is risky

2011-05-03T18:09:00.006+03:00

People with coronary artery disease have significally increased risk of death if they have fat around the waist, according to researchers in the US.

The researchers at the Mayo Clinic looked at the distance around the hips and waist to measure the fat around the belly, and BMI which is a measure comparing height and weight. There was a 75% increased risk of death for patients with high levels of fat around the waist compared with those with thin waists.

This highlights the importance of weight lossing in certain disorders. Dr Mike Knapton, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "This study shows that abdominal obesity is the major risk factor for patients with coronary heart disease even if they have a normal BMI and are a healthy weight.

Check the whole article here.

New EU regulations on herbal medicines

2011-05-01T01:00:00.002+03:00

New EU rules came into force yesterday banning hundreds of traditional herbal remedies. This aims to protect byers from possible damaging side-effects of over-the-counter herbal medicines. This is good since we can't always be sure whether the supplement is 100% safe because of possible side effects and interactions with other drugs, but on the contrast this limits the freedom of choice.

From now on only products that have been assessed by the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency will be allowed to go on sale. These new regulations will allow only long-established and quality-controlled medicines to be sold. Both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business though.

Check the original piece of news here.

Vitamin D Supplements - Not usually living up to claims

2011-04-29T16:53:00.000+03:00

Some vitamin D supplements were tested by ConsumerLab.com to determine whether they contained the claimed amount and form of vitamin D, calcium and vitamin K, were able to disintegrate fully to be available for absorption, and if they were free from unacceptable levels of lead.

This may not be news to you but: The most common problem found with the supplements containing vitamin D was the wrong amount of vitamins. For example, a tablet listing 800 IU of vitamin D contained only 664 IU, 83 percent of the listed amount. Guess this is kind of common problem but what can we do.

I've never had much faith in those med companies and to be honest this doesn't do any good for that. If I want to find something positive about this: at least they didn't put more vitamins than claimed. It can be hard to stay on track how much e.g. vitamin D you get from food and fortified milk. Although it shouldn't be much of a concern because it seems that we should get much more vitamin D than we're suggested. I've read about the recommended amount being 50 mcg/day for real which is over 5 times than we are suggested at the moment where as the tolerable upper intake level being about 100 mcg/day.

You can view the whole article here.

Summer

2011-04-25T20:00:00.004+03:00

Today I certainly noticed that the summer is really coming. The temperature is rising and the sun is shining from a cloudless sky. Could things be more perfect? Well in fact the entrance examination could be past by now but never mind. I think summer really has many positive influences on us. Everyone is suddenly on a very nice mood and smiling. Maybe it has something to do with the bright colours and lightness that comes within, I don't know for sure, but it does feel damn good!

Now that the sun has come out of its closet we are getting the much needed vitamin d in Finland too. (Check that post if you haven't yet!) But on the contrast we should protect our eyes from the UV-radiation and be careful not to get sunburn. Also remember to stay hydrated when the temperature starts to climb a bit more. So the positive vibes don't come without some negative effects. But I guess we can deal with them.

Happy Easter dear readers!

Antioxidants

2011-04-23T10:50:00.000+03:00

Antioxidants are substances or nutrients which can prevent or slow the oxidative damage to our body. When our body cells use oxygen, they naturally produce free radicals which can cause damage. Antioxidants prevent and repair the damage done by these free radicals by being oxidized themselves.

Common antioxidants:

Vitamins A, C & E
Glutathione
Selenium
Flavonoids
Lignan

Antioxidants are often used as ingredients in dietary supplements and have been researched for the prevention of diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease and even altitude sickness. Antioxidants are found in berries, beans, fruits, grain products, and vegetables. This is why you can't only take vitamin pills and forget all the vegetables.

GM mosquitoes offer malaria hope

2011-04-21T10:37:00.002+03:00

Genetically manipulated mosquitoes could be the answer to prevent malaria from spreading and killing around a million people every year. Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans caused by a protist called Plasmodium. The parasite travels to the human liver after a mosquito sting and proceeds to red blood cells multiplicating and causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases progressing to coma, and death.

Scientists believe they aren't far away from being able to manipulate the DNA of wild mosquitoes in order to fight malaria. In the laboratory, they made a gene spread from a handful of mosquitoes to most of the population in just a few generations. If the right gene can be spreaded then researchers hope to reduce the number of malaria infections. This research, however, has a great challenge - getting those genes to spread from the gene-manipulated mosquitoes to the vast number of wild insects across the globe. Unless the gene gives the mosquito an advantage, the gene will arguably disappear.

You can view the whole article here.

Stem cells

2011-04-19T12:18:00.006+03:00

Stem cells are cells that are able to differentiate into specialized cell types. Commonly, stem cells come from two main sources: embryos and adult tissue. Both types are potential to differentiate into different cell types (such as skin, muscle or bone). An important feature for stem cell is its asymmetric cell division, which means that when stem cell divides, one daughter cell remains as a stem cell and the other becomes a specialized cell.

Adult or somatic stem cells exist throughout the body and are found inside of different types of tissue. Adult stem cells can divide or self-renew indefinitely, enabling them to generate a range of cell types from the originating organ. It is generally thought that adult stem cells are limited in their ability to differentiate based on their tissue of origin, but there is some evidence to suggest that they can differentiate to become other cell types. Nevertheless, the separating of somatic stem cells is very challenging.

Embryonic stem cells are derived from a human embryo that is in the blastocyst phase of development. These so called totipotent cells have total potential to develop into any cell in the body. All the cells of our body are originally made from these cells. There are hard ethical questions in the use of embryonic stem cells and it's difficult to get them to specialize into a desired cell.

Medical researchers believe that stem cell therapy has the potential to dramatically change the treatment of human disease. A number of adult stem cell therapies already exist, particularly bone marrow transplants that are used to treat leukemia. In the future, medical researchers have great hope being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wider variety of diseases. Fingers crossed!

What a hit

2011-04-16T23:34:00.001+03:00

I haven't really written about hockey lately because our season ended month ago. We are still playing for fun two times a week. Mainly I've focused on studying to get into medical school. The main reason I wanted to post about icehockey was this great hit Ville Varakas from Blues made in the finals of the finnish hockey league (SM-liiga). Eventhough Siim Liivik got a little damage there, HIFK has won all of the three matches and is now one win away from the championship. Next match is on Monday.

What do you think? Clean hit? Varakas got 5+20 mins for charging from that but didn't get suspended from the next game. In my opinion that was HARD but mostly clean hit and max. 2 mins for charging would've been more than enough.

Hairs

2011-04-15T22:36:00.000+03:00

The human body is covered by hair apart from the palms of the hands, the lips, certain areas of the genital structure, or the soles of the feet. Hairs extend the sense of touch beyond the surface of the skin and provide thermal regulation. Nowadays it seems that hairs exist only to be removed. Hair removal is a common procedure in beauty salons and this can be done there by laser hair removal for example while shaving still being the most used method.

It has been tried to explain the hairlessness of humans, as compared to other species. The thermoregulatory hypothesis suggests that when human ancestors started living on the hot savanna, humans began to sweat more to stay cool. It is posited that hair got in the way of the sweat evaporating, so humans evolved a lighter coat of fur. Although hair provides protection against UV radiation, only our heads were exposed to the sun and thus humans kept the hair on our head, but our body hair was reduced. The aquatic ape hypothesis posits that sparsity of hair is an adaptation to a semi-aquatic environment. And one hypothesis is that human hair was reduced in response to ectoparasites. Getting rid of our hair might have reduced the risk of fleas, ticks, lice, and other biting insects.

One interesting thing about hair removal is that road cyclists tend to remove leg hair for a number of reasons: In the case of a crash, the absence of the leg hair means the injuries (usually road rash) can be cleaned up more efficiently, and treatment is not impeded.

Vitamin D

2011-04-14T10:00:00.001+03:00

Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin that is naturally present in very few foods, added to others, and available as a dietary supplement. It is also produced endogenously when ultraviolet rays from sunlight strike the skin and trigger vitamin D synthesis. Vitamin D promotes calcium absorption in the gut and maintains adequate serum calcium and phosphate concentrations to enable normal mineralization of bone and to prevent hypocalcemic tetany. Vitamin D prevents rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. Together with calcium, vitamin D also helps protect older adults from osteoporosis.

Vitamin D has other roles in the body, including modulation of cell growth, neuromuscular and immune function, and reduction of inflammation. Many genes encoding proteins that regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis are modulated in part by vitamin D. It has many positive influences and greatly boosts the immune system (more specifically CD8+ T lymphocytes) possibly preventing mesothelioma and other cancers.

There is considerable discussion of the serum concentrations of vitamin D associated with deficiency (e.g. rickets), adequacy for bone health, and optimal overall health, and cut points have not been developed by a scientific consensus process. Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) (average daily level of intake sufficient to meet the nutrient requirements of nearly all (97%–98%) healthy people) recommends about 15 mcg/day. And the Tolerable Upper Intake level (UL) (maximum daily intake unlikely to cause adverse health effects) is 100 mcg/day for adults.

Here are the latest news about vitamin D.

Mesothelioma

2011-04-11T08:51:00.000+03:00

Mesothelioma, or more exactly malignant mesothelioma, is a rare form of cancer that develops from the protective lining that covers many our body's internal organs, the mesothelium. It is usually caused by exposure to asbestos, which is a set of silicate minerals exploited commercially for their desirable physical properties. Asbestos exposure becomes a health concern when high concentrations of asbestos fibers (most invisible to the unaided human eye) are inhaled over a long time period. People who become ill from inhaling asbestos are often those who have worked directly with the material.

Asbestos became popular among manufacturers and builders in the late 19th century but nowadays the EU has banned all use of asbestos and extraction, manufacture and processing of asbestos products.

Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases the risk of other asbestos-related cancers. Those exposed to asbestos often take advance of attorneys to collect damages for asbestos-related disease, including mesothelioma. Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits is an important issue in mesothelioma. Better start searching for a lawyer!

One interesting thing is that more than 1,000 tons of asbestos are thought to have been released into the air during the destruction of the WTC towers on 9/11. Inhalation of a mixture of asbestos and other toxicants is thought to be linked to the unusually high death rate of emergency service workers from cancer since the disaster. Many thousands more are now thought to be at risk of developing cancer due to this exposure.

Thermoregulation

2011-04-10T09:25:00.002+03:00

Thermoregulation is needed to keep our body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the temperature in the environment is very different. It does use up quite a bit of energy but on the other hand it allows our metabolic reactions to be independent on the surrounding temperature. Homeotherm is based on hypothalamus keeping the gain and loss of heat equal. If we didn't control our temperature, it would raise about 1,2 °C per hour only because of the basal metabolism. That is why we have developed several methods of managing it.

About 65 % of the heat loss of a naked human happens by heat radiation and about 15 % by conducting to the surrounding air and the surfaces touched and a varying part by convection (moving air or water etc.). Evaporation happens from every wet surface and thus perspiration is a good way to cool yourself. It is also the only mechanism to maximize heat loss when the environment is hotter than the body (e.g. in sauna). Also blood vessels dilate in hot vicinity and contract in cold.

What is the function of fever then? Why does it raise the temperature? Fever is caused by a variety of substances made by leukocytes which affect the hypothalamus to raise the temperature. It appears that fever is more harmful to pathogens than our system and that way helping the immune system. That's why it isn't useful to decrease fever with anodynes unless you're having a very high temperature.

Superbugs

2011-04-08T10:33:00.000+03:00

A superbug is a microorganism which is able to survive exposure to an antibiotic. Antibiotics are often used in rearing animals for food and this use among others is playing a significant role in the creation of resistant strains of bacteria. Each year in the European Union over 25,000 people die because of bacterial infections that are able to outsmart even the newest antibiotics. The WHO says the situation has reached a critical level and a united push to make new usable drugs is urgently needed. Without a concerted effort, we could be dealing with a worldwide spread of untreatable infections.

This is of course a serious threat and the idea of first having a fatal disease followed by surgery leading to a super bacterium infection doesn't sound very temptating. This isn't a huge concern in Finland, yet. It doesn't take many years for this being a major drawback for us too. Luckily we have gotten a short time-out and we should use that efficiently. Now or never is the time to invest on health care!

The original piece of news can be found here.

Autism

2011-04-07T10:06:00.003+03:00

Autistic people seem to have extraordinary skills of remembering and drawing objects in detail from memory. Scientists say in autistic people the brains are organised differently from those of other people; the area at the back of the brain, which processes visual information, is more highly developed. That may be why people with autism can be better than others at carrying out some types of visual tasks. On the contrary, other brain areas are less active which leaves less brain capacity in areas which deal with decision-making and planning.

There was news couple weeks ago about this 12-year-old mildly autistic genius who is now studying at Indiana University-Purdue University. It has been said that also Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton may have suffered from a type of autism, Asperger's Syndrome.

You can read the whole article from BBC here.

Radiation

2011-04-05T10:18:00.000+03:00

We are constantly exposed to different kinds of radiations. Nuclear radiation is dangerous for sure and we get it e.g. from the air we breathe in form of Radon, originally coming from the soil. Electromagnetic radiation we get from electrical devices such as cell phones, microwave ovens and even from TV and computers. Especially I would be concerned about the radiation from cell phones because they are held near the most important organ of ours, the brain. So far the scientist haven't found serious threats in cell phones but no one really knows what kind of long-term effects can electromagnetic radiation have in us.

The other thing with this is that we are highly dependant on electromagnetism and the system is vulnerable. A huge electromagnetic storm from the Sun could black out our electricity and interrupt a variety of things. It has also been found that the magnetic poles of the Earth change place once in a while and someone has stated a hypothesis called Cataclysmic pole shift hypothesis in which the poles could switch places very quickly disabling the protecting magnetic field of the Earth and exposing us to solar winds. Only time will tell!

Fat wars

2011-04-02T21:10:00.001+03:00

There has been a lot of talking about the effects of different lipids lately in Finland at least. Some say the most important thing is the right balance (1:1) between Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids and others state that we have only been dramatizing the effects of saturated fatty acids. Who should we believe when even the experts of nutrition can't find consensus on these cases? There is only one thing they totally agree on: trans fatty acids are dangerous for your health.

I have been trying to find neutral information about the effects, which ain't easy in the first place, and I think it's important to eat a little bit of everything. Humans are omnivores after all. Versatility is the key word and "everything in moderation" is actually very good advice for life in general because it applies in many different situations.

Leptin - A hormone for easy weight lossing?

2011-04-02T00:20:00.001+03:00

Have we found a perfect weight loss treatment for humans? When we eat it's necessary to know when to stop eating. We have lot's of theories regarding to hunger control in the short run. Many of them associated with hypothalamus.

Leptin is a protein hormone secreted by the fat cells which acts as a signal to help our system to control the energy intake and energy expenditure especially in the long run. The amount of leptin in the blood has been directly linked to the amount of fat in the body.

Unfortunately leptin didn't become the instant cure for obesity. It appears that fatness doesn't occur because of low levels of leptin in the blood but because of the ineffectiveness of leptin. Similiar happens in type 2 diabetes with the insulin resistance.

How ever it is important to bear in mind that ascending leptin levels in people who have already lost some weight helps them to keep the weight off. It doesn't help people to lose weight in the first place but prevents the yo-yoing that most dieters come across as their leptin levels drop and the brain tries to compensate that by increasing hunger.

Senses

2011-03-31T23:15:00.001+03:00

For a unicellular prokaryote (some bacterium for instance) it's easy to adapt to the changing environment because they only have one cell to take care of. For us eukaryotes it's a bit trickier because we have lots and lots of specialized cells and organs. That's when our senses get involved. We need information what's going on inside of our system and outside of our cells. That is one major key to survival. How vulnerable would you feel if all of your senses were switched off? See? I think you got my point why senses are so important.

We can sense many different types of things:

Mechanical energy (e.g. touch and pressure)
Electromagnetic radiation (portion of visible light)
Temperature (hotness and coldness)
Chemical substances (e.g. flavours, odours and metabolical products)

There are also some internal senses such as stretch receptors. The thing with receptors are that they can only sense the adequate (appropriate) form of energy for them. E.g. light for the receptors in the eye. This is so specialized that even a mechanical energy to the eye, a hit for example, is being sensed as light. That's why you see stars when you take damage.

It could be useful if we had receptors to detect e.g. radioactive radiation or magnetic fields. Imagine the possibilities!

Leukaemia genes' role discovered

2011-03-28T10:25:00.004+03:00

During leukaemia, a cancer of the white blood cells, the bone marrow, which produces blood cells, starts to churn out immature white blood cells. This changes the balance of the blood: The white blood cells are not properly developed so they cannot fight infection and there are too few red blood cells to carry oxygen around the body. The disease can be fatal within weeks if left untreated. And now three groups of mutations which cause acute myeloid leukaemia, have been identified by scientists. This could lead to new treatments. You can view the original article here.

This is obviously good thing, no doubt. But I've been playing with the idea what if the giant medicine firms are worse than you might think? Could it be possible that for example a cure for HIV has already been found like 10 years ago and the firms haven't published it yet because they can make more money by producing weaker medicines first. This is of course only speculation and hardly true, hopefully. It's still good to think about these things even if they seem far-fetched.

Immortality?

2011-03-26T21:20:00.001+02:00

Talking about medical science the top priority is obviously to increase the number of healthy living years. But how far can we go in the future? The average lifespan worldwide is already double in comparison what it was 200 years ago, according to this article. And there isn't any signs of slowdown. Is it really immortality we are going for? Atleast for the maximum limit I suppose. In my point of view it would be amazing if I could live over a century, healthy of course.

While the life expectancy increases, the gap between socioeconomic groups is also increasing. The ones with higher educational levels are expected to live longer and those with higher earnings are also in better position when it comes to health care. Especially in Finland the development of this difference hasn't gone in the right way being the main challenge for health care in the next couple of decades.

What comes to immortality, I really don't know whether it's actually as fashinating as it sounds. Imagine yourself as a tree for instance. An old tree living next to some younger plants in a dark forest. Do you feel happy? Don't you feel like you've already filled all of your goals? I think it's definitely the quality and not the amount you should be looking for.