The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Medicine

A Whale of an Invention

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I thought that that this is very cool:

LONDON, United Kingdom (CNN) — Medicine has much to learn from nature. There are literally millions of medical compounds out there that could cure diseases, help improve treatment and even protect us from some types of bacteria.cientists have been tapping into nature’s resources for inspiration on how to treat humans.

Humpback whales, sea cucumbers and Australian red algae are just a few of the species leading the way in modern medicine.

The humpback whale has a design within its heart that could help save the lives of many patients suffering from heart disease.

With a heart that can pump six bath tubs of blood around a circulation system that is 4,500 times as complex as our own, and in only three heartbeats a minute, it has fascinated scientists as to how it manages this feat.

But it was while studying how the whale’s heart is able to do this that Dr Jorge Reynolds– (who placed the first external pacemaker in the body of a priest who survived for an additional 17 years) discovered nano-sized ‘wires’. These wires allow electrical signals to stimulate the heartbeats even through masses of non-conductive blubber.

This discovery could be the key to replacing the traditional pacemaker, scientists say. Instead of having to install a battery-powered pacemaker the whale ‘wires’ could be used to stimulate heart beats.

Whale ‘wires’ could save the extra bouts of surgery, which are currently needed to replace the batteries in pacemakers.

It doesn’t end there. There’s also the added bonus of saving money. With the worldwide market for pacemakers expected to reach $3.7 billion by 2010, this technology, which costs only a few cents to make, could replace pacemakers and save billions.

At Ohio’s Cleveland West Reserve University Jeffrey Capadona has pioneered the creation of a material that could help treat Parkinson’s disease, stroke and spinal chord injuries.

This time the inspiration was the humble sea cucumber, whose skin can change from a rigid to flexible state with ease.

Capadona argues that tiny electrodes implanted into the brain are sometimes used to treat Parkinson’s disease, stroke and spinal chord injuries. But they can become less effective over time as the body creates scar tissue around the hard implant.

Using this new material, which was based on the skin of sea cucumber, could improve treatment as the material can become less rigid and prolong its effectiveness.

Even red algae in Australia have provided inspiration to scientists who now believe they could help control some diseases.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales, Australia, discovered that the red algae found just off the coast was free from biofilms– a congregation of bacteria that are the cause of 70 percent of all human infections.

Read the whole thing.

Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

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Oh really. I never would have guessed.

“Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

So what?

I mean really, who cares? Oh for God’s sake. Don’t you have anything better to do that read this column?

According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn’t get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often lose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don’t respond in a socially appropriate ways.

Presumably, this is a pathology, which in turn suggests that sarcasm is part of human nature and probably an evolutionarily good thing.

How might something so, well, sarcastic as sarcasm, be part of the human social toolbox?”

For the full story please click here.

Lack of Sleep is Dangerous

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Can’t say that I am really all that surprised by any of this. HealthDay reports on the importance of sleep. The article discusses compares modern sleep habits to the past and how attempting to improve productivity by cutting down on sleep is problematic.

“For healthy people, there’s a big temptation to voluntarily restrict sleep, to stay up an hour or two or get up an hour or two earlier,” said Dr. Greg Belenky, director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University Spokane.

“But you’re really reducing your productivity and exposing yourself to risk,” Belenky added.

That’s a message doctors are trying to spread to Americans, including the estimated 40 million people who struggle with some type of sleep disorder each year.

Before Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1880, people slept an average of 10 hours a night. These days, Americans average 6.9 hours of sleep on weeknights and 7.5 hours a night on weekends, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

“The group of people getting optimal sleep is getting smaller and smaller,” said Dr. Chris Drake, senior scientist at the Henry Ford Hospital Sleep Disorders and Research Center in Detroit. “When a person’s sleep drops to six hours or less, that’s when a lot of things become very problematic.”

While experts recommend seven to eight hours of sleep each night, the amount needed for an individual can vary.

But lack of sleep affects a person in one of two ways, Belenky said. First, sleeplessness influences the day-to-day performance of tasks.

“The performance effects are seen immediately,” he said. “You short-change yourself of sleep, and you see the effects immediately. You can make a bad decision. You can miss something. Have a moment’s inattention, and you’re off the road.”

The longer-term effects of sleep deprivation involve a person’s health. Doctors have linked lack of sleep to weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart problems, depression and substance abuse.

“Hormones that process appetite begin to get disorganized,” said Drake, who’s also an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the Wayne State University School of Medicine. There’s a decrease in the amount of leptin, an appetite-suppressing hormone, when a person gets too little sleep. At the same time, ghrelin — a hormone that stimulates appetite — increases with a lack of sleep.

Too little sleep also interferes with the body’s ability to regulate glucose and can cause inflammation leading to heart problems and a rise in blood pressure. “There’s a stress response to being in a sleep loss,” Belenky said.

The types of people not getting enough sleep also break down into two groups. First, there are those who make the conscious choice to go without enough sleep.

“It’s sort of part of the culture,” Belenky said. “People pride themselves on getting little sleep. You’ll hear people bragging, ‘I only need six hours a night.’ So there’s a macho element here.”

On the other hand, there are people who are suffering from sleep disorders. These disorders include:

  • Insomnia, an inability to go to sleep or stay asleep.
  • Sleep apnea, or breathing interruptions during sleep that cause people to wake up repeatedly.
  • Restless legs syndrome, a tingling or prickly sensation in the legs that causes a person to need to move them, interrupting sleep.”

For the full story please click here.

Wanted: Women to eat chocolate For a Year

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Who wants to volunteer for this.

LONDON, England (CNN) — Scientists in the UK are seeking 150 women to eat chocolate every day for a year in the cause of medical research.

The trial, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, eastern England, will test whether a natural compound found in cocoa, the main ingredient of chocolate, could cut the risk of heart disease among women with diabetes.

A Belgian confectionist has created the special chocolate bar containing high levels of flavonoids — a plant compound that has been shown to reduce heart risk factors — to be used in the experiment. Soy, another natural source of flavonoids, has also been added to the bar.

Participants, who must be postmenopausal women under the age of 70, will have their risk of heart disease tested on five occasions during the year to see whether change occurs.

“The hypothesis of this exciting study is that flavonoids may improve the level of protection against heart disease over and above that provided by conventional drugs,” said Dr. Ketan Dhatariya, a consultant in diabetes at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.

“If the trial confirms this, it could have a far-reaching impact on the advice we give to postmenopausal women who have type 2 diabetes.”

For the full story click here.

I Really Should Sleep More

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Reuters reports that lack of sleep can be deadly.

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released on Monday.

Although the reasons are unclear, researchers said lack of sleep appeared to be linked to increased blood pressure, which is known to raise the risk of heart attacks and stroke.

A 17-year analysis of 10,000 government workers showed those who cut their sleeping from seven hours a night to five or less faced a 1.7-fold increased risk in mortality from all causes and more than double the risk of cardiovascular death.