Kiss Kiss Kiss, Reeking What You’ve Eaten!?

It’s no secret, I’ve dated a stinker, a wonderfilled woman – full of talent and wit – who had the misfortune of suffering from halitosis, a condition that turned my bog-standard-bipolarized-blond-bird into a slinky-stink-bomb. Brooksy’s condition was initiated by a specific combination of food, give this girl a combo of  garlic and red wine and you’d have to stand five feet away to avoid the pong, no joke, possibly THE most rancid smell my nose has ever been exposed to!

Most of us have had a similar experience, an outwardly gorgeous buddy who turns our nose. So were does the stink come from; diet, perspiration or bad personal hygiene, are we truly what we eat? ::

Alternative medicines like Ayurveda and Homeopathy reckon that toxins in our body – from impure or improperly digested food – can cause our body odour and breath to pong. According to mainstream medicine and science however, the causes of bad body odour are not yet fully understood.

Modern medicine says that bodily smells are caused by numerous factors working in combination, including the chemicals in sweat reacting with bacteria that have made a home on our skin. And while science is busily looking at our diet, conclusions are currently sparse. It’s easy to imagine that what we eat might sneak out through perspiration :: Read the full article »»»»

Extra Brain Cells May Explain Autism

A new study suggests that Autism starts in the womb, researchers have found a remarkable 67 per cent increase in the total number of brain cells in the prefrontal cortex of new born babies with ASD.

Children with autism appear to have too many cells in a key area of the brain needed for communication and emotional development, say US researchers. Their findings help explain why young children with autism often develop brains that are larger or heavier than normal. Dr Eric Courchesne says the finding of excess brain cells in the prefrontal cortex explains brain overgrowth in autism, and hints at why brain function in this area is disrupted. Courchesne, of the University of California San Diego Autism Center of Excellence, and colleagues, have also found dozens of genes that may raise the risk of autism. But genetic causes only explain 10 per cent to 20 per cent of cases, and recent studies have pointed to environmental factors, possibly in the womb, as a potential trigger. The team found excess brain cells in each child with autism they studied, says Courchesne. And the brains of the autistic children also weighed more than those of typically developing children of the same age.

Researchers searching for an early indicator of autism say they’ve discovered a promising possibility, an impairment in the ability of the brain’s right and left hemispheres to communicate with each other. The researchers did brain imaging scans – fMRIs – on 29 sleeping toddlers with autism, 30 typically developing kids and 13 children with significant language delays, but not autism. All were between 1 and 4 years old. The scans showed that the language areas of the left and right hemispheres of the autistic toddlers’ brains were less “in sync” than the hemispheres of the typical kids and the children with other language delays. The weaker the synchronization, the more severe the autistic child’s communication difficulties :: Read the full article »»»»

Coffee Consumption Associated With Decreased Risk of Depression in Women

We’ve been waiting for this discovery for years, patiently sipping away at our cuppa with the hopeful thought that it might one day be of benefit, we’re halfway there. Women who drink four cups of coffee a day are 20 per cent less likely to become depressed than women who rarely drink coffee.

Caffeine is the most frequently used central nervous system stimulant in the world, and approximately 80 percent of consumption is in the form of coffee, according to background information in the article. Previous research, including one prospective study among men, has suggested an association between coffee consumption and depression risk. Because depression is a chronic and recurrent condition that affects twice as many women as men, including approximately one of every five U.S. women during their lifetime, “identification of risk factors for depression among women and the development of new preventive strategies are, therefore, a public health priority,” write the authors. They sought to examine whether, in women, consumption of caffeine or certain caffeinated beverages is associated with the risk of depression. Read the full article »»»»

Nicotinamide Mononucleotide Helps Reverse Diabetes in Female Mice

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have restored normal blood sugar metabolism in diabetic mice using a compound the body makes naturally. The finding suggests that it may one day be possible for people to take the compound in pill form to treat or even prevent type 2 diabetes. The naturally occurring enzyme, Nicotinamide Mononucleotide  - NMN – plays an important role in how cells use energy. Researcher Shin-ichiro Imai says this discovery holds promise for people because the mechanisms that NMN influences are largely the same in mice and humans.

“After giving NMN, glucose tolerance goes completely back to normal in female diabetic mice,” says Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, associate professor of developmental biology. “In males, we see a milder effect compared to females, but we still see an effect. These are really remarkable results. NMN improves diabetic symptoms, at least in mice.”

Kathryn F. Mills, research lab supervisor said, “We also injected older healthy mice and found that they weren’t adversely affected. It’s good to know that even if the mice are not diabetic, giving NMN is not going to harm them.” Read the full article »»»»

Big Thoughts For Tiny Particles: Nanomedicine

Physicist Richard Feynman in 1959 declared that we would one day learn to move individual atoms around, place them precisely where we want and bond them together. By doing this, we could build, tear apart, or modify any object made of atoms.  1959 might seem like a world away, Mr Feynman of course was spot on. Though we’re not sure his application as spelled out was of the human body, spot on by a broad sweep is however, still spot on :: Read the full article »»»»

Researchers Turn Back The Aging Clock on Adult Stem Cells

Ageing, it’s one of those things we’ve simply grown accustomed too: we’re born, we live, we get old and we cease to live. Ageing is a complex process that involves every cell and organ in the body and that leads to the deterioration of many body functions over the lifespan of an individual. With age, for example, the skin loses its elasticity and injuries heal more slowly than in childhood. The same holds true for bones, which turn brittle with age and take much longer to heal when fractured.  Although the vulnerability to infectious disease and cancer is caused by a decline of the immune system, the latter is in turn a product of interactions among haematopoietic stem cells and the microenvironments in the bone marrow and the thymus, as well as in the mucous lining of the bronchus and gut systems. Hence, all ageing phenomena—tissue deterioration, cancer and propensity to infections—can be interpreted as signs of ageing at the level of somatic stem cells. As the regenerative prowess of a living organism is determined by the ability and potential of its stem cells to replace damaged tissue or worn-out cells, a living organism is therefore as old as its stem cells.

Mammals, and especially humans, have paid a high price for climbing up the evolutionary ladder: they have lost much of the regenerative power found in lower animals. Whereas humans have only limited potential to rejuvenate their ailing tissues, other organisms show amazing regenerative abilities. On decapitation, planaria will regenerate a new head within five days. Hydra, a small tubular freshwater animal that spends its life clinging to rocks, is able to produce two new organisms within 7–10 days when its body is halved. After losing a leg to a predator, salamanders recover with a new limb within a matter of days. Animals with staggering regenerative potential either have an abundance of stem cells or can de-differentiate specialized tissue cells into stem cells. It has been estimated that about 20% of a flatworm consists of stem cells, and hydra is a “kind of permanent embryo”. Salamanders use a completely different mechanism. When they are in urgent need of a new limb, they convert adult differentiated cells back to an embryonic undifferentiated state. These cells then migrate to the site of injury where they regenerate the missing part. Read the full article »»»»

The Science of Entrepreneurialism

Outwardly it may seem that two vocations couldn’t be further apart. Throughout my life I’ve known a heap of really smart people, people with really high IQ’s that excelled in school, that went on to become intellectually impressive. I’ve also met and worked with a lot of extremely successful entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs worth 7, 8 and even 9 figures. Intriguingly, the two groups are pretty much mutually exclusive. With one exception, SCIENTISTS. Why? :: Read the full article »»»»