The glory of Spring is in my garden

Breast cancer risk

Decrease your risk of breast cancer by more than 30%. 

AICR tells you how.

Just do not follow the AICR recipes!

Genes For Intelligence Discovered

IQ distribution centered around a mean of 100 shown at left.  By Dmcq - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29433851

Some genes associated with intelligence have been discovered. Abstract:

Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having substantial heritability (0.54) and a confirmed polygenic nature, initial genetic studies were mostly underpowered. Here we report a meta-analysis for intelligence of 78,308 individuals. We identify 336 associated SNPs (METAL P < 5 × 10-8) in 18 genomic loci, of which 15 are new. Around half of the SNPs are located inside a gene, implicating 22 genes, of which 11 are new findings. Gene-based analyses identified an additional 30 genes (MAGMA P < 2.73 × 10-6), of which all but one had not been implicated previously. We show that the identified genes are predominantly expressed in brain tissue, and pathway analysis indicates the involvement of genes regulating cell development (MAGMA competitive P = 3.5 × 10-6). Despite the well-known difference in twin-based heratiblity for intelligence in childhood (0.45) and adulthood (0.80), we show substantial genetic correlation (rg = 0.89, LD score regression P = 5.4 × 10-29). These findings provide new insight into the genetic architecture of intelligence.

Not much you can do about this for your own life of course, other than making the most of what you have.  The mind needs to be exercised as much as the body, and as a middle-aged man I wish that the younger generation would do more reading of books and less social media.

Recipes for poor, recipes for rich

I am on the email list of the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR). 

From time to time, AICR sends me healthy recipes. However, I have not been able to cook even a single one of them. 

Why?

Just check out the most recent recipe, Seared Salmon with Blackberry-Date Chutney.  
Really? Fresh berries, Medjool Dates...

It might be healthy, but it is expensive, and some of the ingredients may not be in the supermarket or bodega near you.

I shared the recipe with my husband, and his re-vamp on the recipe was this:

"I would take canned salmon, throw some mustard, lemon juice on top, and stick it in our grill for a few minutes" 

 I think, I may try his salmon recipe first.

Diet And Psoriasis

At left, typical psoriasis treatment regimens.  By User:Marnanel, after Batrobin - Self-made. Based on the public domain en:Image:Treatment ladder.png, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3235248

While the treatments outlined in the figure (top left) seem to be helpful to most psoriasis patients, those patients should ask their doctors whether a change in diet could be helpful as well.  From the abstract of this paper, we read:

The percentage of patients reporting skin improvement was greatest after reducing alcohol (53.8%), gluten (53.4%), nightshades (52.1%), and after adding fish oil/omega-3 (44.6%), vegetables (42.5%), and oral vitamin D (41%). Specific diets with the most patients reporting a favorable skin response were Pagano (72.2%), vegan (70%), and Paleolithic (68.9%).

The Pagano diet is described here.

Diet Vs. Drugs

In general, I believe that, when and where appropriate, lifestyle changes should be tried first before taking drugs to deal with certain common types of chronic metabolic disorders (but of course always consult with your physician, as "in general" does not apply to every specific case). The experts agree with my opinion:

Many Americans, when faced with a serious health risk like high cholesterol, opt to take a pill rather than adopt healthier living habits.

A middle-aged woman I know is typifies this attitude. Thrilled with how well medication has controlled her rising cholesterol level, she continues to indulge in foods rich in cholesterol-raising saturated fats. She also carries around more body fat, especially risky abdominal fat, than is considered healthful.

I met people like that. For example, some people with Type II Diabetes believe that taking medication gives them green light to load up with cookies, cakes, and doughnuts.

Dr. Philip Greenland, a cardiologist and epidemiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said, “People should be following a heart-healthy diet, keeping their weight under control and exercising regularly. This would be a highly preferable approach. Unfortunately, it’s not the direction we’re going in.”

Admittedly, swallowing a little pill every day is simpler than changing one’s behaviors — and especially one’s eating habits. Yet experts like Dr. Greenland say that even when taking a statin or some other cholesterol-lowering drug, changes in diet and exercise habits are needed to maximize the drug’s benefits. He and others insist that drugs should be a last resort, after lifestyle changes fail to lower serum cholesterol adequately.

I agree. Unfortunately, Dr. Greenland is correct that this is not the direction we are going on. Everything and everyone needs to be medicated, it seems. I recently read a suggestion stating that drugs for treating the consequences of obesity are needed, since it is unrealistic to think people are going to lose weight. In other words, eat excessively, be obese, and then take a pill to try and evade the consequences. Of course, all of these drugs have side effects.  Wouldn’t it be easier to attack the problem rather than its consequences?  Lifestyle changes involving diet and exercise may help the underlying problem, and do so without expensive medications and their side-effects.

Noting that “every food a person might eat either fights or contributes to disease,” Dr. Kopecky said his clinic “tries to get everyone on a Mediterranean diet,” the traditional eating habits of people living in Greece and southern Italy. In addition to its heart benefits, studies suggest the Mediterranean diet may “reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, arthritis and the metabolic syndrome”… “people in Greece eat an average of nine servings a day of antioxidant-rich fruits and vegetables,” and the booklet outlines a long list of potentially healthful foods. Some examples include prunes, blueberries, red grapes, oranges, strawberries, kale, spinach, brussels sprouts, broccoli, beets, red bell peppers, corn and eggplant.

At a minimum, Americans should strive to consume two or more servings of vegetables and two to three or more servings of fresh fruit each day. If “fresh” is not available, “fresh frozen” is the next best option.

Living near the sea, Mediterraneans eat lots of seafood, often daily, and the Mayo diet recommends three or more servings a week of fish or shellfish. One or more servings should be a fatty fish rich in protective fish oils, like salmon, tuna, bluefish, sardines, mackerel and trout.

The white meat of chicken or turkey, eaten without the skin, is the land animal protein of choice, the Mayo Clinic says, with a serving size limited to 3 ounces of cooked meat, about the size of a deck of cards.

Unlike many Americans, people living along the Mediterranean also consume lots of foods with vegetable protein: legumes like split peas, lentils and peanuts, and beans like lima, black, red, kidney and navy…Whole grain breads and cereals are part of the recommended diet, but note that a serving of bread is one slice. Breads should be eaten plain or dipped in olive oil, the Mayo booklet says.

Which brings us back to fats. Olive oil, especially extra-virgin and virgin, the least processed forms, or canola oil should be used in place of butter or margarine…Eggs are back in fashion, consumed in moderation. That means a limit of three to four egg yolks a week, though no limit on egg whites. A good trick when preparing an omelet or scrambled eggs is to use two egg whites for every one yolk…However, red and processed meats should be limited to one three-ounce serving a week. And those cherished treats and desserts — pastries, cakes, doughnuts, cookies, pudding, French fries, potato chips and all sweetened and diet carbonated soft drinks — are best avoided altogether…Likewise, avoid high-fat dairy products…

Of course, what you eat is only half of the health-saving story. Regular physical exercise is a critical ingredient, even if it doesn’t result in weight loss. “Fitness trumps fatness,” Dr. Kopecky said, adding that being fit even while remaining fat markedly reduces cardiovascular risk. He urges parents to establish heart-healthy habits early in their children’s lives. “Patterns for physical activity are set by ages 6 to 9, and healthy eating habits by ages 9 to 12; together, they can result in a much lower risk for developing heart disease as adults,” he said.

This is all sound advice. If radical changes are considered too difficult at first, then go slowly. Reduce rather than eliminate the more unhealthy foods and continue to reduce their intake over time, until they are eliminated or are taken at a reasonable and acceptable frequency. Gradually increase your intake of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Increasingly incorporate physical activity into your daily regimen. Over time, you will have reached the required goals and objectives.

Mediterranean Diet And Metabolic Syndrome

By popsique - Dieta Mediterranea, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1380032

Take a look at this paper.  Key points: First, rather than concentrate on effects of specific nutrients in isolation, it is better to consider a diet as a whole, with all its components working together.  Second, conformation that the typical Western diet contributes to metabolic syndrome. Third, we again see the virtues of the Mediterranean diet.  Fourth, the benefits of that latter diet may be in large part due to "high amounts of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, bioactive polyphenols and dietary fiber."   These are things hopefully we all already know, but confirmation is comforting.  And it should be clear that "high consumption of meat or meat products, snacks, baked desserts and sugar-sweetened beverages" is absolutely no good for anyone's health.  Abstract:

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a cluster of risk factors that significantly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The lack of universally accepted diagnosis criteria makes it difficult to know the real prevalence of MetS in both adult and pediatric population. Lifestyle, especially nutritional habits and physical activity, have been suggested to be independent risk factors for the development of MetS. Recent studies highlight the need to prioritize overall dietary patterns, rather than isolated nutrients, to better appraise the associations between nutritional habits and MetS. In this review we summarize recently published intervention trials and systematic reviews that evaluated the association between overall dietary patterns and the risk of MetS. Westernized dietary patterns, characterized by a high consumption of meat or meat products, snacks, baked desserts and sugar-sweetened beverages, which provide high amounts of saturated fatty acids and simple carbohydrates as added sugars, have been associated with higher risk of MetS. In contrast, more traditional dietary patterns, including the Mediterranean dietary pattern (MDP), characterized by a high consumption of vegetables, fruits, whole cereals and fish are associated with a reduced risk of MetS. The main characteristics of the MDP include a high consumption of nuts and olive oil, resulting in a relatively fat-rich pattern that provides high amounts of mono- and polyunsaturated fatty acids, bioactive polyphenols and dietary fiber. Strong evidence is accumulating to support that a closer conformity with the MDP is inversely associated with the incidence of MetS, cardiovascular risk factors, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

The Vices Of Men

By Vincent van Gogh - Scanned from Smoke: a global history of smoking (2004) ISBN 1-86189-200-4, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3857076

The paper linked here is a fascinating review that looks at three major vices of men – drinking alcohol, being overweight/obese, and smoking tobacco – and how these activities can damage male fertility and also negatively affect the health of their offspring. Mechanisms by which these vices can affect fertility and the health of children include epigenetic changes to sperm DNA and non-coding RNA (changes to the modification to DNA and RNA, not including actual sequence mutation, that can affect gene expression), sperm DNA damage (which can cause actual sequence mutation affecting gene expression), changes in sperm chromatin structure (for example, changes in the chromosome structure that can affect which genes are expressed and which are silenced), and changes in seminal plasma (that can affect the function of the sperm cells themselves).  Abstract:

There is growing evidence from animal and human studies that demonstrate that acquired paternal traits can impair both a male's fertility and the health of his offspring, including advanced age, smoking, stress, trauma, under-nutrition, infection, toxin exposure, and obesity. Curiously, many of these factors manifest as impaired neurological, behavioural, and/or metabolic functioning in offspring. The underlying molecular mechanisms that respond to the paternal environment and act as vectors of intergenerational transmission are beginning to emerge. This review focuses on three vices of men (alcohol consumption, overweight/obesity, and tobacco smoking) that damage fertility and pose risks to offspring health. These vices are not only the three most prevalent but are also leading risk factors for death and disability adjusted life years (DALYs) worldwide. Clearly, any epigenetic/genetic alterations induced by the paternal exposures responsible for transmission need to escape/bypass the substantial post-fertilisation reprogramming that occurs during embryo development. For example paternal obesity alters the molecular composition of sperm, alters the developmental trajectory of resultant embryos, and increase the incidence of obesity and metabolic disorders in offspring. Mechanistic candidates of paternal programming include changes to the sperm epigenome (eg DNA methylation, histone/protamine modifications, and sperm borne small non-coding RNAs), increased sperm DNA damage, aberrant sperm DNA chromatin structure, and components of seminal plasma. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underpinning paternal programming may lead to the development of interventions designed to reduce the disease burden in future generations, who were born to fathers exposed to these initiating factors. Given that these vices are predominantly self-inflicted, interventions aimed at mitigating their consequences are readily identified.

Add this information to all the other reasons to avoid these vices.

Be unreasonable

Yesterday I was searching for YouTube videos on a particular obscure topic and started watching one video that soon turned out to be a nonsense. However, at the very beginning there were two quotes that resonated with me:

All progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw


A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
Pall Romer


The title of my previous post was “Do something you are not ready for”. The title of today’s post is urging you to be unreasonable.

Being unreasonable and doing unexpected things – these are the characteristics of a troublemaker, right? In my work experience, I had been demonstrated over and over again that “troublemakers” are marginalized, penalized and never promoted. In fact, they are reported to HR, complained about to the boss, and called “outliers”. At their jobs, the troublemakers are so “out" of the system/main body that usually they do end up officially out of it – they are fired, the first to be laid off, or forced to quit.

What is wrong with not being unreasonable? Plenty. The opposite of unreasonable is reasonable – someone who does not ask questions and glides with the flow without any resistance. The opposite of a troublemaker is someone who would never tell you that things could be improved on. The opposite of a troublemaker agrees with you, and supposedly, thinks like you.

Years ago, growing in a communist country, my five-year old nephew was watching the TV streaming of the communist party congress (at this time, the only party in existence). He was entranced by the behavior of the men on the screen. Occasionally, the silent and seemingly somnolent dark-suited men would get up as one on their feet, and start applauding and shouting the same words over and over again. Filled with curiosity, the boy asked his grandma who these people were. The communist party, the answer was. What is the communist party, the little guy persisted. His grandma, a smart mathematician, found a brief and simple description, “the communist party is a group of people who all think alike”.

Do you surround yourself with troublemakers or think-alike conformists?

Who are you - a troublemaker or a conformist?

Do not wait for a crisis to trigger the force within you – start being unreasonable today.

Do something you are not ready for

"Do something you are not ready for", this is the advice from Marissa Mayer, the famous Yahoo CEO.

The video I recommend is also in the same spirit: INBOUND 2015 BoldTalks: Lisa Genova "If You Could Do Anything You Wanted"

 I hope that this weekend you do something you are not ready for.

Dismantling academia, part I

Whereas our identities will not be revealed until we are employed, it is not a secret that we hold academic jobs. My husband and I teach and do research. We interact with students every day. We try to impart useful skills and any piece of knowledge we have to our next generations.

However, academia, as we know it, is dying. It is disintegrating right in front of our eyes, and even we are unwilling participants in this process.

How is this happening?

First, there is very little money for research. If you are not highly published and high-visibility researcher today, you are lost. Your research ideas will never see the light, they will never be tested. Maybe in 20 or 30 years from now someone else will come up with the same ideas or may be not.  Countless sparks of creativity are lost today, every day.

Second, teaching in person is over. We will move all instructional material online.

Have you watched The 2015 Atwell Lecture: Stanford President John L. Hennessy? The talk focuses on the future of higher education, and follows the predictions of the honorable president. 

According to him, the students will enjoy short instructional modules of mixed media online and mini-quizzes. This online format may or may not be combined with flipped classroom activities. These are activities, in which students participate on their own - discussions of various scenarios, solving problems, creating small groups to analyze cases. 

This does not sound bad, right? However, when the president of Stanford states that all of these activities could be led by teaching assistants and adjunct faculty to save money, the predictions become sordid. 

The main reason to make these changes? Decrease tuition. Again - this sounds good (especially if you have a child headed for college). However, think about the fact that tuition has increased in the past 20 years, but the ratio faculty:students has not changed. Where does the tuition money go? The money goes to the ever-expanding administration in our schools.

The same administration is disassembling the academia, in order to decrease the payment to faculty, but not their own overblown administrative salaries.

Think about the impact: no academic jobs, no research, no real interaction between highly intelligent faculty and inquisitive students. 

Would the U.S. remain a leader in higher education?

PS
My husband decided to continue this topic in another post. 
I also decided to write PART II on Dismantling academia.

More thoughts and information on college tuition could be found here.

Gut Microbiota, Immune System, And Neurological Disorders

An interesting review article from earlier this year focuses attention on the interplay between gut microbiota, the immune system, and neurological health. The abstract:
 

The diverse collection of microorganisms that inhabit the gastrointestinal tract, collectively called the gut microbiota, profoundly influences many aspects of host physiology, including nutrient metabolism, resistance to infection and immune system development. Studies investigating the gut-brain axis demonstrate a critical role for the gut microbiota in orchestrating brain development and behavior, and the immune system is emerging as an important regulator of these interactions. Intestinal microbes modulate the maturation and function of tissue-resident immune cells in the CNS. Microbes also influence the activation of peripheral immune cells, which regulate responses to neuroinflammation, brain injury, autoimmunity and neurogenesis. Accordingly, both the gut microbiota and immune system are implicated in the etiopathogenesis or manifestation of neurodevelopmental, psychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases, such as autism spectrum disorder, depression and Alzheimer's disease. In this review, we discuss the role of CNS-resident and peripheral immune pathways in microbiota-gut-brain communication during health and neurological disease.

Note: “autism spectrum disorder, depression and Alzheimer's disease.” Likely, going forward, modulation of gut microbiota by diet and/or consumption of active cultures (e.g., in pill form) may be one tool in the arsenal of approaches against these and other neurological disorders.

The eternal evil

Approximately ten years ago I read The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. 

It is a thriller and a gothic novel at the same time, and it weaves in the threads of the ancient European history.

Ten years ago I could not put the book down, it was so addictive and overpowering. However, when I was done with it, I searched in vain for the main message.

The book focuses on the eternal evil in the world. 

In the story, the evil takes the shape of Vlad the Impaler (Drakula), who is still around us, with us and has plans for us. The resistance against, and the victory over, the evil takes years, costs the lives of many, and extracts the last drop of dedication and strength from the main characters. But all of this struggle was lost on me. The eternal evil did not exist around me or even in my mind.

Recently, I re-read the book. Why? Finally, in my life a collided with the evil. No, it was not in the shape and form of Drakula, it was just a regular looking guy at my job, who wrecked our work community, demolished the careers of many colleagues, ousted them from their positions, and tried to do the same to me. 

I finally stared at the face of evil. A vague and depressed feeling of despair and fatality pushed me to take The Historian from the shelve and read it again.

This time, I read the book slowly. I truly enjoyed the cinematographic quality of the narrative, the tours through some of the most picturesque and some of the most obscure places in Europe. I also relived the horror of the characters, who for the first time realized that evil existed.

Finally, a message emerged.  The message was to accept that evil exists and that even when the struggle with evil is unequal and unfair, I should carry it on and defend my identity and dignity. 

Once I read that a true art elicits individual interpretations. The same book or drawing, if true art, would elicit different thoughts, emotions and associations in different people. 

The message I received from The Historian is likely to be a very personal one, but I hope that if you read the book, you will discover your own.