Saturday, March 30, 2013
Bacteria, Weight Loss, Transplant-What Relation?
We all have grown up considering bacteria as bad. They cause many kinds of infections like typhoid to tuberculosis. People still die of diarrhea caused by bacteria or virus.
At the same time there are some bacteria which have made a pact with us and live symbiotically. They are called as commensals. They are on our skin as well as mucosa. The mucosa extends from mouth to the anus. Commensals or the good bacteria play many roles. They help us in getting our daily dose of vitamin, especially B complex. They help to keep the growth of fungi in check. When we take antibiotics the commensals can also get killed increasing the risk for fungal infection, B complex deficiency to happen and at times lead to infection from Clostridium difficile, a more serious kind of bacterial infection.
Long back had mentioned in a post about bonding with bacteria about bacteria being harnessed for mutiple benefits including cancer cure. This was about the research of Ananda M Chakrabarty. You can read it here. Will have to write to him to know the current status of his research.
Apparently there are many other myriad, intriguing ways in which the good bacteria help us. Highlighting below some of the recent research findings.
1. Recently had written about gastric bypass surgery also called Bariatric surgery being a potential cure for diabetes in some patients. You can read that post here. When this gastric bypass surgery is done there is change in the gut microbial population. This change in gut micorbiota is considered to be responsible for weight loss! This has been proven in mice by transferring the gut microbiota to other obese mice which resulted in weight loss and decrease in adiposity.
There is also a strong link between gut microbiota with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
References and further reading:
a) Functional Interactions Between The Gut Microbiota And Host Metabolism.
b) Obesity, Gut Microbiota, Weight Loss, Gastric Bypass Surgery. News article for same can be read here, here, here.
c) Open Access Review Article by Kristina Harris, Amira Kassis, Genevieve Major, Chieh J. Chou.
2. Fecal Transplant? Really? Yes, transferring the donor feces into is more effective for treating recurrent C.difficile infection!
Reference: NEJM, Medscape, 2010
It does seem that nature has far greater mechanism for balance and sustenance of energy! (for lack of better term). There are more than 100 trillion archaeal and bacterial cells in our gut and they represent 1000 different species.
The more we learn the more we know that we do not know!!
I have a personal hypothesis and treatment for gastritis which i will cover in a future post. Also how helminths (worms) have a good role to play in auto-immune diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohns disease and Ulcerative colitis.
Have a healthy life!!
At the same time there are some bacteria which have made a pact with us and live symbiotically. They are called as commensals. They are on our skin as well as mucosa. The mucosa extends from mouth to the anus. Commensals or the good bacteria play many roles. They help us in getting our daily dose of vitamin, especially B complex. They help to keep the growth of fungi in check. When we take antibiotics the commensals can also get killed increasing the risk for fungal infection, B complex deficiency to happen and at times lead to infection from Clostridium difficile, a more serious kind of bacterial infection.
Long back had mentioned in a post about bonding with bacteria about bacteria being harnessed for mutiple benefits including cancer cure. This was about the research of Ananda M Chakrabarty. You can read it here. Will have to write to him to know the current status of his research.
Apparently there are many other myriad, intriguing ways in which the good bacteria help us. Highlighting below some of the recent research findings.
1. Recently had written about gastric bypass surgery also called Bariatric surgery being a potential cure for diabetes in some patients. You can read that post here. When this gastric bypass surgery is done there is change in the gut microbial population. This change in gut micorbiota is considered to be responsible for weight loss! This has been proven in mice by transferring the gut microbiota to other obese mice which resulted in weight loss and decrease in adiposity.
There is also a strong link between gut microbiota with cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
References and further reading:
a) Functional Interactions Between The Gut Microbiota And Host Metabolism.
b) Obesity, Gut Microbiota, Weight Loss, Gastric Bypass Surgery. News article for same can be read here, here, here.
c) Open Access Review Article by Kristina Harris, Amira Kassis, Genevieve Major, Chieh J. Chou.
2. Fecal Transplant? Really? Yes, transferring the donor feces into is more effective for treating recurrent C.difficile infection!
Reference: NEJM, Medscape, 2010
It does seem that nature has far greater mechanism for balance and sustenance of energy! (for lack of better term). There are more than 100 trillion archaeal and bacterial cells in our gut and they represent 1000 different species.
The more we learn the more we know that we do not know!!
I have a personal hypothesis and treatment for gastritis which i will cover in a future post. Also how helminths (worms) have a good role to play in auto-immune diseases, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohns disease and Ulcerative colitis.
Have a healthy life!!
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Pain, Perception and Health
Our behavior is determined either by pursuit of pleasure or avoidance of pain. We seek multiple avenues to avoid pain both physical and emotional. The success or failure determines our future behavior and experience.
Physical pain, especially acute, is to guide us to stay healthy. It forces us to rest that part of the body in pain till healing has happened. It at times brings our attention to the pathology and forces us to seek medical help. Back pain, neck pain, tooth ache, sprains, muscular pains belong to this class which supposedly should alter our behavior to become healthy.
Sometimes we voluntarily endure pain to gain benefit. While exercising if one wants to increase muscle strength and endurance,one needs to exercise till the edge of one's capability. It is when you think that you cannot do one more bench press or pull up that you get the benefit. Even during this endeavor one needs to be alert not to hurt oneself. Muscle, ligament tears can result because of exercising in the wrong way! Also one should not exercise when one has fever, gastroenteritis or other ailment as the reserve ability of the body is less.
This piece of writing is prompted by the severe malaise and body ache i had yesterday on account of fever and bowel disturbance. But more than that it is the account of pain by Dan Ariely.
I started by mentioning how acute pain is there to help us! But are all acute pains helpful? How does acute pain experienced by burns patient helpful?
To read the account of Dan Ariely's encounter with pain click here.
In his account he does mention that the memory of social\emotional pain is stronger than physical pain.
Intend to research more on the topic of pain-all forms and varieties. On a day to day basis see the way my father endures pain caused by Parkinson disease, both chronic and acute. Multiple medications at times relieve his pain or are overwhelmed. I would say pain relief is both an art and science!
My mother who suffers from osteoarthritis has almost ceased to complain pain from that disease after dad started his journey of Parkinson. Her ability to tolerate pain has increased or is that she considers it futile to complain!!
As i research and ponder more will share my thoughts. Will like to end for now with few points:
1.Our ability to tolerate pain is limited.
2. Our will power supply everyday is limited. So we need to prioritize its use.
3. Our ability to empathize and sympathize is also limited!
Are they capabilities which can be increased? Can we measure them?
I personally believe that one can increase those capabilities!! For this belief i will have to research methods to measure it and do some experiment!
Physical pain, especially acute, is to guide us to stay healthy. It forces us to rest that part of the body in pain till healing has happened. It at times brings our attention to the pathology and forces us to seek medical help. Back pain, neck pain, tooth ache, sprains, muscular pains belong to this class which supposedly should alter our behavior to become healthy.
Sometimes we voluntarily endure pain to gain benefit. While exercising if one wants to increase muscle strength and endurance,one needs to exercise till the edge of one's capability. It is when you think that you cannot do one more bench press or pull up that you get the benefit. Even during this endeavor one needs to be alert not to hurt oneself. Muscle, ligament tears can result because of exercising in the wrong way! Also one should not exercise when one has fever, gastroenteritis or other ailment as the reserve ability of the body is less.
This piece of writing is prompted by the severe malaise and body ache i had yesterday on account of fever and bowel disturbance. But more than that it is the account of pain by Dan Ariely.
I started by mentioning how acute pain is there to help us! But are all acute pains helpful? How does acute pain experienced by burns patient helpful?
To read the account of Dan Ariely's encounter with pain click here.
In his account he does mention that the memory of social\emotional pain is stronger than physical pain.
Intend to research more on the topic of pain-all forms and varieties. On a day to day basis see the way my father endures pain caused by Parkinson disease, both chronic and acute. Multiple medications at times relieve his pain or are overwhelmed. I would say pain relief is both an art and science!
My mother who suffers from osteoarthritis has almost ceased to complain pain from that disease after dad started his journey of Parkinson. Her ability to tolerate pain has increased or is that she considers it futile to complain!!
As i research and ponder more will share my thoughts. Will like to end for now with few points:
1.Our ability to tolerate pain is limited.
2. Our will power supply everyday is limited. So we need to prioritize its use.
3. Our ability to empathize and sympathize is also limited!
Are they capabilities which can be increased? Can we measure them?
I personally believe that one can increase those capabilities!! For this belief i will have to research methods to measure it and do some experiment!
Sunday, March 24, 2013
How To Really Measure a Company's Innovation Prowess
How To Really Measure a Company's Innovation Prowess
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | MARCH 22, 2013
http://pulse.me/s/jLos1
Who is the world's most innovative company? The editors of Fast Company say Nike. Last year, number crunchers at Forbes found that Salesforce.com is t... read more
---
http://pulse.me
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW | MARCH 22, 2013
http://pulse.me/s/jLos1
Who is the world's most innovative company? The editors of Fast Company say Nike. Last year, number crunchers at Forbes found that Salesforce.com is t... read more
---
http://pulse.me
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Health and Freedom
We all want to be healthy. Some of us are fortunate and are healthy even when we do not make any particular effort to be healthy. Some of us stay healthy when we strive to be healthy. Some of us are unfortunate and health eludes us. This is especially true in old age.
What is health? WHO defines it as achieving a state of complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing. What is that we gain by staying healthy?
This may sound as a dumb question but as i ponder on it, i have more than one answer. The simplest would be health is required to indulge in pleasurable activities. An hedonistic approach which brings us face to face with the fact that most pleasurable activities when overdone result in ill-health!
Being healthy gives us economic liberty. This is government and societies view. Society benefits from healthy individuals who contribute economically.
Being a human what is the greatest benefit of being healthy. Good health gives us freedom. The freedom to do the things one wants to do. This is only realized when one sees people in sickness from close quarters. Paradigm changing events are at times related to surviving a life threatening disease. Because this enables one to choose rightly with the freedom one has.
The onus of staying healthy lies with the individual. It is individuals responsibility to stay healthy. But what can governments do to aid its citizens to stay healthy? How can societies promote healthy living?
Maternal health, sanitation, nutrition are some of the basic aspects which needs to ensured for all citizens. Health of children is another aspect. These are the foundation and must.
But what about health of adults and elderly? Can we create right incentives for them to stay healthy?
The question of freedom comes up again!!
I should have the freedom to smoke......
I should have the freedom to drink soda.......
I should have the freedom to eat junk food..........
The question of freedom, informed choice brings us to a conflict.
Personally i do not believe in banning anything. At the same time i accept that human beings are not as rational as they appear. The choices we make may be detrimental to us and the society. Our ability to analyze information into knowledge and convert that into wisdom is restricted and limited.
When such is our ability can we trick ourselves to lead healthy life. Guess so. Peer pressure, incentives from society, companies and government can probably modify our behavior.
Reference:
1. Offline: Why governments should take health more seriously
2.What Big Soda Learned From the Marlboro Man
3. http://www.hdassoc.org/site/files/351/105796/364911/499774/Active_Policy_Attention.pdf
Friday, March 08, 2013
Empowering and Respecting Women
We are all selfish but fail to understand what actions are best for selfishness! This holds true for any family, state, nation or union. Let me stop here for this is not to dvelve into virtue of selfishness.
History, tradition and certain bias can mislead us to underestimate and undervalue women. This systemic problem needs to be addressed at multiple levels from education of children to ensuring governmental policies and interventions to empower women.
Studies have consistently shown that empowering women leads to better health, improved childhood development, economic prosperity, and security across all sectors of society. Then why do we fail to act in this direction. As i said previously we fail to act in our best interest.
Respect for women for all that they do and all that they wish to do needs to be engraved in our brain.
Recommend that the following report be read Third Billion Index .
This whole week i have read many inspiring stories about women leaders. One needs to spread these stories wide and far just to educate each and everyone.
Let us make this world a better place by empowering, trusting, respecting and valuing women.
Happy International Women's Day!
History, tradition and certain bias can mislead us to underestimate and undervalue women. This systemic problem needs to be addressed at multiple levels from education of children to ensuring governmental policies and interventions to empower women.
Studies have consistently shown that empowering women leads to better health, improved childhood development, economic prosperity, and security across all sectors of society. Then why do we fail to act in this direction. As i said previously we fail to act in our best interest.
Respect for women for all that they do and all that they wish to do needs to be engraved in our brain.
Recommend that the following report be read Third Billion Index .
This whole week i have read many inspiring stories about women leaders. One needs to spread these stories wide and far just to educate each and everyone.
Let us make this world a better place by empowering, trusting, respecting and valuing women.
Happy International Women's Day!
Bitcoins-Virtual Currency
The last time i was fascinated with virtual currency was when i was hooked to Second Life. It has been a long time since i have visited that site but a quick google search confirmed that it is still active and people are using Linden. Linden is the currency of Second Life!
In last couple of months have been reading about Bitcoins. This is not like Linden, for it is a digital currency being used in real world!
As of today it is valued more than 500 million USD! It was started in 2009 by group of anonymous programmers and wikipedia lists one name Satoshi Nakamoto. The smaller units of bitcoin is satoshi.
The emergence of bitcoin and valuation of it is a learning in commerce and economics. There are skeptics who consider it a ponzi scheme and only time will tell what it will turn out to be.
There is something called as Bitcoin mining and bitcoin miner!
Also now you can make purchases on Amazon using bitcoin.
You are reading this because bitcoin is up over 230 percent since the beginning of the year and up 40 percent this week!!
For those who want to know more....
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
http://www.businessinsider.com/global-economics-lesson-from-bitcoin-2013-3
http://www.techhive.com/article/2030174/bitcoin-processor-links-web-shopping-carts-to-amazoncoms-shipping.html
In last couple of months have been reading about Bitcoins. This is not like Linden, for it is a digital currency being used in real world!
As of today it is valued more than 500 million USD! It was started in 2009 by group of anonymous programmers and wikipedia lists one name Satoshi Nakamoto. The smaller units of bitcoin is satoshi.
The emergence of bitcoin and valuation of it is a learning in commerce and economics. There are skeptics who consider it a ponzi scheme and only time will tell what it will turn out to be.
There is something called as Bitcoin mining and bitcoin miner!
Also now you can make purchases on Amazon using bitcoin.
You are reading this because bitcoin is up over 230 percent since the beginning of the year and up 40 percent this week!!
For those who want to know more....
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
http://www.businessinsider.com/global-economics-lesson-from-bitcoin-2013-3
http://www.techhive.com/article/2030174/bitcoin-processor-links-web-shopping-carts-to-amazoncoms-shipping.html
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