Hope for wannabe writers and a bit of a laugh for anyone

“Our united opinion is entirely against the book.

It is very long and rather old-fashioned.

Does it have to be about a whale?”

                                             From a publisher’s rejection of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

 

 

                            “The pedestal upon which humans place themselves

in terms of neurological abilities

continues to crumble.”

Professor Malcom Kennedy

                

I always felt an affinity for the T.J. Maxx slogan “never the same place twice.” Indeed, my essential necessities (glasses, pens, cell phone, current book I’m reading, etc.) are truly never the same place twice.

Consider then, the clever Cuttlefish. They are invertebrates and, therefore, have no spine. But their brains are among the largest of the cephalopods, and they can remember “the what, where, and when specific things happened right up to their final days of life, according to new research” as confirmed by the lead study author, Dr Alexandra Schnell from the University of Cambridge. Equally interesting, though not relevant to this study, the amazing Cuttlefish have three hearts, eight arms, blue-green blood, regenerating limbs, and the ability to camouflage and exert self-control.

You’ve probably heard of the Stanford marshmallow test in which a child is offered one marshmallow to eat immediately or, better yet, two marshmallows if the kid can sit with the first untouched treat in an otherwise empty room for twenty minutes in order to get the second one as well.

The cuttlefish were trained to approach a certain part of the tank where two meals were offered.  One entrée was king prawns served hourly, but these are not their favorite dish. The other offer was grass prawns which they much prefer; these were available every three hours in another tank location. Cuttlefish live two years, and the youngsters (a year or less) were tested along with the geriatric bunch (between 1-2 years).  Both groups were easily taught where the prize was no matter how young or old. The elders, however, outdid the young’uns in remembering where the food was left as the locations kept changing after the initial training.

“As they get older,” summarizes Dr. Schnell, “They show signs of declining muscle function and appetite, but it appears that no matter their age, they can remember what they ate, where and when, and use this to guide their future feeding decisions.” On the other hand, our memory center, the two sea-horse shaped hippocampi in the temporal lobes of our brain, deteriorate along with our hearing, our knees, and many other parts, and we tend to lose track of past experiences including the where, when, and who of it all.  Past experiences such as where did I last see my walking shoes and perhaps my prescription glasses are on the radiator in the bathroom.

 

A "Cat in the Hat" moment

Honey, I love you, but this is out of control!

With some difficulty,
I scooped semi-crystallized honey
with a knife
out of the jar
and onto my yogurt.

A large glop fell to the floor
as I reached for a spoon
to scrape off the knife.
that swiped at the blob

that clung to my elbow
and stuck to the table
as I started to eat.

A newspaper clung
to the drips on my sleeve, 

soft sucking noises 

arose from my shoes
as I walked to the sink
'cross honey-streaked floor.

My partner pointed out 

with non-sticky finger
a huge dollop on counter
not even in range
of the gooey affair.

 

Do nine gin-soaked raisins a day keep arthritis pain away?  And what about COVID, could tipsy raisins be a decent anti-inflammatory medicine for the infected?  At least one woman recently vouched for that.

Reading about this raisin product is intriguing, particularly on drunkenraisins.com.  This company’s website promotes their “21^st century recipe” as opposed to the longstanding homemade variety.  The latter involves store-bought golden raisins soaked in any old gin for nine days, then eaten each morning, 9-at-a-time. DrunkenRaisins, however, uses a “Choice Jumbo Golden Raisin”, adds a ‘correct’ juniper berry influenced gin, then marinates the dried fruit in a sealed container with honey and imported cinnamon bark oil.  Each batch takes 10-14 days to finish ‘giving birth to the magic of one of the best anti-inflammatory foods available.”

My mouth is watering, and I don’t even really care for gin.  This goodbye to aching joints habit dates back 100 years.  Now is this placebo or an actual non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug that needs no rx?  Placebo or not, it could very well be a very pleasant way to dial down arthritic pain.

Perhaps you’ve heard of Lucia DeClerck; she’s recently made headline news.  On her 105^th birthday in January, she was diagnosed with COVID, one day after getting her second Pfizer vaccine.  She isolated for 2 weeks, had very few symptoms, missed her chats with her friends, then went back to her room in a New Jersey nursing home, all the while never missing a single morning dose of her nine golden raisins which she’s been taking for decades.

Was it the vaccine? Prayer and no junk food which she practices daily?  The raisins?  Doesn’t really matter does it…vaccines 1 &2 with rising protection, anti-inflammatory juniper berry phenols toning down an overactive immune system, and/or belief in raisins and religion.  There you have it, whatever ‘it’ is.

Interested?  There are drunken raisin recipes all over the internet, or call DrunkenRaisins.  They’ll ship a super fresh batch to you within 2 to 3 days. 

 Ugh says the retired doctor who got the two-dose Pfizer vaccines in March and just found out this news regarding Delta Variant:

• Pfizer vaccines only effective against Delta at 42%.  Still seems to minimize severe illness, hospitalization, or death.  Other MDs who have gotten the Delta variant tended to have a rather bothersome illness for about 8 days.
• All it takes is less than 5 seconds to catch the darned variant, and the spreader, whether ill or infected without symptoms, tends to infect 8-10 other people.

 

Odoribacteraceae

 

“In people over the age of 100, an enrichment

in a distinct set of gut microbes generate

unique bile acids.”

Professor Kenya Honda

 

New research on the gut microbiome of old folks in Japan was reported in the latest issue of Nature Research. The scientists analyzed the gut bacteria of more than 300 adults in Japan, including 160 over 100 years-old, 112 between 85 and 89, and 47 under 55 years-old. Principal investigator Honda and colleagues found that bacterial isolates in fecal samples from centenarians were often enriched with microbes capable of synthesizing potent bile acids that were not present in the younger groups. Odoribacteraceae strains in particular came out as star producers of isoallo-lithocholic acid (LCA). LCA is a potent antimicrobial against gram-positive, multidrug-resistant strains such as Clostridioides difficile and Enterococcus faecium.

The conclusion of this study, per Prof. Honda: “There are centenarian-specific members of the gut microbiota which, rather than representing a mere consequence of aging, might actively contribute to resistance against pathogenic infection and other environmental stressors.” 

There are a host of responses to this study.  Many readers had their own theories of aging well.  One young lady declared that skinny was the perfect answer, and her daily intake, delivered in anorectic detail, made me cringe.  Another woman, struggling with C. diff unresponsive to various medications, took matters into her own hands.  She announced to her daughter that she needed a stool sample from her. The daughter, first appalled, then complied. The sample was inserted into one end or another (we got no info over which), and mom felt increasingly normal in a gut sort of way within four days!

I’d like to get ahold of a distinct set of those Odori-bugs, but alas, no search on Amazon or Google offered hope for bottles of such supplements just yet.  

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Repurposed Drugs Offer Hope for Preventing/Treating COVID

A new approach to the war on COVID has potential according to a study published in the June 30^th issue of Science Advances. The University of Cambridge is investigating the possibility that a host of drugs, already approved for other uses, may uncover new weapons against this pandemic.  Historically, many drugs originally developed to favorably outwit one disease have proven useful in other ways.  For instance, zidovudine, now known as azidothymidine (AZT), did not work as a cancer drug but 20 years later proved to work well for the prevention and treatment of HIV.

Cambridge researchers used computer models to screen some 2,000 drugs as potential anti-viral treatments.  The researchers narrowed the field down to 200, then chose a subset of 40 to test in the lab using cell lines cultivated from humans and non-human primates; all cell lines were infected with SARS-CoV-2.  Two drugs in particular—proguanil, an anti-malaria drug, and sulfasalazine, a medication for rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis—successfully stopped COVID viral replication in the cells.

Another study, this one from the Tokyo University of Science, has also come up with a duo of drugs with great promise, perhaps even better than the Cambridge findings. These researchers also tested a panel of already approved drugs in similarly infected cell model cultures. They found a different duo of drugs that effectively blocked the virus: the anti-inflammatory drug cepharanthine and the HIV viral protease* inhibitor nelfinavir. Cepharanthine inhibited SARS-CoV-2 entry into host cells by blocking viral entrance into target cells while nelfinavir suppressed viral replication through protease inhibition.

This picture shows that cepharanthine in the upper left-hand corner sporting fashionable pale turquoise and grey blocks the ugly brown COVID spike from entering the cell. In the lower left-hand corner, a lump of lovely lime green nelfinavir enters the cell and rips apart the protease which stops viral reproduction. The color choices are for artistic purposes and do not represent the actual cells, virions, or drugs.

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*Protease is an enzyme that breaks down proteins into shorter molecules called peptides which allows the virus to construct new proteins in order to replicate new virions inside the host cell.

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I like coffee a lot even though I can hardly taste it!  My dentist can’t stand the coffee stains on the inner surfaces of my teeth; apparently stains are good places for bad biofilms.  Biofilms are ‘communities’ of bacteria co-existing perhaps with a dash of fungi, a smidgen of bacteriophages, and volunteer viruses. They are held together by extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) and tethered to inert surfaces such as teeth, catheters, prostheses, and implants. Home for the wee beasties becomes long-term quarters in what one article on PubMed.gov calls “the biofilm lifestyle.”  More on biofilms in an upcoming post. Meanwhile, for the sake of my dentist, I dilute my morning coffee with water, or drink it with soy milk. I still can’t taste it, and I still love it.

 But let’s move on to important coffee news.  Researchers from the University of South Australia have found that drinking too much coffee can contribute to osteoarthritis, joint disease, and obesity. This same group determined that six cups a day was the absolute safe level of consumption. Another study, conducted at the Australian Centre for Precision Health at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, was based on 17,702 participants aged 37 to 73 and their relationship with coffee. Principal investigator Kitty Pham declared “We consistently found that higher coffee consumption was significantly associated with reduced brain volume” and increased risk of dementia. They declare “Rethink your drink” if your consumption comes even close to six cups a day. Earlier studies declared coffee drinking protects the brain from dementia. What is it then: A good-for-the-brain drink or bad? Six cups too much or just fine?

 To end on an up-note, a prospective study over 12 years determined that coffee does not cause cardiac arrhythmias. Analyzing data from UK Biobank, the investigators determined “each additional cup of habitual coffee consumed was associated with a 3% lower risk of incident arrhythmia.” That sounds completely ridiculous to me, but it was printed in JAMA in July of this year, so could it be so?

I’m down to one diluted cup per day.  Heaven forbid they ever investigate dark chocolate!

 

 

Oh Yuck

We’re not even safe in our beds!  A Medical Microbiology lecturer at the University of Westminster, Manal Mohammed gives us too much information when it comes to bedtime. She notes:

1.    We shed around 5 million skin cells each night in bed. (How can they know this?) The microscopic dust mites have a field day eating those old dead cells. The mite droppings can cause itching, allergies, and asthma.

2.    Those dead cells, along with saliva, sweat, and dandruff, is the perfect environment for bacteria, viruses and fungi.

3.    Gram negative bacteria like Staph aureus and E. Coli can find their way into your bed!

 Ick, ick, ick.  Care to know more? You can find her complete article at:

https://theconversation.com/your-bed-probably-isnt-as-clean-as-you-think-a-microbiologist-explains-163513

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