My Trainer, My Desk

Everybody get on your feet,
You make me nervous
When you're in your seat
-----Jerry Jeff Walker


    
     What on earth would our Ice Age ancestors think?  Genetically identical to our 21st century selves, they were perfectly suited to a life of obligatory physical exercise, periodic famine, and unrelenting cold.  We, on the other hand, no longer running from predators or chasing our dinner, pass our days on the job and at leisure slouched in our chairs, inert, well-fed, and warm.
     My Fitbit, a pedometer-plus, tallies steps, stairs, and calories. Gizmos within know when I am active and know when I am not.  After a day at home or at work, add housework or laundry plus a walk and a trip to the store, I might manage to reach the 10,000 step goal. Syncing with Fitbit on-line turns daily data into a pie chart of motion, gray for sedentary with blue, yellow, and pink for light, moderate and heavy action.  Alas, my so-called busy day is awash in inert--big yawning gray, a thin slice of sky, a sliver of sun, and one slash of pink.
     Perhaps it's time for on beyond Fitbit. A smart--and very pricey!--desk might be the next best thing to a personal trainer.  For several thousand dollars, you can buy a work station at stirworks.com that greets you by name, gently nags you to move, keeps a log of your day, week, and month, and advises you how long until you're next scheduled to fidget.  When you've been too still for too long, the thing takes a 'whisperbreath', heaving beneath your laptop like an impatient dog past due for a walk.
     Sit-stand workstations are today’s medical news; studies prove they decrease on-the-job sedentary behavior (SB), may or may not affect productivity, and mostly don’t cause workplace injuries.  Ingenius, creepy, or just a sign of our times? 

"Turn your DNA into art"

The perfect personalized gift this holiday season--a work of art based on the recipient's unique genetic sequence. If you can only figure out some sneaky way to swab their inner cheek without raising suspicions, you then mail off the sample to Yonder Biology who will turn it into a "beautiful genetic image" on photographic paper, stretched canvas, or acrylic face mount at prices ranging from $99-$1,199. Add a "Me" t-shirt for an extra $34!

Whether or not you choose this route to self-expression, it's a fun web-site. Check-out:
Yonder Biology.

Don't cool your jets!

I get daily discount deals by e-mail. Nothing wrong with these bargains, but who on earth writes their ad copy? This one was too rich to keep to myself:

When pilot lights go out, it is because they lack ample
core strength, a failure that results in uncooked pilots.
Keep your pilot light burning bright with today's deal
at "X" pilates studio.

Back away from the computer, ma'am!

Received from a patient today:

"I am still having a very upset stomach and some episodes of diarrhea (3 to 4 a day now). They are happening after each email now instead of just in the evening."

Oil pulling testimonial

I've written before about oil pulling, an ayurvedic practice that involves swishing a mouthful of oil around in the mouth for 10-20 minutes first thing in the a.m. One web-site proclaims that "regular application of this treatment by reversing [this natural bodily intrusive element evinced by the microflora] so that wellness is the dominant state of the human body is likely to increase the average human lifespan to approximately 150 years, double the present life expectancy."

Well I don't know about that, I don't even get what this authority is talking about. A small study from India(1) concluded, however, that oil-pulling daily for 10 minutes caused a significant decrease in oral Streptococcus mutans (the bacteria that promotes tooth decay) within 1 week of starting the practice.

I recently visited my dental hygienist for a check-up and cleaning. I have practiced daily oil pulling with sesame oil for 5 of the 7 months since my last visit with her. The conclusion? Less stain despite daily coffee, no difference in plaque, very healthy gums, and--best-of-all for me--no sensitivity in the lower teeth to her merciless probing. She was so impressed by the sparkle of my front teeth (so shiny, per her, "they look like glass") that she plans to recommend the practice to others.
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1. Asokan, S et al. Effect of oil pulling on Streptococcus mutans count in plaque and saliva using Dentocult SM Strip mutans test: A randomized, controlled, triple-blind study. J Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry 2008. Vol 26, Issue 1, pgs 12-17.

Bacterial contamination from toilet flushing

I recently completed a long car trip, and thus spent more than a moment in public restrooms. Once in the stall, purse and road atlas in hand, I faced each time the dilemma of where to stow my gear whilst completing my business. Some facilities have elegant shelves to hold these items, others a hook on the door, some no place at all but the more or less unsavory floor. Imagine then how floored I was to read this item in the latest issue of Health Magazine(1):

"Don't put your purse on the bathroom floor; E coli in spray droplets following a flush may land on it. Hang it in the stall, and clean it inside and out weekly with a disinfecting spray or wipe."

Flushed with doubt, I wondered if this was all some sensationalist piece of journalistic nonsense designed to sell magazines and Wireless Wipes. But alas, check this out and think it over the next time you set your bag on the only dry spot on the tiled floor of a public can:

Microbiologists in the UK (2) contaminated "the sidewalls and bowl water of a domestic toilet to mimic the effects of soiling after an episode of acute diarrhoea." In other words, they dumped a gelatinous turdoid sort of matter containing fecal pathogens into the toilet bowl. Cultures of the bowl water and porcelain surfaces confirmed that significant colonies of the little darlings were clinging for dear life therein. They then flushed, and subsequent testing of the toilet AND the surrounding air confirmed that the bacteria had diminished in numbers in the actual toilet (thank heavens) but that a significant number of them had been jettisoned into the air on aerosol droplets of toilet water.

Dr. Barker and company concluded: "Many individuals may be unaware of the risk of air-borne dissemination of microbes when flushing the toilet and the consequent surface contamination that may spread infection within the household, via direct surface-to-hand-to mouth contact. Some enteric viruses could persist in the air after toilet flushing and infection may be acquired after inhalation and swallowing."

Think about it. Your toothbrushes sit how far from your toilet? My bathroom cup is inches away from mine. Do you close the cover before flushing? All this dainty hand washing, was it before or after you picked up your purse from the bathroom floor?

Yech.
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1) Health. November, 2009. p. 20.
2) Barker, J, Jones, MV. The potential spread of infection caused by aerosol contamination of surfaces after flushing a domestic toilet. J Appl Microbiol. 2005;99(2):339-47.

Bacteria, bad breath, and oil pulling

I've been thinking about bad breath and mouth hygiene lately (and as soon as I get the big "L" off my forehead, perhaps I'll think about something fun). First of all, I wonder what to do about patients with bad breath--not the ones who complain of it who frankly never have bad breath on examination, but rather the clueless ones who have bad breath and don't know it. Should I say something to them? Perhaps I could include "Do you have bad breath?" in my review of systems during the annual physical, and if they answer "No," tell them "Not so fast on the negative buster!"

My latest foray into alternative medicine includes a month-long experiment in the Ayurvedic practice of oil-pulling. I'm not quite sure where I came across it, but it seemed like an intriguing way to use up a bottle of organic sesame oil sitting in my 'frig. First of an a.m. on an empty stomach, I sip but don't swallow a tablespoonful of sesame oil. As I bring in the paper, make coffee, empty the dishwasher, and do the little morning chores, I 'pull' the oil through my teeth or poke at the mouthful with tongue against teeth for (theoretically) 20 minutes or until my mouth is too full and I'm too grossed-out to go on which got up to 14 whole minutes today. Spit and rinse follows, then on to breakfast.

Testimonials abound on the Internet in support of the practice which, among other things, is supposed to enhance oral hygiene, and lessen tooth decay, bad breath, and dry lips. So far, one week into it, it only dampens my enthusiasm for breakfast and seems to make me less prone to eating the crap that drug reps bring in to the office (despite new Pharma regulations against the practice!).

An article in the Journal of the Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry reported a study wherein 10 adolescent boys were somehow convinced to oil-pull in the a.m. for 10 minutes, and then their levels of streptococcus mutans (a bacteria associated with tooth decay) were compared with another group of 10 who swished instead of a morning with chlorhexidine mouth wash. Both groups experienced the same drop in levels of those s mutans bad boys.

But...I dare you to find a bunch of health nuts waxing poetic over the morning use of chlorhexidine mouthwash! Consider this on oil pulling from Molly of SanFrancisco: The really bad stuff that forms plague [sic], is very attracted to the acids in the oil. So it melts this bad stuff and then you spit it out. That's why your teeth get much cleaner than by conventional means, like alcohol based rinses. And so, when you melt this bad stuff, you simply spit it out..buh bye.

On now to my real story here which is breaking news from the first ever symposium on the microbiology of odors held last month in Philadelphia. Israeli microbiologists have developed a new saliva test called OkayToKiss that tests for the presence of certain enzymes produced by gram-positive bacteria (such as s mutans) that make it easier for gram-negative bacteria in the mouth to break protein into malodorous compounds.

The doc-in-charge of the research, Dr. Mel Rosenberg, is described as an "international authority on the diagnosis and treatment of bad breath." He invented a two-phase mouthwash (containing saline and oil) based on his studies of petroleum microbiology wherein he discovered that oral microorganisms from dental plaque when mixed with nontoxic oils became bound to the oil. Voila! Does that not sound like a variation on oil-pulling to you? Check out melrosenberg.com if you want a ton of technical on the process. And the 1-2 mouthwash known as Assuta bested Listerine with respect to longterm control of halitosis.

So back to this OkayToKiss test. Due out next year, this pocket-sized test I gather is a treated piece of paper that you lick and check. If it turns blue, keep your mouth to yourself. This Dr. Rosenberg is a kick--don't miss his smellwell site for more ideas on keeping fresh as a daisy.

September, 2009 update: Still oil-pulling. I can last 15 or more minutes at it, no problem. Teeth so white that my 20-something year old daughter who commented below about how gaggingly gross this sounded is now doing it herself. My first visit with the dental hygienist post oil-pulling is next month; I'll let you know how I fare.

How gross is this ad?

Actual advertisement on London bus--does this stud muffin do Pap tests?
(from copyranter.blogspot.com)

Pyridium (phenazopyridine)

Chances are good that this specimen will look familiar to those of you who have been treated for a urinary tract infection known as cystitis. While waiting for the antibiotics to start to work killing the unwanted bacteria invading your bladder, your doctor may have given you Pyridium, an analgesic that soothes the burning pain and spasms of the infection and turns your pee the color of orange Kool-Aid in the process.

A case report in the Mayo Clinic's journal last year(1) is a good reminder that even that which seems innocuous-- a drug taken for a day or two to jump start recovery from a bladder infection-- can have serious side effects. This little old lady with a history of recurrent urinary tract infections (a problem common both to little old and not-so-little, not-so-old ladies) complained her urine was orange and her hands were blue. No problem with the orange urine, we see that of course all the time with the initial use of Pyridium. But what was up with the alarming discoloration of her hands and her ear lobes?

The satisfying pink color of our palms derives from the oxygenated blood carried in the arteries within. Hemoglobin combined with oxygen or oxyhemoglobin imparts that familiar red hue to arterial blood. In order to grab an oxygen molecule, the iron in hemoglobin must be in its reduced or ferrous state with a free electron which can bind to a free electron hanging off the oxygen we absorb through our lungs. When iron is oxidized into its ferric state, a lack of a free electron means no oxygen-binding resulting in methemoglobin which is brown and causes a dusky discoloration to skin. In a normal healthy state, enzymes act to reduce methemoglobin back to oxyhemoglobin.

What's all this got to do with seeking a little relief from a bad bladder day? While a little relief, i.e. a day or two of Pyridium is a good thing, ongoing use of the drug--in this case ten days--is a bad thing. Pyridium and other drugs that diminish the activity of reductase enzymes can result in methemoglobin production. A little abnormal hemoglobin makes your digits blue, a lot makes you seize, fall into a coma, and die.

I've not seen a case of this in all the years I've prescribed this analgesic for UTIs. But this is a good reminder that some folks, on receiving a prescription of thirty Pyridium with the instructions to take it three times daily as needed for bladder pain will do just that, take the entire prescription rather than quitting its use when the bladder no longer pains.
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(1) Singh NK et al. Elderly Woman With Orange Urine and Purple Hands. MayoClinProc. July 2008;83(7):744.

Caffeine-induced hallucinations

Psychologists at Durham University in the UK polled students there about their caffeine intake as it related to hearing voices, seeing things or people that weren't there, or the predisposition to out-of-body experiences. Turns out, the more coffee (or tea) you quaff, the more likely you are to have paranormal encounters.


Study author Dr. Simon Jones allowed, however, that these result might simply indicate that "People who tend to see or hear things may just be more naturally prone to drink a lot of coffee."

Do you see dead people at Starbucks? If you're the sort--and I certainly am-- who enjoys other people's surveys, log-on to Caffeine Questionnaire . The researchers are still collecting data on close encounters of the caffeinated kind.

"Wild thing, I think you move me..."

"It is highly possible that estrogen modulates motion abilities..."
---Karl Grammer of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Urban Ethology

Well, duh Dr. Grammer, just ask an aging postmenopausal woman as she gets out of a chair about the lack of estrogen and the consequent lack of ability to move. Anyway, that was a mini-rant and NOT what this post is about.

In the 'what WILL they study next' dept., we have the following information out of the University of New Mexico. Evolutionary psychologists there were wondering how human females attract mates at the appropriate time of the cycle to generate species-appropriate reproductive behavior. They recruited lap dancers from local clubs to collect data on tips earned as correlated with phase of the menstrual cycle.

Women, as opposed to say a lady chihuahua or chinchilla do not go into heat but rather have a 4-5 day fertile window mid-cycle called the estrous phase when they are highly fertile. The researchers compared tips generated during these ovulatory days compared with those brought in during the luteal phase (post-ovulation time when perhaps a woman might be more inclined to eat her mate rather than mate her mate) or while the dancers were menstruating.

Sixty days, 5300 lap dance incidents later, here's the scoop. Data from 11 women with normal menstrual cycles indicated estrous earnings of about $70 an hour whereas hourly income fell 33% to $50 for those in the luteal phase and plummeted to $35 an hour for those who were menstruating. The seven women on birth control pills earned less throughout the study period.

So there's apparently 'something in the way she moves' during estrous that attracts clients like no other time of the cycle. And no estrous? May as well move on to another profession because she's not moving up in this lap dancing business. All good for the future of pill-free couples, but no wonder that some of my patients lose that loving feeling whilst on birth controll pills.

Making scents of the gene pool

Is this your man?

Here's an interesting theory on how we choose our mates, and how birth control pills may be messing with our offspring's chances of survival. Well, obviously, if we don't have children at all based on the use of BCPs, this is a moot point. Assuming, however, that we choose the father of our future kids during a phase in our life when we're not quite ready to make them, here's the scoop.

Scientists believe there are advantages to dipping into a gene pool far different from our own when constructing the DNA of the next generation. Not only will this strategy decrease the likelihood of passing along two copies of a gene mutation for an inherited disorder, research suggests that the children produced from a thoroughly mixed-up match of chromosomes will also be resistant to a wider range of diseases. Those genes in charge of the composition of a person's immune system are called the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), and MHC heterozygosity (meaning mom's MHC contribution is quite a bit different than dad's) gives the kids a survival advantage in future battles against a wider array of disease-causing pathogens.

Interestingly, MHC is a major determinant of body odor in mice and men and women too. The olfactory neurons of mice in charge of odor recognition respond to fragments of MHC molecules even when these peptide pieces are present in extremely small quantities. Many rodent studies confirm that mice prefer nonself MHC-types as mates.

So what's this got to do with BCPs? A 1997 study found that all male subjects and those female participants not taking contraceptives preferred the smell of used T-shirts from persons with MHCs different than their own. The more the subject liked a T-shirt's odor, the less similar their MHC profile to that of the T-shirt's owner. No such correlation was found between Pill-users and their favorite unwashed T-shirt smells.

So if you want to party hearty with respect to producing hardy children with top-notch immune systems, sniff out potential mates in a Pill-free mode before you mate.

How much sleep do we need?

or how do I get my teenager up for work on a summer morn'?

Generally he gets his own darn self up, but this a.m. was an early start, and early start and summer and teenager are not necessarily part of the same sentence. When I first woke him up, it was clear that no one was home behind his eyes. After I poured water on his head, it was clear that an angry but wakeful human had taken charge.

Here are some observations from a recent article in ScienceNOW Daily News(1) about how much sleep animals need in the wild and why that may or may not apply to humans and the subset of humans known as teenagers:

1. "Animals sleep less if they need to graze extensively--as with herds of horses." This is a tough one, he already grazes extensively. The problem must be, however, that if all the grass...er food...is right there in the 'frig, he doesn't need to spend much time doing so. Note to self: Empty out 'frig.


2. "Animals that sleep in groups, such as herds of grazing animals, get less sleep than species that live alone." Scientists theorize that this is based more in eating habits of herd animals rather than the herdiness of it all. M. certainly has quite a sociable herd to graze with, but, again, the good grazing is apparently too close at hand.

Perhaps when he moseys back down the road to school, no more 'summertime, and the grazing is easy. This kid has a 9 a.m. class this fall; I hope the living is lean and dangerous at school. Or maybe not...
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(1)http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/722/2?etoc

Who's the pain in the butt here?

My patient has a pain in the butt. Not 'is a' mind you, but 'has a'. I've never seen anything like it. Her sit bones (ischial tuberosities) are painful to sit upon. She's o.k. with standing or lying, but her sitting hours are intolerably painful so, therefore, seriously curtailed.

I didn't know what to do with her (my father's advice from my childhood regarding things medical that were problematic --"Don't look at it for three days and it will go away"-- didn't work). Ibuprofen and such made no difference. I had to send her to a specialist, and believe me, it was hard to know just what specialist to use.

The orthopedist ordered an MRI of her butt. It showed minimal inflammation of the spot where the hamstrings insert onto the butt bones, but treatment for tendonitis, including cortisone injections, was useless. The neurologist was clueless, the physical therapist energetic but likewise without results.

We finally sent her to a pain management specialist. If you can't beat it, treat it. She was frantic to travel (out of the question) or simply to read a book in the seated position (if you're like her, reading while lying down is a recipe for sleep).

He listened to her story. Don't know if he examined her butt. He suggested Tylenol (heavens, Doc, been there/tried that already!). When she asked him what else could she do to once again achieve comfort in her life, he answered "Just stand up!"

I kid you not, that's what our pain specialist recommended.

Payback time for moms

The female brain is a dynamic structure, which expresses its plasticity most readily following reproductive experience.
---from the Department of Psychology-Neuroscience, University of Richmond

According to research out of the University of Virginia(1), there may be psychological compensation for all those sleepless nights, saggy breasts, and stretch marks that accompany motherhood. Those tedious months of pregnancy, suckling, and pup-rearing...oh right, we're talking rats here.

Neuroscientist Dr. Craig Kinsley and colleagues proved that mother rats adapted better to the stress of confinement in a Plexiglas restraint tube than their female colleagues who'd not yet coped with the demands of ungrateful offspring. Did they consider that lady rats--married, with children--may have just been grateful for the relative peace and quiet afforded by those Plexiglas walls? Speaking from my current perspective of mom to one teenager on site for summer, I would easily adapt, right here, right now, to voluntary confinement at an air-conditioned hotel.

The researchers conclude: "The data suggest that reproductive (hormonal) and/or maternal (pup exposure) experience may inure a female and her brain to stress, rendering her less susceptible to the behavioral-or other-disruptions that stress sensitivity can produce."
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(1)Wartella, J et al. Single or multiple reproductive experiences attenuate neurobehavioral stress and fear responses in the female rat.Physiol Behav 2003 Aug;79(3):373-81.

Lab test for ovarian cancer

A friend/patient of mine was recently diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer. That, of course, is one of the most difficult aspects of ovarian cancer, namely that it is relatively symptom-free until it reaches an advanced stage.

In retrospect, she identified certain vague abdominal symptoms in the months prior to diagnosis (constipation, bloating, the development of a small 'middle-aged' pouch in the midriff), most notable and puzzling to her through the winter and spring was the increasing agitation of her devoted dog. The dear but scruffy mutt would scarcely leave her side, and no sooner did my friend lie down, but the dog would lay paw or muzzle on her abdomen. Most dramatically, the dog would eye her directly with long and beseeching looks.

An article in the June, 2008 edition of Integrative Cancer Therapies(1) may explain her canine's consternation. Swedish researchers in collaboration with members of the Working Dog Clubs of Sweden and Hungary theorized that dogs could be trained to recognize the characteristic odor of ovarian cancer. They not only found that the scent of an ovarian tumor in a doggy sense is different from that of other gynecological cancers (e.g. cervical or uterine) but that these cancer-screening pooches correctly sniffed out early-stage and borderline tumors as well as big, advanced ones.

The authors wrote: "Our study strongly suggests that the most common ovarian carcinomas are characterized by a single specific odor detectable by trained dogs, and while we do not believe that dogs should be used in clinical practice, because they may be influenced during their work [now what, really, could distract a dog?]... still, under controlled circumstances, they may be used in experiments to further explore this very interesting new property of malignancies."
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(1)Horvath, Gyorgy, et al. Human Ovarian Carcinomas Detected by Specific Odors. Integrative Cancer Therapies Vol 7 Number 2 June, 2008.

I said...MOVE YOUR REINDEER!

You may be surprised to discover that reindeer herding is a hazardous, noisy profession, what with all those braying reindeer and roaring snow mobiles. However, Finnish researchers have found that hearing loss among the herders is not just about nerve damage from noise exposure. Those tundra hands who escaped job stress through smoking, particularly those indulging in more than 144,000 cigarettes (a pack a day for 20 years), had significantly more hearing loss than their non-smoking herd-buddies.

Lest you think this danger does not relate to your daily life, this finding was repeated in a study of 1,500 Japanese office workers exposed to nothing more than the ringing of phones and computer games, There, the risk of high-tone hearing loss among heavy smokers was more than two times greater than those who abstained.

No wonder our pleas to our smoking friends to quit sometimes fall on deaf ears.

Does housework improve your health?

Could be per London researchers who published their study in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. When I read, however, that their data suggested as little as twenty minutes per week of straightening up could straighten up attitudes, I thought "You must be joking."

The doctors sent out questionnaires to nearly 20,000 Scots over an eight year period. They asked participants to: 1) Report on their usual level of physical activity, and 2) take a little quiz assessing their current mental health. They found:

1. Those who puttered 'bout the house and garden for 20 minutes 1-3 times per week were 24% less likely to be in psychological distress.

2. Subjects who upped the putter to 4-5 sessions weekly were 16% less distressed, suggesting perhaps there's a limit to how much time you can muck in the clutter and benefit from having done so.

3. Best of all, no surprise, were those who increased intensity of activity; their bursts of sports rewarded them with 33% less angst.

Well yeah, we know about endorphins and all that; regular hot and sweaty stuff has just got to be good for the mood. But what about this stab or two per week at tidying the home? Does the satisfaction of stacking magazines and emptying waste baskets feed back to a brighter mood?

This, of course, is the rationale behind cognitive behavioral therapy; play like you care and then you start to care. I've mentioned Fly Lady before, the balabusta* who urges women overwhelmed and undermotivated to start the first day of the rest of their lives by cleaning the kitchen sink each night. If you get a grip on one small spot in your chaotic life, next thing you know, you'll be wiping around the kitchen sink, sweeping the floor, combing your hair, and taking on the world.** Hard to believe, however, that those persons spending just long enough each week to conquer the sink and perhaps the stovetop could be experiencing either enough endorphin high to boost their moods or getting cognitively motivated to become undepressed.

My experience with persons in psychological distress is that they simply don't do housework. Period. And those persons not in psychic trouble straighten up their houses as a matter of course.

Makes you wonder about the quality of the medical research that drives our beliefs.
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*That's Yiddish for super-woman; she cooks, she sews, she works, she raises children, and does it all in style.
**Sort of a "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie" approach to mental health.

What's going around, March, 2008

What better way to pass the viral misery than to think of ways to corrupt other people's songs. Too sick to sleep, too sick to read, too miserable to watch TV, here's my creation:

Croup

(Croaked to the refrain of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now")

I've looked at croup from both sides now,
As doc and victim, still somehow,
It's cough/chills/aches that I recall,
I've got no time for croup, at all.

The dewy glow of a morning lark's skin...

My son called me at 6 a.m. today. Lest you think 'what an early bird that teen!', let me tell you he'd not yet been to bed. He'd just pulled one of those college all-nighters, and was calling me to request a noon wake-up call so that he wouldn't miss his 12:30 class...yet again.

Researchers have devised an innovative way of finding out whether folks are morning larks or night owls (as opposed to, say, just asking them). European biochemists recruited a group of willing subjects* who self-identified as morning or evening persons. The scientists then nipped a couple of skin samples from the group and cultured the cells in the lab. They then minced up a few fireflies, and inserted the gene that makes the insects glow into the gene that regulates the internal clock of human skin cells.

The purpose of melding human DNA with that of fireflies was to get a visual on the cells' 'inner slave clocks', that part of our body that responds to the brain's call to bounce out of bed or snooze onward. Indeed, these skin samples began glowing like a Midwestern summer's eve at a time determined by the subjects reported biorhythms. Now how bizarre must that have been--these cell communities in petri dishes switching on and off there in the lab based on the behavior of their previous human owners.

Interesting, but what's the point? Says chronobiologist Achim Kramer who helped design this study, "Pinpointing individual clock cycles could pave the way for personalized sleep and drug therapies." If they can pave a way to get my son up in the a.m., that is scientific progress at its best.

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*I used to dub them volunteers, but discovered in a recent New Yorker article that many of these experimental subjects are 'professional guinea pigs,' often making an adequate living from payments for participation in studies like this.