Listen, Look and Feel Your Way..

Apr 16

whileyouweresleeping:

Meet Elizabeth Blackburn. Blackburn here is a professor at the University of California in San Francisco who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a fascinating little fact.
What fact, you ask? Well, she studied telomeres and figured out what they are made of. Telomeres are tiny little caps at the end of chromosomes and their job is to help keep genetic information safe. She also studied telomerase, which is an enzyme that helps rebuild telomeres.
Here’s why you should care: the role of telomeres is basically to make sure chromosomes stay in good shape. If chromosomes aren’t in good shape, do you know what happens? They get old. That’s rarely good.
Here’s the crazy thing Blackburn is working on at the moment: she has a strong suspicion that the shorter your telomeres, the more likely you are to become sick. So she has spearheaded the creation of a test that measures the telomeres to see if certain illnesses could be caught that way.
Many are saying it’s all too vague and needs more research, but Blackburn is adamant that this is the case. Personally I find that this test, in and of itself is really, really interesting.
But here’s what I think is super intriguing. She says that your emotional state—read this again: your EMOTIONAL STATE, which is to say your ability to handle your stress (which, by the way, can be learnt and controlled)—affects the length of your telomeres. As in, out-of-control stress shortens them.
Do you realise the implications? Blackburn’s research (which she has conducted in recent years with a psychologist, measuring the telomeres of mothers caring for chronically ill children) is basically hard scientific data that tells us we all need to chill the fuck out. And if we can’t do it alone, to seek help.
Emotional stress management really is a matter of life or death.
— From SF.

Meet Elizabeth Blackburn. Blackburn here is a professor at the University of California in San Francisco who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering a fascinating little fact.

What fact, you ask? Well, she studied telomeres and figured out what they are made of. Telomeres are tiny little caps at the end of chromosomes and their job is to help keep genetic information safe. She also studied telomerase, which is an enzyme that helps rebuild telomeres.

Here’s why you should care: the role of telomeres is basically to make sure chromosomes stay in good shape. If chromosomes aren’t in good shape, do you know what happens? They get old. That’s rarely good.

Here’s the crazy thing Blackburn is working on at the moment: she has a strong suspicion that the shorter your telomeres, the more likely you are to become sick. So she has spearheaded the creation of a test that measures the telomeres to see if certain illnesses could be caught that way.

Many are saying it’s all too vague and needs more research, but Blackburn is adamant that this is the case. Personally I find that this test, in and of itself is really, really interesting.

But here’s what I think is super intriguing. She says that your emotional state—read this again: your EMOTIONAL STATE, which is to say your ability to handle your stress (which, by the way, can be learnt and controlled)—affects the length of your telomeres. As in, out-of-control stress shortens them.

Do you realise the implications? Blackburn’s research (which she has conducted in recent years with a psychologist, measuring the telomeres of mothers caring for chronically ill children) is basically hard scientific data that tells us we all need to chill the fuck out. And if we can’t do it alone, to seek help.

Emotional stress management really is a matter of life or death.

— From SF.

(via scinerds)

Impersonating your younger self makes your body physiologically younger

neuroticthought:

by Deric Bownds

An interesting article in the Harvard Magazine describes the life work of Ellen Langer, her demonstrations that our social self image (old versus young, for example) strongly patterns our actual vitality and physiology, her work on Mindfulness, unconscious processing, etc. I recommend that you read the article. Here are some clips from its beginning that hooked me (I actually did my own mini-repeat of the experiment described, a simple self-experiment of pretending that I had been transported back in time to 40 years ago, and convinced myself I was experiencing some of the effects described)…

In 1981, early in her career at Harvard, Ellen Langer and her colleagues piled two groups of men in their seventies and eighties into vans, drove them two hours north to a sprawling old monastery in New Hampshire, and dropped them off 22 years earlier, in 1959. The group who went first stayed for one week and were asked to pretend they were young men, once again living in the 1950s. The second group, who arrived the week afterward, were told to stay in the present and simply reminisce about that era. Both groups were surrounded by mid-century mementos—1950s issues of Life magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, a black-and-white television, a vintage radio—and they discussed the events of the time: the launch of the first U.S. satellite, Castro’s victory ride into Havana, Nikita Khrushchev and the need for bomb shelters.

…Before and after the experiment, both groups of men took a battery of cognitive and physical tests, and after just one week, there were dramatic positive changes across the board. Both groups were stronger and more flexible. Height, weight, gait, posture, hearing, vision—even their performance on intelligence tests had improved. Their joints were more flexible, their shoulders wider, their fingers not only more agile, but longer and less gnarled by arthritis. But the men who had acted as if they were actually back in 1959 showed significantly more improvement. Those who had impersonated younger men seemed to have bodies that actually were younger.

(via ikenbot)

Oct 25

eswiftness:

Sucks to be this guy. And they say learning is fun…

Oct 9

alorer:

tehjai:

stripeydani:

archer-and-anders:

wonderbraforyourdick:

You are the worst person.

You can be a vegan and whine at people, thats hurting nobody but when you tell people to not take vaccines, you’re endangering public health.

If YOU mixed mercury, aluminium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, formaldehyde and viruses and injected it into someone, you’d kill someone because you have no pharmacological experience.

If someone in a lab mixed those together, they know how they work, they have medically assessed and peer reviewed evidence and strict guidelines to follow to create a safe and effective product. Why is it legal? Because they know what they’re doing and know how to spell “phosphate” and “ammonium”.

Why don’t YOU educate yourself instead of subscribing to the notion that all scientists are evil and want to poison you are your natural, vegan lifestyle. I say this as a fucking IMMUNOLOGIST, you are single handedly responsible for the skyrocketing resurgence of deaths caused by TB, measles and the worrying prospect of smallpox returning.

Let’s break this one down and give you some education.

Mercury is an element in the compound thiomersal which was part of many vaccines. It has been claimed with NO tangible evidence other than a multifaceted correlation that thiomersals cause autism. This has been investigated thoroughly and no causal link has been found.

Aluminium phosphate is an aluminium salt which is used as an adjuvant in vaccines. An adjuvant is a compound which causes an immune response to be higher and stronger, so that the immune system comes into contact with the attenuated virus more, so that it can recognise the antigens of the virus and provide immunity. They are a necessary part of the vaccine if you want it to work well.

Ammonium sulfate is used in the process of purifying the proteins in the synthesis of a vaccine. It is also found in bread and flour, so you’d better learn to enjoy rice if you want to avoid it.

Formaldehyde is used in the treatment and purification of vaccines and stops contamination. Most of this is removed before the vaccines is shipped, although some remains.

In my personal and scientifically backed opinion, the war against disease is a hundred fold more important than the mum-led war against vaccines. Do you want your child to die a slow, painful, agonising death? If not, then shut the fuck up with your so called “facts” you got from Yahoo Answers and get your kid vaccinated.

I am going to sound derogatory, but if you don’t have formal education in at least biology, you have no role to talk about the way vaccines should be done. You have no idea of the actual function and mechanism in which they work, and you have is a vague knowledge that mercury used to make people mad, formaldehyde is used in embalming and that ammonium sulfate and aluminium phosphate sound scary.

Vaccinate your kids if you want them to live. End of. If you don’t then you clearly don’t love your kids and would prefer to see them die of completely preventable diseases.

This has been a rage filled, alcohol induced response from a scientist.

This goes for your animals too.

Oh my fucking God are you serious?

VACCINES SAVE LIVES. SIMPLE AS.

YOU ARE A BAD PARENT IF YOU DON’T GET YOUR CHILD VACCINATED.

this. all of this.

There is zero scientific evidence that vaccines harm, but tons of scientific evidence that not vaccinating people kills them.

Yes, there are immunocompromised people who cannot be vaccinated; that’s a different story, and it’s important that everyone who can be vaccinated gets vaccinated to maintain herd immunity to keep those immunocomproimised persons safe.

(And if ANYONE counters with Wakefield’s ‘autism-link’ research, then you should know that that study was found to have been a) performed in a fashion that was shown to be unethical and reached its conclusion by essentially stating that correlation is causation which is patently false, and b) has had its peer-review retracted and is now, basically, the science-community version of excommunicated.)

Reblogging for the awesome replies.

(via hopefulveterinarian)

Oct 8

runningbubbles:

hehe

(via hopefulveterinarian)

Oct 3

Herpes.. to battle severe cancer pains

Herpes likes nerves. Lets make a GMO herpes that delivers human preproenkephalin, the gene we have that codes for a pre-endogenous-opiate. Use herpes to make the cells that respond to pain, make the anti-pain molecule.

Castration helps men (eunuchs) live longer

One thought is that male sex hormones such as testosterone, which are largely produced in the testes, could be damaging. The researchers said the hormones could weaken the immune system or damage the heart. Castration would prevent most of the hormone from being produced, protecting the body from any damaging effect and prolonging lifespan.

Vets have known this for awhile..

Neuter / spay your pet!