Category Archives: Biological Sciences

Mental Health is your Physical Health

Posted on September 28, 2019 by | 5 comments

The National College Health Assessment surveyed in 2016, that 1 in 5 Canadian postsecondary students are depressed or battling other mental issues. Knowing how to maintain mental health is especially important for University students. Without having it in check, it will affect every aspect of life, regarding academic performance, social aptness, and general outlook to life such as self-efficacy.

At first glance when people mention mental health, most think they’re not a real illness and it’s just an excuse for poor behaviour. Other myths include “people experiencing mental illness are those who are weak and can’t handle stress” or “it’s just part of the aging process.” Well, those statements are not true, and believing in it only fuels the stigma and discrimination making it harder for people to reach out for solutions!

What is mental health and mental illness?

Mental health is your ability to handle and cope with stress and to enjoy daily life, it includes the way you feel, act, and relate to others. If people experience inabilities to perform these ordinary tasks, they are experiencing poor mental health and could be diagnosed with mental illness. Having mental illness means there is physical altering to your brain because different cognitive abilities are controlled by different parts of your brain. Just think of your brain as a machine, if something is not functioning as usual then something needs maintenance. Mental illness is a brain disorder that is caused by things like stressful life events, brain injury, irregular hormones, addictions, and imbalance of chemical messenger in the brain.

How does the brain work?

Neurons, which are cells designed to transfer information, are the basic workings of how different parts of the brain talks to each other. If there is an imbalance of chemical messenger in the brain, the neurons will have trouble transferring messages. Serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine are common chemical messengers, having a deficit of these will have you experience symptoms of poor mental health.

These are only a few of the components that make up your entire brain:

Prefrontal Cortex – Recalls memories, make decisions, problem-solving, and your response to situations

Amygdala – Controls fear; helps you avoid harmful and dangerous things

Cingulate cortex – Controlling emotion and concentration on tasks

Hippocampus – Makes and store new memories

How Neurons Communicate

So how does your physical health affect your mental health? Well, you will experience mental illness in two ways:

  1. If you lack a sufficient amount of chemical messengers needed to communicate with different components of your brain. 
  2. If you suffer brain damage, the damaged part of your brain will not work properly even if you have a sufficient amount of chemical messengers.

If you experience mild symptoms of poor mental health, most likely your chemical messengers are lacking. A quick fix for students is to exercise regularly because it’s proven to boost metabolism to counter this kind of health deterioration. The physical health of your brain is the health of your mind! That’s the connection where mental health goes hand-in-hand with physical health! 

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science Communication, Statistics

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Sleep Mysteries: The Ideal Sleep Threshold, Short Sleepers, and Early Risers

Posted on September 23, 2019 by | 1 comment

How much sleep do you get on a nightly basis? With all of the commitments that a student must subject to, one can expect that number to be quite low. Much of Western society has been raised on the knowledge that 7+ hours of sleep is the most ideal for an adult. But what happens to us if we don’t reach this threshold of “enough” sleep? How do some people seem to get by comfortably on much less? And how are individuals able to wake up easily in the morning while others have to hit snooze quite frequently? The answer to the latter 2 questions can be attributed to none other than our own genes. 

An image of a baby sleeping.
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/photos/baby-sleeping-sleep-childish-cute-1941745/

It is common knowledge that reduced amounts of sleep leads to a variety of negative effects. Growth hormones are released during this time, which is why many adults blame lack of growth to not getting enough sleep. You may have also heard about how sleep affects your rate of metabolism, and that sleeping increases weight loss. This is due to the fact that while asleep, your body secretes appetite-reducing chemicals, which are meant to decrease the chances of hunger interfering with your rest. Studies have shown that our body’s DNA repair mechanisms are heightened when we’re asleep, because this is the time in which we undergo the least amount of chemical and mechanical stress from outside forces.

A graph of the sleep cycle, showing the stages of sleep corresponding to time. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/37583694@N04/3457948158

For a subset of the population, a shorter average sleep cycle is actually enough to carry on their daily lives feeling energized. Each gene in our DNA is converted into one protein through intricate biological processes. A study by Ying-Hui Fu’s lab focused on the DEC2 gene, which codes for a certain protein that is an important regulator for the protein orexin. The diagram below explains the the DEC2 mechanism in detail. The study also uncovered that short sleepers (those with the DEC2 gene mutation) had 6.25 hours of sleep while others (those without the DEC2 gene mutation) had 8.06. This shows the natural difference in the amount of sleep that short sleepers felt was necessary to feel refreshed.

DEC2 mechanism in a graphic representation. Image source: Francine Flores, made with Canva

Another mystery in the sleep world pertains to “night owls” vs. “early birds”. A study by Samuel Jones’ lab has found that variation at 351 locations in the genome affects the waking patterns within different people, termed as one’s chronotype. The fluctuation in expression of these genes has shown a 25 minute difference in the waking times of the most extreme early risers and the most extreme late risers.

An image of DNA. Retrieved from https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=31530&picture=structure-of-dna

There are many questions up in the air concerning sleep and sleep patterns. With our knowledge of the reasons behind occurrences such as short sleepers and waking tendencies, we can further our understanding of why we need sleep and how much sleep is enough to sustain our day-to-day systems. Using the information from current and future studies, we can address issues that individuals have regarding sleep and take a step toward solving more of our sleep mysteries. 

Written by Francine Flores

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Uncategorized

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Stem Cell Therapies Banned by Health Canada

Posted on September 23, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Indiscriminate bans could lead to patients being left with no options for their pain.

Source: Amaregenmed, Injection knee ama regenerative medicine, 2018. 1,920 × 1,080 (1.07 MB). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Injection-knee-ama-regenerative-medicine.jpg#file (accessed September 23, 2019).

In May 2019, over three dozen clinics across British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec were ordered by Health Canada to cease and desist offering unapproved stem cell therapies. While this may seem like a reasonable regulation to prevent untested medical treatments being used on unsuspecting patients, many clinics, like Toronto PRP and Stem Cell, say that this ban is too broad and denies patients access to well-documented successful treatments.

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The above video by the DISC Spine Institute – Dallas explains what adult stem cells are and how they can be harnessed for stem cell therapies.

Adult stem cell therapies have been shown in multiple studies to be effective for joint, ligament, and tendon injuries, such as osteoarthritis. Additionally, many patients who have undergone these “unapproved” stem cell therapies have noticed greater range of motion, less pain, and more functional abilities. With the new regulations, all similar treatments, except for certain blood cancers, such as leukemia and lymphoma, would only be available to a select few patients through clinical trials.

This ban does not come without good cause, however. Many private clinics have been advertising stem cell therapies as the ultimate panacea, offering it as a treatment for autism, multiple sclerosis (MS), ALS, and even hair-loss, when there have been no studies to prove their effectiveness in these conditions. Additionally, the nature of these therapies, while leading to long-term improvements, could also lead to long-term threats for those seeking these treatments. Health Canada states that many risks, such as infection by bacteria and viruses, patient cross-contamination, and even tumour formation, have been observed in unapproved stem cell therapies.

There is also a more sinister aspect to these unproven medications. Due to the thousands of dollars each stem cell therapy costs, there is a high risk of financial exploitation. Many private clinics who are capitalizing on the clout of a cure-all miracle drug are using stem cells for absolutely untested treatments, and gaining up to $15 000 per treatment. These sorts of advertisements depend upon the desperation of the sick and disabled and their families to make their living, and most doctors agree it has to stop.

At the end of the day, many believe that Health Canada had to do something about the unregulated use of stem cell therapies across Canada. However, there is also worry that those desperate enough to pay the high fees for these treatments would be willing to go to less safe clinics outside of Canada to undergo these treatments anyways. By slowly implementing restrictions, instead of this broad ban, Health Canada could have avoided this issue, as well as prevented the denial of viable treatments to patients in need.

Written by Kaitlyn Le

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

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Bringing Back the Dinosaurs

Posted on September 23, 2019 by | 2 comments

In November of 2018, Chinese CRISPR researcher He Jiankui sparked international outrage after announcing his experiment to create genetically modified twins using CRISPR. Despite what this event may seem to say about Chinese research ethics, China actually has strict regulations put in place to prevent incidents like these from occurring. They are also at the forefront of CRISPR research, using the genome editing tool in the agricultural industry to efficiently feed their massive population with restricted resources and space. The technology used in the twin experiment is also nothing new and mysterious. CRISPR is a well researched natural defense tool discovered back in 1993.

CRISPR, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”, uses a guide RNA to guide a separate piece of DNA to a specific target in the genome of a cell, where the Cas9 enzyme cuts the current DNA in place. The cell’s natural DNA repair machinery then heals the cut area with the DNA bound to the guide RNA, implementing the DNA into the genome. While there are other methods to edit the genome, CRISPR is relatively cheap, safe, and specific to it’s target.

The cause for concern should not be how little we know about this tool, but instead for how well we know it’s potential. The same tool that helps China grow better crops can also bring back the woolly mammoth or dinosaurs back from extinction. By extracting DNA from bones and other remains of extinct animals, Many species have had their genomes partially sequenced. These genomes can be cut and pasted into living animal cells, to bring about a new hybrid species with traits like the extinct species. Theoretically with a completely mapped genome, the extinct species can be brought completely back to life.

While it seems like a good idea to bring back certain extinct species, we should consider the effect it will have on our current ecological systems. These species were adapted to live in an environment from their time, but we now have different ecological ranges. We should also consider the factors that led to the extinction of that species. What measures will be put in place to prevent their extinction this time around, and what effect will the revival have on current species biodiversity?

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Posted in Biological Sciences, Science in the News

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