Category Archives: Biological Sciences

Exercise and Mental Health

Posted on March 4, 2019 by | 2 comments

An Overview

Physical activity may play an important function in the control of mild-to-moderate mental health illnesses, specially depression and anxiety. Despite the fact that human with depression tend to be less physically active than non- depressed individuals, improved cardio exercise or strength training has been shown to reduce depressive symptoms significantly. However, habitual physical activity has not been shown to prevent the onset of depression.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRWDbdU-qUrMieyPyvPg-oK1is-kVWQC_hxwKDU9XX6X6P-AA2q

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSZaI-HFmszdP4N4lWDfvCzxUMaOmxHrxyyxFyuOqkezeFvet1l

Effects of Exercise on Anxiety

Anxiety signs and panic disorder also improve with everyday exercise, and beneficial outcomes appear to equal meditation or relaxation. In general, acute anxiety responds better to exercise than chronic anxiety. Research on older adults and adolescents with depression or anxiety have been restricted; however, physical activity appears beneficial to those populations as well. Immoderate physical activity may lead to overtraining and generate psychological signs that mimic depression.

The following video demonstrates the brain-changing benefits of exercise.

Video taken from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHY0FxzoKZE

Improvement of Mental Health

Physical activity is one of the most effective ways to improve your mental health. Regular exercise relieves stress, helps you sleep better, improves memory, and boosts your overall mood. Research indicates the advantages of exercise on mental health. You can learn to use exercise as a powerful tool to feel better in any age or fitness level.

Physical exercise is increasingly being encouraged as a method to keep and enhance excellent intellectual health. In general, findings from studies suggest that exercise is related to improvements in mental health which include mood state and self-esteem, although a causal link has not been established. Studies on acute exercise shows that 20 to 40 minutes of cardio activity outcomes in improvement of mood that persist for several hours. These transitory adjustments in mood occur in each people with ordinary or multiplied ranges of anxiety; however, appear to be restricted to aerobic exercise.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTjJf4vE7QrUftchyfuuglKCoA4NMg-5RykqcxRL6S4Bs6ueNNudQ

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTudBNGXu43qe5JfVw_fL5eBtdYWMtUoaGdXhlD4-6U1rQaLJXVTA

Exercising may also result in adverse modifications in mental health. Some individuals can grow to be overly depending on physical activity and exercising to an immoderate degree. This abuse of exercise can result in disturbances in mood and worsened physical health. In the case of athletes the acute training, or overtraining, vital for endurance sports activities continually effects in increased mood disturbance. Severe cases of overtraining may result in the staleness syndrome; a circumstance associated with deteriorating overall performance and behavioral disturbances including clinical depression.

Effects of Exercise on Children’s Mental Health

Physical activity can increase self-esteem and decrease depression and anxiety in children. We also know that physical activity performed in an outside area can improve cognitive performance, self-esteem and decrease anxiety and symptoms associated with interest deficit disorder. Organizations that promote physical activity in children with mental health issues have to have targeted safeguarding staff and referral pathways to greater professional services. This consists of the control of acute mental health conditions.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTRH7iOvmEAepYI9A3APCBEqSi7nepeVtCt6KFiTKHkTwwZdPnq

– Setareh Moazen

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

Tagged , , , , , ,

Image

Trying to lose weight? Avoid the Tapeworm Diet!

 

Humans may use half of their imagination for weight loss. To be slim, all kinds of brain-opening methods of weight loss are endless, such as taking ribs, freezing diet, cutting stomach, swallowing cotton balls, vomiting… Among the strange weight-loss methods, the Tapeworm Diet is the most dangerous.

However, the mite diet is so simple and rude that it always attracts people who want to take shortcuts. Just take a piece of mites, no need for diet and exercise, and wait for the eggs to hatch in the body. These parasites will start their mission to help the body absorb the hateful nutrients. This completely hits the pain point of human beings who want to lie down and get thin.

So, is it feasible to use mites to lose weight? First, let’s understand how terrible aphids are.

Among all parasites, aphids are a heterogeneous species. As an intestinal parasite, they are mainly known as “big” and longer than the human body. However, they can hide in your body for a few years, but you cannot feel their existence. You will not be told by doctors that there are alien invasions until your headache is unbearable, and you are tortured by nausea, vomiting, and convulsions.

Taenia saginata (beef tapeworm) and Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) are mostly used for weight loss. Eggs or gravid proglottids are passed with feces. Thus, Cattle and pigs became infected by ingesting vegetation contaminated with eggs or gravid proglottids.

life-cycle of pig tapeworms and cattle tapeworms ( courtesy of DPDx)

 

Take the pigs (T. solium) as an example. When the mites enter the pig stomach, the stomach acid protease will digest the outer shell. After the egg shell breaks, the aphid larvae will escape. At this stage, the larvae have six hooks. Therefore, they can easily pass through the stomach wall and reach other parts of the body. In general, the destination of them is striated muscle. But some of them will reach other parts of the body, including the brain, liver, eyes and subcutaneous tissues. Once these mites settle down, it grows into a capsule thatprotects them from the immune system. In this stage, they are called cysticercosis.

If people do not fully heat pork before eating them, these capsules will enter the human body alive. They will be encapsulated by digestive juice and transform into adults that have head segments to adsorb on the human intestinal wall. Aphids use fluff to absorb the gut nutrition for their own needs.

However, what happens next is creepy. Aphids’ neck segments will continue to split and produce more body segments which will gradually mature. Adult tapeworms can shed ten segments one day, and each body section contains tens of thousands of eggs. After growing into sic hooks, these mites will enter various tissues and organs. As a result, the host people will have cysticercosis.

If they invade our skin, it is skin cysticercosis.

It can be said that the cysticercosis that normal humans try to avoid, the extreme dieters are open to this. The locusts are not only consuming calories but also consumes the host himself or herself.

 

1 Comment

Posted on January 28, 2019 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science

Tagged , , ,

Bone Broth Aiding Recovery?

Posted on January 28, 2019 by | 2 comments

I fractured my tibial plateau in 2013 and needed surgery for a full recovery. I remember all the elders in my family suggesting I drink bone broth. I wondered why bone broth? What could a soup like drink do for me and the recovery of my fractured bone? The elders failed to explain and convince me that bone broth was to believed to have health benefits, especially in aiding post-injury recovery.

Sold By Kobe Bryant!

Listening to a podcast in 2018, I discovered that my basketball idol, Kobe Bryant, took bone broth when recovering from a bad ankle sprain. He recovered from an estimated 4-6 week timetable of rehabilitation in a record breaking 12 days. I was now sold and intrigued by this magic substance. This made me dig further into the research of bone broth.

What is Bone Broth?

 Ingredients of Bone Broth

The first step in making bone broth involves going to your local butcher or market and collecting animal bones. Then to extract the amino acids, minerals and collagen you will have to boil them along with some salt, vegetables and herbs. It can take up to 10 hours to for the bones to fully boil down.

The Benefits!

Bone broth doesn’t sound appealing, but the nutritious value is high. The bones and connective tissue are rich in both vitamins and nutrients such as iron, vitamin A, fatty acids, and zinc. They also contain collagen which can be used for building blocks of protein by the body. This video below, created by Natural Ways on YouTube, shows the benefits of bone broth ranging from looking younger to boosting energy. From ancestral stories and to modern day research, some things are certain: bone broth helps aid sleep, protect the joints, help reduce inflammation, helps detoxify the digestive system and support weight loss.

 

Maybe, next time when an elder suggests me to change my diet, I will. They know best!

-Kevin Rasode

2 Comments

Posted in Biological Sciences

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Diets, Diets, Everywhere and Not a Pound to Lose

Posted on January 28, 2019 by | Leave a comment

There have been many different trends in the dieting world, with each new diet promoting varying degrees of fat and carbohydrate intake. The most recent trend to take off is the ketogenic diet, focusing on high fat low carb intake. Other big trends include: the Mediterranean diet and the Paleo diet. Now-a-days there are just too many diets to keep track of each promoting different health benefits. *Note what is written here is my own opinion of what each of these diets entail and in no way, are a reflection of a person participating in these lifestyles.

Recent fad Diets:

1) Mediterranean Diet

Example foods for Mediterranean diet. Source: Foxys Forest Manufacture/Shutterstock

Focuses on the consumption of healthy fats like olive oil and fish while eliminating processed foods and limiting red meat consumption. Has recently been named the 2019 best overall diet.

Benefits: Easy to maintain as there are many options, can cause weight loss and help prevent heart attacks and strokes along with type 2 diabetes.

Downside: It does not count calories or percentage of fat to carbs so it may be harder to follow for those adjusting to the diet. Limited milk consumption – for those who like milk. Cap on alcohol consumption – one glass max for women and two glasses max for men.

2) Ketogenic Diet

Ketogenic example meal. Source: anyaivanova/Shutterstock

Focuses on increasing your intake of good fat and protein while decreasing the amount of carbs. The type of carbs that are consumed should not be highly processed, and come from natural sources like fruits and whole grains. Carbs should be used sparingly, only as a filler if needed.

Benefits: Reduction of carb intake, therefore promote weight loss. Increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids which are the better of the 2 main fatty acids (omega-6 being the other)

Downside: It may cause irregularity, irritating your bowls. Puts restrictions on certain food groups, making it harder to order food at restaurants. If you are genetically predisposed to high cholesterol it increases your cholesterol.

3) Paleo Diet

Paleo diet example foods. Source: MaraZe/Shutterstock

Focuses on eating in the same way as our ancestors ate; emphasizing whole foods, lean protein, veggies, and nuts/seeds. This means that all processed foods are removed from your diet.

Benefits: There is evidence to show that this diet can lead to weight loss and a reduction in waist size as there is a reduction in carbs and more protein. Other benefits include reducing factors of heart disease and increased iron intake.

Downside: The elimination of normally nutritious and healthy foods such as grains, legumes, and dairy.

 

The above diets can contribute to weight loss and a healthier life. However, people should consult their doctors before attempting any of these sorts of diets as they may not be beneficial to everyone. It is always best to choose a diet that works for you and one that you can stick to.

~Christina M

Leave a comment

Posted in Biological Sciences

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Hatching a chick without eggshell

Posted on January 28, 2019 by | 1 comment

How does a chick break out its shell? Is it possible to hatch out a chick without an eggshell? The idea originated from Perry MM, he spent 22 days on this study in 1988. Later the Japanese high school students and the Chinese scientists imitated the experiment. It allows  scientists to observe the process of hatching out a chick without an eggshell. Therefore it helps disease prevention and treatment. Furthermore, this skill can be used to save vulnerable birds from extinction.

The Japanese high school students imitated it in 2014.

Source: Zanzibar Ni Kwetu

The Chinese scientists imitated it in 2018 giving more details.

Source: CCTV English

After 21 days, the chick is born without eggshell.

Image credit: CCTV

What is the most difficult process?    

The process of passing oxygen is really important. If the oxygen is too much, it will result in oxygen toxicity. If the oxygen is not enough, it will result in congestion.

Why did they do the experiment?

By doing this experiment, it allows scientists to observe the whole growth process directly. In addition, it allows scientists to test the effects of using drugs and radiation about the growth of chick embryo. This can help disease prevention and treatment.

According to the video, from Day 5, the surface of the embryo is covered by a  vascular network around the embryo, which provides a very good model for the study of vascular proliferation and inhibition. The vascular proliferation model ( the formation of new blood vessels) can be used in wound repair, and the study of vascular growth inhibition can be used in the study of tumor treatment. As the chick embryo develops, it forms a variety of hormones and nutrients that have not yet been fully explored, and which often have surprising effects on tissue regeneration and tissue culture.

To save the endangered birds?

An online article says that it can be used to save endangered birds when their eggs have been damaged, we can also choose bird IVF and try to grow vulnerable species using surrogate eggs. However, we need to consider the success rate, it is around 50% currently.

Life is really wonderful and we should continue to explore science in order to protect this beautiful world.

——ZIJIE LIN

1 Comment

Posted in Biological Sciences

Tagged , , ,

The Biggest Natural Bomb?

Posted on January 21, 2019 by | Leave a comment

Here’s something that’ll blow your mind – beached dead whales may explode! That is if the body is tampered by people unsafely. One of the most infamous cases of exploding whales was a dead sperm whale beached in Florence, Oregon in 1970. Attempting to dispose of the rotting whale, the Oregon Department of Transportation decided to blow it up with dynamites. What could go wrong?  (asked no one).

Video of the above mentioned Oregon whale explosion, and the magnitude of its spread.
Video by: theexplodingwhale.com (which seemed to have closed their website)

The explosion threw whale bits all over the area, to as far as 250 meters away: roughly equivalent to the distance between the UBC bookstore and the Beatty Biodiversity Museum. Even though the intent with the dynamite was to dispose of the whale through blowing it to bits, More of these explosions occur across the world, when people uneducated or unknown to this danger, mess with dead whale corpse.

What causes the explosion?
You might ask, what is the scientific reasoning behind these explosions? To answer that, we must first understand a few things about what happens after an animal die. A dead animal undergoes decomposition: the process of rotting and decaying. During this process, proteins in the whale’s tissue break down, and other tissues dry out. This results in several gasses produced within the whale, including common gasses like methane and carbon dioxide. Normally, these gasses can leak slowly through holes natural to the body or holes made by hungry scavengers. However, due to blockage or the weight of the body, sometimes these orifices are forced shut, resulting in gas build-up within the corpse’s body. After enough gas build-up in the body, any disturbance to weak spots on the body surface any external sources weakening parts of the body, i.e. poking a hole in it, results in an explosion, or strong expulsion of the whale’s body contents.

Is this a whale-only phenomenon?
Are whales the only one that turns into ticking gas bombs? The answer is no, they’re not. This decomposition and gas forming process are universal across all animals, but due to the size of whales and the size of the cavities within their body, that explosion is significantly more terrifying.

Leave a comment

Posted in Biological Sciences, Science Communication

Tagged , , , , , ,

Why the Snooze Button is Anything But Your Friend

Posted on January 21, 2019 by | Leave a comment

The weekend’s over, it’s Monday morning, and suddenly it’s time to go back to another busy week of work. Your alarm clock goes off and almost instinctively – like a predator just waiting to pounce on its prey – you hit snooze.

You know that feeling all too well, and you’re not the only one. A 2014 study revealed that more than half of the American population admitted to regularly using the snooze button. It turns out that what we see as only a few extra minutes of “much-needed” sleep is doing us more harm than good.

So, what’s actually going on when we hit snooze?

A person reaching for the alarm clock at 7 a.m.
Source: The Dreaming Show

Most people who rely on alarm clocks experience sleep inertia, which is the state of grogginess and disorientation one immediately feels upon waking. The deeper the sleep stage you are waking up from, the more intensely you feel the effects of sleep inertia (and the more tempting it is to reach for that snooze button!). When we hit the snooze button and doze off again, our bodies are actually preparing to enter the start of another sleep cycle, making it nearly impossible to reach the final stage of the sleep cycle, REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, within a matter of minutes. This ends up leading us to feel even more exhausted throughout the day.

According to research and Human Sleep Science expert Professor Matthew Walker, being abruptly woken by an alarm clock triggers a “burst of activity [within the nervous system that causes] a spike in blood pressure and sudden acceleration in heart rate.” This means that repeatedly bargaining for more sleep is dangerously detrimental to our own hearts.

Is there anything I can do about it?

A woman basking in the sunrise. Source: Pixabay

If you’re only realizing this now, it’s not too late to turn around and reverse this impulsive snoozing habit. Luckily for you, the road to recovery isn’t a difficult one. Perhaps set only one alarm at a later time rather than having multiple alarms to avoid interrupting your sleep or consider sticking to a consistent sleep schedule to train your body’s natural wake mechanisms. There are even sunrise alarm clocks that replace the blaring alarms with gradually brightening light to help us ease out of our slumber more naturally.

While we may have plenty of excuses to get a few additional moments of sleep in the mornings, we should have no excuse when our health and well-being is on the line.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Posted in Biological Sciences

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Video

Stop cheating yourself! Probiotics can’t treat your stomach flu

Imagine your cousin is terribly exhausted by a stomach flu that he accidentally got during the weekend, and he pukes everywhere. Which treatment would you choose? One pill full of probiotics so that they can fight away the ‘bad germ’ that roams your cousin’s gut? Or just a simple hot water bag and a bowl of thin soup? Which treatment do you think will help you get rid of the terrible puking faster? I bet most of you would choose to take the probiotics, since from what we learnt on the internet, probiotics are effective in fighting away the ‘bad germs’ that lies inside your gut. They can adjust your gut microbes, make your skin looks better, help you digest food more efficiently, and finally build a well-regulated and healthy gut environment. More importantly, they are not as merciless as the antibiotics, which will kill whatever left in the gut and leave a gut free of both good and bad germs behind. At least, that was what most videos on Youtube say about the benefits of probiotics.

However, is it true? Is it possible for just a small pill of probiotics to have the ability to save your gut? How good are these small, almost invisible to naked eyes creatures? The answer,unfortunately, is no. In the case of a gut inflammation caused by virus or bacteria, the probiotics can do nothing better than simple placebos. According to two recent big studies in the U.S., probiotics are inefficient in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gut inflammation, and symptoms of the researched subject shows no difference against the placebo group.

One of the research mainly focused on Lactobacillus rhamnosus and L. helveticus, both are commonly used probiotics. Participants of this research are 3 to 48 months old children that has been diagnosed as gastroenteritis, commonly known as the gut flu or the stomach flu. In this study, participants were randomly selected and separate into two groups, one receives the probiotics while the other group receive the placebo for two weeks. At the end of the study, the outcome of the participants were evaluated to determine if the probiotics or the placebo had treated their illness.  Among all the participants who received the probiotics, 26.1% of them developed into a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis, while 24.7% of the placebo group developed a moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis. This means that the probiotics is of no use in preventing the development of moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis.

cartoon shows how probiotics help us to regulate a healthy life

So what exactly should we do when we are facing a gastroenteritis? And is it true that probiotics are all useless? Researchers have not given a clear answer yet. What is true is that next time when a stomach flu strikes, do not panic, before purchasing the expensive probiotics, keep asking yourself do you really need it.

Leave a comment

Posted on January 14, 2019 by in Biological Sciences, Issues in Science, Science Communication

Tagged , ,