Getting sick is the worst. But if you’re trying to lure customers who are reluctant or unable to leave home, the virus can be an ally.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,869
Man who nearly died from blood clot launches preventative device
Paul Westerman was just 44 when he developed the blood clot that almost killed him after suffering a knee injury while playing tennis.
Eight days after he fell, part of the clot — which had formed in a vein in his calf — travelled to his heart and lungs, with catastrophic results.
‘I woke up that morning feeling more tired than usual and went into the bathroom, looked in the mirror and did a double take,’ says Paul, a former management consultant from Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
Study finds caffeine helps protect against the damage of a poor diet
Consuming a diet high in sugar and fat is a known risk factor for a number of health problems, including obesity and type-2 diabetes. A new study from the University of Illinois has found that consuming caffeine from coffee, tea, and other sources may help protect against some of the health consequences often resulting from poor dietary habits. Similar benefits were also associated with consuming synthetic caffeine.
New Aging Clock based on Proteins in the Blood
Methylation clocks are far and away the most accurate markers of a person’s age, and so are a promising tool for evaluating anti-aging interventions, but they are a bit of a black box. We know from statistics that certain places on chromosomes become steadily methylated ( or demethylated ) with age, but we often don’t know what effect that has on expression of particular genes.
For the first time, a clock has been devised based on proteins in the blood that is comparable in accuracy to the best methylation clocks. This has the advantage of being downstream of epigenetics, so it is less of a black box. What can we learn from the proteins that are increased ( and decreased ) with age?
I’ve written often and enthusiastically about the utility of methylation clocks for evaluation of anti-aging interventions [ blog, blog, blog, journal article ]. This technology offers a way to promptly identify small age-reversal successes (perhaps not in individuals, but averaged over a cohort of ~50 to 100 subjects). Before these tests were available, we had no choice but to wait — usually 10 years or more — for enough experimental subjects to die that we could be sure the intervention we were evaluating affected life expectancy. (This is the plan of the worthy but ridiculously expensive TAME trial promoted by Nir Barzilai.)
Science is catching up once again!
We are thrilled to announce the findings of the latest research study from Amsterdam Medical Center about the impact of the Wim Hof Method on auto-immune disease. The results are truly impressive. A new milestone has been reached! Shedding light on our human potential. Stay Happy, Strong and Healthy & Make sure to check out the FULL VIDEO and learn all about this latest study at the link below: http://ow.ly/kcSg50xtwfW… #iceman #wimhof #science #research #study #inflammation #immunesystem #breath #cold #mindset #wimhofmethod #stronghappyhealthy
This Year’s 4 Most Mind-Boggling Stories About the Brain
2019 was nuts for neuroscience. I said this last year too, but that’s the nature of accelerating technologies: the advances just keep coming.
There’re the theoretical showdowns: a mano a mano battle of where consciousness arises in the brain, wildly creative theories of why our brains are so powerful, and the first complete brain wiring diagram of any species. This year also saw the birth of “hybrid” brain atlases that seek to interrogate brain function from multiple levels—genetic, molecular, and wiring, synthesizing individual maps into multiple comprehensive layers.
Brain organoids also had a wild year. These lab-grown nuggets of brain tissue, not much larger than a lentil, sparked with activity similar to preterm babies, made isolated muscles twitch, and can now be cloned into armies of near-identical “siblings” for experimentation—prompting a new round of debate on whether they’ll ever gain consciousness.
Zinaida Good | Reversing Epigenetic Aging and Immunosenescent Trends in Humans | VISION WEEKEND 2019
You heard about reversing the epigenetic clock 2.5 years? Living drugs? CAR T cells? Fight cancer? Here ya go.
Vision Weekend is the annual member gathering of Foresight Institute, a non-profit for advancing beneficial technologies for the long-term flourishing of life.
More info on speakers and program: https://foresight.org/vision-weekend-2019/.
Join Foresight Institute’s community: www.bit.ly/foresightnews
New research uncovers potential trigger for Type 2 diabetes
Research led by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has uncovered a new process that may help explain how Type 2 diabetes develops. In tests on live mice and human cells in the lab, the team found a new mechanism besides insulin resistance and high glucose levels that triggers pancreatic cells to begin overproducing insulin.
Type 2 diabetes is the form of the disease that’s usually a result of lifestyle choices, such as poor diet and not enough exercise. It involves a kind of vicious cycle of insulin – beta cells in the pancreas produce too much insulin, which causes the body to become resistant to it. That in turn means the beta cells could produce even more to compensate.
It was long thought that high glucose levels – most commonly caused by eating too much sugary and fatty foods – was the trigger for the beta cells to begin overproducing insulin. But it’s also been shown in the past that even beta cells isolated in a lab dish can over-secrete insulin, without glucose playing a part.
MIT reveals first ever laser ultrasound pictures of a human body
Researchers from MIT have revealed the very first images of a human generated through a novel laser ultrasound imaging technique. Unlike conventional ultrasound, the new technique does not require any skin contact with the body, dramatically amplifying the range of uses for doctors in clinical environments.
A conventional ultrasound is one of the cheapest and easiest imaging methods clinicians currently have in their arsenal. Unlike X-ray or CT scans, an ultrasound does not involve harmful radiation, and unlike PET or MRI scans, there is no need for large expensive machines. Of course, ultrasound does have a number of limitations, from the need for significant bodily contact in the process of imaging, to a variability in imaging results.
A new non-contact ultrasound method involving lasers has now been effectively demonstrated by a team of researchers from MIT. The challenge in developing the new method has been figuring out a way to use a laser to produce sound waves. Traditional ultrasound uses sound waves to penetrate a human body and bounce back off different tissues. Light, of course, cannot penetrate a human body as deeply as sound.