Choice of Diet

Anorexia nervosa, commonly known as anorexia, is an eating disorder that is associated with food litigation, fear of gaining weight, underweight, and a strong urge to continuously lose weight. On July 15th, 2019, The largest study for Anorexia Nervosa has taken place, examining around 17,000 patients that have been diagnosed with this disorder.  Findings suggest that chemical signals involving both the mentally and physically have confused the mind to behave in this manner, causing the individual to not choose a healthy diet.  Getting these results from one of the largest studies of anorexia yet, the disorder affects up to 2% of women and 0.3% of men. It has been a struggle trying to figure out how to dissect the disorder and treat it all in the same process.  Anorexia shares some of the same character traits as ODC, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia.
Anorexia, like any other mental disorder, should be as big of a priority as our physical and emotional health. That fact that this disorder shares "characteristic single-nucleotide polymorphisms" with other disorders that are affecting a huge percentage of mental health should be highlighted and brought to the attention of our children. Although psychiatrists have struggled to find solutions to 100% treat the people who have been diagnosed, I feel as though sharing what the issue is and helping others gain knowledge of how to treat the Patient in the real world should bring light to the fact that we want to help. I think by acknowledging people with this disorder as if they are the same as anybody else will help a little at least with the mental state.

Original Article: Roots of Anorexia

Serial killers on cancer

Dr. Rosenberg has been operating on patients for years. He deals with cancer, and for one special patient their own immune system took out their cancer cells. Thinking that this person had a special blood type, he transfused it into another patient with cancer. He was however, unsuccessful. He did learn though a new technique on a way to kill cancer. This technique is called "cell therapy." The patients t-cells are extracted from the body and then modified to recognize and destroy cancer. These t-cells are then multiplied millions of times and then put back into the body to fight the cancer. These cells are known as "serial killers" because they can kill thousands of cancer cells. Cell therapy is a unique treatment because it is using a live thing to fight the cancer and it is unique to every person. There have been side effects on a few patients, but research is still going on. These killer cells are mostly used on blood cancers. This article kept my attention the whole time. This could change the whole world, and lead to a cure if further research is as successful as this. Cancer amazes me because it is a mystery and always changing. Today every single person has been effected by some type of cancer, this could lead to solving one of the worlds greatest mysteries. Dr. Rosenberg looked at cancer in a different way and made me think in a different way as well. I would love for him to publish more about this research so I can keep up to date on it. 

Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/02/health/cancer-cell-therapy-immune-system.html?action=click&contentCollection=health&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0

Related article: http://annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.immunol.25.022106.141527

Young at Heart, Literally - Body Parts Age at Different Rates

Researchers have begun looking at how to measure the rate at which parts of our body age. This was done by looking at previous studies where tissue samples were taken from places such as the heart, lungs, liver, etc. They found that the patterns found in DNA markers of these tissue cells were designed in a way that the age of tissues would be successful. The methylation of DNA was correlated with the age of a cell, "the process by which methyl groups are added to or taken away from DNA to change it's expression." This statistical model was successful and accurate, and was tested with individuals and their own organs.


A process like this is really interesting. It can play a huge role in forensic science and identifying attackers or narrowing blood samples in a specific case. Also in finding risks in diseases or cancers early on. Researchers should continue this line of study because the reality is, it can be beneficial in a variety of ways down the road.


Main Article: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2013/10/22/young-at-heart-literally-body-parts-age-at-different-rates/

Reading Your Biological Clock

UCLA professor Steve Horvath used eight thousand samples of fifty-one tissue and cell types in order to develop a new way to understand the biological clock. Specifically, he used over 350 genetic markers to track the relationship age and methylation levels. From his results, he noticed that different types of tissue aged differently when compared to different tissue found on the same body. Specifically, he noticed that healthy breast tissue was two to three years older than the rest of a woman's body when compare to abnormal cancerous breast tissue that, was on average, twelve years older than the rest of another woman's body. He also observed that biological clock is not moving at a constant rate. The clock ticks faster during the earlier stages of life up until the age of twenty. From there, the biological clock was shown to slow down until a constant rate was reached.

I understand that everyone's clock is not same, but this new biological clock can be used as a guide to help us indicate potential issues within our tissue. With more studies, patterns could be developed to indicated a deleterious change compared to a normal change. With further research, people can start to understand some of the processes related to primary aging and the changes that are associated with it on a molecular level. By knowing the relative age of different tissues within the body, specific preventative medicines could be designed to slow down aging in order to prevent possible disease. Aging is a very complex process. Understanding its fundamental processes can help correct age-related diseases or lower risks for diseases.