Sorry I Couldn’t Pick Just One: the return of the passion blog

Okey doke guys here we go again. It’s been a while since my last passion blog post so I’m gonna throw a few things in this time instead of focusing on just one:

Why You Do (or don’t) Get Bitten

Studies have shown tons of different factors that can attract mosquitos. Everything from having type O blood to being pregnant or drinking beer have all come up as potential causes of attraction. But now they’ve found that a component of sweat may actually be another attractant. This component is lactic acid, commonly found in dairy, but also found in sweat (who knew?). According to the article, this is also why mosquitos can be attracted to cheese and even smelly feet. Ew. Anyways, while this is a relatively new discovery, there are still probably tons of other things that somehow make us look appealing to your average little bloodsucking mosquito, we just don’t know what they all are yet!

Your Immune System vs. Binge Drinking

Somewhat in honor of (yet completely unrelated to…) the last week that we had to post blogs…… apparently just one night of binge drinking can knock down your immune system, and in just twenty minutes. After volunteers because intoxicated (in a controlled lab setting of course) blood samples were taken twenty minutes, two hours, and five hours later. The cells were already in an inflamed state just twenty minutes in. At the later marks, the test results showed a much more sluggish and suppressed immune system. So make good choices kiddos, I hear the flu’s going around again.

Australian Artificial Pancreases

The pancreas is a critical organ that is responsible for synthesizing vital hormones and proteins, such as insulin. People with type 1 diabetes have an autoimmune disorder that greatly diminishes the amount of insulin that the pancreas can make and use. This is the “bad type” of diabetes that is usually thought of as more severe and thought to be incurable. But now there is hope for a cure through the revolutionary treatment that doctors in Australia have come up with. A four-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes has recently been given an artificial pancreas to automatically regulate his insulin levels. Unlike preexisting pumps, this new device doesn’t constantly pump insulin into his system, but rather it has a special algorithm that can calculate when insulin is needed and can then deliver it. This is a revolutionary advance because users of the traditional pumps run the risk of hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) attacks usually happen when patients are asleep, making it all the more difficult to identify and treat them. But this new artificial pancreas can predict hypoglycemic attacks before they even start and stop insulin delivery just in time. Not only does this offer health benefits but it also increases the patients’ quality of life: they can eat normal foods without worrying about consequences and the device is also waterproof for convenience.

Well that’s all for now folks, seeya!

 

 

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-mosquitoes-seem-bite-some-people-more

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/binge-drinking-effects-your-immune-system-immediately

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/4-year-old-australian-boy-receives-world-s-first-artificial-pancreas

 

5 thoughts on “Sorry I Couldn’t Pick Just One: the return of the passion blog

  1. Justin Cooper says:

    Great blog, you always are able to put medical stories and studies in a fun and exciting way!!!!

  2. Haley DeMartin says:

    I love reading your blog, it’s always so interesting. My aunt always gets the most mosquito bites, I’ll have to tell her it might be because she is the sweatiest. Also I was just reading an article about diabetes and how the rates were increasing at such an alarming rate. The article claimed that this is the first case of evolution that has happened to humans in a very short time span. It is interesting because to go from Neanderthals to what we are now took our actions and genes millions (?) of years, yet it only took a few decades for our changing lifestyle (poor diets and lack of exercise) to start changing us.

  3. Wow! It feels great to get a chance to read a fellow medical blogger since this semester I am blogging about studies related to neuroscience, too! I thought the three studies you picked had really interesting findings and more importantly, the manner in which you presented them made them more entertaining and less of the serious medical stuff…That’s actually something I will be trying to achieve in my writing too. I am going to be looking forward to these, great work!

  4. cvk5271 says:

    Like David said, these are all super interesting. The binge drinking one in particular stands out to me considering our campus is often regarded as a top party school. It’s certainly something students should consider if they do choose to drink in excess and maybe even relates to the “Penn State Plague” at the beginning of the fall semester?

  5. David Fanelli says:

    Wow. These are all really interesting things, but in particular I really like the Pancreas one. It sounds like there’s a lot of math involved, and I know how much you love math, so it’s no wonder you like this stuff so much! Mosquitoes are cool too, and lucky for us nobody at Penn State drinks that much!!

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