018 - Living Medicines, Dangerous Cookware, and Toad Licking - HealthHippieMD Week In Review
No Matter Your Age, Improving Your Diet can Extend Your Life - NEJM
At any age, a healthy diet can extend your life is a recap of the 2018 NEJM Paper, Association of Changes in Diet Quality with Total and Cause-Specific Mortality. The take-home message is "No matter how old you are or how much junk food you consume, it's never too late to start undoing the damage caused by a poor diet."
Gut Check
Radiolab replayed an episode on the importance of your gut: Radiolab: Guts. The episode features stories on a UC Davis fistulated cow, the microbiome, the gut-brain axis, and autoimmune disease. As my daughter exclaimed when she sent me the episode, "This is the most dad-like episode I've ever listened to." She knows me well.
Psychedelics and End-of-Life Care
Colorado approved the legalization of medicinal psilocybin on Tuesday. A physician and nurse wrote an opinion piece on How Psychedelics Can Transform End-of-Life Care.
Wood-Wide Web
Do the trees in the forest "talk" to one another? The debate continues. The Wood Wide Web: Scientists Debate Whether Trees Really Talk (paywall-I'm waiting for my gift articles to replenish)
The Race to Develop "Living Medicines."
This Gulp of Engineered Bacteria Is Meant to Treat Disease features a company engineering E. coli, a gut bacteria, as therapeutic agents. Microbiome therapeutics is a hot area of development these days, with a market expected to grow to $1.5 billion by 2027. Here is a list of some of the top microbiome startups by the amount of funding raised: Top 10 Microbiome startups. (disclosure - I own shares of Seres Therapeutics and Finch Therapeutics)
Dangerous Cookware
The EPA has labeled "forever chemicals," such as PFAS—perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl, commonly found in traditional nonstick pans, hazardous substances. That means your nonstick pans are now considered dangerous. Teflon Nonstick Pans Are Bad. Consider These Alternatives discusses the various options to replace your cookware. Time to get my Le Creuset out of storage!
National Park Service Asks Visitors to Stop Licking Toads
Stop licking psychedelic Sonoran Desert toads, National Park Service says is an article about attempts to stop visitors from sampling Bufotoxin, a potent hallucinogen, secreted by Sonoran Desert Toads. The article reminded me of one of my favorite NPR radio stories ever: The Dog Who Loved to Suck on Toads. (listen, don't read)
Cell Senescence, Immunology, Stem Cells, and the Gut
Longevity by Design: Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff—Regenerative Medicine and Immunology was a fascinating discussion about aging, tissue repair, immunology, and cell senescence. The part that most excited me was her current studies investigating the role of the microbiome in stem cell activation. I'm going to track down some of Dr. Elisseeff's papers.
COMPASS Synthetic Psilocybin Study - NEJM
In 003 - Mad Honey, Frisson, and Psychedelic Capitalism I mentioned the controversy behind COMPASS and their attempts to corner the psychedelic market via intellectual property. This week, COMPASS published the results of a study in the NEJM: Single-Dose Psilocybin for a Treatment-Resistant Episode of Major Depression. Here is an article summarizing the findings: A single dose of psilocybin may alleviate major depression for 12 weeks, study finds.
Quiet Quitting and Going to the "Neutral Zone."
"More of us want to find ways to align our work with our values. And for some of us, those values have changed." Post-pandemic, many people are considering the nature of their employment and, in many cases, "quiet quitting." Quiet quitting is a work phenomenon in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract or job. The author of Have you quietly quit? Your next step: Go to the neutral zone recommends rather than jumping directly into a new job, to take time to reflect before drastically changing the way we work and live. The ZigZag Project is a great resource to help contemplate your professional direction.
How do "Super-Agers" Maintain Their Cognitive Abilities?
Super-agers are elderly individuals for whom aging doesn't seem to impact cognitive abilities. "SuperAgers" with super memory have super neurons summarizes a study attempting to figure out why.
Dietary Fiber and the Efficacy of Immunotherapy
The article, More fiber for the microbiome may boost immunotherapy cancer drugs is an overview of recent studies demonstrating an increased efficacy of immunotherapy drugs based on dietary intake. The microbiome mediates the effect.
Brain Training with Crossword Puzzles
A study published in NEJM Evidence has found that regularly attempting a crossword may help slow decline in some people with mild cognitive impairment, an early stage of faltering memory that can sometimes progress to dementia. Read the summary of the study here: Crossword puzzles may benefit people with mild cognitive impairment .
Quote
"The future influences the present just as much as the past."- Friedrich Nietzsche