Less is more

I think that most all dietitians and nutritional professionals have known, at least in theory, that all the additives in our food supply or not only not necessary, but have a negative impact on our health, especially salt and sugar. Anyone with even a few taste buds know that increasing salty and sugary foods are more addictive, and the role of these additives in changing one's brain chemistry will be saved for another post.

Just a few weeks ago, Welsh et al from Emory, reported in the The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA. 2010 Apr 21;303(15):1490-7.) reported that there was a significant correlation between dietary added sugars and blood lipid levels among US adults

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Additionally, numerous experts have urged the FDA to lower salt in the American diet because...

On average, Americans consume more than 3,400 milligrams of sodium -- the amount in about 1.5 teaspoons of salt -- each day. The recommended maximum daily intake of sodium -- the amount above which health problems appear -- is 2,300 milligrams per day for adults, about 1 teaspoon of salt.

Adding to the trifecta is high fructose corn syrup, which is 20-60% sweeter than regular table sugar (sucrose), and despite what Corn Refiners Association would like you to think, HAS NOT been proven to be the same as sugar.

It is great to now see the science to back what I feel most of us have known, let's hope the government and manufactures will take notice and make changes with the health of their consumers in mind.

Travels

Ugh...I have not been as faithful with keeping up the blog as I anticipated, but alas, I have some reasonable excuses, like a cruise to the Bahamas. Yes, finally one appendix and four long years later, I finally made it to the Bahamas. I would like to thank Beth for organizing such a great trip to celebrate the 30th birthday of her and several others. This was my first cruise and despite some over-cast weather, it was great! I did not have any sea-sickness issues, although, I did not really anticipate any. We set sail from Miami on Friday afternoon and got the trip off to a great start with several drinks by the pool. While in port in Nassau I did some shopping, snorkeling and bar crawling. Beth set-up a mini bar crawl to a few local places that ended with her purist to the infamous bar she had stumbled upon during her last trip to Nassau. We also enjoyed wonderful, endless food and a great dinner waiter, Nelson, who kept us very entertained. All in all, for my first experience at sea, it was fun and relaxing.

Now, it is on to Cali. First for the Experimental Biology meeting in Anaheim. It was so wonderful to see ol' friends from UIUC, and of course bittersweet. Last night Mina and I had a great time catching up over a pitcher of margaritas and afterwards met-up with Vicki and company for a rousing evening of scientific banter. Yes, it was stimulating. Now the John (and shortly Desiree) have moved to Cali, I was able to see them both. His new promotion at Chase is going well, and she is excited to get out here after graduation and get ready for their baby!! Of course the conference was good, although there were not too many talks on the specifics of my new research.

FASEB did a great job at improving the career development section and I hope I attended enough seminars to now have some clue of what I want to be when I grow-up. I will say the Anaheim convention center/Hilton was not the best equipped. One example was the ridiculous line at Star-bucks every morning. I know this is not their first conference and it is not hard to figure out having a line solely for coffee along with a barista taking orders in-line would greatly improve the situation. Guess it was my luck I liked the coffee in the room.

Now it is on to UCSD to learn some new scientific techniques. I'll be here just a few days and have already gleaned much more insider information and tricks than I would have just trying to follow the directions. I am not sure how much time I will have to sight-see, as I have to prepare for a presentation on Tuesday when I return.

We don't share very well

Since sharing is not something my new lab has mastered, as per Louise, I (and everyone else) get one of my own just about everything. OK, I don't have my own PCR machine or centrifuge, but I have a set of my own bench basics and reagents: pipettes, pipette aid, all sorts of plastic tubes and holders, scissors, and even a mini-fridge to keep stuff in that I am "too lazy" to walk to the cooler for.

I found the biochem store room, right in our building also have my own shelf in the freezer and a mail slot. I expect letters.

The desk is coming together, calendar, bus schedule and a few pictures are up. I hope to get the rest up tomorrow, but the cork-board around my desk is evil and does not seem to like being stuck with push-pins. The snacks and coffee cups have arrived and mouse-house shoes are coming with tomorrow. I also proudly navigated an additional bus route today to return to the dealership when my car had some recall work done this afternoon. The journey involved a trip from campus to the main terminal downtown and a transfer, all which went smoothly.

Stuart and the fam came down for dinner and so he could install my new faucet in the kitchen sink to remedy the absent sprayer. The faucet functions for what I intended, however, the neck is a bit lower in to the sink that I thought, but it was the only sprayer model that fit my sink. Got to give and take I guess.

It is on to the 1st of 4 animal training classes tomorrow.

Real world: Day 1

My first day in the real world went off without a hitch and was very similar to grad school days. I think moving from one college town to another has been a good move. Most of the morning was spent back and forth between the lab on the 5th floor and the administrative offices on the 3rd floor. My favorite part of the morning was when I received my locker!! Yes, I have a high-school-like locker in the hall down from the lab, number 1530, so you know which one to decorate for homecoming and my birthday. I also had to schedule several training classes for animal handling, radiation safety, and other OSHA requirements. I also was able to start reading some articles and begin to refocus my scientific train of thought.

• Catch the bus at the park-n-ride this morning - check
• Key card access - check
  
• Log-in name/password, network drives, & printer - check
  
• Afternoon coffee at the biggest Espresso Royale Cafe EVER - check
  
• Catch the bus home this afternoon (and I did not have to run it down) - check

The docket for the rest of the week includes journal club tomorrow, the 1st of four training classes Wednesday, and lab meeting Thursday. I have already been warned this might be a doozy, since there has not been a lab meeting in several weeks.

I have my bag of desk essentials ready for tomorrow: pictures, silverware, coffee cup, S&P, sharpies, pens, highlighter, note pads, sticky notes, calendar, and snacks. So far so good, everyone was nice today and I'm looking forward to getting a few experiments under my belt.

Little of this and a little of that

Wrap-up of somethings from this week:

Literature
Forgot to mention I finished World War Z while on vacation in Breckenridge. I highly recommend it, although beware of the looks when you start talking about zombies. It was a really solid read and easily broken up in sections (a style I really like). I really enjoyed how Brooks weaved the story of the war into the personal interviews. My overall conclusion is that if there is ever a zombie or nuclear war, I am running as fast as I can straight in to the heart of it; I sure don't want to be around for the aftermath.

I also started and finished yesterday The Last Lecture. This has been on my reading list for quite awhile. It was a super quick read, even for me. It was enjoyed, which sounds kind of morbid, but once I stopped thinking that these were the words of a dead man, it was a lot like the Chicken Soup Books and Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. There were a few times this week while reading on the bus that I had to put the book down for fear of shedding a few tears. I think it was very well written, insightful, and thought provoking making me think of what I would want people to know and remember about me.

I picked up Under The Banner Of Heaven and When You Are Engulfed In Flames. The first was due to rave, I mean rave, recommendations from a new grad student, Christy I met out at Whiskey Wednesday, and the later is because I have greatly enjoyed everything else by David Sedaris. Not sure yet which I'll start with.


Computers
I, well actually Glenn, got the new MacBook up and running in full capacity with Parallels and XP. I must admit I was a just a little proud when I found the key code to install Office. The writing on the CD itself (a copy from a friend) wasn't correct, so Glenn wasn't able to install it. I messed around with things when I got home and found a Text doc on the CD that had the key. I'm sure Glenn could've found it, but he was probably tired of working on all my computer stuff - Thanks Glenn!!


I also finally got an external hard drive today. Since I'm transferring so much between computers and am going to be a professional here in a few weeks, figured it was about time.




Lab
Finished my last experiments ever in Greg's lab this week. The results are still under debate. I have to work out the stats for the lethality studies. I'll I've got to say is I am sure glad that is done and I won't be around to figure out what's going on; three weeks of septic and dying mice does not put one in a good mood.

I must admit I had a few tears when I was finishing the 2nd experiment on Thursday. I think between all the dead mice and the moving, I'm a tad bit over-emotional.

The 2nd experiment was from the "Scientific Progress" posts. So all in all, it looks like that took just about 3 months from start to finish.

I'm a little concerned about getting everything back to the Journal of Immunology before I leave. Greg is on vaca this week and so we'll only have one week when he's back to weave this new and interesting data in to the paper.
I reviewed my first publication this week for Brain Behavior and Immunity.

Last lab lunch at Timpone's was Friday :(


Moving
I am down a couch and a dining room table. It is really interesting to me how certain things on Craigslist go SO fast. Both of those were sold within 36 hours of posting, but I still have not had much luck with the desk and dresser.

I've packed all the boxes I've collected, so it is back to scavenging the hallways of ERML for boxes - it's looking pretty bare.

The boxes have made their way in to the kitchen.


Vicki leaves on Saturday :( but I'll see her in a few weeks when I head out east to DC, NY, and Boston for leg 2 of the big summer vacation.

Finally, I bought some hiking boots for the UP and Scotland. It was an expensive day: boots, hard drive, and books.

Summer reading

This summer I will have ample time just to sit and read, whether it be in airports and during my summer travels, sitting in the woods at the cottage in the U.P., or in the next few weeks enjoying a very reduced lab schedule sitting at one of the fine establishment downtown.

My "to-read" list is kind of short, so I am looking for some suggestions. I enjoy a lot of styles of writing, in particular short stories, such as David Sedaris, or fiction-type biographies such as The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Other books I have enjoyed are Eat, Love, Pray, works by Daniel Quinn, Malcolm Gladwell, and Wally Lamb. I like reading WWII stories and science fiction, but haven't ever been able to get in to mysteries or far-fetched fiction, such as Wicked. I am not sure the exact genre, but I enjoy scientific-based books like The Female Brain (Louann Brizendine) and Freakonomics.

I had started World War Z about a month ago, but did not have much time to devote to reading and have recently started it again. My short list includeds The Last Lecture and Hot, Flat, and Crowded, so as you can see I am in need of your suggestions.

Up date on the scientific progress

I finally started my experiment yesterday, kind of ironic it was two months to the day that we heard back from the reviewers asking for this experiment. I guess all in all, it was within a reasonable length of time, but then again, I like to get things done yesterday.

Origin of the swine flu?

I just couldn't help myself

More scientific progress??

As previously posted, I am working against the clock to finish rebuttal experiments for the review we received from the Journal of Immunology for my 4th and final dissertation publication.

We are on our way feeding Dr. Z's knockout mice our super-special experimental diet. Par for the course, these mice will be ready for their experiment the last week of May, which is the week I plan on taking my RD boards and right before we are going to CO for the PNIRS conference. I am still debating on whether I might let them stay on the diet a week longer until we return - stay tuned.

The other major experiment the reviewers wanted was to see if our super-special diet would protect mice against sepsis. This required us to write a whole new experimental protocol to preform a sepsis experiment. Since sepsis is a controversial procedure, there was not doubt that this would require a full review from Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), and the full committee only meets on the 1st Tuesday of the month.

The week following the journal review (March 16th) I met with vets and IACUC staff to obtain some help with writing such a controversial protocol. I also found out that it would be in our best interest to submit our new protocol by Friday, March 20th or Monday the 23rd at the latest; leaving me only a few days to write a whole new animal protocol (not easy at all!!). I worked, via email, with the IACUC specialists for a few more changes and pored over the protocol night and day and submitted on Monday, March 23rd (assuming we would be on the agenda for review on April 7th).

March 25th - we received a pre-review with some small changes. "Mark this box, change this verb."

March 29th - we received notice that we were called to full committee review, which was no surprise.

April 10th - we received an email with reviewers' comments asking to clarify some issues with dosing and euthanasia method. It took less than 30 minutes to answer. I contacted IACUC to clarify the questions and found out we had NEVER made it to full committee!! Considering I worked day and night to get this done in the time frame suggested by IACUC, I was not very happy. I completely understand that it makes sense to have the reviewers' comments answered before going to full review, but they had the protocol for a full two weeks before the full committee meeting and it took a full month to get back the questions. I have no idea what was happening on their end as far as how/when they send protocols to reviewers.

April 21st - we received 'follow-up' comments from reviewers on brand-new issues they had not addressed the first time. Again, an issue that took 5 minutes to answer. I found this utterly frustrating, because I am not sure how they expect investigators to make progress when they keep coming up with new questions; this should all be done in ONE review. My boss suggested I call the IACUC chair and inquire about this issue; he was out of town at a conference.

April 24th - I was able to talk to the chair and he, in not so many words, agreed that this was a bit much and said when he saw this second round of questions, he had the vet intervene on our behalf and answer the reviewers' question for us, as it was very simple (maybe they should re-think having community members on the committee).

April 27th - WE ARE APPROVED, sort of. We received the approval email from IACUC and will be able to finally start on these experiments, almost a full month after we started this process, once we return the signature page.

Sex, sleep, and longevity?

It appears that having more sex and sleeping more increases longevity, at least on the Greek island of Ikaria, which begs the question: does the sex make you live longer or does one live longer to have more sex?


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There was an interesting report on Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN last night about this study that was done on the people of Ikaria, who live well in to their 90's, and yes, are still apparently having sex, sleeping until 10-11am and staying up to 2am. There was not a reference to any peer-reviewed scientific report done on this population, but I found another interesting story of a man who was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1970 and decided to move back to Ikaria and lived another whopping 40 years!

Since I don't spend enough time in bed, I decided partake in the longevity calculator provided by CNN to see if my lack of time under the covers was really making me old. I figured I would do pretty good; I exercise regularly, eat a pretty healthy diet, don't smoke, and have no chronic illness.

This is what I found:
Chronological age: 27
Biological age: 23.6 (sigh...I'm still legal)
Life expectancy: 93.6
Blue Zone years: 11.4 (This is the number of extra years I have accrued due to my lifestyle)
Added year: 4.4 (If I optimize my lifestyle, and spend more time in bed, I could live to 98)


Final report; ways to optimize my lifestyle:
1) Sleep 7-8 hours
2) Get screened for alcohol abuse because I have had 5+ drinks in one sitting
3) Eat more seafood
4) Make more money
5) Get married

My thoughts:
1) I was surprised to find that any single encounter of 5+ drinks warranted a screening for alcohol abuse. I know there has to be a cut-off somewhere for health professional to start screening, but I think adding in some modifiers, such as the time period of consumption (what if this was an all day BBQ or a wine tasting), the atmosphere (were you drinking alone), or one's motivation would be useful.

2) Make more money. They asked about my satisfaction with my 'life work,' in which i replied that I was very satisfied. I understand the relationship between financial strain and health, but given that I did not express discontent with my 'life's work' that is not paying well, I figured that would be more important. It would be interesting to see if I reported making a lot of money but not so much satisfaction with work, if that would trigger.

3) Get married...grr, this is kind annoying, especially since they did not ask if I had children, or if I was content with my single-status. Studies have shown that married people without children are the happiest which maybe attributed to increased earning and more enjoying sex. They did not really distinguish if married people without children are happiest, then single, then married with children; although I have heard this around, but found no studies. I reported that I have a good support system of family and friends, however, I guess that doesn't seem to count as much. Also, given the current experiences I have had with people getting divorced, I will have to do a very careful cost:benefit analysis.

So all in all, to live another 4.4 years I need to make more money, sleep more, have more sex, and get married. Maybe I'll forgo the stress of trying to figure out how to accomplish those things, since only one is really within my control, and only live until my early 90's.

Scientific Progress?

After 3 weeks of emails, minor amendments, and transfer requests, I was finally able to walk a block up the road and give some of our experimental fiber diet to some knock-out mice.

We received the review from my last dissertation publication on March 11th. Their response was good, but they asked some very broad-sweeping questions that do not have a direct answer. At that point in time, I was t-minus 3 months until leaving, and as with most things I was/am in a hurry to get the ball rolling on the rebuttal experiments. (As a side note, I will be going regardless of the publication, but it only behooves everyone for me to get as much done as possible).

After a few days of exchanging ideas with the other authors on ideas, we came up with the following experiment, which is to just answer one of the unanswerable questions. A little background first: our hypothesis is that dietary fiber can dampen the response to infection and they wanted a more in depth "how." There are of course several ways to attack this, but given the limited time and available resources we decided to provide our experimental diet to a mouse that has a genetic mutation of a key protein (X) needed to mediate the signal from the bacteria. (This is still top secret stuff, so I apologize to my fellow scientists for the ambiguity).

Not a problem, I thought. Dr. Z, who we collaborate with, has these X knockout mice, we have used his mice before and our diet is approved and is OK with the 2 campus committees that regulate animal experiments. I figured that only road-block would be how many mice Dr. Z could spare. On March 18th Dr. Z informed me that there are some mice we can have and it is necessary to start feeding the mice the experimental diet ASAP after they are weaned from their moms.

The normal protocol for transferring mice from one PI to another is to submit a transfer request, which usually takes a day or so at most to approve - but there is where we hit snag after snag.

Our protocol was low on available mice (on paper) so we needed to write a minor amendment to add more mice. Other labmates were in the progress of doing this when we got the go-ahead from Dr Z. I was not sure if we were still approved to use space in the building with Dr. Z's mice (we can't bring them to our building - even longer story). So we took a few more days to write in use of building space and addition of these X knockout mice to the minor amendment. We submitted this amendment on March 19th and received approval notice on the 23rd.

But there was yet again another snag. Since the last time we had transferred mice from Dr. Z they wrote a new protocol and chose not to allow transfer as an option without specific authorization. Now mind you this was Spring Break at UIUC, and my emails to Dr. Z asking him to authorize a transfer went unanswered (out-of-office response is there for a reason). When my PI returned on the 30th he finally got an email response that Dr. Z was out of town until the 6th. After several more days of emails between Dr. Z and my boss, Dr. Z agreed that we could submit the transfer authorization on his behalf - this was done on April 2nd and received approval later that day. Then we still had to submit the original transfer request (which was the only thing I originally thought we'd have to do) which was done immediately after the transfer was authorized.

Finally on Friday, April 3rd, we were approved to transfer the X knockout mice from Dr. Z to our protocol and give them our experiment diet. Dr. Z was still out of town until the 6th and I finally was able to start the experiment. Now we wait for 6 weeks until they are ready.

After all the paper work and red-tape, it is pretty obvious why scientific progress takes so freakin' long.