Biologizing - Biological News n' Views

Melatonin is a hormone that is secreted by the pineal gland of the brain. The hormone is essential to allow the body to sleep. Melatonin production is connected to light. The brighter your surroundings the less melatonin is produced and in turn the less sleepy you will feel. When you spend hours on your phone before falling asleep you are preventing your brain from secreting melatonin. Although melatonin is a natural hormone it can be purchased in pill form. We are seeing a surge in the use of long-term melatonin dependency. Within the last decade, the use of melatonin has doubled. Melatonin was created to be used in the short term for things such as jetlag. The contents of melatonin are not being properly regulated. “​​Previous studies also found 26% of the melatonin supplements contained serotonin”. Serotonin is a hormone that when mixed with other medications can cause a harmful drug reaction. People are unknowingly taking higher doses of melatonin on a daily basis with long-term us...

Diabetes is a familiar disease in modern medicine, but its various causes can often be unclear beyond normal risk factors, such as obesity, old age, or low physical activity. With the onset of diabetes, your risk of heart attack and stroke increases significantly while problems with kidneys, eyes, feet and nerves become common. In this article, it is presented that an individuad's “chronotype”, or preferred timing of sleeping and waking, can have a statistically significant effect on how likely you are to develop diabetes. According to a study by medical investigators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, if you go to bed late and rise later in the morning, you have a 19% higher chance of developing type 2 diabetes. The findings of this study are definitely alarming for those who tend to be more of a ‘night owl’. For many college students who adopt this lifestyle, it is perhaps worth reconsidering if this circadian preference is healthy. Even in the circumstance of avoiding unhealthy ...

          Alzheimer’s disease is serious, common, and not very easy to detect. Despite this, researchers from the University of Colorado’s medical campus and researchers from Washington University have found a way to detect the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease through the brain’s activity during sleep using a digital biomarker headband device.  The headband device, similar to a fitness tracker for the brain, uses electroencephalography, a test of brain activity, to inspect the patterns of the brain’s waves during sleep. Since these brain waves relate to the reactivation of memory and the part of the brain that processes memories during deep sleep, researchers have found that the results of the electroencephalography readings can be expressive of Alzheimer’s disease’s early symptoms. The data that comes from the headband device analyzes the levels of proteins like tau and amyloid which are generally increased in someone who has Alzheimer’s disea...

When the word wildfire is brought up, for many, it brings along a negative connotation due to its destructive nature and economic impacts. Wildfires have been deemed disastrous by many individuals, but without wildfires, the soil composition in forests cannot improve. Wildfires help break down the soil organic material layer, releasing previously untapped nutrients such as nitrogen, sulfur, and phosphorus. Elevation in soil nutrients allows new life to grow and increases the soil’s capacity for cation exchange. Academic researcher Leonard DeBano outlines the various effects of elements released during fire activity and explains how the soil’s capacity for cation exchange can occur in the article, ‘’The Effect of Fire on Soil Properties’’. The article explains that nitrogen is a limiting factor of tree growth in forests and is released by the rapid combustion of organic material during a fire. The downside to this method is that due to nitrogen’s low-temperature threshold, nitrogen beco...

 Alzheimer’s disease is a neurological disease caused by an abnormal buildup of misfolded or unfolded proteins. Alzheimer’s affects around 6 million people in America and about 50 million people worldwide. When the diseased cell has the mutated gene that does not code correctly for a gene, the translated protein misfolds. Plaques and tangles formed from protein aggregations disrupt the signaling and neurotransmitters of nerve cells. Therefore, the brain cells die and the brain shrinks. Misfolded proteins aggregate as hydrophobic cores of the proteins form London dispersion forces. The hydrophobic residues are exposed, promoting misfolded protein aggregates. The insoluble misfolded proteins form long linear or fibrillar aggregates known as amyloid deposits. When Amyloid and Tau proteins form toxic misfolded aggregates in the brain, causing brain cell death. Plaques form when there is a buildup of amyloids. These plaques can kill neurons in multiple ways. Amyloid plaques can trigger ...

If you’ve been on the right side of TikTok for a decent amount of time, you’ve definitely noticed an uptick in the popularity of snail mucin in skincare. The skincare industry never fails in shifting the goalposts for women all over the world. There is always some new fad or brand that is the “must-have” for the week and then vanishes into obscurity. Even worse, some of these fads can end up negatively impacting your skin. I definitely don’t need to remind anyone of the tragedy that was the St. Ives scrub (holy microtears). Usually, trends in beauty and skincare are driven by brands rather than particular ingredients or additives, which makes the popularity of snail mucin even more notable. Are the beauty influencers finally onto something, or is this yet another damaging trend that no one will remember in a month? A study done in May 2022 using hairless mice as a proxy for human skin showed that snail mucin does in fact lessen the effects of aging. In this study, exposure to UV rays w...

Diabetes in pregnancy is a complication associated with increased detrimental risks to the health of both carrier and neonate. For pregnant patients with pre-existing diabetes mellitus (type 1 and type 2), the risk for birth defects, stillbirth, and preterm birth is elevated. These patients are often treated before and throughout their pregnancy. Those who develop diabetes during pregnancy, also known as gestational diabetes, are at a higher risk of having a cesarean delivery and developing type 2 diabetes after pregnancy, and increases the baby's risk for elevated birth weight, developing obesity and/or type 2 diabetes, and a variety of other medical problems. Pregnant patients at risk for hyperglycemia (elevated blood sugar) are often tested in early pregnancy for undiagnosed diabetes, but their treatment plan varies. Some are advised to treat as needed later on in the pregnancy and others are treated immediately before 20 weeks’ gestation. Whether treating gestational diabetes m...