Tag: science

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Student Life

Food isn’t always good for the skin

Graphic by Thom Bell

Lemon juice treatments, baking soda masks, sugar scrubs—type “DIY acne treatment” into Google, and you are likely to find a slew of articles that praise these treatments and other common household items for their alleged pimple-fighting benefits.

But are these trending DIY ingredients truly effective in treating pesky skin ailments? The kind of skin-care advice found in many women’s magazines, as well as in online beauty and health articles, may actually be ruining your skin.

Let’s begin with the widely-acclaimed beauty blog miracle ingredient: lemon. A health.com article titled “15 Home Remedies to Make a Pimple Vanish,” advises readers to “wipe lemon juice across your pimples with a cotton ball, and leave it on overnight.”

This common skin care treatment overlooks an important aspect of our skin’s chemical makeup: its acid mantle. The acid mantle is the skin’s barrier to bacteria, viruses and other potential contaminants—it is measured by pH.  Through their research for Wake Forest University’s department of dermatology in North Carolina, Dr. Saba Ali and Dr. Gil Yosipovitch stressed the importance of the skin’s acid mantle.

Ali and Yosipovitch expressed in their research paper some concern over the disregard to acid mantle.  They argued that skin’s acid mantle is vital, and that “recognizing factors that alter skin pH and selecting products that preserve the acid mantle is of prime importance” in treating skin.

Exogenous factors, like products that are too acidic (low pH) or too alkaline (high pH), cause damage to the skin’s barrier and lead to “compromised skin,” according to a research paper by American dermatologist, James Del Rosso.

Lemon juice has a pH level of two, while human skin is roughly 5.5. Therefore, Del Rosso explained, this difference in pH levels means using lemon juice on your face can lead to loss of skin elasticity, increased skin rigidity and acne.

According to a 2014 research paper by endocrinologist Dr. Stacey E Anderson and dermatologist Dr. Barbara Jean Meade, having compromised skin can make you more at risk to toxic chemicals that irritate and further damage the skin.  This is because, if the skin’s pH is compromised, chemicals can get through the outer layer of the skin, and inside the body.

Another popular ingredient seen in amateur skin care articles is baking soda. According to Doctor Oz’s website, “you don’t need harsh chemicals to fight acne. Try a mixture of baking soda and honey to help clear skin.”

Baking soda is an alkaline, with a pH of nine. Whether alkaline or acidic, Anderson and Meade’s research found that the pH of daily skin care products is very important to protect the skin barrier.  Baking soda’s pH is, therefore, just too high for skin to handle.

However, some household items are proven to be good remedies.  The aforementioned skin-clearing mixture of honey and baking soda, while best to be avoided, includes honey. In a research publication for the Iranian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences, dermatologists Tahereh Eteraf-Oskouei and Moslem Najafi explored honey’s benefits.  They argued that topical application of honey has healing effects for superficial skin burns and operation wounds, making honey a safe ingredient in DIY skin care treatments.  Honey’s average pH is 3.9, but can range anywhere from 3.4 to 6.1.

While some websites may provide acne-sufferers faulty skin care advice, online communities exist to counteract the wave of careless information. Forums on Reddit, for example, pride themselves on circulating facts about skin care discovered in scientific journals.

Graphic by Thom Bell

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Student Life

The healthy side with Fardad

Graphic by Thom Bell

The human balance: How does our body achieve balance?

The human body is a crazy, fascinating thing. It works hard to keep all its systems balanced.  As students, we know it’s not easy to be balanced.  Let’s look at how the human body works, and how it is able to keep that balance.

As with many other complex life forms, humans are made of living biological units called cells. Cells are basic units of life—all living things are made up of one or more cells.

  • Humans are made up of more than 30 trillion cells—of many different types. Your muscle cells and brain cells are worlds apart.
  • Similar cells in your body with similar functions and structures work together to form tissue, like muscle tissue or nerve tissue. Tissues work together to do a particular job. For example, your heart pumps blood throughout your body, and your lungs oxygenate your blood. These tissues are collectively called organs.
  • Different organs also work together. Your circulatory system, which includes your heart, your blood and blood vessels, and your lungs, transports nutrients and oxygen through your body, among other functions. These organs are collectively called organ systems.
  • Finally, an organism is a collection of organ systems working together to form an entity, such as humans, animals, plants, fungi or bacteria.

As you see, the human body is a very complex system. All humans are formed from a marriage between two cells: a sperm and an egg.  Doesn’t it make you wonder how all these different types of cells, tissues, organs and organ systems cooperate and coordinate with each other in almost perfect harmony? How did we develop to be this complex machine with a high cognitive function?  And what happens when a part in this complex machine fails?

Let’s define health and disease. A human is healthy when all these parts work well and in harmony with each other. This is called homeostasis—keeping a relatively stable environment, suitable for continual maintenance and growth. The keyword here is relatively, which is important because, depending on the specific system, the body is tolerant towards some turbulence. For example, your body can tolerate a dramatic change in external temperature. When the environmental temperature changes suddenly, your body will immediately work to compensate the negative change and return your body to a favourable temperature.

You have hardwired mechanisms that counterbalance negative changes in your body. Some of these changes encompass a relatively generous range, as with temperature, but some encompass a much narrower range. For instance, blood pH (i.e. its acidity) is tightly controlled between 7.35 and 7.45. Your body keeps a close eye on these levels. A sudden change in pH can be fatal: think alcohol intoxication, as an example. If you binge drink too fast, there may be no coming back. Unfortunately, this is not as uncommon as we’d like to think.

Basically, for all intents and purposes, homeostasis means health. A severe deviation from a homeostatic state causes unease… so we call it a disease.  Diseases can be caused by a multitude of sources. It can be external such as viruses, bacteria and fungi or internal such as cancer, genetics and old age.

Fardad is a science student here at Concordia. He wants to share his research and learning about the science field with the Concordia community.

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Student Life

Exploring the healthy side with Fardad

Graphic by Thom Bell

Debunking stress eating: Tis’ the season of midterms and takeout

Midterm season is officially here, and stress is creeping up on many students. Although people respond to stressful situations differently, a lot of us have a common struggle: stress eating.

Emotional eating can happen for a variety of reasons, but this week we will specifically analyze stress as a cause.

When your body is put under prolonged stress, a multitude of physiological changes happen, namely, your body releases a hormone called cortisol.

Cortisol plays a key role in human survival—think about it from an evolutionary standpoint. Your body registers stress as a “fight or flight” situation. When your body thinks it’s in a life or death situation, it “panics” and urges you to consume calories for strength and survival, when really, all you need is a deep breath.

Needless to say, exam period is a stressful time. Seeking refuge in the glory of pizza or greasy fries when the workload gets overwhelming is something a lot of us can relate to.

While this may provide momentarily relief—due to the release of other hormones like dopamine—the underlying cause of your stress still remains.

Additionally, feelings of guilt about eating too much may enter into the equation and end up adding to your initial stress.

But how can you tell the difference between being actually hungry or just feeling stressed?

There are a few telltale signs. Here are the most important ones:

  • We usually turn to comfort foods or unhealthy foods when we are stressed. Let’s just say cauliflower and broccoli aren’t the food of choice when cramming for an exam.
  • According to Harvard Health, consuming comfort food triggers two changes in the brain. First, it stimulates the reward centre of the brain by releasing feel-good hormones. Second, it has been shown to temporarily counter the effects of the stress-producing and processing hormones. So not only does comfort food provide a “happy fix,” but it also temporarily takes the stress away.
  • According to American pediatrics doctor Dr. Mary Gavin, and many other experts, contrary to stress cravings, physical hunger isn’t instant. It takes time for the digestive system to process food.
  • According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, when you feel physiological hunger, it’s due to the gradual release of the hunger hormone, ghrelin. Ghrelin itself is released over time, thanks to “feedback” provided by sensory nerve endings in the digestive tract, including the intestine and colon. So if you suddenly have a “need” for a bag of chips, take a second to reflect on how stressed you are in that moment. You might just need to relax and take a deep breath.

Here are a few things you can do to help combat stress eating during exam time: 

  • Get moving. Exercise releases endorphins so hop to it. Physical activity also releases those feel-good hormones and it gets fresh blood flowing to the brain, making you feel more awake.
  • Drink a lot of water, regularly. Dehydration oftentimes manifests as hunger. Staying hydrated helps keep your body healthy and your brain active.
  • Call a loved one or a friend—but make sure you don’t end up talking about studying or exams. The aim here is to take your mind off all the stress by hearing a familiar voice and maybe cracking a joke or two. Tell the person in advance that you don’t want to be talking about school.

Fardad is a science student here at Concordia. He wants to share his research and learning about the science field with the Concordia community.

Graphic by Thom Bell

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Student Life

Getting back into the rhythm of our internal clocks

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan

Toss and turn, change positions, kick the blankets off the bed and try to force sleep. Sound familiar? There is nothing worse than a sleepless night; a night when the alarm clock beside the bed is repeatedly checked and the realization made that it will be time to get up in five hours… four and a half…three…

Graphic by Jennifer Kwan

A night like that is not unusual for students. Coming back from a summer of late nights and sleeping in, while adjusting to a new semester and the stress that comes with it, can be tough on the mind and body. But for those who suffer from restless nights or stress-related insomnia, there is hope. A recent joint study from Concordia and McGill University offers new insight into understanding the fundamental parts of the internal clock – the clock that schedules the body’s daily activities and syncs them with the external world.

The study, Putting Sleep Disorders to Bed, co-authored by Shimon Amir, a PhD professor in the department of psychology at Concordia and Nahum Sonenberg, a McGill professor with a PhD in biochemistry, looks at how protein synthesis is controlled in the brain and how removing certain proteins can make the internal clock function at an improved rate.

According to Amir, having a strong understanding of the internal clock is important for students. Learning how a person’s internal clock functions can help people achieve normal rhythms, which in turn leads to that much needed and desired sleep.

The internal clock is like the body’s watch – the ticking hands are the signals for the body to activate or suppress certain activities. It keeps humans from sleeping all day or making dinner in the middle of the night. It oscillates on a 24-hour, light-and-dark cycle. Like any watch, the internal clock needs to be tuned and set and there are things students can do to properly sync their internal clock and get that good rhythm.

“We see a lot of students who complain about not getting enough sleep or who experience sleep disturbances,” said Gaby Szabo, a health promotion specialist for Concordia Health Services.

Both Amir and Szabo agree that the most important step in setting up a healthy sleep routine is establishing a steady schedule and sticking to it as much as possible. Synching the internal clock means going to bed and waking up at more or less the same time every day, even on weekends. This doesn’t mean simply getting into bed at the same time, but actually being asleep.

“A tip for falling asleep is to turn off the lights,” said Amir. “Modern society is flooded with light from artificial sources…[and] the light has a strong effect on internal clocks,” he explained. Exposure to light from any source can reset the clock or confuse its natural cycle.

Concordia student Tiffany Pearce thinks that this advice is reasonable, to a point,

“Yes there will be nights when all-nighters are necessary,” Pearce said, “but for the most part I tend to stick to a pretty strict schedule during the week. I definitely don’t maintain the same sleep schedule for the weekend though, and for any university student I think that’s a tad unrealistic.”

Concordia Health Services has a “sleep hygiene” pamphlet available to students with further tips on how to get the best quality sleep. For any of them to work, Szabo said sleep should be made a priority, not pushed aside.

So this September, set that internal clock. Turn off the lights and don’t bring a laptop, smartphone or tablet to bed. Instead, commit to sleep. Put on an eye mask, say goodnight and settle into the eight hours a night the body craves and needs.

Sources:

Shimon Amir, Professor, Department of Psychology, Concordia University

Gaby Szabo, Health Promotional Specialist, Concordia Health Services

Concordia University News Release: Putting sleep disorders to bed

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Student Life

Oxytocin can help make the best of a bad situation

Oxytocin, sometimes called “the cuddle hormone,” promotes trust in romantic relationships, and is known to be partially responsible for bonding between mother and child through breast feeding. However, Concordia University researchers Mark Ellenbogen and Christopher Cardoso have taken a different approach with the hormone and conducted a study that tested the effects of oxytocin on a person’s mood, during an episode of social rejection.

The study simulated  and studied negative social interactions by having participants interrupt, disagree with, and ignore one another. Afterwards, it was found that the subjects who were given oxytocin in the form of a nasal spray, instead of a placebo, were more likely to have trust in people despite the social rejection experienced. These individuals responded more positively to questions such as “I believe that most people are basically well-intentioned”, “I tend to assume the best about people”, and “I have a good deal of faith in the human nature.”

Though the effects of oxytocin remain a topic of debate, Cardoso believes that, “oxytocin probably works on limbic brain areas responsible for motivation and the regulation of stress. Whether it affects these brain areas directly or indirectly once it is administered is still an open question in human research.”

Ellenbogen and Cardoso’s results add to the ongoing debate about how oxytocin functions, but they believe this particular finding will aid people with mood disorders.  According to their results, oxytocin could play an important role in promoting social bonding after negative social experiences. Rather than hiding from social interactions, oxytocin may encourage individuals to look for help and build trust with others.

“Our culture is quite individualistic, and people lose sight of how much we are biologically wired to rely on each other for support,” said Cardoso. Researchers will no doubt use studies such as this one to help better understand human emotions and relationships in the future, but results so far show that when stressed out the answer might be as easy as venting to a friend or as simple as asking a loved one for a hug.

 

http://www.internet.uqam.ca/web/t1716/oxytocine.pdf  (breastfeeding and oyxtocin)

 

http://www.concordia.ca/news/releases/2013/06/25/feeling-stressed.html

 

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News

Concordia student delves into Alzheimer’s research


Erin Johns, a doctoral student at Concordia University, conducted research aimed to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease by studying adults with mild cognitive impairment that are at high risk of developing the disease.

“It’s only a small piece of the puzzle,” Johns explained. “It’s contributing something small while hopefully helping something big.”

Adults who are at high risk of developing irreversible Alzheimer’s disease display problems with attention, memory, decision-making and problem solving are more likely to develop the irreversible Alzheimer’s disease. Executive functions are essential in controlling and regulating abilities and behaviour. Johns and her colleagues examined individuals diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, which is often a precursor of Alzheimer’s disease, and tested them on measures of executive functioning.

Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia, characterized by deficiencies in behaviour, memory and cognitive abilities that are irreversible. An individual suffering from Alzheimer’s disease often has difficulty controlling what they say, which could be a sign of mild cognitive impairment.

“One of the things that was unique about this study is that we looked at multiple aspects of executive functioning,” explained Johns. “We gave them a lot of different tests.”

All participants failed at least one test, with more than half failing to pass each of the tests examined.

The test that nearly all research subjects failed was a sentence completion test. The test required patients to complete a sentence with a word that is not relevant to the subject of the phrase.

Early detection of Alzheimer’s disease through neuropsychological testing could help individuals and families cope. The study was a collaborative effort that pooled research from seven different clinics province-wide, completed during the summer of 2006 and published May 2012.

The Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society published the results of the study funded by the Alzheimer Society of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, under the supervision of Dr. Natalie Phillips.

Now, Johns is continuing with a follow-up study that is currently in the data analysis stage, while balancing an internship at the Royal Victoria Hospital. Johns believes that problems with executive functioning in Alzheimer’s disease may not be caused by damage to the brain per se, but a breakdown of communication.

“I wanted to see if, rather than damage to the brain if it’s a breakdown in the co-ordination of different brain areas causing the problem,” explained Johns. “Maybe it’s the different brain areas that are not communicating well anymore.”

Johns is a psychology student completing her post-graduate degree between courses at the Loyola Campus and attending research lab at the Jewish General Hospital. Johns completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Manitoba before she moved to Montreal to continue her education in 2006. The Winnipeg native is married, and is a mother as well.

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Opinions

Why science needs cheerleaders

(Illustration by Jeff Kent/The Manitoban)
(Illustration by Jeff Kent/The Manitoban)

WINNIPEG (CUP) — I graduated from the University of Manitoba’s computer science department in 2007. Despite what my degree says, I’m not a scientist. I think of myself more as a “science cheerleader.” Science needs cheerleaders, because science is so important.

We humans tend to pay much more attention to those things that confirm our preconceived notions than to those details that don’t fit our theories. We have a marked tendency to remember the hits and forget the misses — presumably why Sylvia Browne remains so popular.

We’re hardly unbiased observers of our surroundings. The way that we see the world is coloured by many things, our egos foremost amongst them. A study of Australian workers conducted in 1987 found that only one per cent of the workers rated their workplace performance as below average. Perhaps when it comes to evaluating our own skill at

Monopoly we can be forgiven if we see ourselves through rose-coloured glasses; when our callous assumption that we outperform our contemporaries affects the quality of our work, concern becomes warranted.

But what about when it really counts? If your child is sick, do you want your doctor to tell you, “Well, this medicine seems to work pretty well most of the time, in my experience.” Perhaps you would be more comfortable if she said,

“Well, this medicine has been shown to work in multiple large, randomized, controlled trials.”

Unfortunately, many people find the first statement just as reassuring as the second. We tend to find personal experiences and anecdotes convincing, despite how biased and unreliable personal experiences can be. But there are many cases where we simply cannot afford to let our petty biases influence the way we see the world. And that’s where science comes in.

Science is the quest to understand ourselves, our universe and our place in it. At its root, science is merely a systematic search for knowledge. As science has progressed, scientists have identified problems and biases in the way humans observe the universe around us, which has led scientific inquiry to become a self-correcting process. In medicine, for example, experiments are blinded, randomized and controlled in an attempt to prevent the biases of the examiner from affecting the result, whether unwitting or deliberate. Replication by independent researchers is one of the cornerstones of science, working to weed out simple mistakes or outright fraud.

Science is skeptical by nature. Scientific skepticism is a systematic process of doubt. Put simply: question everything. Don’t just take claims at face value. Skepticism tells us that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and that we should proportion our belief in a proposition according to the evidence provided for it. While skeptics are frequently dismissed as arrogant and closed-minded, scientific skepticism is, at its core, an intellectually humble exercise. The success of the scientific endeavour requires us to admit our imperfections. If science is seen as ever-changing, it is only because scientists are willing to admit to their errors and to learn from them.

As the scientist and educator Carl Sagan said, “It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

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News

Using science to feed a nation

Scientist Matthew Harsh explored the human side of agricultural engineering on Tuesday in the first Engineering and Computer Science lecture of the year entitled “Biotechnology in Africa: surveying systems of innovation for development.”

An expert in the field of innovation and governance of biotechnology and biosafety, Harsh spoke to a small audience in the EV building about his time spent in Kenya working as part of a research team trying to create a tissue culture banana that would spur the growth of bananas for farmers in Kenya.

The goal was to use technology as a solution to the insecure food situation in Kenya. However, some problems did arise during their research.

“We hadn’t really thought about what we were going to do with this excess amount of bananas,” said Harsh, explaining that the Kenyan markets in proximity to these banana farmers are too small to deal with extra crops. “And it wasn’t easy to convince the farmers because they also didn’t want this many bananas.”

Eschewing the more technical scientific aspects, Harsh focused instead on the innovation of his research in Kenya and the sociology revolving around it. The process of securing funding for projects like this and getting non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved are all critical steps when conducting research of this nature, according to Harsh.

In his case, it was the Kenyan Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) that played an important role in making Harsh’s team’s project possible.

Banana surpluses aside, Harsh said that the real success of their research was the links he and his team managed to make within the Kenyan society.

“This project was a success in linkage, meaning we got a lot of people to work together to make something happen,” said Harsh. “It’s hard work to get everyone to agree to interact and also agree on a project.”

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