Be true to yourself

Wilma Ham — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:11:25 -0500

Once I died my hair as well to show that I was still young at heart and could still think innovative things. Once I realized that I was willingly putting unwanted chemicals into my body to look as if I was innovative, I could no longer do it.
What was I trying to proof here?
I now hope that the way I am being and what I am doing will show who I am, the color of my hair has no longer anything to do with it.
However to be honest, it took a while to come to that and I now use lipstick more :).

Wilma Ham

www.wilmasblog.com

Gray Hair, What to do?

SkinnyCleanFreak — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:06:14 -0500

As I get more gray hairs, I have that conversations with myself - I should age gracefully, right? Or should I dye it? I still haven't come to a conclusion... I don't want to look old. I still have a thin healthy body - so why should my head look old? At age 53, I still don't have a lot of gray hair, but let's say it's enough where plucking would be impractical.

I too have admired women who have chosen to proudly keep the gray, but I'm thinking I'm not going to be one of them.

Carole

CommonSenseLiving.com

Gray Hair

magsmadison — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:04:52 -0500

I love that there is a good reason for my grays. However, I may dislike them even more upon discovering they are actually made by damaged stem cells. That makes me feel even older!

Science Medley--Now with Reasons to Keep Your Gray Hair

Leslie Madsen Brooks — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:21:56 -0500

It's time once again for another edition of science medley, your resource for cocktail party conversation fodder, blog posts by women of science, and--this month--one reason to embrace your gray.

Yes, you read that correctly. Over at the Beauty Brains, you can learn why gray hair is good. In a nutshell:

Hair color is produced by cells called melanocytes which are in part controlled by stem cells. When the number of stem cells in hair follicles goes down, hair turns gray. Now researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University in Japan have discovered that radiation and chemicals that damage DNA can cause stem cells to permanently transform into melanocytes. Without the stem cells to produce more melanocytes, hair turns grey (Cell, vol 137, p 1088). Another researcher, David Fisher at Harvard Medical School, suggests this processes may help protect us from cancer, by preventing damaged stem cells from passing on mutated DNA. “One likely beneficial effect is the removal of potentially dangerous cells that may contain pre-cancerous capabilities,” he says.

I'm lucky enough to still be able to count the gray hairs on my head (8?), and I've always been a fan of women who can pull off the silver, ponytailed Jane Goodall look--and now I have another good reason to try.

More aging news: Ruth Schaffer at The Biotech Weblog quotes from a study on biomarkers for aging in humans

They found that expression of the biomarker was strongly correlated with the donor's chronological age and, in fact, increased exponentially with age. In addition, increased levels were independently associated with tobacco use and physical inactivity as well as with biomarkers of human frailty.

Sharpless said that the researchers were surprised by some of their findings, "We found a very weak correlation between the biomarker and obesity - as measured by body mass index (BMI) - despite other data suggesting that caloric restriction slows aging. The data suggest the possibility that reduced exercise
may actually be worse with regard to molecular age than a higher BMI."

Sandy Szwarc of Junkfood Science has a couple of interesting posts up about recent studies related to junkfood consumption and children's IQs and the contributions (if any) being overweight or obese make to mortality. Szwarc expresses her frustration over mainstream health science reporting:

Last week, more than 400 news stories in just two days reported that a study had found conclusive evidence that fast food makes children stupid and lowers their school tests scores. How many journalists do you think actually went to the original source and read the study?

None.

How can we be so sure?

Because there is no published study in a peer-reviewed journal. There was no ability for educational or health professionals, let alone a journalist, to examine the research and its methodology, data and interpretations.

Kate Porter of Galley Proofs reports on a study on motion and the human brain

During each surgery, several different regions of the patient's brain were stimulated with a small electrical probe. The shocks varied in intensity and duration. The researchers repeated the stimulations up to four times for each location, to check for reproducibility.

What they found out strikes me as pretty interesting. It turns out that, for several of the patients, when parts of the inferior posterior parietal cortex were stimulated, the patients felt an urge to move one or more body parts (arm, lips, chest, etc). If the stimulation was repeated with a higher intensity, the patients thought that they had actually moved that body part, even though no movement actually occurred. (The researchers report that one patient even said "I moved my mouth, I talked, what did I say?", although no mouth movement or speech was observed.)

Additionally, when portions of the premotor cortex were stimulated, the patients did actually move some of their body parts. When the stimulation was increased, the movement became more pronounced. However, and this was the part that I thought was kind of neat, the patients were completely unaware that they had moved at all. In fact, when they were specifically asked, the patients denied that they had moved, even when the movement was quite significant (e.g., raising an arm, or making a fist).

That is awesome. I'm so grateful that patients signed on for these experiments; surgery is already stressful enough, and these patients should be recognized for their additional contributions to furthering scientists' understanding of the brain.

Turning back to kids: Janet Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science considers whether parents who don't vaccinate their kids are free-riders. She explains the danger:

So, let's say all the folks in my community are vaccinated against measles except me. Within this community (assuming I'm not wandering off to exotic and unvaccinated lands, and that people from exotic and unvaccinated lands don't come wandering through), my chances of getting measles are extremely low. Indeed, they are as low as they are because everyone else in the community has been vaccinated against measles -- none of my neighbors can serve as a host where the virus can hang out and then get transmitted to me.

I get a benefit (freedom from measles) that I didn't pay for. The other folks in my community who got the vaccine paid for it.

In fact, it usually doesn't require that everyone else in the community be vaccinated against measles for me to be reasonably safe from it. Owing to "herd immunity," measles is unlikely to run through the community if the people without immunity are relatively few and well interspersed with the vaccinated people. This is a good thing, since babies in the U.S. don't get their first vaccination against measles until 12 months, and some people are unable to get vaccinated even if they're willing to bear the cost (e.g., because they have compromised immune systems or are allergic to an ingredient of the vaccine). And, in other cases, people may get vaccinated but the vaccines might not be fully effective -- if exposed, they might still get the disease. Herd immunity tends to protect these folks from the disease -- at least as long as enough of the herd is vaccinated.

If too few members of the herd are vaccinated, even some of those who have born the costs of being vaccinated, or who would bear those costs were they able (owing to their age or health or access to medical care), may miss out on the benefit. Too many free-riders can spoil things even for those who are paying their fair share.

What are your thoughts? And what good science blogs have you been reading lately? I'm always on the lookout for more women science writers.

Leslie Madsen-Brooks develops learning experiences for K-12, university, and museum clients. She blogs at The Clutter Museum, Museum Blogging, and The Multicultural Toybox.

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Be true to yourself

Gray Hair, What to do?

Gray Hair

Science Medley--Now with Reasons to Keep Your Gray Hair