Curated Paper 2

I find it interesting how many different ways that pathogens can affect our bodies and the bodies of other animals and plants. It amazed me how something so small can have catastrophic effects on our bodies when we are able to handle other things so well. For example the smallest of pathogens released into our body from the wrong tick could kill us in a matter of days. Microdoses of certain drugs could kill the unadapted with just a single touch. The microscopic level of disease fighting and control the body has is amazing. When I look at slides in my histology class it brings perspective to just how complicated we are. You could take for example a slide with a piece of a tissue that is a square centimeter and blow that up to the size of a 100 inch smart board and still struggle to count all of the cells in a singular slice of that slide. To think that each of these cells can communicate and effectively warn each other of everything that is going on without us consciously knowing about it is outstanding. Like I said though there still are these things such as pathogens that can throw our bodies off from time to time. I look forward to learning more about them and how they play differing roles in the body. 

To begin with agriculture, I don't know why but I have always thought of this as more growing crops then I have raising livestock. I enjoyed the map and thought for sure that we would produce more alfalfa and hay then livestock but I guess I don't know. I did like how it pointed out that there needs to be some kind of diversity in order to manage and keep healthy cultures in the world. For example while working on the bee project for this class I have learned that there is a lot of widespread disease among the domestic honey bees when compared to the wild honey bees. I know that this is theorized to be because of genetic diversity as well as having far fewer stressors than the average farmed honey bee. I have also seen this in the circle four pig barns near my house now called smithfield. I have helped out a few times with loading pigs and the amount of medications these pigs need to be on to stay healthy is insane. A few years back they had some massive widespread disease that was killing millions of pigs. This is due to the lack of genetic diversity. The proposed solution is to broaden the foods we eat so that we do not rely on the same few animals and plants for the majority of our nutrition. 

I have seen that there is a lot of work that goes into farming as I grew up in a farm town. There are thousands and thousands of acres that are farmed every year for multiple seasons. Much of this crop goes into feeding the pigs, cows, and horses. It has always made us wonder how much weight a cow has to eat in order to make the ribeye that I am eating. Did a farmer have to grow a fourth of an acre? At what point does the profit margin become too small? I know that around here many farmers lose money doing what they do. If you don't have a lot of acreage and new enough equipment to harvest in time then you will lose money every year. Many of them have to work multiple jobs and farm as well. 

One thing I don't think we are planning for is the continuous growth and increase in resistance and virulence of pathogens. For example Covid was something that struck us by surprise and messed up a lot of things. However we still had food. What would happen if all of the sudden a new strain of a crop killing pathogen struck the entire country. As we know this could lead to massive financial hard times and strain on the economy. If there were multiple factors in the same year that pressed multiple of our main food sources it would really hurt. The constant use of pesticides and preservatives is what we have to be cautious of. If we continue to use them eventually they will no longer work and we will be left with an ever growing population to feed on an ever shrinking supply of food. 

One thing that I didn't realize is that we have so many different trades and deals with african farming for bananas and other goods. This is surprising to me because I feel that food would have to travel for weeks to get to a grocery store and every time I go to the store the bananas look perfect. I buy them and then like 3 days later they are too soft and mostly brown. It makes me wonder what they have to use in order to preserve them that long. I never thought about trading as being a possible issue with spreading disease from corp to corp either. If one country such as Aftrica in this example is not taking the proper precautions and doing all it can to prevent disease, we are trading with them. Then we are technically also not doing as much because that hard work we had could all go down the drain if it started carrying disease overseas. 

I don't know how bad the potato market is right now but no matter what time of year I buy potatoes I almost always have some with those black blight spots on them. I feel that we should be able to find some cure to this. If there are this many potatoes being affected then how many are being thrown out because they are in too rough of shape to be sold. Lets just pretend that there are ten percent of potatoes that are too poor in condition to sell. If there are a million pounds of potatoes produced every year that is 50 tons of potatoes that are going to waste. That is enough to feed a hell of a lot of people. The cure to that compounded over time could help to bring costs down and strengthen economies. 

Toward the end of the slides I enjoyed reading about zoonotic disease and the ability for animals to spread it to one another and to us as well. This is something we definitely need to keep an eye out for because there can be some of the worst things as well as some of the best that come from this. For example I believe the black plague was from rats to humans. This was catastrophic and caused many deaths without people even knowing why. On the flip side there was milk made with smallpox. While smallpox was breaking out and running rampant it was discovered that milk maids would only get slightly sick and then make a quick recovery. This was because they had built up antibodies to cow pox which were similar enough that the immunity could transfer over and bleed into the benefits of a far more dangerous disease. I feel that there is a lot that we can learn from animals in the way they are able to combat disease and overcome it through a gene pool. When we farm animals it makes this a little more complicated because the animals don't have the necessary genetic diversity to all survive a massive disease if it strikes. This could wipe out entire herds as well as populations when we are not careful. 

The euthansia techniques used when there is a massive outbreak that cannot be controlled and is suspected to lead to a mass casualty across the country is quite striking. First off I was not expecting the picture of all those pigs piled up. I have smelt dead pigs and that is not a pleasant smell so openly burning the corpses has got to be one of the most feral things I could think of. Though it does make sense why they would have to do this I feel that it would be much better to focus on preventative measures before we get to this point through frequent testing and analysis. Any time it has gotten to the point that an entire city needs to be ridden of a specific breed of livestock I feel there was a lack of preparation on the part of the farmer and city. For example the foot and mouth disease is probably the best known example. 6 million animals were slaughtered and burned as a result of this disease in order to stop the widespread disease from infecting all livestock everywhere. The United States has done a good job at keeping this at bay but other countries have had some cases in the last 10 years or so. Ultimately this costs people billions of dollars and I find it hard to kill an animal when you don't intend to use the meat for food. Let alone millions of them. 

The second slide set showed just how many different ways that the human body can get messed up from disease. The many ways we spread disease, as well as the ways we measure what it is affecting or damaging. I found viruses to be one of the coolest ones because this nonliving thing takes over our cells and forces them to replicate its DNA and make more of its proteins. This is something that seems like it should be extremely smart but it's not even considered to be a living thing which I find to be wild. Overall this was a very insightful section into pathogens and I still have a lot to look into on this seemingly endless topic. Gene editing ultimately is something that I think will be the future of medicine for better or for worse. I feel that there is only so much we can do with modern medicine before everything we are fighting against has built the proper immunity to no longer be affected by any of this. I look forward to also seeing how this ties back to the overall theme of ayurveda and the mental connection to fight our ability to be sick and the degree to which we are sick. I have enjoyed the reading and journaling on this section and plan to dig deeper into the honey bee versions of this as I continue to work on my project in hopes to have a very detailed and informative result for that work.

I began by watching the youtube video that described the left-right conflict found when trying to say what color the word is when the word is a color that is different from the color of the text. I found that I could even be tricked if I was using my peripheral vision because I could see the word enough that it had been committed to memory and I would occasionally still read the color before telling the correct one. I found that it is interesting how complex our brains are. It then makes sense that each area of the brain would be designed to perform a different function. After all we do so many things all at the same time it is important to distribute the tasks and senses into different sections and also be compressed together by working together. I thought that the video was well done and I also learned that the cerebellum is in some ways like a second smaller brain. It is in charge of things like digestion and other bodily functions that we don't have to think of to do. Our cerebellum just does all of this on its own. 

From the slides I was able to learn what MS is. I have heard of MS many different times in my life but have never really known what it is or how it works. From what I could gather they believe it has something to do with development in different climates or geographical locations. When someone has MS they begin to have the myelinated axons in the brain and spinal cord can become demyelinated. This causes slower signal transfer and can mess a lot more up. It seems from the slides that the disease varies a lot in when and how it onsets and will go through fazes of being active and dormant. In my histology class we are just now learning about the nerve cells and all of the complex layering that goes on in the brain and spinal cord. I hope that one day they will be able to find a cure for this and be able to reverse any damages done to those who are currently fighting MS. 

The next section of the slides covered Huntington's disease. This seemed to be a lot more of a predictable disease as if you have one of the genes for it you will show the phenotype. That means if someone with huntingtons has children statistically half of their children will also have Huntington's disease. From what I learned the problem comes from the coding of 23 glutamine amino acids in the protein called huntingtin. As of right now the use of huntingtin is not understood but it is believed that the affected huntingtin molecules are unable to be learned and block nerve signals.

I have had a little knowledge of Alzheimers from conversations with people, but also from the show my wife and I watch called Grey's Anatomy. The general idea on the show was that it was something that can be genetically inherited and there are multiple genes that can code for it. I did not know that the neurons break apart and tangle like that. This would explain the loss of memory. I feel that it makes it much harder to understand how people can have random times where they remember and then lose their memory again. After taking genetics I feel that these are all things that would be selected out in a population, however with all of these it seems that you are able to have kids and live most of your life before they begin to affect you. 

The final one is Tay-Sachs disease. This one really hit home to me because it can affect young children all through their lives. The disease is caused by a frameshift mutation on the HEXA gene. This makes the carrier unable to break down gangliosides that build up in the neuron. This leads to deafness, blindness, and often leads to loss of motor function. Though more rare it can occur in children and usually leads to death by 15 years old. If it does occur later in life its normally 30-40 years of age. 

I was amazed with how much head trauma happens every year in the United States. It intrigues me that the same injury can cause so many different outcomes. I think it shows just how much we don't know about the human brain. With just the slightest change in approach angle of an object or striking the head at a slightly different angle it could leave one person fine, and the other an entirely different person. I found it odd that many of the injuries change people to have outbursts and be less capable of understanding social situations. Honestly it all goes so far over my head. In histology the brain is something I can't seem to wrap my head around. A bundle of millions of cells that can think and act as one, that makes decisions different from everyone else, with what seems to be infinite storage. I don't know that we will ever figure everything out. I believe that every person's brain is different. That as we develop and grow and have experiences our brain makes physical changes. There really is no other way that I feel it could work. I can't get stuck in this rabbit hole, because I am learning about the brain and all its parts and what it does while my brain just casually types out this paper about what it thinks it is.  I felt that the trauma or abuse studies that were shown can be proof that the things we experience can and will change the makeup of our brain. 

The brain injuries can lead to many imbalances in the body that vary a lot depending on the damages done and to what areas the damages are done. Some may lose the ability to retain memory, others may lose the ability to form words. There are some that may have known what they want to say but the words don't come out anything like they want it to. Some die due to regular rhythms to be out of touch such as heart or respiratory rates. The extent of what can happen from a brain injury is mind blowing. There are a lot of things we still have to learn about the brain. I believe as approaches and understanding improve we could reach better outcomes from these kinds of injuries and hopefully reversal of them. It is also my hope that the information we learn can help to fix the genetic diseases found in the slides from earlier. 

I feel that this next topic can potentially play a key role in how we solve the mysteries of the diseases and cancers of the world. I would like to first talk on what I know about drugs so that there is a contrast between what I know now vs what I learn as I read and research the subject. I know that there are generally 2-3 types of reactions. There are drugs like weed and alcohol that slow everything down for you, I believe these are called downers… But I am not sure. The second type would be energizers and I believe this would be like meth and cocaine. However I am not entirely sure. Third would be something strictly hallucinogenic like mushrooms. This has got to have some kind of effect on neural pathways because people see some crazy stuff. I feel that there is a community at large who likes to do a wide variety of these things and try them all out. I have personally never done any of these so I could be way off. I have family members that drink and smoke, and some friends that have smoked weed but other than those I haven't really seen or heard of peoples experiences with anything. I feel that other drugs are more done in private so we will see how all of these things affect the brain. That's my very minor understanding of how and what drugs do to the body. 

Okay okay okay I was so wrong, in my previous statements I have only taken into account the fact that there are illegal drugs and not the over the counter drugs, and or things like the flu shot or a nasal spray. I have used these kinds of drugs and though I don't know how they work I do know that I will use about anything I can to get out of having to take a medication or pill. If I am taking ibuprofen then I really am feeling it and I need a little boost. One thing that bothers me is we still don't know how tylenol affects the body or by what mechanism it does what it does and to me that's crazy. It is interesting that we can have something on the shelves without knowing exactly what it does. Another one that I am scared for the future of is Ozempic. It seems to be all the craze right now but ultimately I feel that it's going to be doing more harm than good. In the majority of people that I know that take it they don't change the kinds of food they eat and therefore they eat less of the foods that are already low in nutrients. You can see how their muscles in their face shrink away and im sure this cant have good effects on muscles like the heart. Time will tell with this drug but I remember bringing this up to my father in law who remembers there was a similar drug out when he was just getting out of high school. That drug was later linked to heart failure and he has had many of his friends and people in his class die due to heart related issues much younger than they should have. I like the testing and things that are done by the FDA to make sure that something is “safe” before use but I still feel that things should be monitored and watched in human trials on patients who “have no other option and want to send a hail mary” this way effects can be tracked and monitored before a drug goes public and millions have access. 

I learned from the video that the way the majority if not all drugs work is by messing with the sending and receiving end of the nerves. That is the axons and dendrites. The compound or drug will act as more of a neurotransmitter and get more of a response or a stronger stimulus or it will dampen the response and cause delays. There is also the possibility for the drug to hold or delay other chemicals that may build up from use of the neurons and in this case cause mixed signals as well. 

From the slide set I was able to learn a lot about how drugs work with the brain. There are many sites in the brain where a chemical key of sorts is needed to activate or deactivate certain emotions or release other chemicals and endorphins into the body. What is so unique to drugs is they fit the mold of the key and are able to fit into the hole and activate pathways. I also learned a lot about what addiction actually is. Before I saw addiction as just enjoying something so much you were unwilling to make changes in order to quit. I never realized that it physically alters your brian so that those desires to use and do anything to continue to use outweigh any other desire even if it can and will kill you. This makes sense to me now that I think about it. Growing up I just felt like someone who wanted to quit could just quit like cigarette or alcohol if they wanted to stop they could just stop. The hard part about quitting is you have to physically change your brain back or change it again so that the addiction no longer runs your life.
There are many different ways that drugs can affect the brain. In the first case shown you don't even have to be the one that did the drugs. If a pregnant woman is doing drugs this can lead to the baby having developmental issues and that child's brain will not fully develop as it should. The unique thing about this is that we have rapid growth in the number of neurons in our brain and then all of the sudden that growth stops and synaptic pruning kicks in. This is where the brain cuts down on the number of neurons and neural pathways it has by killing off the ones it never uses. Thus if someone was to have this brain development issue they would be behind in most of their every day activities and decision making and those skills and traits or lack there of will then be “locked in” with pruning and take a lot of work if they have a chance at recovery. 

The brain's ability to reward itself for doing activities that keep it alive makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. I feel that it is something we all do. For example I know that when I lift or have a good meal that feels good to me and I find pleasure in that. Prolonged drug use can hijack this reward system in search for the dopamine that is produced when you take drugs. This spike in dopamine can be much higher than any other cause and affect reward we give ourselves for surviving. 

I found it super interesting that drugs that are inhaled have a much more prominent and quicker response time to the brain than drugs that are injected into the bloodstream. I feel like inhaled drugs would have to also enter the blood in the lungs taking longer than just being injected but I am not sure of the exact mechanism for this. 

I find it odd that it says marajuana alcohol and over the counter pills are not drugs that cause addiction, but they may be gateway drugs to lead you further down the path of addiction to other drugs. I know of a young guy who I used to work with that would smoke weed all of the time and he would tell me that it was “ impossible to be addicted to weed” . I never really believed him because he would always say that he could quit any time he wanted at the drop of a hat. I have never seen him quit for more than a week and he even stole from his family sometimes to feed this addiction. Hence why I am confused why this powerpoint says they cannot be addictive. 

From the article on ayurveda I really liked how it showed the 3 sides to our lives, ayurveda, modern medicine, and science. The balance of all 3 of these is what is key in avoiding and overcoming addiction. The problem is when we take drugs and get addicted we tend to avoid taking care of what should be done to keep all 3 in check because of our false sense of what is important or what is life and death. It goes back to the hijacking of the reward system that I talked about earlier. If our ayurveda is to be in check then we need to remain off drugs that alter it significantly. However there may be medication or other treatment that may help our body to find more of its natural rhythm and help to restore a more appropriate level of ayurveda. 

Overall I feel that this was all a very useful dive into drugs and how many people actually use them. Looking at the graph of illicit drug use form the 70’s to 2016 I was shocked to see how high the percentages were. Considering I have never even seen drugs to my knowledge I am going to blame the fact that I grew up in a small town religious Utah as one of the reasons I don't feel that we match this chart entirely. For all I know it could be and I just happened to never be involved or know anything about it.  I have enjoyed reading about all of the different types of drugs and classes. How they are managed as well as mismanaged. I enjoyed seeing a deeper level of how these things can actually impact the brain and body and how no joke these can really be. It amazes me that there is still such an epidemic of opioids even with doctors being given more strict instructions to stay away from those things. I know that as I have observed, it is always the recommendation of the doctor to alternate tylenol and ibuprofen before he even thinks to prescribe something like percocet or any other heavy drug. I hope that as our knowledge continues to increase we will be able to find better ways to help those who are addicted to overcome their addictions and to be able to start over with the choice on whether or not they want to use. I feel that any time I see someone smoke or drink they tell all the young folks to never start so that they won't end up like them. Great reads this week and I look forward to seeing how all of this ties even more together.