I’ve modified my diet to include lots of anti-oxidants and I take vitamin E, vitamin A and beta carotene supplements. Now I’ve recently heard they don’t reduce inflammation. What’s the truth and, oh by the way, why can’t scientists get things straight? Well, first of all, scientists are people and therefore fallible. But, science itself can be thought of as a ratchet to the truth moving forward one cog at a time. And the complete truth/understanding may not become apparent…
Scientists at McMaster University in Canada and at Mount Sanai in the US have co-discovered the cells that remember an allergy. The Canadians call it MBC2 while the Americans call it a type 2 Memory B cell. B cell refers to a type of lymphocyte critical to immune function. B cells are the factory for producing immune proteins called immunoglobulins (Ig’s). Ig’s have a finite life span, but the B cells are much longer lived. This is important in terms…
The FDA has recently approved the first pancreatic islet cell transplant for some type I diabetics. By way of clarification, type I diabetes is due to loss of the pancreatic islet cells and therefore a lack of insulin. Whereas; type II diabetes is due to insulin resistance because the islet cells are over producing insulin due to obesity. Most type I diabetics can be treated with insulin, either by injection or continuous infusion. But in a small minority safe control…
Twenty years ago, if someone had said that the nervous system and the immune system interfaced with one another I probably would have scoffed. I would have done so because with that era’s science I would have found it hard to conceive how brain and nerve cells could control individual immune cells and protein molecules and vice versa. Boy, I would have been very wrong. With the sophisticated molecular biology developed over the past five years or so scientists have…
I’ve lived in Florida my whole life and had tons of mosquito bites, but now they are swelling way more and lasting a week or longer. What’s up with that? It means it’s time for you to leave Florida and lessen our traffic jams….no, just kidding. Most likely it means you have developed an allergy, but a rare cause for strong reactions to arthropod bites is as an early sign of leukemia or myeloma. Mosquitos have been around for over…
I recently underwent food allergy testing at the behest of my gastroenterologist to see if food allergies are causing or contributing to my irritable bowel syndrome. It turns out I’m allergic to five foods. My question is how do I determine if all five are causing my symptoms or just one or two? That is a great question. The guidelines I’m going to share with you were worked out in clinical research units. In these settings patients are kept in…
The FDA recently approved omalizumab (Xolair) to treat patients with food allergy including children as young as one year. The approval came from several research trials including one recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) that was conducted at John’s Hopkins. This particular study looked at allergy to peanut, cashew, egg, milk, walnut, hazelnut and wheat. In the case of peanut allergy 67% of the test patients were able to consume 600 mg of peanut (equivalent to…
By: Sasha Klemawesch, MD If I asked you to tell me one fact about bananas, you’d probably cite how rich they are in Potassium. And you wouldn’t be wrong. But, in addition to having approximately 10% of your daily value for potassium, they also contain about 10% of your daily needs for Magnesium, Vitamin C and Fiber. While potassium is great for lowering blood pressure, maintaining muscle (including heart muscle) strength, and avoiding certain types of kidney stones, foods with…
There is a memorable scene from the movie The Graduate where Ben (Dustin Hoffman) is taken outside at his college graduation party by a friend of his fathers’. The friend says (regarding Ben’s future) “I have just one word for you: plastics”. Fifty years ago, plastics seemed to be a boom in terms of both convenience and commerce. Now, plastics are doom in terms of environmental harm and human health. Once plastics are released into the environment (soil and water)…
Conventional wisdom for decades has been to avoid nuts and seeds if you have diverticulosis; however official Gastroenterology literature now says otherwise. Actually, it has for some time, but old habits die hard, and anecdotal rumors still heavily cloud the discussion both in the medical community and among lay people. While it’s not surprising that patients’ impressions may be skewed by rampant Reddit forums on the subject, doctors should be aware of the change in recs, seeing that literally hundreds…