The typical human body has 32 of those pearly whites in our mouth — more if we do end up growing wisdom teeth. The set of teeth that we have can be a big factor in making or breaking our external image.
For example, we look at the picture above and we think that the smile that is being exhibited is beautiful. If the teeth in that smile were crooked, poorly aligned, decaying, or if there were a few missing teeth, we wouldn’t be inclined to think that way.
But we do know that our lifestyle can contribute to or…
We tend to think of our digestive system at a very simple level. We eat food, our stomach acids break it down, our intestines absorb it, and whatever that isn’t absorbed is excreted into the toilet bowl.
Unfortunately, life isn’t that simple. There are many more chemical reactions that are ongoing within the body — to an extent that we may not even be aware of them!
One of these key reactions that occurs to the food that we eat is lipid peroxidation. This reaction occurs when an unsaturated fatty acid reacts with a pro-oxidant species to form an unstable…
As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on worldwide, the common understanding is that people who have Type 2 diabetes are more likely to experience the severe symptoms of a COVID-19 infection, which can potentially be fatal to them.
The question is, though, how does Type 2 diabetes affect the immune system?
We tend to think of Type 2 diabetes as a lifestyle problem, and there are recommendations in place to consume less carbohydrates, exercise more, sleep better, and manage one’s stress better — all of which are contributors to a healthy immune system, too.
But let’s go into the science behind…
Our blood is a very unique fluid. It doesn’t just contain water. It contains a whole load of other dissolved substances such as proteins, electrolytes and vitamins, as well as other insoluble components such as the red blood cells.
As such, our blood can do a lot of things that other fluids can’t really do — and that is chiefly because of what else is inside our blood.
One of the major things that our blood can do is to clot.
When we accidentally cut ourselves with a sharp object, for instance, our blood will leak out from the blood…
We tend to associate old age with failing eyesight. It’s not that easy to see as we get older, and that ain’t really helped with the aid of reading glasses or other gadgetry at hand.
There are so many eye-related issues that can plague us as we age, including (but not limited to) glaucoma, cataracts or age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
In this article, I will be focusing on the issue of AMD. According to the National Eye Institute (NEI),
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an eye disease that can blur the sharp, central vision you need for activities like reading…
Modern medicine has a whole array of drugs at its disposal to quell various symptoms that one’s body is experiencing as a result of a cascade of biochemical signals gone wrong.
Let’s look at the manufacturing assembly process in the making of a car. A car has many different parts — but let’s assume, in a simplified scenario, that only the doors and the wheels have to be fitted onto the car, and one team handles the fitting of the doors, while another team handles the fitting of the wheels sequentially after the doors have been put on.
When the…
Exercise always poses a problem to me. I have to get off that couch first and foremost, then I have to get dressed in the appropriate attire. If I’m living in a temperate climate that has winter seasons, there’s this really heavy feeling of inertia to get dressed up. Finally, after I get dressed… I may then decide to go back to the couch again, and lie down until the feeling of wanting to exercise passes.
Doesn’t that seem all too familiar to many people out there?
And we know that ain’t good — after all, insufficient exercise doesn’t do…
One of the common blood tests that diabetics undertake regularly is to measure the levels of HbA1c in their blood. HbA1c is what we would know as glycated haemoglobin, or how much haemoglobin proteins in the blood have reacted with the free glucose in the blood?
The idea being that this HbA1c sugar-protein conjugate isn’t as great at moving molecular oxygen through the body. When the haemoglobin protein has been glycated, or, in other words, reacted with glucose, it cannot be counted upon to transport oxygen to the cells and tissues in our body.
For a more severe diabetes case…
Even before the COVID-19 coronavirus came to be, the United States Centers For Disease Control And Prevention (CDC) declared insufficient sleep to be a public health epidemic.
According to the American Sleep Apnea Association,
Sleep problems, whether in the form of medical disorders or related to work schedules and a 24/7 lifestyle, are pervasive. In America, 70% of adults report that they obtain insufficient sleep at least one night a month, and 11% report insufficient sleep every night.
It is estimated that sleep-related problems affect 50 to 70 million Americans of all ages and socioeconomic classes. Sleep disorders are common…
The word “solubility” can be thought of as a blending of the words “soluble” (dissolve) and “ability”. The solubility of a substance (or solute), therefore, refers to its ability to dissolve in a certain liquid (or solvent). The solubility of a substance can be visually represented as in the Youtube video below:
How do we know, then, when a solvent is saturated with a certain solute?
We can see excess undissolved solute precipitating out as solids.
That’s the mechanism as to how different stones will start forming in our bodies…
Deconstructing the interconnectedness between health and business. Join my mailing list at http://thethinkingscientist.substack.com.