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All, Common Myths

The Five Second Rule

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Source: It’s Interesting

Nicole Kell

Most have us grown up hearing about the “five-second rule”. Simply put, people say that food is safe to consume if it is snatched up from the ground in five seconds or less.

But is the food really safe to eat or should we throw it away?

High school student Jillian Clarke and Dr. Meredith Agle at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign performed an experiment to determine whether it is safe to eat food that has been on the ground. Jillian swabbed the floors of a lab, hall, dormitory, and cafeteria in order to quantify the number of organisms. She repeated this and then examined swabs from both trials. The swabs showed minimal microorganisms. The lack of microorganisms on the floor is due to the fact that floors she was testing were dry and most pathogens such as E.coli and salmonella only survive in moist conditions.

However, it has been proven that when it comes to damp floors and carpet, or moist and sticky foods such as gum, watermelon and ice cream, all bets are off when it comes to the “five second rule”. A professor from Clemson University performed a similar experiment, but on different types of surfaces. He found that it didn’t matter how long the food was on the floor, but the amount of bacteria on the floor and the moisture of the food/floor play a significant role how much bacteria transferred to the food.

When it comes to the spread of bacteria and eating food off of the ground, researchers and doctors advise people to throw away the food in order to avoid risk of illness.

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/5-second-rule-rules-sometimes-#1

https://www.ahchealthenews.com/2017/09/12/five-second-rule-myth/

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2016/09/the-five-second-rule-is-a-myth/

 

All

Shampooing and the ‘No Poo’ Method

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Source: Live About

Victor Liaw

From hair stylists to dermatologists, experts now agree that hair does not need to be shampooed everyday. However, a recent movement in hair care has taken this to the extreme. The theory behind the ‘No Poo’ (no shampoo) Method is that the synthetic chemicals found in traditional shampoos damage hair by removing natural sebum. Sebum is the oily secretions from the scalp that protects and moisturizes the skin.  It makes hair feel greasy.

Your scalp responds to frequent shampooing by producing excess sebum, making hair feel even greasier.  Then you need more shampoo for hair to feel clean, and the cycle continues. Proponents of the ‘No Poo’ Method believe they can break this cycle by using gentler options, including baking soda, apple cider vinegar, and even water alone. These alternatives purportedly have the same effect as shampoo, but are much milder. The idea is that persistent use can result in your scalp producing less sebum and hair will become less greasy.

Although some believe that the ‘No Poo’ Method is a better alternative to shampoo, outside of testimonials from celebrities like Kim Kardashian, there is no evidence to support this belief. That being said, the ‘No Poo’ Method isn’t detrimental. How you choose to wash your hair is a personal choice, as neither choice will drastically affect your health. Frequency of hair washing is also largely preferential, but people who sweat a lot, have very fine hair, or a naturally oily scalp might consider daily washing if it helps to limit itchiness, dandruff, and head acne

https://www.nopoomethod.com/

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/general-science/no-poo-craze

https://www.webmd.com/beauty/features/how-often-wash-hair

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-wash-your-hair-every-day-2018-1

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/319848.php

All, Medicine

How Effective Will CAR T-Cell Therapy be in Treating Solid Tumor Cancers?

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Source: Mesothelioma

Guest Piece written by David Haas

David Haas is a health advocate specializing in mesothelioma. He works to ensure the continuation of awareness about the disease and supports active research being conducted to find a cure.

 The American Cancer Society estimates that almost 2 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States this year. Oncologists and researchers are working to develop new treatment options in hopes of increasing both the duration and quality of life of people with cancer. One relatively new treatment (CAR T-cell therapy) extracts and modifies T cells from the blood (type of immune cell), gives them a receptor that directs them to the specific type of cancer (Chimeric Antigen Receptor, or CAR) the patient has, and then places them back into the bloodstream. Patients are monitored closely because reintroduction of a large number of T cells can lead to life threatening complications. One possible complication is Cytokine Release Syndrome (CRS): the release of an excess of cytokines (an inflammatory molecule). CRS can cause a steep drop in blood pressure, high fever, and swelling of the brain, which can be fatal. These risks do not deter many patients who have limited treatment options left.

Given the success of CAR T-cell therapy for liquid tumors such as acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL; 83 percent remission rate in some clinical trials) there is discussion of how this treatment could impact solid tumors. However, site-specific drug delivery is more difficult for solid cancers.

The National Cancer Institute recently granted 11 million dollars to the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center to study T cell therapy for solid tumors. This research will focus on a rare lung cancer known as malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM), which has a notoriously poor prognosis. For people with late-stage mesothelioma, it’s unusual to live more than two years after diagnosis. If successful, research interest in CAR T-cell therapy for rare solid tumors may expand.

At Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) researchers have enrolled 12 people with MPM in a clinical trial of CAR-T-cell therapy. The early results are promising, showing no signs of toxicity, with one patient remaining clinically well eight months after T cell infusion.

It may be a while before this treatment is widely available, as one hurdle is price. The two FDA approved T cell treatments cost more than $370,000. This price would leave the average cancer patient in a debilitating amount of debt even with optimal insurance coverage. Regulators are looking to have these prices reduced.

While research may establish CAR T-cell therapy as effective for solid tumor cancers such as mesothelioma, the timeframe for accessible treatment may be several more years since it is experimental and prohibitively expensive.

***If you are interested in writing a guest piece on our website about a topic of interest, please feel free to reach out to us at kavyarajesh@utexas.edu and David.Ring@austin.utexas.edu to discuss an idea. We hope you enjoyed this piece and we look forward to hearing from you!

 

Sources

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17726-car-t-cell-therapy/risks–benefits

https://labiotech.eu/features/car-t-therapy-cancer-review/

https://www.mesothelioma.com/mesothelioma/

https://www.targetedonc.com/publications/targeted-therapy-news/2018/august-2018/early-signs-of-efficacy-seen-with-mesothelin-car-tcell-therapy