Procrastination & performance in online learning | Psychology Today

What aspects of executive functioning are related to procrastination?

via Procrastination & performance in online learning | Psychology Today.

It is obvious to those who suffer from habitual procrastination that this terrible habit is a cause of a lot of stress, which is why I have put this link in this site.  Fortunately, there is help from many sources, and many ideas on how to lick it, hard tho but can be done.

I have no idea how many many times I have put off something for the sake of “feeling good”, although that feeling good comes with the very steep price of stress, loss of trust, and deep personal unhappiness.

 

Yet another reason to eat chocolates!

Japanese chocolate maker Meiji’s research on our favorite junk food shows that chocolate is not junk, it is actually good for the heart!

Not that we did not know that already, but it also appears that chocolate has proteins that increase the load of High Density Lipoproteins or HDLs, also mistakenly known as quote-unquote Good Cholesterol (and yes, I hate using that term but it has been so thoroughly marketed that there is no escaping it!) as well as regulate the body’s own cholesterol-making mechanisms.

What has been well known before is that cocoa, is a good source of cathecins such as flavonols, really nifty chemicals with technical names that are impossible to memorize, which can affect the blood, the skin, the brain, and even our mood .

Undeniably an unregulated drug, eating chocolate does have side effects such as gluttony and putting on excess weight.

EU’s regulations inhibit Herbal producers

This is the first time I’ve heard of EU’s Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), but it appears that, even though it allowed for 7 years of grace period for Herbal manufacturers with health claims to get registered, very few herbal companies have chosen to get licensed.

Why so?  It appears that licensing is a product-by-product transaction, and herbal manufacturers are unwilling to invest thousands of pounds for a license that, unlike patents, does not allow for their exclusive use of the product.

One of the effects of the directive is that many herbal products will be taken out of the shelves come April.

I wonder if we will see a similar scenario here in the Philippines due to the anti-herbal bias of the past administration.

For more on this, click here.

Cancer Stem Cells: size is not the issue

Today is the day I first read about cancer stem cells, although Sir Bibiano has told me something about them  during my dear friend’s first treatment for cancer not a year ago.

Sir Bibiano said that medical treatment for cancer is quite tricky, because cancer can respond two ways.  On the one hand, you can get the cancer out through surgery  and then get treated with radiation and chemotherapy, and everything works ok.  On other cases, surgery and radiotherapy actually makes the cancer worse, as if as one attacks the “mothership”, the sattelites will become activated, and so the cancer progresses at a faster rate.  I had no idea why Sir Bibiano said that, and neither did he have any explanation for it, only that this is what has been observed.

Today I think I’ve found part of the explanation.

Ano ang pagiging mabuti?

Naghahanap ako ng mga organisasyon na pwedeng magbigay ng pondo para sa pananaliksik tungkol sa mga teknolohiya at metodolohiya ng hilot.  Eh di me nahanap akong isa, yung Global Research Alliance.  Meron silang malakas na proyekto tungkol sa Indigenous Knowledge at sa pagpapalaganap ngmga halamang gamot sa pamamagitan ng paggawa ng mga pharmaceuticals.

There’s Money in Medicine, and it’s from Pharma

This recent Scientific American blogpost reports that Big Pharma companies are paying medical doctors  as consultants to share their findings with colleagues.  Through a database formed by groups including an investigative journalism group ProPublica, the public may look up how much a pharmaceutical company is giving to their MDs.  While this is not directly correlated with the medicines that the doctors prescribe,

this information should prompt “important conversations” between patient and doctor, Ornstein noted. Previous research has shown, however, that something as simple as seeing a drug’s name on a notepad can sway medical students toward prescribing that treatment.

The Wellcome Trust funds research

not only in cutting edge western medical technologies but also in traditional and culturally-appropriate medical systems, or so we hope.  Here’s a copy-pasted stuff from its third focus area:

Focus area 3: Exploring medicine in historical and cultural contexts

We strive to embed biomedical science in the cultural landscape, so that it is valued and there is mutual trust between researchers and the wider public.

Potentially the next BIG thing

is Mitochondria, or so this conference thinks.

Mitochondria are cell organelles that are in charge of burning our body fuel in the presence of Oxygen and turning it into ATP energy.  For reasons which are not clear to me, it looks like it’s suddenly in the pharma-nutra-beauty spotlight, and I quote:

Moreover, mitochondria play a critical role in Ca²⁺ homeostasis, apoptosis, aging and development; making mitochondria as an attractive target for drug and antioxidant-delivery strategies.

The range of potential applications is enormous.  From degenerative and chronic diseases, to ageing, to antioxidants and bioactives, and even energy generation (which is actually the mitochondria’s job description).

So we wait for Nov 18-19, and see.

 

Reverse Pharmacology in India, among other things

 

Engineer RA Mashelkar explains how to design for ultra low cost products, be it USD 2000-cars, USD 28 artificial foot, or cheaper medicine by starting with traditional medical knowledge instead of testing synthetic organic molecules.

He talks about innovative design not as a function of innovation and creativity, but as a function of “the heart being in the right place”.  He talks of convex lens leadership: with focus, you can achieve.  Interactive transcript available here:  More for Less for More.

Molecular Machines: connecting transcription to therapy

In this classic 1995 article, Dr. Robert Tjian explains that seemingly disparate diseases all arise from “from overproduction or underproduction of one or more proteins”.  This lack of balance can be traced to events that happen as a gene is transcribed.

Page 1-2 describe the many players in the transcription event, starting from the promiscuous RNA polymerase (his words, not mine , to enhances and silencers, which he likens to engine starts and breaks.  He moves on to finding the first Human transcription factor (at page 3-5) and finding another missing link (co-activator) at page 5, he finally gets down to theorizing how this all will help research find better therapies for disease at page 6.  The key to therapy it seems is to target and inhibit the transcription of specific genes such as the TAT gene for HIV.

We beg to disagree.

The thing that many western therapies tend to forget is that the disease stems not from events A or B but the lack of balance in A or B.  This is where alternative/traditional health systems can help or contribute.