If you leave your job for three months without explanation, you’ll probably get fired. If you leave school for three months without a really detailed doctor’s note, you’ll probably get kicked out. If you leave your children unattended for three months, even with a good excuse, they’ll probably hate you, and CPS might take them away.

So, if you used to read my blog, but no longer feel that you can trust me as a webmaster, that’s well within your rights. I could go on and on about my hiatus with all the lab meetings and the presentations and the hours spent slaving away over tubes of clear liquids — but that’s not actually so interesting. You know what is?

What’s interesting is that I’m alive and relatively healthy despite my abominable (to some) diet and lack of exercise choices. Please read on for a heartbreakingly honest confession of my wicked health ways, with photographic examples of the devastation I’ve wreaked on myself, and sometimes on loved ones.

Disclaimer #1: The pictures herein may or may not induce diet fail.

Disclaimer #2: I may or may not use tons of hardcore scientific fact to back up my feeble excuses for my health choices.

Disclaimer #3: I may or may not be an advocate of unhealthiness per se, but I strongly defend people’s rights to make whatever unhealthful choices they wish…so long as they can live to tell about it, as I am.

First off, I can’t decide what my goal is with this post. Is it to absolve myself of the guilt I feel for what I’ve done? Is it to brag about the fact that I can do what I’ve done and get away with it? Or do I just want a platform to rage back against the hordes of people who provoke me time and time again by asking “Oh my gosh, you’re going to eat that?!”? Because the answer to this question is almost always “Yes. With seconds.”

So let’s say you make a cupcake. A cinnamon-y cupcake. You’re feeling indulgent, so you top it with streusel, which is basically butter and cinnamon and sugar. This adds a nice crunchy layer of devil-may-care deliciousness to your dessert.

This would be a fine place to stop and enjoy your creation. Would be, if it weren’t for maple buttercream. This is essentially maple syrup, butter (the real stuff), and powdered sugar.

Wow, you’re really throwing caution to the wind now! And since you’ve gone this far, you can’t think of any great argument against garnishing this confection with crumbled bacon, can you?

Paula Deen has nothing on you, obviously, but why are you doing this? Are you hosting a party? (No.) Do you have an amazing food blog, in addition to having an awesome science blog? (No.) Oh, so you just have a thing for unhealthy food! Lots of unhealthy food.

You don’t even really share these with people, you just eat them. The only reason you’ve taken pictures is to make your friends jealous on Facebook. But maybe you justify this as a rare treat! …What’s that? It’s not a rare treat? You mean you make unhealthy stuff, like, all the time? Surely you jest.

Alright, so I’m talking about myself here. I’m constantly making stuff like this, and not sharing it either. High sugar, high fat — and not just for dessert. My meals are technically not much better: cheap Chinese food, half of a large pizza, Ramen noodles. Even when I cook for myself, which is at least half the time, the meal is almost always along these lines:

Lots of frying, lots of butter. I’m not even going to talk about all of this stuff that I have on the side:

Alright, so you’re getting the picture. I’m not necessarily counting calories. Or fat, sugar, salt, cholesterol…. Maybe at this point you’re saying to yourself “Okay, this is disturbing, but what does it have to do with science?”

I’m not so sure, exactly. I guess I’m only just now becoming fully aware of the fact that I have eaten like this for my entire life, while making no attempt at formal exercise whatsoever, and yet I’m alive. Alive with an unremarkably normal BMI of around 20, normal cholesterol levels, no sign of diabetes, and blood pressure on the lower side. This probably sounds a lot like some sort of Humblebrag. And maybe it is. But I like to think of it as an anomaly of nature, an anomaly that should be questioned, challenged, and weakly explained in list form.

And so I present you with reasons why I’m not dead:

1. “I’m on a ketogenic diet!” A ketogenic diet is one that’s high in fats. I’ve got that covered. However, a ketogenic diet it also low in carbohydrates, so I can’t actually claim to be on a ketogenic diet. But it’s interesting to know that such a diet exists and is used as a form of treatment for epilepsy, brain cancer, and some genetic metabolic disorders. When the body has a relatively high amount of fat and low amount of sugar, the liver will burn fat instead of carbohydrates, which generates a byproduct called ketones. In people who can’t metabolize sugars because of enzymes deficiencies, a ketogenic diet is the way to go; in people who have seizures, it’s not well understood why a ketogenic diet helps, but it does.

"Tonight, we dine in hell! ...Because we hardly ate all day."

2. “I’m on the Warrior Diet!” The Warrior Diet is fairly straightforward: “under-eat” during the day and “overeat” at night. Now, I don’t technically follow the Warrior Diet or any diet at all, but I do find that my breakfast is small, my lunch is small, and my dinner is HUGE. For breakfast, I might grab some Greek yogurt (<200 calories). For lunch, I’ll have something like pita chips
and a cereal bar (<300 calories). And dinner is as much food as I can fit into my body. I’m talking 1200+ calories of pepperoni pizza, 1000+ calories of pasta, or 1400+ calories of fried chicken and biscuits. Followed by whatever my most recent baked good happens to be. So maybe I intake a normal number of calories (or so I’ll tell myself), but most of that happens after 6pm…where no one can see me.

3. “I’ve got good genes!” Ah, yes, those all-powerful “genes.” Those things that we use to excuse ourselves for not being runway models, Olympic swimmers, or (insert enviable profession here). And of course genes have a lot to do with everything we are…but, which genes are we talking about specifically? Very few people actually have a gene in mind when they praise “good genes” or lament “bad genes.” In fact, there aren’t many genes that can be solely blamed for why people are fat, athletic, smart, etc. Truth be told, there’s an enzyme known to break down fat in food and in the body and convert it to energy, and I know one of my two copies of this enzyme is mutated. So I don’t think I can say I have superior genes that let me eat tons of fat and sugar without consequence. If you still think it’s my genes, my dad developed Type 2 diabetes in his 50s, and my mom was diagnosed with high cholesterol in her 50s… neither of them were ever supermodels, either, so my genes probably aren’t terribly special.

4. “Just you wait!” And, after all this, it’s certainly possible that I’ve got some rough days in store for me. Everyone’s heard about how eating lots of fats and sugars predisposes to heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and just about every other negative biological outcome. It’s possible that my love of all things fatty is dooming me to a future with scarring in my brain, specifically in my hippocampus. I’m definitely not advocating for anyone to do as I do, but sometimes people break all the health “rules” and turn out just fine, and sometimes people follow every rule and are still struck with health misfortunes.

Honestly, I am in awe of people with well-balanced diets, those of you out there running marathons for fun, and the like. But…I’m just not like that. I’m sure as I get older, I will be forced to make concessions to nature and clean up my act a bit. But, until then, I’d love it if people would give me less grief about what I choose to eat, unless those people are doctors holding the results of my blood work.

And in the meantime, yes, I’m going to eat that.

Stay nerdy.

P.S. I really do apologize for so much time away from blogging. I’m going to shoot for updates every week or every other week, and hope for the best. Thanks as always for your continued support!

P.P.S. Check out this shiny new comedic science blog written by my buddy Tyler: http://www.biLOLogy.net

Lambrechts DA, Wielders LH, Aldenkamp AP, Kessels FG, de Kinderen RJ, & Majoie MJ (2012). The ketogenic diet as a treatment option in adults with chronic refractory epilepsy: Efficacy and tolerability in clinical practice. Epilepsy & behavior : E&B PMID: 22366051

Seyfried TN, Marsh J, Shelton LM, Huysentruyt LC, & Mukherjee P (2011). Is the restricted ketogenic diet a viable alternative to the standard of care for managing malignant brain cancer? Epilepsy research PMID: 21885251

Veggiotti P, Teutonico F, Alfei E, Nardocci N, Zorzi G, Tagliabue A, De Giorgis V, & Balottin U (2010). Glucose transporter type 1 deficiency: ketogenic diet in three patients with atypical phenotype. Brain & development, 32 (5), 404-8 PMID: 19515520

Thaler JP, Yi CX, Schur EA, Guyenet SJ, Hwang BH, Dietrich MO, Zhao X, Sarruf DA, Izgur V, Maravilla KR, Nguyen HT, Fischer JD, Matsen ME, Wisse BE, Morton GJ, Horvath TL, Baskin DG, Tschöp MH, & Schwartz MW (2012). Obesity is associated with hypothalamic injury in rodents and humans. The Journal of clinical investigation, 122 (1), 153-62 PMID: 22201683

You may not exactly like the things you learn about fat in today’s post, but fat seems to be society’s public enemy number one lately, and you know what they say — it’s always best to know your enemy.

Here’s a fat cell:

It’s relatively huge as far as cells go. With a diameter of about a tenth of a millimeter, it’s over 100 times the size of a skin cell, and just one fat cell is potentially visible by the naked eye. As you can see, most of a fat cell is a huge pool of fat, with all of the other parts of the cell squished off to the side. If you’re the average adult, you’ve got about 30 billion of these guys. All the more reason to know what they’re capable of, right?

1. Fat cells can pilfer your medications and vitamins. At the most basic level, when you take medicine or vitamins, your body uses what you need and the byproducts or whatever your body doesn’t use are excreted. However, many vitamins (like A, D, E, and K) and medications (including many antidepressants and anesthetics) are fat-soluble, as opposed to water-soluble, meaning that as they circulate your body they can slip out of your blood and into your fat. THC, the active compound in marijuana, is an example of a fat-soluble drug; if an obese person with large amounts of body fat gets high with a skinny person with low levels of body fat, it is likely that the obese person would test positive for a longer stretch of time, because the obese person has more fat cells to trap the THC and release its metabolites more slowly over time.

Sneaky fat cells…

2. Fat cells influence how hungry you are and whether or not you get diabetes and heart disease. As it turns out, fat cells don’t just take stuff out of your blood, they put stuff in it, too. In particular, fat cells make a whole bunch of hormones and inflammatory molecules. One of the most important molecules made by fat is leptin, which signals to the brain and decreases appetite. Mice without receptors for leptin become obese:

Fat tissue also releases inflammatory molecules called cytokines that can decrease the ability of the body to respond to insulin, which can set the stage for diabetes. Some of these inflammatory molecules are also thought to promote systemic inflammation, and research suggests that this can make atherosclerosis (artery blockage due to fat accumulation) all the more dangerous. That’s because inflammatory cells might be able to rupture atherosclerotic buildup, creating clots that induce heart attacks or strokes.

This is a lot of information to take in, and the many roles of fat as a signaling tissue make up a very active area of research right now, especially because fat can often turn on or off production of specific molecules in obese individuals.

3. Fat cells can feed cancer cells. If you weren’t hating fat by now, this might just tip the scales. Very recent research in Nature Medicine suggests that abdominal cancers, like ovarian cancer, are made worse by fat. Ovarian cancers tend to metastasize to fat-dense regions of the abdomen, and fat cells can directly transfer fat to cancer cells, which provides the cancer with energy and allows it to grow in size.The silver lining of these findings is that researchers may now have a new mechanism to target when designing drugs to fight cancers that flourish in fatty areas of the body.

4. Fat cells might be the cure to just about everything. Alright, last but not least, a major redeeming feature of fat: it’s got stem cells in it. In general, stem cells are cells that have the potential to differentiate into multiple other cell types. Scientists have theorized stem cells to be a potential therapy for just about every disease condition (e.g. using stem cell-derived neurons to replace the lost/damaged neurons in neurodegenerative diseases). Although fat stem cells can’t turn into as many cell types as embryonic stem cells can, they have many upsides: fat stem cells circumvent ethical concerns, are readily available thanks to all of the fat-removing surgeries done today, and pose far less risk of immune rejection when re-introducing cells taken from someone’s own fat. Fat stem cells have already been shown to essentially cure a mouse model of lupus.

So maybe you’re not necessarily any happier about your fat now, but I hope you have a new appreciation for it. While you lament your muffin top, you can consider the diverse biology of your muffin top. That might sound nerdy, but…well, that’s the whole point.

Ovchinnikova O, Robertson AK, Wågsäter D, Folco EJ, Hyry M, Myllyharju J, Eriksson P, Libby P, & Hansson GK (2009). T-cell activation leads to reduced collagen maturation in atherosclerotic plaques of Apoe(-/-) mice. The American journal of pathology, 174 (2), 693-700 PMID: 19131590

Nieman KM, Kenny HA, Penicka CV, Ladanyi A, Buell-Gutbrod R, Zillhardt MR, Romero IL, Carey MS, Mills GB, Hotamisligil GS, Yamada SD, Peter ME, Gwin K, & Lengyel E (2011). Adipocytes promote ovarian cancer metastasis and provide energy for rapid tumor growth. Nature medicine, 17 (11), 1498-503 PMID: 22037646

Choi EW, Shin IS, Park SY, Park JH, Kim JS, Yoon EJ, Kang SK, Ra JC, & Hong SH (2011). Reversal of serological, immunological and histological dysfunction in systemic lupus erythematosus mice by long-term serial adipose tissue-derived mesenchymal stem cell transplantation. Arthritis and rheumatism PMID: 21904997

Yeah, you should check this out:

The authors started off by looking at the genes expressed in muscle biopsies from muscles undergoing atrophy, and they made note of which genes had high or low expression. Then, they screened 1300+ compounds for any that could (basically) decrease the high genes and increase the low genes, the idea being that any compound that could reverse the gene expression in muscle atrophy might be a good treatment. And they were right.

Ursolic acid

The screen identified ursolic acid, a compound found in large quantities in apple peels, as the only potential inhibitor of muscle atrophy. So the researchers injected ursolic acid into mice with atrophic muscles, which stopped muscle loss and increased muscle weight by 7%. Seven percent might not sound like a lot, but it is, considering that, again, this is the first compound shown to stop muscle loss at all. A 7% increase in muscle weight in a 180 lb man with typical muscle mass would mean a gain of over 5 pounds of muscle.

Ursolic acid diet shrinks fat cells

Things got even more interesting when normal mice were put on a diet with 0.27% ursolic acid: muscles got bigger and significantly stronger, blood levels of fat and cholesterol decreased, and fat cells shrank considerably, thus reducing fat weight significantly (see for yourself in a figure from the article, left). This is all in addition to the lowered blood sugar in fasting mice who received ursolic acid injections. To make things even better, the authors were able to identify genes that were increased or decreased by treatment, and that were probably responsible for these effects.

In my opinion, these scientists stumbled across something even greater than what they hoped to find. Their data on ursolic acid suggests its usefulness in treating everything from muscle atrophy to obesity to metabolic syndrome to type 2 diabetes. Not even mentioned in this paper is the work that has previously shown the ability of ursolic acid to inhibit cancer cells and Alzheimer’s proteins.

Okay, I’m impressed. What doesn’t ursolic acid do? Seems like it could be a future wonder drug! I’m very interested to see what scientists will try with this compound next…

Have a nerdy weekend!

Kunkel SD, Suneja M, Ebert SM, Bongers KS, Fox DK, Malmberg SE, Alipour F, Shields RK, & Adams CM (2011). mRNA expression signatures of human skeletal muscle atrophy identify a natural compound that increases muscle mass. Cell metabolism, 13 (6), 627-38 PMID: 21641545

Shishodia S, Majumdar S, Banerjee S, & Aggarwal BB (2003). Ursolic acid inhibits nuclear factor-kappaB activation induced by carcinogenic agents through suppression of IkappaBalpha kinase and p65 phosphorylation: correlation with down-regulation of cyclooxygenase 2, matrix metalloproteinase 9, and cyclin D1. Cancer research, 63 (15), 4375-83 PMID: 12907607

Pathak AK, Bhutani M, Nair AS, Ahn KS, Chakraborty A, Kadara H, Guha S, Sethi G, & Aggarwal BB (2007). Ursolic acid inhibits STAT3 activation pathway leading to suppression of proliferation and chemosensitization of human multiple myeloma cells. Molecular cancer research : MCR, 5 (9), 943-55 PMID: 17855663

Wilkinson K, Boyd JD, Glicksman M, Moore KJ, & El Khoury J (2011). A high-content drug screen identifies ursolic acid as an inhibitor of amyloid-{beta} interactions with its receptor CD36. The Journal of biological chemistry PMID: 21835916

Though this blog has already featured insects more than I would have imagined (i.e. at all), this post is about something I really feel the need to share. Because, every so often, I come across something for which the research is so overwhelmingly positive, I’m shocked that it’s not more well-known.

If you want to know what bees are up to now that could significantly impact human health, click on.

In short, bees are collecting this stuff called propolis. They collect it from plants and it’s sort of like sap, but apparently way more awesome. Bees use it to patch up the smaller holes in their hives, but researchers are using it on…everything.

1. Propolis and diabetes. In China, researchers gave propolis capsules to rats with type 2 diabetes. At the end of the experiment, rats who received propolis had significantly less sugar and fat in their blood, and more insulin, compared to diabetic mice who didn’t get propolis. Not bad for bee spackle. Given that almost 10% of the U.S. has diabetes, we need all the help we can get against this condition.

2. Propolis and ulcers. Stomach ulcers are no fun; they’re painful and can cause a lot of vomiting. Although 60% of stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria in the stomach, some cases occur after a person receives radiation, as with cancer treatment. So some compelling work in Egypt found that if mice were given propolis orally one hour before receiving radiation, they were largely protected against the formation of stomach ulcers. In fact, propolis-treated mice developed a whopping 75% fewer ulcers than untreated mice.

3. Propolis and burns. Anyone who has had a second-degree burn probably wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemy. Interestingly, researchers are still exploring what the best dressing is for these burns. A few weeks ago, a team in Brazil tried propolis. You’ve probably caught onto this pattern, but applying 5% propolis to second-degree burns on rats decreased inflammation and increased the rate of tissue repair. Look at this graph:

Pessolato et al. "Propolis and amnion reepithelialise second-degree burns in rats." Burns. July 6, 2011. Figure 6.

See those black bars that are way taller than the other bars? That’s showing the fact that burns treated with propolis produced a lot more collagen than untreated (gray bars) or tissue-grafted (white bars) burns after 1, 2, and 3 weeks into the experiment. Impressive stuff.

4. Propolis and atherosclerosis. I don’t think I need to give much preamble about atherosclerosis, but basically it’s when arteries become blocked because of fatty deposits, and it’s a serious risk factor for heart attacks. Lo and behold, when a different group from Brazil gave propolis to atherosclerotic mice, the condition of the animals improved. These mice were genetically predisposed to have high cholesterol and they were fed a high cholesterol diet to induce atherosclerosis. After 4 weeks of being given extracts from various types of propolis, the mice were sacrificed and mice who received propolis treatment had better ratios of good to bad cholesterol, and had smaller areas of atherosclerotic build-up.

Finally, if you still need more convincing…

5. Propolis and cancer. Glioblastoma is the most common and most detrimental type of brain tumor in humans. People with glioblastomas tend to only survive 1 or 2 years with treatment (3 months without). That’s why it’s pretty exciting that researchers in Brazil (Brazil is really on top of propolis) found that propolis slowed the growth of glioblastoma cells in their lab. Propolis was effective alone, and even more so in combination with a standard brain tumor drug.

What can’t propolis do? Glioblastoma isn’t the only form of cancer against which propolis has proven effective. These five scenarios I’ve described aren’t the only conditions in which propolis has been a successful treatment. I encourage you to do your research if you’re interested:

And/or consider picking up a bottle of the stuff:

If the research didn’t back it up, I wouldn’t advocate for it.

Li Y, Chen M, Xuan H, & Hu F (2012). Effects of encapsulated propolis on blood glycemic control, lipid metabolism, and insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes mellitus rats. Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM, 2012 PMID: 21716678

El-Ghazaly MA, Rashed RR, & Khayyal MT (2011). Anti-ulcerogenic effect of aqueous propolis extract and the influence of radiation exposure. International journal of radiation biology PMID: 21745002

Pessolato AG, Martins DD, Ambrósio CE, Mançanares CA, & de Carvalho AF (2011). Propolis and amnion reepithelialise second-degree burns in rats. Burns : journal of the International Society for Burn Injuries PMID: 21741176

Daleprane JB, da Silva Freitas V, Pacheco A, Rudnicki M, Faine LA, Dörr FA, Ikegaki M, Salazar LA, Ong TP, & Abdalla DS (2011). Anti-atherogenic and anti-angiogenic activities of polyphenols from propolis. The Journal of nutritional biochemistry PMID: 21764281

Borges KS, Brassesco MS, Scrideli CA, Soares AE, & Tone LG (2011). Antiproliferative effects of Tubi-bee propolis in glioblastoma cell lines. Genetics and molecular biology, 34 (2), 310-4 PMID: 21734835