Category Archives: Mind Building

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Chromatin organizes itself into 3D ‘forests’ in single cells

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A single cell contains the genetic instructions for an entire organism. This genomic information is managed and processed by the complex machinery of chromatin — a mix of DNA and protein within chromosomes whose function and role in disease are of increasing interest to scientists.

A Northwestern University research team — using mathematical modeling and optical imaging they developed themselves — has discovered how chromatin folds at the single-cell level. The researchers found chromatin is folded into a variety of tree-like domains spaced along a chromatin backbone. These small and large areas are like a mixed forest of trees growing from the forest floor. The overall structure is a 3D forest at microscale.

Chromatin is responsible for packing DNA into the cell nucleus. In humans, that’s about six feet of DNA in each cell. The new work suggests that chromatin is more structured and hierarchical in single cells than previously thought. Learning how chromatin correctly operates will help scientists understand what goes wrong with it in cancer and other diseases.

“By integrating theoretical and experimental work, we have produced a new chromatin folding picture that helps us see how the 3D genome is organized at the single-cell level,” said Igal Szleifer, the Christina Enroth-Cugell Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. He co-led the research team with Vadim Backman.

Details of the interdisciplinary study will be published Jan. 10 in the journal Science Advances.

“If genes are the hardware, chromatin is the software,” said Backman, the Walter Dill Scott Professor of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Center for Physical Genomics and Engineering. “If the structure of chromatin changes, it can alter the processing of the information stored in the genome, but it does not alter the genes themselves. Understanding chromatin folding holds the key to understanding how cells differentiate and how cancer happens.”

Advances in genomic, imaging and information technologies are just beginning to enable scientists to better understand how chromatin works. The Northwestern researchers used a Partial Wave Spectroscopic (PWS) microscope, optical imaging developed by Backman and colleagues, to peer deep into live cells and “sense” alterations in chromatin packing. They also used electron imaging.

“Our paradigm-shifting picture of chromatin folding is an important missing piece in the holistic view of genomic structure,” said Kai Huang, the study’s first author. Huang is a postdoctoral fellow in Backman’s research group. “The results should inspire new strategies to fight cancer.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by Northwestern University. Original written by Megan Fellman. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Study finds 95 percent satisfaction rate with Mohs surgery

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Patients who received Mohs surgery to treat the most serious form of skin cancer, melanoma, reported a 95 percent long-term satisfaction rate with their results, according to a new study by UT Southwestern Medical Center dermatologists.

Divya Srivastava, M.D. Divya Srivastava, M.D. The study, published in Dermatologic Surgery, is the first to poll patient satisfaction for Mohs surgery. The findings complement previous scientific studies that found Mohs surgery is as effective as wide local excision for early melanomas, says Divya Srivastava, M.D., a UT Southwestern board-certified dermatologist and fellowship trained Mohs surgeon who led the study and has been specializing in Mohs surgery for the past decade. She says her caseload of Mohs surgeries for melanoma has doubled in that time.

“Patient satisfaction is becoming such an important part of medicine these days, so we wanted to look to see what we can do to get patients more satisfied with the care that they are getting for their skin cancer treatment. That’s a big area of interest for a lot of the subspecialties,” she says.

More people are diagnosed with skin cancer each year in the U.S. than all other cancers combined, but how they attack their cancer is wildly different. “We are working to determine what treatments garner the highest satisfaction to better inform guidelines and decision-making,” Srivastava says.

Named after the late Frederic Mohs, M.D., Mohs micrographic surgery is a highly precise excision technique in which the cancer is removed in stages, one tissue layer at a time. After each removal step, the layer is examined under a microscope to determine whether cancer remains in the patient’s skin and, if present, where exactly it is located so that the surgeon can pinpoint where to remove the remaining skin cancer. This allows for the smallest scar and best cosmetic result.

“You’re looking at 100 percent of the margin under the microscope,” Srivastava says. “You’re really tracking the cancer out so you’re giving people a great cure rate, and it’s all done under local anesthetic so it’s very safe.”

UT Southwestern researchers surveyed 42 of its patients who underwent this technique. The majority of patients were white men with a mean age of 69. The highest percentage of U.S. patients diagnosed with melanoma are white men over age 55. Three-quarters of the tumors were located on the face. The remaining were on the scalp, extremities, and neck.

This small survey suggests patients are finding that the long-term benefits of excision with 100% margin control using Mohs surgery greatly outweigh any potential perceived inconvenience. At UT Southwestern, dermatologic surgeons also provide immediate local tissue reconstruction, using advanced reconstruction techniques to diminish the appearance of scars.

Mohs surgery has a nearly 99% cure rate for early melanoma and results in minimal scarring. Patients follow up with their dermatologists every three months for two years post-surgery.

Dermatologists expect the need for Mohs surgery to increase as the baby boomer population ages. The surgery can also be used to remove basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, which are the two most common types of skin cancers.

“If melanoma is left untreated, it definitely has the potential to grow in the skin and even spread to lymph nodes and organs,” Srivastava says. “It can metastasize.”

People with fair skin, hair, and eyes are at the highest risk. Just a few severe sunburns in one’s lifetime also up the chance of developing skin cancer.

“Once you have one melanoma, you are at risk for more. It’s a marker that you have had lot of sun exposure in your life,” Srivastava says.

Srivastava is recognized as a national leader in the field. She authored textbook chapters and articles about dermatology. She serves in the House of Delegates in the American Medical Association and is a member of the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, and the American College of Mohs Surgery.

Her study was funded by a $5,300 grant from the Cutting Edge Research Grant Program of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery.

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Inspiration Beats Procrastination

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Inviting a stronger flow of inspiration kicked off by the 365-day creative challenge is helping me get more done than I expected, including completing some stale to-do items that I never felt inspired to do before.

This morning I updated all of my YouTube videos (42 of them) to have end screens that invite people to visit my blog, subscribe to my channel, or check out other videos on my channel. For instance, an abundance-related video will now invite people to watch a Deep Abundance Integration invite video next.

I also set most videos to invite people to watch my latest video, which is currently the Stature invite video.

This small improvement is probably more beneficial for the long-term than giving much of a short-term boost. I expect to publish more videos this year, so I wanted to at least get the older videos encouraging people to watch the most recent videos too. My oldest YouTube videos are from 2009.

This small project has been on my to-do list for at least a year, but I could never make it a high enough priority to get it to the top of the list. Then as a surprise this morning, the inspiration was just there to do it, and I got it done very easily. I even enjoyed doing it.

I think this inspiration partly came about from connecting with people on YouTube last night during the live chat for our Stature video live premiere. By connecting with real people on the site in real-time, I felt a stronger energetic link between my YouTube videos and the real human beings who are watching them. I strongly suspect that the flow of inspiration comes from the collective energy of other people.

Even though I don’t have many videos and haven’t published frequently on YouTube, people are watching my videos there every day. The most popular one is the 40 Days of Water Fasting video from 2017, which currently has about 125K views and keeps going up. That was the video I recorded right at the end of 40 days without food, summarizing what the experience was like.

My second most popular video is the first in the Creating Abundance playlist, which currently has about 82K views. That series is from November 2009, and the view count has been gradually increasing ever since.

Most of my videos have between 2K and 10K views on YouTube. Six are between 10K and 100K. Only the 40-day fasting video has passed 100K views so far. Over time this led to a small subscriber base on YouTube, currently about 5900 people there.

Mentally I see a lot of potential in sharing more videos, especially on YouTube. I’m comfortable on camera, and I have an infinite supply of ideas. People generally like the videos I share (95%+ approval according to YouTube’s stats). But as nice as this looks in terms of the opportunity for more sharing and more ripples, I just didn’t feel any energy wanting to flow in that direction. I’d think about making more YouTube videos, and that’s as far as it would go – just thinking but with no motivation to actually do it just yet.

As I’m exploring the flow of inspiration more intensely this year, I’m seeing some promising shifts happening. I’m getting the “big rocks” handled pretty well, but I’m also in such a nice flow that a lot of small rocks are getting handled too and without delay, some old and some new.

Last night in the Stature launch Facebook group, someone asked if there was an audio version of the Stature invite video. There wasn’t, but I knew it would be a simple matter to export the audio from Final Cut Pro and add it to the Stature page, so I did immediately. It only took a few minutes.

I did this extra task when I was tired, after a long day that started around 6:30am, and I think it was sometime after 1am that I handled this. It wasn’t because I had to do it then or because it was the next logical item on my to-do list. It’s because even at the end of a long day, the flow of inspiration was still strong enough that it was easy to leverage it to get more done.

When I act in alignment with this flow, I’m often able to complete tasks (especially creative ones) 2-3x faster than I would if I was disciplining myself to do it without any strong feelings of inspiration. I think this is because when I use self-discipline to take action, I’m pushing through at least some resistance to overcome inertia, whereas the flow of inspiration deactivates such resistance, so I can go faster because no internal misalignments are slowing me down.

I really don’t have to self-motivate or use self-discipline much at all to get a lot done each day. In fact, it feels counterproductive when I try. It’s so much more effective to listen and to invite inspiration without getting too attached to what shows up.

I know what my plans and goals are for each day. I know I have blog posts to create and Stature lessons to design, record, and publish. And there are plenty of other items to attend to, such as doing coaching calls in Conscious Growth Club and keeping up with various business tasks. I think that the flow of inspiration also understands my to-do list, and it’s actually better at getting things done from that list than I am when I try to use a more “businessy” approach.

I’m now wondering how many of the dull, boring, or tedious items on my Nozbe projects list may get done without actually trying to schedule them. The current flow of inspiration is chipping away at some of these items, even when I don’t expect to get to them for a while. When I feel inspired to work on one of these tasks, it’s easy because the energy moves through me to get it done with much less effort than if I were try to self-power my way through.

The part that requires more trust is that I don’t really get to decide when I’ll do which task. I wake up each morning and listen to what the inspiration channel is currently broadcasting, and then when I’m ready I dive into the flow of action, which feels like surfing waves of energy that drive me forward. I often map out my to-dos for the day, but I can’t predict in which order I’ll do them, and it’s better if I don’t try to predict.

At the end of a long day, I may be physically and mentally tired, but it feels like there’s another channel of energy (spiritual or astral perhaps?) that’s still full. Last night I noticed I was getting pretty sleepy and still worked an extra 3 hours beyond that point, partly because I was enjoying the flow and partly because I still had tasks that I’d committed to for the day, like writing and publishing a new blog post.

Before this year I’d prefer to be in bed at 10pm and get up at 5am. But so far this year, I’m typically going to bed around 1-2am and getting up at 5-6:30am, so I’m sleeping less. I’ll often take a 20-minute nap during the day, or I’ll meditate for 30 minutes, which refreshes me enough to keep going. I keep telling myself that I need to slow down and catch up on sleep, and then I don’t. I don’t think I’ve slept more than 6 hours in a night this year yet.

This flow of action doesn’t feel stressful or pushy. It feels more fun, like an invitation to dance. But it also seems to leverage time pressure a lot, sometimes more than I’d like.

I have some definite to-dos on my plate each day. Logically you’d think it would be best to get those done early in the day. And sometimes that’s where the inspiration flows, like this morning as I’m writing my daily blog post – nice to get this done early.

But sometimes the flow of inspiration does just the opposite. I get inspired to work on non-urgent but still valuable projects during the day, and then it might be 5pm or 8pm when I’m finally getting the nudge to do my must-do items. I’m getting them done, but just in time some days, like getting blog posts published only two minutes before midnight (twice, including last night). I do find this stimulating sometimes, especially challenging myself to write faster, but then of course more typos are going to slip through. It’s still fun and stimulating though. The time pressure helps me focus, and it isn’t too stressful.

I sense that this flow of inspired energy knows me better than I know myself. It sure knows how to drive me into resistance-free action – much better than I’m able to on my own. I wasn’t bad before, but this energy flow is next level. It just demolishes tasks and projects with such ease and rhythm, turning each day into a unique song and dance of creative work.

I could definitely get used to this because I enjoy high-stimulation flow. The main challenge is trusting it. Will it still get the accounting done? Will it eventually flow towards tasks where I think a certain timetable matters? Will it ever let me down? Will it respect the social promises and commitments I’ve made? Honor is a really important value to me, and so is trust. So this energy makes me a bit anxious when I can’t be sure if it cares about such values.

Fortunately I know that if I ever need to pause this energy and do something for less inspired reasons, I still can. For instance, I have a dentist appointment this afternoon, and whether the inspiration is there or not, I’ll show up on time and have a nice chat with the hygienist as usual.

But when I have a more open schedule and some flexibility in deciding what gets done and when, I like inviting this energy to flow through and see where it takes me. It rewards me with delightful motivation, productivity, and energy when I get out of the way and let it decide the what and the when hour by hour. Each day is a fun, stimulating ride. We’re not even 10 full days into the year yet, and I feel like I’ve already completed at least a month of work. This flow is nicely aligned with abundance too – creatively, financially, socially, etc.

This year I want to build even more trust with this flow. We’ve been good friends for many years, and I know we can become closer still. I actually think this inspired energy invited to create a closer relationship with it a few week ago. I’m glad I accepted.

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Tafida Raqeeb: Brain-damaged girl in High Court case out of intensive care

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The Italian hospital treating Tafida Raqeeb says she has managed to breath without help for an hour.

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Health24.com | Health resolutions you’ll actually keep In 2020

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The information on Health24 is for educational purposes only, and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you are experiencing symptoms or need health advice, please consult a healthcare professional. See additional information.

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Health24.com | Naps may actually save your life

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Sleep disorders expert

Dr Alison Bentley is a general practitioner who has consulted in sleep medicine and sleep disorders, in both adults and children of all ages, for almost 30 years. She also researches and publishes on a number of sleep-related topics both in formal research journals and lay publications including as editor of Sleep Matters, an educational newsletter on sleep disorders for doctors.

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Health24.com | Writing out your worries really works wonders

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As much as people love to talk about their feelings, it might be more productive to skip the conversations and write about their worries instead, according to research done at Michigan State University (MSU).

The research, published in the journal Psychophysiology, provides the first neural evidence of the benefits of expressive writing, according to lead author Hans Schroder. He’s a former MSU doctoral student who is now doing research at the Laboratory for Translational and Affective Neuroscience at McLean Hospital, in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Offload those worries

It turns out that writing about your stresses, anxiety and worries can free up your brain to accomplish other tasks more effectively.

Researchers have long known that constant worry uses up mental resources. It’s as though anxiety is always running in the background. So when you add on, say, a stressful work project, you automatically force your brain to multitask, which is never a good thing.

In the MSU study, Schroder’s team found that the participants who wrote expressively about their feelings were able to offload their worries and allow their brains to run efficiently, like a new hybrid car. On the other hand, study participants who didn’t write about their feelings – and stayed stressed – ended up guzzling more brain gas to accomplish the same tasks, like your parents’ old, inefficient clunker.

The key takeaway is that offloading worry can help you prepare for future stressful events by freeing up brain space. So, the next time you feel overwhelmed and think of taking a walk to clear your head, it might be even more helpful to crack open a journal and jot down exactly what’s bothering you.

Image credit: iStock

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Stature Video Live Premiere

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Today I made a version of the Stature invitation video for YouTube. When I went to make it public, so people could watch it there, I noticed a different setting that I hadn’t seen before – the option to host a live premiere with a live chat.

I wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but I like to dive in and try new things, and this sounded like a fun way to publish a new video, so I checked the option and made it so. Within two minutes, YouTube was displaying a countdown timer, and it notified some of my subscribers to come check it out. I also quickly shared about this in Conscious Growth Club and in the Stature launch Facebook group to see if anyone wanted to join us, and a few people did.

We had a fairly small group, maxing out at around 18 simultaneous viewers I think, but I thought it was a cool way to launch a new video. I might use this feature again sometime.

If you watch the video directly on YouTube, you can even see our group commentary from this evening’s live premiere as you watch the video, as if it’s simulating the live chat experience. Just look for the “Show Chat Replay” button – on my MacBook screen, it appears in the upper right corner next to the video area. Then click on “Top Chat Replay” and change it to “Live Chat Replay” instead. This will show all the comments instead of just what YouTube’s algorithm selects as the top one. I didn’t notice any spam in our chat, so I think all the comments were genuine.

[embedded content]

The video covers a lot in just 35 minutes:

  • What character sculpting is and why it matters
  • The purpose of the Stature course
  • Who the course is for (and who it isn’t for)
  • Format of the deep dive
  • About the deep dive exercises
  • The vibe and style of the course
  • 5 core transformations people requested for this deep dive
  • Tips on doing character sculpting on your own (what to focus on)
  • Pricing (and launch discount pricing)
  • The honor code for the course
  • What happens after you join?
  • The co-creative phase for those who join soon
  • A simple tip for making a good decision about whether to join

While the purpose is to inform and invite people to join Stature, I think it also works well as a personal development video since I share a lot of insights about character sculpting.

8 Stature Lessons Published

I also recorded and added Stature lesson 1.8 today to the member portal. I often like to include pop culture references such as to popular movies or TV series in the lessons and exercises, as a way of making them more fun.

Can you guess which movie inspired the title of today’s lesson? 😉

To the Pain

I know that gamification has become popular in recent years, but I haven’t been too fond of the cheesy way it’s often implemented, such as doling out virtual badges. I have those effects turned off on my Apple Watch, for instance. They’re not bad on occasion, but I find them more distracting than motivating most of the time.

That said, I do like making courses more fun by inserted playful references or “Easter eggs” into them, including some obscures references that only a few people may actually get, but if someone doesn’t recognize them, it won’t really impact their ability to understand the lesson anyway. I feel that if someone does catch those references, such as to odd movies like The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, the experience will be a little extra special for them.

Stature Launch Discount Extended Through January 16th

The 70% off discount for Stature was set to expire last night at midnight Pacific time. But since I didn’t get the invitation video published on the website till 11:30pm last night, and since many people have been asking for more time to decide, I’m extending the discount.

While plenty of people were eager to join without the video – 257 so far – some told me they really like those video invites and want to watch this one before deciding, especially while the launch discount is available.

So if you’re interested in character sculpting and would like to watch the Stature video, you have an extra week to do so if you still want to get the 70% launch discount.

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Health24.com | How does hormone therapy affect heart health in transgender people?

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Cardiovascular health in transgender people requires a multifaceted approach to care, according to a new report that looked at a range of issues in how hormone therapy affects heart health.

The study, published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, set out to create a guidepost for future medical care by examining past research on hormone therapy and transgender individuals, who makes up an estimated 1-in-200 people in the US.

High levels of sex hormones

“It’s a pretty unique situation, and there’s not a lot of literature available,” said the study’s lead author, Dr Christian Delles.

“We already know sex hormones are important to cardiovascular health, and now we have people being exposed to high levels of sex hormones they normally would not have, which could be associated with cardiovascular benefit or risk. If there’s a risk, we have to find how big the risk is and how we can manage it,” said Delles, a professor at the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

After reviewing dozens of studies, the researchers concluded the use of oestrogen by transgender women may be associated with an increased risk of heart attack and ischaemic stroke. On the other hand, the use of testosterone by transgender men did not seem to increase cardiovascular risk.

Dr Paul Connelly, one of the study’s researchers, said those findings were somewhat unexpected, because oestrogen is thought to reduce inflammation and have a protective effect on the vascular system, while testosterone is thought to have a more mixed effect with some negative impact on cardiovascular health.

“How we think these sex hormones act within the vascular system is really not what we’re seeing in transgender patients as a whole,” said Connelly, a clinical research fellow at the University of Glasgow. “It opens a lot of questions about how we can limit any potential risk and allow transgender adults to have better evidence based-guidance to manage their health.”

A really important paper

The study focused on gender hormone therapy’s affect on cardiovascular health, but it also concluded that hormone therapy also impacts bone metabolism and the risk of malignancy. As a result, “a cross-disciplinary approach is required to provide transgender people with optimal care,” the report said.

It also concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to assess the long-term effects of “pubertal suppression”, or using medication during puberty to suppress sex hormones. The report also said questions remain about whether researchers should compare transgender individuals with people of their birth sex or their adopted gender.

Jae Sevelius, a professor at the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health at the University of California in San Francisco, called the study “a really important paper because it highlights the gaps in what we don’t know and provides a springboard  for future research”.

Sevelius, who was not involved in the study, said the paper points to the need for doctors and researchers “to take a community participatory approach … It’s important to make sure that we’re speaking the language of the trans community, giving them accurate information, and also asking them ‘What do you think the most pressing research questions are?'”

A 2015 survey showed about a quarter of transgender people don’t seek preventive care because they fear discrimination.

More research ‘urgently required’

Sevelius said it’s essential doctors stay well-informed and open-minded when treating transgender patients.

“Some doctors who don’t fully understand transgender health care might, with the best of intentions, tell a transgender woman who smokes ‘When you quit smoking, we can start you on these hormones,’ not understanding that hormones themselves can be a lifesaving treatment, and it really should be the patient making an informed decision,” she said.

Connelly agreed. “Probably the most important thing is to make the transgender community aware that we’re not trying to reduce access to treatment, but to offer them a way to use hormones safely and lower any potential risk to their cardiovascular health,” he said.

To key to risk reduction is conducting large, in-depth studies that could untangle the mysteries of how gender hormone therapy affects health. Future research on the topic is “urgently required”, the study said.

“Around the world, gender identity clinics are becoming more common and more utilised,” Connelly said. “So, this is really a public health opportunity to get in at the ground floor and improve the health of a population that is not only larger than we once thought, but one that’s expanding.”

Image credit: unsplash.com

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Fatty tongues could be main driver of sleep apnoea

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Fat lost from the tongue was the reason for improvements in a sleep apnoea weight loss study.

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