What I Learnt Last Week 19: Extreme mobility of Mantis Shrimp's eyes, Fasting and stem's cells regenerative ability, Fast foods and child bearing, Why you forget your dreams, and The food pathogen detector

_{Check 0:52 to see the comparison between a normal mice and the one observing a fast}

Aging happens to be one thing we(all creatures) have in common. Although our lifespan vary, we all grow old to some point and then we die except for the immortal jellyfish that doesn't die. Just as we age and die, our cells also age alongside, die, and regenerate as need be. The more we age, the lesser their ability to regenerate which may in one way or the other affect our health. But today I won't be talking about cells generally, I'll be talking about stem cells. Follow me...

Just like other cells, the stem cells also lose their regenerative abilities as we age and so there's an effect it brings to our body. Assume the stem cells which are generally known to replace damaged cells in the body loses its own regenerative ability, you know a lot of things will be affected right??? Usually, stem cells replace the cells of the intestine when the need arises but as we age, it begins to take a longer time to replace the damaged cells and when there's an intestinal injury, it'll take more time to heal.

According to the MIT biologists, loss of stem cells' regenerative abilities caused by aging could be reversed by a 24-hour fast. This means they are only sure it heals stem cells' ability loss caused by aging at the moment and would definitely need to do some researchers as to if it can possibly work for other causes too. I know you're probably asking about the possibility of this, take a seat...

Usually when we eat, cells break down the glucose in the food we eat. So, what happens when we don't eat?? They break down fatty acids which in turn promote the regenerative abilities of the stem cells. The biologists after knowing what causes the promotion sought for an alternative way that might not include having to fast and they found out about a molecule that does the same thing the fasting does. The molecule just activates a metabolic switch which ensures that cells break down fatty acids instead of glucose as usual.

This is just one of the things fasting can do in terms of our health... Read more...

Wednesday: Too much fast foods and inadequate fruits is not good for women

_{Women who eat too much fast foods and not enough fruits take longer to get pregnant -wikimedia CCO}

Too much fast foods and inadequate fruits is not good for women especially those who still have childbearing in mind. I remember talking about the danger of fast foods in one of this series which you can see here. Although having too much of anything is bad, I'm beginning to think there's nothing good about fast foods than just being fast. This study found out that too much fast foods and low consumption of fruits by women has the capacity to increase the time it takes to get pregnant.

Although we believe getting pregnant should be nature dependent, at the same time, there are things we need to do to be in order and not disrupt the processes. Yeah, some people change their lifestyle, calculate their fertility cycle, consume more fruits, change their diets, try to boost their fertility and so on... but all these might still not be of help if you let fast foods get in the way.

Just like I said in the other post, the chemical phthalates is linked to pregnancy complications, infertility, cancer, obesity and a lot more. How does this chemical come alive?? Most fast foods use plastics in the preparation of their foods and this chemical comes in during that process. The chemical is birthed when plastic is heated.

Imagine when you placed an order and you requested that it be warmed. It'd be covered with a plastic and placed in a microwave that heats the food and plastic together and then unknowingly we ingest the melted plastic along with our food. You might still say you don't see the signs on the food... lol. Have you ever tried heating or burning a plastic?? It melts, yes, and if properly burnt you'll be left with little or no sign of it which means you'd definitely not see any sign on your food.

You care to know more about this... Read more...

Thursday: Do you forget your dreams??

_{Do you forget your dreams?? You might just need some Vitamin B6 supplements. - Benjamin Combs, Wikimedia CCO}

In Africa where I come from, we are usually spiritual with almost everything. We believe dreams are a revelation from God which I also agree even though it's not all dreams that are revelations. Now, some people believe that an inability to remember a dream is a result of the enemy's attack over you to disrupt and intercept any revelation you must have gotten from your dream which I don't totally agree with except I want to save myself of some argument. Even a mosquito could be seen as an agent of the devil sent to get your blood samples..... Lol, that's a joke anyway - I've never heard of that.

I think it's high time we stopped taking things too far and face the negligence on our own part. However, scientists found out that the inability to recall dreams might just be as a result of a deficiency in Vitamin B6 and that taking it before bedtime would help recall dreams easily.

Of course we know, no one just bombards the world of science with some hypothesis, idea or something, there's need for an experiment. To accomplish that, scientists got about 100 people that had something in common...(they all forget their dreams). They made two groups out of them, treated a set to high dosage of Vitamin b6 supplements and the other to placebo for 5 consecutive days and then, interviewed them.

The responses obtained showed that those that took the Vitamin B6 supplements were able to recall their dreams and those that took placebo were not. Even after helping them recall their dreams, the content of their dreams remained unaltered as test-subject confirmed the weirdness of the dreams. They only added that the dream remained clear, real and vivid in their memory even as the day went by.....

I think I need some Vitamin B6 supplements right now......(sobs)
Wish to know more about this??? Over here

Friday: A system to quickly detect food pathogens

_{Pathogens are dangerous microbes that carry diseases - Pixabay CCO}

If you're a scientist like myself, then this question is not for you?? Have you ever heard of pathogens?? I assume your answer is no. Pathogens are microbes that carry disease. So, what happens if something carrying a disease is in your food?? You're definitely going to contract the disease after consuming such food.

Like I said, they are microorganisms- a word used for organisms undetectable with our normal eyes. That's to say we probably might have eaten a food with pathogens today or is there anyone going to tell me he uses a microscope to check everything he eats before eating them?? No way... except for @lemouth 🤣🤣, I can vouch for him on that.

Food pathogens are very dangerous, causing various diseases to victims. Most times, we have only a little time to fish them out and kill them but the traditional method takes nothing less than a day because you have to separate the pathogens from the food and this requires you to grow the pathogens in a bacteria culture for a day or two. This is contrary to what this newly developed system does, it practically pulls out the pathogens by itself

This research was to help reduce the number of pathogenic substances released into the market for purchase. It uses the "application of magnetic beads coated with antibodies to pull out pathogenic cells from foods." You can also call the system a sequencer. It generates enough data for pathogen detection in an hour while the usual method would take a day or two before completion...

You might want to read more

Yeah, that's it for last week...

Enjoy till we meet again...

Thanks for coming!!

That little boy,
@pearlumie

_{Gif created by @rocking-dave}

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References:-

_{Extreme mobility of mantis shrimp eyes | Fasting and stem cell's regenerative ability | Women who eat fast food, not enough fruit, take longer to fall pregnant | Vitamin B6 supplements and our ability to recall dreams | Vitamin B6 supplements help people recall dreams | Rapid way to detect food pathogens}