It was snowing today. It looked like not going out was a better idea. Southern states in the US do not get snowed very often, so the people's preparedness is rather weak, compared with constantly snowed northern cities. I did witness a car crash caused by a slick spot on freeway yesterday.
So I spent some time to read reviews and recent research results for Alzheimer's disease (AZD), from a researcher's standpoint.
It is, with lack of a better word, fascinating.
There are several theories for the cause, with a few dominant ones. Many strategies for intervention have been proposed and being tested. Current mainstream research seems to focus on the components of "plaques and tangles", the role in the disease, the mechanism of generation, and ways of intervention for or reversal of the "plaques and tangles". With just a day's cursory study, it would be difficult to appreciate them fully, though.
Most people who are not medical doctors or nurses get involved in the disease when a family member (or self) gets it. Their involvement is mostly as caregiver and financial supporter.
And, unfortunately, it appears that there are limited options for a person to do to prevent, delay, or cure the AZD at this moment. I am frustrated with current state of the science of the disease. There is a clear unmet need here.
My position as a medical researcher is quite unique among all people in the society. At this moment I am not certain whether I can bring something to the table of the AZD research field, but it is worth thinking possible ways of translating my own specialties.
This video is one of the videos I watched for general research. It's not for specialists but for anyone who is involved in AZD patient. I recommend this to put yourself in their shoes. For most people, knowing how to get involved with patients would be more practical and immediately actionable.
Experience 12 Minutes In Alzheimer's Dementia
[Added 3/2/2015] ---------------------
Apart from obvious and still-developing pharmaceutical drugs, something actionable include;
(i) Don't worry too much. Depression impacts negatively on hippocampus function.
(ii) If you have diabetes, take good care of it. Diabetes is a major worsening factor for AZD.
(iii) Diet 1. Mediterranean diet seems to have good effect on delaying the disease.
(iv) Diet 2. Anti-inflammatory diet, like fish oil, nuts, etc.
(v) Diet 3. Anti-oxidant diet. Green tea, multi-vitamins (C, E, B12, folate).
(vi) Exercise.
(vii) Sleep well. It helps cells to handle proteins that may be causal to AZD.
(viii) Aromatherapy for stimulating hippocampus.
(ix) Social activity
(x) Mental stimulation, puzzle, game, books, etc
(xi) Music and dance
(xii) Caregiving. Pets and plants.
Listed above are said to be beneficial to delay the disease progression, with some evidence from scientific/medical research. Good news is, they look good to do. When you do not have "magic pills", medicine comes down to good food and healthy lifestyle.
-----------------------------------------------
February 28, 2015
February 24, 2015
Dance: Don't dance. Demonstrate.
This title summarizes my advice for the people who dance for competition.
Each dance and competition category has different things to be "demonstrated". They are expected by the judges and/or audience.
I'll take an example for WCS novice, who dance strictly or J&J.
You should demonstrate that;
(i) Your steps are on time with the downbeat of the music
(ii) You know and do the basic steps according to the rules (like 6 count basics, 1-2, triple, triple. Follower starts from right, etc)
(iii) You position correctly in executing the basics (WCS is a slotted "swing" dance)
(iv) You have good connection, momentum control, and lead-follow teamwork
(v) Both of you are having fun (smile!)
(vi) You are listening to the music by matching your move with the music (musicality)
This much is the minimum to be considered to be remotely competitive.
Then, if you want some edge, you demonstrate that;
(vii) You move smoothly and well, even show some polished and sophisticated look
(viii) You do moves that look interesting with good musicality
(ix) You look relaxed and know what you are doing
If you want to demonstrate all these in competition, you'd be busy preparing for these.
Sometimes I watch boxing or UFC. Good fighters in these days are not just brutes. All champions have good techniques. That is how these sports have evolved. Showing adrenalin-flooded excitement is one thing, but good guys all have great techniques and cool head on top of it. There is a difference between hit and strike.
In competition or audition, they usually say, "show what you've got". And what they primarily appreciate is great skills, not only the dancer being emotional, excited or having fun. We know the former is much harder to acquire.
Is this too judgmental? Sorry, but a contest is inherently judgmental. Competition is something that is going to be judged. Losing self-consciousness and "dance like no one is watching" is a skill that you can acquire, too.
If you are starting out competition, learn to focus on your demonstration. Then you make progress so much faster than just picking up stuff on social dance floor on trial-and-error basis.
I feel like there are so many stuff on my plate. Funny thing is that I took up at least a half of them voluntarily.
Each dance and competition category has different things to be "demonstrated". They are expected by the judges and/or audience.
I'll take an example for WCS novice, who dance strictly or J&J.
You should demonstrate that;
(i) Your steps are on time with the downbeat of the music
(ii) You know and do the basic steps according to the rules (like 6 count basics, 1-2, triple, triple. Follower starts from right, etc)
(iii) You position correctly in executing the basics (WCS is a slotted "swing" dance)
(iv) You have good connection, momentum control, and lead-follow teamwork
(v) Both of you are having fun (smile!)
(vi) You are listening to the music by matching your move with the music (musicality)
This much is the minimum to be considered to be remotely competitive.
Then, if you want some edge, you demonstrate that;
(vii) You move smoothly and well, even show some polished and sophisticated look
(viii) You do moves that look interesting with good musicality
(ix) You look relaxed and know what you are doing
If you want to demonstrate all these in competition, you'd be busy preparing for these.
Sometimes I watch boxing or UFC. Good fighters in these days are not just brutes. All champions have good techniques. That is how these sports have evolved. Showing adrenalin-flooded excitement is one thing, but good guys all have great techniques and cool head on top of it. There is a difference between hit and strike.
In competition or audition, they usually say, "show what you've got". And what they primarily appreciate is great skills, not only the dancer being emotional, excited or having fun. We know the former is much harder to acquire.
Is this too judgmental? Sorry, but a contest is inherently judgmental. Competition is something that is going to be judged. Losing self-consciousness and "dance like no one is watching" is a skill that you can acquire, too.
If you are starting out competition, learn to focus on your demonstration. Then you make progress so much faster than just picking up stuff on social dance floor on trial-and-error basis.
I feel like there are so many stuff on my plate. Funny thing is that I took up at least a half of them voluntarily.
February 15, 2015
Life: Pick your death
I know well that this question is a big downer question for most.
But because of my profession (medical research), sometimes I take my time to look into contemporary health issues. I am involved in cancer research. Yet, many human diseases are interconnected. Certain non-immediately-lethal conditions, like obesity and diabetes, can affect your physical condition greatly and the path to your eventual death. Diabetes is a risk factor for heart attack, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, for example. That is a reason why I make time to study other diseases.
For doing that, Valentine's day weekend is just as good as any other weekend [Hmph].
Pick your death:
1. Heart Attack
2. Stroke
3. Cancer
4. Alzheimer's disease
5. Infection
6. Homicide/violence
7. Accident
8. Other lethal disease
9. Old age
Your family history may suggest a path you might likely take. One thing we cannot escape is eventual death. Like the "Fight club" guy said, given long enough time, our survival rate drops to zero.
However, we do want to live a life with better quality. And even though we will eventually die, we want to die as painless as possible, or want to ease the pain for others. We do not want to be bothered by diseases that tarnish the quality of life.
You pick one death from above (maybe not option 9). Do you feel it is personal now? Good. Next, you can choose to make it your cause that you dedicate to reduce in some ways. Then you can say that your work is not only for yourself but for humankind.
See? It is easy to live for greater good.
But because of my profession (medical research), sometimes I take my time to look into contemporary health issues. I am involved in cancer research. Yet, many human diseases are interconnected. Certain non-immediately-lethal conditions, like obesity and diabetes, can affect your physical condition greatly and the path to your eventual death. Diabetes is a risk factor for heart attack, stroke, cancer and Alzheimer's disease, for example. That is a reason why I make time to study other diseases.
For doing that, Valentine's day weekend is just as good as any other weekend [Hmph].
Pick your death:
1. Heart Attack
2. Stroke
3. Cancer
4. Alzheimer's disease
5. Infection
6. Homicide/violence
7. Accident
8. Other lethal disease
9. Old age
Your family history may suggest a path you might likely take. One thing we cannot escape is eventual death. Like the "Fight club" guy said, given long enough time, our survival rate drops to zero.
However, we do want to live a life with better quality. And even though we will eventually die, we want to die as painless as possible, or want to ease the pain for others. We do not want to be bothered by diseases that tarnish the quality of life.
You pick one death from above (maybe not option 9). Do you feel it is personal now? Good. Next, you can choose to make it your cause that you dedicate to reduce in some ways. Then you can say that your work is not only for yourself but for humankind.
See? It is easy to live for greater good.
Death curve and age
from https://www.env.go.jp/en/wpaper/1995/eae240000000000.html
February 7, 2015
Science: A Harvest Season
As I wrote before (Science: Grant Award [12/14/2013]), scientific research has aspects of forestry, farming, and hunting/fishing. The difference is time span.
Forestry sees the result 20-100 years later.
Farming sees the result in the matter of months to relatively short (1-5) years.
Fishing/hunting sees the result in the matter of hours, days and weeks.
Overall, most relevant time span for medical research that I do is the "farming" time span of months-years. Excitement of hunting helps to run short term experiments, and thinking of the future science and imagining the development would be the joy of forestry.
For my recent research projects, there were two outside grants that supported them. The projects generated data and results. Now I am sitting on these pile of data, and working on translating the data to results, then manuscript, and publication.
During the project running phase, when we did experiments and accumulated samples, data and results, they were not at a stage that we could publish them. It takes a certain amount of results to write up manuscripts and publish them.
There are distinct phases in research. While you are still running experiments, you don't see the end products---publications. They can come in months ahead.
Using the analogy of farming, when you are planting rice in paddy field in May, you cannot get the rice grains. Not even in July when you are tending and fertilizing them. You have to wait until autumn to harvest.
In recent months I am going through a harvest season for the projects. I got two manuscripts accepted and they are in press now. I am working on another manuscript. The contents are going to be presented in upcoming American Association for Cancer research (AACR) annual meeting on April in a Mini symposium session, so I got to hurry. Following is the other manuscript. I better focus on sending them out as publications as soon as possible.
It is a good way to be busy. It is a fun time.
But I got to remember to plant new seeds, too.
Some collaborative works are getting submitted as manuscripts by collaborators. Hope they get published as well. Collaboration is one of a few ways to leverage your work.
Forestry sees the result 20-100 years later.
Farming sees the result in the matter of months to relatively short (1-5) years.
Fishing/hunting sees the result in the matter of hours, days and weeks.
Overall, most relevant time span for medical research that I do is the "farming" time span of months-years. Excitement of hunting helps to run short term experiments, and thinking of the future science and imagining the development would be the joy of forestry.
For my recent research projects, there were two outside grants that supported them. The projects generated data and results. Now I am sitting on these pile of data, and working on translating the data to results, then manuscript, and publication.
During the project running phase, when we did experiments and accumulated samples, data and results, they were not at a stage that we could publish them. It takes a certain amount of results to write up manuscripts and publish them.
There are distinct phases in research. While you are still running experiments, you don't see the end products---publications. They can come in months ahead.
Using the analogy of farming, when you are planting rice in paddy field in May, you cannot get the rice grains. Not even in July when you are tending and fertilizing them. You have to wait until autumn to harvest.
In recent months I am going through a harvest season for the projects. I got two manuscripts accepted and they are in press now. I am working on another manuscript. The contents are going to be presented in upcoming American Association for Cancer research (AACR) annual meeting on April in a Mini symposium session, so I got to hurry. Following is the other manuscript. I better focus on sending them out as publications as soon as possible.
It is a good way to be busy. It is a fun time.
But I got to remember to plant new seeds, too.
Some collaborative works are getting submitted as manuscripts by collaborators. Hope they get published as well. Collaboration is one of a few ways to leverage your work.
February 2, 2015
Dance: Taking privates? How to work well with a pro efficiently
At one time in your dance journey, you may ask yourself, "How can I get better?"
A common answer is "Take privates from professional(s)". I agree with that. Pros can tell you what you need to hear now. And if you are receptive enough and do what they tell you to do, their advice can help taking you to another level. They are there at your service.
But if you want to take a shorter cut and save some money on the lesson fee, learn the notion of the Diagnostic mode, and how the Pros think at the beginning of a private session.
First of all, I consider taking privates as an equivalent of visiting a Doctor. But too many patients/students show up without knowing what's wrong with them, or what they want from the session. They have a vague sense of "My dance needs to be fixed", but are not sure what to do.
Unlike other teachers, dance teachers need to take care of very diverse levels of students. It's like he has to figure out whether the student is at elementary school level, high school level or graduate school level, then start teaching. On-spot assessment and diagnostic is an essential skill for them.
You have to be careful about giving dance advice. Good advice for an advanced dancer may not make sense to a beginning student, and vice versa. Value of advice depends heavily on the student's level. Another reason for the importance of diagnostic skills for dance teachers.
From the Doctor/Pro's standpoint, if the patient/student has something specific, a well defined question or request, it's much easier to work on it. The Doc/Pro is there to help. But he needs clues.
Let's say, a couple shows up, saying, "We'll do WCS strictly swing comp for novice category next month. And we want to do well."
This is a clue. From this, a Doctor/Pro would think, "Strictly means they are a dance couple, and signing up together. I got to see them dance, diagnose some points that may work as their strength and weakness in competition, and provide advice for changing them. Then I'd add some tips or moves that they could use to appeal to judges. "Next month" should be a long enough time to work even on very basic body usage, and that's good."
This initial thinking determines how the session would go. He'd ask the dancers to dance a song or two, and start diagnosing the dance.
His answer can vary depending on what is requested. If the comp is tomorrow instead of next month, it may not be very fruitful to ask them to change basic body usage or something that cannot be fixed overnight. So he may only say it briefly or may not mention it at all, and may focus on something fixable overnight. What judges would seek for novice are different from those for intermediate/advanced, and his advice would reflect that too.
Just like a family doctor, if he knows the patient/student for a longer time, he can provide service for longer term in mind and with better accuracy.
If you do not provide clues, an option for the Pro is to be a taskmaster. He'd ask you to do some moves, and would start correcting them. That should work, too.
In general, dance advice can be one of the following;
About Body (genetics)
About Body (usage)
About Knowledge for the dance (or lack of, or about misconception); what to do and how to do
About Particular skills and drills
About Mental attitude (or lack of, or about misconception)
For a blog entry that is meant to be short, I'll save the details. But when you take your privates next time, give it a thought about how you can interact better with the pro and get more out of the session.
In short, learn to be a better learner and a good student. It can be your shortcut for better dancing.
For Pro vs Pro interaction, this is not always true. It's more like Doctor and Doctor interaction, with mutual respect for each other's specialty and ability.
A common answer is "Take privates from professional(s)". I agree with that. Pros can tell you what you need to hear now. And if you are receptive enough and do what they tell you to do, their advice can help taking you to another level. They are there at your service.
But if you want to take a shorter cut and save some money on the lesson fee, learn the notion of the Diagnostic mode, and how the Pros think at the beginning of a private session.
First of all, I consider taking privates as an equivalent of visiting a Doctor. But too many patients/students show up without knowing what's wrong with them, or what they want from the session. They have a vague sense of "My dance needs to be fixed", but are not sure what to do.
Unlike other teachers, dance teachers need to take care of very diverse levels of students. It's like he has to figure out whether the student is at elementary school level, high school level or graduate school level, then start teaching. On-spot assessment and diagnostic is an essential skill for them.
You have to be careful about giving dance advice. Good advice for an advanced dancer may not make sense to a beginning student, and vice versa. Value of advice depends heavily on the student's level. Another reason for the importance of diagnostic skills for dance teachers.
From the Doctor/Pro's standpoint, if the patient/student has something specific, a well defined question or request, it's much easier to work on it. The Doc/Pro is there to help. But he needs clues.
Let's say, a couple shows up, saying, "We'll do WCS strictly swing comp for novice category next month. And we want to do well."
This is a clue. From this, a Doctor/Pro would think, "Strictly means they are a dance couple, and signing up together. I got to see them dance, diagnose some points that may work as their strength and weakness in competition, and provide advice for changing them. Then I'd add some tips or moves that they could use to appeal to judges. "Next month" should be a long enough time to work even on very basic body usage, and that's good."
This initial thinking determines how the session would go. He'd ask the dancers to dance a song or two, and start diagnosing the dance.
His answer can vary depending on what is requested. If the comp is tomorrow instead of next month, it may not be very fruitful to ask them to change basic body usage or something that cannot be fixed overnight. So he may only say it briefly or may not mention it at all, and may focus on something fixable overnight. What judges would seek for novice are different from those for intermediate/advanced, and his advice would reflect that too.
Just like a family doctor, if he knows the patient/student for a longer time, he can provide service for longer term in mind and with better accuracy.
If you do not provide clues, an option for the Pro is to be a taskmaster. He'd ask you to do some moves, and would start correcting them. That should work, too.
In general, dance advice can be one of the following;
About Body (genetics)
About Body (usage)
About Knowledge for the dance (or lack of, or about misconception); what to do and how to do
About Particular skills and drills
About Mental attitude (or lack of, or about misconception)
For a blog entry that is meant to be short, I'll save the details. But when you take your privates next time, give it a thought about how you can interact better with the pro and get more out of the session.
In short, learn to be a better learner and a good student. It can be your shortcut for better dancing.
For Pro vs Pro interaction, this is not always true. It's more like Doctor and Doctor interaction, with mutual respect for each other's specialty and ability.
[You better give good clues for your Pros/Doctors]
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