Filtering by
- All Subjects: Podcast
- All Subjects: medicine
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Health and Wealthness is a podcast where your hosts, Emily Weigel and Hanaa Khan discuss pressing and trending topics about health and wealth that everyone should know about. Our first four episodes focus on the opioid crisis. Both the science and healthcare sides. We then go on to talk about burnout and mental health in a conversational episode.
Medical recovery time continues to be a drawback for many medical diagnoses and procedures. Prolonged recovery affects all aspects of the population, and targets different avenues of everyday life. Avenues such as providing, attending a job, personal objectives in different ways and even their own well-being. To combat this one area of research that has gained tremendous awareness in recent years is that of platelet-rich fibrin (PRF), which has been utilized across a wide variety of medical fields for the regeneration of soft tissues. PRF, or platelet-rich fibrin, is the next generation treatment of platelet concentrate. PRF is a fibrin matrix composed of platelet cytokines, growth factors and cells used to help wound healing and tissue regeneration. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the potential recovery time difference with PRF incorporation for common medical procedures. The experimental group included three individuals who had PRF treatment at any point during any sort of medical operation. The control group included individuals who did not have PRF treatment at any point and also those who had no prior knowledge of this method of treatment. Results were mixed because of the variative behind the medical procedures. Through observation, PRF treatment improved tolerance of pain, well-being of patients and quality of recovery with three different domains of inquiry per patient testimony. This case-analysis of 6 patients is a preliminary study and therefore inconclusive. PRF is a promising approach and this study suggests that it could potentially be a new medical approach to treatment.
Our current understanding of the mitochondrial genome was revolutionized in 2015 with the discovery of short open reading frames (sORFs) that produced protein products called mitochondrial-derived peptides (MDPs). Interestingly, unlike other proteins produced by the organelle, these MDPs are not directly involved in the electron transport chain but rather serve the role of metabolic regulators. In particular, one of these peptides called MOTS-c has been shown to regulate glucose and fat metabolism in an AMPK-dependent manner. With its capacity to enter the mitochondria and impact gene expression, MOTS-c has also displayed the ability to increase aerobic exercise performance by triggering elevated synthesis of the HO-1 antioxidant. Overall these findings position MOTS-c as a promising treatment for metabolic diseases as well as a potential dietary supplement to boost ATP availability.
Cellular hypertrophy is an anaerobically-based, adaptive process that mammalian skeletal muscle undergoes in response to damage resulting from unaccustomed force generation by the muscle. Hypertrophy allows for the muscle tissue to recover from the immediate injury and also to be rebuilt more capable of withstanding producing the same amount of force without injury, should it happen again. This means the end result of an adapted muscle is an overall more efficient tissue. The ability to regenerate after damage to the structure and function of the muscle tissue is a highly orchestrated event involving multiple steps and key events to occur. Most briefly, a mechanical load is attempted to be lifted but due to demanding a high amount of contractile force to lift, it causes microdamage to the structural and contractile elements of muscle fiber’s sarcomeres. In addition to an inflammatory response, satellite cells, as a part of a myogenic response, are activated to invade the fiber and then permanently reside inside to produce new proteins that will replace the damaged and necrotized proteins. This addition of cellular content, repeated over multiple times, results in the increased diameter of the fibers and manifests in the visual appearance of skeletal muscle hypertrophy. These steps have been listed off devoid of the contexts in which it takes for these to occur and will be addressed within this thesis.
Disclaimer: The initial goal of this project was to present this information as a podcast episode as a part of a series aimed at teaching the general public about human physiological adaptations. Due to the circumstances with COVID-19 we were unable to meet to make a final recording of the podcast episode. A recording of a practice session recorded earlier in the year has been uploaded instead and is therefore only a rough draft.
Disclaimer: Due to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the final outcomes of this project were impacted and limited. Therefore, the rough draft practice podcast session has been uploaded to accompany the written thesis portion as final recordings could not be recorded at this time.