Blog Post Module 6

    This week I chose to blog about a TED Talk given by Tim Spector who is a Professor of Genetic Epidemiology and the Founder of TwinsUK. In his talk, he engages in the idea of how environmental factors play into how our genes shape our health and identity. Spector brought up a very interesting experiment he’s been working on and it was about how if ones grandparents smoked cigarettes at an early age, then it was more likely for them to produce children and grandchildren who would suffer from asthma. I found this actually related to my family because both my grandparents have smoked since they were in their early high school days. Back then, I suppose it was just a common thing to do at their school. However, I never put two-and-two together when my brother and I developed asthma back when we were just little kids. I soon grew out of it after a couple years, however, my brother still suffers from asthma to this day. He always carries a back up inhaler incase he finds himself extremely out of breath. I would have never imagined that my grandparents smoking habits could effect my genes and likelihood of developing lung cancer, especially since I’ve never touched a cigarette myself. My biggest takeaway from this TED talk was how we can start altering our destinies now through genetic epidemiology. Our environment and lifestyle carry a huge affect towards our genes and how we remain healthy. Spector acknowledges how you can reverse the effects of our genes epigenetically. For instance, exercise and a healthy diet can benefit a person in all sorts of ways. It not only builds up your immune system but it can also help eliminate someone's obesity gene. I also learned that if a person quits smoking, it only take about 3 months for their anti-cancerous cells to be re-stimulated which will better protect one's immune system.


Here is the link to the TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1W5SeBYERNI 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Post Module 3

Image
    When I first think of the term fitness, my head goes straight to people working out at the gym, really pumping some iron, or going on a really long run. However, from attending this week’s lecture, it completely changed my thought process as I received more insight on the evolutionary/biology perspective on fitness. Fitness in biology is not how strong and powerful one is, but instead, it is actually the process of how phenotypes can be passed onto the next generation through the gene pool. Fitness can be measured in a natural population by measuring an organism’s reproductive success, so basically just by keeping track of how many offspring an organism is able to reproduce. Therefore, an organism would be considered biologically fit if it were to produce a greater number of offspring. One example I have in mind is the bullfrog species. In order to quantify fitness, I would have to look at different mutations across the species, their environment, predators also ...
Read more

Introduction

     My name is Lauren Leiker and I am from Lenexa, Kansas. I am a junior here at K-State majoring in Human Health Biology on the Pre-Med track. Ever since I was a kid, I have always dreamed of working in the medical field. My father's health has also played a huge role in the reason why I want to work in the medical field. My father was diagnosed with a very rare condition called Dermatomyositis about 10 years ago. This is an autoimmune condition in which his immune system mistakenly attacks his muscles and organs. This one disease has progressed and in addition, has triggered various additional autoimmune diseases, like Raynaud's disease. He currently struggles with heart and lung disease as well as kidney failure. My drive to work in the medical field primarily started when my dad's health first began to deteriorate, and I soon came to the conclusion that I wanted to become a doctor to help not only my father but also other people struggling with their health for vario...
Read more

Blog Post: Module 11

      For this blog post, I decided to write about Rachel Carlton Abrams Ted Talk that is over (R)evolutionary Medicine. She first starts her talk explaining a simple prescription that we can help us in our daily lives. That simple prescription revolves around getting into alignment with our evolutionary nature. She states how there is a split between the life and environment that we have evolved to thrive in and the life and environment that majority of us are living in. She begins to worry me with the statement how that for the first time in our country, our children are expected to have shorter life spans due to the exposure to diseases of civilization. You would think with the amount of technology and resources we have nowadays, children would be expected to live longer and healthier lives than their parents. She explains how children will suffer from high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol.       So in order to solve this issu...
Read more