Thanks for Voting!
Today’s post is just to thank all my avid readers for voting Dr. Sharma’s Obesity Notes the 2nd Best Canadian Health Blog. The competition was stiff. The well-deserved winner was Yoni Freedhoff’s Weighty Matters – truly my favorite nutrition blog of all time. The competition was extremely close with Marijke: Nurse turned writer, who received only 6 votes less than I did. Kudos also to runners up Salted Lithium and Ottawa Street Dental, who came in #4 and #5, respectively. Thanks to all who voted (no matter for whom) – simply knowing my readers care (enough to bother to vote) is all I need to keep me going. AMS Edmonton, Alberta
Nominated for Best Canadian Health Blog
Thanks to my friend Yoni, I found out that I have been nominated for the Best Health Blog Category in the Canadian Blog Awards! There are two rounds to voting: the first round began a couple of days ago and ends Nov. 30th. The other health blogs nominated include: Ottawa Street Dental Medical Education Blog Breast Reloaded Canadian Medicine Prostate Reloaded Fibromyalgia and Exercise ZXC Marijke: Nurse turned writer Facing Autism in New Brunswick My Journey With AIDS Salted Lithium Baby will you love me when i’m bald? Weighty Matters Feel free to take a look at all of these great blogs including my friend and colleague Yoni’s. When you’re ready to vote just click here! To see all the other categories click here! AMS Edmonton, Alberta
Glowing Cats and Virtual Rats
Last week, I blogged about Dr. Jeff Friedman’s talk, where he mentioned genetically modified mice, that have “glowing” adipose tissue. This novel technique allows the in vivo study of adipose tissue distribution and development. While this is a great tool for studying adipose tissue and energy biology, the idea of genetically modifying animals by inserting or knocking out genes to better understand the roles of specific genes in biological processes is by no means limited to the field of obesity research. Sometimes the results can be creepy as in the “glow-in-the-dark” cat I recently found mentioned on my favorite high-tech blog MedGadget, which reported on Mr. Green Genes, the cat that was genetically engineered at the Audubon Centre for Research of Endangered Species in New Orleans to carry the green flourescent protein (GFP), the discovery of which won this year’s Nobel Prize for Chemisty. Readers who are freaked out by the “misuse” of animals for science, may find solace in another entry in MedGadget: a “virtual rat” for pre-laboratory studies of drug response developed by Simcyp, a UK company specializing in pharmacokinetic modeling. The idea of course is to reduce the amount of rat testing during the development of new drugs. Although the model used in the Simcyp Rat module is based on the male Sprague-Dawley, the flexible platform allows the user to ‘build their own rat’ by changing parameters within the library. As excess fat affects drug response in both rats and people, I wonder if there is a “virtual fat rat” that can be used to study bariatric pharmacology. AMS Edmonton, Alberta
Obesity on Death Row
Sometimes I cannot help but wonder just in how many ways the obesity epidemic is affecting so many aspects of our health, economics and social interactions. Here is perhaps the strangest story that I have heard so far: According to Terry Kiney of the Associated Press, an Ohio death row inmate blames prison food for making him too fat to be executed humanely. Richard Cooey is scheduled to die by lethal injection Oct. 14 for killing two University of Akron students in 1986. His attorneys said in a brief filed Tuesday in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati that the state is partly responsible for Cooey’s physical problems that might make his death unnecessarily painful. The appeal says his obesity could make it difficult for the execution team to find a viable vein for lethal injection. You never stop wondering…. AMS Edmonton, Alberta p.s go to Yoni Freedhoff’s Weighty Matters for a picture of me (and him) after our single bypass!
Xyndrome Blues
Almost 20 years ago, just out of medical school, I wanted to measure the effect of salt intake on insulin sensitivity in healthy volunteers. I reviewed the literature and soon found an article by Richard Bergman that described a piece of software he had developed for assessing insulin sensitivity (SI) by a computed mathematical analysis of the relation between the change in insulin and glucose clearance after a bolus of iv glucose. At the time (this was years before e-mail), I called his office at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and found out that he was on sabbatical in Phoenix. When I finally tracked him down and got him on the phone, I explained who I was and what I wanted and he was most kind and actually sent me his software, which arrived a couple of weeks later in the mail on a 3.5-inch floppy (how did anyone do research before the internet?). Anyway, this weekend, for the first time, I finally met Richard at the International Chair on Cardiometabolic Risk (ICCR) meeting in Quebec City. Of course he did not remember speaking to me on the phone 20 years ago – but we did laugh about it. Today, as some of you may know, Richard is the Editor-in-Chief of OBESITY and still extremely active in the field of insulin resistance. At the Chair symposium, which focussed on various aspects of the endocannabinoid system in obesity and metabolism, Richard introduced the term “Xyndrome”, a clever contraction of the terms “metabolic syndrome” and “syndrome X” (both terms are used to describe the cluster of abdominal obesity, hypertension, hypertriglyceridemia, low HDL and elevated glucose associated with insulin resistance). More interestingly, on Sunday, after the symposium, Richard and I got to play a set of blues at the post-symposium barn party hosted by my good friend Jean-Pierre Despres in his hometown just outside Quebec City. As many of you may know, JP Despres is perhaps the most prominent obesity researcher in Canada (nearly 500 papers at last count), who coined the term “hypertriglyceridemic waist“. He is also the Scientific Director of ICCR and Head of the Canadian Obesity Network’s Section on Heart Lung and Blood Vessels. More relevant in the context of this post, JP is also a singer and guitarist and recently recorded his first album. Anyway, I not only finally got to meet Richard Bergman 20 years after… Read More »
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