The Weekly Dose

The Weekly Dose...

... the latest from Dr Karan

  Here is your weekly dose...  

Hi all!Here is your weekly dose of the Sunday Six! A list of what I'm pondering and exploring. If you enjoy this please feel free to forward this to friends. families and enemies alike!**You'll find more in depth analysis of some of these subjects on my social platforms in the links just below, including Dr Karan Investigates! for deep dives into interesting topics on my YouTube channel.**

Something That Will Surprise You...

This is one of the most incredible things I've ever learnt in medicine. The Abscopal Effect. This is how it works; imagine a patient has a skin cancer on their left leg and another skin cancer on their right leg. If the patient received radiation therapy to cancer on the right leg it would cause the cancer cells to die and release cancer antigens into the bloodstream that the immune system hasn't seen before. The immune system now detects these novel cancer antigens and is primed to attack them when they next see them again; so these "trained" immune cells float around your blood stream and eventually come into contact with cancer cells from the left leg and recognise those same cancer antigens and attack them too on the patient's behalf! The craziest thing is it does this without any specific treatment for that side! In summary if we give local therapy to a cancer somewhere in the body your immune system recognises that and fight cancer elsewhere in the body on your behalf! 

What I've Been Pondering...

Food pairings...can you combine certain foods to boost their health giving properties? Sort of! There are some foods you can pair together to improve the absorption of certain nutrients. For example the type of iron found in plant based foods like beans or lentils, non heme iron, is better absorbed in the presence of vitamin C- so the next time you're having some beans why not pair it with some bell Peppers. Another example is with the fat soluble vitamins; vitamins A, D, E and K are absorbed in the presence of fat in the gut so if you're eating some wholegrain toast  which is a source of vitamin E & K, why don't you consider adding some peanut butter to it, a source of fat to boost the absorption of these vitamins. Finally cooking tomatoes with olive oil-  this boosts the bioavailability of a pigment called lycopene...very good.

What I'm Listening To...

Case number 2: BritneyI was on a longish car journey recently and somehow accidentally ended up on this podcast, listening to this show and wow what a gem! In summary this episode is about Andrea, a writer whom no one reads, and the author knows it. And then, all of a sudden, she notices that her second book, which she assumed that no one actually even heard about, is held by Britney Spears herself in one of the press photos. It's a very intriguing listen and will help pass the time on that long commute or car journey!

What I'm Doing To Improve My Sleep

Chances are you're guilty of bringing work or food into the bedroom or perhaps even doomscrolling on your phone before bed? If you do any of these then struggle to fall asleep then you are falling victim to one of the most common sleep problems; sleep arousal.Something in your sleep environment is signalling to your brain that going to sleep = be awake. You're stimulating your brain in bed and thus the brain being the simple creature it is, starts to associate your bed with wakefulness. Keep the bed for sleep, snu snu or at the most non mentally taxing activities like listening to gentle music or a light read. If you do struggle to sleep, the worst thing you can do is lie there and toss and turn; instead get up and go to a different part of the house, relax and try again.

Awake Brain Surgery

Playing the saxophone during brain surgery!Neurosurgery has come a long way; just a few thousand years ago we were smashing holes into people's skulls to release demonic spirits but now we drill holes in a slightly more civilised manner to evacuate blood which might be putting pressure on the brain tissue - different but same same. One of the wildest advances in the field of neurosurgery is something called an awake craniotomy! Yes, the patient is awake and is often seen to be playing an instrument, singing or talking while surgeons operate to remove a tumour for example. The reason this amazing feat is possible is because the brain itself has no pain receptors; the scalp and skin needs to be anaesthetised but that's about it! The reason we do awake brain surgery is so surgeons can identify "important" areas of the brain that may be potentially close to the tumour but which control language, speech function or key motor skills (e.g instrument skills) which need to be preserved if possible. So if the surgeons touches a certain brain region and the patient stops playing the instrument or plays a wrong note; we know that area needs to be left alone! (if we can!)

  The Dr Karan Podcast... 

I've been guesting on a few podcasts here and there over the last few months and it has certainly whet my appetite to launch my own. I'm hoping at some point in the next couple of months I can eke out some time to release my own podcast where I cover all manner of weird, wonderful and bizarre topics but get more into the meat of the matter! I'd be very grateful for name suggestions of course! Keep an eye out on social media for updates on this!

As always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which of this weeks Sunday six is your favourite? Is there something you want more, or less of? I'm open to any suggestions so please let me know! Just send a  tweet to @drkaranrajan and use the hashtag #theweeklydose at the end so I can find it!

Have a wonderful week, all.

Much love,

Karan