The Weekly Dose - Episode 29

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 few things I found interesting this week. 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.**

The Doomsday Poop Vault...

In 2021, the Microbiota Vault initiative started a two-year launch phase of a project to create a biobank of a diverse range of microbial samples...which primarily came from human poop preserved through cryogenic deep freezing. The vault will hold samples of human poop from around the world to hopefully protect the world’s microbial diversity. The project takes direct inspiration from the Svalbard Seed Vault, a facility in the Norwegian Arctic that safeguards the global diversity of food crop seeds. We've seen a rise in many conditions over the last few decades - diabetes, asthma, allergies, inflammatory bowel disease and much more– these can all be linked to changes in the microbiome. However this diversity is coming under threat. This biobank might be a solution to preserve the world’s microbial diversity and provide researchers with the opportunity to master the science of human microbiomes.

Unexpected Item In Bagging Area...

You might have seen my video on this earlier in the week. How does a grenade, still unexploded, find itself inside someone's chest? The answer is, I don't know. I can hypothesise that perhaps some explosives require contact with a hard surface to detonate and the soft tissues it found itself in (someone's chest) prevent an explosion.Equally fascinating was the removal of this object without the use of electrical cautery, something routinely used even for the most minor of surgeries to prevent persistent bleeding. Understandably an electric current near an explosive isn't wise.Finally the chest x-ray seen in link above showed the heart on the right side, instead of the left. This is known as dextrocardia, a rare phenomenon that is usually picked up incidentally on xrays or other scans. In fact this soldier likely had a condition known as situs invertus, where all the organs are mirrored to the opposite side.I once operated on a patient with their gallbladder on the left side instead of the right and it is surprisingly hard to re-adjust yourself as a surgeon to decipher anatomy when its flipped. Thankfully the operation went well but took twice as long as it usually does! 

The Truth About Supplements...

In medicine things are rarely ever black and white. The murky grey I want to talk about today is regarding supplements. I keep saying adverts on my social media feeds, sponsored podcasts and posts from your favourite podcaster or influencers about "Athletic Greens" or some other high priced supplement.For most people, taking these expensive supplements is superfluous..it's not needed. The money spent on this high end item is better repurposed and spent towards a gym membership or more nutritious food. If you take a look at the ingredients list of any multivitamin you'll see that it often provides you with far more than 100% requirement of a given supplement. The simple fact is your body can't "store" that extra vitamin C for a rainy day. Any excess ends up as expensive pee or poo.The grey area with supplements lies in social and health inequalities. For a cohort of people who can't afford nutritious food or a variety of food groups on a regular basis, perhaps the odd multivitamin *might* help to mitigate these inadequacies. *Might*, NOT *will*.I find it disconcerting that we are seeing a rise of wellness influencers who promote these things instead of being upfront about their sponsorships. Can you truly take a review at face value if the very person promoting it is on the payroll of said company? In scientific literature these conflicts of interests affect the quality of the research for obvious reasons.

  Are there any benefits of fasting?... 

I rarely fast voluntarily. My involuntary fasts are usually a result of me being stuck in a 9 hour surgery or when I'm beset by a stomach buy that has me catapulting my inside into the outside, violently. However there may be a good reason to build in natural fasts into your 24 hours and it has something to do with your microbiome. Every-time you eat food, pass a bowel motion etc, the lining of your intestines take a bit of a beating. Some cells are sloughed off and the lining is damaged. This is normal and your intestinal lining has a high turnover rate and can replenish itself. Leaving longer gaps between your night time meal and your first meal of the day, by at least 12 hours can actually allow certain populations of bacteria, e.g Akkermansia, to help replenish the lining of the gut.Of course this is not always a feasible option for people who require a tight control of their blood sugar etc but simply avoiding very late night feasts and then ensuring an adequate period of time lapses until your morning meal could make a difference to your gut function. We all have different microbiomes and this might work better for some than others but it's something I'm experimenting with and I will keep you posted. However it must be noted n = 1 studies must be taken with a generous pinch of salt.

What I'm Listening To..

I've been off the boil with new music and podcasts but I recently discovered this gem - Deeply HumanThis podcasts goes into things which are quintessentially human - why we hate others, why we fear things, why we like to form social constructs like hierarchies and so on. It has some science but it leans more on anthropology, psychology and human behaviour and offers equal parts questions and answers.Its ambient listening at its best so you can focus in and out!  

What I'm Watching...

Break PointI'm a fair weather tennis fan. I watch the Wimbledon finals and other bigger games but I won't religiously follow the tennis circuit throughout the year and I certainly can't name all the current top 10 ranked players.This documentary however reminds me of the pressure that any job with high expectations comes with. The pressure cooker environment, the success stories, the failures, the teamwork, the in fighting, the relief when it's all over. It sounds far too much like emergency surgery sometimes.This documentary provides a behind the scenes view of tennis players during the Australian Open and the highs and lows they go through as they win, lose, struggle with their own demons and expectations from the world and themselves.Worth a watch! 

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