Monthly Archives: February 2017

Eye Anatomy [Show Notes]

 in Podcasts  tagged anatomy / camera / color / episode / eyes / lens / light / vision by

Eyes

Your eyes are more complex than any camera on the planet!

Cornea:  a concave lens on the front of your eye that focuses light
Iris:  the colored part, a diaphragm that controls how much light comes in (the pupil is the hole the light enters = equivalent to the aperture of a camera)
Lens:  the “focuser”, uses a process called accommodation to focus near to far and make the image as sharp and clear as possible
Retina:  the sensor, and sends signals to the brain to translate light into an images

The retina has 2 types of sensors:

  • Rods – detect light intensity
  • Cones – color differentiation

Two special areas of the retina:

  • Macula – right in the middle of the retina, they place that detects the most detail (that’s why the center of your vision field is a clearer picture than the periphery)
  • Fovea – the center of the macula, it contains cones (color sensors) only to aid in the translation of very fine details

Support structures

  • Extra-ocular muscles – allows your eyes to move around in their holes
  • There are chambers of fluid that are between each structure of the eye, and that fluid helps hold nutrients that feed those parts, and remove waste
  • Choroid:  the layer that holds all the blood vessels that feed the eyes
  • Sclera:  the whites of your eyes, an outer coating that hold everything inside
  • Conjuntiva:  the mucus membrane that attaches the sclera to the eyelids; produces liquid for lubrication and trapping invaders

PSA

Please don’t vigorously rub or scratch your eyes, you could hurt them!

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Brainstem

 in Brain / Podcasts  tagged brainstem / breathing / episode / heart beat / medulla oblongata / midbrain / pons / rhythms by

An out of focus image of white and colored dots of light. The picture was taken this way, don't blame the out of focus on your brainstem.

Brainstem Basics

Your brainstem is the most basic area of the brain.  The area of the brain that we have in common with almost all other levels of the animal kingdom.  It extends right into the spinal cord.  A lot of other whole body involuntary reflexes come from the spinal cord – that’s another story for another day).

3 main parts

  • Medulla oblongata – rhythm center (heart rate, breathing, swallowing, vomiting and coughing reflex) – they’re all involuntary
  • Pons (not ponds) – the bridge between the cerebellum hemispheres and other brain regions, helps coordinate the right side and left side of your body for complex activities
  • Midbrain – sensory reflexes (also involuntary) – blinking, eye focusing, pupil dilation in response to light, visual and auditory startling reflex that kick-starts the “fight or flight cascade”.

Other eye focusing problems are not rooted in the midbrain. They are more likely rooted in the areas of the brain that control orbital muscles or in the areas that translate what your eyes are seeing, like a “lazy eye” or drifting eye or being cross-eyed.  There are therapies that doctors prescribe to try and strengthen the weak eye.  Blinking is usually a response to eye moisture.

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Flu Season Madlib

 in Blog  tagged advice / doctor / flu / madlib / prescription / sick by

Flu Season Madlib

I found a website that had several medicine-related madlibs on it.  I find madlibs great fun!  I’ll share them every so often in the Pharmacist Answers Podcast Community.

Here is a few of the outcomes from the group.  Things people say during flu season:

Laura says:

“I’ve had, like, six weeks of wheezing. I’ve been to the Kauffman Stadium and got a prescription for filet mignon. And then I kept having dry abs, and I went to Mosque and got another prescription for Pringles. That was 12 hours ago, and I’m not any better. I think I need some mascara because my friends took it and got better. And I’m just so tired of feeling bored. Can you give me something to make me teleport? Every year my regular doctor gives me brandy, and I always get better immediately.”

Ronei says:

“I’ve had, like, six weeks of bronchitis. I’ve been to the Bridgestone Arena and got a prescription for crab cakes with tartar sauce. And then I kept having dry glutes, and I went to Temple and got another prescription for french fries. That was a month ago, and I’m not any better. I think I need some keratin conditioner because my friends took it and got better. And I’m just so tired of feeling fearful. Can you give me something to make me invisible? Every year my regular doctor gives me wine, and I always get better immediately.”

The sad part is that this is a very accurate example of what people will say to me at the pharmacy counter!

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Blood Brain Barrier [Show Notes]

 in Brain / Podcasts  tagged blood brain barrier / drugs / episode / HIV / rabies / virus by

Basics

The blood brain barrier is the last layer of cells between what’s in your blood and the extracellular fluid around your brain cells.

You’re born with it!  It’s main job is filtration.

2 ways things get through the blood brain barrier:

  • Passive diffusion: small, neutral molecules (water, gases, lipid-soluble)
  • Active transport: glucose, amino acids, drugs (like a revolving door)

Permeability: how easily something can pass through a layer without work

Things that change permeability:

  • Inflammation – stretches layer and makes holes bigger (meningitis, injury)
  • Multiple sclerosis – an auto-immune disease that can degrade the BBB
  • Alzheimer’s – BBB becomes overwhelmed with antibodies and burns out

*Scary Section*

Rabies is a virus that is small and can get through the blood brain barrier but the immune system cells, antibodies from the vaccine, and medicines can’t.
HIV encephalopathy is caused when a mutation of the HIV gets into the brain and use brain cells to replicate (rather than the well-known T-cells of the immune system).  There is also a rare symptom of HIV called HIV-associated dementia.

Callback

microchimerisms – Pregnancy causes the permeability of many areas of the body to change, and this includes the BBB.

Test Yourself

Drugs that have central nervous system effects (good) or side effects (bad) cross the BBB.  See what you know of different medications and what job they’re supposed to do and what negative side effects they cause and see if you can guess if they cross the BBB.

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Male DNA in the Female Brain

 in Brain / Podcasts  tagged Alzheimer's / blood brain barrier / brain / DNA / microchimerism / pregnancy by

*Sorry again for crying baby*

Male DNA In The News

The news reported that scientists had discovered a link between male DNA found in the brain of the women who gave birth to sons.

Microchimerism = DNA fragment of another organism that incorporates into you

This particular microchimerism involves the Y chromosome (because otherwise, you wouldn’t know it was specifically male).

Other documented microchimerism studies have reason to believe they may be beneficial – especially in a process called immuno-surveillance (when the immune system is patrolling around looking for things that don’t belong there).

The blood brain barrier is the last layer of cells between what’s in your blood and your brain cells.  DNA fragments are small and can easily pass through the BBB, especially during pregnancy when membrane permeability (the penetrable-ness) has increased all throughout the body already.

The primary resource written by the scientists that did the study of the female brains states that their findings were pretty much inconclusive – partly due to the small sample size of brains they had available.  And they couldn’t study living people.  They were mostly trying to decide if this male microchimerism had a positive or negative effect on Alzheimer’s risk.  The final conclusion – we dunno.  Another obstacle was that the complete health history of the samples they used was not known.

Other sources have stated hypotheses regarding the number of children a woman has and the risk of early onset Alzheimer’s.

This issue with reporting on studies like these is that Alzheimer’s has so many factors that may increase or decrease risk and science is pretty sure there’s NOT just one thing that will cause or prevent someone from developing this disease.

The only thing they could conclude is that microchimerisms are evolutionarily significant.

Here’s the primary journal article.

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Music Credits:  “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/