Look where you're going

The thought I woke up with was: we should be studying the healthiest people, not the sickest.

This is a sleepy oversimplification of what I really believe.  Obviously we shouldn't stop researching disease or creating models of cellular dysfunction.  But there is also value in studying a process that is working optimally.  You may learn a lot about car engines by studying the contents of junk yards and trying to resurrect or improve them; but, it would be really valuable to have a Ferrari and a Prius purring in the front lot, so you know what to aim for.

In my field of basic biological sciences, it is far easier to pinpoint "dead" as a relevant experimental output.  But the goal of what we learn from the dysfunctional data points in basic sciences is to reconstruct how-this-works - when it's working - and see if that informs how-it-works in all animals including us.  Recent advances in imaging and data mining have allowed us to look deep inside even those cells and processes that are humming along perfectly and see what is really going on.

I imagine in medicine it is easier to justify pumping money into interventions that will improve lifespan or healthspan, or open a new market for prescription drugs, when the starting point is "really sick", rather than "doing OK, not great".  There is a field of preventative medicine and though I'm told that funding is tight, I personally know little about it.  So this will largely be a half-awake ramble outside my expertise.

When I was learning to drive, the most lasting, practical lesson was not "10 and 2" or even FINALLY grasping how to parallel park.  It was "look where you're going".  I took a crash avoidance course and in a crisis, the instinct is to stare, deer in headlights style, at whatever you are hoping not to hit - the oncoming vehicle in the wrong lane, the guardrail you ventured too close to, the dog that is running in front of your car - is very powerful.  And disastrous. 

The bromide that applies here is "look where you are going"; the related human rule of physics: you go where you look.  The course taught drivers to use the seconds before a possible collision to scan the environment for escape routes, rather than the obstacle.  Drive past the scene of an accident and your wheels drift in the direction of the crash you are staring at.  Round a corner to find a huge rock in your lane and you just might avoid it if you can keep your head, check the other lanes for an opening and swerve out of the way.

Coincidentally, I was in a tunnel yesterday, driving my lab to a Vancouver conference, when a truck three cars ahead began losing engine parts; the jumbo sized muffler landed right in the middle of my lane as we were going about 40 miles an hour.  I couldn't go right (tunnel wall) or left (cars in adjacent lane) or come to a dead stop without getting rear-ended, so I went over.  The sidewall of the front right tire on my car and the car directly ahead of us that also had to make this decision were both torn out.  We shared a bonding moment after exiting the tunnel on our rims, changing tires on the side of the road.

This is not directly related to my thesis; on a further tangent I have to say my tires always go flat at the least convenient and most dangerous places.

Despite our roadside adventure, we made it to the Vancouver Regional Worm meeting on beautiful UBC campus, and I even got a chance to obtain a delicious sushi assortment from Jun Sushi near Blanca and Broadway - a mom and pop that was one of THREE sushi options within walking distance of Big O Tires.  Their mango and dynamite rolls will both make you cry with happiness.

Yes, Vancouver IS awash in good, cheap sushi.  Sushi for four?  $33 including tax. I share here a picture of the feast about three minutes into our feeding frenzy.  There's nothing like a near death experience to make you appreciate wild caught salmon sashimi.





My favourite talk of the conference, besides of course the killer jobs done by my own colleagues and an excellent keynote address from a very established female PI, was from a woman using C elegans as a model for ALS.  So I'm not a hater, yo.  For reals.  This kind of research is fascinating and valuable; the presenter had some very exciting results to share and it was truly a showcase for what model systems can tell us about being human, which is nice since I have devoted the last fifteen years of my life to this kind of basic science research.

I also watched a TEDx talk recently about Dr. Wahls', a physician who cured her own severe MS with a daily diet of:
3 cups leafy greens like kale
3 cups sulfur vegetables like brussel sprouts
3 cups bright colors like roots and berries
grass-fed animal protein and organ meats like liver

MS is a debilitating progressive disease and the most modern pharmaceutic and technological interventions at BEST buy a minor reduction in decline or minimal increase in comfort.  Like ALS, there is no medically sanctioned cure.  Typical lifespan after an ALS diagnosis is less than four years.  The picture of MS is of patients in wheelchairs.

I'm fairly healthy and I've always been fit and active, but at 40 I've finally reached a point where if I don't watch what I eat very carefully I gain - oh let's say theoretically - 30 pounds in two years.  I wake up stiff and sore, and if I don't stretch and manage injury properly I find I can't go running, hiking, dancing, or even walking without pain.

My friend in toxicology believes environmental chemical pollutants and poor diet are at the heart of much of modern first-world disease.  There is a small but growing medical community that is getting behind this idea.  I've been inspired to try this MS diet and see what happens to my inflammation and weight. 

What I woke up thinking was that we should be focusing on those people who are extra healthy - populations where cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's are at a global low - and figure out what they are doing right.  Of course this is not a new idea; people have tried to correlate red wine drinking in France, olive oil use in Greece, fish and rice consumption in Japan, with health benefits.  I am eager to see the large studies on hunter gatherers asking whether a lifelong diet of nuts, berries and wild caught game, environmentally imposed diet restriction cycles, and a physically active lifestyle is associated with decreases in heart disease or senility.

I'm not a luddite and I don't think that technology is evil per se, though there can be no doubt that first-world-technology-driven pollution is a giant problem with devastating environmental effects.

I just think we should be looking where we want to go at least as much as we stare at what scares us.  Figuring out how the healthiest bodies work, not to downgrade the care and treatment of people suffering from chronic illness, but to raise the bar.  There is value in finding the drug that will keep someone alive an extra six months.  I want that to be six months worth living.