Worrier or Warrior gene

Brilliant article I have just read based on new research
Are you a warrior or are you a worrier?
It all depends on what type of COMT gene you have.
This gene determines what happens in your  brain when you are in a "challenging " situation. Every time we get nervous or excited dopamine is continuously squirted into our pre-frontal cortex - which is not a good thing.
We need to have just the right amount of dopamine there to feel OK.

The COMT gene produces 2 enzymes
1. Clears the dopamine away rapidly
2. Clears the dopamine away slowly.

Half the population has equal amounts of each enzyme 1 and 2
Quarter of the population only has the rapid clearer 1
Quarter of the population only has the slow clearer 2

Rapid clearers handle stress very well
Slow clearers struggle with stress

I don't think my clearers work at all. Perhaps they get worn out with age

Article The Times Saturday March 9 2013 quoting from Book by Po Bronson
"Top Dog - The Science of Winning and Losing"

We love the English

Hey – we love the English – really we do.

My mother is English.

I went to Medical School in London.

My son lives in England.

The awful thing about The SNP trying to get independence and insisting every few years on making us vote on it, is that those fellow British citizens down there in the deep south, think that we all don’t like them. They think we are all little Alec Salmonds. What a dreadful picture that conjures up !

Well – we are not.

We love you – you are our brothers.

And – like siblings, there are silly jealousies and fights

BUT – like siblings we have a deep and important kinship

The only time you really do annoy us -

Is when on National TV such as The News, you forget that the broadcast is also being seen in Scotland.

I have no interest in Sport, but those that do find it irritating to hear commentary about English teams, as if the broadcast is only for English viewers. I can imagine the outcry there would be in England if the reverse were to happen.

We love you – really we do.

We are no different to you.

We just happen to live a few miles further North.

AND

The majority of us

DO NOT WANT

Independence

And never have done.

Scottish pensions would be reduced

Oh my God -even the SNP themselves are now saying it.
They would have to cut back pensions (the state pension AND public pensions)  - if Scotland becomes independent.
In complete contrast to his public SNP statements, John Swinney (their finance minister), admits in a secret paper that there would be problems. He then spells them out.
For years the Scot Nats have talked about how wealthy Scotland could be because of North Sea Oil. But finally they are admitting that North Sea Oil is running out.
Without money from England there will not be enough to pay Scotland's pensioners.
We need England
Pay attention present and future pensioners

Genetic tests - a scam

Ah well – I was taken in – I always am. At least I had not sent off any money.

An excellent article by the real Genetic Professionals reveals the truth.

Genetic testing - "to see from whence one came" - is little better than fortune telling or horoscopes.

The commercial companies doing it are using science designed for populations, not individuals. The writer of the article suggests that they find out what you want to hear and interpret the findings to fit (in the same way as a fortune teller).

This is the article

http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/119/Sense-About-Genetic-Ancestry-Testing.pdf

It says several interesting things.

We all have 4 grandparents and 8 great grandparents - the number doubles with each generation.

So 10 generations (200-300 years) back we each have 1,000 and so on. You don’t have to go too far back before we have more ancestors than we have DNA. In other words  - we have some ancestors from whom we have inherited no DNA – they are too distant.

And

Via the male Y-DNA everyone today shares an ancestor who lived 240,000 and 580,000 years ago

Via the female Mt-DNA, everyone today shares an ancestor who lived between 160,000 and 200,000 years ago

Via the Autosomal-DNA everyone today shares an ancestor who lived about 1 million years ago.

But

If you look for the most recent person that everyone alive today is descended from - you only have to go back 3,500 years.

Having quickly Googled -“World time line” and taken 2013 away from 3,500 - I reckon that means approximately 1,500 BC

 So I have come up with the below-

40,000 BC -   Homo Sapiens arrived in Europe

24,000 BC -   The start of the ice age over Britain (in which nothing could have lived)

12,000 BC -   The Ice age receded and man began to go back to Britain

2400 BC -     Stonehenge was being built

2000 BC -     Start of Bronze Age in Britain

1500 BC   -   Oldest Common ancestor of everyone alive today

1185 BC -     The Trojan war

1100 BC -     Chinese invented gunpowder

800 BC   -      Start of Iron Age in Britain

725 BC   -      Homer

390 BC -       Socrates

275 BC   -     Celts in Britain

0            -      Jesus was born

29 AD   -       Pompeii obliterated when Vesuvius erupted

43 AD   -       Roman Britain

685 AD -       Pictish Scotland

793 AD -      Viking Britain

Scotlands DNA

I went to an excellent free lecture at NLS (National Library of Scotland) entitled 'Britain's DNA' by Alistair Moffat.
It turned out to be the same lecture I had heard him give last year during The Edinburgh Festival entitled 'Scotland's DNA'.
 However it was so good that I didn't mind hearing it all again. To be quite honest, my memory is so bad that it was almost like hearing it anew.
Alistair along with others is trying to persuade us all to get our DNA tested - not to find out anything medical - but to find out - WHO WE ARE - WHERE WE COME FROM - our history.
What he has found so far is completely fascinating.
For a start, he horrified his Scottish Audience by telling us that once upon a time , we were all English.
Shock Horror!!
In fact, he said - everyone in Britain is an immigrant.
Britain at one stage was covered in ice -  for a long time. Any people who might have been there before would have had to leave.
Scotland kept it's ice for longer than the rest of the UK, so migration to Scotland occurred up through England.
Red hair he conjectures belongs to those whose ancestors mated with Neanderthals
and
Tom Conti agreed to be tested - being a Scot of Italian descent. It turns out that his DNA is very unusual and  makes him a descendant of Napoleon
and not surprisingly
Magnus Linklater's DNA shows he is a viking (his grandfather was from Orkney)
I am very tempted to get tested especially as amazing deals are being offered at the 'Who do you think you are' thing which has just finished  in London.
One firm www.familytreedna.com are offering to do your Y DNA for only £40.
The Y-DNA tells a male who is father's father's father's father is ete etc - No good for female me.
The Mt-DNA tells a male or a female who their mother's mother's mother's mother is ete etc - suitable for me
However if I could persuade one of my brothers to spit into a tube, both tests could be done on the one specimen for much less money.
The difficulty is persuading them

Vitamin D

My grown up son - who lives in Scotland - recently had to have his Vitamin D level checked. It was found to be, not just low - but dangerously low.

This does not surprise me. I have been advocating that we all take Vitamin D supplements for some time - especially us pensioners.

When I was a medical student very little was known about most Vitamins. It was known that you mainly get Vitamin D from sunlight and that people with a lack of Vitamin D got rickets, which made their bones so soft that they developed bendy bandy legs.

It was known that calcium and Vitamin D have a close relationship. You need Calcium for strong bones, but it is no good without Vitamin D.

What was not taken on board until a few years ago is just how important vitamin D is for all sorts of things and that you can be having nasty problems well before you get to the stage of full blown rickets.

A thinking GP in Glasgow wondered why her patients with darker skins seemed to attend more and to have more problems than others. Could it be because the pigment in their skin made it more difficult for them to absorb vitamin D?

So she did a small trial and tested her patient’s vitamin D levels. The results showed that those with darker skins had lower levels, thus proving her theory. However, what it also showed was that nearly all her patients had low levels.

Scotland does not get much sun (especially Glasgow) and in the winter months the sun is so low in the sky that it is impossible for us to get any Vitamin D from it, even if we are brave enough to expose some flesh!

So we need to eat more foods such as oily fish or egg yolks and we need to take vitamin D supplements.

However - which supplement should we take and how much?  All the available ones, that I can find, are made by companies that don’t inspire me with confidence - and that includes the supermarkets. A recent report showed that most vitamin pills do not contain what they say on the label. I would like to see one of the mainstream pharmaceutical companies produce a vitamin D supplement that has gone through the same stringent process as aspirin.

There is one called - Fultium D3 800 IU made by Internis Pharmaceuticals, but sadly it is prescription only.

More and more studies are showing the importance of Vitamin D and linking it to conditions such as MS. Scotland has more MS than anywhere else, could this be why?

It is thought to play an important role in the autoimmune and anti-inflammatory systems with early studies linking also to asthma, high blood pressure and heart problems, diabetes, cancer and depression and to cognitive decline in older people

Older people have particular difficulty in making Vitamin D from the sun or absorbing it from food.

So start supplementing.

Buy a product with Vitamin - D3.  Take 600 IU daily if you are under age 70 and 800 IU if you are over 70 (NHS recommendation).

http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/

Pregnant women and children also are strongly advised to supplement.

Everyone in Scotland should supplement especially during the winter.

Solgar make a product which contains Vitamin D3 600 IU – or so they claim.

It is dangerous to take crazy mega dose supplements of Vitamin D. It can cause calcium to be deposited in the kidneys.

Here is a helpful calculation when shopping for vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol)

1mcg = 40 IU

So

15mcg = 600IU

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20710028

Patients are not cans of paint

A while ago now I worked as a doctor in a private clinic owned by a businessman. He had previously made a fortune selling some type of special paint

He was convinced that a medical clinic could be run like a factory and that he would make a nice profit.

I was constantly saying -

“You can’t do that. These are people with problems, they are not cans of paint “

“You cannot treat these people like cans of paint”

Sadly I was right.

He went bankrupt a few years after I had left in disgust.

You cannot run a medical clinic like a factory.

The NHS cannot be run like a normal business.

Why?

Because you are dealing with very vulnerable ill people – not cans of paint!