Sweating it out

They tried to treat diabetes with a cytokine called TSLP. They found something much cooler: TSLP makes mice sweat their fat away. Literally — it reversed their obesity. Even with a high-fat diet, the chunkier mice became normal in 28 days, as their fur actually glistened from the fat they were sweating.

And get this:

[T]he TSLP-treated mice were actually eating 20 to 30 percent more, had similar energy expenditures, base metabolic rates, and activity levels, when compared to their non-treated counterparts.

Apparently, TSLP activates genes that put sebaceous glands into high gear, and they just pump the fats out.

Life expectancy, um, finds a way

The other day we (and everyone else) shared the news that U.S. life expectancy had dropped in 2020 thanks to a combination of Covid-19 and drug overdoses. But there could be more to it than that.

Economist David Colander points out that, while the drop in life expectancy might be true for 2020 (and 2021) that’s just a short-term number: “Period life expectancy.” It’s the average lifespan of someone born where every year was like 2020.

But 2020 is an outlier — a downward blip. You can’t look at a decade’s average temperature based on a single week, and you can’t base a person’s life expectancy on a single year.

In fact, he says, the advances in medicine — can you say “mRNA vaccines”? — will mean that Covid’s long-term effect will probably be to increase life expectancy.

The pandemic’s indirect effect on the more meaningful cohort life expectancy is likely to be positive since the recent gains in medical knowledge and vaccine technology can be expected to extend life expectancy for incoming cohorts as it leads to better treatments for all types of diseases.

About those breakthroughs

In case you were wondering, fully vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections have about a 19 percent chance of having long Covid — or at least “could experience long-term symptoms such as such as fatigue, brain fog and shortness of breath” at least six weeks later.

Local Covid notes

The South leads the nation in Covid hospitalizations; “More than 5,400 coronavirus patients were admitted to the hospital on average during the week of July 21-27, according to the CDC, a 46% increase over the week prior.”

Most of Georgia is now in the red zone for community-transmission, based on new cases per 100,000 persons in the past week.

And if you really want a detailed, scary look at the situation in Georgia, Amber Schmidtke lays it out in detail.

[C]hildren’s hospitals in Kansas City (where I live), Baton Rouge, New Orleans are surging with children needing hospitalization and intensive care for COVID-19. In Oklahoma, there are no pediatric hospital beds available in the state. Next door in Arkansas, children’s hospitals are also feeling the strain with kids in the ICU for COVID-19. And we can see that this situation is starting to appear in Georgia too.

It’s men raining

Why is this year’s allergy season — and, heck, the last few years’ — been so bad? Blame urban landscaping. (You thought I was gonna say ‘climate change,’ didn’t you?)

Urban landscaping, because people don’t like those icky female trees. And it’s not just because they have cooties Female trees are the ones that drop seed pods and fruit and other messy things, so urban landscapers prefer males, which only release pollen. Lots of pollen.

So not only is there more pollen being sent into the air, there aren’t enough female trees to catch that pollen. Thus…

Pollen season has increased by 20 days annually between 1990 and 2018, while pollen concentrations in North America increased 21% over the same time period

Are you a leader?

Eight shall be chosen to be tomorrow’s pharmacy leaders — for our state and our association. Are you one?

GPhA is pleased to re-introduce Leadership GPhA in an exciting new format!

Leadership GPhA is a single weekend academy focused on developing pharmacy leadership skills — three days crammed full of insightful and thought-provoking interactive presentations, great networking with current and future GPhA leadership, and plenty of fun activities!

Leadership GPhA is free for the eight candidates who are chosen, and it’s held October 15–17, 2021 at Georgia’s beautiful Lake Blackshear Resort.

You are invited to apply if you:

• are a pharmacist member in good standing of the Georgia Pharmacy Association;
• have practiced pharmacy for at least five years;
• exemplify honesty, integrity, and motivation to advance the profession of pharmacy in the state of Georgia.

Remember: Participation is limited to only eight candidates and these leaders are expected to participate in all Leadership GPhA activities for the weekend of October 15 – 17, 2021.

Have you got what it takes? CLICK HERE to learn more and to apply!

Great grains

These days, when it comes to grains, most of the world eats maize*, rice, and wheat. But it turns out that millet, the red-headed stepchild of grains, has a surprising benefit: It lowers blood-glucose levels.

An international team looked at research from around the world and crunched the numbers. And they were striking:

[D]iabetic people who consumed millet as part of their daily diet saw their blood glucose levels drop 12-15% (fasting and post-meal), and blood glucose levels went from diabetic to pre-diabetes levels. The HbA1c (blood glucose bound to hemoglobin) levels lowered on average 17% for pre-diabetic individuals, and the levels went from pre-diabetic to normal status.

These findings affirm that eating millets can lead to a better glycemic response.

* We call it corn. The rest of the world uses “corn” to refer to grains in general. Cool, huh?

ICYMI

Internal documents reveal the CDC is very worried about Delta because of its crazy-high transmission rate — greater than the common cold, on par with chickenpox. And vaccinated people carry as much virus as the infected.