Did you take home ec?

Hey, recent grads! Do you know how to cook? No, stirring a microwave meal doesn’t count. It seems that college grads don’t know how to prepare healthy meals, and that — per Brazilian nutritionists — might make them, er, larger than life, shall we say.

As they put it, “[O]ur findings showed that overweight and obesity were associated with lower cooking skills.”

Their tips: Learn to cook with healthy ingredients and, if you live with others (especially a spouse or children), learn to share the cooking (with those healthy ingredients). Otherwise “Living with other people and eating out of the home were associated with higher chances for overweight and obesity.”

Having a properly multi-ethnic and -cultural group makes your cooking even better!

High-five to Mercer’s Angela Shogbon Nwaesei

A big GPhA Buzz congrats to Mercer’s Dr. Angela Shogbon Nwaesei, who was named the recipient of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy’s 2023 ACCP Education Award.

This award recognizes a college member who has made substantial and outstanding contributions to clinical pharmacy education at either the professional or postgraduate level.

Way to go, Dr. Nwaesei!

Scent of a migraine

What do perfume, tobacco, fabric softener, body odor, garbage, hairdressing products, cars, and sweat^* have in common, besides a hot date behind a 7-Eleven? According to Japanese researchers, they’re the most common odors associated with triggering a migraine attack.

Of course that doesn’t discount all the other possible triggers, like stress, weather, hormones, etc. But it does suggest that there might be an olfactory component to migraines. You know the mantra: More research is necessary.

^* Those are just the top eight. Apparently there’s a lot that can trigger a migraine; other scents reported in more than 10% of cases were garlic, rice, grilled fish, alcohol, excrement, machine oil, vomit, “chemicals,” propane gas, and “animals.”

When the pond grows larger, even the big fish feel smaller

As healthcare organizations get bigger from consolidation, acquisition, expansion, or just too many French fries, that’s usually pretty good for the company, and may even be good for the workers it employs … at least on paper. But when companies get super-sized, they often start to standardize procedures and eliminate wiggle room.

That means employees start to feel smaller and smaller as their professional judgement takes a back seat to the three-ring binder of corporate policy.

Inside their workplaces, standardization becomes a burden. When an employee tries to do things differently or to tailor care to an individual patient’s needs, they’re told, “The policy is the policy.” Bigger does not feel better. The are transformed from highly trained professionals into invisible line workers. There is a loss of agency that can be painfully numbing.

A cause found for SIDS?

Researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital have made what appears to be a breakthrough in understanding Sudden Infant Death Syndrome — a biological cause. It’s not a simple one, though.

[T]hey hold the belief that sudden infant death syndrome occurs when three factors coincide. Firstly, it happens during a crucial stage of cardiorespiratory development in the infant’s first year. Secondly, the child experiences an external stressor, such as sleeping in a face-down position or sharing a bed. Finally, the child possesses a biological abnormality that renders them susceptible to respiratory difficulties while sleeping. It is the convergence of these three elements that is thought to contribute to cases of sudden infant death syndrome.

A pathway to nerve regeneration

British molecular biologists have found a way to promote the regeneration of nerve cells. That’s kind of a big deal.

There’s a signalling pathway in cells that works via an enzyme called PI3K that helps cells grow. Scientists have been looking for ways to reliably activate PI3K as a potential cancer-treatment target (as you might expect with an enzyme that helps cells grow).

It seems that a newly discovered compounded that they dubbed “1938” (thus making it really difficult to google), does just that — and that’s potentially a big deal, because they found something interesting. When activated with 1938, PI3K not only promotes cell growth in general, but specifically helps nerve cells regenerate.

What this means — after the necessary further studies, natch — is that “PI3K activators” could someday be a class of drugs used to treat nerve damage.

Short Takes

Paxlovid is official

The FDA has given Pfizer’s Paxlovid full approval for the treatment of Covid-19 in adults, moving it up from just an emergency use authorization. (It’s still under an EUA for teens.)

This is your brain on Musk

Elon Musk’s Neuralink says it has FDA approval to begin human trials for its brain implant that aims to allow humans to control computers with their minds. (It’s meant for paralysis patients, but we all know what it’ll really be used for … wink wink.)