Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/Strange Situation

  • Motherhood, war, and attachment: what does it all mean?

    is son love football, that they spoke with their pediatrician about it, and that their son will continue with football at least into middle school. There’s a bit of wary nodding, and then, back to the Pinewood Derby. Scene 2: Two mothers meet on a playground. After a little conversation about their toddlers, one mother mentions that she still breastfeeds and practices “attachment parenting,” which is why she has a sling sitting next to her. Th…

    Authored by on May 16, 2012

  • From spiders to breast cancer: Leslie Brunetta talks candidly about her cancer diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up

    …very giving. I live in Cambridge, MA, where I could actually make choices about where I wanted to be treated at each phase and know I’d get excellent, humane care and where none of the facilities I went to was more than about 20 minutes away. Some things that women might have some control over and that their families might help nudge them toward: Find doctors you trust. Ask a lot of questions and make sure you understand the answers. But do…

    Authored by on January 31, 2012

  • Biology Explainer: The big 4 building blocks of life–carbohydrates, fats, proteins, and nucleic acids

    …molecules themselves break down into a surprisingly small number of building blocks. The proteins that make up all of the living things on this planet and ensure their appropriate structure and smooth function consist of only 20 different kinds of building blocks. Nucleic acids, specifically DNA, are even more basic: only four different kinds of molecules provide the materials to build the countless different genetic codes that translate into all…

    Authored by on June 8, 2012

  • Depressing genes

    Can depression be a matter of genetic fate? by Siobhan Mitchell          [This post is the latest installment in our I Am Mental Illness series.] What if you could know if you were fated to be depressed? With the rise of personal genotyping services such as 23andme, almost can find out what their psychiatric ‘fate’ will be, but what do you do with this information once you have it? When I first considered testing myself for depressio…

    Authored by on May 17, 2013

  • My bipolar life

    …last message, so that no one would be sending out the police. All that was going to happen is one day I would be alive. The next I would be dead. Consequences be damned. Well, the DKA didn’t kill me on day 1. Nor on day 2. What it did do was deplete my blood potassium, which caused a worse problem, an uncontrolled, and very painful heart rate. You see, I didn’t quite think this through as carefully as I should have. Through a strange…

    Authored by on February 8, 2013

  • After Newtown missteps, journalists get guidelines

    …almost twice as likely to say that they don’t want to live or work near a person with mental illness if they read an article about a person with mental illness involved in a mass shooting, according to a study published March 20 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Interestingly, this tendency is the same even if the article avoids any mention of mental illness. This may be because this link between violence and mental illness is deeply engrain…

    Authored by on March 27, 2013

  • I Am Mental Illness: a quarter-century chronicle

    ghts i had were merely symptoms, finding out i had some delusions, et cetera. but, god, this emptiness, i feel so numb, so hollow, the delusions are back, i think. my body doesn’t feel like my own.” [sic]  When I turned 21, my drinking went from bad to worse. It became even more acceptable to drink. I could be open about it. I could buy it on my own. I had a steady relationship by this point, but it ended, partially due to my drinking. He t…

    Authored by on February 22, 2013

  • DXS Op-Ed: How birth control can save the world

    …over the last 50 years, reaching 7 the billion mark in March of this year.  This is an astounding statistic since it took until 1804 – around 50,000 years – to reach our first billion.  World Population: 1800 – 2100 (Wikimedia Commons) What makes these numbers really scary is the concept of carrying capacity, which is an ecological term used to describe the maximum number of individual members of a species that a certain habita…

    Authored by on May 2, 2012

  • For Dad: A guide on strokes, including a glossary of terms

    s though ultrasound, as well as in the heart, using both an electrocardiogram(EKG) and an echocardiogram(ultrasound of the heart).  The patient might also be asked to wear a Holter Monitor, which is a device worn for at least 24 hours and can detect potential heart abnormalities that may not be obvious from short-term observations, like those obtained via an EKG.  If a stroke is due to a hemorrhagic event, an angiogramwould be performed to try an…

    Authored by on January 26, 2012

  • An obituary fail of the Finkbeiner test

    …ystem that keeps satellites in orbit where they belong. You know, really important stuff. For example, in addition to her great achievement, she received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama in 2011 and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2010. Coolest of all? She even worked for a couple of years at NASA in the 1980s on the rocket motor for the space shuttle. She was, quite literally, a freaki…

    Authored by on April 1, 2013

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