Double X Science - It's In Your Genes

Search Results for: label/endocrine disruption

  • 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

  • Science, health, medical news freaking you out? Do the Double X Double-Take first

    …ouble X Double-Take: What to do when reading science in the news 1. Skip the headline. Headlines are often misleading, at best, and can be wildly inaccurate. Forget about the headline. Pretend you never even saw the headline. 2. What is the basis of the article? Science news originates from several places. Often it’s a scientific paper. These papers come in several varieties. The ones that report a real study–lots of people or mice or…

    Authored by on April 27, 2012

  • 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

  • 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

  • He found out he has ovaries*

    …dition is Turner Syndrome. The man in this case report has Turner, which can result in features such as short stature and incomplete ovarian development, along with some health issues. Turner Syndrome is present in about 1 in 2500 live female births. Adrenal glands: They’re small, but they’re very, very important. Image, public domain, US Govt. In addition to being XO, though, he has another condition: congenital adrenal hyperplasia….

    Authored by on June 6, 2013

  • What does ‘safe’ mean when we’re talking about chemicals?

    …look at things on a spectrum of lower risk to higher risk and think about decisions as risk evaluations.  At the lower risk end, I would include things that have 1) solid, evidence-based records of few or no harmful effects, 2) relatively few/unusual circumstances in which it produces harmful effects, and 3) statistics favoring my likelihood of emerging unscathed. Here are some things I would consider lower risk  within the parameters of my lif…

    Authored by on June 4, 2012

  • Early puberty among adoptees

    …es is much smaller? A 3-year-old is unlikely to pass for a 1-year-old or vice versa, but many a 6-year-old could pass for a 4-year-old. A child who cannot yet walk on his own would almost never be estimated to be any age over 2, but a 10-year-old might pass for as young as 6 if undernourished and immature. It’s worth noting that this issue affects a shrinking number of children in the U.S., if only because international adoption rates have…

    Authored by on May 28, 2013

  • 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

  • Is the bar high enough for screening breast ultrasounds for breast cancer?

    …n controversial. What’s new is the “Are You Dense?” patient movement and legislation to inform women that they have dense breasts. Merits and pitfalls of device approval The approval of breast ultrasound hinges on a study of 200 women with dense breast evaluated retrospectively at 13 sites across the United States with mammography and ultrasound. The study showed a statistically significant increase in breast cancer detection when ultrasound was…

    Authored by on September 21, 2012

  • Autism and the DSM-5

    …ial social aspect of this change, and the one thing that might, when it comes to autism, elevate the DSM-5 above the level of doorstop. [Image credit: Dave Bullock, UK, via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.]…

    Authored by on April 23, 2013

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