Emergency Physician, Educator, Researcher, interested in the microbiome, evolution, and medicine
I guess I have to feel pretty good about the semester when the students seem to be able to teach the class at the end of it! One thing to remember is that the bar is set a little bit higher for the graduate students in the class than the […]
Chris Engdahl has graciously offered to post his presentation from last year (2008). C.Engdahl on Phage Therapy This is a very good powerpoint and might be a starting point to organize your presentation. But remember, I want to encourage originality, so do not feel constrained by this format. You do […]
I hope that everybody had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Final projects will be graded depending on the following elements: General a) Does the topic relate to a disease of humans? b) Does the project include one of the categories of evolutionary medicine hypotheses we have covered in class? c) Is the […]
In honor of Thanksgiving – I will present a discussion of the Holiday meal, in light of evolutionary hypotheses of diet, especially the Paleolithic diet. If modern environments are to blame for our ill health, perhaps we would be better off eating as our ancestors did. But what did they […]
Babies that are fed formula have more E. Coli (a potential pathogen) in their stool that babies who are fed breast milk. Breast-fed babies have mostly bifidobacteria (a benign commensal) in their stool. Breast milk differs from formula in having more oligosaccharides (dietary fiber) and a different mixture of fatty […]
Tuesday’s reading is here: The Role of the Gut Microbiota in Energy Metabolism and Metabolic Disease Last week we introduced the concept that visceral fat may play a protective role in early childhood. As was mentioned in class, visceral fat is innervated by sympathetic nerve fibers. When under stress, the […]
“The ideas that are being tossed around for presentation are incredibly creative and insightful. It’s going to be a lot of fun hearing your presentations! I would add that many ideas have been posed have fallen under the ‘novel modern environment’ umbrella (this often includes the gene-mismatch and by-product hypotheses). […]
For today’s Thursday Discussion (Nov 12), please bring your idea/s for presentation including perhaps any associated articles or research that you may have gathered thus far. We will have an open brain-storming session during which we as a class will respond to ideas by exploring evolutionary hypotheses, perhaps attempting to […]
Writing project for next tuesday: There appears to be switch activated in underweight babies that leads to diabetes later in life. Early on, these individuals might be insulin resistant – so less glucose gets metabolized by muscle tissue. As a result, less energy is devoted to growth and building muscles […]
On tuesday we are going to discuss some very interesting findings on diabetes and insulin resistance. Could there be any adaptive value to the trait of insulin resistance? For tuesday please read the following: kuzawa-chapter-for-evolutionary-anthropology Diabetes and Development
EvolutionMedicine 