Newsletter

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 40 and 42

Audiocast #40 – Epigenetics

Humans, like most organisms on earth, grow and maintain their biological systems through a complex interplay between the environment and their genes. Epigenetics is the study of the ability of environmental signals to silence or activate these genes, thus effecting cellular function and species survival. I was once given an analogy, by Dr. Randy Jirtle, that your genes are like a computer hard drive. They do nothing until the software inputs change activity. The environmental signals like food, chemicals, stress and much more are the putative software inputs for us. Good lifestyle inputs have been epidemiologically proven to reduce disease risk.

Audiocast #42 – Stress, Psychiatry and the Intestinal Microbiome

Humans develop disease from many different routes including toxic exposures, genetics, poor nutrition, injury, microbial exposures and much more. One of the biggest risk factors for the development of disease is mental stress. Specifically, chronic stress of the psyche is traumatic to the cellular machinery of the body like the protective telomere tails of DNA strands or the functioning intestinal microbiome.
Enjoy,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 39 and 41, Covid Updates 44 and 45

Coronavirus Updates #44 and 45 – Listen to the latest data driven perspectives on the pandemic. Vaccine boosters, MIS and what is happening now are covered. For the written versions please visit: https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter

 

Best,

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 36 and 38

Audiocast #36 – Vision and Breathing
What are the connections between breathing and vision? Dr. Huberman, a Stanford Neurobiologist has been researching this topic for years and his findings are fascinating.
From a 2020 Scientific American article: “But Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at Stanford University who studies the visual system, sees matters a bit differently. Stress, he says, is not just about the content of what we are reading or the images we are seeing. It is about how our eyes and breathing change in response to the world, as well as the cascades of events that follow. Both these bodily processes also offer us easy and accessible releases from stress. For more: https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/999-volume-11-letter-36
Audiocast #38 – Type II Diabetes and Covid in Kids
The pandemic has taken an amazing toll on human health. According to two new studies that are not yet in print, the pandemic caused a doubling in diabetes in children. This is not a trivial matter as insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome in general are the diagnostic diseases associated with increased risk for cancer, coronary artery disease and early death from issues like COVID. The antecedent triggers have been well studied and discussed in this newsletter. Sedentary behavior coupled to a high fat, high refined carbohydrate diet are the main drivers of disease and the pandemic forced many a child’s hand. They were less likely to exercise and move during the poor quality zoom events. Physical education classes were non existent. Food quality plummeted from a poor school based place to a worse home based place. For more: https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/1007-type-ii-diabetes-and-covid-in-kids
Best,
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 37 Covid Update #43

Delta is a pain in the BUTT, but our T and B cells are ready to wage war once we have either had natural infection or received the SARS2 vaccine.
Evolution of the SARS2 coronavirus may have reached a perfect level of fitness with the delta variant. It is incredibly effective at transmission while not being more deadly than alpha. Time will ultimately tell if it evolves again in a significant way. If you think of the evolution of humanity with respect to SARS2/Covid19 risk, it is clear to me that this virus would have been much less deadly 30 or 50 or 100 years ago before the invention of modern processed foods, chemicals and stress that have upended human immune health and lead to an era of metabolic diseases and disease. I have thought about this for some time and the reality is as such. We are here to some extent by our own doing and that is a tragedy of our time.
Some may say that modern medicine is saving countless lives and that is so, but how many would have never entered the hospital based on much better baseline health? Ah, these are questions that we cannot answer less we just hypothesize.
Read more for COVID #43….https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter
Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 33 and 35 Covid Update #41/42

A few people are asking about the need to vaccinate if you have already had COVID natural illness. What is the story here? Hot off of the press from Cell Reports Medicine, we see: “Ending the COVID-19 pandemic will require long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2. Here, we evaluate 254 COVID-19 patients longitudinally up to 8 months and find durable broad-based immune responses. SARS-CoV-2 spike binding and neutralizing antibodies exhibit a bi-phasic decay with an extended half-life of >200 days suggesting the generation of longer-lived plasma cells. SARS-CoV-2 infection also boosts antibody titers to SARS-CoV-1 and common betacoronaviruses. In addition, spike-specific IgG+ memory B cells persist, which bodes well for a rapid antibody response upon virus re-exposure or vaccination. Virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are polyfunctional and maintained with an estimated half-life of 200 days. Interestingly, CD4+ T cell responses equally target several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, whereas the CD8+ T cell responses preferentially target the nucleoprotein, highlighting the potential importance of including the nucleoprotein in future vaccines. Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.” (Cohen et. al. 2021)

Read more for COVID #41……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/988-volume-11-letter-33-coronavirus-update-42

Read more for COVID #42……https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/994-coronavirus-update-42

Happy listening

Dr. M

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Audiocast Volume 11 Issues 32 and 34

Majestic poplar

Newsletter #32 covers – School and the Covid Generation

More than a year later, as we had feared, we are starting to see and feel the repercussions of the school closure pandemic phenomenon. The K shaped recovery of the economic pandemic is also playing out similarly in the school system. Last year, private schools stayed open while public schools shuttered. Of those in public school systems, many that could afford one, hired tutors to bridge the academic dysfunction of zoom education. The gap between the rich and poor just widened like never before right before our eyes. Regardless of the intent behind the outcome, we are now here. It serves no purpose to blame teachers unions or local governments or parents living in fear or any other publicized reason to date. We are Americans and we must now roll up our sleeves and begin the process of bridging this gap again. These children deserve our total and unwavering support. Link to more….https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/983-school-and-the-covid-generation

Newsletter #34 covers – Long Covid and its association with Epstein Barr Virus, EBV, reactivation

This is a very important topic for clinicians and parents to understand so we are going to look at it a little more deeply.
Long COVID or what appears to be a post infectious inflammatory issue may now be a consequence of another infection. What are the symptoms of long COVID and when do they occur? From the CDC: Some people are experiencing a range of new or ongoing symptoms that can last weeks or months after first being infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. Unlike some of the other types of post-COVID conditions that only tend to occur in people who have had severe illness, these symptoms can happen to anyone who has had COVID-19, even if the illness was mild, or if they had no initial symptoms. Symptoms can even begin weeks after the infection.  Link to more…. https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/990-long-covid-and-its-association-with-epstein-barr-virus-ebv-reactivation

Dr. M’s SPA Newsletter Volume 11 Issue 31 Covid Update #40

It is time for a change of direction for me and my vaccine thoughts. A lot of risk analysis this week in children and opinions on masking to be in schools. I have been steadfastly in the push to vaccinate high risk kids over age 12 years only and all else make individual choices. The data keeps shifting and the risk of a potential concern is increasing for adolescents. Read on….
Quick hits
1) COVID mRNA vaccines for 12 and over – a few days ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Danny Benjamin, Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at Duke University and Principal Investigator on the NC school COVID study, about the COVID vaccine, variants and risk factors for problems in children. He is a brilliant and thoughtful teacher and someone that I truly trust. Our interview will be live in 1 – 2 weeks at the Women and Children First Podcast on Apple podcasts. However, there was one HUGE takeaway that I wanted to share now.
According to Dr. Benjamin, the COVID vaccine has already surpassed the necessary amount of time and number of inoculated children over 12 years of age to steadfastly discuss safety as a net known entity. In the history of vaccine development, there has never been a case of a new unknown side effect being discovered 6 months post any individual vaccination if enough people have been vaccinated to see a signal….. Read More Here: https://www.salisburypediatrics.com/patient-education/dr-magryta-s-newsletter/977-volume-11-letter-31-coronavirus-update-40