Monthly Archives: January 2016

Olfactory epithelium diagram

Ultimate order, the cell

This is a diagram from years past that I could not bear to let go. I scanned it and pseudocolored it in photoshop highlighting the olfactory bipolar sensory cells (pink), the basal cells (blue-green) the sustentacular cells (blue) and put in one microvillar cell (yellow) which wasn’t in the original diagram but needed to be added since the migrating immune cells in the olfactory epithelium – and many other epithelia, such as intestine and epidermis, is almost 10% of the cell population. Mitochondria are colored yellow and green, I didn’t pseudocolor the sensory cilia atop the olfactory sensory bipolar cells, nor the knob but probably should have.  This is a raster file-I tried unsuccessfully to vectorize it and i guess there was something that prevented the process, or at least made it beyond my abilities to bring about. If you desire a high resolution tif images, just email me. marian(at)pdqpatterns(dot)com and this image is also on SciencePhoto

olfactory_epithelium_diagram

Surgical amphitheater vector illustration

Ultimate order, the cell

I took the  scanned negative and vectorized it, and pseudo colored some of the elements of this image, that would be the drapes, masks gowns and equipment in pale shades of blues and greys. I particularly like the nurse in the upper right, i only call her a nurse instead of a doctor or resident because these were the ages in which women just did not go to medical school.  Times have thankfully changed.  While this was state of the art 70 years ago, how primitive.surgical_amphitheater_UC_Col_Med_circa_1950

Old surgical amphitheater General Hospital Cincinnati Ohio

Ultimate order, the cell

I drew this picture from a photograph many many decades ago, and this was the setup, hexagonal white tile on the floor, balconies full of surgical residents and medical students, spreading their microbiospheres down on the the draped patient watching the pold_surgical_amphitheatre_General_Hospital_Cincinnati_ohio_circa_1960-thumbnailhysicians doing the surgery. Notice the old style camera used for photographing the procedure and the ribbed stairs over to the right, and some dude in one of the balconies with his nose outside of his mask, caring NOT for the outcome of his transgression. I don’t know what ever happened to my original black and white sketch, but this is an old lantern slide negative that i scanned and cleaned up a little in photoshop. This seems to primitive, yet 50 years ago it was state of the art.

Sleepless nights from MSG

Rants

MSGTHINK ABOUT IT,  “betcha can’t eat just one” It seems somewhat silly that it took me so long to determine why there were so many nights that i didn’t sleep well, or sleep at all, and it seems sadder that i still get tripped up by the same problem.  I know well that “big food” and “big pharma” are BFFs and that the FDA is powerless (or blind) in trying to get between that friendship.

Case in point from my personal experience (it may not apply to you, we all come to the table with different DNA, different epigenetic tags, different environments , but it certainly is relevant to me) where consuming MSG from commercial foods acts as a stimulant (the glutamines and glutamic acid) and if i consume food containing these, night becomes a nightmare.  I fall asleep for one REM cycle, and then cannot go back to sleep for the remainder of the night.  1) MSG is not leaving the “big food” industry anytime soon, even though it is clearly addictive and also a stimulant, so it becomes my job  to guard against consuming food with high levels of ADDED glutamines (check the internet for other names under which glutamines are cloaked like hydrolysed vegetable protein, umami and “natural flavors” (please give it a rest” LOL)  and 2) to avoid slipping into the trap from “big pharma” that would have me take sleep aids to cure my free glutamine stimulated insomnia. Glutamate is one of the most abundant excitatory  neurotransmitters in the brain. It also can be addictive. The issue here is “free” glutamines.  glutamines bound up in cellular form (as in plants and meat) is NOT FREE.

I have no clue how individuals who don’t understand things like this make it through life with any semblance of peace.  I get tripped up often and I recognize the risk of eating in a restaurant…. last night at my grandaughter’s birthday dinner, ha ha, a couple small (because their servings are unfortunately small) i ate Marion’s Piazza pizza which must be loaded with MSG or free glutamines and spent the night awake.  So how does a mother who has small children cope with a child, who like me, is sensitive to free glutamines, who would be awake all night from the MSG, and get them off to school and expect a productive learning day.  It is really sad, and I feel for them. ”

It is all about the sensitivity, and while I may recognize my symptoms and avoid adding extra glutamines salted onto my food as umami, or soaked into my raw chicken as “natural flavors” , or added to my canned soup — i worry that so many don’t understand the difference between the consuming them bound in the natural cell structures of the plants and meat and the latter, where they are unbound.

Read two views here:  http://www.rense.com/general52/msg.htm  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate