Month: May 2019

PROMPT: Reflect on the peer-review process with you as the reviewer. How did it feel to read and critique someone else’s writing? What did you learn that you can apply to your own writing as you revise your final essay?

The peer review process was an interesting one to say the least. I was constantly trying to make sure that I was reviewing the work properly. It felt odd to critique someone else’s work because if how unsure I am of my own. I tried to put myself in the author’s shoes, to see the work from their perspective, but it was rather difficult given we aren’t the same person. It is basically impossible to align your own thoughts as if they were someone else’s entirely. Because of this, I didn’t do much “critiquing at all.” Instead, I made a couple of suggestions but really just tried to ensure the author that the paper was good, because I believe it was intended to be good, and it was from a perspective other than my own. This process helped me learn that when I am writing, that I must make a great attempt to write from a more general perspective. I should leave things up for debate and question, instead of writing things with concrete ink. I believe that this process can help us all become better writers.

PROMPT: Describe the process of peer review to someone who does not frequently read scientific articles. In your response, consider the pros and cons of peer review and how that might impact the credibility of the results that come from that scientific article.

The author of the work analyzes the data, forms an opinion, and once a paper is formed, the author then proceeds to get the paper published in a scholarly journal (in most cases). Before the author’s work can be properly published, the paper must be reviewed by a group of experts in the same field as the author. The experts in the same field are needed in case any of the data is insufficient, the writing isn’t appropriate for the audience, or the paper just is not done well enough to be published. The main idea regarding peer review is that it either challenges or validates the author’s  work. This is important because scholarly journals are where most researchers get their references, ideas, etc. A peer review decides whether an author’s work should be published in a scholarly journal or not. The pros of a peer review are that an author’s work will be published if it should be. A con of this process is that the peer review panel is anonymous but the author isn’t. This poses an issue regarding bias in some cases. If the author is known for something controversial, it may leave a sour taste in the mouths of the panel, and not be considered a credible reference for research.

PROMPT:

Step 1: Free write: What are some of the most interesting or surprising things you’ve learned and/or want to learn more about, in regards to microbes and human health? Set a timer for 5 minutes and type out your response. Please don’t edit or worry about correct grammar/spelling/sentence structure… just write!

Step 2: After your 5-minute timer is up, read back through your response and underline a word or short phrase that you wrote that stands out as being particularly interesting.

Step 3: Free write: Start your next free write with the word or phrase that you underlined in step 2. Set a timer for 5 minutes and type out your response. Please don’t edit or worry about correct grammar/spelling/sentence structure… just write!

Step 4: Reflection. Based on your free write exercises above, write about your thoughts on what you might do to begin preparing for your final paper.

The most interesting thing that I have learned about so far in this course is the major role that the gut microbiome plays in our everyday lives. It is crazy to think that the bacteria in our gut influence almost all the areas of our lives. With that being said, the one thing that I want to learn more about is how inflammation within the bacteria of our gut microbiome affects the human body long term. I want to know more about the benefits of the beneficial bacteria and the detriments of the detrimental bacteria. It is important to me to understand how a shift in our gut microbiome can influence our entire lives.

It is important to me to understand how a shift in our gut microbiome can influence our entire lives. The previous phrase is particularly interesting to me because I believe that the composition of our gut microbiome plays a more important role on the longevity of our lives than the majority of people think that it does. Studies have shown that our gut flora and the inflammation associated with it has a large influence on many of the health issues in the world today. Correlations have been made between inflammation in the gut and obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and various other cultural issues. These things are important to me because I believe that the gut microbiome will play an extremely large role in future when it comes to longevity and the idea of treatment methods in humans.

 

Prompt: List and describe potential factors that the mother or the infant could be exposed to that could influence the colonization of the microbial community in the newborn infant (in positive or negative ways).

Several factors influence infant colonization of the gut microbiome, and this is important because the gut microbiome plays a major role in infant development. There are different microbial colonization patterns that are associated with the development of an infant. Understanding microbial colonization patterns can assist in an infant’s neurocognitive development and their disease life course risk. Things that can affect these microbial colonization patterns are:

Surgical vs. Vaginal birth – Vaginal birth is important for the vertical transfer of vaginal-perianal microbes from the mother as the infant is delivered through the birth canal. These microbes may not be transferred through surgical birth.

Exposure to antibiotics – Can affect the trajectory of the microbial colonization diversity. It has been discovered that antibiotics exposure to infants in the first 1000 days also may play a role in the development of early-onset obesity and neurocognitive developmental delays.

Infant feeding patterns – Most important during the first year of life. The gut microbial profile differs widely in newborns that are breast-fed vs. those who are formula fed. Breast fed babies have been shown to have an abundance of the prebiotic Bifidobacterium. It has also been found that formula-fed babies have a more diverse flora, but diverse with the wrong abundance of bacteria. E.coli, staphylococcus, streptococcus, and Clostridium are often found in babies whoa are exclusively formula-fed.

Maternal effects on Infant Microbiome during the first 1000 days:

1. Stress
2. Infection
3. Antibiotics exposure
4. Obesity
5. Feeding patterns

References:

• Yang I, Corwin EJ, Brennan PA, Jordan S, Murphy JR, Dunlop A. 2016. The Infant Microbiome. Nursing Research 65:76–88.

Prompt: Describe your personal philosophy about how and when you have taken, or would take, antibiotics. What experiences or prior knowledge do you have that shaped that personal philosophy?

In my prior experiences, I have and have not taken antibiotics seriously. I definitely take them seriously now, but I didn’t used to care very much about them, just from lack of knowledge really. I, personally feel that antibiotics are both taken advantage of and taken for granted. Taken advantage of because there are so many people that misuse them, don’t use them, give them away, flush them down the toilet, etc. They are taken for granted due to all of the same reasons. Many people don’t stop to think just how helpful antibiotics are in certain situations, and how detrimental they can be in others. In other situations, people think they are needed because they may be helpful, so they will get a few from a friend after self-diagnosing an illness. These are all issues that deserve addressing because antibiotics are important, especially for the future and for our well-being.

With that being said, I take antibiotics only when and if they are prescribed to me by my doctor. It is important to be diagnosed and then prescribed antibiotics by a doctor. The prescribed antibiotics are administered in their respective dosages for a reason. It is also important to remember that it is all done by the doctors for a reason, that is, if you trust your doctor I suppose (I do). Also, when given antibiotics, take the entire prescription, even if you feel better after the first couple of days. They are still inside working to get rid of whatever the sickness is, even after you feel better.

I have learned what I know about taking antibiotics from being in college and working in the medical field with doctors. It is always stressed to me that antibiotics are no joke and should not be misused at any cost. The reason being, is that we do not want antibiotic resistant bacteria and pathogens to become so resistant that our medications no longer work in the future. TAKE YOUR MEDS!

Prompt: What choices do you make in terms of food/nutrition/product use and consumption that may have an impact on your microbial communities? Consider choices that are intentional, and choices that are perhaps non-intentional.

So, first I want to say that I believe that everything that we consume affects our microbial communities in our guts. Now, I do however, make some choices to consciously give myself a chance of benefiting those tiny organisms in my intestines. Some of the things I have started doing intentionally in the past couple of years to benefit my gut microbiome are:

• I take a probiotic supplement (capsule) daily with my first meal.
• I make it a point to drink 4-6 ounces of raw kombucha 5-6 days a week (DELICIOUS).
• I eat fermented foods: yogurt, kimchi, beer (lol), kiefer, and sauerkraut. This is easy because I like all of these things.
• Lots of garlic in my diet.
• Overall, I try to eat healthy every day, not just for my gut health but for my overall health.
• Greens (spinach, kale, broccoli, spirulina)

The intentional choices have been placed in my daily routine in order to benefit my gut health, overall health, etc. The non-intentional choices can most definitely have an adverse affect on microbial communities. Without doing any research, here is a list of things that I believe are probably bad for my gut.

• Sugar-Free energy drinks (Bang, Monster, Red Bull) – These are full of weird stuff that we can’t pronounce and sugar alcohols that are probably no good.
• Protein powders/bars – Once again, the sugar alcohols really scare me when I think about them.
• Fried Foods – Inflammation causing food.
• Potato Chips
• TACO BELL – Every college kid knows we eat a little too much of this after a good weekend
• Too much beer?