Theobromine,
theobromine. Your magical, mystical
powers make my heart sing.You make me
feel good and give my mind focus. You suppress
coughs, relax airways, and tame inflammation. Your pharmacology truly works
wonders for me… but only in small doses, you see.
Theobromine,
theobromine. Your magical, mystical
powers make my heart sing.You make me
feel good and give my mind focus. You suppress
coughs, relax airways, and tame inflammation. Your pharmacology truly works
wonders for me… but only in small doses, you see.
So holiday
times getting you down just a bit?
Endless
cooking, and cleaning, and holiday shopping draining your spirit?
Take a
short moment, a deep breath, along with two, maybe more, pieces of chocolate.
Close your
eyes, soak it in, and thank the Lord for this blessing… theobromine.
As the years go by, I grow more and more convinced that the scientific process is a perfect process for its intended purpose - to test ideas in order to explain how natural phenomena work in the realm of space and time. Natural phenomena can range from at one end - the known universe - to at the other end - the seemingly infinitesimally small Higg's boson (aka - God particle). At either of those extreme ends of natural phenomena, questions of science often meet the philosophical - e.g. was there a BEFORE the big bang? Most of us, however, reside somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. Even in the in between, there is still so much we have to learn - about ourselves, about our world. I believe the wonder, awe, and beauty of the unknown will always be a part of our existence because it is central to being human to question, wonder, and desire to know. I have yet to meet a person without these traits. I have to agree with a recent incredibly thought-provoking interview of Richard Dawkins on the Daily Show that this curiosity just may lead to humanity's demise (Really, watch it. It's fascinating). Yes, I agree that how certain humans will choose to use our accumulated knowledge will likely destroy us long before our use of the scientific process has a fighting chance of coming anywhere near understanding all there is to understand. Like an addiction to a bad drug, we can't stop our craving for knowledge. And I know we never will; I hope we never will. We need solutions to humanity's problems like food allergies, and understanding the problems should go a long way in helping us fix the problems.
Whew, that was deep! I hope you don't mind my random musings (the best thing about a personal blog, in my opinion!) But, back to what I really wanted to discuss - the scientific process in all its perfect glory. The process is perfect. Humans are not. Therefore, how humans use this process is inherently imperfect. The steps - observation, question, hypothesis, test the hypothesis (experiment), analyze the data, conclude - gets repeated over and over and over... it's like an upward spiral staircase continuously climbing higher in our knowledge. Any wrong ideas (hypotheses) will eventually be uncovered through experimentation. This is the beauty of the scientific process - it self corrects our wrong ideas.
It's been a busy week and let's face it - the last several posts verge on the rather deep. So, because I'm a scientist, an educator, and a Mom to a food allergic child, I've decided to start a new little series on the blog aimed at fun, simple science experiments you can do with your food allergic child to inspire all the little future Einsteins and Curies out there! Oh, and if you're an adult who does not happen to have a child, by all means, let your inner curiosity that is itching to get out (I hope not literally) and share with the little scientists in your life, whether it is niece, nephew, or family friend!
Have I mentioned that I love science?! Have I mentioned that I love fostering the science in all of us?! My poor children are probably doomed to all things geek-dom and I couldn't be any prouder. Science rocks! As humans, we are constantly striving to understand the world around us, and I strongly believe we are all born with an innate scientific ability that gets squashed for way too many of us as we get more "educated."
Alright, I'll get off my little soapbox, and get to the first fun science project for kiddos, inspired by none other than JR's fascination with all things "bug."
I admit it. I am a life scientist with a very narrow focus on all things vertebrate (those animals with a backbone), and I have neglected a large swath of the animal kingdom for far too long. One major animal division (phylum) are the arthropods - those animals with an exoskeleton (hard outer shell) in lieu of an internal skeleton like us humans. Included in this phylum are classes of animals, which include insects, spiders (arachnids - FYI - did you know the highly allergenic dust mite is similar to a spider? Now you do!), and the highly allergenic shell fish (crustaceans), among others. By the way, a great way to ruffle the feathers of an entomologist...oh wait, "bugs" don't have feathers, is to lump spiders together with insects. Faux pas - don't ever do that. Here is a nice side-by-side comparison of these two classes of arthropod.
Now that you know what insects are - on to the fun part - the science! When it comes to insects, I'm a bit inept. Therefore, I will refer you to an awesome, easy-to-do experiment on a fantastic blog by The Bug Chicks! In this experiment (link to experiment), you can leave a bug trap outside in your back yard (different brightly colored bowls filled with soapy water) and determine which color bowl is the "better" trap. Be sure to define what "better" means - one possible example is a higher number of bugs landing in the trap. And, like all good scientists do, form a hypothesis and think of what your experimental control will be - your baseline for comparison against the brightly colored bowls, your treatment. Don't forget to encourage your kids to form a hypothesis (what do they think is going to happen and why). Even if you, the parent, have an idea of what the outcome of the experiment will be, shh... do not tell your kids! Let them discover it all on their own - this is doing science! Once you have your results, look online to see if you can find an explanation for why your experiment turned out the way it did :). Have fun and be sure to comment below with your findings if you end up doing the experiment!
Tools for your buggy experiment. Image source: The Bug Chicks
Oh, and if you or you or your child has a potential allergy or are appalled by the creepy crawlies, you can always turn to anatomically correct lego bug collections for all the insect fun without the creepy crawly :).
I am in no way endorsing this product, other than to say this looks really cool! Image source: http://nerdapproved.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/lego9.jpg?cb5e28
This week, I feel truly blessed to be a part of a community of Moms, inspired by love, to use our talents to make the world a better place for our food allergy kiddos. Food Allergy Sleuth is nominated as a Top 25 blog for food allergies by the Circle of Moms! By the way, this will be my only attempt throughout the remainder of the blog post at "shameless" self promotion. If you like what I do, follow the link and click the big yellow 'thumbs up' for Food Allergy Sleuth once every 24 hours until Oct 17 :).
Thanks to the community at Circle of Moms, my eyes have truly been opened to the number of Mom bloggers out there. It has been an absolute joy to read through so many other family's experiences in dealing with food allergies and to even connect with a few of the other Mom's individually! I encourage you to take a gander at the excellent work of some of these amazing women.
Since this is a "science" blog and I am a scientist at heart, I can't help but notice one glaring trait of most food allergy bloggers - a distinct lack of male food allergy bloggers (not that I was expecting many men to show up in a top 25 list for Food Allergy Moms!). In general, though, throughout my experiences becoming more entrenched in the food allergy community, I've noticed a distinct lack of men who are blogger-vocal about food allergies. Or is it an overwhelming abundance of women? Is the glass half empty or half full? (Hint - judging by the cartoon at the side, I may fall into the "realist" camp!).
In a little "test" to explore this observation further, I opened Google and searched "food allergy blog" this morning. My reasoning is that by searching "food allergy blog," Google should return hits regardless of whether they are authored by a Mom, a Dad, an allergy-sufferer, friend, foe, alien, one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eater. (You can thank me later for getting this song stuck in your head :). I selected the first 25 "hits" that were personal blogs (e.g. not organizations like FAAN), visited their site, and determined whether they were male or female, a food allergy parent, and/or a food allergy sufferer (as self-reported, of course). What I found was shocking! In my sample of 25, only 8% of food allergy bloggers were men, which means 92% of food allergy bloggers were women! 84% were a parent to a food-allergic child, while 16% were food-allergic adults who did not specify if they also had a food allergic child. Interestingly, 24% all bloggers were food allergy sufferers, meaning that there are a few food-allergic adult bloggers out there who are raising food-allergic children! If I tease the data out of the two factors 1) gender and 2) whether the individual is a parent to a food-allergic child, 80% of food allergy bloggers are Moms to food-allergic children!
Of course, my little "study," is by no means scientifically rigorous (e.g. the error of the sample may be quite large and the google search method may be flawed - I'll explain later), but I think it starts to get at a couple of really interesting key points. There are distinct biological differences between men and women (besides the obvious, folks!), and women just may be a social force to be reckoned with.
I am a neuroscientist (a scientist who studies the brain) by training. Even though it is not my area of expertise, differences between the male and female brain is truly fascinating. It is clear from many years of research that there are profound differences in how male and female brains are wired (for more information, see this excellent, relatively easy to understand summary by the Dana Foundation). So, what does this mean?
If women's brains are indeed wired differently, it means that women observe and engage with the world differently than men. Something that has likely been obvious to most human-beings since Adam and Eve :). For awhile, there has been a "movement" that women are essentially the same as men, mentally. Scientific evidence suggests otherwise. In fact, testosterone that is made by a male fetus (genetically X-Y) early in prenatal development (before birth ), appears to be critical in establishing male brain pathways. Interestingly, once testosterone reaches the boy brain, it gets converted to estrogen (link to a review research article)! Yes, this is not a typo. In order for a little boy to be a little boy, he needs to have his testosterone converted to the "female" hormone, estrogen! Now, who is the better sex? Is it evidence that our bodies convert the "toxin" also known as testosterone into a more manageable substance (Ha ha - I'm being humorous here. No, I don't think testosterone is actually poison!). There is no way I'm weighing in which sex is the better sex, but I'll leave you with this little blast from the past from Annie Get Your Gun.
So if men and women truly are different from one another, perhaps my little "study" on the gender prevalence among food allergy bloggers reflects a much grander observation. Perhaps women banding together may in fact truly be vehicles of social awareness and change. I come full circle back to one possible flaw in my "study" using a Google search for the terms "food allergy blog." You see, Google and search engines like Google, use mathematical algorithms (complex formulas) to return the most "relevant" items first. How search engines define what is "relevant" to a human relies heavily on how well webpages are referenced by other webpages. So let's say that women are indeed better than men at connecting with one another to deal with issues and promote social change simply because our brains our wired to do so. This means women's blogs will tend to reference other women's blogs, and thus Google may inflate the percentage of food allergy bloggers who are women. I would be interested to know if there is a different way to search for blogs that doesn't rely on the "relevancy" criteria and if the results would be different than the Google search.
Many examples from history suggest that women banding together are powerful forces for social awareness and change (think of the women's suffrage movement or even heaven forbid prohibition). This is only anecdotal in nature, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that food allergy Mom's are moving heaven and earth to raise awareness to an uneducated public, while simultaneously keeping our kiddos safe, and giving them the most that life has to offer in spite of an uphill food battle. Most importantly, we seem to get together and want to share our knowledge with others! Here is my tip of the hat to all my fellow food allergy Mom's out there making a difference in any way that we know how, whether it be great or small.
Sidenote: I'd love to hear from any food allergy men and Dad's out there! I am a huge believer that the more diverse we are in our thinking, the more ideas for solutions and change are possible. Here is a shout-out to two of the blogs authored by men who made the Google search, top 25 list.
1. http://www.allergyeats.com/blog/
2. http://foodallergiesrock.com/
