Salt-sensitive blood pressure | Parkinson's article updated
New on Genetic Lifehacks:
Salt-sensitive blood pressure
Cutting out salt is usually the first recommendation for people with high blood pressure. But for some people, a low-salt diet may not do much to lower their blood pressure, and other solutions may work better. Genetic variants significantly influence individual salt sensitivity, with certain genotypes making people more prone to high blood pressure in response to high salt intake. We are all unique, and understanding your genetic variants may help you to more quickly figure out the best way to lower your blood pressure.
Major article updates:
Parkinson's Disease: Genetics and Environment
Parkinson's disease and Lewy body disease involve damage to dopaminergic neurons in a specific region of the brain. This article has been updated to include a more detailed look at what happens in the brain to cause damage to the dopaminergic neurons, as well as other susceptibility genes.
Growing and improving:
As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, the Genetic Lifehacks community is growing - which is wonderful, but with a few recent growing pains. I've now upgraded the site to run on a bigger, better, faster server, and I'm working on additional features to make the user experience smoother and easier. As a member-supported endeavor, my goal is to continually increase the value for members.
Coming soon:
Manganese
Retinal detachment
Interesting new studies:
1) Infection and chronic disease activate a systemic brain-muscle signaling axis
Neuroinflammation can cause symptoms outside of the central nervous system, and this may be key in fatigue and muscle exhaustion in long Covid and ME/CFS. The study (in fruit flies) showed that the neuroinflammation caused IL-6 to activate JAK-STAT signaling in skeletal muscle, resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction in the muscles.
2. "Blue zones" may just be due to vital record errors
This is a preprint study looking into the phenomenon of "Blue Zones" - the areas of the world where people apparently live longer. The authors point out that the areas where people are thought to live the longest - to be supercentenarians - are also areas where vital records aren't as well maintained. " Only 18% of ‘exhaustively’ validated supercentenarians have a birth certificate, falling to zero percent in the USA, and supercentenarian birthdates are concentrated on days divisible by five: a pattern indicative of widespread fraud and error. Finally, the designated ‘blue zones’ of Sardinia, Okinawa, and Ikaria corresponded to regions with low incomes, low literacy, high crime rate and short life expectancy relative to their national average. As such, relative poverty and short lifespan constitute unexpected predictors of centenarian and supercentenarian status and support a primary role of fraud and error in generating remarkable human age records."
3. What does psilocybin do to the brain?
There's a fascinating new study in Nature showing the effects of psilocybin on brain function using brain imaging. The researchers found a profound desynchronization in the brain, and they discovered that the effects were different if the study participants were told to focus on certain physical things. If you're interested in the topic, one of the researchers wrote an article about his experience with running the study.
4. Haunting the Human Genome Project
For anyone interested in the history of genetics research, this Undark article is an interesting read. The Human Genome Project started in the late 90s as a monumental effort to decode the whole human genome, and it was supposed to include genetic data as a mixture of a number of different people. However, one person's data ended up being used for the majority of the genome reference sequence.
Graphical overviews for the new article (for all the visual learners):
