Ahsan Iqbal

what about bruises? For example consider the case of a soft part of body hit firmly by a round stone. What should be done quickly after being hit?

my opinion on the issue is slightly different. You said that the risk of CV (cardiovascular) diseases in AB group people is about 30-40% higher than in people with O group. The question I am going to ask is how many people will be affected by a CV disease just because they are AB. The answer should be very few if not none. Other factors like diet, lifestyle etc are much much more important than your blood group. Once these major factors are controlled, the role of your blood group becomes negligible... And if modern world means drinking alcohol, eating lots of junk and doing nothing but sitting or sleeping, then all blood types are a genetic failure. Some more than others, but they are all failures..

It was in response to "I implore you should not shutdown ideas so quickly".

Brain transplants! Well, you should call it human transformation.... I think their is nothing impossible and there would be one day when we would be able to transplant brains. But just think about the consequences. It is the brain that makes us what we are. I know a person as my father because I have memories of that person acting as a father to me. stored in my brain since I was born. My name is "Ahsan Iqbal" because it is stored in my brain that everyone calls me by this name. I am writing this post because there is some portion of my brain that compels me to do it. And every person has a different brain with different memories, different likings, different dis-likings etc. And all of this is the property of the brain exclusively. So if I receive someone else's brain, would I remain what I am now. Or would I be transformed in what the original owner of the brain was? The answer should be simple. So brain transplant would mean transformation from one person to another, keeping your old shape and form.

I am not saying that animal experiments have not proved fruitful. Indeed they have. We have learned a lot from them. The point I wanted to make was that there is a limit the the knowledge we can gain from animal experiments. This is based on simple explanation that animal brains are not even near to human brain in terms of physiologic development. We can get solid results from experiments on the hind brain or the mid brain. As their is not such an extensive difference in these portions of brains of humans and animals. But when it comes to the forebrain, the scenario changes completely. Human cerebrum is way more developed than other animals' and in this case, animal experiments are very unlikely to provide solid results as the material of experiment doesn't contain the ingredients for which it is tested.

I should explain in medical terms what @ecrdndrs said. Actually, it is the long bones and the vertebral column that matter the most for the height of an individual. The long bones of human body include femur, tibia, fibula, radius, ulna, and humerus. A typical long bone is divided into three parts during teen ages. These are Epiphysis (the head), Diaphysis (the shaft) and Metaphysis (the connection between head and shaft). Before about 20 years of age, the metaphysis of a long is cartilaginous. It has active cells that produce new cartilaginous mass, which is actively converted to bony mass, thus causing an increase in length of bone. After about 20 years, the metaphyseal cartilage itself becomes converted to bony mass (ossified) and hence no more growth can take place. At this stage, the epiphysis and diaphysis are said to be fused. Once they are fused, no hormones or drugs are going to help to increase the length of a person to a significant extent. But before the fusion occurs, supplements can help to increase the length. However, it must be understood that height of individual depends on three factors: 1) Genetic makeup 2) Nutrition 3) Lifestyle and health If all three factors are favorable, a person should attain the maximum height permitted by his genes. NOTE: In case someone wants more information on the epiphysis, diaphysis thing, here are a few links: Parts of a young bone Process of bone formation Growth of a long bone

One thing to remember folks: the brain itself is insensitive to pain. So there is no way you would feel like if a tight hat is on your head, when your brain swells. It is the meninges and stretch of the nerves that initiate headache.

That is what I would also recommend

There can be infinite number of ideas but even when we think about ideas, we have to know the limits. How about this idea that some day we would be able to plug a Solid State Drive to our brain that will store all the information permanently and the we won't have to worry about forgetting something and like a computer of today we would be able to access all of it instantaneously. Who knows, it becomes true someday. But the point is that we should present only those ideas that seem possible to the current state of thinking of the general population. After a few decades there would be ideas that we cannot even think about. Nothing is impossible but this doesn't mean that we should just start assuming and forget the era we are living in.

Where is the link?

You are absolutely right about different brain researches conducted on animals that have proved to be fruitful for humans as well. The point I wanted to make was that for researches on areas of brain like the frontal lobes of cerebrum, we need to have some samples available. We cannot perform such researches on a Chimp's brain. They might provide ideas but never solid results. Yes we do have access to human brain in cases of brain injury or other disorders, but the real question is that can we experiment on them. The answer would be no, because we would never want to damage someone's brain just for our research. The most important part of brain research is the loss of a specific type of function because of injury to a specific area. And most of the ideas and conclusions about human bran have come thorough this route.

There is no way that HIV virus could be removed from the body by changing every single blood cell. The reason is that blood is no the only place where HIV virus stays. As a friend has already mentioned, there are other places like the bone marrow where the virus would stay and there is no way you can remove it from there.

It is not like what you are trying to make it. No matter how complex a thing becomes, it will still be composed of some basic components and all we need to do is find out those basic components and their arrangement. It is very common for an artist to break complex structures and illustrations into simple basic forms and then make proper arrangements to correctly express the original illustration. I might sound a little strange but think of complex organic molecules. Think of DNA. We have uncoded their mysteries because we found out the basic elements that make them and then we found the proper arrangement. The same applies to brain. We are not limited by thoughts because every complex thought can be broken down into simple components, most of which we know. The most important hinderance in brain research is the access to it. No other living being has nearly as complex forebrain as human beings and because we cannot perform brain experiments directly on humans, we are limited to under-developed brain samples, which can never provide sufficient information. So in my opinion, to understand something, you first need to have access to it, which in this case is not going to happen as brain experiments are fatal. That is why brain research lags so much behind.

That's good news for both patients and medical professionals. If it is proven to be decisive and accurate enough, it will surely be of much clinical importance.

As long as you don't suffer with malnutrition, or some sort of disorder, I don't think these proteins are going to increase your efficiency in storing memory. Yes, I do realize that some substances help increase the effectiveness of a person to store memory but memory loss with old age is as natural as stiffening of joints. We might find some substance in future that can help reduce the speed with which memory weakens but to absolutely get rid of effects of old age will lead to immortality. And Immortality is not going to be achieved anytime soon, if ever. Generally, people do mental exercises and other training to keep their brain healthy. In my opinion such exercises (accompanied with necessary nutrients) are the best way to go.

I didn't get exactly what you meant in this paragraph. What I understood from the quoted paragraph is that you are finding it difficult to understand how these thin epithelia make such complex structures as the stomach. If this is the problem then the answer is quite simple. Consider the case of stomach. When you go from inside to outside, you encounter the following layers. Mucosa Submucosa Muscularis Externa Serosa Now where comes the epithelium in all these? The answer is that epithelium is the first layer (from inside) of mucosa. Beneath the epithelium is lamina propria and then muscularis mucosae. So the purpose of all this was to tell you that epithelium is just a small component of the structure of stomach. The bulk of the wall is formed connective tissue and muscle. So those hundreds of thousands of cells are not all epithelial cells. In fact very few of them are epithelial. Most of them are either connective tissue cells or muscle cells. I hope this helps. But if I have explained the wrong thing to you, please tell me what exactly you don't understand so that I may help you.

There is one theory that explains this phenomenon. According to this theory, in the night when a person is resting, the forces of weight are no more acting on the intervertebral discs. These are elastic discs and can compress as a result of forces of weight during the day time when the person is either sitting or standing. So when you wake up in the morning, the discs have expanded to their original size because compressional forces were absent. This can result in increase in the length of the vertebral column and consequently the person as a whole.

Certainly no normal person can gain 2 kilos in one day. And your idea is rather brilliant. You should put the additional weight in somewhere not easily discoverable. Underwear is the best place for this. The next issue is how to get the additional 2 kilos of weight to fit into an underwear. The obvious solution is to look for something which weights more and volumes less (i.e. is very dense). And as we all know, lead is the most dense metal so if you can find some lead, this will do nicely for you. Another advantage with lead is that you can transform it into virtually any shape. So you can make any virtually any structure out of it to fit in your underwear.

I read one other author and they he has similar description of nerves. Basically, I was studying the cranial nerves. The first cranial nerve (olfactory nerve) is a purely sensory nerve. So it should be described as "nerve FROM the upper part of the nasal cavity". Instead everyone describes it as "nerve TO the upper part of the nasal cavity". Probably their is some embryology involved in it. I don't have any knowledge of the embryology of the nervous system. Probably the nerves (whether sensory or motor) in the fetus follow the path from the CNS to the periphery and probably this is the reason why both sensory and motor nerves are described as "nerve TO the structure". But I still need confirmation on this.

I didn't get your point. Why won't anyone want to know the hormones or other chemicals that stimulate muscle growth. Probably you are saying this because you are afraid that people will abuse it. They will use it to over grow their muscles in short amount of time and hence they will face many serious side-effects. You are right in your thinking but knowing the substances has many beneficial positive uses as well. It would be particularly useful for patients of diseases in which muscle mass is reduced. It would certainly be a big relief for them. I would also like to talk about the effect of nerves. A few days back, when I was reading a neuroanatomy text, I was amazed to find that nerves have significant effects on muscles. It is the type of nerve fibers that determine the type of the muscle. For instance, the alpha motor neurons innervate the type ii muscle fibers and the gamma motor neurons innervate the type i muscle fibers. If for any reason, the innervation of type I muscle fibers changes from gamma to alpha motor neurons then the type i fibers will eventually change to the type ii fibers. This is very significant especially in crush injuries and clearly indicates the effect of neurons of the anatomy of muscles.

I was reading a neuroanatomy book lately. I noted that every time a description of a nerve is made, the author has said the "fibers to the structure". There has been no distinction of whether the fibers are sensory or motor. Both are described as "fibers to the structure". My basic knowledge of the nervous system tells me that motor nerves start from the cerebral cortex (mostly the pre-central gyrus) through the spinal cord or cranial nerve nuclei reaches the structure. Sensory neurons, in contrast, starts at the sensory organ to the spinal cord or cranial nerve nuclei to the relaying stations in the brain and finally to the cerebral cortex (mostly the post-central gyrus). What I want to say is that motor nerve fibers pass FROM the central nervous system TO the peripheral structure. On the other hand the sensory nerve fibers pass FROM the sense organs TO the central nervous system. So when describing the routes of the nerves, shouldn't this be taken into account. Shouldn't we describe sensory nerves fibers as for instance "fibers from the skin of the face pass to trigeminal ganglion in its three divisions" instead of "sensory fibers to the skin of the face pass from the trigeminal ganglion in its three divisions". I have never found a description in which the former method is followed so I am guessing that there is some solid reason behind why sensory fibers are not described as mentioned above. I expect the same difference in description as exists in the description of arteries and veins (arteries TO the kidney and veins FROM the kidney). Has anyone any idea??

It definitely can't be as simple as this, but if the person (mentioned in the first post) as actually conducted a research, then probably eye color is a big factor in determining the color behaviors.

Very interesting! I am also waiting for the answer to this interesting question

Thanks DrmDoc. At last we got a point on which we both can agree.