Day: 01/28/2023

The Future of Food—CRISPR Crops That Capture Carbon

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Genetically engineered plants are sprouting up to restore the carbon cycle and prevent the further buildup of carbon dioxide

There is a push to use CRISPR to make agricultural technologies that pull carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air and store it better in the soil. With the help of CRISPR technology, scientists are making gene edited plant varieties that are better at storing carbon and don’t have the traits of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that are made with transgenes.

Many research projects have sprung up to enhance biological carbon sequestration and thereby help restore balance to the carbon cycle and prevent further buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere. For example, carbon sequestration research is being conducted at the Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI), an organization founded by Nobel laureate Jennifer A. Doudna, PhD. In June 2022, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative gave $11 million to the IGI to help scientists find ways to protect or heal the ecosystem from harm caused by humans.

Next-generation agriculture

Bradley Ringeisen
Bradley Ringeisen, PhD
IGI

Bradley Ringeisen, PhD, executive director at the IGI, argues that we must change the way we do agriculture. “We’ve got to feed 2 to 3 billion more people in the next 30 years,” Ringeisen points out. “We can’t keep doing it with the carbon footprint that agriculture has right now. We’re talking about generations, and we have to do this for the planet. And there’s a lot of opportunity in agriculture for carbon capture. Since the start of modern agriculture 125 years ago, the soil has lost hundreds of gigatons of carbon. But crops can be used to help add carbon back into the soil via engineered plants.”

The IGI has started with rice as the model organism. “If we succeed in rice, there are going to be homologues in other grass varieties,” Ringeisen predicts. “Simultaneously, we’re working to try to improve the genetic tractability of sorghum, a really deep-rooted crop that can be used for carbon capture and grain for livestock feed. It’s also a bioenergy crop, so you can imagine converting some of the above-ground biomass into bio-oils or other forms of bioenergy as well. We really see this potentially blooming out into a lot of different areas to really have global impact.”

CRISPR genome editing can be used to help agriculture
A program organized by the IGI is exploring how CRISPR genome editing can be used to help agriculture adapt to climate change and improve carbon sequestration. The program encompasses three working groups, each of which is focused on a different stage of the journey of carbon from the atmosphere into the soil: (1) sequestration of atmospheric carbon; (2) flow of carbon to plant roots and root exudates (secretions); and (3) retention of carbon in the soil.

Championing carbon flow

The IGI has designed a program that looks at every single possible touchpoint along the carbon cycle in agriculture. “Right now, farmers and genetic engineers aren’t thinking about this holistically as a carbon cycle,” Ringeisen observes. “How do we increase yield? How do we protect rice from a specific pathogen? People are taking little bites, but they’re not looking holistically at the entire process. The IGI is trying to look at essentially every single step.”

Photosynthesis

The first step is to use genetic engineering or CRISPR to change the process of photosynthesis. Ringeisen says that if you’re going to do carbon capture with biology focused on agriculture, photosynthesis is the way to go because of the increased crop yields and biomass above and below ground. “We’re counting on enhancing photosynthesis so that if we partition off a greater extent of things going down into the roots or going down deeper into the soil, we aren’t going to be reducing the yields,” Ringeisen explains. “If anything, we hope to increase the yields, but that all starts with photosynthesis.”

sorghum
Peggy G. Lemaux, PhD, is a professor of plant and microbial biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the IGI. She is shown here holding sorghum, a nutrient-rich serial grain. At the IGI, sorghum plants are being transformed to unlock their potential as a carbon dioxide removal platform. [UC Berkeley photo by Neil Freese]

The IGI team is looking into a number of photosynthetic genes that can be put into groups based on how they respond to light and darkness. Krishna K. Niyogi, PhD, a professor of plant and microbial biology at UC Berkeley and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), has found a number of genes that could be used to improve photosynthesis. He is known for his work on stopping the mechanism that shuts down photosynthesis to keep light reactions going longer.

But attempts to use CRISPR to genetically engineer plants haven’t succeeded. David Savage, PhD, an HHMI investigator and associate professor of molecular and cell biology at UC Berkeley, told GEN that plants are difficult to target with the CRISPR-Cas9 system because they are highly evolutionarily divergent in ploidy and difficult to culture in tissue form. For example, as Savage notes, CRISPR-Cas9 makes it possible to make “knock out” mice in just a few months, whereas the corresponding experiment on plants would take years.

Savage wants to enhance plant delivery and create extremely effective editors. To do so, Savage has devised a high-throughput screening platform that gets down to protoplasts—plant cells without cell walls that are totipotent, sensitive, and versatile. With this screening platform, there is no need to wait through entire plant life cycles, from seedlings to adult plants, to be able to ask whether a genetic modification–based approach worked or whether a gene was a good target. Savage believes that the platform approach could improve photosynthesis by 30 to 50%.

rice callus
At the IGI, projects to improve rice plants include those focusing on carbon capture, as well as those focusing on greater disease resistance and drought tolerance. To make it possible to confirm the transformation of rice callus tissue, IGI researchers inserted a gene for a red fluorescence marker. Expression of the marker helps them select tissue for growing seedlings with the desired genome edit.

Root depth

All of this sequestered carbon has to go somewhere, and that’s what the second step is about: plant carbon flow. The additional sequestered carbon that doesn’t go into the above-ground crop yield mostly goes into the below-ground biomass, into the roots, and out through the root exudates (secretions) to the soil. More than 40% of the root’s dry mass is made up of pure carbon, making root mass an essential attribute.

The IGI is focusing on how to enhance the depth of the roots because the deeper you pump carbon into the ground, the greater the likelihood the carbon will stay in the soil. According to Ringeisen, the first few centimeters of soil are where a lot of the carbon turnover occurs. But if the carbon gets into the roots below that till layer, then there’s a much higher probability of the carbon staying there for longer periods of time.

Brian Staskawicz
Brian Staskawicz, PhD
IGI

Brian Staskawicz, PhD, director of sustainable agriculture at the IGI, is partnering with Pamela Ronald, PhD, distinguished professor of plant pathology at UC Davis, to create rice and grass roots that are deeper—at least 30 or 40% deeper than what they are with high-yield varieties. Ronald created a library of thousands of rice mutants by effectively knocking out every gene, which Ringeisen believes will turn out to be a gold mine of information. Ringeisen says that this research initiative has already identified a few variants that are showing a lot of promise.

Pamela Ronald
Pamela Ronald, PhD
UC Davis

“[Ronald] has found a couple of different genes and ways to affect root depth, but that is the tip of the iceberg,” Ringeisen stresses. “If she focuses on root architectures in that library, there will be a huge amount of discovery. We will focus early on these mechanisms that she has already found. There will be a lot of potential discovery in that mutant library from her moving forward.” The goal is to work with those variants and identify other genes and processes to extend the roots even deeper to conduct field trials.

Soil microbiome

The third step deals with capturing the carbon that leaves the roots to look at how the carbon flow into the soil works. “We’re trying to understand what kinds of keystone mechanisms are at play between the rice, its secretions, and the rice microbiome,” Ringeisen says. “How do we engineer that system? Is there a role for CRISPR in engineering the plant? Is there a role for CRISPR to potentially directly engineer the microbes? Or is it potentially just how you feed the microbiome and how you sort of farm the microbiome to promote the organisms that you want?”

Jillian Banfield, PhD, a soil microbiologist at UC Berkeley who famously introduced Doudna to CRISPR in 2005, is trying to reconstruct the genomes of the organisms that are actively taking out the carbon that the plant is making. Her team’s study of the rice paddy microbiome is probably its most in-depth work, and Banfield will use it to look into ways to reduce soil emissions. “If you can reduce the emissions, that means you are probably shutting down the escape of greenhouse gases and maybe building up more carbon in the soil as well,” Ringeisen suggests.

Jennifer Pett-Ridge
Jennifer Pett-Ridge, PhD
Lawrence Livermore

Jennifer Pett-Ridge, PhD, a staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, works with Banfield. Pett-Ridge is in charge of tracking the organisms of microbial communities and determining how they may stay in the soil for longer periods of time. Her story is one of sticky molecules that help the carbon adhere to the inorganic and mineral deposits in the soil. She thinks that the trophic interactions in the rhizosphere, the underground zone within the influence of the roots, are what create the precursor for some of the carbon to be absorbed onto mineral surfaces and caught up in little aggregates. She also studies processes involving extracellular polysaccharides and extracellular polymeric substances, which tend to be enriched in soils where carbon is increasing.

Pett-Ridge’s plan for the project supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is to focus on crops harvestable for food or fodder. She says that we have control over crops in a way that we do not have control over wildland plants. She hopes to develop crops that will have deeper roots, interact with more extracellular polymeric substances, and (perhaps someday) develop enhanced partnerships with the different populations living in their rhizosphere. All those traits take advantage of what we naturally know leads to more carbon accrual.

The IGI is working from all angles, framing solutions in a way that’s acceptable to the richer farmers in the United States but also to farmers around the world. “We’re hoping that the IGI can be the hub to help advance technologies that promote a net-zero farm,” Ringeisen declares. “This is the future.”

This Common Aquatic Plant Could Produce Buckets of Biofuel

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Engineered duckweed could be a prolific “green” oil producer

This Common Aquatic Plant Could Produce Buckets of Biofuel
Photo illustration of duckweed engineered to produce oil for biofuels/bioproducts.

Scientists have figured out how to coax copious amounts of oil from duckweed, one of nature’s fastest-growing aquatic plants. Converting such plant oil into biodiesel for transportation and heating could be a big part of a more sustainable future.

For a new study in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, researchers genetically engineered duckweed plants to produce seven times more oil per acre than soybeans—currently the most commonly used biodiesel-producing plant. Study lead author John Shanklin, a biochemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, says further research could double the engineered duckweed’s oil output in the next few years. Shanklin and his colleagues conducted the study with researchers at New York’s Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Unlike fossil fuels, which form underground over hundreds of millions of years, biofuels can be replenished faster than they are used. Fuels made from new and used vegetable oils, animal fat and algae can have a lower carbon footprint than fossil fuels do, depending on how they are sourced—but there has been a recent backlash against them. This is partly because so many crops now go into energy production rather than food; biofuels take up more than 100 million acres of the world’s agricultural land.

Duckweed, common on every continent but Antarctica, is among the world’s most productive plants per acre, and the researchers suggest it could be a game-changing renewable energy source for three key reasons. First, it grows readily in water, so it wouldn’t compete with food crops for prime agricultural land. Second, duckweed can thrive in agricultural pollution from, say, pig and poultry farms—potentially cleaning up some of the nitrogen and phosphorus such farms release into the water.

Illustration of a hand holding a gas nozzle.

Third, Shanklin and his team found a way to sidestep a major biotechnological hurdle: According to Rebecca Roston, a biochemist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, who was not involved in the study, engineered green plants typically expend a lot of energy on oil production and thus stop growing. For the new study, Shanklin says, the researchers added an oil-producing gene that would be inactive at first, “turning it on like a light switch” by introducing a particular molecule only when the plant had finished growing.

This process “worked fabulously well,” Roston says. “If it replicates in other species—and there’s no reason to think that it would not—this can solve one of our biggest issues, which is how can we make more oil in more plants without negatively affecting growth.”

To scale production up to industrial levels, scientists will need to design and produce large-scale vessels for growing engineered plants and extracting oil—a challenge, Shanklin says, because duckweed is a nonmainstream crop without much existing infrastructure.

Scientists Fire Lasers at the Sky to Control Lightning

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Laser beams could be used to deflect lightning strikes from vulnerable places such as airports and wind farm

Scientists Fire Lasers at the Sky to Control Lightning
A new “laser lightning rod” in action.

Lightning strikes about 40 million times in the U.S. each year. This natural phenomenon is terrifyingly random, and we rely mainly on lightning rods—a nearly 300-year-old technology—to deal with it. But researchers are finally working on a more 21st-century solution: laser beams.

Pioneered by Benjamin Franklin, the lightning rod works well to defend a building. But it only has a limited ability to protect larger swaths of land or sprawling facilities such as wind farms, airports and rocket launch pads. So a team of scientists has tried using a high-powered laser to guide lightning strikes atop a mountain in Switzerland. This “laser lightning rod” technique that could one day deflect strikes from important large-scale infrastructure. The results of the researchers’ new study were published this week in Nature Photonics.

“What they’ve done is very impressive,” says Jerry Moloney, an optical scientist at the University of Arizona, who was one of the early pioneers of this laser application but was not involved in the study. It’s “a very, very sophisticated setup.”

Lightning occurs when friction among water droplets creates a static electric charge within clouds, usually during storms. This electricity builds before being discharged in a giant spark, which can travel between the cloud and the ground, either upward or downward, following the path of least resistance. Regular lightning rods are made of conductive metal, and they provide a preferential point for the lightning to strike and then safely channel the charge around a building and into the ground. But metal is not the only way to attract lightning away from more vulnerable targets.

Laser lightning rod
The laser lightning rod fires 1,000 times a second.

In the new experiment, a high-powered laser turns a column of air into an electrical conductor. When the laser is fired, the air molecules in the beam’s path are stripped of their electrons in a process called ionization. This transforms the air, which is normally insulating, into an attractive point for the lightning to hit—effectively creating a giant, temporary and controllable lightning rod in the sky above the area to be protected. Scientists had dreamed of building laser lightning rods for decades, but previous experiments had largely failed. Lasers that were available at the time could only pulse around 10 times per second, explains Aurélien Houard, a physicist at the École Polytechnique in France and first author of the study. That rate is too slow to keep an air column ionized. The new laser can fire 1,000 times per second, with each pulse lasting one trillionth of a second.

“You can burn stone if you want with this laser,” says Houard. The laser has an average power of one kilowatt (roughly the amount of electricity required to operate a large oven or refrigerator), says the paper’s senior author Jean-Pierre Wolf, a physicist at the University of Geneva.

The researchers tested their laser’s ability to draw lightning atop Säntis, a prominent peak in the Swiss Alps that was chosen because lightning often hits a telecommunication tower at its summit. There, during the summer of 2021, the team observed 16 lightning strikes—four of which occurred while the laser was powered on. And in all four cases, sensors—either a high-speed camera or a high-frequency electromagnetic wave detector—captured the lightning following the beam’s path. The results are preliminary for now, and the authors hope to fine-tune the technique with more data from future studies.

“The next step will be closer to the real-world applications,” Wolf says, “basically redoing this experiment, say, close to a launching pad or close to an airport.”

Lightning strikes at airports are an “ongoing issue,” and they not only delay flights but can also injure or kill employees and travelers, says Irene Miller, an assistant professor of aviation at Southern Illinois University, who was not involved in the new study. Most airports currently rely on early-warning systems to prevent planes from taxiing or landing when the risk of a strike is high.

It remains unclear how laser lightning rod technology might be adapted to this setting because even tiny lasers aimed at the sky are notoriously dangerous to pilots. During their recent mountaintop experiment, the researchers worked with aviation authorities to designate a no-fly zone around Säntis. One way to address such concerns could be to adjust the laser’s wavelength and power, and the study authors hope to explore that idea in future projects. For now, though, Benjamin Franklin’s innovation will have to do.

3 Age-Reversing, Body-Regenerating Substances Backed by Science

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Food is medicine. We know that already. But did you know it can also reverse your biological age and regenerate tissues in your body, therefore preventing you from needing to use medicine in the first place? Here are three common substances you probably didn’t know act like “elixirs of youth.”

1. Wasabi for Nerve Regeneration

Wasabi is an incredibly spicy and delicious part of the Japanese food experience. This preparation of Japanese horseradish is from the Brassicaceae family, along with broccoli and mustard greens.

It has a wide range of health benefits, from anticancer properties to combatting infection, which you can learn more about on our wasabi research database. One of the least recognized, yet most promising, health properties of wasabi is its potenital ability to stimulate the regeneration of nerve tissue. 

A 2008 study published in the Journal of Neurochemistry found that wasabi contains a compound known as 6-methylsulfinylhexyl isothiocyanate (6-HITC). 6-HITC is similar to sulforaphane, another powerful sulfur-containing compound found in broccoli that’s also known to stimulate brain cell regeneration.

6-HITC stimulates the production of nerve growth factor (NGF), which according to the study plays an “essential role in the growth, development, survival and functional maintenance of neurons in the central and peripheral systems.” The study noted this could have a role in addressing both neurodegenerative and ischemic conditions of the brain, such as stroke.  

You can learn more about wasabi by reading Why Wasabi is Good for More Than Just Sushi.

2. Wheatgrass for Reversing Cataracts

Age-related cataracts (clouding of the normally clear lens of the eye) generally progress to severely impair vision and are often treated with invasive surgical procedures. But what if you could elicit your body’s natural regenerative properties to reverse the opaqueness using food as medicine?

We have indexed a wide range of natural substances that may mitigate, and in some cases reverse, cataractogenesis. In fact, there are over 60 substances indexed for cataracts on the GeenMedInfo.com database. There are also substances, such as statin drugs, listed that contribute to degenerative processes linked to cataracts. But of all the factors that are relevant to the topic, one food extract stands out above them all as a powerful healer and source of profound regeneration: wheatgrass. 

A 2005 study published in the journal Biogerontology titled, “Aging reversibility: from thymus graft to vegetable extract treatment — application to cure an age-associated pathology,” found old dogs fed wheat grass extract for a month saw a reduction in lens opacity of 25% to 40%.

The authors theorized, “The efficacy of wheat sprouts in the recovery of age-related alterations and in treating age-associated pathologies could be due to the contemporary presence of small regulatory acid peptides, a remarkable level of highly energetic phosphoric radicals and antioxidant molecules, peculiarities that may be, to some extent, related to the aging process regulation.”  

3. Vitamin C for Bodywide Healing and Hormone Regeneration

Vitamin C is one of the most important vitamins for the maintenance of human health, yet remains one of the most common and underappreciated deficiencies, contributing to over 500 conditions. How do we know this? Visit the GreenMedInfo.com vitamin C database and you will find over 1,200 studies indicating that vitamin C deficiency contributes directly to hundreds of diseases while getting adequate vitamin C prevents and/or ameliorates them.

This is how vitally essential vitamin C is to your basic health and well-being. Yet, it is virtually never discussed by the conventional medical establishment. To the contrary, an incredibly substantive and compelling amount of clinical research exists showing it can be used to support conditions such as deadly cancers, heart disease and infections. Much of that research is housed on the Orthomolecular Society’s website.

One of the most stunning applications of vitamin C, in the case of degenerative diseases and stimulating regeneration, is how it affects your hormone levels and their metabolism.

As reported in our article “‘Sunshine Vitamin’ Regenerates and Detoxifies Your Hormones,” a groundbreaking study from 1993 published in the journal Radiation Physics and Chemistry, and titled, “Photo-induced regeneration of hormones by electron transfer processes: Potential biological and medical consequences,” revealed vitamin C plays a profound role in preventing the degradation of steroid hormones into toxic and cancer-promoting metabolites known as “hormone transients.”

Moreover, the study found that vitamin C’s role as an electron donor (free radical quencher) regenerates steroid hormones like testosterone and estrogen from their metabolic byproducts, which otherwise represent a toxic burden on the system.

And so, in one stroke, vitamin C both regenerates and increases the levels of functional steroidal hormones in the body, as well as prevents their degradation into potentially carcinogenic metabolic byproducts. Specifically, the study found up to 90.9% regeneration of the three hormones studied: 

“Investigations were performed using progesterone (PRG), testosterone (TES) and estrone (E1) as representatives of hormones. By irradiation with monochromatic UV light (λ=254 nm) in a media of 40% water and 60% ethanol, the degradation as well as the regeneration of the hormones was studied with each hormone individually and in the mixture with VitC as a function of the absorbed UV dose, using HPLC. Calculated from the obtained initial yields, the determined regeneration of PRG amounted to 52.7%, for TES to 58.6% and for E1 to 90.9%.”

The Most Powerful Secret

The amazing thing is not that these three substances have the ability to reverse your biological clock and stimulate regeneration. You can read my book “REGENERATE: Unlocking Your Body’s Radical Resilience Through the New Biology” to learn more about how common this is, across many tissues in your body.

You can also view episodes of my REGENERATE YOURSELF masterclass to find out more on specific topics you are interested in, such as What Supplements Should I Take, or How to Regenerate Brain Tissue. The most amazing thing is how almost all foods studied have powerful healing properties that seem to work far better than drugs to address the root causes of health conditions.

The most powerful secret is that your body’s self-healing abilities are so profound that virtually any disease known can often be reversed. This does not mean you will experience this, but knowing it is possible at least means it is attainable. And at the very least, you can use natural substances, and especially foods, to mitigage your symptoms and improve your functionality and well-being, without suffering from the numerous side effects that conventional pharmaceutical treatments can cause.

People With Cancer Should Be Wary of Taking Dietary Supplements

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e photo of vitamin D capsules

Cancer dietitian Lisa Cianciotta often finds herself sitting across from a patient who suddenly fishes a bottle of antioxidant supplements from their bag and says, “My friend told me this works really well,” or “I read on the internet that this is supposed to be really good for cancer.” 

Although taking an antioxidant pill sounds harmless, Cianciotta, a clinical dietitian who works with cancer patients at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, knows well that this popular dietary supplement can interfere with a patient’s radiation or chemotherapy.

But many patients with cancer believe these over-the-counter vitamins, minerals, or herbal remedies will help them, and most use at least one dietary supplement alongside their cancer treatment.

And that leaves Cianciotta with a delicate conversation ahead of her. 

Cancer Diagnosis & Treatment Insights

Learn from two physicians about what advice they have for patients during their cancer journey.

Drug-supplement interactions are complex, often varying by supplement, cancer, and treatment type, and can do more harm than good. Popular dietary supplements may, for instance, cancel the effects of a cancer treatment, making it less effective, or increase serious side effects, such as liver toxicity. But in other cases, supplementation, such as vitamin D for patients who lack the vitamin, may be beneficial, Cianciotta says. 

These drug-supplement interactions can be hard to pinpoint, given that more than two-thirds of doctors don’t know their patients are using supplements.

Here’s what patients need to know about the potential risks of supplement use during treatment, and how oncologists can address this thorny, often poorly understood topic with patients.

The Complex Drug-Supplement Landscape

The list of dietary supplements and how they can interact with different treatments and cancer types is long and nuanced. 

But certain supplements appear to affect cancer treatments regardless of other things and should be avoided. Any supplement that strongly alters the body’s levels of the protein cytochromes P450 is one example. This group of enzymes plays a key role in metabolizing drugs, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy agents. 

Certain supplements – most notably St. John’s wort extract – may decrease or increase the activity of cytochrome P450, which can then  affect the concentrations of anticancer drugs in the blood, says William Figg, PharmD, an associate director of the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, MD. Studies show, for instance, that this common herbal supplement can increase the activity of cytochrome P450, resulting in lower levels of cancer drugs.

Outside of drug metabolism, patients with hormone-related cancers, such as breast and prostate cancers, should steer clear of dietary supplements that can alter levels of testosterone or estrogen, Figg says. The evergreen shrub ashwagandha, for example, is marketed to reduce stress and fatigue, but can also increase testosterone levels – a potential problem for those with prostate cancer receiving androgen deprivation therapy, which lowers testosterone levels. 

Many oncologists counsel patients against using antioxidant-based dietary supplements – particularly turmeric and green tea extract – while they have radiation therapy and certain chemotherapies. These therapies work by creating an abundance of highly reactive molecules called free radicals in tumor cells, which increase stress within these cells, ultimately killing them off. Antioxidants, in theory, can neutralize this effect, says Skyler Johnson, MD, a radiation oncologist at the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City.  Some studies suggest that antioxidant supplements may lessen the effects of radiation and chemotherapy, although the evidence is mixed.

Some dietary supplements, including high-dose green tea extract and vitamin A, can cause kidney or liver toxicity, and “many cancer patients already have compromised kidney or liver function,” says Jun J. Mao, MD, chief of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Even herbs that don’t interfere with how well a cancer drug works, such as stevia, can increase treatment-related side effects, such as nausea and vomiting. 

Another potential problem with dietary supplements: It’s nearly impossible to know exactly what’s in them. For instance, just last year, the FDA sent nearly 50 warning letters to companies marketing dietary supplements. The issue is that federal regulations governing production are less strict for supplements than for medications. As a result, some supplements contain ingredients not listed on the label. 

One historical example was the supplement PC-SPES, a mix of eight herbs, marketed to men with prostate cancer. The supplement was recalled in 2002 after certain batches were found to contain traces of prescription drugs, including diethylstilbestrol, ethinyl estradiol, warfarin, and alprazolam.

To further complicate matters, some dietary supplements can be helpful. Most patients with cancer “are malnourished and missing out on nutrients they could be getting from food,” says Cianciotta.

Patients are tested routinely for vitamin deficiencies and receive supplements as needed, she says. Vitamin D and folic acid are two of the most common deficiencies in this patient population. Vitamin D supplementation can improve outcomes in patients who have received a stem cell transplant by aiding engraftment and rebuilding the immune system, while folic acid supplementation can help to raise low red blood cell counts and hemoglobin levels.  Slideshow

Reviewed by Laura Martin on 9/12/2021

Although she rarely sees vitamin toxicity, Cianciotta stresses that more is not always better and supplement use, even when it seems safe or warranted due to a deficiency, should be taken under supervision, and monitored carefully by the patient’s care team. 

Bringing Supplement Use Into the Light

Too often, providers are unaware of a patient’s supplement use. 

A core reason: Dietary supplements are often touted as natural, which many patients equate with safety, says Samantha Heller, a senior clinical nutritionist at New York University Langone Health in New York City. 

That means patients may not know a supplement can act like a drug and interfere with their cancer treatment, and thus may not see the importance of telling their doctor.

Still, the promise of herbs, vitamins, and minerals can be alluring, and there are many reasons patients decide to partake. One major appeal: Dietary supplements can help some patients feel empowered.

“Cancer is a disease that takes away a lot of control from the individual. Taking supplements or herbs is a way to regain some sense of control,” says Mao. 

The phenomenon can also be cultural, he says. Some people grow up taking herbs and supplements to stay healthy or combat health woes.

Pressure or advice from family or friends who may think they are helping a loved one with their dietary recommendations may play a role as well. Friends and family “cannot prescribe chemo, but they can buy herbs and supplements,” Mao says. 

Patients seeking greater control over their health or who feel high levels of anxiety may be more likely to take suggestions from friends and family or more likely to believe false or misleading claims about the efficacy or safety of supplements, explains  medical oncologist William Dahut, MD, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. 

Plus, social media often amplifies and normalizes this misinformation, notes Johnson. In a 2021 study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, he and colleagues found that one-third of the most popular articles on cancer treatment posted to social media in 2018 and 2019 contained false, inaccurate, or misleading information that was often harmful. 

Some of the false claims centered on unproven, potentially unsafe herbal remedies, according to Johnson. These included “lung cancer can be cured with cannabis oil” and “golden-berries cure and prevent cancer.” 

Given exaggerated claims of “cures,” some patients may keep their supplement use under the radar out of fear they will be judged or criticized. 

“Clinicians should avoid making patients feel judged or telling people not to go online to do their own research,” Johnson says.                         

Guiding patients, instead, to accurate sources of online information may be one way to help patients feel empowered, he says. Cancer.gov and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s About Herbs database provide accessible and accurate information on dietary supplements and cancer treatment for both health care professionals and patients, he notes. 

If a particular supplement is not safe during treatment, providers should be able to explain why, says  Cianciotta. In a recent study, 80% of health care providers surveyed believed that interactions between herbals and medications could be problematic, but only 15% could explain why. 

“Being able to explain why we are discouraging a particular supplement right now tends to be much better received than just telling a patient not to take something, because it is bad,” she says. 

Another key is listening closely to patients to understand why they may be taking a particular supplement. Does the patient feel out of control? Is nausea a problem?  Slideshow

Reviewed by Sabrina Felson on 27/9/2022

“Allowing patients to tell you why they are using a particular supplement will often reveal unmet needs or psychosocial challenges,” Mao says. This information can allow providers to suggest an evidence-based alternative, such as mindfulness meditation or acupuncture to manage stress.

And if a patient has received a dietary supplement from well-meaning family and friends?

“Simply telling a patient that a given supplement is useless or harmful could create family tension,” says  Mao. 

Instead, he recommends reframing the issue. 

“We want to have a better understanding of how patients are tolerating chemo or immunotherapy before throwing other things on top of it. Let them know that now may just not be the right time to add a supplement to the mix,” Mao says. 

The bottom line: “Patients want to play an active role in their own care, and we want to help them do that in a safe way,” he says.

What Causes Heart Palpitations?

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What It Feels Like

What It Feels Like

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Your heart pounds, flutters, or seems to skip beats. You might call these feelings palpitations. Although they can feel scary, most aren’t serious and rarely need treatment. Knowing what makes your heart race can help you not panic when it happens and know when to call your doctor.

Stress and Anxiety

Stress and Anxiety

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Intense emotions can trigger the release of hormones that speed up your heartbeat. Your body gets ready to face a threat, even if you’re not in danger. Panic attacks are intense bouts of fear that can last a few minutes. Symptoms include a racing heart, sweating, chills, trouble breathing, and chest pain. A panic attack can feel like a heart attack. If you’re not sure which one you’re having, get medical help.

Exercise

Exercise

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Working out is good for you. And a brisk run or intense indoor cycling class will naturally make your heart beat faster. That helps your heart pump more blood to power your muscles through the workout. If your heart flutters or pounds, it could be because you haven’t worked out in a while and you’re out of condition. An irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia, can also cause palpitations when you exercise.

Caffeine

Caffeine

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Does your heart beat faster after your morning latte? Caffeine is a stimulant that raises your heart rate, whehther you get it from coffee, soda, an energy drink, tea, chocolate, or another source. One study found that caffeine from coffee, tea, and chocolate isn’t likely to cause palpitations in people with healthy hearts. But experts don’t know whether it might trigger them in people with heart rhythm problems. 

Nicotine

Nicotine

5/16

The addictive chemical in cigarettes and other tobacco products, nicotine raises your blood pressure and speeds up your heart rate. Quitting smoking is one of the best things you can do for your heart, though it might not slow your heartbeat right away. Patches and other nicotine replacement products can make your heart race. Palpitations can also be a symptom of nicotine withdrawal, but they should stop within 3 to 4 weeks after you quit.

Hormone Changes

Hormone Changes

6/16

Women might notice that their heartbeat speeds up when they have their period, they’re pregnant, they’re close to menopause, or they’re in menopause. The reason: hormone levels. The boost in heart rate is usually temporary and no reason for worry. If you’re pregnant, palpitations can also happen if you’re anemic, which means you don’t have enough red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout your body.  

Fever

Fever

7/16

When you have a fever during an illness, your body uses energy at a faster pace than usual. This can set off palpitations. Usually your temperature needs to be above 100.4 F to affect your heart rate.

Medicines

Medicines

8/16

Some prescription and over-the-counter medicines cause palpitations as a side effect, including:AntibioticsAntifungal medicinesAntipsychotic drugsAsthma inhalersCough and cold medicinesDiet pillsHigh blood pressure medicinesThyroid pillsIf you take one or more of these types of meds, ask your doctor if it could affect your heartbeat. Don’t skip any doses before you check with your doctor.
Low Blood Sugar

Low Blood Sugar

9/16

Have you ever noticed that you feel shaky, cranky, and weak when you’ve skipped a meal? It can also lead to palpitations. When your blood sugar level drops, your body releases stress hormones like adrenaline to prepare for an emergency food shortage. Adrenaline speeds up your heart rate.

Overactive Thyroid Gland

Overactive Thyroid Gland

10/16

Your thyroid is a butterfly-shaped gland in your neck. It makes hormones that help manage your metabolism and other things. An overactive thyroid (called hyperthyroidism) can make too much thyroid hormone. That can speed up your heart so much that you feel it beating in your chest. Taking too much thyroid hormone to treat an underactive thyroid gland (called hypothyroidism) can also rev up your heartbeat.

Heart Rhythm Problems

Heart Rhythm Problems

11/16

Sometimes an irregular heart rhythm, called an arrhythmia, causes palpitations.

  • Atrial fibrillation, or AFib, happens when the heart’s upper chambers, called the atria, flutter instead of beating normally.
  • Supraventricular tachycardia is an abnormally fast heartbeat that starts in the heart’s upper chambers.
  • Ventricular tachycardia is a fast heart rate due to faulty signals in the heart’s lower pumping chambers, called the ventricles.
Alcohol

Alcohol

12/16

If you drink a lot, or just have more than usual, you might feel your heart beating faster or fluttering. It often happens on holidays or weekends, when people drink more, earning it the nickname of “holiday heart syndrome.” But for some people, it can happen even when they only drink a little bit.

Premature Ventricular Contractions

Premature Ventricular Contractions

13/16

Premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) are extra heartbeats. They happen when your heart’s ventricles squeeze too soon. The extra beat throws off your heart’s normal rhythm and makes it flutter, pound, or jump in your chest. If your heart is healthy, occasional PVCs are nothing to worry about. But you might need treatment if you have heart disease and you get these extra beats often.

Cocaine and Other Street Drugs

Cocaine and Other Street Drugs

14/16

Illegal drugs like amphetamines, cocaine, and ecstasy are dangerous to the heart. Cocaine boosts blood pressure, raises heart rate, and damages the heart muscle. Amphetamines stimulate the nervous system, which ramps up your heartbeat. Ecstasy triggers the release of a chemical called norepinephrine, which makes the heart beat faster.

When to See a Doctor

When to See a Doctor

15/16

If you’re healthy, you probably don’t need to worry about palpitations that happen once in a while and last only a few seconds. But make a doctor’s appointment if they come more often or you also have symptoms like these:

  • Chest pain or pressure
  • Shortness of breath
  • Dizziness
  • Fainting
Finding the Cause

Finding the Cause

16/16

These tests can help your doctor figrue out what’s going on:

  • Electrocardiogram (ECG). This test looks for problems with the electrical signals that control your heart rhythm.
  • Holter monitor. You wear this portable ECG for 24 to 72 hours at a time. It can find heart rhythm problems and any patterns that might need more tests.
  • Event Monitor. You wear this device for several weeks. It records your heart rhythm when you press a button while having symptoms.
  • Echocardiogram. This test uses sound waves to make pictures of your heart. It can find problems with your heart’s structure.

Scientists Say We’re Closer to Nuclear Armageddon Than Any Other Point in History

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The scientist-activists who run the Doomsday Clock have once again ticked it forward, bringing humanity’s estimated chances of its own nuclear annihilation closer than ever.

A statement publishedby the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group behind the Doomsday Clock, cited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential for a “hot war” between NATO and Russia as its reasoning for moving the clock a mere 90 seconds to midnight.

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the scientists who would have been his colleagues had the US granted him security clearance to work on the atomic bomb-building Manhattan Project, the BAS has every year since 1947 warned of the preceding annum’s biggest risks to humanity — and this year, those risks are all about Russia.

“Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict — by accident, intention, or miscalculation — is a terrible risk,” the statement reads. “The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high.”

Hot War

While not mentioned in the statement, the country formerly known as the Soviet Union has some pretty jarring past precedents to take into consideration: the 1983 “false alarm” incident in which USSR radar picked up and subsequently alerted officials about phony readings from the West that were initially interpreted as warhead-carrying spy planes coming out of the US.

The protocol, which wasn’t followed, would have been to strike back. If Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet Air Defense officer in charge of the early-warning station located that detected the misinterpreted signals, hadn’t trusted his gut when it told him they were false alarms, nuclear war would almost certainly have broken out.

Back in the present, the concerned scientists note that beyond just the heating up of the new cold war, Russia’s Ukrainian aggression has also “undermine[d] global efforts to combat climate change,” and its fake news about Ukraine developing bioweapons may indicate that it’s doing exactly that.

While “there is no clear pathway for forging a just peace that discourages future aggression under the shadow of nuclear weapons,” the BAS urged open engagement with peace talks between NATO and Russia — not just for the sake of heading off war, but for the sake of helping the planet avoid further catastrophe, too.

Earth’s Core Has Stopped and May Be Reversing Direction, Study Says

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The surprising finding might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena.

Earth’s inner core has recently stopped spinning, and may now be reversing the direction of its rotation, according to a surprising new study that probed the deepest reaches of our planet with seismic waves from earthquakes. 

The mind-boggling results suggest that Earth’s center pauses and reverses direction on a periodic cycle lasting about 60 to 70 years, a discovery that might solve longstanding mysteries about climate and geological phenomena that occur on a similar timeframe, and that affect life on our planet. 

Of course, it must be noted this is more or less the plot of the 2003 disaster film The Core, but there’s no need to worry about averting an impending apocalypse by nuking the center of Earth. While the core’s rotation influences Earth’s surface environment, scientists think this periodic spin switch is a normal part of its behavior that does not pose risks for life on our planet.

Earth’s inner core is a solid metal ball that is 75 percent the size of the Moon. It can spin at different speeds and directions compared to our planet because it is nestled within a liquid outer core, but scientists are not sure exactly how fast it spins or whether its speed varies over time. 

Located some 3,000 miles beneath our feet, the core experiences intense heat on par with the surface of the Sun. Because it is so remote and difficult to study, the inner core remains one of the least understood environments on our planet, though it’s clear that it plays a role in many processes that make our world habitable to life, such as the generation of Earth’s protective magnetic field, which blocks harmful radiation from reaching the surface.

Now, Yi Yang  and Xiaodong Song, a pair of researchers at Peking University’s SinoProbe Lab at School of Earth and Space Sciences, have captured “surprising observations that indicate the inner core has nearly ceased its rotation in the recent decade and may be experiencing a turning-back in a multidecadal oscillation, with another turning point in the early 1970s,” according to a study published on Monday in Nature Geoscience.

“There are two major forces acting on the inner core,” Yang and Song said in an email to Motherboard. “One is the electromagnetic force. The Earth’s magnetic field is generated by fluid motion in the outer core. The magnetic field acting on the metallic inner core is expected to drive the inner core to rotate by electromagnetic coupling. The other is gravity force. The mantle and inner core are both highly heterogeneous, so the gravity between their structures tends to drag the inner core to the position of gravitational equilibrium, so called gravitational coupling.”

“If the two forces are not balanced out, the inner core will accelerate or decelerate,” they added. “Both the magnetic field and the Earth’s rotation have a strong periodicity of 60-70 years. We believe that the proposed 70-year oscillation of the inner core is driven by the electromagnetic and gravitational forces.”

Song has spent decades trying to unravel the mysteries of the inner core by studying seismic waves that pass through this distant region. He was part of the team that first reported evidence of the inner core’s rotation in 1996 by measuring slight time (or “temporal”) changes in these waves, which are generated by earthquakes. 

However, the origin of the temporal changes has been a matter of debate within the geoscience community ever since, as some scientists think the wave patterns arise from phenomena at the boundary between the outer and inner core.  

“Some researchers are still arguing that the temporal changes do not come from the inner-core rotation, but from localized deformation at the inner core boundary,” Yang and Song said. With their new study, the pair “tried to gather more data over a longer duration to test different models.” 

To that end, the team studied seismic waves that passed through the inner core made by earthquakes that occurred since the 1960s. In particular, they looked for “doublet” events, which are “repeating earthquakes with nearly identical waveforms at common receivers,” according to the study. By analyzing the slight temporal changes between these doublets, Yang and Song were able to probe the rotation of the inner core.

As it turned out, the temporal changes reached a minimum around 2009, suggesting that the inner core had paused rotation around this time, creating seismic observations that seem more static. The team was even more astonished when they identified a similar turning point in the early 1970s, hinting that the core stops and reverses rotation on a periodic cycle.

“Our results further support the inner-core rotation, and more interestingly, reveals the multidecadal pattern of the rotation,” Yang and Song said to Motherboard.

The results offer an unprecedented look at the searing pit of our planet, a region that continues to evade clear explanation, and it also has big implications for understanding the familiar world we inhabit on Earth’s surface. 

For instance, the team notes that the same multidecade cycle has also been observed in Earth’s climate system, as global mean temperatures and sea level rises appear to oscillate every 60 to 70 years. The length of Earth’s day, which shifts slightly over time, also seems synced to the proposed cycle. For this reason, the new findings “may imply dynamic interactions between the deepest and shallowest layers of the solid Earth system,” according to the new study. 

“We pointed the existence of similar periodicity of different observations, forming a

resonating system,” Yang and Song told Motherboard. “The linkage, however, is less clear at the moment. The gravitational coupling between the inner core and the mantle may cause deformation at the Earth’s surface, which would affect the sea level. The changes of the sea level and the Earth’s rotation may affect the global atmosphere circulation and temperature. The resonance of different systems may also amplify the mutual interactions.”

It’s tantalizing to imagine that our most mundane experiences—such as the length of our days, and the climatic patterns that guide our local weather—might be sculpted by the rotational cycles of a weird metal ball at the center of our world. Untangling these nuances will require new models and continued observations of Earth’s enigmatic central realm.

The next steps are “to build quantitative models of the physical mechanisms on the multi-decadal oscillation system” and “to monitor how the rotation changes in the future,” Yang and Song said. 

“We’d expect it to rotate westwards relative to the surface of the Earth in the coming years and decades,” the pair concluded. “Seismic waves are still the best way and thus continuous operation of high-quality seismic networks is crucial in this regard.”

Earth’s Core Appears to Have Stopped Spinning, Scientists Say

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Spin Cycle

According to a new study, the Earth’s inner core appears to have stopped spinning.

While that may sound bad, as Vice reports, scientists say it’s not actually a big deal.

The new findings, as detailed in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, support the theory that the core comes to a halt and reverses direction every 60 to 70 years.

Measuring seismic waves from quakes deep beneath the surface, the researchers found that the Earth’s inner core “may be experiencing a turning-back in a multidecadal oscillation,” suggesting that there was “another turning point in the early 1970s.”

Flip It and Reverse It

The reasons for this switch back, the scientists believe, involve the Earth’s magnetic field — causing the planet’s mostly liquid outer core to move, thereby forcing the inner core to rotate — and gravity.

“The mantle and inner core are both highly heterogeneous, so the gravity between their structures tends to drag the inner core to the position of gravitational equilibrium, so-called gravitational coupling,” lead authors Yi Yang  and Xiaodong Song, a pair of researchers at Peking University, told Vice.

“If the two forces are not balanced out, the inner core will accelerate or decelerate,” they explained.

Molten Metal Onion

The theory could explain a number of observed phenomena, from cycles in the Earth’s climate system to the shifts in the length of a single day.

In fact, “the gravitational coupling between the inner core and the mantle may cause deformation at the Earth’s surface, which would affect the sea level,” the researchers told Vice, tying it to a number of other systems including “the global atmospheric circulation and temperature.”

Yang and Song are now working on building out their model, understanding how these mechanisms work, and how the inner core’s rotation will change going forward.

But for now, it’s a tantalizing glimpse into a possible relationship between the deepest inner workings of our planet and the effects it may have on life back on the surface.

Scientists Warn Giant Asteroid Is Actually Swarm, Nearly Impossible to Destroy

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We might have to rethink our asteroid defense strategy. 

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Researchers have found that some asteroids that are largely made from small pieces of rubble could be very difficult to deflect if one were to ever hurtle towards Earth, a terrifying finding that could force us to reconsider our asteroid defense strategies.

It’s an especially pertinent topic considering NASA’s recent successful deflection of asteroid Didymos by smashing its Double Asteroid Reduction Test (DART) spacecraft into it last year, a proof of concept mission meant to investigate ways for humanity to protect itself from asteroid threats.

By analyzing asteroid particles collected by Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa 1 probe, which visited the 1,600-foot “rubble pile” asteroid Itokawa back in 2005, the researchers suggest the remote asteroid is far older than previously thought.

In fact, Itokawa, which scientists have long believed is a giant collection of space rocks and not one large lump, could be as old as the solar system itself.

Itokawa’s considerable age shocked the scientists.

“Unlike monolithic asteroids, Itokawa is not a single lump of rock, but belongs to the rubble pile family which means it’s entirely made of loose boulders and rocks, with almost half of it being empty space,” said Fred Jourdan, planetary sciences professor at Curtin University in Australia and lead author of a new paper titled “Rubble pile asteroids are forever,” published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a statement.

Yet the mysterious pile of space rubble remained cohesive.

“The survival time of monolithic asteroids the size of Itokawa is predicted to be only several hundreds of thousands of years in the asteroid belt,” Jourdan said, adding that its formation dates back to “at least 4.2 billion years ago,” which is “an astonishingly long survival time for an asteroid the size of Itokawa.”

According to Jourdan and his colleagues, the fact that it’s a rubble pile and not a solid lump makes it inherently shock-absorbent, which could explain its extremely long lifespan and inherent resilience.

If an object like it were ever headed toward Earth, though, it could be very bad news.

“In short, we found that Itokawa is like a giant space cushion, and very hard to destroy,” he said.

The research suggests that rubble piles like Itokawa may be far “more abundant in the asteroid belt than previously thought,” according to coauthor Nick Timms, also a professor of planetary sciences at Curtin, which means “there is more chance that if a big asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, it will be a rubble pile.”

But that doesn’t mean we’re doomed.

Armed with the knowledge that it may be a loose collection of rocks threatening our existence — and not a giant billiard ball in the sky — we could change our defense tactics ahead of time, and, for instance, use a “shockwave of a close-by nuclear blast to push a rubble-pile asteroid off course without destroying it,” as Timms suggested in the statement.

In other words, we might have to rethink our defense strategies.