all things HOLD TOGETHER with laminin

FWD: Carol Bernal

A couple of days ago I was running on my treadmill watching a DVD sermon by Louie Giglio! I want to share what I learned.

He (Louie) was talking about how inconceivably BIG our God is...how He spoke the universe into being...how He breathes stars out of His mouth that are huge raging balls of fire...etc etc. Then He went on to speak of how this star-breathing, universe creating God ALSO knitted our human bodies together with amazing detail and wonder. At this point I am LOVING it (fascinating from a medical standpoint, you know.) .....and I was remembering how I was constantly amazed during medical school as I learned more and more about God's handiwork.

I remember so many times thinking: "How can ANYONE deny that a Creator did all of this?" Louie went on to talk about how we can trust that the God who created all this, also has the power to hold it all together when things seem to be falling apart...how our loving Creator is also our sustainer.

And then I lost my breath. And it wasn't because I was running my treadmill either!!! It was because he started talking about laminin. I knew about laminin. Here is how Wikipedia describes them: "Laminins are a family of proteins that are an integral part of the structural scaffolding of basement membranes in almost every animal tissue." You see....laminins are what hold us together....LITERALLY. They are cell adhesion molecules They are what holds one cell of our bodies to the next cell. Without them, we would literally fall apart. And I knew all this already.

But what I didn't know is what laminin LOOKED LIKE. But now I do. And I have thought about it a thousand times since....Here is what the structure of laminin looks like...AND THIS IS NOT a "Christian portrayal"' of it. If you look up laminin in any scientific/medical piece of literature, this is what you will see:

Amazing!

The glue that holds us together....ALL of us....is in the shape of the cross!!

Immediately Colossians 1:15-17 comes to mind: "He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created; things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, And in him all things HOLD TOGETHER."

Thousands of years before the world knew anything about laminin,

Paul penned those words The Creator knew EXACTLY what laminin "glue" would look like long before Adam even breathed his first breath!!

And now we see that from a very LITERAL standpoint, we are held together one cell to another....BY THE CROSS!!

Our Children, Our Future

"Healthy Food is a Recipe for Peace" That's quite a claim! It is a statement made by Bernard Gesch, a senior research scientist in the physiology department at Oxford University. Gesch is the director of Natural Justice, a British research institute that studies the causes of anti-social behavior. As printed in "ODE Magazine", June 2007 issue: In a British prison, we divided 231 prisoners into two groups. For 18 months, one group was given food supplements including the daily requirements for vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids. The other group was given a placebo. No one in the prison knew who was getting what. Those that were given the supplements committed 26% fewer offences and 37% fewer violent assaults compared with the placebo group. The study was set up to rule out ethnic or social factors potentially affecting the two groups so the supplementation must have been the source of the behavioral improvement. What would the future of these 231 men have been if they had grown up with better nutrition? We have to think about that. We all have to eat for good health and, so it appears, also for good behavior. And if it works in prisons, it will also work with school children. There will be increasing evidence that young people are undermined by what they eat. There is not a diet yet that takes behavior into account. In short: this is a societal time bomb. Bernard Gesch is very clear: "Poor nutrition can be an important source of anti-social behavior." The above study referenced by Bernard Gesch offers evidence that high quality, whole food nutrition makes a real difference in how people experience life's many potential stresses. I am so pleased to have strong scientific evidence that clearly supports what I have observed for over fifteen years! Most of us believe diet is important. But many people do not realize how essential diet is not only for life, but for how that life is going to be lived. Our minds, our emotions, and our intellect require specific nutrients. Lose one, and the amazing healing machine of our body will cope. Lose a few, and it will compromise to protect life. Lose enough, and that life changes dramatically. The most important gifts our children bring--their hopes and dreams--are also in danger-because along with a culture that venerates fast food and often ignores nutrition as an essential component of our children's health, we are also seeing dramatic increases in disorders that involve brain function. How many children and parents do you know who are dealing with: *ADD *Depression in an adolescent *Autistic Spectrum Disorder A look at the facts is frightening. *Preschoolers are the fastest growing market for antidepressants *20% of all children have some sort of legally defined mental disorder *Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death in adolescents 15 and over *Adolescent suicide has tripled since 1960 Children-children!-under the age of 12 are now being diagnosed as clinically depressed, bipolar, and schizophrenic. Along with each of these labels come drugs, most of which have not been tested on children and which have never been studied for long term effects. It is heartbreaking to realize that at a time when innocent life is sweetest-before first grade is even begun-over a million children are so affected by unhappiness that they are prescribed antidepressants to get through the day. Footnotes 1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/disease/ 2. http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehhe/ 3. Silvia Casabianca, Nutrigenomics: menus based on your genetic code, 10/03/2006 4. John A. Milner, Incorporating Basic Nutrition Science into Health Interventions for Cancer Prevention, The Journal of Nutrition 5. Carmia Borek, PhD., Fish and the N-3 Fatty Acids Reduce Risk of Alzheimer's Disease, Life Extension Magazine, November 2003 6. Morris MC, Evans DA, Bienias JL, et al, Consumption of fish and n-3 fatty acids and risk of incident Alzheimer disease, Arch Neurol. 2003 Jul;60(7):940-6.7. 7. Eva Edelman, Natural Healing for Schizophrenia & Other Common Mental Disorders, 1998 8. www.feingold.org

Gesch B, Hammond S, Hampson S et al., Influence
of supplementary vitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids on the antisocial behaviour of young adult prisoners; Brit Journal of
Psychiatry 2002 July;181:22-8

Dr. Lukas Rist, British Journal of Nutrition

Nuts About Your Eyes

Regardless of their shape, size, or type, fatty foods may be bad for your eyes. With this exception: nuts!

Yep, eating nuts at least once a week may help protect your peepers from vision-stealing conditions like macular degeneration.

Feed Your Vision
Scientists discovered that people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) could slow down the disease by eating one or more servings of nuts a week. Makes sense. The supernutrients in nuts -- vitamin E, copper, magnesium, fiber, and resveratrol -- all help protect against blood vessel problems that might contribute to AMD. (Use RealAge Smart Search to learn more about the condition.)


More Sight Savers
Not so nuts about nuts? Here are some other ways to keep your eyes sharp.

* Go fish! Turns out eating fish, like eating nuts, may have a protective effect against AMD progression. It's also good for warding off this eye syndrome.
* Be cool. Wear your shades. Here's how protecting your eyes from UV rays helps keep them healthy.
* Hit the road. Simple exercises like walking may be good for your eyes. Here's why.
* Bulk up. Your diet, that is -- with these four other friends of eye health.

How's your vision? Take the Amsler Eye Test at the end of this eye-health article.
RealAge Benefit: Eating a diet low in saturated and trans fats can make your RealAge as much as 6 years younger.

The latest News

Interesting CBS News report about Regenerated Body Parts:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3805459n

Stem Cells May Treat Diabetes

Scientists Coax Embryonic Stem Cells to Treat Mice With a Condition Like Type 1 Diabetes

By Miranda Hitti WebMD Medical News

Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD

Researchers report using embryonic stem cells to treat a condition like type 1 diabetes in mice.

Stem cells are cells that can develop into other types of cells. Embryonic stem cells can develop into a wide range of cell types.

In lab tests on mice, scientists at a San Diego company called Novocell grafted human embryonic stem cells into abdominal fat in mice. Before being implanted into the mice, those stem cells had been prepped to develop into pancreatic cells that get killed in type 1 diabetes.

Thirty days after implantation, the embryonic stem cells had morphed into pancreatic cells. And about two months after that, those pancreatic cells were up to speed at producing insulin, a hormone that controls blood sugar.

The experiment proves the potential for embryonic stem cells to treat type 1 diabetes, note the researchers, who included Emmanuel Baetge, PhD.

But the process isn't yet ready for use in people.

Of the 46 grafts that Baetge's team transplanted into the mice, seven led to tumors. Scientists worldwide are working on ways to harness the potential of stem cells while minimizing health risks from stem cell treatment.

Baetge and colleagues report their findings online in Nature Biotechnology.

Stem Cells Run Through Stop Signs

Now scientists at Northwestern University and the University of Washington offer one of the first clues as to why stem cells ignore stop signs in the cell cycle: a special molecular mechanism has cut the brakes. The researchers found that tiny bits of genetic material called microRNAs are necessary for stem cell division to take place, suggesting that microRNAs shut off the signals that stop cell division in most other cells.

The findings were published online this week by the journal Nature. In the paper, the researchers also speculate that microRNAs may play a similar role in cancer cells, encouraging their proliferation. This speculation is supported by three other new papers published this week in Nature linking microRNAs to cancer.

According to authors Richard Carthew, Owen L. Coon Professor of Molecular Biology at Northwestern University, and Hannele Ruohola-Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, microRNAs can regulate gene expression and give stem cells a green light to pass from the normal stop phase to the stage in which they begin replicating their DNA for later division.

In their work, Carthew and Ruohola-Baker focused on fruit flies, which have approximately 80 types of microRNAs. They genetically modified stem cells from the fruit flies' ovaries and studied how many egg chambers the mutant stem cells produced as compared to normal stem cells. The production rate in the mutant cells fell over the course of 12 days, and the researchers concluded it was because the mutant stem cells were no longer dividing.

Without the microRNAs at work, the brakes were applied to the cell division of the mutant stem cells, just like ordinary cells. The cellular brake (in this case a protein called Dacapo, a fruit fly homologue of a human tumor suppressor) kept the stem cells from proliferating.

"Determining which of the 80 microRNAs is responsible for deactivating the stop signal is the next step of our research," said Ruohola-Baker.

"The list of chores that microRNAs do within cells keeps growing in new and surprising ways," added Carthew. "This latest discovery with stem cell division makes us wonder if microRNAs also control division of other types of cells such as cancer cells."

Other authors on the Nature paper are Kenji Nakahara of Northwestern University and Karin Fischer, Steve Hatfield and Halyna Shcherbata of the University of Washington.

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Adapted from materials provided by Northwestern University, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

repair system for the body

Stem cells have the remarkable potential to develop into many different cell types in the body. Serving as a sort of repair system for the body, they can theoretically divide without limit to replenish other cells as long as the person or animal is still alive. When a stem cell divides, each new cell has the potential to either remain a stem cell or become another type of cell with a more specialized function, such as a muscle cell, a red blood cell, or a brain cell.

This document covers basic information about stem cells. For a more detailed discussion, see our Stem Cell Reports. Or you can check the Frequently Asked Questions page for quick answers to specific queries.