April 25th, 2022
1) Firearms are now killing more young humans than cars. In 2017, there was a cross over point where 8 deaths occurred per 100,000 young persons between 1 and 24 years of age. Since 2019, firearms deaths are now at 10 per 100,000. (Lee et. al. 2022)
These results are two fold in cause in my estimation. Cars are much safer now leading to less deaths despite lots of crashes. Firearms deaths are up because as a society our mental health struggles are real and massively exacerbated by the pandemic.
2) Disinfectants and allergies: From the Journal Occupational Environmental Medicine we see - Disinfectants are widely used in the medical field, particularly recently because of the coronavirus pandemic,
which has led to an increase in their use by both medical professionals and the general population. We used data from 78 915 mother/child pairs who participated in the Japan Environment and Children's Study, which is a prospective birth cohort recruited between January 2011 and March 2014. We examined the associations between maternal disinfectant use during pregnancy and allergic diseases (asthma, eczema and food allergies) in children. Compared with those who never used disinfectants, participants who used disinfectant every day had a significantly higher risk of asthma in their offspring. The associations between disinfectant exposure and eczema were similar to those of asthma. We found a significant exposure-dependent relationship (p for trend <0.01). There were no significant associations between disinfectant use and food allergies. (Kojima et. al. 2022)
Long known is the association between over cleanliness and allergic type disorders. This is yet another study to put in you memory banks of why you should choose a posture of soap and water for hand washing when the time necessitates, i.e. after using the bathroom, touching a sick person, before eating, etc....
Throw away your hand sanitizers and cleaning agents for general use.
3) Antibiotic exposure and cognitive function - use impacts the gut microbiome and has been linked with chronic disease in multiple studies over the past 2 decades. Despite prior data sets, there is no published evidence of an association between long-term antibiotic use in adults and cognitive function.
"We conducted a prospective population-based cohort study among 14,542 participants in the Nurses' Health Study II who completed a self-administered computerized neuropsychological test battery between 2014-2018. Women who reported at least 2 months of antibiotic exposure in midlife had lower mean cognitive scores seven years later, after adjustment for age and educational attainment of the spouse and parent, compared with non-antibiotic users. Thus the relation of antibiotic use to cognition was roughly equivalent to that found for three to four years of aging. Long-term antibiotic use in midlife is associated with small decreases in cognition assessed seven years later. These data underscore the importance of antibiotic stewardship, especially among aging populations." (Mehta et. al. 2022)
This is an observational study but there are very good scientific realities as to why this would come to pass. Altered microbial bacterial communities from antibiotic use will have downstream effects on inflammation and neurotransmitter function.
Avoid antibiotics,
Dr. M
Lee NEJM
Kojima Occup Envir Medicine
Mehta PLOSOne
