What I've Been Reading Lately

I just starting reading The Emperor of all Maladies.  

Ever since reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks my interested has been piqued in health related books.  As I've been reading this book, I've found so many different things fascinating.   Learning of how historical care practices from doctors, who with the best of intentions, but lack of knowledge was really horrific and macabre for the patients.  There really is a fine line between human trials and human experiments that was probably crossed with the best intentions.  

I have to confess, I really know nothing about cancer, with so many different types of cancer, I really didn't know what cancer really was.  I'm so ignorant, I didn't even know that oncology was until I started reading this book.  And I guess that makes be lucky  but I'm retiscent to talk about all the things I've been reading, because I've seen how hard it is for families when I family member has cancer.  So I will leave you with one thing I found interesting.

One interesting thing

When the humoral theory was proposed, with the different fluids of the body (black bile, phlegm, yellow bile, and blood), the only disease that was attributed to black bile was cancer and depression.  I wonder if its because the symptoms of either manifest in a variety of different ways, or that people often look fine on the outside, but are well aware of their "condition" on the inside.  Or that those closest to a person with depression and cancer are also affected by the disease.  

 I'm also reading an interesting article that explores the correlation between your gut microbiota and your metabolism.  This kind of article is a little outside my field of knowledge, but its still pretty interesting, and so far I can grasp what it's saying without googling any of the big words.  

The article is talking about how the gut microbial community has more microorganisms that in the body by "two orders of magnitude".  In my mind I have a tiny universe of microorganisms living inside my gut helping my body with biochemical and metabolic stuff.  Kinda like the locker in Men In Black that holds an entire universe:

 

~b~