The Many Uses of Retin-A

The Many Uses of Retin-A

It helps fight acne, but the returns aren’t in on cancer treatment

Unlike Dorian Gray’s temporarily flattering yet ultimately gruesome portrait, Retin-A has been shown in many tests to offset the effects of aging without causing diabolic side effects. Here, Dr. Wilma Bergfeld, who heads the Clinical Research Department of Dermatology of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation an is a past president of the American Academy of Dermatologists, answers questions about the currently accepted uses of tretinoin in the medical community.

What is Retin-A?

Based on a vitamin A derivative known generically as tretinoin, the drug was originally developed as a treatment for acne in the late 1960s. Doctors could prescribe it at their discretion, and many dermatologists have put people on tretinoin-based programs to treat light wrinkles, liver spots, freckles, pre-cancerous skin lesions.

How effective is Retina-A in treating acne?

Tretinoin is most effective in treating acne when it is combined with a tropical antibiotic. The antibiotic works in tandem with the tretinoin to reduce the blackheads, whiteheads, and pimples that are the primary lesions of acne by reducing inflammation and killing yeast and bacteria microorganisms. Cream-based tretinoin applications moisturize, while gels and the lotions dry out skin, which can lead to scaling. Both vehicles, however, aid in the healing process. Tretinoin itself may produce some redness and scaling, but that is a sign of the agent at work.

Atelier Barbie. Photo by Elena

Can it help with warts?

Warts are viral skin tumors, and it appears that tretinoin may have the ability to kill the wart virus, basically by destroying its cell walls. It has also been used to promote the healing of blisters and scars with some success.

Does Retin-A really make wrinkles disappear?

Actually, the best way to get rid of wrinkles is to not get them in the first place. You should always keep your skin well hydrated and as pale as possible. In fact, simply hydrating the skin with simple over-the-counter moisturizers can reduce wrinkles up to 30 percent. What makes tretinoin more effective from a cosmetic perspective, however, is that it not only removes light wrinkles, but it also bleaches some of the yellow in the skin to a more youthful pink by thickening the epidermis and peeling away the layers of skin in which small wrinkles and irregular pigmentation reside.

Who can prescribe it?

Any physician can prescribe tretinoin, but a dermatologist will be better able to help you because he or she will be aware of some of the adverse effects of the drug such as blotchiness and scaling. The treatment should extend two years for maximum effectiveness, and follow-up treatments can last indefinitely.

Can Retin-A help treat cancer?

Though some research has shown promise for the use of a vitamin A derivative similar to tretinoin in the treatment of cervical cancer and melanoma (a potentially deadly form of skin cancer), these conditions are far too serious to be dealt with by an unproven treatment. Tretinoin can help prevent melanoma, however, if it is used to bleach very flat lesions like freckles.

Germ Warfare

Germ Warfare

Cooking by the Book

Use temperature to kill bacteria before they make you sick:

• 240º – Canning temperature for low-acid vegetables, meat, and poultry in pressure canner.
• 212 – Canning temperature for fruits, tomatoes, and pickles in water bath canner. Cooking temperatures destroy most bacteria. Time required to kill bacteria is decreased as temperature is increased.
• 165 – Warning temperatures prevent growth but allow survival of some bacteria.
• 140 – Some bacterial growth may occur. Many bacteria survive.
• Danger zone: Temperatures in this zone allow rapid growth of bacteria and production of toxins by some bacteria.
• 60 – Some growth of food-poisoning bacteria may occur. (Do not store meats, poultry, or seafoods for more than one week in the refrigerator.)
• 40 – Cold temperatures permit slow growth of some bacteria that cause spoilage.
• 32 – Freezing temperatures stop growth of bacteria, but may allow bacteria to survive. (Do not store food above 10 degrees F for more than a few weeks).

Germ Warfare. Photo: Elena

To Cook Shellfish

Simmer in boiling water: Shrimp (5 minutes); Crab (20 minutes); Lobster (30 to 40 minutes).

Cooking shellfish thoroughly or to an internal temperature of 140 degrees F is required to help avoid the threat of food poisoning. Shrimp, scallops, clams, and oysters can be deep-fried at 370 F for about three minutes. Shrimp and scallops can also be sauteed. Other shellfish are best boiled or steamed. 

Boil for three to five minutes after the shells have opened. Steam shellfish four to nine minutes from the start of steaming. Use small pots for boiling or steaming. If too many shells are cooking in the same pot, it’s possible that the ones in the middle won’t be thoroughly cooked. Discard any clams, mussels, or oysters that do not open during cooking. If the shells remain closed, it may mean they have not received adequate heat.

Glutamate: Learning and Memory

Glutamate: Learning and Memory

The full name of glutamate is monosodium glutamate. As far as neurotransmitters are concerned, serotonin and dopamine are studied more frequently than glutamate. Glutamate is a powerful excitatory neurotransmitter (major neurotransmitter in the mammalian central system), it plays an important role in learning and memory.

Neurons are brain cells, which release chemicals (neurotransmitters) in the brain; it is a form of communication within the brain, as well as, between the brain and the organism as a whole. Thus, glutamate is the primary excitatory neurotransmitter. In this short essay, we discuss the subject.

Certain medications, such as Lamotrigine (mood stabilizer and the actual medicinal ingredient of the generic version, while the brand names are numerous, including Lamictal) inhibit the release of glutamate into the brain. Glutamate is also a precursor to epinephrine. Other medications also alter brain chemistry, such as antidepressants (increase serotonin) and antipsychotics (decrease dopamine).

Among other roles, neurotransmitters have been linked to mental and physical ailments. For example, too much dopamine can result in psychosis and schizophrenia, while a lack of serotonin is responsible for depression. Also too little dopamine results in Parkinson’s disease. Thus, the brain needs normal function and the proper amount of neurotransmitters.

The brain is very complex, and thus, it is quite difficult to study. Interestingly, the belief that we only use 5-7% of our brain is false. All the brain is active all the time, even when we sleep. Hence, there is a concept in Neuroscience called the subtraction method. The usual brain’s activity is compared with localized activity in the brain to determine which part(s) respond(s) to the stimulus/stimuli.

Learning and Memory. Photo be Elena

Furthermore, glutamate underlies such processes as spatial learning and hippocampus-dependent-memory. However, some individuals have some form of mental illness (1 in 5 people across in Canada are affected). Therefore, these individuals are prescribed medications that lower the amount of glutamate in the brain. Thus, their ability to learn and their memory are affected.

Also, some believe that other prescriptions, such as Clonazepam, cause irreversible brain damage. Others live happily on such medications and experience far better results than without the medications.

On the topic of mental health:

Many persons with schizophrenia refuse to take their medication altogether. One of the problems with schizophrenia is that persons stop taking their prescribed medications, because of the difficult side effects. But, if they are seen by a Psychiatrist at the onset, they could have worked together as a team and find the dose and medication that is both efficient and has either mild side effects, or at least undetectable to the person taking the medication.

Moreover, some pathologies are brought about when the glutamatergic pathway is dysregulated. Again, neural (brain) cells must be in balance, and many (mental health) prescriptions target respective causes of the disorder. Glutamate has been linked to neurodegenerative, psychiatric, neurodevelopmental and other disorders.

What is more, compared to other disciplines, little is known on a variety of subjects focusing on the brain, as neuroscience is a fairly new science. Glutamate is a also a precursor to GABA, which is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain.

Psychology Students

Psychology Students

The purpose of this essay is simply to cover some of the main questions psychology students try to answer during their undergraduate careers. Psychology students are often faced with the question “are you trying to analyse me?” Indeed, when you study a subject like psychology, upon meeting, a majority of people assume (or at least make it look like they do), that you’ll analyse them. Interestingly enough, what undergraduate psychology programs actually teach could not be further from the truth, in a way. For example, introductory level psychology textbooks are mostly filled with descriptions of experiments, statistics and names of psychologists who made important contributions to the social science. In addition, psychoanalysis, pioneered by Sigmund Freud, is no longer in use today in clinical and academic settings.

Conversely, branches of the discipline, such as interpersonal or social psychology and personality psychology, as well as courses on specialized topics such as genes and behaviour do influence how students of psychology interact with other people, since such subdivisions do shed substantial light on the thoughts, emotions, motivations and reactions of one’s peers and other people in one’s social environment.

University of Toronto. Photo: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

For instance, the famous Asch experiments on conformity demonstrated that most people would prefer to agree with the wrong opinion, despite going against their own intuition, to remain in agreement with others. In Asch’s experiments, confederates (paid actors) pretended to be participants in an experiment testing an hypothesis unrelated to the one truly being tested. When asked to compare the length of two lines, they consistently deemed the shorter line as the longest. Then, when the real subjects’ turn came, they made the same choice, rationalized by the researchers as trying to conform. In fact, as many parents afraid that their children or, even more so, teenagers, give into peer pressure and take part in dubious activities know, the need and want to belong is a strong human motivator.

Furthermore, to go back to the first paragraph of the present short entry, psychology students may analyse human behaviour, to an extent. For instance, a psychology undergraduate student may infer that someone jealous is simply slightly insecure, or assume that the beauty queen who always gets her way with everybody has a particularly well developed Theory of Mind (ToM – the array of mental schemas representing other people’s thoughts, intentions, emotions and motivations, lacking in such developmental disorders as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) – and diagnosed by such paradigms as Sally’s Hidden Marble).

The purpose of the present essay was to go over some of the ways psychology students learn about the academic world, particularly as it relates to their field. Alternatively, even after taking Introduction to Psychology or Psychology 101 (a prerequisite for admission in most university psychology programs), a student may likewise infer that his or her friend may be lacking serotonin (a neurotransmitter regulating mood) if he or she seems depressed all the time. Similarly, whereas other friends may simply attempt to interest the popular, but dangerously emaciated, cheerleader to join them for dinner, the psychology student may suspect that she has developed an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia nervosa. Notwithstanding, a lot of studying psychology has to do with reading, reviewing and analysing existent research and looking at theoretical convergence in the general population, rather than analysing a particular person per se.

Poignant Reminders

Poignant Reminders

Many moments have meanings related to your togetherness: one weekend at the cottage, the family reunion... anytime when activities were shared can be poignant reminder of happy days gone by. All are special reminders of the absence of someone in your life.

(All the pictures were taken by Elena).

Often the grief attack may not come on the actual anniversary. Perhaps we anticipate the difficult day and our defenses are up. Yet our unconscious does not want to miss the opportunity to deal with the grief, so we feel the pain a week or a few days earlier.

Sometimes we have a bad day and do not even remember the specific occasion. We may discover that our unconscious has set off an alarm around an event we thought was forgotten.

When you're having a bad day or a grief attack, try to pause and think for a moment. Could you be having a response to an significant happening you have forgotten? Plan to do something meaningful on that special day - something that you want to do that will provide you with the support you need.

When you're having a bad day or a grief attack, try to pause and think for a moment. Could you be having a response to an significant happening you have forgotten?

Plan to do something meaningful on that special day - something that you want to do that will provide you with the support you need.

The road to recovery leads toward the pain. We must experience the pain of loss - we can't avoid it, go around it, over nit, or under it. Tranquilizers or alcohol don't end the pain; they merely mask it or provide a temporary escape. Anything that encourages us to avoid or suppress the pain merely delays coming to terms with our loss.

After a time, the intensity of the pain will not be as severe. Grief has a way of simply easing off. But just when you think you have finally recovered, you may have a sudden grief attack.

No matter what has shattered our dreams, our expectations, our hopes or even our lives, we are not beyond repair. Pain is a gift. It is one you wish you could exchange for something else, but it warns your body, mind and spirit of danger. Because pain is our teacher, we must never ignore or suppress it.

This hurt needs to be tended, this wound needs to be bound. Your pain is telling you that you cared about someone. It shows you that you need to attend to the healing of your broken heart.

The best pain is shared pain. Share it with someone who simply accepts you as you are. You don't have to do it alone.

Hold on to hope. Hope brings us comfort. While we must not minimize the pain and difficulty of grief, we need to trust that someday this pain will subside and life will have meaning again. There is a purpose, even though we may not see it right now.

As you are given the grace and the strength to carry on, the feelings of grief will become less painful and occur less often. You will begin to pick up the threads of your life. You will look toward the future with hope.

When our pain seems so great, we may question whether others know how we feel. To see the possibility of recovery will provide that first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes, hope is not so much for getting through the entire process as for getting through one more day. Can I get through one day or overcome one more challenge.

Remember, even the smallest victory can be a major triumph.