A Dash of Dizzy

Happy Birthday Haikus!

My friend Helen sent me a bunch of happy birthday haikus this morning! I like this trend! Tumblr is making this impossible to format. Sorry it’s weird. Here they are:

You’re my favouritest/the Queen of all the Meggies/ birthday haiku fun

Insomnia sucks/but means you get to wake up/ to all poetry

Last one kinda sucked/ next one will be super boss/ this one’s just ok

Haiku text all day?/ you deserve the very best/ but haikus work too

Not even tired, yo/ probably should stop making/ this all about me

Hey. Hey you. Missy/ I hope you know I think you’re/ sweetiest around

Love you lots and lots/ try to laugh today, for reals/ do it for Helen!

Cheer-up Haikus

My friend Tavish wrote some haikus about me to cheer me up! I thought they were lovely so I want to share them!

Meaghan likes toast
It’s crisp with melted butter
I like Toast Meaghan

Meaghan’s a sweetie
genetics is her forte
monozygotic!

Meaghan is so nice
I’d like to be her friend — oh!
I am already!

Male Pattern Baldness!

I asked you guys to ask me science things, and to my surprise a couple people did! Shane asked me my first question ever. I was really glad when I knew the answer too!  His question was:

“I’ve always heard that male pattern baldness is inherited through the mother, but if women don’t get it how is it passed on?”

The genetics of male pattern baldness aren’t completely known, but generally speaking this condition (called ‘androgenic alopecia’ if you want to get sciencey about it as I always do) is much more common in males, hence male pattern baldness. Like Shane heard, it is commonly inherited through the genes that the male receives from his mother. If the mother has all her hair though, how is she passing on something that makes her son bald?

Before going into the genetics of what gives someone male pattern baldness I am going to start with genetics 101! When a baby is conceived it receives one sex chromosome from the mother and one from the father. Females have two X chromosomes (XX) and males have one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY). Since females have two X chromosomes, during conception they automatically give an X chromosome to their child because that is all they have to give. The father however can randomly give the child either an X or a Y. Giving an X will create a female and giving a Y will create a male. This is why people say that the father determines the sex of the baby. 

Another important thing to know is that for the most part everyone has the same genes. What makes us different is that these genes have mutations in them that make us unique. Our DNA is like a book and the genes are the sentences making up that book. We all have the same sentences but with slightly different phrasing. A person without male pattern baldness may have a sentence in their book that says “I like canines” whereas a person with male pattern baldness has the same sentence reading “I like dogs”. It’s the same gene, but the slight change in it makes one person have the trait.

Male pattern baldness is what we call an X-linked trait.This means that the genes that cause male pattern baldness can be found on the X chromosome. Since women have two X chromosomes, they have two genes for male pattern baldness. Men only have one X chromosome, so they have one male pattern baldness gene. If a man has a mutation in his male pattern baldness gene that turns the word “canine” into “dog” he is going to develop male pattern baldness. A woman though has two chances because of her two X chromosomes. She can have one gene say “dog”, but her second X chromosome could say “canine”. This one “good” gene is enough to protect her from going bald. This doesn’t change the fact that one of her chromosomes still says “dog” though, and when she reproduces there is a 50% chance that her child will get the “dog” chromosome. If that child also inherits a Y chromosome from his father, he will develop into a boy. The Y chromosome doesn’t have any male pattern baldness gene. Since the boy only has one X chromosome, and the gene on it says “dog”, no “canine” gene will be present to protect the boy, and the “dog” gene will dominate, leading to male pattern baldness. So just because the mother doesn’t express the bald trait doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have the genes that can cause it.

If this same woman who carried the male pattern baldness gene had a child with a man with male pattern baldness, there would be a chance of them creating a daughter with baldness. If the child is a female, this means that the father had to pass on his single X chromosome, which has the “dog” gene because the father is bald. The mother has a 50% chance of passing on her “dog” gene too. If she did, both of the X chromosomes that their daughter inherited would have genes for male pattern baldness, and their daughter would inherit this trait. Luckily for women this condition tends to express itself differently in females, and usually causes thinning hair rather than the receding hair line. This hair thinning is called female pattern baldness. Remember though, if the woman donated the “canine” X chromosome, their daughter would have one “dog” gene and one “canine” gene, and this canine gene would be enough to protect her from expressing the condition. She would simply be known as a carrier, like her mother.

Colour blindness and two forms of muscular dystrophy are also X-linked!

I hope that wasn’t too confusing and that my dog/canine talk didn’t complicate things. Genetics is so cool you guys! If you ask me genetics questions, there is a greater chance that I will know the answer! If any of this was confusing and you want me to clarify, or if you have a question of your own, you can ask me here!

Anemia

A lot of you have probably heard of anemia. I always knew that it was a disorder of the blood that made people tired. Personally, it always prevented me from donating blood. I hated that! I hated taking time out of my day to go all the way there, only to have them tell me that I needed to eat more red meat and green vegetables, or take an iron supplement and try again next time. I didn’t actually understand why that was necessary. I do now, and by the end of this, you will too! :D

Red blood cells are basically big sacs that hold enzymes and a protein called hemoglobin. Hemoglobin allows our red blood cells to bind oxygen molecules. Our red blood cells then travel all over our body, dropping oxygen off at tissues and organs everywhere. This oxygen needs to go everywhere so that we can keep living! People who are anemic don’t have enough hemoglobin. They still have it, but not quite enough. This means that we can’t move as much oxygen around as we need to in order to feel well. Our tissues are still getting oxygen, but not quite enough. This makes an anemic person feel tired, irritable, lightheaded, dizzy, and their heart beats faster.

There are a lot of things that cause anemia, but they all cause the person to either not produce enough red blood cells, or to get rid of too many red blood cells. Drugs, as well as radiation for cancer treatment can cause anemia. These things are often created to destroy cells in our body that are bad for us. You want to blast away those cancer cells! In the process though, they can end up killing our red blood cells and making us anemic. A more common cause of anemia (and the annoying one from the blood donor clinic) is lacking the nutrients needed to make red blood cells. We need iron, folic acid, and vitamin B12. Iron is especially important because the hemoglobin which does all the red blood cell work uses iron to bind oxygen. Without iron, hemoglobin is totally useless!!

The nurse at the blood donor clinic also told me that if I tried to donate blood after I’d been on my period, I would likely be too anemic to donate. This is because many red blood cells have been removed, but you haven’t had time to make new ones yet. 

A bunch of other factors like genetics, infections, and other things that make you lose a lot of blood can cause anemia too. For the most part though, there are methods of becoming un-anemic. It could be a diet change, taking an iron supplement, or talking to your doctor about various treatments if the cause of your anemia is less common.

So yea! That’s anemia. Not quite the most interesting topic to start off with, but I think a lot of people hear of anemia without really knowing what it is. Feel free to ask me questions!!!

A Pledge!

So in an attempt to better learn the various things I am learning in school, I am going to start writing to you all about the concepts that I need to remember. Explaining them in regular language will reinforce the concepts for me, plus it will help me realize if I don’t actually understand what I am talking about. I’ll only write about stuff that you might actually find interesting. Also, if I need to explain the entire rest of the course in order to explain the concept, that won’t be happening. 

Feel free to ask me questions about what I have written too! Though I don’t know anyone will care enough to do that. But it will help! OR! You can ask things that you have wondered about the body. I will likely not be able to answer most of these, but if I can, I will!

The course I will mainly be writing about is human physiology. Other people think the body is interesting right?

Disclaimer: I’m a freakin’ undergrad. I can’t guarantee that everything I write is completely accurate. It will be for the most part, but please don’t take this too seriously.