Occasionally Preposterous, Repeatedly Scrutinizing, and Sporadically Egotistical: My Two Cents

 Am I the only one who remembers the cartoon Fighting Foodons? Or the Food Fighters little action figures? I might be and don't even know why I remember them. All I remember from the cartoon was how the food would come alive and could be "seasoned" and made stronger. Yes, it was a real show and no, you can't judge me for watching it. Why would you any way? Major Munch, Private Pizza, and the Burgerdier General would disapprove. What was I going on about? This was going to start with a joke about E. coli  and collies but I will save that for another time.  Escherichia coli or E. coli  for short is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod shaped bacteria. For this post I will refer to it as EC because I said so. Unlike the C. diff  I talked about last time, EC can use aerobic and anaerobic metabolism to stay alive but prefer the gut where the oxygen is less. For its hosts, EC strains can prevent the growth of more pathogenic bacteria and produce vitamin K2 amon...

We are just going to keep talking about GI subjects until I get tired of them. Probably after this but who knows? I get to take care of a lot of GI/GU patients at work with some of the "Greatest Hits" of the gut. Diverticulitis, intestinal perforations, colorectal cancer, pancreatitis, bowel obstructions, abscesses, bleeds, and the like. I won't ever be a GI specialist but I do love infections and the big dog at the moment is everyone's favorite, Clostridioides difficile  AKA Clostridium difficile maybe C. diff  or in this mess of words, CD.  CD is a Gram -positive, spore forming, obligate anaerobic, motile, "drumstick-shaped" bacillus. To expand on that, they need low-no oxygen environments (like the gut), create spores that are hardy and able to survive conditions that would kill the live bacteria, and CD creates toxins that cause many of the effects of a CD infection. Though we generally associate CD with the diseases it causes, sometimes called CDAD or C...

CRC right? Lord I don’t miss that place. Truly the embodiment of “hurry up and wait” because even the most waiting-est branch of service, Marine Corps, got ahead of us in line. Wait in Texas to wait in Kuwait to wait in another desert. Seems legit. What was this about about? Oh. CRC as in colorectal cancer. Even worse than the previous CRC.  In 70-80% of cases, CRC arises from adenomatous polyps in the colon. Who would have guessed thats where they would start? These polyps come about when the normal cells of the epithelium gain a genetic mutation in the Wnt signaling pathway. Normally the Wnt keeps the cells proliferating to maintain the lining of the colon, which is good. When Wnt is turbocharged you get overgrowth, which is bad. Too much of a good thing eh? I forget if I have said this in other posts, if only there was a way I could go back and read them, but the more a cell divides the more chances for a mutation to occur that would transform it into cancer. So the Wnt makes th...