11 Things That Can Change Your Eye Color
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Eye color is generally considered so static that iris scans are considered a reasonable security method. However, it can indeed change—mostly for reasons you won’t want, though:
Ringing the changes
Putting aside any wishes of being a manga protagonist with violet eyes, here are the self-changing options:
- Aging in babies: babies are often born with lighter eyes, which can darken as melanocytes develop during the first few months of life. This is similar to how a small child’s blonde hair can often be much darker by the time puberty hits!
- Aging in adults: eyes may continue to darken until adulthood, while aging into the elderly years can cause them to lighten due to conditions like arcus senilis
- Horner’s syndrome: a nerve disorder that can cause the eyes to become lighter due to loss of pigment
- Fuchs heterochromic iridocyclitis: an inflammation of the iris that leads to lighter eyes over time
- Pigment dispersion syndrome: the iris rubs against eye fibers, leading to pigment loss and lighter eyes
- Kayser-Fleischer rings: excess copper deposits on the cornea, often due to Wilson’s disease, causing larger-than-usual brown or grayish rings around the iris
- Iris melanoma: a rare cancer that can darken the iris, often presenting as brown spots
- Cancer treatments: chemotherapy for retinoblastoma in children can result in lighter eye color and heterochromia
- Medications: prostaglandin-based glaucoma treatments can darken the iris, with up to 23% of patients seeing this effect
- Vitiligo: an autoimmune disorder that destroys melanocytes, mostly noticed in the skin, but also causing patchy loss of pigment in the iris
- Emotional and pupil size changes: emotions and trauma can affect pupil size, making eyes appear darker or lighter temporarily by altering how much of the iris is visible
For more about all these, and some notes about more voluntary changes (if you have certain kinds of eye surgery), enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Understanding And Slowing The Progression Of Cataracts
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The Spectrum of Hope – by Dr. Gayatri Devi
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We’ve written before about Dr. Devi’s work (See: “Alzheimer’s: The Bad News And The Good“) but she has plenty more to say than we could fit in an article.
The book is written for patients, family/carers, and clinicians—without getting deep into the science, which it is assumed clinicians will know. the general style of the book is pop-science, and it’s more about addressing the misconceptions around Alzheimer’s, rather than focusing on neurological features such as beta amyloid plaques and tau proteins and the like.
Dr. Devi explains a lot about the experience of Alzheimer’s—what to expect, or rather, what to know about in advance. Because, as she explains, there are a lot of different manifestations of Alzheimer’s that are all lumped under the same umbrella.
This means that a person could have negligible memory but perfect language and reasoning skills, or the other way around, or some other combination of symptoms showing up or not.
Which means that any plan for managing one’s Alzheimer’s needs to be adaptable and personalized, which is something Dr. Devi talks us through, too.
Bottom line: if you are a loved one has Alzheimer’s, or you just like to be prepared, this is a great book to prepare anybody for just that.
Click here to check out The Spectrum of Hope, and hold onto that hope!
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Longevity Noodles
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Noodles may put the “long” into “longevity”, but most of the longevity here comes from the ergothioneine in the mushrooms! The rest of the ingredients are great too though, including the noodles themselves—soba noodles are made from buckwheat, which is not a wheat, nor even a grass (it’s a flowering plant), and does not contain gluten*, but does count as one of your daily portions of grains!
*unless mixed with wheat flour—which it shouldn’t be, but check labels, because companies sometimes cut it with wheat flour, which is cheaper, to increase their profit margin
You will need
- 1 cup (about 9 oz; usually 1 packet) soba noodles
- 6 medium portobello mushrooms, sliced
- 3 kale leaves, de-stemmed and chopped
- 1 shallot, chopped, or ¼ cup chopped onion of any kind
- 1 carrot, diced small
- 1 cup peas
- ½ bulb garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp rice vinegar
- 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
- 1 tsp black pepper, coarse ground
- 1 tsp red chili flakes
- ½ tsp MSG or 1 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce
- Avocado oil, for frying (alternatively: extra virgin olive oil or cold-pressed coconut oil are both perfectly good substitutions)
Method
(we suggest you read everything at least once before doing anything)
1) Cook the soba noodles per the packet instructions, rinse, and set aside
2) Heat a little oil in a skillet, add the shallot, and cook for about 2 minutes.
3) Add the carrot and peas and cook for 3 more minutes.
4) Add the mushrooms, kale, garlic, ginger, peppers, and vinegar, and cook for 1 more minute, stirring well.
5) Add the noodles, as well as the MSG or low-sodium soy sauce, and cook for yet 1 more minute.
6) Serve!
Enjoy!
Want to learn more?
For those interested in some of the science of what we have going on today:
- Rice vs Buckwheat – Which is Healthier?
- The Magic Of Mushrooms: “The Longevity Vitamin” (That’s Not A Vitamin)
- Monosodium Glutamate: Sinless Flavor-Enhancer Or Terrible Health Risk?
- Our Top 5 Spices: How Much Is Enough For Benefits? ← 4/5 of these spices are in today’s dish!
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The Cancer Journey – by Dr. Chadi Nabhan
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After a brief introduction of what cancer actually is and what causes it, the layout of the rest of the book is in chronological order of patient experience, that is to say, what to expect during the journey from screening and diagnosis, to one’s first oncology visit (the author being an oncologist himself), how cancer staging works, getting second opinions, and a chapter-by-chapter review of many different treatment options, ranging from surgery and chemotherapy, to radiation and hormonal therapies, and even more modern targeted therapies, immunotherapy, cellular therapies, and yes, complementary and alternative therapies, amongst others we haven’t listed for the sake of brevity.
He doesn’t leave it there though; he also talks managing side effects, monitoring for recurrence, and even caring for the caregiver(s), along with eventual survivorship and that emotional journey, or if it comes down to it, palliative and hospice care.
Finishing on a hopeful note, he also brings attention to novel approaches that are being trialled presently, and the prospects for the near future of cancer care.
The style is very human and readable, notwithstanding that the author has hundreds of peer-reviewed publications to his name, the content here is presented in a much more approachable, less clinical way, while still conveying all the information that needs to be conveyed.
Bottom line: if you or a loved one is facing cancer, this book will be an invaluable resource.
Click here to check out The Cancer Journey, and understand each part of it!
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Antihistamines’ Generation Gap
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Are You Ready For Allergy Season?
For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, fall will be upon us soon, and we have a few weeks to be ready for it. A common seasonal ailment is of course seasonal allergies—it’s not serious for most of us, but it can be very annoying, and can disrupt a lot of our normal activities.
Suddenly, a thing that notionally does us no real harm, is making driving dangerous, cooking take three times as long, sex laughable if not off-the-table (so to speak), and the lightest tasks exhausting.
So, what to do about it?
Antihistamines: first generation
Ye olde antihistamines such as diphenhydramine and chlorpheniramine are probably not what to do about it.
They are small molecules that cross the blood-brain barrier and affect histamine receptors in the central nervous system. This will generally get the job done, but there’s a fair bit of neurological friendly-fire going on, and while they will produce drowsiness, the sleep will usually be of poor quality. They also tax the liver rather.
If you are using them and not experiencing unwanted side effects, then don’t let us stop you, but do be aware of the risks.
See also: Long-term use of diphenhydramine ← this is the active ingredient in Benadryl in the US and Canada, but safety regulations in many other countries mean that Benadryl has different, safer active ingredients elsewhere.
Antihistamines: later generations
We’re going to aggregate 2nd gen, 3rd gen, and 4th gen antihistamines here, because otherwise we’ll be writing a history article and we don’t have room for that. But suffice it to say, later generations of antihistamines do not come with the same problems.
Instead of going in all-guns-blazing to the CNS like first-gens, they are more specific in their receptor-targetting, resulting in negligible collateral damage:
Special shout-out to cetirizine and loratadine, which are the drugs behind half the brand names you’ll see on pharmacy shelves around most of the world these days (including many in the US and Canada).
Note that these two are very often discussed in the same sentence, sit next to each other on the shelf, and often have identical price and near-identical packaging. Their effectiveness (usually: moderate) and side effects (usually: low) are similar and comparable, but they are genuinely different drugs that just happen to do more or less the same thing.
This is relevant because if one of them isn’t working for you (and/or is creating an unwanted side effect), you might want to try the other one.
Another honorable mention goes to fexofenadine, for which pretty much all the same as the above goes, though it gets talked about less (and when it does get mentioned, it’s usually by its most popular brand name, Allegra).
Finally, one that’s a little different and also deserving of a special mention is azelastine. It was recently (ish, 2021) moved from being prescription-only to being non-prescription (OTC), and it’s a nasal spray.
It can cause drowsiness, but it’s considered safe and effective for most people. Its main benefit is not really the difference in drug, so much as the difference in the route of administration (nasal rather than oral). Because the drug is in liquid spray form, it can be absorbed through the mucus lining of the nose and get straight to work on blocking the symptoms—in contrast, oral antihistamines usually have to go into your stomach and take their chances there (we say “usually”, because there are some sublingual antihistamines that dissolve under the tongue, but they are less common.)
Better than antihistamines?
Writer’s note: at this point, I was given to wonder: “wait, what was I squirting up my nose last time anyway?”—because, dear readers, at the time I got it I just bought one of every different drug on the shelf, desperate to find something that worked. What worked for me, like magic, when nothing else had, was beclometasone dipropionate, which a) smelled delightfully of flowers, which might just be the brand I got, b) needs replacing now because I got it in March 2023 and it expired July 2024, and c) is not an antihistamine at all.
But, that brings us to the final chapter for today: systemic corticosteroids
They’re not ok for everyone (check with your doctor if unsure), and definitely should not be taken if immunocompromised and/or currently suffering from an infection (including colds, flu, COVID, etc) unless your doctor tells you otherwise (and even then, honestly, double-check).
But! They can work like magic when other things don’t. Unlike antihistamines, which only block the symptoms, systemic corticosteroids tackle the underlying inflammation, which can stop the whole thing in its tracks.
Here’s how they measure up against antihistamines:
❝The results of this systematic review, together with data on safety and cost effectiveness, support the use of intranasal corticosteroids over oral antihistamines as first line treatment for allergic rhinitis.❞
~ Dr. Robert Puy et al.
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Can I take antihistamines everyday? More than the recommended dose? What if I’m pregnant? Here’s what the research says
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Allergies happen when your immune system overreacts to a normally harmless substance like dust or pollen. Hay fever, hives and anaphylaxis are all types of allergic reactions.
Many of those affected reach quickly for antihistamines to treat mild to moderate allergies (though adrenaline, not antihistamines, should always be used to treat anaphylaxis).
If you’re using oral antihistamines very often, you might have wondered if it’s OK to keep relying on antihistamines to control symptoms of allergies. The good news is there’s no research evidence to suggest regular, long-term use of modern antihistamines is a problem.
But while they’re good at targeting the early symptoms of a mild to moderate allergic reaction (sneezing, for example), oral antihistamines aren’t as effective as steroid nose sprays for managing hay fever. This is because nasal steroid sprays target the underlying inflammation of hay fever, not just the symptoms.
Here are the top six antihistamines myths – busted.
Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels Myth 1. Oral antihistamines are the best way to control hay fever symptoms
Wrong. In fact, the recommended first line medical treatment for most patients with moderate to severe hay fever is intranasal steroids. This might include steroid nose sprays (ask your doctor or pharmacist if you’d like to know more).
Studies have shown intranasal steroids relieve hay fever symptoms better than antihistamine tablets or syrups.
To be effective, nasal steroids need to be used regularly, and importantly, with the correct technique.
In Australia, you can buy intranasal steroids without a doctor’s script at your pharmacy. They work well to relieve a blocked nose and itchy, watery eyes, as well as improve chronic nasal blockage (however, antihistamine tablets or syrups do not improve chronic nasal blockage).
Some newer nose sprays contain both steroids and antihistamines. These can provide more rapid and comprehensive relief from hay fever symptoms than just oral antihistamines or intranasal steroids alone. But patients need to keep using them regularly for between two and four weeks to yield the maximum effect.
For people with seasonal allergic rhinitis (hayfever), it may be best to start using intranasal steroids a few weeks before the pollen season in your regions hits. Taking an antihistamine tablet as well can help.
Antihistamine eye drops work better than oral antihistamines to relieve acutely itchy eyes (allergic conjunctivitis).
Myth 2. My body will ‘get used to’ antihistamines
Some believe this myth so strongly they may switch antihistamines. But there’s no scientific reason to swap antihistamines if the one you’re using is working for you. Studies show antihistamines continue to work even after six months of sustained use.
Myth 3. Long-term antihistamine use is dangerous
There are two main types of antihistamines – first-generation and second-generation.
First-generation antihistamines, such as chlorphenamine or promethazine, are short-acting. Side effects include drowsiness, dry mouth and blurred vision. You shouldn’t drive or operate machinery if you are taking them, or mix them with alcohol or other medications.
Most doctors no longer recommend first-generation antihistamines. The risks outweigh the benefits.
The newer second-generation antihistamines, such as cetirizine, fexofenadine, or loratadine, have been extensively studied in clinical trials. They are generally non-sedating and have very few side effects. Interactions with other medications appear to be uncommon and they don’t interact badly with alcohol. They are longer acting, so can be taken once a day.
Although rare, some side effects (such as photosensitivity or stomach upset) can happen. At higher doses, cetirizine can make some people feel drowsy. However, research conducted over a period of six months showed taking second-generation antihistamines is safe and effective. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist if you’re concerned.
Allergies can make it hard to focus. Pexels/Edward Jenner Myth 4. Antihistamines aren’t safe for children or pregnant people
As long as it’s the second-generation antihistamine, it’s fine. You can buy child versions of second-generation antihistamines as syrups for kids under 12.
Though still used, some studies have shown certain first-generation antihistamines can impair childrens’ ability to learn and retain information.
Studies on second-generation antihistamines for children have found them to be safer and better than the first-generation drugs. They may even improve academic performance (perhaps by allowing kids who would otherwise be distracted by their allergy symptoms to focus). There’s no good evidence they stop working in children, even after long-term use.
For all these reasons, doctors say it’s better for children to use second-generation than first-generation antihistimines.
What about using antihistimines while you’re pregnant? One meta analysis of combined study data including over 200,000 women found no increase in fetal abnormalities.
Many doctors recommend the second-generation antihistamines loratadine or cetirizine for pregnant people. They have not been associated with any adverse pregnancy outcomes. Both can be used during breastfeeding, too.
Myth 5. It is unsafe to use higher than the recommended dose of antihistamines
Higher than standard doses of antihistamines can be safely used over extended periods of time for adults, if required.
But speak to your doctor first. These higher doses are generally recommended for a skin condition called chronic urticaria (a kind of chronic hives).
Myth 6. You can use antihistamines instead of adrenaline for anaphylaxis
No. Adrenaline (delivered via an epipen, for example) is always the first choice. Antihistamines don’t work fast enough, nor address all the problems caused by anaphylaxis.
Antihistamines may be used later on to calm any hives and itching, once the very serious and acute phase of anaphylaxis has been resolved.
In general, oral antihistamines are not the best treatment to control hay fever – you’re better off with steroid nose sprays. That said, second-generation oral antihistamines can be used to treat mild to moderate allergy symptoms safely on a regular basis over the long term.
Janet Davies, Respiratory Allergy Stream Co-chair, National Allergy Centre of Excellence; Professor and Head, Allergy Research Group, Queensland University of Technology; Connie Katelaris, Professor of Immunology and Allergy, Western Sydney University, and Joy Lee, Respiratory Allergy Stream member, National Allergy Centre of Excellence; Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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The Dangers Of Fires, Floods, & Having Your Hair Washed
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It’s a dangerous business, going out of your door… And this week’s news round-up looks at 5 reasons why that might be:
Superspreading like wildfire
Environmental health risks are a big topic these days, with our changing climate. As for wildfires? Some of the risks are obvious: burning to death or choking to death in the smoke—but even upon surviving the seemingly worst, more threats remain that themselves can still kill.
Those threats include that both burns and smoke inhalation can cause acute and chronic changes in the immune system. Specifically: changes for the worse. The mechanisms by which this happens depend on the nature of any burns received, and in the case of smoke, what exactly was in the smoke. Now, there is no kind of smoke that is healthy to inhale, but definitely some kinds are a lot worse than others, and let’s just say, people’s homes contain a lot of plastic.
Additionally, if you think someone coughing near you spreads germs, imagine how far germs can be spread by miles-high, miles-wide billowing hot air.
In short, there’s a lot going on and none of it is good, and we’ve barely had room to summarise here, so…
Read in full: Wildfires ignite infection risks by weakening the body’s immune defenses and spreading bugs in smoke
Related: What’s Lurking In Your Household Air?
A flood of diseases
*record scratch*
Environmental health risks are a big topic these days, with our changing climate. As for floods? Some of the risks are obvious: drowning to death or having your house washed away—but even upon surviving the seemingly worst, more threats remain that themselves can still kill.
Those threats include increases in deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases, and respiratory diseases in general. Simply, a place that has been waterlogged, even if it seems “safe” now, is not a healthy place to be, due to bacteria, viruses, fungi, and more. In fact, it even increases all-cause mortality, because being healthy in such a place is simply harder:
Read in full: Linked to higher mortality rates, large floods emerge as an urgent public health concern
Related: Dodging Dengue In The US
Don’t lose your head
Visiting the hairdresser is not something that most people consider a potential brush with death—your hairdresser is probably not Sweeney Todd, after all. However…
There is an issue specifically with getting your hair washed there. Backwash basins—the sink things into which one rests one’s head at a backwards tilt—create an awkward angle for the cervical vertebrae and a sudden reduction in blood flow to the brain can cause a stroke, with the risk being sufficiently notable as to have its own name in scientific literature: beauty parlor stroke syndrome (BPSS).
❝While research suggests BPSS is most likely to occur in women over 50—and previous history of narrowing or thinning of blood vessels and arthritis of the spinal column in the neck are particular risk factors—it could happen to anyone regardless of age or medical history.❞
Read in full: The hidden health risk of having your hair washed
Related: Your Stroke Survival Plan
The smartwatch wristbands that give you cancer
It’s about the PFAS content. The article doesn’t discuss cancer in detail, just mentioning the increased risk, but you can read about the link between the two in our article below.
Basically, if your smartwatch wristband is a) not silicone and b) waterproof anyway, especially if it’s stain-resistant (as most are designed to be, what with wearing it next to one’s skin all the time while exercising, and not being the sort of thing one throws in the wash), then chances are it has PFAS levels much higher than normally found in consumer goods or clothing.
You can read more about how to identify the risks, here:
Read in full: Smartwatch bands can contain high levels of toxic PFAS, study finds
Related: PFAS Exposure & Cancer: The Numbers Are High
The cows giving milk with a little extra
Bird flu (HPAI) is now not the only flu epidemic amongst cattle in the US, and not only that, but rather than “merely” colonizing the lungs and upper respiratory tracts, in this case the virus (IAV) is thriving in the mammary glands, meaning that yes, it gets dispensed into the milk, and so far scientists are simply scrambling to find better ways to vaccinate the cattle, in the hopes that the milk will not be so risky because yes, it is currently a “reservoir and transmission vector” for the virus.
There are, however, barriers to creating those vaccines:
Read in full: Unexpected viral reservoir: influenza A thrives in cattle mammary glands
Related: Cows’ Milk, Bird Flu, & You
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