I just had my husband read up a most interesting story from the most recent Economist (May 3rd, 2014)–a most unlikely source for a scientific article–that came down on me like a rock! And it will on you as well. The title of the article does not tell you what it is about and it sounds silly too–not sure why they gave this title… but cute nonetheless albeit says nothing of the topic. The title is: Sex, writhes and videotape.
So why is this article interesting? It is not about sex and not about video taping animals having sex. Rather it discovered something critical for us to know about. The original research was published in Nature Methods by Jeffrey Mogil of McGill University in Montreal and his colleagues. So why is this article important to us you say?
This article is about how our research on animals has mislead us for years! And we did not know until now. This basically means we need to redo every single research. Why? As it turns out, lab rats fear male experimenters and kick into a “fight-or-flight” mode, initiating diarrhea and other things, one if which is key: less sensitivity to pain!
If the researchers are women, the rats do not have the same fear, have no panic attacks, do not run for their lives, and their pain sensors remain what it normally would be.
This all sounds great but what is its importance? If you are taking a medication for a headache and the dose of that medicine was established for you based on the research of a male researchers, there is a good chance you will be overdosed! In fact, in recent studies, a couple of sleeping aid pharmaceuticals have already had to make adjustment to dosages since the dose for men represented a 45% overdose for women. But these doses may have still been established by male researchers that would mean that even the men are overdosed and women still also are. We just don’t know.
Based on this discovery of lab rat fear, it is questionable if we really have any medicine in the market today that is safe in dose! Think about its implications! And this is all because lab rats are more scared from men than women. It is both ridiculous and scary! It also teaches us a great lesson: rats can tell who is male and female.. in fact they can tell so from a T-Shirt put close to their cages… There is something about male researchers that intimidates lab rats!
Next time you buy your bottle of pain reliever, look to see if the researcher was male or female…
Any questions and suggestions are welcome!
Angela
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About Angela A Stanton, Ph.D.
Angela A Stanton, PhD, is a Neuroeconomist focusing on chronic pain--migraine in particular--physiology, electrolyte homeostasis, nutrition, and genetics. She lives in Southern California. Her current research is focused on migraine cause, prevention, and treatment without the use of medicine. As a forever migraineur from childhood, her discovery was helped by experimenting on herself. She found the cause of migraine to be at the ionic level, associated with disruption of the electrolyte homeostasis, resulting from genetic variations of all voltage dependent channels, gates, and pumps (chanelopathy) that modulate electrolyte mineral density and voltage in the brain. In addition, insulin and glucose transporters, and several other variants, such as MTHFR variants of B vitamin methylation process and many others are different in the case of a migraineur from the general population.
Migraineurs are glucose sensitive (carbohydrate intolerant) and should avoid eating carbs as much as possible. She is working on her hypothesis that migraine is a metabolic disease.
As a result of the success of the first edition of her book and her helping over 5000 migraineurs successfully prevent their migraines world wide, all ages and both genders, and all types of migraines, she published the 2nd (extended) edition of her migraine book "Fighting The Migraine Epidemic: Complete Guide: How To Treat & Prevent Migraines Without Medications". The 2nd edition is the “holy grail” of migraine cause, development, and prevention, incorporating all there is to know. It includes a long section for medical and research professionals. The book is full of academic citations (over 800) to authenticate the statements she makes to make it easy to follow up by those interested and to spark further research interest. It is a "Complete Guide", published on September 29, 2017.
Dr. Stanton received her BSc at UCLA in Mathematics, MBA at UCR, MS in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, PhD in Economics with dissertation in neuroscience (culminating in Neuroeconomics) at Claremont Graduate University, fMRI certification at Harvard University Medical School at the Martinos Center for Neuroimaging for experimenting with neurotransmitters on human volunteers, certification in LCHF/ketogenic diet from NN (Nutrition Network), certification in physiology (UPEN via Coursea), Nutrition (Harvard Shool of Public Health) and functional medicine studies. Dr. Stanton is an avid sports fan, currently power weight lifting and kickboxing. For relaxation (yeah.. about a half minute each day), she paints and photographs and loves to spend time with her family of husband of 45 years, 2 sons and their wives, and 2 granddaughters.
Follow her on Twitter at: @MigraineBook, LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaastantonphd/ and facebook at https://www.facebook.com/DrAngelaAStanton/
Clueless Doctors & Scientists 
Scare myself? Guess I’m lacking that skill. How does that work?
No roses here. Maybe in the flower shop?
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red crimson roses for your wife…the ones that did not make the news? 🙂 In any case, read the article I just posted on blood pressure! It was shocking to watch the program last night. I am glad!
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Ok Einstein, here ya go, especially selected for you.
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lol… did you come to my front yard to take this picture??? 🙂 Mine has more water dots on it from the sprinkler… lol 🙂
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Rest assured you never would see me coming, lady!
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hmmmmmmmmmmmmm… wordpress!!!!!!! Cure yourself!
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what? Moderation AGAIN?!
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Something about you… rats.. males… hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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Oh well, I’m used to be persona non grata in certain circles.
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It is not up to me … not sure what wordpress thinks of you… it is their choice and not mine. I do not set posting approval automatically because of the spam control… what it does (normally) is that if I approved you before you become a permanently approved person.. apparently it doesn’t think of you that way… not sure why.
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Probably not in their circle,
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no.. you are in a vertical line in the middle of dark matter with a particle splitting… who would want to be in your circle?
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You probably.
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got that right. 🙂
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Ah, another myth about males debunked. From now on, no woman can tell us we’re like rats, because as it turned out, rats are not afraid of women, while men are. Really great news.
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Ah… But Roald.. We can still say men are rats… Only now we know men scare themselves and still love women. 🙂 You got it wrong my friend. 🙂
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Nice try, but your logic sucks. Anyway, as expected you will continue to call us rats no matter what, but now we don’t give a rat’s ass about that anymore.
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nah… my logic is great. What do you do when you scare yourself? And where are the red roses to your wife? Just curious…. 🙂
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Oh, damn, I forgot your vertical ritual. Oh well, here it is.
Scare myself? Guess I’m lacking that skill. How does that work?
No roses here. Maybe in the flower shop?
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