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Positive outlook predicts less memory decline

Date:
October 29, 2020
Source:
Association for Psychological Science
Summary:
A new study finds that people who feel enthusiastic and cheerful — what psychologists call ‘positive affect’ — are less likely to experience memory decline as they age. This result adds to a growing body of research on positive affect’s role in healthy aging.
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We may wish some memories could last a lifetime, but many physical and emotional factors can negatively impact our ability to retain information throughout life.

A new study published in the journal Psychological Science found that people who feel enthusiastic and cheerful — what psychologists call “positive affect” — are less likely to experience memory decline as they age. This result adds to a growing body of research on positive affect’s role in healthy aging.

A team of researchers analyzed data from 991 middle-aged and older U.S. adults who participated in a national study conducted at three time periods: between 1995 and 1996, 2004 and 2006, and 2013 and 2014.

In each assessment, participants reported on a range of positive emotions they had experienced during the past 30 days. In the final two assessments, participants also completed tests of memory performance. These tests consisted of recalling words immediately after their presentation and again 15 minutes later.

The researchers examined the association between positive affect and memory decline, accounting for age, gender, education, depression, negative affect, and extraversion.

“Our findings showed that memory declined with age,” said Claudia Haase, an associate professor at Northwestern University and senior author on the paper. “However, individuals with higher levels of positive affect had a less steep memory decline over the course of almost a decade,” added Emily Hittner, a PhD graduate of Northwestern University and the paper’s lead author.

Areas of future research might address the pathways that could connect positive affect and memory, such as physical health or social relationships.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Association for Psychological Science. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Emily F. Hittner, Jacquelyn E. Stephens, Nicholas A. Turiano, Denis Gerstorf, Margie E. Lachman, Claudia M. Haase. Positive Affect Is Associated With Less Memory Decline: Evidence From a 9-Year Longitudinal Study. Psychological Science, 2020; 095679762095388 DOI: 10.1177/0956797620953883

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Health Technology

Study helps explain why motivation to learn declines with age

Research on mice suggests aging affects a brain circuit critical for learning to make some types of decisions
Date:
October 28, 2020
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
Neuroscientists have identified a brain circuit critical for learning to make decisions that require evaluating the cost or reward of an action. They showed this circuit is negatively affected by aging and in Huntington’s disease.
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As people age, they often lose their motivation to learn new things or engage in everyday activities. In a study of mice, MIT neuroscientists have now identified a brain circuit that is critical for maintaining this kind of motivation.

This circuit is particularly important for learning to make decisions that require evaluating the cost and reward that come with a particular action. The researchers showed that they could boost older mice’s motivation to engage in this type of learning by reactivating this circuit, and they could also decrease motivation by suppressing the circuit.

Grandmother Making Faces

“As we age, it’s harder to have a get-up-and-go attitude toward things,” says Ann Graybiel, an Institute Professor at MIT and member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “This get-up-and-go, or engagement, is important for our social well-being and for learning — it’s tough to learn if you aren’t attending and engaged.”

Graybiel is the senior author of the study, which appears today in Cell. The paper’s lead authors are Alexander Friedman, a former MIT research scientist who is now an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, and Emily Hueske, an MIT research scientist.

Evaluating cost and benefit

The striatum is part of the basal ganglia — a collection of brain centers linked to habit formation, control of voluntary movement, emotion, and addiction. For several decades, Graybiel’s lab has been studying clusters of cells called striosomes, which are distributed throughout the striatum. Graybiel discovered striosomes many years ago, but their function had remained mysterious, in part because they are so small and deep within the brain that it is difficult to image them with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

In recent years, Friedman, Graybiel, and colleagues including MIT research fellow Ken-ichi Amemori have discovered that striosomes play an important role in a type of decision-making known as approach-avoidance conflict. These decisions involve choosing whether to take the good with the bad — or to avoid both — when given options that have both positive and negative elements. An example of this kind of decision is having to choose whether to take a job that pays more but forces a move away from family and friends. Such decisions often provoke great anxiety.

In a related study, Graybiel’s lab found that striosomes connect to cells of the substantia nigra, one of the brain’s major dopamine-producing centers. These studies led the researchers to hypothesize that striosomes may be acting as a gatekeeper that absorbs sensory and emotional information coming from the cortex and integrates it to produce a decision on how to act. These actions can then be invigorated by the dopamine-producing cells.

The researchers later discovered that chronic stress has a major impact on this circuit and on this kind of emotional decision-making. In a 2017 study performed in rats and mice, they showed that stressed animals were far more likely to choose high-risk, high-payoff options, but that they could block this effect by manipulating the circuit.

In the new Cell study, the researchers set out to investigate what happens in striosomes as mice learn how to make these kinds of decisions. To do that, they measured and analyzed the activity of striosomes as mice learned to choose between positive and negative outcomes.

During the experiments, the mice heard two different tones, one of which was accompanied by a reward (sugar water), and another that was paired with a mildly aversive stimulus (bright light). The mice gradually learned that if they licked a spout more when they heard the first tone, they would get more of the sugar water, and if they licked less during the second, the light would not be as bright.

Learning to perform this kind of task requires assigning value to each cost and each reward. The researchers found that as the mice learned the task, striosomes showed higher activity than other parts of the striatum, and that this activity correlated with the mice’s behavioral responses to both of the tones. This suggests that striosomes could be critical for assigning subjective value to a particular outcome.

“In order to survive, in order to do whatever you are doing, you constantly need to be able to learn. You need to learn what is good for you, and what is bad for you,” Friedman says.

“A person, or this case a mouse, may value a reward so highly that the risk of experiencing a possible cost is overwhelmed, while another may wish to avoid the cost to the exclusion of all rewards. And these may result in reward-driven learning in some and cost-driven learning in others,” Hueske says.

The researchers found that inhibitory neurons that relay signals from the prefrontal cortex help striosomes to enhance their signal-to-noise ratio, which helps to generate the strong signals that are seen when the mice evaluate a high-cost or high-reward option.

Loss of motivation

Next, the researchers found that in older mice (between 13 and 21 months, roughly equivalent to people in their 60s and older), the mice’s engagement in learning this type of cost-benefit analysis went down. At the same time, their striosomal activity declined compared to that of younger mice. The researchers found a similar loss of motivation in a mouse model of Huntington’s disease, a neurodegenerative disorder that affects the striatum and its striosomes.

When the researchers used genetically targeted drugs to boost activity in the striosomes, they found that the mice became more engaged in performance of the task. Conversely, suppressing striosomal activity led to disengagement.

In addition to normal age-related decline, many mental health disorders can skew the ability to evaluate the costs and rewards of an action, from anxiety and depression to conditions such as PTSD. For example, a depressed person may undervalue potentially rewarding experiences, while someone suffering from addiction may overvalue drugs but undervalue things like their job or their family.

The researchers are now working on possible drug treatments that could stimulate this circuit, and they suggest that training patients to enhance activity in this circuit through biofeedback could offer another potential way to improve their cost-benefit evaluations.

“If you could pinpoint a mechanism which is underlying the subjective evaluation of reward and cost, and use a modern technique that could manipulate it, either psychiatrically or with biofeedback, patients may be able to activate their circuits correctly,” Friedman says.

The research was funded by the CHDI Foundation, the Saks Kavanaugh Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation, the Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson’s Foundation, the William N. and Bernice E. Bumpus Foundation, the Simons Center for the Social Brain, the Kristin R. Pressman and Jessica J. Pourian ’13 Fund, Michael Stiefel, and Robert Buxton.

Story Source:

Materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Original written by Anne Trafton. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference:

Alexander Friedman, Emily Hueske, Sabrina M. Drammis, Sebastian E. Toro Arana, Erik D. Nelson, Cody W. Carter, Sebastien Delcasso, Raimundo X. Rodriguez, Hope Lutwak, Kaden S. DiMarco, Qingyang Zhang, Lara I. Rakocevic, Dan Hu, Joshua K. Xiong, Jiajia Zhao, Leif G. Gibb, Tomoko Yoshida, Cody A. Siciliano, Thomas J. Diefenbach, Charu Ramakrishnan, Karl Deisseroth, Ann M. Graybiel. Striosomes Mediate Value-Based Learning Vulnerable in Age and a Huntington’s Disease Model. Cell, 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.09.060

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Health Health Technology

Malaria test as simple as a bandage

Microneedle-based diagnostic a new platform for many diseases, blood draw not required

Date:
November 2, 2020
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
A test for malaria looks like a bandage, but can diagnose the disease in minutes without the need for medical expertise or specialized equipment.
Yellow Stethoscope And Medicines On Pink Background
                             FULL STORY

Testing for malaria could become as simple as putting on a bandage.

That’s the idea behind a platform developed by Rice University engineers who introduced a microneedle patch for rapid diagnostic testing that does not require extracting blood.

The device detailed in the Nature journal Microsystems and Nanoengineering draws upon protein biomarkers contained in dermal interstitial fluid, what people generally recognize as the fluid inside blisters but surrounds all of the cells in skin.

This fluid contains a multitude of biomarkers for various diseases, such as malaria, which can be used for rapid testing. The disposable patches could be programmed to detect other diseases, potentially including COVID-19, said mechanical engineer Peter Lillehoj of Rice’s Brown School of Engineering.

“In this paper, we focus on malaria detection because this project was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and it’s a big priority for them,” said Lillehoj, who joined Rice in January as an associate professor of mechanical engineering. “But we can adapt this technology to detect other diseases for which biomarkers appear in interstitial fluid.”

The self-contained test developed by Lillehoj and lead author Xue Jiang, a Rice postdoctoral researcher, delivers a result in about 20 minutes and does not require medical expertise or any equipment.

The sticky patch has 16 hollow microneedles in a 4-by-4 array on one side, coupled with an antibody-based lateral-flow test strip on the other. The antibodies react when they sense protein biomarkers for malaria and turn two readout lines on the strip’s exposed surface red. If the test is negative, only one line turns red.

The needles are treated to be hydrophilic — that is, attracted to water — so the fluid is drawn in and flows through to the test strip. Once the test is complete, the device can be removed like any bandage.

While both microneedles and antibody test strips have been extensively studied, Lillehoj said his lab is the first to combine them into a simple, inexpensive package that will be easy to deploy at the point of need, especially in developing regions where finger-prick blood sampling and the availability of trained medical personnel to diagnose samples may be challenging.

The hollow needles are 375 microns wide and 750 microns long, enough to reach the fluid within skin that is typically between 800 to 1,000 microns thick. The needles are sharp enough to overcome the mechanical stress of entering the skin.

“Xue and I have applied the patch to our skin, and it doesn’t feel painful at all compared to a finger prick or a blood draw,” Lillehoj said. “It’s less painful than getting a splinter. I would say it feels like putting tape on your skin and then peeling it off.”

They think the familiar form factor may provide some comfort, especially to children. “We didn’t intend for it to look like a bandage,” he said. “We started with a rectangular shape and then just rounded the edges to make it a little more presentable. We didn’t plan for that, but perhaps it makes the patch more relatable to the general public.”

He estimated individual patches could cost about $1 if and when they are produced in bulk.

Categories
Health Lifestyle

5 Truths About Vaping You Need to Know

One stop at a local gas station and you’d think that vaping was the best thing to happen to our society since Taco Tuesday. Coming to that conclusion is a little reckless, but not as much as the actual habit of vaping itself.

According to a recent poll conducted by Reuters/Ipsos, about 10 percent of Americans now vape on a daily basis, and almost 70 percent of those users began vaping in the last year alone. There’s no question that vaping is popular, but do you really know everything you need to about the supposed “cigarette substitution”?

Vaping Is Different Than Smoking, but Not Necessarily Safe

When they first came out, a lot of people thought e-cigarettes were a safe alternative to smoking. According to Silvia Balbo, PhD, at the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota, that’s not the case. “We don’t really know the impact of inhaling the combination of compounds produced by this device,” Balbo said about the research. “Just because the threats are different doesn’t mean that e-cigarettes are completely safe.”

More research is needed to better characterize the long-term safety of e-cigarettes. According to Balbo, “comparing e-cigarettes and tobacco cigarettes is really like comparing apples and oranges. The exposures are completely different.”

Mixing Flavors Could Be Toxic

While there isn’t a lot of research on the matter, studies are starting to show that the flavoring chemicals in e-cigarettes, as well as in e-liquids without nicotine, aren’t as safe to inhale as previously thought.

A 2018 study conducted by researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that “cinnamon, vanilla, and butter flavoring chemicals were the most toxic” to immune cells in the human body, but that “mixing flavors of e-liquids caused by far the most toxicity to white blood cells.” he study goes on to say that “while the flavoring compounds tested may be safe for ingestion, these results show they are not safe for inhalation.”

Your Body May Retain Harmful Elements From Vaping

While most people know cigarettes cause cancer, many believe that vaping keeps them safe from cancer-causing chemicals. That’s just not correct. A recent pilot study conducted by researchers at Desert Research Institute (DRI) and the University of Nevada, Reno, found that during an average vaping session, “significant amounts” of cancer-causing chemicals (like formaldehyde) were retained in the respiratory tract.

The FDA Is Cracking Down on E-Cigarettes

In September 2018, the FDA announced it was taking “historic” steps to address e-cigarette use in kids and teenagers. In addition to taking a harder stance with manufactures and retailers who were selling to and targeting the youth market, the FDA is requiring some of the bigger manufacturers to explain how they will help curtail the alarming rise in youth e-cigarette use, and if their answers aren’t satisfactory, may even order them to remove “some or all” of their flavored products from the market. And when it comes to true FDA-approved ways to quit smoking, e-cigarettes are not listed, but smoking cessation products like Nicorette are.

Vaping Actually CAN Lead to Smoking

The common belief about vaping is that, if you vape, you won’t smoke. Sadly, that’s just not the case.

2017 study produced by the University of Waterloo and the Wake Forest School of Medicine, delivered a startling truth about vaping and smoking, especially for young adults. According to researchers, “Students in grades seven to 12 who had tried an e-cigarette are 2.16 times more likely to be susceptible to cigarette smoking.”

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Health Lifestyle

Several People Die in South Korea after Flu Vaccination

Samuel Lovett
 
 
 
 (AFP via Getty Images)
(AFP via Getty Images)
South Korean health authorities have sought to downplay vaccine fears within the country following the recent deaths of nine people who had been inoculated with a seasonal flu jab.
A 17-year-old boy who died on Friday was the first death noted by officials to follow receipt of the vaccine. The boy died two days after receiving the flu shot in Incheon, near the capital Seoul.

 

A man in his 70s, who had Parkinson’s disease and arrhythmia, was the most recent case. He died in Daegu on Wednesday, a day after receiving the flu vaccine. Daegu officials said the man had received vaccines since 2015 with no prior adverse reactions.

“It makes it hard for us to put out a categorical statement,” vice health minister Kim Gang-lip said on Wednesday. Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), told a media briefing that the country would be pushing ahead with its nationwide vaccine programme, having found no reason to suspend it.
 
Coming just weeks after the rollout of the national inoculation programme was suspended over safety worries, the deaths have dominated headlines in South Korea, and are expected to further intensify vaccine concerns within the country and beyond.

 

Boosting public trust in vaccines has become a major global challenge this year, with the likes of Russia and China rushing to approve experimental Covid-19 vaccines before full safety and efficacy studies have been completed.

Fears have been raised that vaccine hesitancy could hamper attempts to inoculate populations and reduce the transmission of Sars-Cov-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, thereby prolonging the pandemic.

In South Korea, officials last month announced plans to inoculate 30 million people in a bid to prevent the health system being overloaded by patients with flu and Covid-19.

However, the start of a free jab programme for around 19 million eligible people was suspended for three weeks after it was discovered that some five million doses, which need to be refrigerated, had been exposed to room temperature while being transported to a medical facility.

The nationwide rollout of flu jabs was resumed on 13 October, with 8.3 million people inoculated since then. Around 350 cases of adverse reactions have been reported.

The highest number of South Korean deaths linked to the seasonal flu vaccination was six in 2005, according to Yonhap news agency.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, trust in vaccines was a growing challenge for public health bodies. The World Health Organisation identified anti-vaxx sentiments as one of the top 10 global health threats for last year.

A South Korean poll earlier this month found that 62 per cent of 2,548 respondents in Gyeonggi province, near Seoul, would not get vaccinated against Covid-19, even if a vaccine is approved, until all safety questions are fully answered.

In America, six in 10 respondents to a September Axios/Ipsos poll said they would not take a vaccine as soon as it is available, up from 53 per cent in August, and a majority said they would wait at least a few months to get a vaccine or did not plan to get one at all.

Categories
Health Health

Black hair on your tongue? Here’s what that could be

(CNN)When Dr. Yasir Hamad heard that a patient’s tongue had turned black, he decided he needed to see it for himself.

“It was the typical textbook case” of a condition known as black hairy tongue, said Hamad, an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Hamad published the case Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Despite the name, black hairy tongue isn’t hair at all. It refers to tiny nubbins on the tongue, called papillae, that have grown longer and turned black. These bumps, normally less than a millimeter long, can reach between 12 and 18 millimeters, according to a review last year.

As the papillae grow, they are thought to trap microscopic food particles, giving bacteria and other microbes a chance to thrive on the tongue — causing a strange discoloration.
A woman developed black hairy tongue after taking an antibiotic for a wound infection. This image appears in her case report.Image courtesy of fox6now.com
Black hairy tongue is an uncommon and harmless side effect of some drugs, but it can also be linked to smoking, poor oral hygiene and certain medical conditions.
Hamad’s patient, a 55-year-old woman, had received an antibiotic called minocycline to deal with an wound infection after a motor vehicle accident, according to his report. Within a week, her tongue turned black, she began to feel nauseated, and there was a foul taste in her mouth.

“As scary as this looks, the good part is that it’s actually reversible,” Hamad said. Four weeks after doctors changed her medication regimen, the patient’s tongue returned to its normal color.
About a month later, the patients tongue was no longer of the black hairy variety.
It’s unclear exactly how uncommon this is, Hamad said, but it’s the first case he’s seen in 10 years of practicing.

If your tongue starts to look suspiciously black and hairy, he added, don’t panic, and “check with your primary doctor, because some other conditions can resemble this.”
“A lot of things you can diagnose just from looking at the mouth,” Hamad said, with a message to fellow doctors. “That’s the lesson: Don’t miss that part of the body when you’re examining the patient.”

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Health Health

Coronavirus 2020 Outbreak: Latest Updates

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Food Food Food

Top 10 foods to try in the Caribbean

Caribbean island
Caribbean island
Top 10 foods to try in the Caribbean
By Ryan Ver Berkmoes

Travellers are advised to read the FCO travel advice at gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice for the country they are travelling to.

All recommendations have been reviewed and approved as of February 2020 and will be checked and updated annually. If you think there is any incorrect or out of date information in this guide please e-mail us at goodfoodwebsite@immediate.co.uk

Visiting the Caribbean is not exactly a hard-sell. With its white sandy beaches, azure sea, lively culture and balmy weather, this cluster of islands is a dream holiday destination. What’s more, sampling the food is a journey in itself.

Don’t leave the Caribbean without trying….
SeafoodShellfish

All those islands, all that ocean. Seafood, whether swimming or in a shell, is a Caribbean highlight. Long a staple of sailors crossing the Atlantic, flying fish are a firm and tender whitefish, best served grilled and hugely popular on Barbados and the Windward Islands. Grouper, a large fish, makes excellent steaks and is good in stews while countless varieties of shellfish is served in beachfront bars.

JerkJerk chicken

The signature flavour of Jamaica and one of the Caribbean’s most famous cuisines, jerk refers to a very spicy dry or wet rub applied to chicken or other meat. After absorbing the flavours, the meat is smoked and/or grilled to fiery perfection. Variations are many, with influences from Africa to Portugal to Latin America.

Try making your own jerk chicken

Roast porkJerk pulled pork with banana salsa

Ubiquitous across the islands, especially those with a strong Spanish heritage like the Dominican Republic and Cuba, roast pork is often served with other regional staples like rice and beans plus plantains. Succulent and juicy, pork drippings give everything on the plate a rich flavour. Roadside stands across Puerto Rico serve the much-loved lechón asado, which is spit-roasted suckling pig.

Pepperspot
Jerk sweet potato & black bean curry

Simmered in huge pots across the Caribbean, this thick and rich stew can include aubergine, okra, squash, potatoes and pretty much anything else that grows in the islands’ rich earth. Beef is the most common meat, while fungi – tasty cornmeal dumplings – add texture. It’s called souse in the Bahamas, which may refer to the condition of the cook given that no two recipes or even batches are alike.

ConchConch shell

A sort of sea escargot, conch is any of many different large sea snails that are housed in often beautiful shells (piles of them in Bonaire form pearly pink mountains). Something like a huge clam, the meat makes fabulous fritters – a staple in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands and cruise-ship ports everywhere. Conch also appears in salads, soups and stews. Farm-raised is the most sustainable.

Chicken with riceRice & peas

Still craved by locals even decades after they’ve emigrated, Arroz Con Pollo is the ultimate island comfort food. Wildly popular where Spanish influences remain strong, this deceptively simple dish is a savoury mix of flavours that include tomatoes, garlic, peppers and more. Baked until the rich scents fill the kitchen, most would say their mother’s version is best.

Try making rice & peas

Cuban sandwichCuban sandwich
One Cuban export that has found favour across the Caribbean and Florida, this hearty sandwich was once the lunchtime meal for labourers in Havana. Soft, crusty white bread is layered with ham, roast pork and some sort of mild white cheese. Dill pickles and vinegary yellow mustard provide accents. A sandwich press makes everything gooey, toasty and scrumptious.

Goat stew

Goat curry

“Got some?” is a conversation-starter on tiny Montserrat, where a thin, clove-scented stew called goat water is a national obsession. The broth is heartier on islands like Aruba and Bonaire, where it is called kabritu (or cabrito) and locals solemnly proclaim that their own mother’s version is best. Mannish water, a Cayman Islands version, includes a goat head and foot.

Try cooking with goat in a Jamaican-style curry

CallalooCallaloo
A vegetable dish with roots in West Africa, callaloo was brought to the Caribbean by slaves and is still a vital part of diets on Jamaica and Dominica plus Trinidad and Tobago. Leafy greens (often from the namesake bush or from taro, water spinach and more) are boiled into a thick stew, which may include peppers, coconut milk, okra and all manner of meats and seafood.

PapayaJerk chicken salad with papaya
This tasty fruit staple grows wild and on farms almost everywhere. It comes in yellow and orange varieties and when perfectly fresh is served plain with a squeeze of lime for a sweet and luscious breakfast. It also appears in salads and even stews. However many prefer papaya mixed into a cocktail with the Caribbean’s great contribution to libations: rum.

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Food Food

The Nigerian Spicy Beef called Kilishi

Kilishi (Nigerian Beef Jerky)

kilishi

Nigerian Kilishi

Kilishi (also Kilichi) is the spicy Nigerian Beef Jerky, another gift from Northern Nigeria. This is one of those Nigerian snacks that you can eat till your chin pains you, yet you will not want to stop.

How to make Kilishi [Video]
Kilishi can be likened to Nigerian Suya in that they have similar ingredients but the preparation and texture is different.
Traditionally, Kilishi is dried under the sun’s intense heat for about 3 days but here’s how to make it in your kitchen in under an hour.

Ingredients you need for Kilishi

Here are the ingredients I used:

  • 10 pieces wafer-thin beef
  • 1 tablespoon suya spice (suya pepper)
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 teaspoon cloves (Kanafuru)
  • A small piece of ginger
  • 1 small stock cube
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon dry cayenne pepper seeds

Notes on the ingredients

  1. The beef you will use for Kilishi should be cut from the reddest part of the beef with no fat at all.
  2. Cut the beef as thin as possible. It is usually as thin as 3mm. The Mai Kilishis have the sharpest knife in the world. Their ability to cut a large blanket of beef so thinly is a skill that cannot be rivalled.
    Where I live, the butchers have an appliance for cutting beef into very thin fillets. Unfortunately, they cannot get a large blanket of beef so I manage the small pieces the size of my palm.
  3. You can buy the suya spice (suya pepper) in African food stores, you can also make yours. Visit How to make Nigerian Suya Spice for details.
  4. By 3 cloves of garlic I mean 3 small pieces of garlic you get when you break up a bulb of garlic.
  5. Cloves is a spice that gives the Kilishi a unique flavour.
  6. I used fresh ginger but you can use dry ground ones instead.
  7. You only need a small quantity of salt. You may not even need it if you do not eat a lot of salt. Be careful when adding salt else the Kilishi will be over-seasoned when done.
  8. You get the dry cayenne pepper seeds by removing the red part of the pepper.

Prepare the Kilishi Spice Solution

  1. Grind the cloves with a dry mill and set aside.
  2. Peel the garlic and ginger and pound/grind into a smooth paste.
  3. Add the ground cloves and crushed stock cubes to the garlic and ginger paste.
  4. And some water, stir and sieve to get an extract of these spices and seasoning.
  5. Add the suya spice and cayenne pepper seeds to the solution, stir and set aside.

Directions for making Kilishi

  1. Cut the beef into very thin fillets if it has not been done for you by the butchers.
  2. Cut off all traces of fat from the beef.
  3. Set your oven to 250°C (475F) or Gas Mark 9 to preheat. If your oven temperature settings are not up to these, use the highest possible setting but this means that your own drying times will change. If your oven has a fan, turn it on as well because it helps dry the beef faster.
  4. Sprinkle a tiny quantity of salt on the fillets of beef and spread them around. You only need a tiny quantity and you can skip salt altogether.
  5. Line your oven tray with a baking sheet and lay the pieces of beef flat on it.
  6. Put the tray of beef into the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Flip the beef every 5 minutes for even drying.
  7. After 15 minutes, bring out the beef from the oven and brush the Kilishi all over them, making sure that both sides of the beef are well covered.Note:
    The way they do it in the North is to dry the fillets of beef in the sun for 2 days then soak them in the Kilishi spice solution and spread in the sun (on flat rafia baskets) till dry.
    Some grill it after soaking in the Kilishi solution.
  8. Put them back in the oven and bake for additional 10 to 15 minutes. Flip them from time to time and this time, keep a very good eye on it else it will become bone dry. You want it dry and chewy not crunchy.

Please note that the Kilishi will become drier when it has cooled down completely so bear this in mind when deciding the time to bring it out of the oven.

Serve with more pepper (if you wish) and a chilled drink.

Categories
Health Lifestyle

Backward leg allows young cancer survivor to dance

It was a cold morning in early December 2016 when Melissa Unger received a phone call at work that changed her family’s life forever.

She heard a physician on the other end say “the words that no parent ever wants to hear, that your child has a mass on her femur and you have an appointment that afternoon with a pediatric oncologist,” Unger said.

For the Ungers and their 12-year-old daughter, Delaney, a dedicated dancer since the age of 3, the news was devastating. Delaney had a rare and aggressive bone cancer called osteosarcoma of the knee, which would require chemotherapy and amputation of her left knee.

Her future as a dancer seemed over.

But this brave girl took an unusual course. Today, Delaney appears to show no signs of cancer. She keeps a contagious smile on her face and even has resumed her training as a lyrical, hip-hop and jazz dancer — despite having a left leg that now faces backward.

A Ray Of Hope

Osteosarcoma affects fewer than 1,000 people a year in the United States, and about half are children and teens, according to the American Cancer Society.

The cancer can grow anywhere but normally attacks a child’s rapidly growing knee, said Dr. Fazel Khan, an orthopedic surgeon at Stony Brook Medicine in New York who treated Delaney.

More than 90 percent of patients, Khan said, get a massive artificial knee replacement, which in a growing child is unstable and limits the ability to do any intensive activity such as dance or sports.

Yet because of the location of Delaney’s cancer, the Ungers had another option: a rare procedure called a rotationplasty.

“Her cancer really was in the knee and nowhere below the knee,” Khan explained. “Her ankle, her foot, the bottom part of her calf, all of those muscles, nerves and even the ankle joint were fully intact.”

Instead of an above-the-knee amputation, Khan said, they would cut below the knee, and “rather than throw out the good ankle, leg, foot and some of the muscles in the bottom part of the calf, we actually take the ankle, the calf, the foot, and we use that to make a new knee.”

In other words, the ankle, turned 180 degrees, functions as the new knee. Her ankle sits in the location of where her knee would be, since her lower leg was reattached to her thighbone.

Doctors say they keep the foot because the toes provide important sensory feedback to the brain.

Delaney’s father, Noah Unger, said he was told that by having a natural joint at the knee, instead of a prosthetic joint, Delaney would be able to do “the leaps, the jumps, the hops” that dancing requires.

“So that’s the reason for the rotation,” he explained. “You’re using a natural joint in the direction it’s supposed to go.”

Delaney would then have an entire foot where her old knee had been, pointing backward. A lower-leg prosthesis would fit over the backward foot, giving her an artificial leg and foot.

 

Courtesy Melanie Unger/Stony Brook Children’s Hospital

 

‘A Chance To Try And Fail’

The family knew that it would be a startling sight, a foot facing the opposite way. Mom Melissa was apprehensive. After all, Delaney, who lives in Selden, New York, would soon be a teenager, going to parties, meeting people who would not know her story.

They debated the options in a family huddle, Noah said, until Delaney spoke up.

“She looked at Melissa and said, ‘I would rather have a chance to try and fail then not have a chance at all,’ ” Noah remembered. “And this surgery was the only chance she had at ever doing what she wanted to do.”

The 13-hour surgery occurred at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital in New York in April 2017, followed by chemotherapy and a prosthetic below her new knee — which the family has affectionately dubbed the “knankle.”

Recovery was tough. “She had to learn to flex and things like that in the opposite way … so there definitely is a learning curve,” Melissa said.

“You really have to rewire your brain,” Noah said.

But Delaney had a goal: to resume dancing and try out for the school kickline team, something she always wanted to do.

“I wanted to be normal again,” she said. “I wanted to make sure I could do most of the stuff that all my friends were doing and I could keep up with them.”

An Unforgettable Moment

For Khan and Dr. Jason Ganz, another surgeon on the 13-hour operation, Delaney’s spirit has been inspiring.

“I’ve never met someone that had such a clear vision of what she needed,” Ganz said, adding that Delaney had a smile on her face constantly.

“Every time she was in the hospital, every time I’d see her, she had that same grin, which is incredible.”

Delaney’s positive attitude was an important part of her journey, they said, and has contributed to her rapid recovery.

“She is blowing us all away with how fast she is progressing with dance and walking,” Khan said. “We have videos of her walking, and when she has pants on, it’s almost impossible to tell that she had any surgery to begin with.”

When the doctors first saw videos of Delaney in recovery and later dancing, they say, they both choked up.

“Literally, there were tears in both of our eyes,” Khan said. “I’m so happy to see her free from her cancer, so happy to see her actually get back to the thing that she wanted to do.”

Ganz added, “I have a daughter her age. It was definitely a moment that will make my life highlight reel: seeing her walking, seeing her smiling, seeing her dancing. That was just incredible. I’ll never forget that.”

This weekend, Delaney and her family are planning to travel to Washington for a childhood cancer rally called CureFest. There, she will be advocating for childhood cancer research funding and performing a dance routine on stage.

As for the future, “she has her whole life ahead of her,” Melissa said. “We wanted to give her the best chance of being able to do as many things as she would want to do and not be limited. We definitely feel like we made a good decision.”

Although the doctors say they were able to remove all the cancer, about a third of osteosarcoma patients are expected to relapse, so Delaney will need monitoring for the rest of her life.

What would Delaney say to other children who might be in her situation?

“What I would say to another teenager who has cancer is to keep your personality,” she said. “When I heard I had cancer, I said ‘I want to be an inspiration and I just kept smiling and doing what I always did.’

“Don’t say ‘I can’t.’ Just try it, and if you can’t do it then, that’s fine, but if you never actually tried it, you should. It’s like just a little stop in the road, but then you got to just keep going.”

Written by Jacqueline Howard and Sandee LaMotte for CNN.

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