Category: Biochemistry

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Pancreas – Hermit of the Abdomen

Pancreas – Hermit of the Abdomen

Ashley Davidoff MD

O’ Dear pancreas

You have been called the hermit of the abdomen
By whom I do not know
But in your dark and hidden way, you have
spoken without a word
from the gurgling depths of the abdomen
Yes – you have earned this lonely title
and a coin should be tossed
to the person who coined the phrase


 

But it took a long time to understand who this hermit was – and what he was doing in the darkness of the abdomen

From the day of antiquity
You have been looked upon by many
Herophilus, the father of anatomy had the first incisive insights into you
As he was one of very few who had the guts to explore the guts in open fashion

Aristotle at the same time seemed to have known something about you
But then you lay unharmed and unexplored for almost 500 years
Until Rufus mistook you for a piece of meat –
You must have laughed at the “pan kreas” thing
How wrong he was – you evasive little trickster

And then the Talmud – always seeming to be right
Thought you were the finger of the liver –
Little did they know how independant you were

While Vesalius was up to your “hide and seek” game
The magical eyes of da Vinci missed you completely
Even though he saw the serpiginous splenic artery snake right above you

Your ducts seemed to have intrigued the next generation, Wharton, Wirsung, and de Graaf
As you sustained the pain of the quill penetrating your inner gut
(I forget you were already dead but it must of hurt just watching!)

A little later it was that man called Vater and the little Italian Santorini found your minor duct and your nipple
And so by this time we had a good understanding of you in your nakedness
But of course, as said – you were dead

And so young Bernard explored your factories, and got a sense of your canine workings,
But you were able to hold on to your sweet secret for just a little longer
Until the Langerhans found the family jewels in the famous 2% of your population-
The islets – those beautiful eyelits – governess of all things sweet in the body

Eberle Bernard Danilevsky, and Kuhne joined up across the world to expose your antacid and enigmatic enzymatic brew
And once again your wonderful workings for a better world were exposed –
And we knew then, that you were the quiet and effective type –
A hermit who did good
But did not want the limelight

To see you as you lived and breathed in the flesh
was the mission of Wilhelm the X-Ray man
who crusaded the path to visualise 40,000 Angstroms under the skin

 

abdomen, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, kidneys, CT scan, Art in Anatomy, Ashley Davidoff MD

 

And then there was a slew of heroes who learned to slew your sickened parts – including the famous Whipple who was able to Whipple you in an inimitable way

And then a bone guy – for God’s sakes – a bone guy! – called Banting and his student Best
Exposed the insular chemistry of you insulin that had given you the power over the sweet
Never mind – in the end it was for the good of all –
And a new era was borne

And so we try to understand your form as our scans explore you as you live and breathe
And we stare in awe at your odd shape – why oh why did you choose that shape?
What are you supposed to look like? – we have no clue
And we are happy – so happy for you that you are well nourished by a double blood supply
And we wonder why you have no skin – we thought all the organs had a skin
Except for your tail – almost a foreskin

And you are off axis on two planes – what is that all about? – kinda crooked

And your twin origins and the intimacy with the duodenum, of the ventral twin
And the strange fusion of the Wirsung guy excluding the little Italian Santorini
It seems to me that your matrimonial fusion with Wirsung and the bile duct has led to more problems than the merger was worth
It does not seem in the long run, to have been a marriage made in heaven
What was that all about? Is there a grand plan to come?

 

And so we try to understand your diseases
And in some way we understand that the guy glugging down the bottle
Could be punished by your reaction
But why Oh why are you so nasty to those whose misfortune it is to have stones roll down and get no satisfaction.. down the green vile bile route
Have you not learned to live with the green secretion by now
And did you not know that by reacting the way you do, that you are cutting off your nose to spite you head?

While type 2 seems remote from you
We don’t know about this Type 1 business
Why are you made to suffer so much at the hands of your own body on your own body?
We feel sorry for you – to have your own buddies reject you – must be awful
And then to see so many young ones suffer because you don’t work
And we once again see and understand what power you control from that deep dark hermit home of yours

And the cancer thing … so silently it creeps on you causing your collagen to counter
And only making things worse as it strangles nerve, blood vessel, and your spouse duct – the green one, – without regard

And then I think of you in your prime and in your happiness
When you are with you two buddies – the splenic vein and the renal vein
And you all look so much alike, and happy swimming in that deep ocean where you hide
And I wish this was forever

 

 

Copyright 2017 Revised from previous publication in The Common Vein

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BEYOND THE WATER DROP

BEYOND THE WATER DROP

From Big Bang to Eternity –

From the explosive womb of Big Bang
Hydrogen, your progenitor was born
Consisting of single moving and opposite forces
Seeking companionship, and a need for Oneness
Bigger and more powerful than the self
And the atoms and elements and then the molecules of life
Were themselves given life

And then you my darling water
The purest of beings

Born with a gush from the amniotic sacs of Big Bang
Finding your way to virgin earth
Under forces beyond you
With forces in you
To enable all of life
For without you we would not be

The single droplet of rain hitting the puddle
With its kind but explosive kinetic force


Under the same original force that brought you to earth
Converting to a beautiful sound of the droplet on water
With an array of waves in perfect circle

As I ponder this wonder
The beauty of physics at its best
No energy destroyed, just converted
A simple yet not so simple action reaction of Newton
Snow, ice, vapor, waves of the sea, and a flowing river

Calming of the soul
Giver of life
From Big Bang to Eternity

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Anatomy of Circadian Rhythms in the Body

Anatomy of Circadian Rhythms in the Body

Ashley Davidoff MD Copyright 2015

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

Ecclesiastes 3:1

What is a season?

A season in the classical sense, is a natural division of the year and relates to the position of the earth to the sun.  The sun is a source of light, warmth, and energy.  A season is a continuum of time divided by the rhythmicity of four seasons.   The seasons are characterized by changes in light and dark cycles as well as temperature cycles.  These factors impact life in all its aspects.

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Cycles Around and Within Us

This image shows the  seasonal cycle that occurs within a year.  The top left image is the spring when rebirth and restoration of life occurs.  The summer (top right) follows where light and temperature are high.  The mature mellow autumn follows with orange reds and yellow colors (bottom right) .  Light starts to fade and temperatures start to fall  Autumn is a time for introspection and recognition of mortality.  The bleak and cold winter follows with a silence of impending death (bottom left).  The dancers with their own cycles are incorporated into the larger cycle, inferring the intimate integration of internal biology with the changes in the environment.  They are positioned like the hands of a clock – again incorporating the element of time.

  • Spring is a time for birth, freshness and renewal
  • Summer brings energy, blossoming, productivity and maturation and is the prime of life. Light is brightest during this period and the weather is warmest
  • Fall brings mellowness and maturation and warns of decline.  Symbolically it is a time for introspection during mid life
  • Winter is the time of aging, bleakness, decline and death.  It is characterized by darkness and cold and symbolizes quietness, contemplation, and reminds us of our  impending old age and death.

“To every thing  there is a season”  What does that mean to the structures of the body?  

The changes of the seasons have parallels in the internal environment of the body down to the cells and molecules.  This implies that “everything” in biology experiences a season.  

The annual cycle of the seasons is experienced physically by the body, its organs, cells, and molecules throughout the year.  They sense the cold and the warmth, and the light and dark of the external environment.

circadian rhythms

Seasons of the Feet

The AiA rendering is a collage of photographs with superimposed CT scan of the feet as they walk through the seasons.  The four seasons created in a sphere provide a sense of wholeness in time, while the footsteps represent a walk in  time.  The top left image of the sphere shows the magnolias of Spring, the next (going clockwise) is green forest of Summer, followed by the Fall and finally the deathly cold of winter.

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Seasons of the Abdomen

This AiA rendering shows the abdominal structures reflecting the seasons.  The spring is in shades of  pink, the summer in green of the forest and the blue of the sky, the fall in oranges and red, and the winter in ice blue and white.

Seasons within Seasons and Cycles within Cycles

The cycles of the body range from nano seconds per cycle to a lifetime.  Each cycle is part of another cycle.  Each cycle consists of a beginning that evolves to full speed production, progressing to a winding down phase and  finally a phase of rest and restoration. The Krebs cycle,  heart cycle, circadian cycle, menstrual cycle, are all part of the wheel within a wheel concept and in the grand scheme of a single life it revolves around the process  of  maturation.  These same cycles occur within the cycles of evolution with improvement in processes over time.

Biochemical cycles are responsible for growth, and reproduction. The clock has to be rewound, restored to step one so that it can do its duty again. All of these have been optimized by the grand Darwinian cycle of reproduction, generation after generation, picking up fortuitous improvements over the eons.

Seasons of the Day –  Parallel Changes in the External and Internal Environments

Seasons of the Body in a 24 hour Period

This image shows the parallel of a 24 hour cycle correlating with the seasonal cycle that occurs within a year.  The top left image is the dawn when the day is born and the person is restored from sleep and starts to get ready for the the next 12 hour period.  The stress hormones start to rise as the body prepares for the work day which reflects the summer time (top right) where light and temperature are high.  After the “summer” the mellow and introspective time of the sunset arrives(bottom right)  as light and temperature start to fade.  The temporary death of sleep provided by the night follows in the bottom left .

Daybreak at sunrise is the birth of the day, and represents spring time in the body.  We wake up restored while it is a little light and a little cold outside and are refreshed and reborn after our slumber.  As the day warms up, and the light becomes stronger, we enter the summer of our 24 hour cycle.  Our cortisol levels are up to deal with the physical stresses of the day and this preparation is felt in our cells and in our psyche.  As a result of the stress we are better able to process and produce at work.  During the day we reach the height of our wakefulness and are in our productive prime.    At dusk, the autumn of the day moves in as we start to wind down and become introspective.  The light starts to go down and without the sun, the day cools down. The winter of the day – nighttime arrives. It is colder and darker, and we prepare for sleep, a transient death that helps us restore.

The internal environment of the body also senses the cycles through a hormonal cycle called the circadian cycle, which is executed via the hypothalamus.   enabling rhythmic physiological and behavioral events of the body to work in parallel with the natural rhythms of the external environment.

“Anatomy of Sleep” 

The central control system for the circadian rhythms is in the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus (turquiose blue butterfly shaped structure at the base of the brain)  It is responsible for the control of the circadian rhythms of the body.

Seasons of the Molecules

Circadian Rhythm and the Daily Internal Seasons of the Body 

There are three main physiological events in the daily human diurnal circadian rhythm; melatonin secretion, cortisol secretion, and temperature variation.

Melatonin

Melatonin is secreted by the pineal body in response to the dark.  The retina identifies light and transmits this information to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus integrates the light and darkness cycles of the environment with the pineal gland which in turn secretes melatonin in the dark.  Melatonin levels are therefore high at night and low in the day.  Melatonin is involved in sleep cycles, blood pressure regulation, and in seasonal reproduction.

Cortisol

Complex-biochemical-synthetic-function-of-the-adrenals

Seasons at the Molecular Level in the Adrenal Gland

The adrenal gland is an essential component of the circadian rhythm.  It produces cortisol which prepares the body for the stresses of the day. The artistic rendering shows background of complex biochemistry artistically incorporated into the gland. This is a featured art piece  because of the beautiful manner in which the almost invisible gland transforms the biochemistry into life giving hormones.

Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland that is elemental in the control of metabolic function. It prepares the body for impending stresses.  Diurnal secretion of cortisol is part of circadian rhythm physiology.  The level is highest in the early morning and is at its lowest level at about midnight to 4 am. This high level in the morning prepares the body for the stress of the day.  Cortisol is intimately involved in the metabolism of glucose, fat and protein.

Body Temperature

Body temperature is lowest about 2 hours before waking in the morning and highest in the late afternoon and early afternoon.  During the night metabolic activity is slowed and the lowered temperature is a mechanism to conserve energy.  temperature is elemental to all biochemical processes.

“Body Temp Variation” by user:RHorning – Image Source. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons –

Seasons of the Cells

The molecular changes give rise to cycles in the cells both in a minute to minute variations, hour to hour variations, and eventually into annual variations

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Seasons in the Squamous Flower

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Cycles in the Columnar Cell of the Colon

 

What would life be like if there were no seasons?

Although there is a pattern to the seasons – each one is different and as we gain perspective on the cycles.

There are cycles within cycles as time moves on – each not the same as the prior, but having many things in common.  The beginning of Spring is so full of life and we soon look forward and want to welcome the blooming of the brighter colors of summer.  And then the heat of summer comes and we look forward to the cool and mature fall – and the beautiful first deep snowfall comes and soon grows old, cold, uncomfortable and dreary – and the new cycle begins with our eyes a little changed

Eachseasons bring a lesson of life.  We need the seasons to feel the rhythm within us and around us… but each year the seasons are different, and we learn and grow with each season.

The dawn brings us newness and freshness.  The day brings us energy in full flight and productivity – the dusk brings quietness and satisfying mellowness and the night brings rest and restoration….   But each day is different, and hopefully we learn and grow with each day

“I think that to one in sympathy with nature, each season, in turn, seems the loveliest.”
― Mark Twain

“Life Cycle of the Uterus”

shows the uterus from birth through maturation to senility 

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