Super Humans - is there a limit?

'Super Humans'

I have been amazed while watching the Paralympics to see what some of the athletes have overcome to be where they are, and how they have used a limit to drive them to achieve. The 2012 Summer Games will include about 1,100 athletes from 170 nations. They include athletes with spinal cord injuries, amputated limbs, blindness or other visual impairments, cerebral palsy, mental handicaps and other disabilities, including multiple sclerosis and dwarfism.

I recently visited the London Museum of Medicine at the Wellcome Collection in London. There was a whole exhibit questioning the morality of making super humans. The general concept was that we have imagined super humans for decades - marvel comics providing every kind of superhuman under the sun, and many love the idea of a super human with powers above and beyond others, to save the planet from evil and such. One artist made a fake (but scarily convincing) documentary, showing a group of ten Americans who agreed to let plastic surgeons give them a super-power, as voted by the general public. This was quite terrifying to watch, showing individuals who were excited to have extreme surgery and go through such pain to have a certain 'power' as voted by random strangers around the country. I wonder, would this ever be reality?

"Knight Warrior"

Unfortunately, just this week a lad has been in the news, who in my opinion is a super-eejit. Rob, aged 19, has claimed his super power is the ‘supernatural desire to make the world a better place’. Ok sunshine, how are you going to do this? Give to Charity? Volunteer? Oh no, of course, you’re going to run round Greater Manchester at night in a £200 custom-made Lycra costume on ‘patrol’. Alone. Now I don’t mean to slam this lad, he’s got good intentions. But encouraging teens to dress up and go out alone at night to fight crime? What he’s doing is so dangerous and foolish. Is dressing up at night and putting yourself in danger really being a super human?

Prosthetics better than legs?

Oscar Pistorius last month made history, being the first double-amputee to compete in the Olympics. Many have debated that his synthetic limbs may be better than actual legs - making it unfair for him to run with able bodied people. And experts say that with future improvements in prosthetics, this may be the case. Could the limited become the unlimited, the super humans? Could we one day have a world where people use stronger prosthetics to replace weaker human body parts? I think the museum at the Wellcome Collection made a strong point - the ability to make ourselves stronger is something which in the wrong hands could get carried away with and taken to extremes.

However, I would unquestionably argue that the good that technology has done for disabled people is truly amazing. At the museum I saw some of the first false legs used for children - wooden with painted red shoes for girls and brown for boys. They were shabby, looked awfully uncomfortable and were fixed in one position. Yet I did not see them as a creepy thing of the past, but as a first caring step towards helping children that otherwise could not walk. These constant developments have enabled many of the athletes on our TV screens, as well as members of the public, to live better lives.

Martine Wright - inspirational

To round things up, I think the best superpowers for any human are motivation and outlook. Although this is not as cool as being able to stop time (without ‘Bernard’s Watch’), fly, or write with our feet (come on, we’ve all tried it…), I think that having drive and motivation is the best way to achieve something ‘superhuman’. Some of the athletes shown on TV have the most inspiring stories – Martine Wright sat next to a suicide bomber in the 7/7 attacks and lost both legs. She then went on to be a Paralympian, saying “My motivation, one of my motivations, is I truly believe I was meant to do this journey” – she took what had happened and used it to go on and achieve great things she otherwise would not have. Inspiring eh?!

I am genuinely inspired by the Paralympic athletes, and I think that it is fantastic that humans round the world accept each other now irrespective of disabilities and such, which as we all know even a few decades ago, was not the case. Let’s celebrate humanity; we are all super humans, together… to the rescue!

References

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/31/paralympic-athlete-7-7-survivor?newsfeed=true

http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/870771-caped-crusader-brings-peace-to-mean-streets-but-antics-worry-his-mum#ixzz259qQ21C5

http://www.factmonster.com/spot/summer-olympics-paralympics.html

http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/technology/story/2012/08/28/sp-paralympics-outperform-pistorius.html

Vitamin Supplements - more harm than good?

Vitamin supplements
- good for your health?

We live in a world where we listen to Google more than our GP. And with this faith in the internet and the opinions of strangers, many of us take vitamins and supplements from our local health shop, which may not actually do us any good. Headlines often imply eating a special something 'stops cancer' - and for many, this is reason enough to head to a health shop and by a jar of concentrated daily supplements. Supplements, by definition, contain vitamins, minerals, herbs or plant material...but they may cause us more harm than good.

Now, in my opinion, supplements are generally a waste of money, with health shops stocking normal foods claiming them as special cures and doubling the price - I am not writing to debate this. These things may work for different people and really help some, sure, but the reason they are supplements and not given as medicines is because there is not enough evidence to show that they strongly have any impact - otherwise the government would fund us all to have a broccoli tablet, no one would have cancer and the NHS would be greatly relieved from its current pressures and strains.

Headline implying 
Vitamin B stops Alzheimer's

So why do we take vitamins and supplements? Well, some people get frustrated with NHS and doctors being unable to help them and so want to take control themselves and find their own cure. And hey, if I had a health problem doctors couldn't help, I would look down every road in search of a cure - who wouldn't? For others, vitamins offer increased security for a healthy longer life and offer to prevent problems before they start, and again if this cuts down people’s anxieties, then this is a good thing. On top of this, the placebo effect is a huge benefit - even if these supplements don’t help, if they make people feel better then so be it. Vitally some people do need vitamin supplements – pregnant women for example are told to take certain vitamin supplements throughout their pregnancy by doctors, and on doctors advice I have no concerns with supplements.

However, my question here is whether vitamin supplements may actually cause more harm than good for the average human.... something I personally would never have considered when taking an alternative medicine. An analysis of 68 clinical trials of vitamin supplements using almost 250,000 participants found that people taking vitamin A supplements were actually 16% more likely to die than those not taking any supplements during the trial. Vitamin E supplement takers had a 4% increased risk of death next to those taking nothing. Such a large study having strong results against taking vitamin supplements was soon argued against by, non-surprisingly, supplement manufacturers who argued that the study involved people who were already ill - but the study bit back stating that 70% of the studies participants were healthy.

Zinc -dangerous if taken incorrectly

Another study found that glucosamine and chondrotin sulphate, both used to fight arthritis and joint pain actually did not work any better than a placebo to slow the loss of knee cartilage in osteoarthritis, which aids the 'waste of money' argument, but at least does not result in worsened health. Zinc however, has on occasion done this to extremes. Zinc helps us make new cells, enzymes, and helps with the healing of wounds. You should be able to get all the zinc you need from your daily diet. Importantly, too much zinc reduces the amount of copper the body can absorb, leading to anemia and weakening of the bones. Therefore this is a supplement, which when used improperly, can actually have very dangerous side effects. Yet on TV adverts, zinc is branded as something we should all take to be healthier. 

So how do companies get away with this misleading marketing? Some supplements go through loop holes to be considered a food - this means that it is subject to food safety laws, which are not as strict as those for medicines. Supplements are not allowed to make claims that can treat or cure conditions without clinical evidence, however, they can and do make claims their product maintains a function - e.g. maintains bone function. Sneaky eh? We as humans need 13 vitamins to maintain health, but only in minute amounts. And the best way to get them? A balanced healthy diet (apart from Vitamin D, the one exception which we get from sun exposure).Yet we are sold vitamins by the tub-full for extortionate prices, which are branded as good for us.

Would you take them?

It seems that the original good intentions of early day vitamin supplements have been exploited by big companies wanting bigger profits. So, next time the headlines scare you about rates of a disease increasing, and then tell you the following week that "scientists have found product x STOPS the disease" think twice before heading to the health store to buy random supplements - the NHS choices website has some general advice on who should take what, as listed below. But in my opinion, unless I’m told by my GP, I won’t be taking supplements for the sake of it.

References

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1122.aspx?categoryid=51&subcategoryid=168 - who should take what?
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/05May/Documents/BtH_supplements.pdf -
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325934.000-can-vitamin-supplements-do-more-harm-than-good.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14842-arthritis-supplements-no-better-than-placebo.html
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/vitamins-minerals/Pages/Other-vitamins-minerals.aspx

Human Olympians

The 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic games have shown some truly amazing athletes. World records have been broken, which leads me to question - are we becoming ever stronger? These athletes are pushing themselves over the limitations of their own bodies to achieve great fitness, and are breaking records in the process. So, how do these athletes become Olympic medalists, world champions and record breakers? I personally think this is not simply a matter of fitness - its training, dedication and state of mind.

Amazing athlete
 Jessica Ennis

To firstly focus on the human body, I ask how athletes have the ability to run, jump and swim better than any other? The simplest answer: training. Effects of exercise include your heart getting physically larger, bones becoming denser and the vital capacity of your breath deepening. So let’s go one step further - what does it mean to build up muscles? When a muscle cell is activated by a nerve cell, the interaction of contractile muscle proteins called actin and myosin generates a force. Exercise increases the concentration of these proteins within the muscle, allowing the muscle to exhibit greater strength and force. By doing resistance exercises which force muscles to contract as hard as they can, the number of contractile filaments in the muscle cells increase, causing muscle cells to enlarge and consequently your muscles become bigger. Also, by exercising more, the number of capillaries (blood vessels) in muscles increases - this allows an increased supply of oxygenated blood, helping the muscles go for longer and improving endurance.

And who is to say these athletes are beyond limits? Our human bodies have evolved through hunter/gatherer times, but now modern lifestyles have evolved faster than our bodies – we now live in a world where we sit at a desk all day, sit in our cars as we drive home only to sit in front of the TV set with our dinner. Our bodies evolved with the requirements to hunt and gather – for example, we have evolved opposable thumbs, which were useful for using tools required to catch our dinner. However, it is our intellect itself which has vastly increased through time, leading to our modern lifestyle vs. old-design bodies. So perhaps these athletes are using their bodies the way they are intended to be, which is a view that makes me for one feel terribly unfit!

Now, remember to
think positive...

But as I say, being an athlete is not as simple as training. It is also the state of mind which plays a huge role. I was surprised to hear of sports psychologists commenting on Olympic athletes, for example, I heard a BBC commentary saying that Tom Daley would use his father’s memory to spur him on in the second round. I initially thought little of this, but in fact sports psychologists are of huge importance to some athletes, helping to reduce stress, anxiety and improve overall performance. Olympic athletes have a different mental state which allows them to achieve better – they have competitiveness, dedication and passion for their sports. Have you ever heard of a gold medalist who wasn’t overly interested in their sport and didn’t care about winning? The mind is as important as the muscles in my opinion.

So, hopefully that’s explained and explored some of the reasons why and how Olympians are the best of their field. I think, from a more philosophical view, that we should use the Olympics and our athletes as inspiration - we have united as British - community spirit is in the air, and we see what hard work and dedication can achieve. I for one feel like going out and doing something sporty, and although I know I will never be a serious athlete, to have a passion for your sport is a great thing, to belong and be part of such an activity is a privilege many more of us should enjoy.

References

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/pe/exercise/2_exercise_effectsoftraining_rev1.shtml

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-does-exercise-make-yo http://www.sportspsychologist.com/

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7282/full/463712d.html