I visited my dad the latter part of last week and the first part of this week (Thurs. — Tues). He turned 90 years old two days ago on March 28th. I spent the entire time hanging around with his wife and him at their home. Dad and I went out for two meals when I was there as his wife really can’t leave home anymore. We also went to the Museum of Natural History to see a traveling show about the Vikings.
I wish I’d brought my phone (it’s new to me). Why? They had signs that said, “no photos,” but everyone was taking zillions of photos with their phones. The guards could not have cared less. I’ll tell you, if this show comes to your city’s Museum of Natural History, go see it. Amazing stuff. Clothing, jewelry galore...so incredibly beautiful, all the tools used to make fabric and build ships were on display. Swords and axes used for fighting, even a partial Viking helmet was there. They let us know only one single fully intact Viking helmet has ever been found, and no, they didn’t have any horns on their helmets in truth. That’s made up. At one point you could pick up a model Viking sword to feel the true weight and balance of it. The balance point felt to me to be about 3/4ths of the way out. I can see why they made them that way. If you were to swing that sword, it’s “sweet spot” would be at that place. It was really amazing!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My dad is a gastroenterologist who spent his life doing medical research and teaching medicine at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver conveniently located within walking distance of his home. Well, that was back then. Billionaire Philip Anschutz (worth at least $12.5 billion) somehow got himself involved and moved the entire thing to a new place he built in the rich suburbs south of Denver.
My dad created the way to study something no one knew about → lactose intolerance.
While I was visiting, dad told me about just how he did his research to prove lactose intolerance actually exists. Yup, it was my dad. He’d never told me the step-by-step way he went about it until three days ago. I thought I’d share it with you.
When you teach at a medical school, you get all the toughest cases. When doctors or regular hospitals can’t figure out what’s going on with someone, they typically send them to research and medical school hospitals since that’s where cutting edge stuff is going on (think Stanford or UCSF in the Bay Area).
My dad would see patients with all sorts of problems in their guts and livers. Back then, if someone had an ulcer in their gut (stomach or duodenum) they were put on a "bland diet" which meant lots of milk. They really didn't have any drugs yet for that problem other than TUMS or Rolaids which were chalk and just soaked up and neutralized stomach acid. When some of these people complained of more pain and bloating while on the milk diet, they were given ever increasing amounts of milk, which only made matters worse.
Way back in the early 1960’s, dad had a thought about why this happened to some people and not others. He believed those affected had another problem which was they couldn’t digest milk. More specifically, he believed they couldn’t digest the milk sugar lactose.
He wanted to do research, but how? He needed to devise an entire method to study this issue. He knew when we eat food, our stomach is where most digestion takes place. All proteins are broken down into dipeptides (two amino acids still bound together) and all carbohydrates broken down into disaccharides (two sugar molecules still bound together). The resulting liquid (chyme) is then passed onto the duodenum (first 12 inches of the small intestine) where inactivated enzymes from the pancreas are injected for the final bit of digestion. Hydrochloric acid from the stomach then activates the enzymes in the duodenum which then divides dipeptides into individual amino acids and disaccharides into individual sugar molecules. This should be completed by the time stuff gets 12 inches down into the jejunum (the second part of the small intestine). How could he study this?
My dad took nasogastric tubing and made three holes in it at four-inch increments over the initial 12 inches. He then snaked that down via the mouth until it was placed right in the first foot of the jejunum. In this way, he could take three samples at those four-inch increments. He knew that at the lowest hole, all sugars should have been fully digested unless there was a problem. Well, guess what he discovered? Those folks with cramps and bloating from drinking milk to treat their ulcers had undigested milk sugar, specifically lactose. He speculated they may well lack the enzyme (lactase) to do the job.
He needed to do a study. First, he needed to have some sort of baseline to compare things to. What to do, what to do? We all know pigs have the closest tissues to humans. That’s why they use pig heart valves often to replace human heart valves, for instance. My dad contacted slaughter houses in north Denver and convinced a place that butchered hogs to play ball. He needed fresh samples of pig jejunum. He went there with a cooler full of dry ice. He also told me how fast the entire process of slaughtering pigs was done as he watched it happen there.
First, a guy would tie the back legs of a pig. A huge wheel with hooks (he said it had to be at least twenty feet tall) spun around. The pigs tied back legs were hooked on those hooks. Then the pig went up in the air hanging head down, a guy would slash the throat. By the time the pig made it around the wheel, it’s body was chopped up into all parts. At one place along the wheel-of-pig-death, it’s belly area was sliced open and the guts pulled out. The jejunum and ileum were cut from the guts. Then a hose forced water to be flushed through. My dad told me, “you should have seen all the worms that came out when they did that.”
Next, they took the washed-out pig guts and put them through rollers that smooshed all the mucosa out leaving just tissue behind aka “casings”. The cleaned tissue is what my dad wanted. He got it, put it in his cooler and was off to the lab. This tissue was still “alive” in the way a harvested organ is “alive” for some hours when you put it on dry ice for transplanting. He cut out four-inch sections to use for his studies. He could destroy lactase thus leaving that area unable to digest lactose. Then he would be able to study what the cells of the microvilli looked like after being subjected to milk.
This created a new problem, however. When they study tissues in the lab, the technique is to take the tissue sample and put it in wax then freeze it. The sample in frozen wax can then be sliced into incredibly thin slices that are put under the microscope. In this way, they can see individual cells. Well, the guys that put my dad’s samples in wax couldn’t do it in such a way that left the microvilli still standing up. They were all squashed down making them pretty useless for his studies.
So, dad had to roll up his sleeves and devise his very own technique to get his tissue samples just right. After lots of trial and error, he finally succeeded. Now he could see how cells in the pig gut looked when they experienced “lactose intolerance” and when subjected to milk.
The next step was to take biopsies of the guts of people who seemed to have trouble digesting milk. When he compared their cells to the pig cells, they looked the same. Over and over he did this with the same results. Now it was time to get people of different ethnicities with the symptoms. He knew Asian and African people seemed to be most susceptible.
Eventually, he did enough research to publish his findings including percentages of all races likely to have lactose intolerance. He even got a picture of himself in the March 1966 TIME magazine in the MEDICINE section for his efforts.
When dad did lectures for gastroenterologists regarding his research, he wasn’t initially believed at all. He told me he got a ton of flack and was told he was “off his rocker.” Other gastroenterologists thought folks just had gastritis and didn’t believe people couldn’t digest milk. They were wrong. In time, his research did become accepted as fact. Ladies and gentlemen, there really is such a thing as lactose intolerance, and my dad was the guy who did the research to prove it.
What do you want to talk about today?
RSVPS
1. nhox42
2.
3.
MAYBEES
|
RSVPS
1. navajo
2. sidnora
3. kathny
4. belinda ridgewood
5. joanbrooker
6. aoeu
7. Denise Oliver Velez
8. rubyr
9. MBNYC
10. cohenzee
11.
MAYBEES :
Missys Brother
kishik
Avilyn
Chris Reeves
|
RSVPS
1. Thinking Fella
2. Ojibwa
3. state of confusion
4. jakedog42
5. MotherMags
6. MTmofo
7. Done4nau
8. Boise Blue
9. Mrs. Boise Blue
10. Mhosz
11. Mrs. Mhosz
12. Maudlin
13. Mr. Maudlin
14. dsb
15.
MAYBEES :
Simple
woolibaar
Back Porch
philosopher
Kitsap River
Charles Curtis Stanley
|
RSVPS
1. Bill in Portland Maine
2. Common Sense Mainer
3. navajo
4. markm667
5. vicki
6. vicki’s recruit 1
7. vicki’s recruit 2
8. smileycreek
9. paradise50
10. Ed Tracey
11. side pocket
12. Mrs. side pocket
13. Richard Cranium
14. YellowDogInGA
15. DebtorsPrison
16. brillig
17. mik
18. thatkid
19. K2
20. LuLu
21. moodyinsavannah
22. norm
23. Egberto Willies
24. Chris Reeves
25.
MAYBEES :
SanDiegoDem
|