Linda Nil Taskin

🫀Now that’s it’s been revealed that Senator Lindsey Graham died of an aortic dissection, I wanted to provide some clarity as to what it is (and isn’t). As you see👇, the aorta is like the water main, a huge artery that sends oxygenated blood to the entire body. It’s under extreme pressure - every time the heart beats, it expands a little and has to withstand the force of blood pumping. To do this, it has to be elastic - able to bounce back after being stretched. In some individuals with atherosclerotic disease (hardening of arteries), the inner aorta wall becomes hardened. Imagine a very old rubber band that is brittle and crumbles when you stretch it rather than stretching and bouncing back. The aorta wall crumbles slightly, allowing blood under high pressure to make its way between the inner and outer walls of the aorta. After just a few heartbeats (insufficient time to really do much about it in many cases), the blood peels the inner and outer walls of the aorta away from one another, causing it to burst. I’ve treated a patient with it - and he didn’t make it. It’s tough to survive. How to avoid this? Tough to detect in advance that it’ll happen. So… Eat well (including fatty fish with Omega 3’a), lower your cholesterol, keep your blood pressure normal (exercise and weight loss help a lot). May Senator Graham rest in peace.

Senator Graham's passed away this evening, just hours after he returned to Washington from Ukraine. A true shock. This was him in Kyiv just yesterday.

Ethan Hawke explains why having children doesn't automatically make you a more compassionate person "I know so many people who have children who are some of the least empathetic people I've ever witnessed in my life" "So the idea of having children is this kind of great compassion creator um.." "And there's a lot of people out there in this world who don't have children who are unbelievably compassionate" "And being a parent sometimes makes people incredibly selfish, they see their children as an extension of themselves" "I had a cab driver the other days say, you know the best thing about my son, it's like wait, looks just like me" "Oh God, that's the best thing about your son I mean but you hear that kind of thing all the time"

For treatment and outcomes for cancer, the tumor microenvironment (TME) is pivotal, but we've never had a non-invasive way to assess it. Until now, a blood test breakthrough! (<-a term I use sparingly) Pictured below, schematically, the TME surrounds the cancer cells and consists of immune cells, blood vessel (endothelial) cells, fibroblasts and matrix