Elena Shekhova, PhD

@eshekhova.bsky.social

Posts

Life Scientist | SciComm

Post about:
🧬 biology
📑 scientific literature review
💻 Rstats
📊 data viz

Aiming to challenge misinformation about diets by building an evidence-based resource called LumiPie (lumipie.com)
📍Denmark

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#rstats 📊 I found this cool package called smplot2 by Seung Hyun Min. It allows you to quickly add statistical results from correlation analysis to ggplots. Only one line is needed to add the R- and p-values, along with a regression line, to the graph👍

🧪🍎📃 Vitamin D accumulates in adipose (fat) tissue. During moderate exercise (like treadmill), fat digestion is activated, releasing fat soluble vitamin D to perform its functions. Interestingly, circulating vitamin D metabolites are elevated 1 h post-exercise, but not at 24 h! shorturl.at/EAwa1

The effect of an acute bout of exercise on circulating vitamin D metabolite concentrations: a randomised crossover study in healthy adultsphysoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com Abstract figure legend Thirty-three healthy adults (14 ♀, 41 (15) years, body mass index 26.2 (3.7) kg/m2, V̇O2max${{\dot{V}}_{{{{\mathrm{O}}}_{\mathrm{2}}}{\mathrm{max}}}}$ 36.2 (9.2) ml/kg/min; mea....

🧪🍎📃 Keto diet (avoiding carbohydrates like grains or fruits) was effective for weight loss, as was simply reducing sugar consumption. This is because both caused reduced energy intake. From a very neatly done clinical trial: www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Yet another confirmation that humans don't like mental effort. I guess it's one of the reasons we've developed technologically? we want machines to do the hard work for us psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d... 🧪#AcademicSky

90-60-90 were promoted as the ‘perfect’ measurements of the female body for several decades. Are these dimensions even common? I analyzed a dataset created by scientists who measured the body dimensions of physically active individuals. Among 215 participants, none had 90-60-90 measurements 🧪📊

“... all it took was a single meow, and she’d bring me a meal, along with a bountiful reassurances of my refined good looks, charm, intelligence, breeding, and any other of my numberless superior qualities that struck her at that particular moment.” The Dalai Lama’s Cat 💙📚

🧪Why do some prefer exercise over other activities like eating delicious food? When mice are placed in a maze with multiple activities to choose from, they opt for exercise, even when highly palatable food is present. Orexin receptors in the brain play a role in this. 🔗 shorturl.at/NUxXy

Orexin neurons mediate temptation-resistant voluntary exercise - Nature Neuroscienceshorturl.at What makes the brain maintain voluntary exercise despite attractive alternative options such as eating? Tesmer et al. show that orexin/hypocretin neurons are crucial for implementing the underlying va...

🧪Surprising news: There are benefits from aging for… fertility! New study: ⬆️ maternal age linked to ⬆️ purifying selection on mutations in mitochondria. This means fewer mitochondrial DNA-associated diseases in offspring from older mothers. Caution: The phenomenon observed in mice shorturl.at/0urxL

Welcome to Nutrition feed! ✔️Pin and like the feed if you're interested in nutrition science ✔️Use 🍎📃 or 🥪📃 to post to the feed ✔️Reference the study you want to discuss ✔️Academics are encouraged to post about their publications or preprints ✔️Blogs are welcome but should reference scientific studies

Intermittent fasting is great for losing weight and improving metabolic health. However, its effect likely comes from consuming fewer calories than normal. If caloric intake is not reduced, no benefits of intermittent fasting are observed. Recent RCT: shorturl.at/Xxepi 🧪 🩺🍎📊

Note on biases in clinical evidence: This article nicely shows the impact of reporting and citation biases on the perceived efficiency of treatment. It illustrates how some trial outcomes (e.g., negative results about antidepressants) may eventually become hidden. shorturl.at/Mreyk 🧪 #AcademicSky

Possible reverse causation is a good thing to know about. E.g., PMID: 33314992 reports skipping breakfast increases the odds of depression (OR: 1.39). But what is more likely? 1. Skipping a meal contributes to depression 2. Depressed people are not into eating breakfast 🧪 #stats #metasky

🧪 🩺 A new study aimed to investigate whether giving people $1,000 every month for three years would improve their health. It turns out no improvement in physical health occurred. Link: public.websites.umich.edu/~mille/ORUS_...

🧪 Women are born with a finite egg reserve. How do these eggs stay healthy for several decades? Scientists have some clues: 🥚 By maintaining low levels of oxidants (produced via mitochondria) 🥚 By having extremely stable, long-lived proteins 🔗 to primary studies ⤵️ www.science.org/content/arti...

Why do eggs in ovaries last for decades? Long-lived proteins may be keywww.science.org If human ovarian proteins show the same staying power, it would be “mind blowing,” experts say

How much vegetables do people normally consume? I fetched data from Our World in Data and displayed on a map the top 3 countries with the lowest and the highest vegetable consumption. The gap is huge. 📊🧪🌍

🧪 🩺 Fiber is beneficial for health. But some people, e.g. a subset of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, can’t tolerate fiber. Why? Potential reason - β-fructan fibers, which can’t be fermented if certain microbes are lacking in the gut. Unfermented β-fructan fibers can fuel inflammation 🔗⤵️

🧪🩺 Clinical trial highlights: ✔️ 326 participants with type 2 diabetes ✔️ Randomized control trial ✔️ 12-week intervention What’s better for diabetes? Caloric restriction (formula diet) 2 days/week or Exercise (HIIT+resistance) 2 days/week or Routine lifestyle education (1/3)

A 🧵 on how the exaggerated (and false) claim about the potential side effect of statins, based on a published study, was transformed into a big headline. This highlights the importance of reading primary studies and critically evaluating their results. 🧪 🩺 (1/6)

Conversing with an imaginary other as a research strategy sounds similar to rubber duck debugging in IT. Some programmers carry around a rubber duck, and once they encounter a bug, they explain their code to it line by line. This helps to find mistakes in the code more quickly 😎 #StatsSky

I never found it useful as learning strategy but it improved communicating with people outside of my field by highlighting how useful good analogies can be. As a learning/research strategy, conversations with an imaginary other helps find questions I can't answer which tells me where to spend time.

Fear generates clicks. Clicks -> Money. Therefore, critical evaluation of any scary headlines is a must. Addressing the buzz about tampons, OB/GYN Jen Gunter wrote a blog article discussing a recent study on the presence of metals in these products. 🧪 🩺 vajenda.substack.com/p/dont-panic...

Don't Panic about Lead in Tamponsvajenda.substack.com And do you know how much is in supplements, kale, or tea (to name just a few)

Sometimes, it’s hard to communicate research findings efficiently and accurately. These recommendations for systematic reviews can also be useful for describing results in other types of research. Phrases based on certainty of evidence and magnitude of effects ⤵️ PMID: 31711912 #AcademicSky #PhD

A new hormone was discovered called CCN3. It is important for bone health during lactation and can also help heal bone fractures 🦴🩹 🧪 🩺 www.ucsf.edu/news/2024/07...

Scientists Discover a New Hormone that Can Build Strong Boneswww.ucsf.edu A newly discovered hormone explains why females can maintain bone density during lactation, when calcium is stripped away to make milk. This discovery could one day have applications to treating fract...

A comprehensive guide on how to approach the literature review process in a systematic manner. Highly recommend this book. Free online version (and PDF) is available 👉https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235930866_Systematic_Approaches_to_a_Successful_Literature_Review #AcademicSky #PhD

The topic of sleep attracts lots of attention. Of course, when the headlines scream: “Sleep is essential for brain health”. PMID: 37798367 shows that while 6.5h sleep is optimal, short habitual sleep is not a cause of poorer brain health. 🧪Have you seen the study? What do you think? #AcademicSky

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Elena Shekhova, PhD

I unexpectedly find myself with FOUR spare copies of Sticky. So, it's giveaway time! TWO available here and TWO on Mastodon. Open to all 🌍 To go in the draw for one, reply to this post with this emoji: 🦎followed by your favourite sticky or slippery thing! Winners chosen 48hrs from now. GO! ( fyi 👩‍🔬🧪)

Something that blew my mind when I learned it: We shed about 30g of gut cells per day. On top of that, some of them are alive and exhibit upregulated antimicrobial and immune-related processes! Sources: PMID: 33432173 and PMID: 37857731 The image from PMID: 16909128 🧪 #science #gut

Previously believed: Some animal-sourced proteins are almost completely digested by the host (a mouse or human). New study showed: Proteins from all sources remain partially undigested, can reach the colon, and become a substrate for the microbiota 🦠 Preprint: shorturl.at/gtZr6 🧪 #diet

Dietary protein from different sources escapes host digestion and is differentially modified by the microbiotashorturl.at bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

How can people learn about the impact of lifestyle choices on the human microbiome during pregnancy? Scientists created a "gamified review" that allows readers to explore scientific findings by playing a game. Game: microbiome.gamelabgraz.at Preprint: shorturl.at/4nUq4 🧪 🩺 #AcademicSky #pregnancy

This paper summarizes why bar plots can be misleading. Very different datasets can result in the same bar plot. It’s more informative for a reader to see individual data points on the graph ⤵️ 📎https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002128 🧪 #AcademicSky #stats

A friend of mine (a statistician) told me today that using a bar chart to compare means (even if you include error bars) is a “cardinal sin” of statistics, and that a box plot or violin plot should be used instead so you can see the variability… thoughts on this? #stats #rstats

Can 🍫 make you thin? Not sure about that. Can bad science be turned into a big headline? Absolutely! An experiment from 2015 shows how easily fake science can spread and make people believe that chocolate can help them lose weight 👇 www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning... 🧪

How, and why, a journalist tricked news outlets into thinking chocolate makes you thinwww.washingtonpost.com It was unbelievable news. And reporters shouldn't have believed it.