Post Card

Oops, I got a bit out of order here... I guess Herb was carrying this post card around for a bit and finally sent it.

February 12, 1919
Dearest Mother,

Just finished a long move with no chance to write. I’m now in Epinal, France. The weather is fine but quite cold, the sort of weather you’re probably having. I’m feeling quite as usual – not even a cold to complain of. Letter in a day or two.

Best Love to All,
Herb

The Right Dose of Exercise for a Longer Life

I seem to always be looking for some authority to tell me that I don't need to exercise all that much. I mentioned the 20 seconds for three bursts here. You'd have thought I could keep that up, but nope, not me. Maybe I will try again, but I have not made it a habit.

I didn't determine if riding my bike to the grocery or walking to do my errands counts towards these moderate minutes mentioned here. During walking I never really hump it, but sometimes while riding my bike I have some bursts to get through a light or something. Does that count?

I took this article from the New York Times; written by Gretchen Reynolds back in April.

Exercise has had a Goldilocks problem, with experts debating just how much exercise is too little, too much or just the right amount to improve health and longevity. Two new, impressively large-scale studies provide some clarity, suggesting that the ideal dose of exercise for a long life is a bit more than many of us currently believe we should get, but less than many of us might expect. The studies also found that prolonged or intense exercise is unlikely to be harmful and could add years to people’s lives.

No one doubts, of course, that any amount of exercise is better than none. Like medicine, exercise is known to reduce risks for many diseases and premature death.

But unlike medicine, exercise does not come with dosing instructions. The current broad guidelines from governmental and health organizations call for 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week to build and maintain health and fitness.

But whether that amount of exercise represents the least amount that someone should do — the minimum recommended dose — or the ideal amount has not been certain.

Scientists also have not known whether there is a safe upper limit on exercise, beyond which its effects become potentially dangerous; and whether some intensities of exercise are more effective than others at prolonging lives.

So the new studies, both of which were published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine, helpfully tackle those questions.

In the broader of the two studies, researchers with the National Cancer Institute, Harvard University and other institutions gathered and pooled data about people’s exercise habits from six large, ongoing health surveys, winding up with information about more than 661,000 adults, most of them middle-aged.

Using this data, the researchers stratified the adults by their weekly exercise time, from those who did not exercise at all to those who worked out for 10 times the current recommendations or more (meaning that they exercised moderately for 25 hours per week or more).

Then they compared 14 years’ worth of death records for the group.

They found that, unsurprisingly, the people who did not exercise at all were at the highest risk of early death.

But those who exercised a little, not meeting the recommendations but doing something, lowered their risk of premature death by 20 percent.

Those who met the guidelines precisely, completing 150 minutes per week of moderate exercise, enjoyed greater longevity benefits and 31 percent less risk of dying during the 14-year period compared with those who never exercised.

The sweet spot for exercise benefits, however, came among those who tripled the recommended level of exercise, working out moderately, mostly by walking, for 450 minutes per week, or a little more than an hour per day. Those people were 39 percent less likely to die prematurely than people who never exercised.

At that point, the benefits plateaued, the researchers found, but they never significantly declined. Those few individuals engaging in 10 times or more the recommended exercise dose gained about the same reduction in mortality risk as people who simply met the guidelines. They did not gain significantly more health bang for all of those additional hours spent sweating. But they also did not increase their risk of dying young.

The other new study of exercise and mortality reached a somewhat similar conclusion about intensity. While a few recent studies have intimated that frequent, strenuous exercise might contribute to early mortality, the new study found the reverse.

For this study, Australian researchers closely examined health survey data for more than 200,000 Australian adults, determining how much time each person spent exercising and how much of that exercise qualified as vigorous, such as running instead of walking, or playing competitive singles tennis versus a sociable doubles game.

Then, as with the other study, they checked death statistics. And as in the other study, they found that meeting the exercise guidelines substantially reduced the risk of early death, even if someone’s exercise was moderate, such as walking.

But if someone engaged in even occasional vigorous exercise, he or she gained a small but not unimportant additional reduction in mortality. Those who spent up to 30 percent of their weekly exercise time in vigorous activities were 9 percent less likely to die prematurely than people who exercised for the same amount of time but always moderately, while those who spent more than 30 percent of their exercise time in strenuous activities gained an extra 13 percent reduction in early mortality, compared with people who never broke much of a sweat. The researchers did not note any increase in mortality, even among those few people completing the largest amounts of intense exercise.

Of course, these studies relied on people’s shaky recall of exercise habits and were not randomized experiments, so can’t prove that any exercise dose caused changes in mortality risk, only that exercise and death risks were associated.

Still, the associations were strong and consistent and the takeaway message seems straightforward, according to the researchers.

Anyone who is physically capable of activity should try to “reach at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week and have around 20 to 30 minutes of that be vigorous activity,” says Klaus Gebel, a senior research fellow at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, who led the second study. And a larger dose, for those who are so inclined, does not seem to be unsafe, he said.

Demobilization Memo #2

And there he is, standing there wearing the same thing as every other man waiting to go home.

Michael Meads at the Ogden

Ok, this has nothing to do with travel, health, genealogy or fiber art, I just really liked the exhibit.

I am reporting on this exhibit a little late.... Only there until the 28th of February. You can find info about the Odgen here.

I heard Michael Meads speak about his art and the creative process the other day at the museum. So wonderful to hear an artist talk about their work. He spends a full day on his art - starting at the studio around 9 and ending around 4:30 pm. He says his hand cramps up. The size of his art is dictated by the size of the studio; such practical considerations.

I loved it. Such incredible detail; such beautiful colors, such a variety of media. Boy, though, does he love penises and round bottoms. For an example of his very colorful watercolors, go here.

Here is the blurb from the Ogden:

Here is an example of his work taken from his web site:

Farmers in New York (hahaha!)

Can't you just see Herb in his uniform with his two stripes wandering down the streets and peering in the windows as he dreams of home and wonders what his friends are up to. We met Herb Blake here. So nice to know he is married and hopefully happy.

We have met Birdella here. I still don't know who she is; again, I think a neighbor who gets the honorary title of Aunt.

I found this post card here

February 15, 1919

Dearest Mother and all,

I’ve finally settled down in a very comfortable quarters where I hope to stay until ordered back to the Ambulance Service Base Camp for my last ocean trip.

The Section has now been in Epinal for about a week and since Epinal is headquarters for the 13th Division I expect that we are to stay. The 13th, you see, is a regular army division and was stationed in the district before the war, on frontier guard duty.

We’re in a suburb of Epinal proper but less than a mile from the centre of the town and up on a hill. All the men are together in an empty house that was “to let” until we requisitioned it. The top sergeant and myself are in an empty half-furnished apartment a few doors down the street. It really isn’t half bad. The first three or four days the weather was very cold – pretty close to zero Fahrenheit and things were none too comfortable because this apartment had been locked up for a long time and was cold as a barn. But an oil stove cheered things up a lot and since then Spring thaw has come and it’s finally warm, though rainy, of course. The people here seem to think that winter is through for good and I’m not sorry about it. Now I suppose we’re due for at least a month of rain.

We’re practically doing no work at all – only three cars are on duty, so we’ve plenty of time on our hands. The sergeant and I wander around Epinal looking into store windows like a couple of farmers in New York. It’s so long since I’ve been in a village of more than five hundred people that I hardly know how to act. There are three movie houses that show American films, old films, of course, and we take in one of them almost every evening.

The town is full of M.P.s, of course, but they don’t bother us for some reason or other provided we clear off the streets before 9:30 pm.

Your letters of January 19 and 24 came this week both in the same mail. I was interested in that letter from Mrs. White. The boys all had rather a hard time, didn’t they?

Still no authentic news about going home. I hear rumours [sic] that some Sections are to go before the end of this month and regularly thereafter. That’s fairly official but I do not know yet what Sections have really gone or even whether any have started back. It has been half promised that the Service will be broken up by the end of July but that may mean anything or nothing. Basing demobilization on length of time in France + length of service at the front SSU 580 out to be among the first third of the Service to start for home.
I shall let you know at once, of course, if I hear anything reliable.

Your affectionate son,
Herbert

Demobilization Memo #1

First we will de-louse.

And then, holy crap, what a process. Does that mean these men have been living with creepy crawlies?

Can you imagine how these men felt at this time. Anticipating seeing their loved ones again soon.

1919 - Demobilization Memos February

Herb's section doesn't get released until the third group, in May. It behooves Herb to make sure all his paperwork is in order so that his Section can leave in a timely manner.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Happy Lundi Gras!

Using a Mother’s Microbes to Protect Cesarean Babies

Fascinating stuff. Dr. Dominguez-Bello was a lecturer in my course on the human microbiome on Coursera.

Clearly I would rather get my microbiome from Mom, not the 'less-scrubbed' areas in the delivery room. Ick. 

I took this article, written by Sandra Blakeslee, from the New York Times on February 1st.

The first germs to colonize a newborn delivered vaginally come almost exclusively from its mother. But the first to reach an infant born by cesarean section come mostly from the environment — particularly bacteria from inaccessible or less-scrubbed areas like lamps and walls, and skin cells from everyone else in the delivery room.

That difference, some experts believe, could influence a child’s lifelong health. Now, in the first study of its kind, researchers on Monday confirmed that a mother’s beneficial microbes can be transferred, at least partially, from her vagina to her baby after a C-section.

The small proof-of-principle study suggests a new way to inoculate babies, said Dr. Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor of medicine at New York University and lead author of the report, published on Monday in Nature Medicine.

“The study is extremely important,” said Dr. Jack Gilbert, a microbial ecologist at Argonne National Laboratory who did not take part in the work. “Just understanding that it’s possible is exciting.”

But it will take further studies following C-section babies for many years to know to what degree, if any, the method protects them from immune and metabolic problems, he said.

Some epidemiological studies have suggested that C-section babies may have an elevated risk for developing immune and metabolic disorders, including Type 1 diabetes, allergies, asthma and obesity.

Scientists have theorized that these children may be missing key bacteria known to play a large role in shaping the immune system from the moment of birth onward. To replace these microbes, some parents have turned to a novel procedure called vaginal microbial transfer.

A mother’s vaginal fluids — loaded with one such essential bacterium, lactobacillus, that helps digest human milk — are collected before surgery and swabbed all over the infant a minute or two after birth.

An infant’s first exposure to microbes may educate the early immune system to recognize friend from foe, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

Friendly bacteria, like lactobacilli, are tolerated as being like oneself. Those from hospital ventilation vents or the like may be perceived as enemies and be attacked.

These early microbial interactions may help set up an immune system that recognizes “self” from “non-self” for the rest of a person’s life, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

In the United States, about one in three babies are delivered by C-section, a rate that has risen dramatically in recent decades. Some hospitals perform the surgery on nearly seven in ten women delivering babies.

An ideal C-section rate for low-risk births should be no more than 15 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

Dr. Dominguez-Bello’s study involved 18 babies born at the University of Puerto Rico hospital in San Juan, where she recently worked. Seven were born vaginally and 11 by elective C-section. Of the latter, four were swabbed with the mother’s vaginal microbes and seven were not.

Microbes were collected on a folded sterile piece of gauze that was dipped in a saline solution and inserted into each mother’s vagina for one hour before surgery. As the operations began, the gauze was pulled out and placed in a sterile collector.

One to two minutes after the babies were delivered and put under a neonatal lamp, researchers swabbed each infant’s lips, face, chest, arms, legs, back, genitals and anal region with the damp gauze. The procedure took 15 seconds.

Dr. Dominguez-Bello and her colleagues then tracked the composition of microbes by taking more than 1,500 oral, skin and anal samples from the newborns, as well as vaginal samples from the mothers, over the first month after birth.

For the first few days, ambient skin bacteria from the delivery room predominated in the mouths and on the skin of C-section babies who were not swabbed, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said.

But in terms of their bacterial colonies, the infants swabbed with the microbes closely resembled vaginally delivered babies, she found, especially in the first week of life. They were all covered with lactobacilli.

Gut bacteria in both C-section groups, however, were less abundant than that found in the vaginally delivered babies.

Anal samples from the swabbed group, oddly, contained the highest abundance of bacteria usually found in the mouth.

The results show the complexity of labor, said Dr. Alexander Khoruts, a microbial expert and associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. “It cannot be simplified to a neat, effortless passage of the infant through the birth canal,” he said.

As the month progressed, the oral and skin microbes of all infants began to resemble normal adult patterns, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. But fecal bacteria did not, probably because of breast or formula feeding and the absence of solid foods.

The transfer fell short of full vaginal birth-like colonization for two reasons, Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. Compared to infants who spent time squeezed inside the birth canal, those who were swabbed got less exposure to their mother’s microbes.

And all infants delivered by C-section were exposed to antibiotics, which also may have reduced the number and variety of bacteria colonizing them.

A larger study of vaginal microbial transfer is underway at N.Y.U., Dr. Dominguez-Bello said. Eighty-four mothers have participated so far.

Infants delivered both by C-section and vaginally will be followed for one year to look for differences in the treated and untreated groups and to look for complications. Thus far the swabbing has proved entirely safe.

The procedure is not yet recommended by professional medical societies, said Dr. Sara Brubaker, a specialist in maternal and fetal medicine at N.Y.U. Until more is known, physicians are hesitant to participate.

“But it has hit the lay press,” she said. “Patients come in and ask for it. They are doing it themselves.”

Dr. Brubaker is one of them. When her daughter was born three and a half months ago, she arranged to have her baby swabbed.