Islets of Langerhans

I was watching the TV monitor at the credit union where we bank.  My wife was waiting in line for a teller to call her.  The TV was streaming, I guess to entertain the customers who were waiting in the long line, and what caught my attention was a quiz that asked, “Islets of Langerhans are in what organ of your body?”  Then the picture shifted to something else, such as the bank’s 1.99 % rate for a new car loan and a 2.99% rate for a home equity loan under $100K, but promised to give the answer in a bit.  I was at the sideline, so to speak because my wife was actually the one standing there with the hapless crowd – my role was to drive her to the bank that day and for me to enjoy the bank’s complimentary Java Dark Roast, while waiting; granted customers had to pour their own coffee from any of four different dispensers, real sugar and artificial sweetener, regular cream or non-fat, etc.

Obviously, I became a captive anticipator for the answer to the question posed by the TV monitor.  I never heard of “Islets of Langerhans” before, what they do, and curious about which organ of the body the question was referring to?  It was one of those phrase words combo one heard for the first time then recalling and remembering them indelibly, such as, The Straits of Hormuz, The Gulf of Tonkin, Sea of Tranquility, Broca’s Brain, etc.  My wife was still about number 8 down the line so there was time for me to catch the answer before she could finish her transaction.

 Well, if you haven’t yet, as most people probably haven’t, you read it here first – Islets of Langerhans are in our pancreas.  So, as we headed back to the house, my compulsion was to Google it.  You see, unlike the guy whose T-shirt said, “I don’t Google, my wife knows everything”, I do not have that luxury; or misfortune, depending on how you look at it.

Indeed, “Islets”, small as they are, play a very significant role in what is one of today’s rising chronic illnesses – diabetes.  Let me back up.  The pancreas is one tiny organ. Islets of Langerhans make up just 1-2% of the total mass of our pancreas.  A healthy adult has a million of these islets – that’s how tiny they are - which contain the endocrine cells that produce insulin.  This then leads to how critical these cells are, when impaired, to the development of diabetes, which then leaves one to wonder how these tiny, almost insignificant particulates of tissue could be so important.

How it got its name goes back to 1869 when a German anatomist discovered these tiny dots in the pancreas. Paul Langerhans was that pathologist who perhaps fondly called them islets, for little islands of cells.

How could something that is a mere fraction of our anatomy cause such serious condition?  Indeed it is the little parts that give the whole so much issues – from a tooth cavity, a busted ear drum, a bursting appendix, trouble with the pituitary gland, an aneurism, etc. all involve little parts.  A blood clot from the leg can traverse through the blood stream and cause extreme damage at the artery near the heart or the lungs.

Directly or indirectly we know someone afflicted with the commonly known Type 2 diabetes. If TV ads for diabetes medication are any indicator, the condition seems to have reached epidemic proportions, although statistically it is just about 10 % of the general population in the U.S. But indeed, if one were to look at it from a particular context, it would mean that one of every ten of our relatives, friends, co-workers, has diabetes.  In fact, try naming ten relatives or friends, look at your work place, and you will have one diabetic in each group of ten.  The U.S. population alone will have over thirty million diabetic patients.  China and India, whether they have a slightly lower or higher ratio, each country has over 100 million diabetic patients.  It is therefore a non-trivial trend.  In a rapidly increasing age group of seniors, as more and more people get older, the proportion goes up to one in five, 21% !, although for 18-39 year olds, the stats bear only 2%.  However, by the time someone gets past the age of forty, the ratio goes up to 11 %.

Islets of Langerhans are critical because diabetes, or more precisely its development, operates at the cellular level. It begins at the tiniest level of our anatomy.

Here is a quote from the “Biology of Diabetes”

“The tissue cells of the muscle, fat, and liver are designed to take glucose (sugar) out of the blood, pull it into the cells and change it into energy.

These cells require insulin to absorb glucose. When these cells fail to respond adequately to circulating insulin, these cells lose their sensitivity to insulin (a condition known as insulin resistance) and blood glucose levels rise.

The body responds to this situation by signaling the pancreas to produce more insulin, causing insulin levels in the blood to become too high. This condition is known as hyperinsulinemia. The cells in the liver also become insulin resistant and respond by making too much blood sugar. Because blood sugar is not absorbed by the cells, it stays in the blood, causing blood sugar levels to rise — a condition known as hyperglycemia.”

“All of this leads to diabetic complications that can lead to blindness, kidney failure, amputation, heart attack and stroke. Other health issues include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high inflammation markers, periodontal disease, and erectile dysfunction.”

We can say that diabetes is a new age condition.  Apparently, we can surmise that over two thousand years ago, or even earlier, diabetes may not have been a condition people worried about: (a) most folks probably didn’t get past the age of forty (b) they worked so much harder physically that excess sugar and glucose in their blood was unheard of; (c) there may not have been that much unused sugar in their diet, to begin with – just guessing.  As an aside, other age-related afflictions like cataract, glaucoma, even arthritis were likely very rare as well.  And likely still, obesity and gout were suffered only by the very rich.

Today, however, the million islets of Langerhans, can be overwhelmed by the million and one sugary foods out there – from M&Ms to sodas to cheesecakes to even bowls of rice or loaves of bread.  What are we to do when the sweetness of life, the delectable ingredients of our favorite snack, the staple carbohydrates of our basic food are to be doled out in small portions as to obliterate any vestiges of guilty pleasures from our lives?  Well, as Yoda might say, “0ne to thirty nine years had you with sugar and spice, suck it up you will do to live twice”.  Or, walk five miles a day or skip a bowl of rice; a bowl of ice cream or do ten miles.

Now, diabetes is not a death sentence anymore when caught early.  Tests are accurate and medicines are widely available.  Diet, if followed, helps greatly and recommended exercise regimen is effective.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that sedentary life styles prevail in the developed world and sugar in many forms finds itself in most of what we eat; and, in the underdeveloped countries, health care management is still found wanting.

Since you have read this now and you are well aware of what the “islets of Langerhans” are, you have so much less excuse to ignore the warnings on diabetes.  We even have less reason not to read a bit more and find out about it in more detail, or at the very least raise our awareness.

We are not going to know everything but this we know – we all should take a pancreatic oath, requiring but a small sacrifice to take care of the million islets of Langerhans.

A sweet tooth is as real as the tooth fairy - resist it.

Democracy of the Ants

Of course, there is no such thing as democracy in the ant world; neither at the termite colony, the beehive or in the den of a family of naked mole rats. What they have instead, if you haven't run across this word yet, is eusociality. It is the phenomenal engine that powers their behavior.  Eusocial behavior is both simple and sophisticated so that for the ants it is simply one amazing natural adaptation that had gone on for millions of years, predating even the dinosaurs.  Why is this even a point of discussion?  Democracy is a settled idea - there is no other like it, except in just a one-handful of places (actually just three or four remaining governments clinging to the communist ideals).  There is nothing more to discuss.

In nature the most successful behavior is one that not only ensures survival but to have the ability to flourish, even prosper, in the most demanding environment. An organism must not only succeed in fighting off predators but it must sustain itself and its descendants so that the species can live on forever.  That has been the story of life on this planet.  It is a story of learning, developing, adapting and insuring so that life itself, no matter in what form, is sustained and unrelenting in its capacity to persevere and win. That’s what the ants and all other similar eusocial organisms have been doing for millennia.

So, what is eusociality?   Simply put, as an example, in the ant colony, the queen literally rules as an absolute monarch, with absolute power, in every sense of the phrase. Every monarch who ever lived throughout history and anyone who aspires to become one in the future would have envied or will only dream of the power of the queen ant.  Ants and termites are the epitome of adaptive survivalism. In eusociality a single population of many thousands of individuals – in some cases a few hundred thousand – takes its marching order from just one individual; naturally, we can call that the instinctual behavior of the lead organism – the queen.  The dependence of the entire population is so rigid and dedicated that the death of the queen kills off the entire colony.  Though that might seem like a weakness, on the contrary ants and termites could very well be the ultimate survivor in the proverbial cataclysmic event that may befall this planet.  The queen ant and the queen termite and the queen bee all exemplify eusocial strengths without equal in the animal world.

In eusocialism, the queen decides first of all where to locate the colony, which is the mound and intricate tunnels underground if it were a permanent structure; in the case of the army ants – it is where they settle for the night or as a temporary bivouac area.  Only the queen lays eggs and only it controls what kind of babies will come out of each egg, male or female, worker or soldier, and even nannies for the young.  It knows exactly which ones to replenish; i.e., when there is a breach in the mound and soldier ants were lost, the queen knows to produce more soldier ants. Its demand to be fed constantly is met with regularity and it is bigger too than the average ant, and it is groomed and carried around whenever it wants to go anywhere within the colony and no activity is accomplished without its approval. The queen is the absolute ruler and it rules absolutely.

If eusocialism is so successful, why is it not the prevalent system?  After all, every species is made up of many individuals and the objective is to survive and multiply and the strength in number is what eusocialism has.  Humans have done well. We are everywhere and we are the dominant species, yet the prevailing system for governing ourselves is a democracy.  Eusociality is the exact opposite of democracy though it is not communism or socialism, or any other similar derivative.  We have progressed in areas that animals will never achieve, too many to enumerate here, but as an example, we have spoken and written languages, we have laws and standard norms of behavior, etc. Other than that, we have societies, boundaries, and our survival depends on consuming what we find in our environment – animals and/or plants.  But we do not have eusocialism.

In the beginning we started out that way.  Tribal groups as the smallest unit were ruled by tribal leaders who decided for the tribe and must have at one time the privilege to sire children exclusively.  As tribal alliances got bigger, kingdoms arose and kings and monarchs emerged – all tried to rule absolutely; unfortunately, as ants in a colony, there were soldiers and workers too but similarities end there, because individuals had minds and free will of their own. Nations and kingdoms experimented with other systems and today we have democracy.

Democracy though has a weak if not even a darker side.  Its history is fraught with many failures.  In fact, the birthplace of democracy – Greece – failed.  The Romans who adopted it and even improved on it also suffered the same consequence. Dictators and bad leaders even emerged from the democratic processes.  Hitler and Mussolini were elected leaders in the beginning. As a matter of fact, there are many ways a democracy can fail from within.  Yet, the adage, “it is the best we have”, still holds true.  It is near perfect, in fact, except that like the proverbial chain, its weakest link is man – the elected leader and the electorate who elected him or her.  That is the irony of democracy because the people it is supposed to serve are the very same ones who will bring it down. 

Democracy has another weak point.  It has a shelf life of two to three hundred years per nation that adopts it.  This is not saying that democratic nations are obliterated or destroyed past that time (at least, not right away) but that it is weaker than when it begun.  Monarchial and despotic systems are what necessitated the birth of democracy but the latter has a way to enlarge the reach of corrupt practices, far beyond that which the monarch’s family can ever achieve.  While democracy engages the individual to succeed and pursue riches and all the comforts that go along with it, the national wealth also has an insidious way to corrupt the system as soon as the critical mass is reached, whatever that percentage is in a given nation of people relying on the government’s help.  It is attained when a point is reached whereby the taxed is outnumbered by the beneficiaries of taxation. Election - the very foundation of democracy – doles out the true blessing of the system when conducted fairly but is corrupted easily not so much by fraud but by ignorance of the voting public, the craftsmanship of corrupt politicians and the inevitably well disguised, even unintended, vote buying.  As soon as the beneficiaries of government aid outnumber those who are the source of the government’s money – the tax payers – politicians go after the former with more aid and benefits that results into spiraling costs and debt. Soon the government runs out of money as its expenses outrun its revenues; tax payers are outnumbered by those who are not.  Democracy somehow has a built in longevity per nation, as if it has in its genes the ability to turn off at some point. 

“The glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome” was descriptive of two civilizations that were at one time the poster nations of democracy.  Apparently, the system is a sound one because nation after nation adopted it, experimented with it, and to date, we have republics and parliamentary systems that seem to work well.  Unfortunately, the people that the system serves can be the cause of its undoing.

The queen ant, if we have not encountered it in our human experience, is the one true example of the benevolent dictator.  At some point man has pined for that dictatorial benevolence as the answer.  Short of faithful reliance on God, or the perceived dictates of a deity, the tenets of religion (if strictly adhered to) man seems unable to effectively sustain a government that can last forever.  It is obvious that human benevolence is either non-existent or at best, a temporary state.  A case in point is when a leader is chosen to replace a corrupt one - history has produced many – however, given enough time the new leader gives in to the corruption of power, almost without exception.

Eusocialism, believe it or not, can be and had been a human experience.  It is called parenting.  Parents are fine examples of benevolent dictatorship.  It is necessary to say, however, that good parenting is a fine example of benevolence - up to a point, obviously. Since the basic component of a population, next to the individual, is the family unit, the breakdown at that level is where the breakdown of democracy begins, if there is enough of family fragmentation in a given society.  This is not a lecture on single parenting, or parenting in general, but if democratic leaders do behave like benevolent parents, looking after the welfare of other people outside of themselves, truly aware of their role and staying with it, as if it is their children’s lives that are at stake, democracy can indeed be eusocialistic. It will be something that the governed could accept.

One can only dream.