Instant Genius - Team talk: Beating pandemic burnout, the seasons of you and a daring giraffe rescue

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

In this episode of the Science Focus Podcast, we chat through the January 2021 issue of the magazine, which is on sale now. Editor Dan Bennett opens the episode by talking about new research that suggests that rather than following a pattern of spring, summer, autumn and winter, our bodies may have their own seasonal fluctuations that don’t match the calendar. Next up is managing editor Alice Lipscombe-Southwell, who tells us about how we can beat the pandemic burnout. Finally, commissioning editor Jason Goodyer tells the story of a daring rescue of endangered giraffes from an island where food is slowly running out. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription of this episode [this will open in a new window] Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: End of year roundup: The non-COVID science that brought us joy in 2020 Inside the December issue with the BBC Science Focus team The Science Focus team: What’s inside November’s issue? Why you can’t multitask (and why that’s a good thing) Prof John Drury: The psychology of lockdowns How a scientist used viruses to save her husband’s life from a superbug Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hello and welcome to the Science Focus podcast. I'm Sarah Rigby, online assistant at BBC Science Focus magazine. With me today, I have editor Dan Bennett. Hello. Managing editor Alice Lipscomb Southwell Hello and commissioning editor Jason Goodyear Hi-ah

We're going to tell you all about the January issue of the magazine which is on sale now Why don't we start with Dan? Dan, what are you going to tell us about today? Well, so I've got a health story but not the kind you're sort of used to hearing in January because, I mean honestly he's got time and energy for resolutions This is something we found really fascinating

about a really, really big and sort of huge amount of work that's gone into this new study that was published at the end of last year. And it was a group of scientists who were essentially interested in the seasons, but not the kind that we, I suppose, familiar with, not, you know, summer, autumn, winter, or in England, as I like to think, of it as rain, rain, rain, and it's too hot. But they were interested in whether the human body might have its own seasons. And that would vary depending on where you were in the world.

So to set out whether our bodies have their own rhythm, these researchers followed a whole group of people in California. I believe it was around 100 of them. And over four years, 105 volunteers, I'll say, over four years, they sampled their blood, their poo samples, taking measurements of the kind of molecules that were floating around in their blood and body, measurements of what kind of microbes were populating their microbiome, looking at what was in their blood, nose, and guts. and at the same time they were also taking measurements of what the weather was around them like, what it was like, so the climate, using things like weather data and airborne pollen counts to see whether there was any link between the environment and what was going on in their bodies. So it's a huge effort done over four years.

And actually, they've started to analyse the data, and in fact they found that there's two key signals, at least, that they might be able to identify as sort of biological seasons. One comes in December, which you might expect, because effectively that's when infections are around. And they found that the molecules and the markers related to immune system responses

were in abundance in the blood at that time. So it makes sense, the body's probably preparing itself for infectious microorganisms. And then the other part, peak was actually in April rather than summer. And they're not sure what that's to do with, but they suspect it might have something to do with airborne pollen. So they suspect that with that entering our bodies around springtime,

that the body is sort of in a rhythm to prepare a response to that, sort of these invasive pollen particles. So it's quite interesting. They found that the human body had seasons and those differ from our traditional seasons. But I suppose why we were interested in it is it's a move towards a really interesting area of health research called multionomics. So that's the idea that you take as many measurements of as many parameters as you can and find out how the human body changes over the course of a year. Because, of course, when you go to a doctor, you're ill and you say, oh, I'm ill, I feel like I've got a temperature.

They compare your temperature to the baseline human temperature and say, yep, you're ill. Or maybe they take your cholesterol and say, yeah, that's higher than the bands that we think are normal. But in reality, your body changes throughout the year. In winter, we know that cholesterol is higher because we're basically indoors sitting around and we're, you know, perhaps putting on our winter weight. And perhaps that's in natural bounds compared to what happens. in summer. And so they're starting to see all these different markers that actually the human body ebbs and flows. And if we don't take special care and attention to that, we may be either

missing crucial diagnoses when people come in to see doctors because, you know, the measurements might be within certain bands, but actually for them, it's out of usual. I mean, particularly when it comes to sex, we know that certain hormones and, um, you know, um, you know, temperature ranges might be normal for one person and not normal for another. So it's a really interesting sort of piece of insight into where medicine is going, i.e. now that we have all these really simple, easy tests that can tell us huge amounts about our genetics, our microbiome, and what's in our blood, then we actually might be able to develop a sort of a better resolution of a picture of what optimal health is. And actually when someone actually falls out of bounds of

that. And I think that's going to be a really big, you know, talking point from this year and onwards. Wow. So you said that the, one of the peaks was in April and I think it was because of pollen. I didn't realize that pollen had such an impact on the body, except for people who had hay fever. Yeah, this was, this is something we, we actually went back to the researchers for more detail. And it surprised them too, because they weren't able to tell us, they're necessarily a significant proportion of their volunteers, have a hayfifah, for example, and that might be causing this signal.

And it's something they're going to dig deeper into. But they sort of said it's sort of reasonable to assume that if you're inhaling all these airborne particles and there's been a natural increase of them for as long as we can remember, that your body, it's quite reasonable to assume that your body might want to to mount a defence. And perhaps in those of us, where our immune systems are working properly, we, you know, we don't notice it.

And for those of us who have overactive immune systems, you know, it then shows up a safe fever. So presumably this was a study done out in California, and it was found they had the peaks in December and April. So elsewhere in the world, I assume it's going to be different, those seasonal sort of peaks? Yeah, I mean, so they were very, very keen. to stress that they just essentially found that there are two seasons in Californians, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I think that's the next step is, you know, this took them four years of just continuous measurements, but they do want to go to other countries and, you know, profile more and more people to understand what are the, what effectively

are the boundaries beyond which we start to say, okay, this person is, you know, descending into poor health because at the moment we have very, you know, they're just like single points. Okay, if your temperature's above 37, you're probably ill. If you're this level's below this, it's very ill. But if we can start to understand those fluctuations wherever you are in the world, then we can really start to help people before they get ill. So does that mean that they assume that there's going to be bigger variations between locations than between individual people so that you can largely group people's levels of these things

in their blood by where they live. Yeah, I mean, so this is really new stuff in a sense. It's just sort of coming aboard that we have all these new tracking devices that we're able to capitalize on from, you know, fitness trackers, heart rate watches to all these tests I talked about. before. And the honest answers, they really don't know. There's been some early results that

show that the presence of certain genes fluctuate with seasons. There was certain, they were interested in certain hormone levels and those could just vary person to person more so than say area to area. But the honest answer they just don't know. They just are very

careful not to say, you know, all people have these two seasons when you know, full well, the seasonal differences in India with the monsoon season. in the summer season is very different to what we experience over here in the West. Okay, great. Thank you very much, Dan. So now let's move on. Jason, what are you going to tell us about? So my favourite news story of this issue was the tale of a daring rescue of giraffes in Kenya. So essentially this story began back in 2011 when a group of eight,

Rothschilder's giraffes. We were in danger from poachers, so they're removed into a remote sort of peninsula area. But recently, there's been a lot of heavy rainfall, like it's in Lake Beringo in Kenya. It's been a lot of heavy rainfall, and it basically turned the peninsula into an island, and marooned these eight giraffes onto this small island. And so, obviously, they're going to run out of food or whatever. So the Kenyan Wildlife Service and the charity called Save Drafts Now decided that it was time to stage a rescue of these giraffes. So what they did is they built rafts, these sort of big, I think they made out of steel, sort of barge-like rafts.

And the plan originally was just to coax the drafts onto the rafts with sweet treats like mangoes. and then take them to safety in this newly established giraffe sanctuary which is about six kilometres called Rucco giraffe sanctuary. But the giraffes was so nervous because they're not used to human contact or whatever

that they viewed the gamekeepers as predators and they'd also, it had been quite a good year for acacia so they were pretty full anyway so they weren't hungry to say the mangoes didn't work. So they had to go to Plan B which is kind of using tranquilizers which is kind of scary because obviously

giraffes aren't in the habit of lying down and in fact if you do tranquilise a giraffe and it lies down then you get all sorts of complications because obviously it's got such a long neck the blood pressure is absolutely insane in order to get the blood to the brain so if they're on their side like this

then their blood pressure enormously dropped and they can get brain damage from this and they can also choke on their own saliva. So the giraffes not ordinarily lie down when they sleep? Not on their, you know, not on their side. Oh, right. Because their physiology, their anatomy doesn't allow them to do it. They're not designed for that purpose. So yeah, it's super dangerous. And they didn't really want to have to do this. But so basically they created a system of hoists. So they dart them and then

they'd hoist, hoist them up. Wow. And they put little hoods on them so that they, they, um, couldn't see what was going on and they weren't distressed. And this worked so well, one of the gamekeepers described them as they're walking on and off the rafts as behaving so well. It was like walking a puppy on a Sunday afternoon. So I thought it was pretty cute. So it does feel, I can definitely relate to a sense of being marooned on an island cut off of the rest of the world with food slowly running out. It seems quite a familiar. I think we all kind of bit, right?

It seems like a familiar scenario right now. But, so they did they do, sorry, just to get a proper picture of this, so they had this little raft and they were trapped on an island. And there's eight of them. So was it a one by one or two by two type of operation? So basically, at the moment,

they've done two females called Pasaka and Asiwa, but there are six left that they're currently moving now. So, yeah, they can only do one at a time because I don't know, maybe most people don't know, but there are nine subspecies of giraffe. So these are Rothschild's giraffes. There's also West African, South African, Nubian, cordifan, Angolan, reticulated, mass iron thornacrofts. Rothschilds are their whoppers of the giraffes.

well, they could be six metres tall, weigh more than a thousand kilos. And also, if anybody's seen that, David Attenborough documentary, where the lion attacks the giraffe and it starts kicking on it, you don't want to mess with an angry giraffe, basically. So, yeah, they had to do it one by one.

It was very sort of carefully thought out, carefully managed plan. I'm sure anyone who has tried to put a cat in a box to take it to the vet can understand the difficulty they have to getting the giraffe on the raft. So are the remaining giraffes okay for the meantime at the moment? So it's not flooding so quickly that they need to get them off really quickly. Yeah, literally as we speak, they're doing it now because it's the sanctuary that they've got is about six kilometres away.

but it's great. It's like a big something like 4,000 acre site that's specially for them. So hopefully it will keep them away from poachers. Because a lot of people, I think giraffes fly under the radar

a little bit and they are critically endangered. And they are poached. You wouldn't necessarily think it, but sometimes they're poached for bushmeat, but that isn't quite as common because a lot of African cultures think that consuming

giraffe meat gives you leprosy. So a lot of the time they'll kill the animal and they'll just take the tip of its tail off and leave the carcass to the vultures. And that's because it's used as a dowry, the tip of the tail. And it's very, you know, it's very sort of highly regarded amongst some cultures. So that's one of the, you know, you wouldn't necessarily expect poachers to be hunting dras, but that's one of the reasons, unfortunately. There's only, especially Rothschilds,

there's only a few of them left now, so they're... It's really important that these eight animals are saved. Yeah, I've heard about that, because you hear about lions and elephants and rhinos, you know how endangered they are, but it seems like to Ross just don't seem to get as much air time as some of the other animals. Yeah, it blows my mind, really.

I don't know why that is. They sort of seem to me like they can look after themselves. Yeah, unfortunately that isn't the case, I'm afraid. It's not only these guys. Like the cordofans are critically endangered as well. I'm not sure about the numbers of those, but there aren't many of those either. Thank you very much, Jason. So finally, we've got Alice.

What are you going to tell us about Alice? So this issue, I quite like the feature on how we can beat pandemic burnout. Now, I think we all feel a bit sort of bored of. of the pandemic at the moment. I know it's going on and it's awful, but it started off back in March, we thought we'd just be working at home for a few weeks and a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months

and now it's coming up to a year since we all been working from home. And while it's important for us to be doing this to keep people safe, at the same time it's been a whole new way of working and you're getting problems where you're sort of home life's blurring with your work life. Maybe you're having to balance your job,

with looking after children or homeschooling. And everyone's feeling, you know, a bit sort of burnt out. I mean, it isn't a new thing. You know, back in 2019, the World Health Organization, it actually put burnout onto its international classification of diseases. So it recognized this. You know, people were feeling burnt out. They had a lot on their plates, you know, trying to juggling,

juggling a lot anyway. But now sort of this pandemic burnout, this pandemic fatigue, is sort of a whole new thing, really. And so, you know, we all know how everyone feels, and we thought, let's do an article about how we can make people feel better about it. So we sort of dug deep into it and try to find out ways of making yourself feel better. And even though everyone's probably a bit fed up with Zoom calls at the moment and, you know, chatting online, it's actually really important to maintain relationships in any way you can. So, you know, whether you meet your friends over a, you know, Zoom chat or have a phone call with your colleagues as well. because they've done this research where they found that if you're feeling quite, you know, in pain, sort of socially, or you're not having a social interaction, it actually lights up the same areas of your brain as if you're in physical pain.

So, you know, physical pain is the same as social pain in your brain. So that rhymed quite a lot. It's a serious, it's a serious point, isn't it, that loneliness we're beginning to understand even before. this happened to us all has some quite serious health consequences. They found that because it's effectively, it's like being in a state of high stress all the time and the presence of those hormones can be quite damaging to your organs over a prolonged period of time. We're all fairly sick of video calls.

Obviously, I'm enjoying seeing you guys. Yeah, like the importance of networks, I think, has been huge. Yeah, exactly. And that sort of social connectedness and you're feeling like someone's listening to you or feeling like you've got friends or colleagues that you can be open with and talk to. You know, that can release oxytocin and those hormones that are good for your brain. If you feel, you know, sort of protected and looked after and like you've got a social circle you can rely on. So that was one thing we found that, you know, despite the fact you might be fed up with all these

then it is really important to try and maintain those relationships. And another thing, I know everyone's sort of fed up as well. We're being told, you should exercise more. You should go out. You can have your exercise for a day, you know, and all of that. And it's really easy just to sit down and be like, nah, I can't be bothered. But you shouldn't feel bad about yourself for that

because actually they've done this research and they found that our brains are actually designed to make you kind of want to sit down. So if you're sat there's, oh, I feel really bad. I should go for a walk, but I kind of want to sit. Then, you know, don't beat yourself about it. Because I've done this research. It was out in Switzerland.

This guy called Boris Chaval. He did this research where they got people to, you know, control these figures on screen and try and make the figures do exercise or make the figures sit down. And they found that when you're trying to, if you're naturally a person who doesn't really like going out and doing a lot of exercise anyway, then your brain has to almost work hard.

Even though you're like, yeah, I really do want to do more exercise. So when you're trying to make this figure do, do exercise on the screen. It's still just like, you know, your brain's like, nah, I don't want this. It's too hard. This is too difficult. So, you know, it shouldn't be yourself about it.

But again, going for that bit of exercise, it can really help. It gets you, you know, out of the house a little bit, a bit of fresh air. It's not so you have to go run 10 miles or anything. Just, you know, do whatever you enjoy, whether that's you're going for a walk or, you know, going for a cycle ride or something like that.

So that can be really beneficial. So what have you go? been doing to sort of keep yourself feeling, feeling happy and uncomfortable over the last year? I think over the winter break, I certainly turned to hibernation, which is probably like the opposite of the exercise advice. But there's logic to it. One, it felt good. It's just to catch up and sleep. but more so, I think sleep is obviously one of the major factors when it comes to keeping, you know, making sure that your immune systems in good working order. You know, not that you can necessarily protect yourself from COVID this way,

but definitely, you know, I think I've tried to sleep more, drink a bit less, which seems a bit hard in the current. situation, but I think that too can keep your kind of body in good order. And I think that's made me feel a little bit healthier and a little bit more well. But I think the other one is that there's a really interesting thing that we've all talked about is sort of with the sameness of our day to days, the sort of sense of time is just blurred into one. and I think I did see, I can't attribute it now, but I did see one researcher saying that part of the importance of these daily walks

that everyone are telling you to go on is to sort of punctuate and stretch out your days so that it doesn't just turn into one long smear of you moving between your desk and your sofa. I did the real hipster thing and back at the beginning of March when we first all started working, from home. I made a sourdough starter. And he's called Bob and he's still going. Still going. Still going. Oh, well done. I've not killed him off yet. So has making bread, has that been your keeping yourself sane activity? Yeah, I did make quite a lot of bread and baking. But, I mean, I really like the outdoors anyway. So I know at the moment we're only allowed out once a day, but when we were allowed out more than that, then I was just going out as much as I could,

because I think it's why it's really important get the vitamin D and the sunshine. I just feel so much better once I get some fresher, even just tipping it down with rain. And I just say, no outside anyway, I need to. What have you been doing, Jason? I've been playing my guitar a lot more.

I don't know, this is my own personal theory. And a lot of people talk about meditation. I think playing an instrument has a similar effect. So I used to joke about it saying that you go into a jazz trance, but you do, there's a certain point, not necessarily if you're reading score, but if you're just sort of noodling around, I find it really relaxing.

Yeah, I've definitely noticed that when I'm playing an instrument, if it gets to the point where I know a piece quite well, so I can play it without really thinking about it, I find that that is really good for just sort of emptying my mind of anything I'm worrying about. I'm going to draw on my ancient psychology degree here. And I think that's a known phenomenon, which I think, if I'm right, psychologists called flow, which they liken to mindful, to state,

when you find your kind of groove in a task and time can just part, time can flow really, go really slowly or go really fast, but you kind of lose, the one main feature is you lose track of time and come out the other side of it, feeling very relaxed. And I think that's a quantifiable thing that they've seen. It's quite hard to put someone in a fMRI machine

who's those big clunking giant machines that people describe as tubes and tell people to relax in them and see what it looks like. But I think they've seen it in, at least in ECG scans so that your brainwaves start to look a little bit more rhythmic and relaxed and akin to meditation when you're in a sort of mindful task like playing an instrument or could be making pottery or something like that.

Playing Tetris as well. Didn't they say that playing Tetris you can get into a flow state like that? Yeah, I didn't remember. Yeah, I was going to say, because I can't play an instrument. So what other things could there be that get into that flow sort of state? Does it just have to be something you enjoy then? Yeah, I think the qualities of it are

is that it's sort of, I don't, as a journalist, I could never imagine writing being like that. But it was always sort of painting, cooking can be like that to a degree, I think, interestingly, there is a slight trend for mindful cooking now. But again, I think getting to the point where you have to serve up, something gets a bit too stressful. But I think anything sort of physical in that it, you know,

hand-eye coordination, you know, requires something from you. And you can also, it is creative, you know, it doesn't necessarily matter so much. when you get it wrong or you don't have any deadlines or imposition or any set time you need to do it within. It's just you just do it for the joy of it. Okay, great. Thank you very much. So we'll wrap it up there. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Science Focus podcast. The January issue of BBC Science Focus magazine is out now. Also in this issue, we explore the greatest mysteries of the universe. Dr Michael Mosley shares his top tips for keeping your blood pressure on track.

And as always, our panel of experts answer your question. Of course, there's much more inside and on sciencefocus.com. Thank you for listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. We're the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at sciencefocus.com or look out for us in your app store. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French

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