Friday 14 October 2016

What lies beneath in the months to come

If you have been following this blog for the past years you might have noticed that over the year of 2016 I haven’t said much. The writing of my PhD thesis, preparing for my viva, searching for a job and promoting both my science serious games company and our very first product “Adna’s Lab” occupied most of my time. Add to that my beautiful 2-year-old and preparing the coming product of my company, and you have an idea that updating this toxicology blog was ever so hard.

The year is starting to burn the very first Autumn sticks and most of my personal and professional projects have known a turning point. I submitted my thesis, passed my viva, finished the suggested minor corrections that I will finally submit this 20th of October, SciBoard Games reached the final of the 4th International Educational Games Competition at ECGBL 2016, I was offered the role of multilingual medical information officer at the ProPharma Group and I’m travelling to Germany (as I write) to exhibit “Adna’s Lab” at the Spiel 2016 (Essen).

In addition, I’m having a little girl this December. She will be with us very close to Christmas Day. What a present I’d say… a little girl… I am going to be the proud father of a beautiful ever so smart and artistic kiddo and his newborn sister right at the hype of Christmas. Add to that the possibility of finally selling the rights of our game to a good publisher and the year of 2016 gave me pretty much all I prayed for. In addition, I can also stress that as a Sjogren’s syndrome patient I had an incredible year after all the changes I produced in my diet. Strictly no alcohol, replacing sucrose for stevia, adding chocolate based on xylitol, no spicy food, drinking loads of water, exercising at least twice a week, replacing dairy products for coconut and rice milk and soy yogurts, and eating loads of avocados, walnuts and brown bread.

The year 2016 gave me so far pretty much 90% of the best I could wish for. But I want more, I deserve more, and I will get more. Now that the levels of stress and anxiety are behind, I am enjoying having transitioned from academia to the industry, or at least to a more corporate-based professional context. I am happy, my company looks solid in their market position and their investment on training their employees is so far the most appealing factor I could come across. What I have experienced with them so far isn’t but a very positive attitude towards preparing their employees to deliver immaculate professional results. Contrarily to the chaotic/autistic training approach left behind in academia, this industry so far has really caught my heart.

But I need to write more. Writing and researching scientific subjects is part of my DNA. I cannot live without knowing more and helping others know more and do informed decisions. For that matter I will try and look for a post every 10 days, even if the amount of information isn’t too big, at least I’ll deliver informative and modern topics trice a month.… and if you knew what I have in store for you guys!!! To start with, my fellow American readers are crazy about Bay Leaf. They crave for information and that is what I’ll be doing over the coming weeks, i.e., responding to a pile of questions that have been stacking in the past bay leaf posts. There are very pertinent and interesting questions hanging for a while and I really want to make sure I don’t let those readers down.

Then, a personal opinion article on the possible link between hypercortisolism and the onset of Sjogren’s syndrome. That followed by another research post looking a bit more into the amphibiotic behaviour of Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria’s camouflage strategies and other examples of amphibiotic resistance from bacteria.


But there is lots and lots more of interesting subjects to cover. Stick around.

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