Jeffrey Bland, PhD comments on the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for discoveries of mechanical stress–sensing receptors (referred to here as "piezo receptors") by Dr. Adim Patapotian and David Julius. He explains that these mechanical transducer receptors translate touch and other physical stimuli (including heat/cold) into cellular signal transduction affecting physiological, metabolic, behavioral, and neurological functions. Bland links the discovery to lifestyle and functional medicine: mechanical interventions (massage, chiropractic), thermal therapies (sauna, cold baths), and certain phytochemicals in foods (garlic—allicin, menthol) can modulate these receptors. He also notes genetic variation in these receptors and cites papers associating receptor mutations with lymphedema, highlighting implications for lymphatic flow and personalized lifestyle interventions.
Questions this video answers
Dr. Adim Patapotian and David Julius.
Piezo receptors.
Allicin (in garlic) and menthol.
Lymphedema (receptor mutations associated with impaired lymph circulation).
Chapters
Hi, I'm Jeff Bland, and I'd like to say a couple of words about this new Nobel Prize in Medicine and physiology awarded to Dr. Adim Patapotian and David Julius from Scripps and UCSF, respectively. This is for their discoveries about the mechanical stress response sensing and how the concepts of touch get translated into physiological function. And it's extreme extraordinary discovery that I think has really interesting implications for that which we've been talking about in lifestyle medicine and the functional medicine model for many years. You know, a lot of us feel that there is like these two worlds. There's this world of science that talks about mechanistic issues that are related to specific pathologies. And then there's this other side, the social determinants of illness and some of the things that are related to kind of lifestyle that are soft science and don't really have the same mechanistic underpinning. But as we learn more in science, we learn actually that that's not true, that these two really converge. And there are scientific explanations at a mechanistic level for how these lifestyle principles actually impact that which we call our physiological, metabolic, behavioral and neurological function. And that's certainly the case in these, this discovery that led to this Nobel Prize. These are the piezo receptors that were the mechanical transducer receptors that were discovered by these two investigators that translate mechanical forces into physiological functions through signal transduction. Meaning that all these signals that we're getting from the outside world, sight, sounds, touch, taste, all of these have transduction mechanisms that take at the surface of a cell where its antenna is sitting and pick up these signals and translate them into function in these different cell types. Now, how does that really relate to things that are everyday thoughts? Well, it leads me back into this book. This is Dr. Gerald Lamoh's new book on lymph and longevity. You recall that we talked about Dr. Lamoh's discussion as a cardiovascular surgeon about the importance he thought of the lymphatic system in clearing the body of toxic waste and of things like transform lipids. Well, it turns out that the lymph system doesn't have a pump like the blood circulatory system does. It moves itself through mechanical mechanisms of fluid flow. And those, it turned out, are activated through these mechanical receptors, the pzoreceptors, for which the Nobel Prize was just won for their discovery. And so things like touch, like when we have manipulation, when we have chiropractic, when we have massage, when we have bodywork that actually manipulates mechanically tissue, it's sending signals to actually change, then gene expression patterns related to those receptor sites, those pziocytes and other mechanical receptor sites. Well, it turns out as you study this a little bit more, you find out that these receptor sites are also responsive to hot and cold. So those are other things that actually translate their information, like saunas or cold baths translate through these receptors. We also find in these families of receptors that there are certain kinds of agents, phytochemicals, present in certain foods that modulate some of these receptors. Like it's been found that certain substances in garlic, particularly allicin or menthol, that's found in men, these activate these portions of these receptors. So this is a really interesting field that brings together basic hard science into the experience of living and how we can harness some of these things in personalized lifestyle intervention to manipulate function. And let me just say lastly, there's been found to be a big genetic diversity in these receptors and how they function from individual, individual. And there are certain papers in which mutations of these receptors have been associated with lymphedema in which the lymph is just not circulating properly because these receptors are not responding to the mechanical forces as they would normally. So all of this is part of this advancing understanding of how genetics and environment and lifestyle intervene to ultimately modulate our function and give us tools that we can then use to improve functional outcome. Thanks to this extraordinary work that won the Nobel prize in medicine physiology this year, Dr. Petipudyan and Dr. Julius.
