Hormesis is a term used by toxicologists to refer to a biphasic dose response to an environmental agent characterized by a low dose stimulation or beneficial effect and a high dose inhibitory or toxic effect. In the fields of biology and medicine hormesis is defined as an adaptive response of cells and organisms to a moderate (usually intermittent) stress. Examples include ischemic preconditioning, exercise, dietary energy restriction and exposures to low doses of certain phytochemicals. Recent findings have elucidated the cellular signaling pathways and molecular mechanisms that mediate hormetic responses which typically involve enzymes such as kinases and deacetylases, and transcription factors such as Nrf-2 and NF-κB. As a result, cells increase their production of cytoprotective and restorative proteins including growth factors, phase 2 and antioxidant enzymes, and protein chaperones. A better understanding of hormesis mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels is leading to and to novel approaches for the prevention and treatment of many different diseases.
Spider-mouse. Spider-mouse
Does whatever a Spider-Mouse does
Can he swing, on a web?
No he can’t, he’s a mouse.
Makes sense, explains why the people at Chernobyl had much, much, less problems than predicted.
Don’t we get a good dose of radiation daily from natural sources, i.e., the sun?
“producing health benefits for mice with an unusual genetic makeup” ...so normal mice (without this unusual genetic makeup) would NOT experience this ‘benefit’? Wouldn’t they have said so if normal mice were unharmed?
So much hedging in this article; note the “probably in humans”. State of the art, massive, long-term, well-designed scientific studies like BEIR VI have shown, year after year, that there is no safe or beneficial radiation threshold and that even low dose radiation damages humans.
In the BEIR VI, researchers note low doses are especially damaging to young and to females (twice as damaging to girls than boys). The article doesn’t say but I am guessing they used adult mice for their “genetic anomaly” sample in order to avoid this sensitivity because damage to thyroid/endocrine/bone-marrow etc. would interfere with their study of this genetic anomaly.
Since BEIR VI and other studies have proven that low dose radiation is damaging to humans (and quantified the damage by age/gender), I don’t believe this research will be useful to humans unless used to treat a gentically anomalous human who is older and male and whose genetic anomaly is regarded as worse than the damage caused by radiation dosing.
Ah...checking the article I see:
“Mother mice that got radiation doses between 0.7 and 3 centigrays had more pups with browner coats than did sham-irradiated mice. Browner coat colors among mice exposed to low-dose radiation were associated with higher levels of DNA methylation on the agouti gene, indicating that radiation does something to alter the chemical tagging.”
So irradiating the young altered their DNA. Not something we want to try unless you are a “viable yellow agouti mice”.
Better living through chemistry!
Most people get too little radiation. Art Robinson worked on this and radiatoin hormesis appears to be beneficial. IIRC the lowest incident of skin cancer is among Australian life guards.