I just want to recommend the channel Ninja Nerd for learning about biology and medical concepts. I watched half of their video so far explaining multiple sclerosis, and the host is entertaining and appears to be very knowledgeable, and there are a lot of visuals. The channel has a ton of content about many aspects of biology and lots of different diseases. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_136Lk_XPg
Thanks for sharing. Maybe they can do an episode on ME/CFS? Did a quick search and noticed that none of the team members is an actual doctor or specialist. Zach Murphy, the CEO and guy in the videos is a physician assistant.
That might be interesting. I'll see if I can send an email requesting that. [Edit: Sent!] Yeah, I saw that. Would be good to hear the opinions of some specialists about the channel. Looks to be 9 or 10 medical students on the team as "medical editors". I get the impression it's targeted mainly at medical students studying for exams, and maybe also clinicians treating patients.
Of the hundreds of videos, it doesn't seem like any deal with psychology, at least based on the titles. I assume they try to stick to what is known clinically or physiologically with very high certainty. So I was thinking there might not be nearly enough "known" information about ME for it to be worth making for them, at least for the pathophysiology section of the video.
Given that even some ME researchers and doctors and patient groups try to insist that there is a lot known about ME/CFS biology, ranging from outlandish to possibly plausible if replicated, I don't think we can assume anything. It depends entirely on who they decide to consult and what references they use. I wouldn't assume anything about what they might include. I'm not keen on novices using You Tube channels to provide half baked 'education'. Call me cynical, but who would you trust to do a good job on ME/CFS?
Yeah, was probably rash of me to request they cover ME. For me personally, this is about the limit of what my brain can handle. I've tried reading through textbooks, and can barely do a page a day at best.
It seems that they mostly focus on medical students. So if they use something like the IOM report, Mayo review article, NICE guideline or just the Wikipedia page on ME/CFS it would likely be much better than what most medical students learn about ME/CFS (if they hear anything about it all).
It's terrible.The guy knows nothing about what he is talking about and simply regurgitates the worst sort of dumbed down textbook stuff. MS is not type 4. Factors are not just genetic and environmental... Nothing to do with HHV-6 as far as I know... I presume the rest of it is as bad. This is the sort of stuff we are here to chuck in the garbage can.
Is there any visual media you'd recommend? I was originally looking to try to understand the basics of the immune system - T-cells, B-cells, NK, etc. And I'm interested in digging into the mitochondrial energy cycles as well.
I wouldn't start with YouTube as a source. There are thousands of people with poor understanding spouting all sorts of stuff, as we've found here, and those of us without background knowledge will find it hard to distinguish between them. I had a lovely time for a few years before I took on forum duties following free online courses run by universities from all round the world on all sorts of subjects. I found Coursera a good source, and EdX. There was a lovely pictorial one on mitochondria, and some good ones on human biology, cells and genetics. You work through them at your own speed, and don't have to do any of the assessments if you don't want to. They were mostly pitched at introductory university level. https://www.coursera.org/learn/physiology If you want school level the Khan Academy might be better.
For better or worse, the Ninja Nerd channel replied about ME/CFS: "Thanks so much for reaching out to Ninja Nerd. We completely agree with you! We are hoping to address these topics in our updated Neurology section. We plan on releasing this in the coming months. Thanks and we wish you all the best of health!"
Thanks! I just signed up for that coursera course. I was worried because it was saying at least $50 to take it, but looks like it's free if you don't want a certificate.
One thing is that animations are amazing for helping me quickly and easily understand and remember things. If I can get a visual of a little T-cell bouncing around, doing whatever it does and showing how it interacts with other cells (little faces on the cells welcome but not necessary), that will absorb much better than text or a lecturer just describing it. If some well-made comprehensive physiology courses had the super visually engaging style of a YouTube channel like Kurzgezagt or 3Blue1Brown, that'd be perfect. Edit: In fact, Kurzgezagt has some beautiful intro videos about the immune system, and it looks like they cite every single thing they say, at least in these immune videos, down to the exact quote from the paper/book they cite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXfEK8G8CUI
