Could we treat spinal cord injuries with asparagus? | Andrew Pelling
TED Health
TED
4.2 • 1.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 August 2021
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Take a mind-blowing trip to the lab as TED Senior Fellow Andrew Pelling shares his research on how we could use fruits, vegetables and plants to regenerate damaged human tissues -- and develop a potentially groundbreaking way to repair complex spinal cord injuries with asparagus.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ted Audio Collective |
| 0:07.6 | This is Ted Health. |
| 0:08.6 | I'm your host, Dr. Shoshana Ungerlider. |
| 0:13.6 | Plant-based diets are trending these days, but I'd never considered a future where medical |
| 0:17.9 | treatments were also plant-based. |
| 0:20.5 | Could asparagus and its structure be used to repair spinal cord injuries? |
| 0:25.2 | This Ted 2020 talk, biomedical researcher Andrew Pelling, explains how fruits and vegetables |
| 0:31.2 | that we eat regularly could potentially be used in the future to help human tissue |
| 0:35.9 | heal and repair itself. |
| 0:41.1 | There's another podcast you might enjoy, it's called Am I Normal from the Ted Audio Collective? |
| 0:46.0 | It's back with a new mini-series all about the stories behind the statistics. |
| 0:51.5 | What does adulthood mean in a place where more than three-quarters of people between ages |
| 0:55.5 | 18 and 35 live with their parents? |
| 0:58.5 | What defines joy when you live in one of the top-ranked countries for happiness? |
| 1:02.5 | Here from the people that make up every interesting data point, listen to Am I Normal, wherever |
| 1:06.8 | you get your podcasts. |
| 1:09.1 | About a decade ago, my team started to rethink how we make materials for reconstructing damaged |
| 1:15.3 | or diseased human tissues. |
| 1:17.7 | And we made the totally unexpected discovery that plants could be used for this purpose. |
| 1:24.1 | In fact, we invented a way to take these plants and strip them of all their DNA and their |
| 1:29.1 | cells leaving behind natural fibers. |
| 1:32.6 | And these fibers could then be used as a scaffold for reconstructing living tissue. |
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