Muscle is extremely important for regulating whole-body metabolism, said Dr. Tray Wright, who studies animal physiology at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “In many animals, muscle mass can make up 40 to 50 percent of their body mass, and it is a really metabolically demanding tissue. By tuning that metabolism in the muscle, you really affect a lot of animal fitness.”

Vitamin C actually makes pregnancy more likely, said Dr. Shannon Clark, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s department of obstetrics and gynecology. It can increase progesterone levels, which thickens the lining of the uterus, thus potentially making it more receptive to a fertilized egg.

Five years before Brown v. Board of Education desegregated public schools in the south, the first Black student was accepted into a Texas medical school. Dr. Herman Barnett applied to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston in 1949, in direct challenge to the state’s segregation laws at the time. Barnett attended UTMB on the condition that he’d later transfer to a separate medical school for Black students that the university planned to build. But that school was never built, and Barnett ended up making history.

Prior to 2020, the medical branch had more than 400 volunteers throughout its campuses. “We now have only about 150 active volunteers,” said Holly Jolin, administrative manager for Volunteer Services at UTMB. “We are looking for caring, compassionate and friendly people with a heart for helping to volunteer.”

Play that helps with exercise for babies during the tummy time can be placing yourself or a toy just out of reach of the baby. Dr. Sally Robinson offered more tips for parents in her column.

“Recent work may have found why some of us do not appear to get sick from COVID-19,” wrote Drs. Norbery Herzog and David Niesel in Medical Discovery News. “The latest thinking is that some people have a variant gene that doesn’t prevent a ‘super dodger’ from becoming infected but makes it so that they don’t get sick.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services rabies bait program is in its 28th year, wrote Drs. Megan Berman and Richard Rupp in their Vaccine Smarts column. The program has successfully eliminated the domestic dog-coyote, and the fox rabies virus strains from the state. Rabies bait is a vaccine and is part of an overall strategy to protect us from the lethal disease.