Category: Medicine

By Anupum Pant

Microbiologists, in an effort to prevent infection are interested in studying how vomit splashes around a room when someone spews it out unprepared. Even tiny droplets of vomit, as they’ve found, can contain enough amount of microbes to infect others. This demonstration is fairly dangerous to do with actual vomit.

So, they’ve created a robot called vomitting larry which can spew fluorescent liquid (which is harmless). This fluorescent liquid can be seen in black light. Look at how even after good amount of cleaning dangerous amounts of infection containing vomit can still stay around.

By Anupum Pant

Today we know that asbestos is an evil substance. One of the direct diseases it causes is lung cancer. When asbestos fibers get inside the body, they cause genetic damage in cells which grows gradually and cancerous cells start developing. But that’s not it. There’s an increasing agreement among scientists that asbestos exposure is linked with several other kinds of cancers.

Asbestos, when it’s wickedness wasn’t know, used to be a very common substance lying around here and there, is now being replaced with other benign substitutes.

It’s like those times when cigarette smoking used to be advertised on the TV as being healthy. The ads of those times also had doctors recommending a particular brand of cigarettes. Watch some of the videos here.

So, obviously, during the time when smoking and asbestos were cool, they were combined in a single product which had a cumulative coolness coefficient of both asbestos and cigarettes.

There was this brand of of Kent micronite cigarettes which used fibers of asbestos for the filter part of it. These were made by a company called Hollinsworth & Vose Company. The ads said that these filters offered “the greatest health protection” in the history. Apparently, these filters could filter 30% extra tar. About 12 Billion of these cigarettes were sold.

Slowly, the production of these filters was stopped and asbestos was replaced by something benign, in something evil that’d still cause cancer. This brand is sold even today, without the “dangerous part” of asbestos.

I always wonder what all is considered “safe” by the scientists today. It’s only a matter of time that we’ll realize how something very common, ordinary and safe we use every day in our life is a seriously life threatening thing.

[More]

By Anupum Pant

Sound can do wonders, especially ultrasound – which is basically nothing but a very high frequency sound. It’s also the basis for a popular technique to image growing fetuses inside pregnant women.

Back in the year 2011, the same ultrasound, with a slightly different pulse was used on a patient Gary Denham’s ankle when he came in with a broken ankle. A water-based gel was applied to the ultrasound transducer moved over the broken bone area. There’s no pain or any other undesirable feelings involved here.

But the most interesting part was that the ultrasound made the broken ankle bone heal much faster. The ankle which otherwise would have healed in about 6-12 months got healed completely in 4 months flat.

According to the Orthopedic surgeon Angus MacLean:

We use it for difficult fractures, the ones with problems with healing, and it’s a very simple, painless treatment that we can give.

“It’s a very interesting scientific development and there’s good evidence that it just vibrates the cells a little which then stimulates healing and regeneration in the bone.”

Link – [BBC]

Much before that development, in 2007, there were a few Engineers from the University of Washington who had designed a way to utilize a similar technique to seal lung punctures.

Traditionally, to heal lung punctures pressure was used to stop bleeding. And god forbid, if the puncture was big, a long incision had to be made, ribs separated to sew up the damaged area. Ultrasound proved to be a much better option because it was completely non-invasive after all.

link [Popsci]

And then it was found that ultrasound could be used to skip brain surgery. InSightec, an Israeli company created a tool that could focus ultrasound to a small point inside the brain where the problem was. No damage done to the skull.

The only other two methods, to remove say clots inside the brain, were drugs, or to physically open it up and retrieve the clot. The helmet-like InSightec’s device could sit on top of your head and focus a high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) inside to burst those clots instead.

Link [Technology review]

Another Ultrasound technique recently targeted towards brains again by Australian scientists reported that it could reverse the damage done to the brain because of the evil Alzheimer’s disease. By stimulating a particular kind of cell called microglia, they were able to break down the plaque in mice brains. They achieved retrieval of memory in their brains!

Link [Popsci]

Just a few days back, researchers at the University of Bristol figured that a low-intensity ultrasound could help in decreasing the healing time (increase the rate of healing) of wounds on the skin in diabetic and aged mice by a 30 percent.

Their findings were published in Journal of Investigative of Dermatology. They predict that among the old people, this technique could be used to help diabetic people’s skin heal faster. Also limb amputation that had to be done due to the presence of things like chronic ulcers could soon be a thing of the past.

Link [Popsci]

 

By Anupum Pant

OCD, or obsessive compulsive disorder is a serious psychiatric condition and not some word to throw around for yourself, being proud, just because you like to keep things arranged. The life of a person with OCD is tough. These might be minor OCD tendencies that can be seen among normal people from time to time. But the actual disorder is far too rare.

People who are affected by it have really no control over what they are obsessed with, it being washing hands or something else. It takes up the majority of time in their day and is very debilitating.

By Anupum Pant

Aaron from healthcare triage, one of the many science channels I love, spends most of the time on his videos talking about how most popular dietary plans purported to be the best aren’t really backed by science. Today however, he shares what really is good for you and backed by science. And I completely agree and do what he says.

First Rule: Buy food that hasn’t been prepared, cooked or altered. Yes, anything that is even slightly artificial – as a rule, try to things that come from the earth (grown) to you as fast as possible, without anything happening to it in between – just ingredients. That means an orange is far far better than a glass of100% natural and preservative free orange juice.

Second Rule: You can’t go completely ground to mouth. You do have to rely on artificial foods for some extent. For that, just keep it to the minimum.

Third Rule: Cook at home. That helps you stick to the rule one. You are in control of what you put in.

Fourth Rule: Try not to deep fry very often. Also, that doesn’t mean you cut fat completely – those processed foods saying completely free of any fat, are nothing but the very artificial foods you must avoid. Eat real butter.

Fifth Rule: Drink a lot of water. Which doesn’t mean you have to completely cut on coffee, alcohol and other beverages. Just keep it to a minimum. If you ever plan to go crazy one day and get a meal plan at burger king, instead just get the burger – take the free water instead of the coke.

Sixth Rule: Eat with people and eat slow.

Yes, that is all it takes.

By Anupum Pant

Well, calorie counting isn’t really a good idea because not all calories are the same. Or 100 calories from chocolate chip muffins would have meant the same as 100 calories coming off carrots. But our foods are a mix of so many different things that it is hard to keep a track of all the different calories you consumed. To keep a track of what goes in, the printed calorie count usually is enough, as long as you are making sure its good wholesome food you are eating.

Restaurants these days are required to post calorie information adjacent to the mentioned food item in their menus. The newyork health code requires restaurants to do this in newyork. And I’m sure other states do the same. But if you read in between the lines, you find that the code requires the restaurants to just print the information. And does not mention anything about enforcing the accuracy of these calorie counts.

Casey Neistat, a famous film maker took it upon himself to check the accuracy of these mentioned calorie counts. He made this beautiful movie about how he went about doing it…

By Anupum Pant

Encephalitis Lethargica, or sleepy sickness, is probably the biggest medical mystery of all times. In the 1920s a devastating illness struck throughout the world, and effected about a million people leaving them all like statues – motionless and speechless. It’s estimated that about a million people died and a million others were affected, lying like statues in different hospitals around the world.

The cause of this disease wasn’t known. Probably because science and technology hadn’t progressed as much as it has today. But then in the year 1993 it reappeared. However, it was just this one case where an illness similar to the 1920s disease was seen.

Becky Howells, a 23 years old woman, suddenlly had high fever, started shaking and hallucinating. No doctor could figure what had happened to her. One thing was sure, her brain was affected. No one knew how. Later it was concluded that she was suffering from Encephalitis Lethargica.

Doctors think that the disease, in a widespread manner, could strike again and they’ll be able to do absolutely nothing about it. Becky’s case was just as mysterious to them as it was several decades ago.

Gradually several such cases were identified. At least it didn’t affect millions this time.

One thing was common among all of the patients. All of them started off with a simple sore throat – caused by a simple streptococcus bacteria. Researchers have a hypothesis that the immune system of these people reacted to this bacteria due to some unknown reason and attacked the brain cells.

via [BBC]

By Anupum Pant

Capgras delusion must be a monster to deal with. It is a syndrome that makes a person believe that someone close to them, either their mother, sister, brother or father has been replaced by someone else who claims to be the same. Usually after a trauma to the head, or due to old age, the affected person starts believing that their close family member has been replaced by an imposter who looks exactly like them, but isn’t actually the same person they used to know, or grew up with.

By Anupum Pant

Well, driving drunk is the worst thing you can do because doing that almost makes it sure you’d get into an accident. The blood alcohol limits are there for a purpose. But the interesting thing about drunk driving is, in the case of an accident due to drunk driving, your odds of survival are much higher than the passenger who’s not been drinking. This is real science and there’s a reason why it works.

Still, this shouldn’t be taken as an encouragement to drive drunk because doing that means you are inviting trouble for sure. Surviving doesn’t always mean a good thing when you have to live without a limb for the rest of your life.

The reason why it works has been evaluated in a study published in the journal called American surgeon. The study looked at 8000 old driving accidents and found that

Seven percent of people who came in sober died of their injuries, while those who were hurt while drunk only died one percent of the time. – [Scientific American]

No one is sure about why it happens, but one thing might be that the alcohol present in your blood during traumatic injuries protects you against nerve damage.

Other theories suggest that being drunk makes your body loose. That means you might actually absorb the force better throughout the time than a stiff conscious body. Think of a soft shock absorber vs a hard sports shock absorber.

By Anupum Pant

Cell towers do not create very intense microwave fields near your head. Phones result in much higher intensity radiation near your head because of their close proximity. So no, the benefit of better reception is not outweighed by proximity to the tower

By Anupum Pant

It’s hard to find real butter in grocery stores these days. Scan the aisles and you’ll only see spreads like “You won’t believe this  is not BUTTER”, with butter written in huge letters, to deceive people into buying it. I somehow don’t like these. I can’t trust margarine to substitute my breakfast bread butter with it. Of course it has no cholesterol and has higher “good” fats. Today everyone is convinced enough by the fake food industry to consume margarine. Remember, the industry once told us that even cigarettes are good for your health. Could you really trust them after that? I still don’t like it and will never buy it. I trust the good old butter made from real milk. Even the worst real butter I think is better than margarine.

I could talk about Conjugated Linoleic Acid, Butyric acid, vitamin k2, fat-soluble vitamins and the Wulzen factor. But what’s better than a simple story which led to a genius newyork times best seller book called The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet.

In the year 2000 Nina Teicholz, a journalist got a job at a small newspaper which offered her a great deal – Free meals. During this stint she ended up consuming good amounts of fatty foods like creamy soups, foie grass, steaks and what not. All the things that she had avoided for decades, and all the things that every diet book in the world had prevented her from consuming was being eaten in good amounts now. Surely, she must have gained 10 lbs and a whole lot of cholesterol after this, right? No, she lost 10 lbs and her cholesterol remained at the right levels.

From this revelation, she went into several years of investigation and discovered some amazing things that she has elaborated in her book. The whole debate of fake butter vs. real butter most definitely originated from a research study done by a pathologist Ancel Keys…

He compared the health and diets of 13,000 individuals from Japan, U.S and Europe. And concluded that people who consumed more of saturated fats in meat and dairy had high levels of heart disease, but the people who ate more grains, fish, nuts and vegetables did not. However, it is now clear that he cherry picked data to exclude countries like France where the food is rich in saturated fats and still hear diseases are relatively rare. A more comprehensive study which ensued, considered all the data and found that the culprit was sugar, not fat. It all started from this cherry picking of data to prove fat is bad. Similar thing happened with MSG, which led to a widespread belief that MSG was too bad a substance.

Also, read how some fats are just too good, and have exceptional health benefits, like whale fat.

more about it at [Time]

By Anupum Pant

Halitosis is a medical term today for a symptom in which extremely bad breath comes out of someone’s mouth. It is usually a sign of tooth decay or gum disease. Usually the origin of bad breath is in the mouth when there’s bad bacteria below the gumline or at the back of the tongue. But can also come from the  nasal cavity, sinuses, throat, lungs, esophagus, stomach or elsewhere.

Initially when the word was coined, it was done only for the bad breath coming from the mouth and it wasn’t even a medical symptom then. In fact, where the word came from is a funny story.

Halitosis was invented by the Lambert company to sell one of their products that was invented in the 1880s. Back then, Listerine wasn’t very popular. It was only an antiseptic that was a prescription medicine used for, well, killing bacteria everywhere. Since this is something which didn’t attract a lot of attention, the company knew they weren’t marketing their product well.

Gerard, son of Jordan Wheat Lambert, owner of the company came up with a word by twisting latin to sound like a medical condition. Halitus meant breath and osis made it sound like a medical condition that would get people’s attention. Now, about 20% of the people had a medical condition that they had been concerned about for a long time (without a name before) and had access to a cure for it. Who would have not bought this!

At that time listerine wasn’t even a normal bottle of mouthwash you could pick up from the grocery store. You needed to have a prescription for it. But as their medical symptom caught people’s attention, its popularity exploded and it started selling without prescription.

via [io9] [Listerine]

By Anupum Pant

You won’t believe me if I said that a grapefruit can be lethal. It’s true and there’s absolute scientific proof that drinking a glass full of grapefruit with some drugs can cause some serious complications, and even sudden death.

The number of drugs that make a lethal combination with grapefruit was only 17 till a few years back, but the number is rapidly rising. In 2012 the number went up to 43.

Taking in these 43 drugs with a glass full of grapefruit juice can all have some serious side effects – ranging from stomach bleeds, altered heart beat, kidney damage and sudden death. Researchers say that taking a tablet of something with grapefruit juice can be as much as taking ten of them with water. So these drugs can easily reach toxic levels with this fruit’s juice. Also, it isn’t just grapefruit that has these effects. Even milk, orange juice, marmalade and lime can be lethal with drugs. However, not as much. So you definitely do not want to mix tablets with anything other than water.

Chemicals present in these fruits called furanocoumarins will wipe out an enzyme which breaks the drugs down. That means more of the drug goes through the digestive system without getting broken down. Much more than the body can handle.

You should know.

via [BBC]