‘Medicine’ Archives
CHOOSING LAPAROSCOPY
A KIDNEY HAS TO GO My brother-in-law's still a handsome guy in his mid seventies. He's fiercely loyal to my sister and his kids, a "drivin' fool" who runs his magnificent RV across country at the drop of a beanie, and he's the "go to guy" in the family when it comes to automotive questions. But for several years, he's been battling cancers [...]
FIVE SCIENCE STUNNERS
HANG UP THE OXYGEN HOSE? The guy in the next cubicle grabs his chest and passes out. Five long minutes later, the paramedics show up. On goes the oxygen mask. That should help, right? Not exactly. An article in the Cochrane Systematic Review lays it out. 387 patients. 14 deaths. The ones on oxygen? Three times as likely to [...]
Do I Have Alzheimers?
GETTING SMART ABOUT DEMENTIA Alzheimer's. A shelling. It takes the you out of you. Would you know if it was happening? Till now it's been hard to be sure. The standard test is kinda wishy washy. You're supposed to know it when you see it. Is it really Alzheimer's disease? Is it depression? Hearing loss? Transient stroke? How many [...]
A Cure For Type 1 Diabetes?
Diabetes: cure. INSULIN PRODUCING BETA CELLS PROTECTED IN FOUR YEAR STUDY Let's see what's new. Ah. Here's a study from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation about a cure for diabetes. Now I KNOW I'm dreaming! A new drug, otelixizumab, is in phase III trials. (Phase III trials are the randomized, controlled, multicenter [...]
FOR BACK PAIN: AN INJECTION OF YOUTH
REJUVINATE YOUR BACK Brian Saunders and Tony Freemont (University of Manchester) would inject a new kind of substance into aging spines to restore them to almost their "original" condition. Which we will discuss shortly. But first.. BACKS (According to MISTERScienceAintSoBad) Your spine's an upright column of bones (vertebrae) and disks. The [...]
IS YOUR KID HAVING TROUBLE BREATHING?
"BREATHERS" Remember Hal Finkelstein? The glasses? The awful red sneakers? Remember how he breathed through his mouth all the time? The way his nostrils seemed welded together? "Ngh! Gimme BANNNK my BOOK!" Hey Finkelstein. You still out there? Maybe you should pop by the dentist. I been readin' about mouth breathers - a study in [...]
PROGRESS AGAINST PANCREATIC AND ORAL CANCER
Oncology: Pancreatic Cancer. Head/Neck Cancer What's your favorite cancer? I bet it isn't pancreatic cancer. The request queue for cancer's pretty short. But the least popular members of this rather unpopular group of diseases may be things like the oral cancers (head and neck), pancreatic, and lung cancer. Course I haven't taken a [...]
Shoot! What A Smelly Landfill!
CANONIZING AN ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM Several cities are toying with changing their names to Google to see if that'll land 'em ultrafast Internet. Bejing, the Capital of China isn't one of them. But its good name IS being sullied by big piles of smelly garbage. Bejingers toss out roughly 18,000 tons of garbage each day. It's out of space [...]
Cure For Colorblindess
Ophthalmology: Colorblindness MONOCHROME WORLD You always wondered, didn't you? What's it like to be colorblind? That word - blind. Very dark and murky. But, if you're colorblind, it's colors you can't see. It's not like yer gonna wump into a wall or anything. So is it such a bad thing? The answer's kinda yes and kinda no. Some people are [...]
Migraine Science: Drugs, Devices, And Dark Rooms
I had a rental car with a broken radio. You couldn't lower the volume or turn it off and it only got one station which had Rush Limbaugh, ranting and raving. What could be worse? - BizWhiz59 MIGRAINES My wife says migraine headaches are worse than a date with MISTER ScienceAintSoBad . But she's probably exaggerating. A musician who gets [...]
