From the National Post: Canine medic alert: Some dogs sniff out medical problems before they occur.
Bob Maher's diabetes was shutting his body down. He no longer got the shakes or the sweats to warn him that his blood sugar was plummeting. Instead, he would just pass out.
It made him scared to drive, to be alone, even to sleep.
Chewie's going to change all that. The two-year-old dog, an auburn Labrador mix named after the Star Wars character Chewbacca, has the ability to detect changes in Mr. Maher's blood sugar that are unrecognizable to Mr. Maher himself. Chewie then alerts Mr. Maher to correct it.
To see the phenomenon "just makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up," said Jennifer Kriesel, director of development at Canine Partners for Life, a Chester County, Pa., organization that trains service dogs for people with impaired mobility and medical conditions. [continue]
Related links
Pacific Assistance Dogs (Western Canada)
Assistance Dogs Australia
Canine Partners (UK)
Canine Partners for Life (US)
From the BBC: How junk food will make kids age.
Warnings about children's unhealthy lifestyles are common, but experts are now showing how junk food fans could look in middle age.
Computer wizardry allowed one family to see how their children will look at 40, if they do not change their habits
Child health experts are overseeing the experiment for the BBC3 show Honey We're Killing the Kids!
Julie Buc, whose children loved eating fried food and sweets, said she was shocked by the images she saw. [continue, see images]
From Reuters: Dark chocolate seen healthy for arteries.
Eating dark chocolate may have a protective effect on the cardiovascular system in healthy people, the results of a new study suggest.
"Epidemiological studies suggest that high flavonoid intake confers a benefit on cardiovascular outcome," Dr. Charalambos Vlachopoulos, of Athens Medical School in Greece, and colleagues write in the American Journal of Hypertension.
They point out that the elasticity or stiffness of arteries "are important determinants of cardiovascular performance and are predictors of cardiovascular risk."
The researchers examined the effects of flavonoid-rich dark chocolate on blood-vessel function in 17 young, healthy volunteers over a 3-hour period after they consumed 100 grams of a commercially available dark chocolate. [continue]
Elsewhere on the web:
Can chocolates be healthy? - The Manila Times
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Chocolate: anti-cancer properties?
Chocolate as cough remedy
Insurers advise clients to eat chocolate
Dark chocolate helps blood flow
Chocolate for heart health
Chocolate in pregnancy good for babies
From the Medical Informatics Insider: Digital Bandage Captures Vital Signs.
A U.K. scientist has devised an electronic device small enough to be attached to an ordinary bandage that can detect vital signs including temperature, blood pressure and glucose levels. The device then sends the information to a computer database via mobile phone or PDA. [continue]
From csmonitor.com: With woofs and wet noses, dogs help heal in China.
CHENGDU, CHINA – A tangible buzz courses through the Hua Xi cancer hospice when the newest "doctors" make their rounds. Faces of patients light up with broad grins, and chatter and laughter fill the halls.
What this group lacks in medical training, they make up for with their bedside manner.
Meet China's "Dr. Dogs." These three - a golden retriever, a shih-tzu, and a Chinese toy mix - are just some of the more than 300 "canine consultants" from Animals Asia Foundation (AAF), an animal-welfare charity based in Hong Kong. They're practicing "animal therapy" - the theory that pet companionship can improve a patient's mental well-being which, in turn, promotes healing. [continue]
From The Guardian: Scientists link plastic food containers with breast cancer.
A chemical widely used in food packaging may be a contributing factor to women developing breast cancer, scientists have suggested. (...)
The compound involved is called bisphenol-A or BPA. It is used in plastic food containers, cans and dental sealants and other research suggests it leaches from products and is absorbed in low concentrations by the human body. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Suddenly glass looks great
From BBC Africa: Why pumping water is child's play.
A company in South Africa has found a way to harness youthful energy in solving the perennial problem of water supply in rural villages.
It uses a playground roundabout to power a borehole pump.
Roundabout Outdoors is now hoping to take the concept to other African countries where water infrastructure languishes behind South Africa.
The play-pump benefits women and girls in particular who can spend hours each day fetching water.
"African and Asian women spend up to six hours a day walking to collect water," Roundabout Outdoor's Trevor Field told the BBC's World Today.
"If we put a play-pump in, if you look at the saving on time alone it's phenomenal, and it does have a massive impact on the health of children and people in general."
Mr Field describes the device as "basically windmill equipment". [continue]
Related:
Roundabout Outdoor (Flash page)
Roundabout Outdoor (non-Flash page)
From wired.com: Happiness Is the Best Medicine.
In 2001, Deborah Danner, at the University of Kentucky's Center for Gerontology, analyzed the handwritten autobiographies of 180 nuns of mean age 22, and compared the positive emotional content of the writings with the nuns' health six decades later. It turns out that sisters who used words like "joy" and "thankful" lived up to 10 years longer than did those who expressed negative emotions.
But Steptoe and colleagues wanted to know what causes such differences. What is the mechanism that helps happy people live longer?
To find out, they studied the emotions and health of more than 200 middle-aged Londoners in their daily lives. They found that people who reported that they were pretty much happy every day were verifiably healthier. Happiness is associated with reduced neuroendocrine, inflammatory and cardiovascular activity. [continue]
If you've been reading Mirabilis.ca long enough, you'll know I love finding articles about the potentially salubrious effects of chocolate. (See links below.) Here's another one: Researchers Find That Chocolate Compound Stops Cancer Cell Cycle in Lab Experiments. From the Georgetown University Medical Center:
Researchers from the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University have shown how an ingredient found in chocolate seems to exert its anti-cancer properties - findings that might be used one day to design novel cancer treatments. The study, published in the April issue of the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, explains how pentameric procyanidin (pentamer), a natural compound found in cocoa, deactivates a number of proteins that likely work in concert to push a cancer cell to continually divide. The full text of the article is available here. (...)
(That link goes to a .pdf file, BTW.)
Chocolate is made from the beans of cacao trees, and, like some other plants, are rich in natural antioxidants known as flavonoids. These antioxidants may protect cells from the damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals, which are thought to contribute to both heart disease and cancer development. The primary family of flavonoids contributing to the antioxidant benefit in chocolate is the procyanidins, and of the various types of procyanidins, pentamer seem to be strongest, according to a number of studies. [continue]
Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Chocolate as cough remedy
Insurers advise clients to eat chocolate
Dark chocolate helps blood flow
Chocolate for heart health
Chocolate in pregnancy good for babies
From csmonitor.com: Fed up with living alone, Germany's elders get roommates.
The five have been living together in a renovated flat in this Communist-style building for more than a year. They've spurned the regimented, sometimes isolated, life of a nursing home for the shared living of their salad days.
Their successful experiment is being copied in more than 200 other homes across Germany. Experts expect that number to increase as the swelling ranks of elderly Germans decide where they want to spend the rest of their lives. [continue]
From Reuters: Stretching Before Exercise May Not Always Be Best.
Although stretching is part of the warm-up routine of athletes everywhere, the practice may actually be counterproductive in certain cases, research suggests.
Most people stretch before hitting the court, trail or slopes because they believe that it reduces their odds of injury and boosts their athletic prowess.
There is, however, no clear evidence that a pre-game stretch prevents injuries during the game. And in some instances, stretching right before activity may actually detract from an athlete's performance, according to Dr. Ian Shrier, of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Community Studies at SMBD-Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. [continue]
If you have a colicky baby, you might want to take a peek at this New York Times article: Colicky Baby? Read This Before Calling an Exorcist.
"Fussy babies would really benefit if they could hop back inside the uterus whenever they get overwhelmed," Dr. Karp said. Paradoxically, their distress can also stem from being understimulated. "Our culture believes in the strange myth that a baby wants to be left in a quiet dark room," he said. "But what is this stillness for a newborn baby? It might be aversive, since the womb is jiggly and noisy."
To calm a baby, Dr. Karp sets out five maneuvers that he says will touch off a calming reflex and put the infant to sleep. They must be carried out progressively, as a kind of dance, to work their magic, he said.
The first is swaddling or snug wrapping that imitates the restrictiveness of the womb for the last two months of pregnancy. Parents have swaddled babies for millenniums, Dr. Karp said, and it is a cornerstone of his method. But it is only the first step and will not by itself stop the crying.
The second step is [continue]
I don't think you'll need a password to read this article. But if you do, check out BugMeNot.
From nature.com: Too much folic acid risks future health of population.
The widespread practice of fortifying food with folic acid could be slowly changing the genetic make-up of the population - and perhaps creating future generations more vulnerable to fatal diseases. [continue]
From the editorial page of today's Vancouver Sun: From eyes to tummies, a wee tipple is good for you.
Go ahead. Have a drink with your meal. It might protect you from food poisoning.
Health officials in Spain studying a 2002 outbreak of salmonella in the aftermath of a banquet featuring tainted tuna found that those who consumed large amounts of beer, wine, or spirits had a lower rate of sickness.
Better make it a double. A 1992 study of an oyster-borne outbreak of hepatitis A in the United States found only drinks with an alcohol concentration of 10 per cent or greater prevented or reduced the severity of the illness.
Mmmm. Please pass me a glass of something that's yummy and highly alcoholic.
The above excerpt is from the paper edition of the Vancouver Sun. For more on this topic, see the New York Times' article: The Claim: Drinking Alcohol With a Meal Prevents Food Poisoning. (Get your NYT password from BugMeNot.)
From the Guardian: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who'll be fattest of them all?
The wicked queen in Snow White had a magic mirror that told the truth. French scientists have gone one better. They have a mirror that will tell the ugly truth - five years on.
They have fashioned a thinking looking glass that will offer a reflection of the future, after years of binge drinking and junk food have taken their toll, according to New Scientist today. This mirror will know you better than you know yourself, and never fail to tell you so.
Researchers at Accenture Technology, in Sophia Antipolis near Nice, have devised a flat liquid crystal display television screen linked to a set of cameras and some powerful image processing technology. Its first role is to capture the real you, the one you present to the screen. [continue]
From Reuters: The Secret of Getting to Sleep? Music.
Having trouble sleeping? Don't bother with a cup of cocoa or counting sheep -- listening to music at bedtime is the way to get a restful night, Taiwanese researchers have found. [continue]
There's more here at the BBC.
So apparently there's a link between abortion and breast cancer, though one rarely hears about such things. But look: Second Successful Abortion-Cancer Lawsuit in U.S. Completed.
Monday marked the completion of a successful lawsuit against an abortion clinic and a physician for performing an abortion on a 15-year-old girl without informing her of the psychological risks and the increased risk of breast cancer. It is the second abortion-cancer lawsuit to be successfully prosecuted in the U.S. and the first case to obtain a judgment. [continue]
This could get interesting.
From the CBC: Drink a day protects aging brain, women's study shows.
Older women who enjoy having a glass of wine with dinner or an occasional nightcap may be helping to prevent the onset of dementia, a new study suggests. [continue]
I love these "wine is good for you" articles.
From the Beeb: Untidy beds may keep us healthy.
Failing to make your bed in the morning may actually help keep you healthy, scientists believe.
Research suggests that while an unmade bed may look scruffy it is also unappealing to house dust mites thought to cause asthma and other allergies. [continue]
From The Guardian: Attack on smoking gets papal blessing.
The Vatican has signalled that it is considering adding its global influence to the campaign against smoking, in an article likely to send tremors of apprehension through the multi-billion-pound tobacco industry.
The article in an authoritative Roman Catholic publication, prepared with the knowledge and endorsement of the Pope's most senior aides, declares that smokers cannot damage their own health and that of others "without moral responsibility".
The article stops short of branding smoking a sin. But its author says that lighting up is "not neutral either in social or indeed moral terms".
His groundbreaking views are published in the latest edition of the scholarly Jesuit review Civilta Cattolica. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
No smoking at the Vatican
Elsewhere:
Vatican closer to condemning smoking - Washington Times
La Civilta Cattolica - laciviltacattolica.it
From the BBC: Spanish siesta, adios?.
For centuries in Spain, heading home mid-afternoon for lunch and a snooze was regarded as something of a national right.
Long days at work and late nights with friends have always been common here.
Spaniards used to take a siesta to make it all more manageable.
But the country's corporate culture now spurns the idea of daytime dozing as being unproductive, and the siesta is fast becoming an endangered institution.
Spain is fast becoming a nation of sleep deprivation. [continue]
What a pity. Will they get fat due to lack of sleep?
I think the rest of the world should adopt the siesta. Then the Spanish wouldn't need to cancel their naps, and we'd all get more rest.
From ICWales comes this article about hangover cures: Fried canaries, rabbit-dropping tea, and pickled sheep's eyes. Yum!
If you are searching for a new and wonderful cure, try these alternatives and take a tip from antiquity and overseas.
The Romans ate cabbage leaves - they also ate fried canaries, the ancient equivalent of our all-day breakfast fry-up - while ancient Egyptians drank cabbage water. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content::
Patron saint for people with hangovers
From The Telegraph: Shortage of sleep is linked to obesity.
The less you sleep the more your waist will expand, say scientists who have linked the insomniac lifestyle of western society to the epidemic of obesity.
Lack of sleep boosts levels of a hormone that triggers appetite and lowers levels of a hormone that tells your body it is full, according to the team. The scientists will now study whether obese people should sleep more to lose weight. [continue].
Related:
Studies Show Why Lost Sleep Equals Gained Weight - Reuters
From the CBC: Iris Murdoch novel may be evidence of Alzheimer's.
British novelist Iris Murdoch's last book, 1995's Jackson's Dilemma, is evidence that the author was coping with the effects of Alzheimer's disease before she had been diagnosed.
That's according to researchers who have analyzed books by Murdoch from different stages in her career.
According to their findings, Murdoch's vocabulary shrank considerably when she was writing Jackson's Dilemma — which may explain why the novel got a frosty reception from critics.
The team of neuroscientists, led by Dr. Peter Garrard of University College London, used specialized software to compare the variety of words that Murdoch used. [continue]
From The Guardian: Baby remedy is clear as day.
The old-fashioned nannies of the nation were right. The best way to get small babies to sleep well at night is to take them out in the pram for a good airing in the afternoon, a scientific study has concluded.
Those of the older and wiser generation who used to leave the pram outside the back door covered with a cat net may consider this pronouncement from a psychologist at Liverpool John Moores University to be a touch of the blindingly obvious.
But according to Yvonne Harrison, whose study appears in the Journal of Sleep Research today, it is not fresh air that makes all the difference but daylight.
She asked the parents of 56 babies to describe their babies' sleeping habits, and then attach a light-monitoring teddy bear to their clothes and their cots. At six weeks, and then at nine and 12 weeks, she took readings to establish how much light each baby had been exposed to over three consecutive days. One finding stood out: babies who got a lot of light in the afternoon were better sleepers. [continue]
From The Guardian: Chocolate as cough remedy.
It tastes better than cough medicine, and now researchers think it may be better at relieving coughs, too.
Dark chocolate may have health benefits to weigh against fears of tooth decay or putting on weight.
A chemical compound, theobromine, which is found in cocoa, has proved more effective at stopping persistent coughing than codeine. [continue]
From the BBC: Church air is ‘threat to health’.
Air inside churches may be a bigger health risk than that beside major roads, research suggests.
Church air was found to be considerably higher in carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons than air beside roads travelled by 45,000 vehicles daily.
It also had levels of tiny solid pollutants (PM10s) up to 20 times the European limits.
The study, by Holland's Maastricht University, is published in the European Respiratory Journal.
The researchers say that December, with churches lighting up candles for Christmas, could be an especially dangerous month for the lungs. [continue]
Who knew? Time to open some windows. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep me away from midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Related:
European Respiratory Society
European Respiratory Journal
From Ananova: Insurers advise clients to eat chocolate.
A German insurance firm has written to clients urging them to eat more chocolate if they want to cut the risk of heart attacks.
Many scientists now accept the antioxidants found in cocoa have been shown to decrease the risk of coronary artery disease. [continue]
Related Mirabilis.ca content:
Dark chocolate helps blood flow
Chocolate for heart health
Chocolate in pregnancy good for babies
From the CBC: Keen taste buds linked to svelte figures.
People with an unusually keen sense of taste tend to be thinner than other people, a new study suggests. [continue]
From The Guardian: Forget meat and moons. To give birth to a boy you need a live-in man.
The old wives' tale has it that women who want to have sons should eat meat and salty food or make love standing up during a quarter moon. But the real answer for women could be a lot simpler than that: just make sure you are living with your partner.
An American doctor has found that women are more likely to give birth to boys if they are married or living with a man at the time of conception. The results are the first evidence that living arrangements can affect the human sex ratio at birth, and could explain the fall in the number of boy babies in some developed countries in the past 30 years. [continue]
From The Guardian: What does your body shape say about you?.
Fretting about your long-term health prospects? Worried about whether you are going to succumb to heart disease and cancer? According to new advice from scientists, the answers to your questions could be as close as your nearest full-length mirror. Take a long, hard look at your body shape, they say, because it could reveal a whole host of clues about your longevity and your risk of serious illness. [continue]
From the BBC: Dogs ‘sniff out’ bladder cancer.
Dogs can be trained to sniff out bladder cancer, the first controlled experiments published claim.
There have been anecdotal reports of dogs spotting cancer in their owners, but now researchers say they have proved this phenomenon scientifically.The scientists at Amersham Hospital, Buckinghamshire, ultimately hope to build a tool that is as good at discerning these smells as dogs' noses.
Their findings appear in the British Medical Journal. [continue]
My joy is complete. Found at Slashdot: Beer Found to be as Healthy as Wine.
Matt Clare writes "Researchers at the University of Western Ontario (Canada) recently found that beer has the same positive qualities that wine has previously been found to have. The media release quotes professor John Trevithick, ‘We were very surprised one drink of beer or stout contributed an equal amount of antioxidant benefit as wine, especially since red wine contains about 20 times the amount of polyphenols as beer.’ For more info on how beer helps police harmful free radicals in blood, The London Free Press also has an article."
This and the coffee thing, all in one week!
On Monday I'm going to Europe, and you can bet I'll be drinking a number of salubrious liquids over there.
Related articles:
Beer has same benefits as red wine, study suggests - Toronto Star
Beer Has Same Benefits As Red Wine: Study - HealthTalk.ca
Beer to fight cancer, heart disease and diabetes: a new study shows - NewsFromRussia.com
Ah, more about how dark chocolate is good for you. From abc.net.au:
Eating dark chocolate can improve healthy blood flow and prevent clots forming in the veins, an international heart congress has heard.
But the same benefits might not be gained from eating milk chocolate.
The research by Greek scientists was presented at the European Society of Cardiology's meeting ESC Congress 2004.
The researchers said they had demonstrated for the first time how chocolate improved the function of blood vessels, allowing them to dilate, thereby preventing the formation of potentially damaging clots. [continue]
Related content on Mirabilis.ca:
Chocolate for hearth health
Chocolate in pregnancy good for babies
Related links:
Dark chocolate ‘may help to reduce heart disease’
From National Geographic: Dogs in Training to Sniff Out Cancer.
Some people say that old dogs can't be taught new tricks. But don't tell that to Larry Myers.
A professor of veterinary medicine at Alabama's Auburn University, Myers has trained unwanted dogs to detect everything from drugs and bombs to off-flavor catfish and agricultural pests.
Myers says that, with proper training, just about any dog can learn to detect a unique scent — even the odor of certain cancers. [continue]
From the CBC: Babies sigh to reboot breathing: study.
A sleeping baby's repeated sighs not only reassure parents, the deep breaths also help reset breathing patterns, scientists say.
Healthy babies sigh every 50 to 100 breaths to reopen the tiny airways in their lungs, which are prone to collapse. [continue].
Well, who knew?
From The Telegraph: Alcohol sharpens your brain, say researchers.
It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman.
Research to be published tomorrow by academics at University College London has found that those who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers.
The benefits of alcohol, which are thought to be linked to its effect on the flow of blood to the brain, can be detected when a person drinks up to 30 units of alcohol - about four to five bottles of wine - per week. [continue]
I love news like this.
From New Scientist: Power implant aims to run on body heat.
Life-saving medical implants like pacemakers and defibrillators face a big drawback: their batteries eventually run out. So every few years, patients need surgery to have the batteries replaced.
Now a company in New York state is planning to tackle the problem by providing patients with an implantable power source that recharges their implant's batteries using electricity generated by the patient's own body heat. [continue]
From The Independent, bless them: A square of dark chocolate a day could keep the cardiologist away.
Dark chocolate has joined Guinness, sherry and red wine on the list of foods and drinks that are good for the heart, because it boosts blood vessel function.
Research found that plain chocolate containing high levels of cocoa is rich in flavonoids, the anti-oxidant chemicals that reduce the stickiness of the blood and counter the inflammation of the blood vessels. [continue]
This is just the kind of news I love to hear.
A couple of weeks ago a friend showed me his copy of The Okinawa Program, saying "this is how I'd like to eat." The book explains the traditional diet of Okinawa, and suggests how the rest of us can adopt similar eating habits. The Okinawans, you see, live to an extremely ripe old age.
So tonight I asked Google about the Okinawan diet, and came up with this healthiest diet on earth article:
There exists a place on our planet where 100-year-olds live in their own homes and tend their own gardens. It's a place where breast cancer is so rare that screening mammography is not needed and where the three leading killers in our culture — heart disease, stroke and cancer — occur with the lowest frequency in the world. Where people maintain a healthy weight — without dieting — throughout life (the average Body Mass Index o the senior citizens is 21!). Where women live to be 86 years old — on average — and when they do pass on, the cause of death is generally classified as "old age" since autopsies reveal no discernible cause.
This place is the Japanese island-state of Okinawa, home to the healthiest people on Earth. A 25-year research project, the Okinawan Centenarian Study, found that there are more than 400 people aged 100 or older in a population of 1.3 million. [continue]
You might also like to visit the Okinawa Centenarian Study site. Most interesting.
Related:
Want to live to be 100? - The Guardian
Okinawans have world's longest average lifespan - canoe.ca
Okinawa-Diet.com (Companion website for the Okinawa diet books.)
From The Guardian: Grow-your-own to replace false teeth
The British institution of dentures sitting in a glass of water beside the bed could be rendered obsolete by scientists who are confident that people will soon be able to replace lost teeth by growing new ones.
Instead of false teeth, a small ball of cells capable of growing into a new tooth will be implanted where the missing one used to be.
The procedure needs only a local anaesthetic and the new tooth should be fully formed within a few months of the cells being implanted. [continue].
Related:
New teeth ‘could soon be grown’
From Ananova: Trolley helps you shop till you get fit.
A supermarket trolley that helps you get fit is being introduced into the UK.
The Trim Trolley features equipment normally found in gym equipment with a resistance wheel letting customers increase or decrease the effort needed to push the trolley around.
It can monitor your heart rate, check the number of calories you're burning and set the speed and length of your session. continue.
Posted at 12:54 PM . Permalink
There are three types of health related articles I love to see on the web. They are: coffee is good for you, wine is good for you, and chocolate is good for you.
In the chocolate is good for you category, the latest contribution is from New Scientist: Chocolate in pregnancy keeps baby happy. That must mean that chocolate is good for us all, don't you think?
(If you disagree, just keep it to yourself. No point spoiling my happy fantasy.)
Duchess's poison dell will lure visitors. From The Guardian:
Provided that a duchess can see eye-to-eye with the Home Office on growing cannabis, strychnine and cocaine, Britain is about to get the most venomous and hallucinogenic garden it has ever seen.
Harking back to medieval times, but with a toxic arsenal that a witch or apothecary could only dream of, the project includes shrubs and creepers so potentially nasty that the designers have suggested growing some of them in cages.
Visitors will be kept at a distance from the flowerbeds, with marked boundaries and supervisors enforcing a no-touching policy.
The dell at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland will lie under a perpetual miasma of "deliberately spooky" mist, enlivened by a copper snake rearing from a grotto and hissing vapour, triggered by sensors as visitors creep past.
"It should be quite an experience," said Caroline Holmes, the garden's poison plant consultant, who takes a gleeful relish in her subject. [continue]
Related:
Alnwick Garden - AlnwickGarden.com
From the BBC: Real pain dulled in virtual worlds.
Fantasy worlds created by virtual reality have been shown to provide a novel form of relief to patients suffering from intractable pain.
Dr Hunter Hoffman, research fellow at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, has tested his virtual worlds on victims of burns injuries who suffer excruciating pain during their daily dressing changes which conventional drug therapy fails to control.
Hoffman's virtual worlds, which he calls by names such as SnowWorld or SpiderWorld, are designed to immerse the user so deeply in the virtual experience that their attention is distracted away from the pain. [continue]
Brits OK maggots as medicine. From Wired:
British doctors will be able to prescribe maggots to NHS patients with infected wounds from now on, a hospital official said.
He said the National Health Service had realized maggots were a cheaper and more beneficial way of treating wounds than using conventional medicine. Patients would be able to treat themselves at home and avoid the possibility of picking up a hospital infection.
Maggots have been used for centuries to rid wounds of decaying flesh, but after the discovery of antibiotics their use went into decline.
Related:
Maggot medicine gains popularity - BBC
Medical maggots treat as they eat - National Geographic
From foodnavigator.com: Basil and thyme oils combat foodborne bacteria.
Previous research has shown that thyme and basil have antimicrobial potential. Building on this research, scientists at Ghent university in Belgium opted to investigate the antimicrobial impact of thyme and basil essential oil and their major constituents towards Shigella.
According to the researchers who published their findings in the February issue of Food Microbiology, thyme essential oil and its major constituents thymol and carvacrol decontaminated Shigella inoculated lettuce.
They also found that thyme and basil essential oil, and their major compounds thymol, estragol, carvacrol, linalool and p-cymene, inhibited Shigella in an agar diffusion method. [continue]
This ranks right up there with the use of vinegar as a disinfectant in medieval times. Who knew?
Related:
Shigellosis
FSNET April 2, 2003
From the Globe and Mail: Go ahead and eat the pie — just work it off.
Forget the Atkins diet. Try the Amish diet.
New research shows that Old Order Amish -- a religious group who shun technology -- have an obesity rate of only 4 per cent despite a meat and potatoes (and pie) diet.
Their secret: physical activity in the form of hard work and walking. Lots of walking.
The study, published in this month's edition of the journal Medicine & Science & Exercise, found that Amish men walk an average of 18,425 steps daily, and women an average of 14,196 steps. [continue]
Walking and pie. What better plan?
(Thanks to the Dominion Weblog for the link.)
From The Scotsman: Dundee cake has medics in a flap.
It may be a humble flapjack made by a Scottish family baker, but experts believe the latest Dundee cake could revolutionise diagnosis of a range of potentially fatal diseases.
Alan Clark has added secret ingredient c13 to his traditional flapjack recipe - and teamed up with researchers at Dundee University in hope of a medical breakthrough. [continue]
Link found here at Metafilter.
From the BBC: Guinness good for you - official.
The old advertising slogan "Guinness is Good for You" may be true after all, according to researchers.
A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.
Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from Wisconsin University told a conference in the US.
Guinness were told to stop using the slogan decades ago - and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.
The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease.
They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager. [continue]
Related:
Beer ‘may be good for you’ - BBC, April 2000
I stumbled upon this creepy bit of news at Jewish World Review: Accidental discovery led to doubts about safety of plastic.
Something was wrong with the mice eggs.
In two separate labs at Case Western Reserve University, researchers noticed a sudden mini-epidemic of defective chromosomes in August 1998.
And no one could say why.
Was it the food? The water?
Human error in handling the eggs?
After some anxious detective work, with months of valuable research in jeopardy, genetics professor Patricia Hunt made a surprising discovery:
When someone used the wrong soap to clean the plastic mice cages, a chemical - bisphenol-A, the same chemical that is used to make baby bottles, dental sealants, and linings for food and beverage cans - leached out of the plastic.
In the five years since that discovery, industry has continued to make millions of pounds of BPA, even though, the Case Western researchers learned, studies beginning in 1997 had claimed it was linked to problems such as enlarged prostates and decreased fertility.
"The first thing I wanted to do was go down to my kitchen and throw out every bit of plastic I had in my house," Hunt said. "I thought, ‘What is this stuff still doing on the market?’ " [continue]
Doesn't this make you want to go buy a bunch of glass containers?
Related:
Compound in plastic bottles causes abnormal pregnancies in mice - Case Western Reserve
Geneticists Find Component of Common Plastic Bottles Causes Abnormal Pregnancies in Mice
Common plastic ingredient linked to birth defects
Component in plastic bottles found to cause abnormal pregnancies in mice
How they took a cure 800 years ago. From icliverpool.co.uk:
Medieval monks used herbs to treat ailments such as rickets and TB centuries before the discovery of modern drugs like penicillin.
Now, 800 years later, research has allowed gardeners at a Cheshire monastery to recreate a 12th-century medical herb garden for the first time.(...)
The garden stands on the ground where monks from Norton Priory, near Runcorn, would have grown their herbs when the monastery's infirmary was built in 1134.
Academics from Oxford University and experts from Kew Gardens used ancient manuscripts stored in the Bodleian Library to ensure authenticity. [continue]
Related:
Norton Priory Museum and Gardens
This is the problem that comes with extensive prenatal testing. (Link goes to BBC article.)
I'm reminded of that famous quotation from G.K. Chesterton: "Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like."
From Yahoo: $150,000 Medieval Torture Rack Cures Chronic Back Pain.
BEVERLY HILLS, Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Jeffrey Farricielli, at the Beverly Hills Physical Medicine Center, uses today's version of the medieval torture rack to cure patients suffering of low back pain, and herniated and degenerated discs. After six years of research and testing in hospitals and universities the rack has now been released with great success. The device was invented by Dr. Allan Dryer, former Canadian Deputy Minister of Health, who pioneered research on the heart defibrillator which is used around the world.
Dr. Jeffrey Farricielli describes the treatment as: "The patient is being drawn across the machine in a controlled stretch that creates a vacuum between the vertebrae and thus the disc is literally sucked back into place. Patients that suffer from chronic back pain from sitting in a chair all day to sports injuries are our specialty. Each treatment last for 45 minutes, results are rapid and miraculous, within several weeks back pain reduces or disappears. Our focus is to correct the problem, not just relieve the symptoms." [continue]
From a Telegraph article, In sickness and in health: of cabbages and things.
The dominating influence of the drugs companies in contemporary medicine has marginalised - to the point of extinction - knowledge of the simple remedies of an earlier age. Thus, an orthopaedic surgeon at Bristol's Southmead Hospital was rather taken aback when a 72-year-old woman with severe arthritis of the knee lifted her skirt to reveal a large cabbage leaf firmly strapped in place - which, she claimed, was "the only thing" that relieved her pain.
This struck him as so bizarre as to warrant a short, illustrated report to the British Medical Journal. He was quite unaware - as was subsequently vigorously pointed out - that cabbage leaves have an ancient and esteemed role in medical folklore. Since antiquity, people have been applying them to swollen joints and other painful swellings, and breast-feeding mothers have found them uniquely beneficial in relieving their tender, engorged breasts. Certainly the shape of the leaves is particularly well suited to the purpose, while their coolness provides an effective antidote to heat and soreness.
And it's not just cabbage leaves, for, as Michael Hurley, a physiotherapist at King's College Hospital in London, points out, doctors have a "serious drug habit" that discourages them from recommending other highly effective non-pharmacological treatments. In the case of knee arthritis, this also includes something as simple as muscle-strengthening exercises. [continue]
What a excellent use of technology! From Australian IT: Japan ready to market "robot suit".
Japanese companies are preparing for the commercial launch of a "robot suit" that helps aged or physically disabled people walk, get up the stairs or seat themselves to relax without a chair.
Trading house Mitsui and Co. and some 30 other Tokyo firms plan to set up a joint-venture in April or May next year to market the powered suit developed by Yoshiyuki Sankai, professor and engineer at Tsukuba University, officials said. (...)
"The suit practically supports people's life, focusing on the strong point of robots," Mr Sankai said.
The powered suit, code-named HAL-3 (Hybrid Assistive Leg), consists of a computer and batteries in the backpack as well as four actuators attached around the knees and hip joints.
The motor-powered devices guide movement of the legs as the computer calculates the user's next motion by detecting faint electric signals from the muscle, the professor said.
With the equipment, the user can walk at a speed of four kilometres (2.5 miles) per hour with little physical exertion and avoid the jerky stop-go moves of ordinary robots.
As a first step, the new venture plans to lease or sell 10 prototypes next year, targetting hospitals and nursing-care facilities at home and abroad, Mr Sankai said. (...)
"Not only the elderly but also disabled people will be able to live comfortably, leaving heavy physical tasks to the suit," he said. [continue]
Of course, any malfunctions would be a little like Wallace's wrong trousers when they've gone wrong.
Related:
The Wrong Trousers video. Very much fun; highly recommended.
DVD Review - Wallace and Gromit
Wolds find proves medieval babies stayed healthy for longer on mother's milk. From the Guardian:
A study of infant bones from a deserted medieval village has given backing to the ancient nursing nostrum that "breast is best".
Evidence from Wharram Percy in the Yorkshire Wolds, abandoned when almost everyone was killed by the Black Death, shows that unweaned children were as healthy as their modern counterparts.
Malnutrition, disease and other curses of peasant life in the 10th to 14th centuries set in when children left the breast - which appears to have happened later than is usually the case today.
Results from nitrogen isotopes in the bones show children were still taking breast milk at 18 months, although by then their diet included food and water, much of which was sub-standard or contaminated.
"Stunted growth really started after this point," said Simon Mays, a human skeletal biologist with English Heritage, who has carried out the study with archaeologists from Bradford and Oxford universities.
"Conditions thereafter were so poor that adults in Wharram Percy continuing to grow until their late 20s, in order to make up for the slow start, as opposed to the modern figure of about 18 years old." [continue]
From the Hindustan Times: Secrets of China's ancient cure for malaria laid bare.
Scientists believe they have unlocked the workings of an ancient Chinese herbal remedy which has become one of the brightest yet most puzzling hopes in the war against malaria.
The knowledge, they hope, may give rise to a new generation of cheaper, more effective drugs against a scourge that kills around a million people each year and infects hundreds of millions more.
"We are particularly pleased to have found the missing piece in the anti-malarial jigsaw and solved one of the longest-running mysteries about how a critical anti-malarial works," the researchers said in a statement on Wednesday, on the eve of the publication of their work.
"We cannot wait to apply this information in areas where there is a lot of drug resistance in (malaria) parasites."
The remarkable story behind the herb starts off in 340 AD, when a Taoist scribe wrote "Zhou Hou Bei Ji Feng" ("Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergency Treatments"), giving a recipe for using sweet wormwood (qing hao) in an infusion for treating fever.
More than 1,200 years later, a Chinese sage, Li Shizen, realised that this could be used for tackling the symptoms of malaria, and included the treatment in a compendium that is a landmark in Chinese medical history.
There things lay until 1972, when Chinese scientists took an interest in the plant's reputed qualities.
They successfully extracted the plant's active compound, calling it qing hao su -- transcribed into artemisinin in conventional scientific terminology, after the herb's Latin name, Artemisia annua.
Artemisinin has since become a leading medication against the malaria parasite, not least in Southeast Asia, where the cheapest frontline treatments, chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine, are encountering big resistance problems.
But how artemisinin works has never been clear.
The prevailing theory was that it interacts with haem molecules, the iron-rich debris from red bloodcells which are destroyed by the parasite as it replicates around the body. [continue]
From Wired.com: Diagnosis and Medicine in a Pill.
Engineers at the University of Calgary have developed a pill that, once swallowed, will determine how healthy or ill the patient is, and will release just the right amount of medicine accordingly.
Dubbed the Intelligent Pill or iPill, the new drug-delivery system packs a micropump and sensors that monitor the body's temperature and pH balance into one pill. If the body's temperature and pH reach certain levels, the iPill responds by pumping out more or less of its drug payload. It could be used to treat many ailments like AIDS or diabetes.
"If you overdose yourself with pain relievers, you are killing your kidneys and liver," said the iPill's inventor, Wael Badawy, an electrical engineer at the University of Calgary. "The iPill will help people have healthier kidneys and liver, as it will only deliver the dose that's needed."The device also can be programmed to release drugs at various intervals. This could be particularly useful in treating diseases such as cancer or AIDS, where cocktails of many different medications may be required at constant intervals.
"Instead of taking many pills at different times, with the iPill you could adjust its timer and swallow them all at once and get the right doses at the right times," Badawy said. [continue]
I like unusual grains, so couldn't resist taking a peek at this article, Ancient Grain Spelt Finds Niche in Modern World.
LONDON (Reuters) - Little-known strains of wheat such as spelt are making a comeback in health and environmentally conscious Europe. (...)
Spelt, a tall and gangly plant, was once a key source of grain nutrition for Europeans from Belgium, through the Upper Rhine valley, Bavaria and Switzerland into Austria, but it was driven to farming's fringes by mechanization some 150 years ago.
Higher in protein content than its nemesis soft wheat, it cannot compete with the latter's huge yields under the mineral fertilizers of industrial farming. The first harvesters also broke its brittle ears and severely cut yields.
But renewed health consciousness, the rise of organic farming, and the 900th anniversary of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th century German abbess and mystic, helped trigger a comeback in the rugged grain that thrives where its cousins wither.
(Emphasis mine.)
<boggle> What's Hildegard doing in an article about spelt? A web search found this reference at all-organic-food.com:
Some 800 years ago Hildegard von Bingen, (St.Hildegard) wrote about spelt: "The spelt is the best of grains. It is rich and nourishing and milder than other grain. It produces a strong body and healthy blood to those who eat it and it makes the spirit of man light and cheerful. If someone is ill boil some spelt, mix it with egg and this will heal him like a fine ointment."
Fascinating. And the Abtei St. Hildegard site even has a Spelt Products and Liqueur page.
Related links:
What St. Hildegard had to say (on spelt) - purityfoods.com
Nutritional content of spelt
Books:
From Saint Hildegard's Kitchen: Foods of Health, Foods of Joy
The Spelt Cookbook: Cooking With Nature's Grain for Life
A few spelt recipes (all untested):
Steamed Spelt
Steep Hill Spelt Recipes
Hi-Energy Cookies
From an article about melissa officinalis (that's lemon balm) over at the Guardian:
Do you know the treasures that may be lurking at the bottom of your garden? Melissa, also known as lemon balm or balm mint, is enjoying a revival as the ingredient du jour by the beauty industry. (. . .)
Twelfth-century French nuns and monks closely guarded the secret of "carmelite water", which combined melissa with lemon peel, nutmeg and angelica root to ward off nervous headaches and fever. The 16th-century Holy Roman emperor, Charles V, reportedly drank the restorative water. In fact, melissa's historical importance is confirmed by The London Dispensary (1696), which states: "An essence of balm, given in canary wine every morning will renew youth, strengthen the brain, relieve languishing nature and prevent baldness."
Last month, the restorative nature of the herb was confirmed by researchers at Northumbria University, who found that melissa helps with some areas of memory. So the question is, does melissa have a place on the beauty altar next to our beloved lavender, rose or camomile, or is it just another fad? "Melissa has been used in Tibetan medicine for more than 3,000 years. It was even been made into an incense and burnt to help ease psychological problems," says Christopher Hansard, physician of Tibetan Dur Bon medicine at the Eden Medical Centre, London, but adds, "Herbal medicine does go through fads. Take St John's wort, its popularity has meant that many people have taken it out of its proper context and use." [see full article]
Related links:
Lemon balm lifts the puzzled mind - another Guardian article
Lemon balm - info from gardenguides.com
Lemon balm info from rain-tree.com's plant database
Lemon balm - from Mountain Valley Growers
An article about autism treatments on the Washington Post website includes this tidbit:
Classical music and Gregorian chants have been shown to encourage improvement in the way the brain processes input for some kids with an autism spectrum disorder.
Who knew?
Now this I wouldn't have expected:
Using old saris to filter drinking water collected from rivers and ponds has halved the number of cholera cases in remote Bangladeshi villages.
"Many, many lives could be saved" by this cheap and simple way of reducing the cholera risk, says Rita Colwell, of the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Virginia, USA. Colwell led a three-year study, the results of which were published on Monday. [continue].
From a Newscientist.com article, Old clothes filter out cholera.
The Guardian has an article about a South African plant that could "cure obesity and save an ancient way of life." It's also said to be an aphrodisiac.
Hunting with bows and poisoned arrows over the bleached sands of the Kalahari, it was sometimes days before the San bushmen had food or water. So precarious was survival that some believed their god was a "trickster" who played jokes with the land and their fate.
The San learned that in this arid wilderness of southern Africa they could trust one thing. Sprouting 6ft high amid the prehistoric vegetation, green, prickly and sour, it was a plant they called Xhoba.
Hunters would cut a slice, munch it, and within minutes hunger and thirst would evaporate, leaving a feeling of strength and alertness. They could travel for days eating nothing else.
The trickster god has played another joke, except this time it is to the benefit of the San. Xhoba, a member of the Asclepiadaceae family of plants, is known in English as hoodia, but is more likely to become better known as P57.
Dotting the Kalahari desert of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola, it is being hailed as a wonder plant whose qualities as an appetite-suppressant could revolutionise treatment of obesity for 100 million westerners.
So of course Pfizer's going to make a drug from the Xhoba plant, and then a good number of portly people will line up for prescriptions instead of bothering with excercise. (Am I too cynical?) The good part is that the San will get a good chunk of money and benefits.
Under the accord it is expected that San youths will be given scholarships to study abroad and those left at home will be employed tending plantations and teaching scientists what they know about hoodia. [continue]
Native healers want drug company cooperation
In Africa the Hoodia cactus keeps men alive. Now its secret is 'stolen' to make us thin.
Update:
Africa's Bushmen May Get Rich From Diet-Drug Secret - National Geographic, April 2003.
Ah! The kind of essential research you've been waiting for. From a Canada.com article:
She's only 13 years old but already her research is gracing the pages of a major international medical journal - thanks to ice cream. Maya Kaczorowski of Hamilton has had a study on ice-cream headaches published in the special Christmas double edition of the British Medical Journal. [continue]
Here's Maya's article about her study.
Related Links:
Eating smaller bites can prevent ice cream headache
Savour licks to prevent ice cream headaches
This is the kind of news I love to hear! From a Globe and Mail article, Raise a glass to the newest antibiotic:
Could it be that the next time an outbreak of food or water poisoning strikes Canada, the medical officer of health will sternly announce: Cook your meat; wash your vegetables; boil your water and down a glass or two of white wine?
The white wine/food safety connection has arisen out of a convincing bit of soon-to-be published research by Mark Daeschel at Oregon State University. [continue]
A group of Americans are applying for asylum in Canada, because their government is prosecuting them for their use of medicinal marijuana. Isn't this amazing? When doctors suggest the use of this plant for patients suffering from cancer and other awful diseases. . . well, I'm just gobsmacked that a governement would be this fussed about it.
We have some stupid laws in Canada, too, but at least the Canadian government allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
Related links:
Seeking Refuge from the Drug War
CBC Backgrounder article on medical marijuana
Marijuana as medicine.org
medical marijuana.ca
News.com.au reports that three coffees a day keeps dementia at bay. Meanwhile, an article at wired.com suggests that blogging can help to stave off dementia. Now there's a good excuse for one more cup, and maybe one more blog, too.
Today brings happy news to go along with my Guinness. An article at The Denver Channel reports that
A new study shows beer is rich in the mineral silicon. Researchers said that learning which parts of our diet have high concentrations of silicon may be key to preventing osteoporosis.
There's a similar article at Yahoo News today. Both sources refer to a study done by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Well, pour me another pint.
A research study at the Université du Québec suggests that the scent of roses or of almond oil can reduce pain... but only for women.
"Canadian researchers are leading a massive international study to determine whether shielding infants from cow's milk in the first six months of life can prevent juvenile diabetes." (This excerpt is from an article in the Toronto Star. More information about the study at trigr.org.)
Whatever led anybody to think that cows' milk might be good for humans in the first place?
The Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine points out that milk is not recommended or required.