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The dementia height advantage, and ‘human textile’
Soylent stitches are people!
Ask anyone in advertising and they’ll tell you that branding is everything. Now, there may be a bit of self-promotion involved there. But you can’t deny that naming your product appropriately is important, and we’re going to say with some degree of confidence that “human textile” is not the greatest name in the world.
Now, we don’t want to question the team of French researchers too much. After all, according to their research published in Acta Biomaterialia, they’ve come up with quite the nifty and potentially lifesaving innovation: stitches made from human skin.
By taking sheets of human skin cells (eww) and cutting them into strips, the researchers were able to weave the strips into a sort of yarn, the advantages of which should be obvious. Patients can say goodbye to pesky issues of compatibility and adverse immune response when doctors and surgeons can stitch wounds, sew pouches, and create tubes and valves with yarn crafted from themselves.
We just can’t get past the name they chose. Human textile. The process of making them is gruesome enough already. No need to call to mind some horrific dystopian future in which cotton can no longer grow and we have to recycle humans (alive or dead, depending on how grim you’re feeling) in big industrial textile mills to craft clothing for ourselves.
It’s just too bad Charlton Heston is dead; he’d have made a great spokesperson.
Towering over dementia
Let us take a moment to pity the plight of the shorter brother. Always losing the battle of the boards in fraternal driveway basketball games. Never reaching the Pop-Tarts cruelly stashed high in the pantry by one’s taller, greedier sibling. Always being addressed during family dinners as “Frodo.”
And new research findings add to the burden borne by altitude-impaired brothers everywhere: Being the short one may boost your risk of dementia.
Danish researchers at the University of Copenhagen examined the potential role that height in young adulthood plays later in dementia risk. The planet’s taller-brother Danes (the world’s third-tallest nation) analyzed data from more than 666,000 Danish men, including more than 70,000 brothers.
They found that, for every 6 cm of height in those above average height, the risk of dementia dropped 10%. And that inverse relationship between height and dementia risk held even in the shared environments of families: Being the taller brother delivered relatively more dementia protection. Even being smarter, better educated, and savvier at playing point guard didn’t erase shorter brothers’ dementia/height disadvantage.
Before you take solace in a Coors stubby, littler brothers, let’s remember the advantages shorter siblings still enjoy: Never being called “Ichabod.” Walking tall in low-ceilinged parking garages. Fitting comfortably into 911s and F-18s alike. Draining threes from anywhere in the driveway.
Oh, and clearly being Mom’s favorite.
Swinging for longevity
They say that laughter is the best medicine, but we always assumed that it applied to the people doing the laughing.
That may not be the case, according to a report presented at the American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference in Dallas.
It may be even better to get laughed at, and Adnan Qureshi, MD, of the University of Missouri, Columbia, and associates have data from the Cardiovascular Health Study of adults aged 65 years and older to prove it.
It’s all about the golf. The 384 golfers among the almost 5,900 participants had a death rate of 15.1% over the 10-year follow-up.
As for the nongolfers – the ones who make fun of golfers’ clothes and say that golf is boring, who joke about riding around in carts and hanging around with old people, who laugh because the lowest score wins, who say it’s easy to hit a little white ball that’s not even moving, who think an albatross is just a bird ... um, we seem to have gotten a bit off topic here.
Anyway, the death rate for the nongolfers in the study was a significantly higher 24.6%. So, suck on that, nongolfers, because it looks like the golfers will be having the last laugh. In plaid pants.
Soylent stitches are people!
Ask anyone in advertising and they’ll tell you that branding is everything. Now, there may be a bit of self-promotion involved there. But you can’t deny that naming your product appropriately is important, and we’re going to say with some degree of confidence that “human textile” is not the greatest name in the world.
Now, we don’t want to question the team of French researchers too much. After all, according to their research published in Acta Biomaterialia, they’ve come up with quite the nifty and potentially lifesaving innovation: stitches made from human skin.
By taking sheets of human skin cells (eww) and cutting them into strips, the researchers were able to weave the strips into a sort of yarn, the advantages of which should be obvious. Patients can say goodbye to pesky issues of compatibility and adverse immune response when doctors and surgeons can stitch wounds, sew pouches, and create tubes and valves with yarn crafted from themselves.
We just can’t get past the name they chose. Human textile. The process of making them is gruesome enough already. No need to call to mind some horrific dystopian future in which cotton can no longer grow and we have to recycle humans (alive or dead, depending on how grim you’re feeling) in big industrial textile mills to craft clothing for ourselves.
It’s just too bad Charlton Heston is dead; he’d have made a great spokesperson.
Towering over dementia
Let us take a moment to pity the plight of the shorter brother. Always losing the battle of the boards in fraternal driveway basketball games. Never reaching the Pop-Tarts cruelly stashed high in the pantry by one’s taller, greedier sibling. Always being addressed during family dinners as “Frodo.”
And new research findings add to the burden borne by altitude-impaired brothers everywhere: Being the short one may boost your risk of dementia.
Danish researchers at the University of Copenhagen examined the potential role that height in young adulthood plays later in dementia risk. The planet’s taller-brother Danes (the world’s third-tallest nation) analyzed data from more than 666,000 Danish men, including more than 70,000 brothers.
They found that, for every 6 cm of height in those above average height, the risk of dementia dropped 10%. And that inverse relationship between height and dementia risk held even in the shared environments of families: Being the taller brother delivered relatively more dementia protection. Even being smarter, better educated, and savvier at playing point guard didn’t erase shorter brothers’ dementia/height disadvantage.
Before you take solace in a Coors stubby, littler brothers, let’s remember the advantages shorter siblings still enjoy: Never being called “Ichabod.” Walking tall in low-ceilinged parking garages. Fitting comfortably into 911s and F-18s alike. Draining threes from anywhere in the driveway.
Oh, and clearly being Mom’s favorite.
Swinging for longevity
They say that laughter is the best medicine, but we always assumed that it applied to the people doing the laughing.
That may not be the case, according to a report presented at the American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference in Dallas.
It may be even better to get laughed at, and Adnan Qureshi, MD, of the University of Missouri, Columbia, and associates have data from the Cardiovascular Health Study of adults aged 65 years and older to prove it.
It’s all about the golf. The 384 golfers among the almost 5,900 participants had a death rate of 15.1% over the 10-year follow-up.
As for the nongolfers – the ones who make fun of golfers’ clothes and say that golf is boring, who joke about riding around in carts and hanging around with old people, who laugh because the lowest score wins, who say it’s easy to hit a little white ball that’s not even moving, who think an albatross is just a bird ... um, we seem to have gotten a bit off topic here.
Anyway, the death rate for the nongolfers in the study was a significantly higher 24.6%. So, suck on that, nongolfers, because it looks like the golfers will be having the last laugh. In plaid pants.
Soylent stitches are people!
Ask anyone in advertising and they’ll tell you that branding is everything. Now, there may be a bit of self-promotion involved there. But you can’t deny that naming your product appropriately is important, and we’re going to say with some degree of confidence that “human textile” is not the greatest name in the world.
Now, we don’t want to question the team of French researchers too much. After all, according to their research published in Acta Biomaterialia, they’ve come up with quite the nifty and potentially lifesaving innovation: stitches made from human skin.
By taking sheets of human skin cells (eww) and cutting them into strips, the researchers were able to weave the strips into a sort of yarn, the advantages of which should be obvious. Patients can say goodbye to pesky issues of compatibility and adverse immune response when doctors and surgeons can stitch wounds, sew pouches, and create tubes and valves with yarn crafted from themselves.
We just can’t get past the name they chose. Human textile. The process of making them is gruesome enough already. No need to call to mind some horrific dystopian future in which cotton can no longer grow and we have to recycle humans (alive or dead, depending on how grim you’re feeling) in big industrial textile mills to craft clothing for ourselves.
It’s just too bad Charlton Heston is dead; he’d have made a great spokesperson.
Towering over dementia
Let us take a moment to pity the plight of the shorter brother. Always losing the battle of the boards in fraternal driveway basketball games. Never reaching the Pop-Tarts cruelly stashed high in the pantry by one’s taller, greedier sibling. Always being addressed during family dinners as “Frodo.”
And new research findings add to the burden borne by altitude-impaired brothers everywhere: Being the short one may boost your risk of dementia.
Danish researchers at the University of Copenhagen examined the potential role that height in young adulthood plays later in dementia risk. The planet’s taller-brother Danes (the world’s third-tallest nation) analyzed data from more than 666,000 Danish men, including more than 70,000 brothers.
They found that, for every 6 cm of height in those above average height, the risk of dementia dropped 10%. And that inverse relationship between height and dementia risk held even in the shared environments of families: Being the taller brother delivered relatively more dementia protection. Even being smarter, better educated, and savvier at playing point guard didn’t erase shorter brothers’ dementia/height disadvantage.
Before you take solace in a Coors stubby, littler brothers, let’s remember the advantages shorter siblings still enjoy: Never being called “Ichabod.” Walking tall in low-ceilinged parking garages. Fitting comfortably into 911s and F-18s alike. Draining threes from anywhere in the driveway.
Oh, and clearly being Mom’s favorite.
Swinging for longevity
They say that laughter is the best medicine, but we always assumed that it applied to the people doing the laughing.
That may not be the case, according to a report presented at the American Stroke Association International Stroke Conference in Dallas.
It may be even better to get laughed at, and Adnan Qureshi, MD, of the University of Missouri, Columbia, and associates have data from the Cardiovascular Health Study of adults aged 65 years and older to prove it.
It’s all about the golf. The 384 golfers among the almost 5,900 participants had a death rate of 15.1% over the 10-year follow-up.
As for the nongolfers – the ones who make fun of golfers’ clothes and say that golf is boring, who joke about riding around in carts and hanging around with old people, who laugh because the lowest score wins, who say it’s easy to hit a little white ball that’s not even moving, who think an albatross is just a bird ... um, we seem to have gotten a bit off topic here.
Anyway, the death rate for the nongolfers in the study was a significantly higher 24.6%. So, suck on that, nongolfers, because it looks like the golfers will be having the last laugh. In plaid pants.
The Zzzzzuper Bowl, and 4D needles
HDL 35, LDL 220, hike!
Super Bowl Sunday is, for all intents and purposes, an American national holiday. And if there’s one thing we Americans love to do on our national holidays, it’s eat. And eat. Oh, and also eat.
According to research from LetsGetChecked, about 70% of Americans who watch the Super Bowl overindulge on game day. Actually, the term “overindulge” may not be entirely adequate: On Super Bowl Sunday, the average football fan ate nearly 11,000 calories and 180 g of saturated fat. That’s more than four times the recommended daily calorie intake, and seven times the recommended saturated fat intake.
Naturally, the chief medical officer for LetsGetChecked termed this level of food consumption as potentially dangerous if it becomes a regular occurrence and asked that people “question if they need to be eating quite so much.” Yeah, we think he’s being a party pooper, too.
So, just what did Joe Schmoe eat this past Sunday that has the experts all worried?
LetsGetChecked thoughtfully asked, and the list is something to be proud of: wings, pizza, fries, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, nachos, sausage, ice cream, chocolate, cake. The average fan ate all these, and more. Our personal favorite: the 2.3 portions of salad. Wouldn’t want to be too unhealthy now. Gotta have that salad to balance everything else out.
Strangely, the survey didn’t seem to ask about the presumably prodigious quantities of alcohol the average Super Bowl fan consumed. So, if anything, that 11,000 calories is an underestimation. And it really doesn’t get more American than that.
Zzzzzuper Bowl
Hardly, according to the buzzzzzz-kills [Ed. note: Why so many Zs? Author note: Wait for it ...] at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In a report with the sleep-inducing title “AASM Sleep Prioritization Survey Monday after the Super Bowl,” the academy pulls the sheets back on America’s somnolent post–Super Bowl secret: We’re sleep deprived.
More than one-third of the 2,003 adults alert enough to answer the AASM survey said they were more tired than usual the day after the Super Bowl. And 12% of respondents admitted that they were “extremely tired.”
Millennials were the generation most likely to meet Monday morning in an extreme stupor, followed by the few Gen X’ers who could even be bothered to cynically answer such an utterly pointless collection of survey questions. Baby boomers had already gone to bed before the academy could poll them.
AASM noted that Cleveland fans were stumped by the survey’s questions about the Super Bowl, given that the Browns are always well rested on the Monday morning after the game.
The gift that keeps on grabbing
Rutgers, you had us at “morph into new shapes.”
We read a lot of press releases here at LOTME world headquarters, but when we saw New Jersey’s state university announcing that a new 4D-printed microneedle array could “morph into new shapes,” we were hooked, so to speak.
Right now, though, you’re probably wondering what 4D printing is. We wondered that, too. It’s like 3D printing, but “with smart materials that are programmed to change shape after printing. Time is the fourth dimension that allows materials to morph into new shapes,” as senior investigator Howon Lee, PhD, and associates explained it.
Microneedles are becoming increasing popular as a replacement for hypodermics, but their “weak adhesion to tissues is a major challenge for controlled drug delivery over the long run,” the investigators noted. To try and solve the adhesion problem, they turned to – that’s right, you guessed it – insects and parasites.
When you think about it, it does make sense. What’s better at holding onto tissue than the barbed stinger of a honeybee or the microhooks of a tapeworm?
The microneedle array that Dr. Lee and his team have come up has backward-facing barbs that interlock with tissue when it is inserted, which improves adhesion. It was those barbs that required the whole 4D-printing approach, they explained in Advanced Functional Materials.
That’s sounds great, you’re probably thinking now – but we need to show you the money, right? Okay.
During testing on chicken muscle tissue, adhesion with the new microneedle was “18 times stronger than with a barbless microneedle,” they reported.
The 4D microneedle’s next stop? Its own commercial during next year’s Super Bowl, according to its new agent.
HDL 35, LDL 220, hike!
Super Bowl Sunday is, for all intents and purposes, an American national holiday. And if there’s one thing we Americans love to do on our national holidays, it’s eat. And eat. Oh, and also eat.
According to research from LetsGetChecked, about 70% of Americans who watch the Super Bowl overindulge on game day. Actually, the term “overindulge” may not be entirely adequate: On Super Bowl Sunday, the average football fan ate nearly 11,000 calories and 180 g of saturated fat. That’s more than four times the recommended daily calorie intake, and seven times the recommended saturated fat intake.
Naturally, the chief medical officer for LetsGetChecked termed this level of food consumption as potentially dangerous if it becomes a regular occurrence and asked that people “question if they need to be eating quite so much.” Yeah, we think he’s being a party pooper, too.
So, just what did Joe Schmoe eat this past Sunday that has the experts all worried?
LetsGetChecked thoughtfully asked, and the list is something to be proud of: wings, pizza, fries, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, nachos, sausage, ice cream, chocolate, cake. The average fan ate all these, and more. Our personal favorite: the 2.3 portions of salad. Wouldn’t want to be too unhealthy now. Gotta have that salad to balance everything else out.
Strangely, the survey didn’t seem to ask about the presumably prodigious quantities of alcohol the average Super Bowl fan consumed. So, if anything, that 11,000 calories is an underestimation. And it really doesn’t get more American than that.
Zzzzzuper Bowl
Hardly, according to the buzzzzzz-kills [Ed. note: Why so many Zs? Author note: Wait for it ...] at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In a report with the sleep-inducing title “AASM Sleep Prioritization Survey Monday after the Super Bowl,” the academy pulls the sheets back on America’s somnolent post–Super Bowl secret: We’re sleep deprived.
More than one-third of the 2,003 adults alert enough to answer the AASM survey said they were more tired than usual the day after the Super Bowl. And 12% of respondents admitted that they were “extremely tired.”
Millennials were the generation most likely to meet Monday morning in an extreme stupor, followed by the few Gen X’ers who could even be bothered to cynically answer such an utterly pointless collection of survey questions. Baby boomers had already gone to bed before the academy could poll them.
AASM noted that Cleveland fans were stumped by the survey’s questions about the Super Bowl, given that the Browns are always well rested on the Monday morning after the game.
The gift that keeps on grabbing
Rutgers, you had us at “morph into new shapes.”
We read a lot of press releases here at LOTME world headquarters, but when we saw New Jersey’s state university announcing that a new 4D-printed microneedle array could “morph into new shapes,” we were hooked, so to speak.
Right now, though, you’re probably wondering what 4D printing is. We wondered that, too. It’s like 3D printing, but “with smart materials that are programmed to change shape after printing. Time is the fourth dimension that allows materials to morph into new shapes,” as senior investigator Howon Lee, PhD, and associates explained it.
Microneedles are becoming increasing popular as a replacement for hypodermics, but their “weak adhesion to tissues is a major challenge for controlled drug delivery over the long run,” the investigators noted. To try and solve the adhesion problem, they turned to – that’s right, you guessed it – insects and parasites.
When you think about it, it does make sense. What’s better at holding onto tissue than the barbed stinger of a honeybee or the microhooks of a tapeworm?
The microneedle array that Dr. Lee and his team have come up has backward-facing barbs that interlock with tissue when it is inserted, which improves adhesion. It was those barbs that required the whole 4D-printing approach, they explained in Advanced Functional Materials.
That’s sounds great, you’re probably thinking now – but we need to show you the money, right? Okay.
During testing on chicken muscle tissue, adhesion with the new microneedle was “18 times stronger than with a barbless microneedle,” they reported.
The 4D microneedle’s next stop? Its own commercial during next year’s Super Bowl, according to its new agent.
HDL 35, LDL 220, hike!
Super Bowl Sunday is, for all intents and purposes, an American national holiday. And if there’s one thing we Americans love to do on our national holidays, it’s eat. And eat. Oh, and also eat.
According to research from LetsGetChecked, about 70% of Americans who watch the Super Bowl overindulge on game day. Actually, the term “overindulge” may not be entirely adequate: On Super Bowl Sunday, the average football fan ate nearly 11,000 calories and 180 g of saturated fat. That’s more than four times the recommended daily calorie intake, and seven times the recommended saturated fat intake.
Naturally, the chief medical officer for LetsGetChecked termed this level of food consumption as potentially dangerous if it becomes a regular occurrence and asked that people “question if they need to be eating quite so much.” Yeah, we think he’s being a party pooper, too.
So, just what did Joe Schmoe eat this past Sunday that has the experts all worried?
LetsGetChecked thoughtfully asked, and the list is something to be proud of: wings, pizza, fries, burgers, hot dogs, ribs, nachos, sausage, ice cream, chocolate, cake. The average fan ate all these, and more. Our personal favorite: the 2.3 portions of salad. Wouldn’t want to be too unhealthy now. Gotta have that salad to balance everything else out.
Strangely, the survey didn’t seem to ask about the presumably prodigious quantities of alcohol the average Super Bowl fan consumed. So, if anything, that 11,000 calories is an underestimation. And it really doesn’t get more American than that.
Zzzzzuper Bowl
Hardly, according to the buzzzzzz-kills [Ed. note: Why so many Zs? Author note: Wait for it ...] at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. In a report with the sleep-inducing title “AASM Sleep Prioritization Survey Monday after the Super Bowl,” the academy pulls the sheets back on America’s somnolent post–Super Bowl secret: We’re sleep deprived.
More than one-third of the 2,003 adults alert enough to answer the AASM survey said they were more tired than usual the day after the Super Bowl. And 12% of respondents admitted that they were “extremely tired.”
Millennials were the generation most likely to meet Monday morning in an extreme stupor, followed by the few Gen X’ers who could even be bothered to cynically answer such an utterly pointless collection of survey questions. Baby boomers had already gone to bed before the academy could poll them.
AASM noted that Cleveland fans were stumped by the survey’s questions about the Super Bowl, given that the Browns are always well rested on the Monday morning after the game.
The gift that keeps on grabbing
Rutgers, you had us at “morph into new shapes.”
We read a lot of press releases here at LOTME world headquarters, but when we saw New Jersey’s state university announcing that a new 4D-printed microneedle array could “morph into new shapes,” we were hooked, so to speak.
Right now, though, you’re probably wondering what 4D printing is. We wondered that, too. It’s like 3D printing, but “with smart materials that are programmed to change shape after printing. Time is the fourth dimension that allows materials to morph into new shapes,” as senior investigator Howon Lee, PhD, and associates explained it.
Microneedles are becoming increasing popular as a replacement for hypodermics, but their “weak adhesion to tissues is a major challenge for controlled drug delivery over the long run,” the investigators noted. To try and solve the adhesion problem, they turned to – that’s right, you guessed it – insects and parasites.
When you think about it, it does make sense. What’s better at holding onto tissue than the barbed stinger of a honeybee or the microhooks of a tapeworm?
The microneedle array that Dr. Lee and his team have come up has backward-facing barbs that interlock with tissue when it is inserted, which improves adhesion. It was those barbs that required the whole 4D-printing approach, they explained in Advanced Functional Materials.
That’s sounds great, you’re probably thinking now – but we need to show you the money, right? Okay.
During testing on chicken muscle tissue, adhesion with the new microneedle was “18 times stronger than with a barbless microneedle,” they reported.
The 4D microneedle’s next stop? Its own commercial during next year’s Super Bowl, according to its new agent.
The scents-less life and the speaking mummy
If I only had a nose
Deaf and blind people get all the attention. Special schools, Braille, sign language, even a pinball-focused rock opera. And it is easy to see why: Those senses are kind of important when it comes to navigating the world. But what if you have to live without one of the less-cool senses? What if the nose doesn’t know?
According to research published in Clinical Otolaryngology, up to 5% of the world’s population has some sort of smell disorder, preventing them from either smelling correctly or smelling anything at all. And the effects of this on everyday life are drastic.
In a survey of 71 people with smell disorders, the researchers found that patients experience a smorgasbord of negative effects – ranging from poor hazard perception and poor sense of personal hygiene, to an inability to enjoy food and an inability to link smell to happy memories. The whiff of gingerbread on Christmas morning, the smoke of a bonfire on a summer evening – the smell-deprived miss out on them all. The negative emotions those people experience read like a recipe for your very own homemade Sith lord: sadness, regret, isolation, anxiety, anger, frustration. A path to the dark side, losing your scent is.
Speaking of fictional bad guys, this nasal-based research really could have benefited one Lord Volde ... fine, You-Know-Who. Just look at that face. That’s a man who can’t smell. You can’t tell us he wouldn’t have turned out better if only Dorothy had picked him up on the yellow brick road instead of some dumb scarecrow.
The sound of hieroglyphics
The Rosetta Stone revealed the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics and unlocked the ancient language of the Pharaohs for modern humans. But that mute stele said nothing about what those who uttered that ancient tongue sounded like.
Researchers at London’s Royal Holloway College may now know the answer. At least, a monosyllabic one.
The answer comes (indirectly) from Egyptian priest Nesyamun, a former resident of Thebes who worked at the temple of Karnak, but who now calls the Leeds City Museum home. Or, to be precise, Nesyamun’s 3,000-year-old mummified remains live on in Leeds. Nesyamun’s religious duties during his Karnak career likely required a smooth singing style and an accomplished speaking voice.
In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the British scientists say they’ve now heard the sound of the Egyptian priest’s long-silenced liturgical voice.
Working from CT scans of Nesyamun’s relatively well-preserved vocal-tract soft tissue, the scientists used a 3D-printed vocal tract and an electronic larynx to synthesize the actual sound of his voice.
And the result? Did the crooning priest of Karnak utter a Boris Karloffian curse upon those who had disturbed his millennia-long slumber? Did he deliver a rousing hymn of praise to Egypt’s ruler during the turbulent 1070s bce, Ramses XI?
In fact, what emerged from Nesyamun’s synthesized throat was ... “eh.” Maybe “a,” as in “bad.”
Given the state of the priest’s tongue (shrunken) and his soft palate (missing), the researchers say those monosyllabic sounds are the best Nesyamun can muster in his present state. Other experts say actual words from the ancients are likely impossible.
Perhaps one day, science will indeed be able to synthesize whole words or sentences from other well-preserved residents of the distant past. May we all live to hear an unyielding Ramses II himself chew the scenery like his Hollywood doppelganger, Yul Brynner: “So let it be written! So let it be done!”
To beard or not to beard
People are funny, and men, who happen to be people, are no exception.
Men, you see, have these things called beards, and there are definitely more men running around with facial hair these days. A lot of women go through a lot of trouble to get rid of a lot of their hair. But men, well, we grow extra hair. Why?
That’s what Honest Amish, a maker of beard-care products, wanted to know. They commissioned OnePoll to conduct a survey of 2,000 Americans, both men and women, to learn all kinds of things about beards.
So what did they find? Facial hair confidence, that’s what. Three-quarters of men said that a beard made them feel more confident than did a bare face, and 73% said that facial hair makes a man more attractive. That number was a bit lower among women, 63% of whom said that facial hair made a man more attractive.
That doesn’t seem very funny, does it? We’re getting there.
Male respondents also were asked what they would do to get the perfect beard: 40% would be willing to spend a night in jail or give up coffee for a year, and 38% would stand in line at the DMV for an entire day. Somewhat less popular responses included giving up sex for a year (22%) – seems like a waste of all that new-found confidence – and shaving their heads (18%).
And that, we don’t mind saying, is a hair-raising conclusion.
If I only had a nose
Deaf and blind people get all the attention. Special schools, Braille, sign language, even a pinball-focused rock opera. And it is easy to see why: Those senses are kind of important when it comes to navigating the world. But what if you have to live without one of the less-cool senses? What if the nose doesn’t know?
According to research published in Clinical Otolaryngology, up to 5% of the world’s population has some sort of smell disorder, preventing them from either smelling correctly or smelling anything at all. And the effects of this on everyday life are drastic.
In a survey of 71 people with smell disorders, the researchers found that patients experience a smorgasbord of negative effects – ranging from poor hazard perception and poor sense of personal hygiene, to an inability to enjoy food and an inability to link smell to happy memories. The whiff of gingerbread on Christmas morning, the smoke of a bonfire on a summer evening – the smell-deprived miss out on them all. The negative emotions those people experience read like a recipe for your very own homemade Sith lord: sadness, regret, isolation, anxiety, anger, frustration. A path to the dark side, losing your scent is.
Speaking of fictional bad guys, this nasal-based research really could have benefited one Lord Volde ... fine, You-Know-Who. Just look at that face. That’s a man who can’t smell. You can’t tell us he wouldn’t have turned out better if only Dorothy had picked him up on the yellow brick road instead of some dumb scarecrow.
The sound of hieroglyphics
The Rosetta Stone revealed the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics and unlocked the ancient language of the Pharaohs for modern humans. But that mute stele said nothing about what those who uttered that ancient tongue sounded like.
Researchers at London’s Royal Holloway College may now know the answer. At least, a monosyllabic one.
The answer comes (indirectly) from Egyptian priest Nesyamun, a former resident of Thebes who worked at the temple of Karnak, but who now calls the Leeds City Museum home. Or, to be precise, Nesyamun’s 3,000-year-old mummified remains live on in Leeds. Nesyamun’s religious duties during his Karnak career likely required a smooth singing style and an accomplished speaking voice.
In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the British scientists say they’ve now heard the sound of the Egyptian priest’s long-silenced liturgical voice.
Working from CT scans of Nesyamun’s relatively well-preserved vocal-tract soft tissue, the scientists used a 3D-printed vocal tract and an electronic larynx to synthesize the actual sound of his voice.
And the result? Did the crooning priest of Karnak utter a Boris Karloffian curse upon those who had disturbed his millennia-long slumber? Did he deliver a rousing hymn of praise to Egypt’s ruler during the turbulent 1070s bce, Ramses XI?
In fact, what emerged from Nesyamun’s synthesized throat was ... “eh.” Maybe “a,” as in “bad.”
Given the state of the priest’s tongue (shrunken) and his soft palate (missing), the researchers say those monosyllabic sounds are the best Nesyamun can muster in his present state. Other experts say actual words from the ancients are likely impossible.
Perhaps one day, science will indeed be able to synthesize whole words or sentences from other well-preserved residents of the distant past. May we all live to hear an unyielding Ramses II himself chew the scenery like his Hollywood doppelganger, Yul Brynner: “So let it be written! So let it be done!”
To beard or not to beard
People are funny, and men, who happen to be people, are no exception.
Men, you see, have these things called beards, and there are definitely more men running around with facial hair these days. A lot of women go through a lot of trouble to get rid of a lot of their hair. But men, well, we grow extra hair. Why?
That’s what Honest Amish, a maker of beard-care products, wanted to know. They commissioned OnePoll to conduct a survey of 2,000 Americans, both men and women, to learn all kinds of things about beards.
So what did they find? Facial hair confidence, that’s what. Three-quarters of men said that a beard made them feel more confident than did a bare face, and 73% said that facial hair makes a man more attractive. That number was a bit lower among women, 63% of whom said that facial hair made a man more attractive.
That doesn’t seem very funny, does it? We’re getting there.
Male respondents also were asked what they would do to get the perfect beard: 40% would be willing to spend a night in jail or give up coffee for a year, and 38% would stand in line at the DMV for an entire day. Somewhat less popular responses included giving up sex for a year (22%) – seems like a waste of all that new-found confidence – and shaving their heads (18%).
And that, we don’t mind saying, is a hair-raising conclusion.
If I only had a nose
Deaf and blind people get all the attention. Special schools, Braille, sign language, even a pinball-focused rock opera. And it is easy to see why: Those senses are kind of important when it comes to navigating the world. But what if you have to live without one of the less-cool senses? What if the nose doesn’t know?
According to research published in Clinical Otolaryngology, up to 5% of the world’s population has some sort of smell disorder, preventing them from either smelling correctly or smelling anything at all. And the effects of this on everyday life are drastic.
In a survey of 71 people with smell disorders, the researchers found that patients experience a smorgasbord of negative effects – ranging from poor hazard perception and poor sense of personal hygiene, to an inability to enjoy food and an inability to link smell to happy memories. The whiff of gingerbread on Christmas morning, the smoke of a bonfire on a summer evening – the smell-deprived miss out on them all. The negative emotions those people experience read like a recipe for your very own homemade Sith lord: sadness, regret, isolation, anxiety, anger, frustration. A path to the dark side, losing your scent is.
Speaking of fictional bad guys, this nasal-based research really could have benefited one Lord Volde ... fine, You-Know-Who. Just look at that face. That’s a man who can’t smell. You can’t tell us he wouldn’t have turned out better if only Dorothy had picked him up on the yellow brick road instead of some dumb scarecrow.
The sound of hieroglyphics
The Rosetta Stone revealed the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphics and unlocked the ancient language of the Pharaohs for modern humans. But that mute stele said nothing about what those who uttered that ancient tongue sounded like.
Researchers at London’s Royal Holloway College may now know the answer. At least, a monosyllabic one.
The answer comes (indirectly) from Egyptian priest Nesyamun, a former resident of Thebes who worked at the temple of Karnak, but who now calls the Leeds City Museum home. Or, to be precise, Nesyamun’s 3,000-year-old mummified remains live on in Leeds. Nesyamun’s religious duties during his Karnak career likely required a smooth singing style and an accomplished speaking voice.
In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the British scientists say they’ve now heard the sound of the Egyptian priest’s long-silenced liturgical voice.
Working from CT scans of Nesyamun’s relatively well-preserved vocal-tract soft tissue, the scientists used a 3D-printed vocal tract and an electronic larynx to synthesize the actual sound of his voice.
And the result? Did the crooning priest of Karnak utter a Boris Karloffian curse upon those who had disturbed his millennia-long slumber? Did he deliver a rousing hymn of praise to Egypt’s ruler during the turbulent 1070s bce, Ramses XI?
In fact, what emerged from Nesyamun’s synthesized throat was ... “eh.” Maybe “a,” as in “bad.”
Given the state of the priest’s tongue (shrunken) and his soft palate (missing), the researchers say those monosyllabic sounds are the best Nesyamun can muster in his present state. Other experts say actual words from the ancients are likely impossible.
Perhaps one day, science will indeed be able to synthesize whole words or sentences from other well-preserved residents of the distant past. May we all live to hear an unyielding Ramses II himself chew the scenery like his Hollywood doppelganger, Yul Brynner: “So let it be written! So let it be done!”
To beard or not to beard
People are funny, and men, who happen to be people, are no exception.
Men, you see, have these things called beards, and there are definitely more men running around with facial hair these days. A lot of women go through a lot of trouble to get rid of a lot of their hair. But men, well, we grow extra hair. Why?
That’s what Honest Amish, a maker of beard-care products, wanted to know. They commissioned OnePoll to conduct a survey of 2,000 Americans, both men and women, to learn all kinds of things about beards.
So what did they find? Facial hair confidence, that’s what. Three-quarters of men said that a beard made them feel more confident than did a bare face, and 73% said that facial hair makes a man more attractive. That number was a bit lower among women, 63% of whom said that facial hair made a man more attractive.
That doesn’t seem very funny, does it? We’re getting there.
Male respondents also were asked what they would do to get the perfect beard: 40% would be willing to spend a night in jail or give up coffee for a year, and 38% would stand in line at the DMV for an entire day. Somewhat less popular responses included giving up sex for a year (22%) – seems like a waste of all that new-found confidence – and shaving their heads (18%).
And that, we don’t mind saying, is a hair-raising conclusion.
The age of maximum misery, and why Marcus Welby was gray
A year to forget
47.2. Just another number, right? Nothing too special about it. But this innocent number is hiding a deep, dark secret. It is the number of misery.
More specifically, 47.2 is the age when human misery hits its peak, according to a study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The data, collected from 132 countries, show that human happiness is actually U-shaped. We all start out pretty happy, you know, being infants and all. Sadly, life takes a pretty sharp downhill turn when we’re born, and that slide doesn’t abate until the magic age of 47.2. That’s the point in our lives when we’re at our most unhappy.
We do have some good news if you happen to have been born in early November 1972 and you’re having a rough time of things lately. That U-shaped curve will be your friend from now on, as your happiness will, according to the data at least, grow constantly from this point forward. Once you get past 70, at least in the United States, you’ll be as happy as you’ve ever been in your adult life.
Of course, that’s not much comfort for those of us who’ve yet to hit that magic number. So if you thought the daily existential crises were bad now, just wait: Apparently, they’ll only get worse. Won’t that be fun?
Why Marcus Welby was gray
Stress is a key ingredient in the Bureau of LOTME’s recipe for success. The deadlines. The office coffee. The serial commas. And what do we get for all that stress? Other than fan mail (thanks, Mom) and cease-and-desist orders?
Gray hair.
Is the correlation coefficient between stress and our silvering LOTME coifs truly zero? We think not. And now science agrees: Stress may indeed be gray hair’s follicular fertilizer.
Harvard University scientists say they’ve mapped the path from after-hours EHR data entry to premature silver fox status. Specifically, like a pharma rep with a new drug to detail, stress wears on nerves, which help spew norepinephrine and deplete the stem cells that regenerate your hair follicles’ pigment cells. Presto! You’ve got gray hair and a med closet bursting with more drug samples.
More accurately, the Harvard researchers found that stress damages the color-restorative function in the hair of mice. Which means 92-year-old Mickey Mouse is clearly hiding a dye job. (Ed. note: C’mon, people – another Disney cease-and-desist letter?)
We know no one knows stress as intimately as physicians. That’s why we’re planning a complete line of hair coloring products we call “Just for Docs,” featuring colors like “Pre-Auth Platinum Blonde,” “MOC Magenta,” and “EHR Red.” And, of course, “Burnout Brunette.”
Mr. Bedbug goes to Washington
You’ve heard it a million times: The old good news/bad news delivery.
Well, make that a million and one, because it’s time to play “Good news is bad news!”
Good news: Baltimore is no longer the bedbug capital of the United States. Bad news: It only dropped from first to second place on Orkin’s Top 50 Bed Bug Cities list. More bad news: Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is now the bedbug capital as well. [Insert joke about Congress here.]
Good news: Kids in England are getting less sugar and salt in their packed school lunches than they did a decade ago. Bad news: They are also getting less vitamin A, vitamin C, and fruit, according to a study in BMJ Open.
Good news: Drinking skim or 1% milk instead of 2% can add more than 4 years to your life, and the reduction in lifespan is even greater for whole milk. Bad news: “Children who drink whole milk are actually 40% less likely to be obese or overweight than kids drinking reduced-fat milk,” Study Finds reported.
Wait a second. That’s not exactly bad news, is it? Maybe for those who are drinking low-fat milk to add a few years to their lives. They will live longer, but they’ll be overweight while they’re doing it.
Thank you for watching “Good news is bad news.” Remember, if you’re not confused, you haven’t been paying attention.
A year to forget
47.2. Just another number, right? Nothing too special about it. But this innocent number is hiding a deep, dark secret. It is the number of misery.
More specifically, 47.2 is the age when human misery hits its peak, according to a study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The data, collected from 132 countries, show that human happiness is actually U-shaped. We all start out pretty happy, you know, being infants and all. Sadly, life takes a pretty sharp downhill turn when we’re born, and that slide doesn’t abate until the magic age of 47.2. That’s the point in our lives when we’re at our most unhappy.
We do have some good news if you happen to have been born in early November 1972 and you’re having a rough time of things lately. That U-shaped curve will be your friend from now on, as your happiness will, according to the data at least, grow constantly from this point forward. Once you get past 70, at least in the United States, you’ll be as happy as you’ve ever been in your adult life.
Of course, that’s not much comfort for those of us who’ve yet to hit that magic number. So if you thought the daily existential crises were bad now, just wait: Apparently, they’ll only get worse. Won’t that be fun?
Why Marcus Welby was gray
Stress is a key ingredient in the Bureau of LOTME’s recipe for success. The deadlines. The office coffee. The serial commas. And what do we get for all that stress? Other than fan mail (thanks, Mom) and cease-and-desist orders?
Gray hair.
Is the correlation coefficient between stress and our silvering LOTME coifs truly zero? We think not. And now science agrees: Stress may indeed be gray hair’s follicular fertilizer.
Harvard University scientists say they’ve mapped the path from after-hours EHR data entry to premature silver fox status. Specifically, like a pharma rep with a new drug to detail, stress wears on nerves, which help spew norepinephrine and deplete the stem cells that regenerate your hair follicles’ pigment cells. Presto! You’ve got gray hair and a med closet bursting with more drug samples.
More accurately, the Harvard researchers found that stress damages the color-restorative function in the hair of mice. Which means 92-year-old Mickey Mouse is clearly hiding a dye job. (Ed. note: C’mon, people – another Disney cease-and-desist letter?)
We know no one knows stress as intimately as physicians. That’s why we’re planning a complete line of hair coloring products we call “Just for Docs,” featuring colors like “Pre-Auth Platinum Blonde,” “MOC Magenta,” and “EHR Red.” And, of course, “Burnout Brunette.”
Mr. Bedbug goes to Washington
You’ve heard it a million times: The old good news/bad news delivery.
Well, make that a million and one, because it’s time to play “Good news is bad news!”
Good news: Baltimore is no longer the bedbug capital of the United States. Bad news: It only dropped from first to second place on Orkin’s Top 50 Bed Bug Cities list. More bad news: Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is now the bedbug capital as well. [Insert joke about Congress here.]
Good news: Kids in England are getting less sugar and salt in their packed school lunches than they did a decade ago. Bad news: They are also getting less vitamin A, vitamin C, and fruit, according to a study in BMJ Open.
Good news: Drinking skim or 1% milk instead of 2% can add more than 4 years to your life, and the reduction in lifespan is even greater for whole milk. Bad news: “Children who drink whole milk are actually 40% less likely to be obese or overweight than kids drinking reduced-fat milk,” Study Finds reported.
Wait a second. That’s not exactly bad news, is it? Maybe for those who are drinking low-fat milk to add a few years to their lives. They will live longer, but they’ll be overweight while they’re doing it.
Thank you for watching “Good news is bad news.” Remember, if you’re not confused, you haven’t been paying attention.
A year to forget
47.2. Just another number, right? Nothing too special about it. But this innocent number is hiding a deep, dark secret. It is the number of misery.
More specifically, 47.2 is the age when human misery hits its peak, according to a study distributed by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The data, collected from 132 countries, show that human happiness is actually U-shaped. We all start out pretty happy, you know, being infants and all. Sadly, life takes a pretty sharp downhill turn when we’re born, and that slide doesn’t abate until the magic age of 47.2. That’s the point in our lives when we’re at our most unhappy.
We do have some good news if you happen to have been born in early November 1972 and you’re having a rough time of things lately. That U-shaped curve will be your friend from now on, as your happiness will, according to the data at least, grow constantly from this point forward. Once you get past 70, at least in the United States, you’ll be as happy as you’ve ever been in your adult life.
Of course, that’s not much comfort for those of us who’ve yet to hit that magic number. So if you thought the daily existential crises were bad now, just wait: Apparently, they’ll only get worse. Won’t that be fun?
Why Marcus Welby was gray
Stress is a key ingredient in the Bureau of LOTME’s recipe for success. The deadlines. The office coffee. The serial commas. And what do we get for all that stress? Other than fan mail (thanks, Mom) and cease-and-desist orders?
Gray hair.
Is the correlation coefficient between stress and our silvering LOTME coifs truly zero? We think not. And now science agrees: Stress may indeed be gray hair’s follicular fertilizer.
Harvard University scientists say they’ve mapped the path from after-hours EHR data entry to premature silver fox status. Specifically, like a pharma rep with a new drug to detail, stress wears on nerves, which help spew norepinephrine and deplete the stem cells that regenerate your hair follicles’ pigment cells. Presto! You’ve got gray hair and a med closet bursting with more drug samples.
More accurately, the Harvard researchers found that stress damages the color-restorative function in the hair of mice. Which means 92-year-old Mickey Mouse is clearly hiding a dye job. (Ed. note: C’mon, people – another Disney cease-and-desist letter?)
We know no one knows stress as intimately as physicians. That’s why we’re planning a complete line of hair coloring products we call “Just for Docs,” featuring colors like “Pre-Auth Platinum Blonde,” “MOC Magenta,” and “EHR Red.” And, of course, “Burnout Brunette.”
Mr. Bedbug goes to Washington
You’ve heard it a million times: The old good news/bad news delivery.
Well, make that a million and one, because it’s time to play “Good news is bad news!”
Good news: Baltimore is no longer the bedbug capital of the United States. Bad news: It only dropped from first to second place on Orkin’s Top 50 Bed Bug Cities list. More bad news: Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States, is now the bedbug capital as well. [Insert joke about Congress here.]
Good news: Kids in England are getting less sugar and salt in their packed school lunches than they did a decade ago. Bad news: They are also getting less vitamin A, vitamin C, and fruit, according to a study in BMJ Open.
Good news: Drinking skim or 1% milk instead of 2% can add more than 4 years to your life, and the reduction in lifespan is even greater for whole milk. Bad news: “Children who drink whole milk are actually 40% less likely to be obese or overweight than kids drinking reduced-fat milk,” Study Finds reported.
Wait a second. That’s not exactly bad news, is it? Maybe for those who are drinking low-fat milk to add a few years to their lives. They will live longer, but they’ll be overweight while they’re doing it.
Thank you for watching “Good news is bad news.” Remember, if you’re not confused, you haven’t been paying attention.
Sleep apnea’s got your tongue, and singin’ in the kerosene rain
On the tip of my tongue
The greatest risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea is obesity, and unsurprisingly, people who are obese and have sleep apnea very often improve their breathing when they lose weight.
But what if you’re secretly a hobbit named Peregrin Took, and you absolutely have to have both first and second breakfast? Is there any way to ease your sleep apnea?
According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, weight loss in and of itself isn’t what improves sleep apnea symptoms. No, it’s something more targeted.
The secret to improving sleep apnea is ... tongue fat.
The patients in the study lost about 10% of their body weight over 6 months, and experienced a 31% improvement in sleep apnea scores. MRIs done before and after the intervention showed that, while reductions in pterygoid and pharyngeal lateral wall volumes helped, the reduction of tongue fat volume was the primary link between weight loss and sleep apnea improvement.
The Livin’ on the MDedge team eagerly awaits the dawning of the tongue weight-loss industry, thanks to this new research. Tongue diets. Tongue exercise. Pretty soon you’ll be able to buy “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” DVDs featuring tongues in bad ’80s Spandex flopping all over the place. Have your cake and eat it too – just don’t let your tongue know.
The rain falls mainly from the plane
Why does rain inspire music? Gene Kelly sang in it. Prince crooned about its purple hue. The Weather Girls gave vocal thanks for a downpour of men. And kids will joyfully create a symphony of mud in a summer shower.
But what if it rains on the playground? On a sunny day? Kids will definitely sing the blues, right?
Especially when the shower’s not water.
Shortly after takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport this week, Delta Air Lines Flight 89 to Shanghai developed engine problems. Which sent Flight 89 right back to LAX. Not wanting to land a distressed Boeing 777 with wings full of explosive aviation fuel, the pilot began dumping his Jet A-1 kerosene as he circled back to the airport.
Which fell to earth as a mist ... that blanketed five elementary schools in the middle of the school day.
The plane rain led to minor lung and skin irritation in 56 kids and adults below. But the Los Angeles County Fire Department said injuries were minor, and the drizzling jet fuel evaporated quickly.
Given the absence of serious injuries, it’s clear the Los Angeles students heeded at least one public health message during the kerosene shower: Nobody was engaged in outdoor underage smoking.
And the Inventing Oscar goes to ...
For many people, the new year means the announcement of the Oscar nominations.
We here at LOTME have been waiting for an announcement that comes at the beginning of each year, but it has nothing to do with who got snubbed by the Academy. We’re talking about something really big: the National Inventors Hall of Fame class of 2020.
As usual, we were not disappointed. The world of health care was well represented among this year’s inductees.
At the head of the class, at least alphabetically, is R. Rox Anderson, who developed groundbreaking laser technology (patent number 5,595,568) used in medical treatments and procedures. Then there’s James McEwen, who invented the first microprocessor-controlled automatic surgical tourniquet system (patent number 4,469,099).
Posthumous NIHF nominations went to Stewart Adams and John Nicholson, the codevelopers of 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid, which we know as ibuprofen (patent number 3,228,831). Adams, a pharmacologist, and Nicholson, an organic chemist, worked for Boots Pure Drug Co. in England during the 1950s and 1960s while they collaborated on the drug’s creation.
Several other nominees have somewhat-less-direct medical connections. Edward W. Bullard invented the hard hat (patent number 1,699,133), which has undoubtedly saved lives and prevented injuries. Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller, and Polly Smith invented the sports bra (patent number 4,174,717), which “has enabled women’s participation in athletic activities and advanced women’s health and well-being,” the NIHF said in a written statement.
And finally – for those of you who thought this would never end – there’s Floyd Smith, the trapeze artist turned aviator who invented the modern parachute (patent numbers 1,340,423 and 1,462,456) and kept many sky divers out of the emergency department.
On the tip of my tongue
The greatest risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea is obesity, and unsurprisingly, people who are obese and have sleep apnea very often improve their breathing when they lose weight.
But what if you’re secretly a hobbit named Peregrin Took, and you absolutely have to have both first and second breakfast? Is there any way to ease your sleep apnea?
According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, weight loss in and of itself isn’t what improves sleep apnea symptoms. No, it’s something more targeted.
The secret to improving sleep apnea is ... tongue fat.
The patients in the study lost about 10% of their body weight over 6 months, and experienced a 31% improvement in sleep apnea scores. MRIs done before and after the intervention showed that, while reductions in pterygoid and pharyngeal lateral wall volumes helped, the reduction of tongue fat volume was the primary link between weight loss and sleep apnea improvement.
The Livin’ on the MDedge team eagerly awaits the dawning of the tongue weight-loss industry, thanks to this new research. Tongue diets. Tongue exercise. Pretty soon you’ll be able to buy “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” DVDs featuring tongues in bad ’80s Spandex flopping all over the place. Have your cake and eat it too – just don’t let your tongue know.
The rain falls mainly from the plane
Why does rain inspire music? Gene Kelly sang in it. Prince crooned about its purple hue. The Weather Girls gave vocal thanks for a downpour of men. And kids will joyfully create a symphony of mud in a summer shower.
But what if it rains on the playground? On a sunny day? Kids will definitely sing the blues, right?
Especially when the shower’s not water.
Shortly after takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport this week, Delta Air Lines Flight 89 to Shanghai developed engine problems. Which sent Flight 89 right back to LAX. Not wanting to land a distressed Boeing 777 with wings full of explosive aviation fuel, the pilot began dumping his Jet A-1 kerosene as he circled back to the airport.
Which fell to earth as a mist ... that blanketed five elementary schools in the middle of the school day.
The plane rain led to minor lung and skin irritation in 56 kids and adults below. But the Los Angeles County Fire Department said injuries were minor, and the drizzling jet fuel evaporated quickly.
Given the absence of serious injuries, it’s clear the Los Angeles students heeded at least one public health message during the kerosene shower: Nobody was engaged in outdoor underage smoking.
And the Inventing Oscar goes to ...
For many people, the new year means the announcement of the Oscar nominations.
We here at LOTME have been waiting for an announcement that comes at the beginning of each year, but it has nothing to do with who got snubbed by the Academy. We’re talking about something really big: the National Inventors Hall of Fame class of 2020.
As usual, we were not disappointed. The world of health care was well represented among this year’s inductees.
At the head of the class, at least alphabetically, is R. Rox Anderson, who developed groundbreaking laser technology (patent number 5,595,568) used in medical treatments and procedures. Then there’s James McEwen, who invented the first microprocessor-controlled automatic surgical tourniquet system (patent number 4,469,099).
Posthumous NIHF nominations went to Stewart Adams and John Nicholson, the codevelopers of 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid, which we know as ibuprofen (patent number 3,228,831). Adams, a pharmacologist, and Nicholson, an organic chemist, worked for Boots Pure Drug Co. in England during the 1950s and 1960s while they collaborated on the drug’s creation.
Several other nominees have somewhat-less-direct medical connections. Edward W. Bullard invented the hard hat (patent number 1,699,133), which has undoubtedly saved lives and prevented injuries. Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller, and Polly Smith invented the sports bra (patent number 4,174,717), which “has enabled women’s participation in athletic activities and advanced women’s health and well-being,” the NIHF said in a written statement.
And finally – for those of you who thought this would never end – there’s Floyd Smith, the trapeze artist turned aviator who invented the modern parachute (patent numbers 1,340,423 and 1,462,456) and kept many sky divers out of the emergency department.
On the tip of my tongue
The greatest risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea is obesity, and unsurprisingly, people who are obese and have sleep apnea very often improve their breathing when they lose weight.
But what if you’re secretly a hobbit named Peregrin Took, and you absolutely have to have both first and second breakfast? Is there any way to ease your sleep apnea?
According to a study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, weight loss in and of itself isn’t what improves sleep apnea symptoms. No, it’s something more targeted.
The secret to improving sleep apnea is ... tongue fat.
The patients in the study lost about 10% of their body weight over 6 months, and experienced a 31% improvement in sleep apnea scores. MRIs done before and after the intervention showed that, while reductions in pterygoid and pharyngeal lateral wall volumes helped, the reduction of tongue fat volume was the primary link between weight loss and sleep apnea improvement.
The Livin’ on the MDedge team eagerly awaits the dawning of the tongue weight-loss industry, thanks to this new research. Tongue diets. Tongue exercise. Pretty soon you’ll be able to buy “Sweatin’ to the Oldies” DVDs featuring tongues in bad ’80s Spandex flopping all over the place. Have your cake and eat it too – just don’t let your tongue know.
The rain falls mainly from the plane
Why does rain inspire music? Gene Kelly sang in it. Prince crooned about its purple hue. The Weather Girls gave vocal thanks for a downpour of men. And kids will joyfully create a symphony of mud in a summer shower.
But what if it rains on the playground? On a sunny day? Kids will definitely sing the blues, right?
Especially when the shower’s not water.
Shortly after takeoff from Los Angeles International Airport this week, Delta Air Lines Flight 89 to Shanghai developed engine problems. Which sent Flight 89 right back to LAX. Not wanting to land a distressed Boeing 777 with wings full of explosive aviation fuel, the pilot began dumping his Jet A-1 kerosene as he circled back to the airport.
Which fell to earth as a mist ... that blanketed five elementary schools in the middle of the school day.
The plane rain led to minor lung and skin irritation in 56 kids and adults below. But the Los Angeles County Fire Department said injuries were minor, and the drizzling jet fuel evaporated quickly.
Given the absence of serious injuries, it’s clear the Los Angeles students heeded at least one public health message during the kerosene shower: Nobody was engaged in outdoor underage smoking.
And the Inventing Oscar goes to ...
For many people, the new year means the announcement of the Oscar nominations.
We here at LOTME have been waiting for an announcement that comes at the beginning of each year, but it has nothing to do with who got snubbed by the Academy. We’re talking about something really big: the National Inventors Hall of Fame class of 2020.
As usual, we were not disappointed. The world of health care was well represented among this year’s inductees.
At the head of the class, at least alphabetically, is R. Rox Anderson, who developed groundbreaking laser technology (patent number 5,595,568) used in medical treatments and procedures. Then there’s James McEwen, who invented the first microprocessor-controlled automatic surgical tourniquet system (patent number 4,469,099).
Posthumous NIHF nominations went to Stewart Adams and John Nicholson, the codevelopers of 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid, which we know as ibuprofen (patent number 3,228,831). Adams, a pharmacologist, and Nicholson, an organic chemist, worked for Boots Pure Drug Co. in England during the 1950s and 1960s while they collaborated on the drug’s creation.
Several other nominees have somewhat-less-direct medical connections. Edward W. Bullard invented the hard hat (patent number 1,699,133), which has undoubtedly saved lives and prevented injuries. Lisa Lindahl, Hinda Miller, and Polly Smith invented the sports bra (patent number 4,174,717), which “has enabled women’s participation in athletic activities and advanced women’s health and well-being,” the NIHF said in a written statement.
And finally – for those of you who thought this would never end – there’s Floyd Smith, the trapeze artist turned aviator who invented the modern parachute (patent numbers 1,340,423 and 1,462,456) and kept many sky divers out of the emergency department.
Invasion of the body-snatcher DNA, and pediatric ‘La Niña’s revenge’
A place for everything
Our editor – imagine a combination of Mitch McConnell and SpongeBob SquarePants – is a big fan of the year-in-review list and said we should do one. But he turned down our idea for “Top 10 reasons not to do a year-in-review list,” so we’re doing the next-best thing: reporting on someone else’s.
We came across a list on Vice.com that was right up our alley, so to speak: “What did we get stuck in our rectums last year?”
It’s the latest edition of an annual list compiled by Barry Petchesky, who says he’s “been chronicling our country’s cavity misadventures” for a decade using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database.
After you’re done here, we strongly urge you to check out Mr. Petchesky’s full list, which covers all of the major bodily orifices and is not limited to rectums. In the meantime, here are a few highlights, with quotes from the actual NEISS reports when necessary:
- Christmas ornament (ear).
- Egg timer (rectum).
- “Jumped off couch landed on spoon” (vagina).
- Christmas ornament (nose).
- Small shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Large shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Christmas ornament (throat).
- “Was using prostate massager & it got ‘sucked in’ ” (rectum).
- Coaxial cable (penis).
- Christmas ornament (rectum).
The weather stinks today
On the surface, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation isn’t the most impressive phenomenon in the world. The tropical eastern Pacific Ocean isn’t a small area, but there’s a lot of ocean out there, and the temperature difference from the norm during El Niño and its less well-known sister, La Niña, is only a few degrees.
But that blob of water can have massive effects on the world’s climate, causing drought and heat waves in some areas while being responsible for increased storms and massive amounts of rainfall and diarrhea in others.
“Wait, hang on – what was that last one?” you’re probably asking.
Yes, we’re going from “things stuck in our rectums” to “things very much not stuck in our rectums” thanks to a study published in Nature Communications. According to the researchers from Columbia University, La Niña (cooler water) is linked to increased diarrhea in young children in Botswana. During La Niña years, incidence of diarrhea in children aged 5 years or younger is 30% higher than in non–La Niña years.
It does make sense when you think about it. In southern Africa, La Niña is associated with cooler weather, increased rainfall, and more flooding during the rainy season. The aftermath of extreme rainfall events is often a breeding ground for waterborne pathogens. And so the diarrhea flows.
So, if you happen to be reading this from Botswana, pay attention to the news. If the meteorologists start talking about La Niña, you may want to stock up on oral rehydration salts and zinc.
Are two DNAs better than one?
Before you read any further, you need to find the X-Files theme to set the mood, so use this link and get it started.
Okay, is it on? No? That’s fine, we can wait.
Now are you ready? Good, here goes.
What happens after you receive a bone marrow transplant to treat acute myeloid leukemia? Many years of life, hopefully. But what if you survived and then started to turn into someone else? What if the DNA from the bone marrow donor started to replace your DNA?
Now you know why we needed the X-Files music.
Chris Long, who works at the Washoe County (Nev.) Sheriff’s Department, underwent a bone marrow transplant several years ago. Just before the procedure, a friend and colleague in the department, who just happened to run the crime lab, asked him for DNA samples.
Say, isn’t Area 51 in Nevada? Hmm, interesting.
A few months later, the lab determined that all of the DNA in his blood had been replaced by that of the bone marrow donor, the New York Times reported. And over the years, “swabs collected from his lip, cheek and tongue showed that these also contained his donor’s DNA, with the percentages rising and falling.”
Even more surprising? After 4 years, Mr. Long’s colleagues in the crime lab found that all of the DNA in his semen belonged to the donor, the Times said.
Mr. Long, it seems, has become a chimera, a combination of two people.
Guess what? There was an X-Files episode called “Chimera.”
Now, we’re not saying that all this proves aliens were involved, but … well … you know.
A place for everything
Our editor – imagine a combination of Mitch McConnell and SpongeBob SquarePants – is a big fan of the year-in-review list and said we should do one. But he turned down our idea for “Top 10 reasons not to do a year-in-review list,” so we’re doing the next-best thing: reporting on someone else’s.
We came across a list on Vice.com that was right up our alley, so to speak: “What did we get stuck in our rectums last year?”
It’s the latest edition of an annual list compiled by Barry Petchesky, who says he’s “been chronicling our country’s cavity misadventures” for a decade using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database.
After you’re done here, we strongly urge you to check out Mr. Petchesky’s full list, which covers all of the major bodily orifices and is not limited to rectums. In the meantime, here are a few highlights, with quotes from the actual NEISS reports when necessary:
- Christmas ornament (ear).
- Egg timer (rectum).
- “Jumped off couch landed on spoon” (vagina).
- Christmas ornament (nose).
- Small shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Large shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Christmas ornament (throat).
- “Was using prostate massager & it got ‘sucked in’ ” (rectum).
- Coaxial cable (penis).
- Christmas ornament (rectum).
The weather stinks today
On the surface, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation isn’t the most impressive phenomenon in the world. The tropical eastern Pacific Ocean isn’t a small area, but there’s a lot of ocean out there, and the temperature difference from the norm during El Niño and its less well-known sister, La Niña, is only a few degrees.
But that blob of water can have massive effects on the world’s climate, causing drought and heat waves in some areas while being responsible for increased storms and massive amounts of rainfall and diarrhea in others.
“Wait, hang on – what was that last one?” you’re probably asking.
Yes, we’re going from “things stuck in our rectums” to “things very much not stuck in our rectums” thanks to a study published in Nature Communications. According to the researchers from Columbia University, La Niña (cooler water) is linked to increased diarrhea in young children in Botswana. During La Niña years, incidence of diarrhea in children aged 5 years or younger is 30% higher than in non–La Niña years.
It does make sense when you think about it. In southern Africa, La Niña is associated with cooler weather, increased rainfall, and more flooding during the rainy season. The aftermath of extreme rainfall events is often a breeding ground for waterborne pathogens. And so the diarrhea flows.
So, if you happen to be reading this from Botswana, pay attention to the news. If the meteorologists start talking about La Niña, you may want to stock up on oral rehydration salts and zinc.
Are two DNAs better than one?
Before you read any further, you need to find the X-Files theme to set the mood, so use this link and get it started.
Okay, is it on? No? That’s fine, we can wait.
Now are you ready? Good, here goes.
What happens after you receive a bone marrow transplant to treat acute myeloid leukemia? Many years of life, hopefully. But what if you survived and then started to turn into someone else? What if the DNA from the bone marrow donor started to replace your DNA?
Now you know why we needed the X-Files music.
Chris Long, who works at the Washoe County (Nev.) Sheriff’s Department, underwent a bone marrow transplant several years ago. Just before the procedure, a friend and colleague in the department, who just happened to run the crime lab, asked him for DNA samples.
Say, isn’t Area 51 in Nevada? Hmm, interesting.
A few months later, the lab determined that all of the DNA in his blood had been replaced by that of the bone marrow donor, the New York Times reported. And over the years, “swabs collected from his lip, cheek and tongue showed that these also contained his donor’s DNA, with the percentages rising and falling.”
Even more surprising? After 4 years, Mr. Long’s colleagues in the crime lab found that all of the DNA in his semen belonged to the donor, the Times said.
Mr. Long, it seems, has become a chimera, a combination of two people.
Guess what? There was an X-Files episode called “Chimera.”
Now, we’re not saying that all this proves aliens were involved, but … well … you know.
A place for everything
Our editor – imagine a combination of Mitch McConnell and SpongeBob SquarePants – is a big fan of the year-in-review list and said we should do one. But he turned down our idea for “Top 10 reasons not to do a year-in-review list,” so we’re doing the next-best thing: reporting on someone else’s.
We came across a list on Vice.com that was right up our alley, so to speak: “What did we get stuck in our rectums last year?”
It’s the latest edition of an annual list compiled by Barry Petchesky, who says he’s “been chronicling our country’s cavity misadventures” for a decade using data from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) database.
After you’re done here, we strongly urge you to check out Mr. Petchesky’s full list, which covers all of the major bodily orifices and is not limited to rectums. In the meantime, here are a few highlights, with quotes from the actual NEISS reports when necessary:
- Christmas ornament (ear).
- Egg timer (rectum).
- “Jumped off couch landed on spoon” (vagina).
- Christmas ornament (nose).
- Small shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Large shampoo bottle (rectum).
- Christmas ornament (throat).
- “Was using prostate massager & it got ‘sucked in’ ” (rectum).
- Coaxial cable (penis).
- Christmas ornament (rectum).
The weather stinks today
On the surface, the El Niño–Southern Oscillation isn’t the most impressive phenomenon in the world. The tropical eastern Pacific Ocean isn’t a small area, but there’s a lot of ocean out there, and the temperature difference from the norm during El Niño and its less well-known sister, La Niña, is only a few degrees.
But that blob of water can have massive effects on the world’s climate, causing drought and heat waves in some areas while being responsible for increased storms and massive amounts of rainfall and diarrhea in others.
“Wait, hang on – what was that last one?” you’re probably asking.
Yes, we’re going from “things stuck in our rectums” to “things very much not stuck in our rectums” thanks to a study published in Nature Communications. According to the researchers from Columbia University, La Niña (cooler water) is linked to increased diarrhea in young children in Botswana. During La Niña years, incidence of diarrhea in children aged 5 years or younger is 30% higher than in non–La Niña years.
It does make sense when you think about it. In southern Africa, La Niña is associated with cooler weather, increased rainfall, and more flooding during the rainy season. The aftermath of extreme rainfall events is often a breeding ground for waterborne pathogens. And so the diarrhea flows.
So, if you happen to be reading this from Botswana, pay attention to the news. If the meteorologists start talking about La Niña, you may want to stock up on oral rehydration salts and zinc.
Are two DNAs better than one?
Before you read any further, you need to find the X-Files theme to set the mood, so use this link and get it started.
Okay, is it on? No? That’s fine, we can wait.
Now are you ready? Good, here goes.
What happens after you receive a bone marrow transplant to treat acute myeloid leukemia? Many years of life, hopefully. But what if you survived and then started to turn into someone else? What if the DNA from the bone marrow donor started to replace your DNA?
Now you know why we needed the X-Files music.
Chris Long, who works at the Washoe County (Nev.) Sheriff’s Department, underwent a bone marrow transplant several years ago. Just before the procedure, a friend and colleague in the department, who just happened to run the crime lab, asked him for DNA samples.
Say, isn’t Area 51 in Nevada? Hmm, interesting.
A few months later, the lab determined that all of the DNA in his blood had been replaced by that of the bone marrow donor, the New York Times reported. And over the years, “swabs collected from his lip, cheek and tongue showed that these also contained his donor’s DNA, with the percentages rising and falling.”
Even more surprising? After 4 years, Mr. Long’s colleagues in the crime lab found that all of the DNA in his semen belonged to the donor, the Times said.
Mr. Long, it seems, has become a chimera, a combination of two people.
Guess what? There was an X-Files episode called “Chimera.”
Now, we’re not saying that all this proves aliens were involved, but … well … you know.
Human hair’s super strength and boiled diabetes
Stop us if you’ve heard this one
An elephant, a capybara, and a horse walk into a bar …
What? You’ve heard it? Really? … No, not really? You were just pulling our leg. Very funny.
Can we go on now? You’re sure? Because if there’s one thing we love, it’s reader participation.
Anyway, there’s this bar, and a bunch of researchers from the University of California’s San Diego and Berkeley campuses are hanging out with a bear, a boar, a javelina (looks and sounds like a pig, about the size of a border collie), and a giraffe when the aforementioned trio shows up.
They see all these mammals together and get an idea. Why not compare the tensile strength of their hair with that of a human adult and child? The next day, after sobering up, they started collecting hair samples.[Legal note: The situation at the bar is a literary device. At no time did the investigators conduct any of their work in such a place.]
Once that was done, uniaxial tension tests were conducted, as you would expect, using an Instron 3342 universal testing system equipped with a 500-N load cell at a strain rate of 10–2s–1.
The results, however, were not expected. Thin hairs are stronger than thick hairs. Hair from a human, with an average diameter of about 60 mcm, is stronger than hair from a boar (average diameter, 235 mcm) or a horse (average diameter, 200 mcm), and the weakest hair of all came from an elephant (diameter of 345 mcm) and a giraffe (diameter of 370 mcm). Also, the hair from the 9-year-old child is stronger than the thicker hair of the 30-year-old adult.
The results show that the inherent strength of human hair’s hierarchical structure – an outer layer, or cuticle, “wraps around an inner cortex made of many small fibers linked by chemical bonds” – makes it resistant to deformation, the investigators explained. They hope that synthetic materials with a similar structure could become lighter and stronger in the future.
Now what? The punchline? All this valuable hair information isn’t enough? Fine.
The shocked bartender, who’s already got the makings of a small zoo in his establishment, points a finger in alarm at the latest arrivals and yells, “Hey!” The horse says, “You read my mind, buddy.”
Boiled type 2 diabetes
Ah, coffee. Is there anything it can’t do? From speeding up delivery of this tardy column (if not boosting its comedy quotient) to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, the magic bean seems nearly omnipotent. But java’s magical metabolic properties may be entirely dependent on how you brew your brown elixir.
Coffee-fueled Scandinavians have determined that the stimulating liquid’s antidiabetes effect is only possible when you don’t boil your beans. For those eager to ward off type 2 diabetes, filtered coffee – not boiled coffee – is the ticket to lower insulin resistance.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Umeå (Sweden) University identified biomarkers that distinguished the consumption of filtered coffee from its boiled cousin. They found that people who drank two to three cups of filtered coffee a day enjoyed a 60% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than did those who subsisted on less than one cup of filtered coffee per day. But drinking boiled coffee did nothing to dent drinkers’ diabetes risk.
Why the difference? The coffee-sipping Swedish investigators say boiled coffee contains diterpenes, which don’t make it past a coffee filter. Other studies have shown diterpenes inflate the risk of heart and vascular diseases. And the researchers say those unfiltered diterpenes may sap your morning cuppa joe’s antidiabetes powers.
We know what you’re thinking: Who boils powdered coffee? Is Sanka even a thing anymore? It’s an approach that’s unfamiliar to most Mr. Coffee–owning Scandinavians and American java junkies alike. But before you, like us, take another smug sip from that cup you just made in the Keurig machine, know this: Coffee pod machines deal out hot, unfiltered brew.
Maybe just add two sugar packets next time. Your beta cells will thank you.
Let my people poop!
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but a tilted toilet.
The latest piece of late-stage capitalistic horror comes from Great Britain, and has lovingly been called the “StandardToilet.” No dystopian overtones there, absolutely not. The toilet’s “genius” lies in the seat’s 13-degree downward slope, which increases strain on the legs just like a squat thrust would. Sit on one for more than 5 minutes, and the pain becomes too much to handle.
The inventor of the StandardToilet claims that his product will cut time employees spend on the toilet by 25%, saving businesses as much as 4.8 billion pounds sterling a year. Not only that, he suggests that there are numerous health benefits, such as reduced hemorrhoid risk and a reduction of musculoskeletal disorders.
Critics were quick to point out that people with disabilities would likely have accessibility issues (and let’s not forget people with GI diseases), and a bathroom space expert (yes, that’s a thing) suggested that, if employees are spending too much time on the toilet, the issue is likely not laziness but the poor state of affairs in the workplace itself.
As purveyors of quality toilet- and poop-themed humor, we here at Livin’ on the MDedge world headquarters think it would be a shame if the giant corporations of the world took away normal toilets. So we say to the downtrodden proletariat: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your toilets!
Livin’ on the MDedge will be taking a holiday break, but we’ll be back to advance medical science in January!
Stop us if you’ve heard this one
An elephant, a capybara, and a horse walk into a bar …
What? You’ve heard it? Really? … No, not really? You were just pulling our leg. Very funny.
Can we go on now? You’re sure? Because if there’s one thing we love, it’s reader participation.
Anyway, there’s this bar, and a bunch of researchers from the University of California’s San Diego and Berkeley campuses are hanging out with a bear, a boar, a javelina (looks and sounds like a pig, about the size of a border collie), and a giraffe when the aforementioned trio shows up.
They see all these mammals together and get an idea. Why not compare the tensile strength of their hair with that of a human adult and child? The next day, after sobering up, they started collecting hair samples.[Legal note: The situation at the bar is a literary device. At no time did the investigators conduct any of their work in such a place.]
Once that was done, uniaxial tension tests were conducted, as you would expect, using an Instron 3342 universal testing system equipped with a 500-N load cell at a strain rate of 10–2s–1.
The results, however, were not expected. Thin hairs are stronger than thick hairs. Hair from a human, with an average diameter of about 60 mcm, is stronger than hair from a boar (average diameter, 235 mcm) or a horse (average diameter, 200 mcm), and the weakest hair of all came from an elephant (diameter of 345 mcm) and a giraffe (diameter of 370 mcm). Also, the hair from the 9-year-old child is stronger than the thicker hair of the 30-year-old adult.
The results show that the inherent strength of human hair’s hierarchical structure – an outer layer, or cuticle, “wraps around an inner cortex made of many small fibers linked by chemical bonds” – makes it resistant to deformation, the investigators explained. They hope that synthetic materials with a similar structure could become lighter and stronger in the future.
Now what? The punchline? All this valuable hair information isn’t enough? Fine.
The shocked bartender, who’s already got the makings of a small zoo in his establishment, points a finger in alarm at the latest arrivals and yells, “Hey!” The horse says, “You read my mind, buddy.”
Boiled type 2 diabetes
Ah, coffee. Is there anything it can’t do? From speeding up delivery of this tardy column (if not boosting its comedy quotient) to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, the magic bean seems nearly omnipotent. But java’s magical metabolic properties may be entirely dependent on how you brew your brown elixir.
Coffee-fueled Scandinavians have determined that the stimulating liquid’s antidiabetes effect is only possible when you don’t boil your beans. For those eager to ward off type 2 diabetes, filtered coffee – not boiled coffee – is the ticket to lower insulin resistance.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Umeå (Sweden) University identified biomarkers that distinguished the consumption of filtered coffee from its boiled cousin. They found that people who drank two to three cups of filtered coffee a day enjoyed a 60% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than did those who subsisted on less than one cup of filtered coffee per day. But drinking boiled coffee did nothing to dent drinkers’ diabetes risk.
Why the difference? The coffee-sipping Swedish investigators say boiled coffee contains diterpenes, which don’t make it past a coffee filter. Other studies have shown diterpenes inflate the risk of heart and vascular diseases. And the researchers say those unfiltered diterpenes may sap your morning cuppa joe’s antidiabetes powers.
We know what you’re thinking: Who boils powdered coffee? Is Sanka even a thing anymore? It’s an approach that’s unfamiliar to most Mr. Coffee–owning Scandinavians and American java junkies alike. But before you, like us, take another smug sip from that cup you just made in the Keurig machine, know this: Coffee pod machines deal out hot, unfiltered brew.
Maybe just add two sugar packets next time. Your beta cells will thank you.
Let my people poop!
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but a tilted toilet.
The latest piece of late-stage capitalistic horror comes from Great Britain, and has lovingly been called the “StandardToilet.” No dystopian overtones there, absolutely not. The toilet’s “genius” lies in the seat’s 13-degree downward slope, which increases strain on the legs just like a squat thrust would. Sit on one for more than 5 minutes, and the pain becomes too much to handle.
The inventor of the StandardToilet claims that his product will cut time employees spend on the toilet by 25%, saving businesses as much as 4.8 billion pounds sterling a year. Not only that, he suggests that there are numerous health benefits, such as reduced hemorrhoid risk and a reduction of musculoskeletal disorders.
Critics were quick to point out that people with disabilities would likely have accessibility issues (and let’s not forget people with GI diseases), and a bathroom space expert (yes, that’s a thing) suggested that, if employees are spending too much time on the toilet, the issue is likely not laziness but the poor state of affairs in the workplace itself.
As purveyors of quality toilet- and poop-themed humor, we here at Livin’ on the MDedge world headquarters think it would be a shame if the giant corporations of the world took away normal toilets. So we say to the downtrodden proletariat: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your toilets!
Livin’ on the MDedge will be taking a holiday break, but we’ll be back to advance medical science in January!
Stop us if you’ve heard this one
An elephant, a capybara, and a horse walk into a bar …
What? You’ve heard it? Really? … No, not really? You were just pulling our leg. Very funny.
Can we go on now? You’re sure? Because if there’s one thing we love, it’s reader participation.
Anyway, there’s this bar, and a bunch of researchers from the University of California’s San Diego and Berkeley campuses are hanging out with a bear, a boar, a javelina (looks and sounds like a pig, about the size of a border collie), and a giraffe when the aforementioned trio shows up.
They see all these mammals together and get an idea. Why not compare the tensile strength of their hair with that of a human adult and child? The next day, after sobering up, they started collecting hair samples.[Legal note: The situation at the bar is a literary device. At no time did the investigators conduct any of their work in such a place.]
Once that was done, uniaxial tension tests were conducted, as you would expect, using an Instron 3342 universal testing system equipped with a 500-N load cell at a strain rate of 10–2s–1.
The results, however, were not expected. Thin hairs are stronger than thick hairs. Hair from a human, with an average diameter of about 60 mcm, is stronger than hair from a boar (average diameter, 235 mcm) or a horse (average diameter, 200 mcm), and the weakest hair of all came from an elephant (diameter of 345 mcm) and a giraffe (diameter of 370 mcm). Also, the hair from the 9-year-old child is stronger than the thicker hair of the 30-year-old adult.
The results show that the inherent strength of human hair’s hierarchical structure – an outer layer, or cuticle, “wraps around an inner cortex made of many small fibers linked by chemical bonds” – makes it resistant to deformation, the investigators explained. They hope that synthetic materials with a similar structure could become lighter and stronger in the future.
Now what? The punchline? All this valuable hair information isn’t enough? Fine.
The shocked bartender, who’s already got the makings of a small zoo in his establishment, points a finger in alarm at the latest arrivals and yells, “Hey!” The horse says, “You read my mind, buddy.”
Boiled type 2 diabetes
Ah, coffee. Is there anything it can’t do? From speeding up delivery of this tardy column (if not boosting its comedy quotient) to reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes, the magic bean seems nearly omnipotent. But java’s magical metabolic properties may be entirely dependent on how you brew your brown elixir.
Coffee-fueled Scandinavians have determined that the stimulating liquid’s antidiabetes effect is only possible when you don’t boil your beans. For those eager to ward off type 2 diabetes, filtered coffee – not boiled coffee – is the ticket to lower insulin resistance.
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and Umeå (Sweden) University identified biomarkers that distinguished the consumption of filtered coffee from its boiled cousin. They found that people who drank two to three cups of filtered coffee a day enjoyed a 60% lower risk of type 2 diabetes than did those who subsisted on less than one cup of filtered coffee per day. But drinking boiled coffee did nothing to dent drinkers’ diabetes risk.
Why the difference? The coffee-sipping Swedish investigators say boiled coffee contains diterpenes, which don’t make it past a coffee filter. Other studies have shown diterpenes inflate the risk of heart and vascular diseases. And the researchers say those unfiltered diterpenes may sap your morning cuppa joe’s antidiabetes powers.
We know what you’re thinking: Who boils powdered coffee? Is Sanka even a thing anymore? It’s an approach that’s unfamiliar to most Mr. Coffee–owning Scandinavians and American java junkies alike. But before you, like us, take another smug sip from that cup you just made in the Keurig machine, know this: Coffee pod machines deal out hot, unfiltered brew.
Maybe just add two sugar packets next time. Your beta cells will thank you.
Let my people poop!
This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but a tilted toilet.
The latest piece of late-stage capitalistic horror comes from Great Britain, and has lovingly been called the “StandardToilet.” No dystopian overtones there, absolutely not. The toilet’s “genius” lies in the seat’s 13-degree downward slope, which increases strain on the legs just like a squat thrust would. Sit on one for more than 5 minutes, and the pain becomes too much to handle.
The inventor of the StandardToilet claims that his product will cut time employees spend on the toilet by 25%, saving businesses as much as 4.8 billion pounds sterling a year. Not only that, he suggests that there are numerous health benefits, such as reduced hemorrhoid risk and a reduction of musculoskeletal disorders.
Critics were quick to point out that people with disabilities would likely have accessibility issues (and let’s not forget people with GI diseases), and a bathroom space expert (yes, that’s a thing) suggested that, if employees are spending too much time on the toilet, the issue is likely not laziness but the poor state of affairs in the workplace itself.
As purveyors of quality toilet- and poop-themed humor, we here at Livin’ on the MDedge world headquarters think it would be a shame if the giant corporations of the world took away normal toilets. So we say to the downtrodden proletariat: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your toilets!
Livin’ on the MDedge will be taking a holiday break, but we’ll be back to advance medical science in January!
Tales of nasal terror, and dental hoverboarding
A cure for nosiness
Christmas may be just around the corner, but is there ever really a wrong time to huddle around a campfire and swap scary stories? So bundle up, get the fire going, and prepare yourselves for a pair of nasal-based horror stories that will frighten your Jingle Bells off!
Our first tale of nostril terror comes all the way from southern India, where a 13-year-old boy jumped into a water well to cool off. Hey, southern India gets hot, even in November. But like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, his peaceful swim was interrupted when something swam up his nose, causing him extreme pain. After a 30-minute procedure, the doctor pulled out the culprit: A horrific alien parasite! Okay, we’re lying; it was a fish. But we had you going, didn’t we?
Well, maybe that didn’t get you frightened. But we have more rhinal dread to share! A young girl in Las Vegas stuck a pair of plastic doll shoes up her nose, one in each nostril. Her mother removed one shoe, but neither she nor urgent care could reach the second. A trip to the hospital was in order, and once there, the doctors were able to remove the foreign object in seconds.
But as with all things in U.S. medicine, a reckoning would soon come. You feel it now, the dread in this woman’s heart when the hospital bill came.
She takes the envelope, and opens it slowly.
The paper unfolds, rough and heavy in her hands.
Her eyes scan the page, looking for the number, where is it, where is it? It must be here, it must be ...
$3,000.
That’s right, for this simple procedure, performed with a pair of fancy tweezers, the hospital saw fit to charge the hapless mother $3,000! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Some say that the mother’s high-deductible insurance policy reduced the cost to $1,700. But we ask you, does that make the story any less spooky? We think not.
Hoverboarding down the root canal
Time spent in the dentist’s chair is among the most anxiety-inducing in anyone’s life. The needles. The grinding. The drilling. The rinsing. The spitting. The throbbing copays.
But you know what might inject a few cc’s of fun into your oral hygiene visits?
Did you guess ... a hoverboard?
If you did, well, you’re probably dentist Steve Martin in “Little Shop of Horrors.” Or perhaps Alaska dentist Seth Lookhart, who authorities say performed a tooth extraction on a sedated patient while Dr. Lookhart also rode a hoverboard. There are also charges of felony Medicaid fraud and reckless endangerment. And allegations of hefty theft from his practice partners. Oh, and a state board apparently suspended Dr. Lookhart’s dental license in 2017.
But hey, pulling teeth while taming a hoverboard? Photos or it didn’t happen, right?
Unfortunately for the well-balanced dentist, there are photos. Actually, there’s an entire video. And when prosecutors showed it to Dr. Lookhart’s unwitting and horrified costar, she was about as happy as the impacted wisdom teeth your teen kid’s still toting around.
Dr. Lookhart denied the felony fraud charges. But he did cop to the hoverboard. Which puts him one up on his cinematic “Wild and Crazy Guy” doppelganger. Even as a neurosurgeon in “The Man With Two Brains,” Mr. Martin never attempted to hoverboard while performing double “cranial screw-top” brain surgeries.
CSI: Quebec
They may live in that eternally polite land on the other side of our northern border, but they know where the bodies are buried. Lots of bodies. Some of them in shallow graves. Some of them in vehicles.
No, we are not talking about Gil Grissom and the gang at CSI. We’re talking about the Secure Site for Research in Thanatology, also known as the “body farm,” which is scheduled to open this spring in Becancour, Quebec.
It’s the first such outdoor forensic facility in Canada and the first in the world – there are also body farms in the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands – to be located in a northern climate.
“We’re particularly interested in understanding what happens when a body is in subzero temperatures, when there’s a lot of snow on the ground, and how that freeze and then the thaw process might actually change the rate of decomposition,” Shari Forbes, the farm’s director, told CTV News recently.
The science team will be out on the farm every day, meticulously checking each body – talk about making a list and checking it twice – for all the important CSI stuff: how long fingerprints and DNA evidence last, the effects of insect feeding and egg-laying, and the ability of dogs to detect scents.
The decomposition process in a cold climate will be a strange and wondrous journey, and the body farm’s work can, perhaps, best be summed up by none other than Mr. Grissom, who once said that getting to the evidence means having to destroy the evidence.
Then again, he also said that “dead men don’t ride roller coasters,” so the analogy only goes so far.
A cure for nosiness
Christmas may be just around the corner, but is there ever really a wrong time to huddle around a campfire and swap scary stories? So bundle up, get the fire going, and prepare yourselves for a pair of nasal-based horror stories that will frighten your Jingle Bells off!
Our first tale of nostril terror comes all the way from southern India, where a 13-year-old boy jumped into a water well to cool off. Hey, southern India gets hot, even in November. But like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, his peaceful swim was interrupted when something swam up his nose, causing him extreme pain. After a 30-minute procedure, the doctor pulled out the culprit: A horrific alien parasite! Okay, we’re lying; it was a fish. But we had you going, didn’t we?
Well, maybe that didn’t get you frightened. But we have more rhinal dread to share! A young girl in Las Vegas stuck a pair of plastic doll shoes up her nose, one in each nostril. Her mother removed one shoe, but neither she nor urgent care could reach the second. A trip to the hospital was in order, and once there, the doctors were able to remove the foreign object in seconds.
But as with all things in U.S. medicine, a reckoning would soon come. You feel it now, the dread in this woman’s heart when the hospital bill came.
She takes the envelope, and opens it slowly.
The paper unfolds, rough and heavy in her hands.
Her eyes scan the page, looking for the number, where is it, where is it? It must be here, it must be ...
$3,000.
That’s right, for this simple procedure, performed with a pair of fancy tweezers, the hospital saw fit to charge the hapless mother $3,000! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Some say that the mother’s high-deductible insurance policy reduced the cost to $1,700. But we ask you, does that make the story any less spooky? We think not.
Hoverboarding down the root canal
Time spent in the dentist’s chair is among the most anxiety-inducing in anyone’s life. The needles. The grinding. The drilling. The rinsing. The spitting. The throbbing copays.
But you know what might inject a few cc’s of fun into your oral hygiene visits?
Did you guess ... a hoverboard?
If you did, well, you’re probably dentist Steve Martin in “Little Shop of Horrors.” Or perhaps Alaska dentist Seth Lookhart, who authorities say performed a tooth extraction on a sedated patient while Dr. Lookhart also rode a hoverboard. There are also charges of felony Medicaid fraud and reckless endangerment. And allegations of hefty theft from his practice partners. Oh, and a state board apparently suspended Dr. Lookhart’s dental license in 2017.
But hey, pulling teeth while taming a hoverboard? Photos or it didn’t happen, right?
Unfortunately for the well-balanced dentist, there are photos. Actually, there’s an entire video. And when prosecutors showed it to Dr. Lookhart’s unwitting and horrified costar, she was about as happy as the impacted wisdom teeth your teen kid’s still toting around.
Dr. Lookhart denied the felony fraud charges. But he did cop to the hoverboard. Which puts him one up on his cinematic “Wild and Crazy Guy” doppelganger. Even as a neurosurgeon in “The Man With Two Brains,” Mr. Martin never attempted to hoverboard while performing double “cranial screw-top” brain surgeries.
CSI: Quebec
They may live in that eternally polite land on the other side of our northern border, but they know where the bodies are buried. Lots of bodies. Some of them in shallow graves. Some of them in vehicles.
No, we are not talking about Gil Grissom and the gang at CSI. We’re talking about the Secure Site for Research in Thanatology, also known as the “body farm,” which is scheduled to open this spring in Becancour, Quebec.
It’s the first such outdoor forensic facility in Canada and the first in the world – there are also body farms in the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands – to be located in a northern climate.
“We’re particularly interested in understanding what happens when a body is in subzero temperatures, when there’s a lot of snow on the ground, and how that freeze and then the thaw process might actually change the rate of decomposition,” Shari Forbes, the farm’s director, told CTV News recently.
The science team will be out on the farm every day, meticulously checking each body – talk about making a list and checking it twice – for all the important CSI stuff: how long fingerprints and DNA evidence last, the effects of insect feeding and egg-laying, and the ability of dogs to detect scents.
The decomposition process in a cold climate will be a strange and wondrous journey, and the body farm’s work can, perhaps, best be summed up by none other than Mr. Grissom, who once said that getting to the evidence means having to destroy the evidence.
Then again, he also said that “dead men don’t ride roller coasters,” so the analogy only goes so far.
A cure for nosiness
Christmas may be just around the corner, but is there ever really a wrong time to huddle around a campfire and swap scary stories? So bundle up, get the fire going, and prepare yourselves for a pair of nasal-based horror stories that will frighten your Jingle Bells off!
Our first tale of nostril terror comes all the way from southern India, where a 13-year-old boy jumped into a water well to cool off. Hey, southern India gets hot, even in November. But like something out of a bad sci-fi movie, his peaceful swim was interrupted when something swam up his nose, causing him extreme pain. After a 30-minute procedure, the doctor pulled out the culprit: A horrific alien parasite! Okay, we’re lying; it was a fish. But we had you going, didn’t we?
Well, maybe that didn’t get you frightened. But we have more rhinal dread to share! A young girl in Las Vegas stuck a pair of plastic doll shoes up her nose, one in each nostril. Her mother removed one shoe, but neither she nor urgent care could reach the second. A trip to the hospital was in order, and once there, the doctors were able to remove the foreign object in seconds.
But as with all things in U.S. medicine, a reckoning would soon come. You feel it now, the dread in this woman’s heart when the hospital bill came.
She takes the envelope, and opens it slowly.
The paper unfolds, rough and heavy in her hands.
Her eyes scan the page, looking for the number, where is it, where is it? It must be here, it must be ...
$3,000.
That’s right, for this simple procedure, performed with a pair of fancy tweezers, the hospital saw fit to charge the hapless mother $3,000! AHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Some say that the mother’s high-deductible insurance policy reduced the cost to $1,700. But we ask you, does that make the story any less spooky? We think not.
Hoverboarding down the root canal
Time spent in the dentist’s chair is among the most anxiety-inducing in anyone’s life. The needles. The grinding. The drilling. The rinsing. The spitting. The throbbing copays.
But you know what might inject a few cc’s of fun into your oral hygiene visits?
Did you guess ... a hoverboard?
If you did, well, you’re probably dentist Steve Martin in “Little Shop of Horrors.” Or perhaps Alaska dentist Seth Lookhart, who authorities say performed a tooth extraction on a sedated patient while Dr. Lookhart also rode a hoverboard. There are also charges of felony Medicaid fraud and reckless endangerment. And allegations of hefty theft from his practice partners. Oh, and a state board apparently suspended Dr. Lookhart’s dental license in 2017.
But hey, pulling teeth while taming a hoverboard? Photos or it didn’t happen, right?
Unfortunately for the well-balanced dentist, there are photos. Actually, there’s an entire video. And when prosecutors showed it to Dr. Lookhart’s unwitting and horrified costar, she was about as happy as the impacted wisdom teeth your teen kid’s still toting around.
Dr. Lookhart denied the felony fraud charges. But he did cop to the hoverboard. Which puts him one up on his cinematic “Wild and Crazy Guy” doppelganger. Even as a neurosurgeon in “The Man With Two Brains,” Mr. Martin never attempted to hoverboard while performing double “cranial screw-top” brain surgeries.
CSI: Quebec
They may live in that eternally polite land on the other side of our northern border, but they know where the bodies are buried. Lots of bodies. Some of them in shallow graves. Some of them in vehicles.
No, we are not talking about Gil Grissom and the gang at CSI. We’re talking about the Secure Site for Research in Thanatology, also known as the “body farm,” which is scheduled to open this spring in Becancour, Quebec.
It’s the first such outdoor forensic facility in Canada and the first in the world – there are also body farms in the United States, Australia, and the Netherlands – to be located in a northern climate.
“We’re particularly interested in understanding what happens when a body is in subzero temperatures, when there’s a lot of snow on the ground, and how that freeze and then the thaw process might actually change the rate of decomposition,” Shari Forbes, the farm’s director, told CTV News recently.
The science team will be out on the farm every day, meticulously checking each body – talk about making a list and checking it twice – for all the important CSI stuff: how long fingerprints and DNA evidence last, the effects of insect feeding and egg-laying, and the ability of dogs to detect scents.
The decomposition process in a cold climate will be a strange and wondrous journey, and the body farm’s work can, perhaps, best be summed up by none other than Mr. Grissom, who once said that getting to the evidence means having to destroy the evidence.
Then again, he also said that “dead men don’t ride roller coasters,” so the analogy only goes so far.
Childproofing your protocols, and what’s the deal with airline water?
Childproof your study protocols
Childproof caps on medicine bottles. Like a bank vault lock to third-rate thieves, they’re an impregnable line of defense between inquisitive little hands and heavy-duty pharmaceuticals.
So, you can imagine the delight with which parents learned that their children’s education at an Illinois elementary school included a test of their ability to spring drugs from their fortress-like bottling.
In a quest to advance scientific understanding, a junior high student recruited some of the school’s kindergartners and first graders as participants in a science fair experiment. The hypothesis: “Childproof” medicine bottles were anything but.
The junior high scientist collected data on how quickly the study subjects could defeat assorted bottles. And, being a kindly soul, the adolescent researcher demonstrated techniques for achieving a state of, ahem, pharmaceutical openness.
While teachers were present during the experiment, parental permission slips were not. As any principal or institutional review board knows, informed consent is kind of a big deal.
Surprised parents learned of the experiment only when their kids deftly demonstrated their newfound pill skills. One shocked parent even shared a video of his daughter defeating a childproof lid.
Pharmacies, of course, would remind us all that their bottles are at best “child resistant,” not childproof. It’s a distinction lost on us here at the Bureau of LOTME, however. We’re desperately viewing that how-to video for tips on liberating our statins from the “child resistant” bottle our millennial pharmacist clearly superglued the cap onto.
What’s the deal with airline food?
You probably thought Jerry Seinfeld’s immortal query was rhetorical. No one actually knows what the deal is with airline food, right?
Enter Charles Platkin, PhD, JD, MPH, executive director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, and editor of DietDetective.com. Not only does he know the deal, he publishes a study detailing the healthiness of the food offered by 11 airlines every year, based on criteria such as healthy nutrients and calorie levels of meals, level of transparency, improvement and maintenance of healthy offerings, and water health.
For the 2018-2019 edition, there’s a tie at the top between Alaska Airlines and Air Canada, both scoring 4 out of 5 on Dr. Platkin’s “Health Score,” both well ahead of Delta and JetBlue in second place with a score of 2.9.
At the bottom? Southwest Airlines, with a paltry 1.7, edging out Spirit and Hawaiian Airlines.
Our personal favorite tidbit from the study has to be the poor scores in water health. Spirit managed to score a measly 1 out of 5 in the water health subscore, and several airlines were below 2. An actual quote from the study: “The quality of drinking water varies by airline, and many have provided passengers with unhealthy water. In general, it’s probably best to avoid drinking coffee and tea on board since they are made with galley water.”
While Hawaiian can take some comfort because they didn’t finish dead last, Dr. Platkin did award them his special “Shame on You” award for not providing all their nutritional information. You can try to hide, Hawaiian Airlines, but Dr. Platkin will find you.
Use the Force, Jack Nicklaus
We here at LOTME usually strive to provide an insightful and up-to-date wrap-up of the latest news on cutting-edge research, clinical breakthroughs, and impolite bodily functions. But right now, we want to talk about something really important: your golf game.
There’s an old saying in golf: Drive for show, putt for dough. That cliché may need a bit of updating, though, now that investigators in Ireland (where they are pretty serious about their golf) have brought science to the party.
Their research indicates that it may be possible for golfers to improve their putting without practicing. Without physically practicing, that is. Without going to the golf course. Just think about it: Golfers can putt better by, you know … just thinking about it.
Imagining the feel of an action without actually performing it is known as kinesthetic imagery ability, and it just might have an effect on putting, researchers from the physical education and sports sciences department at the University of Limerick and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, reported in Psychology of Sport and Exercise.
In a group of 44 skilled golfers, half watched video of an expert golfer putting in a lab environment “while listening to a motor imagery script consisting of short sentences describing key visual and kinesthetic feelings associated with performing the putting.” Then all the golfers took 40 putts from 15 feet in the lab.
The good kinesthetic imagers in the bunch improved their putting consistency more than subjects with poorer kinesthetic imagery ability and subjects from the nonintervention group.
So, here’s the new and improved old saying for golfers: Drive for show, use your kinesthetic imagery ability for dough. Yup, that’ll definitely catch on.
Childproof your study protocols
Childproof caps on medicine bottles. Like a bank vault lock to third-rate thieves, they’re an impregnable line of defense between inquisitive little hands and heavy-duty pharmaceuticals.
So, you can imagine the delight with which parents learned that their children’s education at an Illinois elementary school included a test of their ability to spring drugs from their fortress-like bottling.
In a quest to advance scientific understanding, a junior high student recruited some of the school’s kindergartners and first graders as participants in a science fair experiment. The hypothesis: “Childproof” medicine bottles were anything but.
The junior high scientist collected data on how quickly the study subjects could defeat assorted bottles. And, being a kindly soul, the adolescent researcher demonstrated techniques for achieving a state of, ahem, pharmaceutical openness.
While teachers were present during the experiment, parental permission slips were not. As any principal or institutional review board knows, informed consent is kind of a big deal.
Surprised parents learned of the experiment only when their kids deftly demonstrated their newfound pill skills. One shocked parent even shared a video of his daughter defeating a childproof lid.
Pharmacies, of course, would remind us all that their bottles are at best “child resistant,” not childproof. It’s a distinction lost on us here at the Bureau of LOTME, however. We’re desperately viewing that how-to video for tips on liberating our statins from the “child resistant” bottle our millennial pharmacist clearly superglued the cap onto.
What’s the deal with airline food?
You probably thought Jerry Seinfeld’s immortal query was rhetorical. No one actually knows what the deal is with airline food, right?
Enter Charles Platkin, PhD, JD, MPH, executive director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, and editor of DietDetective.com. Not only does he know the deal, he publishes a study detailing the healthiness of the food offered by 11 airlines every year, based on criteria such as healthy nutrients and calorie levels of meals, level of transparency, improvement and maintenance of healthy offerings, and water health.
For the 2018-2019 edition, there’s a tie at the top between Alaska Airlines and Air Canada, both scoring 4 out of 5 on Dr. Platkin’s “Health Score,” both well ahead of Delta and JetBlue in second place with a score of 2.9.
At the bottom? Southwest Airlines, with a paltry 1.7, edging out Spirit and Hawaiian Airlines.
Our personal favorite tidbit from the study has to be the poor scores in water health. Spirit managed to score a measly 1 out of 5 in the water health subscore, and several airlines were below 2. An actual quote from the study: “The quality of drinking water varies by airline, and many have provided passengers with unhealthy water. In general, it’s probably best to avoid drinking coffee and tea on board since they are made with galley water.”
While Hawaiian can take some comfort because they didn’t finish dead last, Dr. Platkin did award them his special “Shame on You” award for not providing all their nutritional information. You can try to hide, Hawaiian Airlines, but Dr. Platkin will find you.
Use the Force, Jack Nicklaus
We here at LOTME usually strive to provide an insightful and up-to-date wrap-up of the latest news on cutting-edge research, clinical breakthroughs, and impolite bodily functions. But right now, we want to talk about something really important: your golf game.
There’s an old saying in golf: Drive for show, putt for dough. That cliché may need a bit of updating, though, now that investigators in Ireland (where they are pretty serious about their golf) have brought science to the party.
Their research indicates that it may be possible for golfers to improve their putting without practicing. Without physically practicing, that is. Without going to the golf course. Just think about it: Golfers can putt better by, you know … just thinking about it.
Imagining the feel of an action without actually performing it is known as kinesthetic imagery ability, and it just might have an effect on putting, researchers from the physical education and sports sciences department at the University of Limerick and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, reported in Psychology of Sport and Exercise.
In a group of 44 skilled golfers, half watched video of an expert golfer putting in a lab environment “while listening to a motor imagery script consisting of short sentences describing key visual and kinesthetic feelings associated with performing the putting.” Then all the golfers took 40 putts from 15 feet in the lab.
The good kinesthetic imagers in the bunch improved their putting consistency more than subjects with poorer kinesthetic imagery ability and subjects from the nonintervention group.
So, here’s the new and improved old saying for golfers: Drive for show, use your kinesthetic imagery ability for dough. Yup, that’ll definitely catch on.
Childproof your study protocols
Childproof caps on medicine bottles. Like a bank vault lock to third-rate thieves, they’re an impregnable line of defense between inquisitive little hands and heavy-duty pharmaceuticals.
So, you can imagine the delight with which parents learned that their children’s education at an Illinois elementary school included a test of their ability to spring drugs from their fortress-like bottling.
In a quest to advance scientific understanding, a junior high student recruited some of the school’s kindergartners and first graders as participants in a science fair experiment. The hypothesis: “Childproof” medicine bottles were anything but.
The junior high scientist collected data on how quickly the study subjects could defeat assorted bottles. And, being a kindly soul, the adolescent researcher demonstrated techniques for achieving a state of, ahem, pharmaceutical openness.
While teachers were present during the experiment, parental permission slips were not. As any principal or institutional review board knows, informed consent is kind of a big deal.
Surprised parents learned of the experiment only when their kids deftly demonstrated their newfound pill skills. One shocked parent even shared a video of his daughter defeating a childproof lid.
Pharmacies, of course, would remind us all that their bottles are at best “child resistant,” not childproof. It’s a distinction lost on us here at the Bureau of LOTME, however. We’re desperately viewing that how-to video for tips on liberating our statins from the “child resistant” bottle our millennial pharmacist clearly superglued the cap onto.
What’s the deal with airline food?
You probably thought Jerry Seinfeld’s immortal query was rhetorical. No one actually knows what the deal is with airline food, right?
Enter Charles Platkin, PhD, JD, MPH, executive director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, and editor of DietDetective.com. Not only does he know the deal, he publishes a study detailing the healthiness of the food offered by 11 airlines every year, based on criteria such as healthy nutrients and calorie levels of meals, level of transparency, improvement and maintenance of healthy offerings, and water health.
For the 2018-2019 edition, there’s a tie at the top between Alaska Airlines and Air Canada, both scoring 4 out of 5 on Dr. Platkin’s “Health Score,” both well ahead of Delta and JetBlue in second place with a score of 2.9.
At the bottom? Southwest Airlines, with a paltry 1.7, edging out Spirit and Hawaiian Airlines.
Our personal favorite tidbit from the study has to be the poor scores in water health. Spirit managed to score a measly 1 out of 5 in the water health subscore, and several airlines were below 2. An actual quote from the study: “The quality of drinking water varies by airline, and many have provided passengers with unhealthy water. In general, it’s probably best to avoid drinking coffee and tea on board since they are made with galley water.”
While Hawaiian can take some comfort because they didn’t finish dead last, Dr. Platkin did award them his special “Shame on You” award for not providing all their nutritional information. You can try to hide, Hawaiian Airlines, but Dr. Platkin will find you.
Use the Force, Jack Nicklaus
We here at LOTME usually strive to provide an insightful and up-to-date wrap-up of the latest news on cutting-edge research, clinical breakthroughs, and impolite bodily functions. But right now, we want to talk about something really important: your golf game.
There’s an old saying in golf: Drive for show, putt for dough. That cliché may need a bit of updating, though, now that investigators in Ireland (where they are pretty serious about their golf) have brought science to the party.
Their research indicates that it may be possible for golfers to improve their putting without practicing. Without physically practicing, that is. Without going to the golf course. Just think about it: Golfers can putt better by, you know … just thinking about it.
Imagining the feel of an action without actually performing it is known as kinesthetic imagery ability, and it just might have an effect on putting, researchers from the physical education and sports sciences department at the University of Limerick and Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, reported in Psychology of Sport and Exercise.
In a group of 44 skilled golfers, half watched video of an expert golfer putting in a lab environment “while listening to a motor imagery script consisting of short sentences describing key visual and kinesthetic feelings associated with performing the putting.” Then all the golfers took 40 putts from 15 feet in the lab.
The good kinesthetic imagers in the bunch improved their putting consistency more than subjects with poorer kinesthetic imagery ability and subjects from the nonintervention group.
So, here’s the new and improved old saying for golfers: Drive for show, use your kinesthetic imagery ability for dough. Yup, that’ll definitely catch on.
Grading Dr. Google and treating malaria by the bowlful
Google: A hypochondriac’s dream
Thanks to Google, we have basically free and unlimited access to a huge amount of information right at our fingertips. So when you’re laid up at home with a cold that seems to be taking a turn for the worse, it’s only natural to pull out your phone and ask Google all about your strange new symptoms. After all, the doctor’s office is so far away, and it costs money and time, and who even wants to deal with doctors anyway?
According to a survey commissioned by LetsGetChecked, you’d hardly be alone in turning to Dr. Google. Although 51% of the 2,000 survey respondents consulted a doctor as their first choice for medical help, 65% admitted that they use Google to self-diagnose, 26% have no primary care physician, and about 60% actively avoid doctor’s offices.
So, for the two-thirds of Americans who made an appointment with the good internet doctor, how did things turn out? Not well. About three-quarters reported worrying more afterward, and 43% of all survey respondents managed to convince themselves that they had contracted a serious illness. And the information they looked up? It was wrong more than 60% of the time.
As it turns out, a trained medical professional is actually better than a search engine. Now all we need to do is make accessing health care cheaper, more convenient, and easier to understand. No problem, right?
Better the second time around?
“What’s this stuff?”
“Recycled water. Supposed to taste just like regular water.”
“Did you drink it?”
“I’m not gonna drink it. You drink it.”
“I’m not gonna drink it.”
“Let’s get Mikey!”
“He won’t drink it. He hates everything.”
This time, the kids were right. Mikey did hate the recycled wastewater, or to be more accurate, he was disgusted by it. Like most people, he supports the idea of water conservation but is too disgusted by the source of recycled water to drink it, according to investigators at the University of California, Riverside.
In three separate experiments, volunteers were shown videos about water. One was about water conservation, another was about the urban myth that crocodiles live in New York City sewers, and the third was an educational video demonstrating that recycled wastewater is contaminant free.
In the first experiment, half of the subjects watched the conservation video and half watched the NYC sewer video. Afterward, nearly all participants in each group said no thanks to recycling. In the second experiment, subjects from the two video-watching groups were all shown the third video on recycled water’s purity. That led to a small but insubstantial increase in willingness to use recycled water.
In the third experiment, each of three groups watched one of the videos. Afterward, all subjects were asked to sign a petition supporting conservation and were offered a bottle of water labeled “SMARTdrop – Pure Recycled Water.” About two-thirds of each group signed the petition and took the bottle despite the investigators’ expectation that the group watching the water purity video would have greater acceptance.
Messaging involving water scarcity and conservation alone may not be enough in this case. Instead, the researchers urged “a focus on the more visceral roadblock of disgust.”
Maybe, or maybe not. For now, let’s get back to Mikey and company.
“Don’t tell the kids it’s the recycled wastewater you’ve been trying to get them to drink. You’re the only one who has to know.”
Chicken soup for the malarial soul
A nice hot cup of soup: The refuge of concerned parents who managed to resist looking at Google and decided that their child’s cold wasn’t actually stage IV lung cancer. It’s good, and it’s good for you. But just how good for you? Could the healing powers of soup be harnessed to treat something like, say, malaria?
The research, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, has perhaps the most adorable setup of any study our cold, stony hearts at LOTME world headquarters have ever seen. The researchers went to a London primary school and asked a group of students to bring in homemade soup for testing and analysis. The students obliged, bringing in dozens of unique soups, of which 56 were tested for 72 hours against the deadliest malaria species, Plasmodium falciparum.
Not every soup was effective, but extracts from five broths were able to halt growth of sexually immature parasites by more than 50%, two of which were about as effective as dihydroartemisinin, a leading antimalarial drug. In addition, four other broths were more than 50% effective at blocking sexual maturation.
The researchers noted that they haven’t analyzed the ingredients of the soups yet and that the utility of soup in combating malaria will depend on a number of factors; regardless, we hope those kids got some serious extra credit. Curing malaria is way more impressive than knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.
Google: A hypochondriac’s dream
Thanks to Google, we have basically free and unlimited access to a huge amount of information right at our fingertips. So when you’re laid up at home with a cold that seems to be taking a turn for the worse, it’s only natural to pull out your phone and ask Google all about your strange new symptoms. After all, the doctor’s office is so far away, and it costs money and time, and who even wants to deal with doctors anyway?
According to a survey commissioned by LetsGetChecked, you’d hardly be alone in turning to Dr. Google. Although 51% of the 2,000 survey respondents consulted a doctor as their first choice for medical help, 65% admitted that they use Google to self-diagnose, 26% have no primary care physician, and about 60% actively avoid doctor’s offices.
So, for the two-thirds of Americans who made an appointment with the good internet doctor, how did things turn out? Not well. About three-quarters reported worrying more afterward, and 43% of all survey respondents managed to convince themselves that they had contracted a serious illness. And the information they looked up? It was wrong more than 60% of the time.
As it turns out, a trained medical professional is actually better than a search engine. Now all we need to do is make accessing health care cheaper, more convenient, and easier to understand. No problem, right?
Better the second time around?
“What’s this stuff?”
“Recycled water. Supposed to taste just like regular water.”
“Did you drink it?”
“I’m not gonna drink it. You drink it.”
“I’m not gonna drink it.”
“Let’s get Mikey!”
“He won’t drink it. He hates everything.”
This time, the kids were right. Mikey did hate the recycled wastewater, or to be more accurate, he was disgusted by it. Like most people, he supports the idea of water conservation but is too disgusted by the source of recycled water to drink it, according to investigators at the University of California, Riverside.
In three separate experiments, volunteers were shown videos about water. One was about water conservation, another was about the urban myth that crocodiles live in New York City sewers, and the third was an educational video demonstrating that recycled wastewater is contaminant free.
In the first experiment, half of the subjects watched the conservation video and half watched the NYC sewer video. Afterward, nearly all participants in each group said no thanks to recycling. In the second experiment, subjects from the two video-watching groups were all shown the third video on recycled water’s purity. That led to a small but insubstantial increase in willingness to use recycled water.
In the third experiment, each of three groups watched one of the videos. Afterward, all subjects were asked to sign a petition supporting conservation and were offered a bottle of water labeled “SMARTdrop – Pure Recycled Water.” About two-thirds of each group signed the petition and took the bottle despite the investigators’ expectation that the group watching the water purity video would have greater acceptance.
Messaging involving water scarcity and conservation alone may not be enough in this case. Instead, the researchers urged “a focus on the more visceral roadblock of disgust.”
Maybe, or maybe not. For now, let’s get back to Mikey and company.
“Don’t tell the kids it’s the recycled wastewater you’ve been trying to get them to drink. You’re the only one who has to know.”
Chicken soup for the malarial soul
A nice hot cup of soup: The refuge of concerned parents who managed to resist looking at Google and decided that their child’s cold wasn’t actually stage IV lung cancer. It’s good, and it’s good for you. But just how good for you? Could the healing powers of soup be harnessed to treat something like, say, malaria?
The research, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, has perhaps the most adorable setup of any study our cold, stony hearts at LOTME world headquarters have ever seen. The researchers went to a London primary school and asked a group of students to bring in homemade soup for testing and analysis. The students obliged, bringing in dozens of unique soups, of which 56 were tested for 72 hours against the deadliest malaria species, Plasmodium falciparum.
Not every soup was effective, but extracts from five broths were able to halt growth of sexually immature parasites by more than 50%, two of which were about as effective as dihydroartemisinin, a leading antimalarial drug. In addition, four other broths were more than 50% effective at blocking sexual maturation.
The researchers noted that they haven’t analyzed the ingredients of the soups yet and that the utility of soup in combating malaria will depend on a number of factors; regardless, we hope those kids got some serious extra credit. Curing malaria is way more impressive than knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.
Google: A hypochondriac’s dream
Thanks to Google, we have basically free and unlimited access to a huge amount of information right at our fingertips. So when you’re laid up at home with a cold that seems to be taking a turn for the worse, it’s only natural to pull out your phone and ask Google all about your strange new symptoms. After all, the doctor’s office is so far away, and it costs money and time, and who even wants to deal with doctors anyway?
According to a survey commissioned by LetsGetChecked, you’d hardly be alone in turning to Dr. Google. Although 51% of the 2,000 survey respondents consulted a doctor as their first choice for medical help, 65% admitted that they use Google to self-diagnose, 26% have no primary care physician, and about 60% actively avoid doctor’s offices.
So, for the two-thirds of Americans who made an appointment with the good internet doctor, how did things turn out? Not well. About three-quarters reported worrying more afterward, and 43% of all survey respondents managed to convince themselves that they had contracted a serious illness. And the information they looked up? It was wrong more than 60% of the time.
As it turns out, a trained medical professional is actually better than a search engine. Now all we need to do is make accessing health care cheaper, more convenient, and easier to understand. No problem, right?
Better the second time around?
“What’s this stuff?”
“Recycled water. Supposed to taste just like regular water.”
“Did you drink it?”
“I’m not gonna drink it. You drink it.”
“I’m not gonna drink it.”
“Let’s get Mikey!”
“He won’t drink it. He hates everything.”
This time, the kids were right. Mikey did hate the recycled wastewater, or to be more accurate, he was disgusted by it. Like most people, he supports the idea of water conservation but is too disgusted by the source of recycled water to drink it, according to investigators at the University of California, Riverside.
In three separate experiments, volunteers were shown videos about water. One was about water conservation, another was about the urban myth that crocodiles live in New York City sewers, and the third was an educational video demonstrating that recycled wastewater is contaminant free.
In the first experiment, half of the subjects watched the conservation video and half watched the NYC sewer video. Afterward, nearly all participants in each group said no thanks to recycling. In the second experiment, subjects from the two video-watching groups were all shown the third video on recycled water’s purity. That led to a small but insubstantial increase in willingness to use recycled water.
In the third experiment, each of three groups watched one of the videos. Afterward, all subjects were asked to sign a petition supporting conservation and were offered a bottle of water labeled “SMARTdrop – Pure Recycled Water.” About two-thirds of each group signed the petition and took the bottle despite the investigators’ expectation that the group watching the water purity video would have greater acceptance.
Messaging involving water scarcity and conservation alone may not be enough in this case. Instead, the researchers urged “a focus on the more visceral roadblock of disgust.”
Maybe, or maybe not. For now, let’s get back to Mikey and company.
“Don’t tell the kids it’s the recycled wastewater you’ve been trying to get them to drink. You’re the only one who has to know.”
Chicken soup for the malarial soul
A nice hot cup of soup: The refuge of concerned parents who managed to resist looking at Google and decided that their child’s cold wasn’t actually stage IV lung cancer. It’s good, and it’s good for you. But just how good for you? Could the healing powers of soup be harnessed to treat something like, say, malaria?
The research, published in Archives of Disease in Childhood, has perhaps the most adorable setup of any study our cold, stony hearts at LOTME world headquarters have ever seen. The researchers went to a London primary school and asked a group of students to bring in homemade soup for testing and analysis. The students obliged, bringing in dozens of unique soups, of which 56 were tested for 72 hours against the deadliest malaria species, Plasmodium falciparum.
Not every soup was effective, but extracts from five broths were able to halt growth of sexually immature parasites by more than 50%, two of which were about as effective as dihydroartemisinin, a leading antimalarial drug. In addition, four other broths were more than 50% effective at blocking sexual maturation.
The researchers noted that they haven’t analyzed the ingredients of the soups yet and that the utility of soup in combating malaria will depend on a number of factors; regardless, we hope those kids got some serious extra credit. Curing malaria is way more impressive than knowing that mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell.