Santa Claus, A Sick Patient Needing Medical Care

ENT Journal published in December 2003, a humorous paper on Santa Claus as a patient with numerous medical problems. Given it is Christmas Eve, it is probably worth revisiting the article which lists among his many medical problems:

• Allergies to woodwork (sawdust and varnish) and materials used in preparing teddy bears, dolls, and other gilts.
• Asthma exacerbated by reindeer exposure as well as the hay and straw in the stable which makes his nose run
• His symptoms get worse when he leaves the North Pole where there is no pollen to regions of the Earth where vegetation and pollen are plentiful, especially in the Southern Hemisphere where it is summer.
• Going down chimney's irritates the eyes and his nose resulting in sneezing fits. Probably carcinogenic as well.
• Santa is considerably overweight, and his cheeks appear quite ruddy suggesting high blood pressure.
• Probably has type 2 diabetes exacerbated by milk and cookies left for him in millions of homes.
• He smokes a pipe putting him at increased risk of oral, throat, and lung cancer

Merry Christmas!

Suggest you leave for Santa a glass of water and a low-calorie, low-salt granola bar instead of milk and cookies tonight!

Read the full article here.

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Can Placebo Be Used to Help People Instead of Drugs?

On my way to work On December 23, 2010, I heard a great story on NPR regarding how placebos can potentially be used to help people... EVEN if they know it's a placebo!

Based on research done at Harvard, they found that a placebo helped patients with irritable bowel syndrome 59% of the time compared to a similar group that received nothing. Of greater significance... the treatment group with placebo KNEW they were getting a placebo.

Given that many medications have similar (and even lower) improvement rates, that's quite amazing.

Why does placebo work?

My own personal belief is that this is truly a case of mind over matter.

The human body is literally a pharmaceutical manufacturing company able to naturally produce all sorts of chemical compounds. Pretty much every drug that you can take in pill form, the human body already produces within to some degree. Drugs in essence augments what the body is already able to naturally produce.

The placebo effect is (in my opinion) when the human mind is able to boost the production of the appropriate drugs the body is already able to naturally produce.

The REAL key to improving the human health condition and avoid all the drugs and their potential for side effects is to somehow figure out how to enable the placebo effect on command.

Read the NPR story here.

Reference:
Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome. PLoS One. 2010

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New Drug Helps Prevent A Cough From Being Contagious

University of Alberta researchers have developed an experimental new drug that may be able to completely eliminate airborne disease transmission due to cough.

The way this drug works is by reducing/eliminating the amount of droplets that is expelled during a cough by changing the properties of the lung fluid. The drug comes in the form of a spray that can be inhaled by a sick patient.

It is conceived that this drug would help stop the spread of pandemic outbreaks as well as protect healthcare professionals from catching whatever an ill coughing patient may have. Furthermore, this drug would not necessarily be disease specific. If there's a cough, it'll work.

Reference:
Effect of artificial mucus properties on the characteristics of airborne bioaerosol droplets generated during simulated coughing. Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.jnnfm.2010.07.005

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For $349, Test Your DNA for 100+ Hereditary Diseases

Image from Wikipedia

A company called Counsyl claims to be able to test an individual's DNA and determine the risk of passing on over 100 hereditary diseases to future offspring for $349 (or free with insurance). Such hereditary diseases they are able to test for include the commonly known cystic fibrosis to more rare conditions like Nijmegen Breakage Syndrome. The full list can be viewed here.

Though many of the diseases listed are associated with ear, nose, throat problems, the list unfortunately does not include hereditary hearing loss conditions.

To do the testing, all you need to do is get the kit mailed to your home, spit into their test tube, and send the kit back to the company.

Read more about this in the New York Times here.

Though this all sounds great, there are some potentially unforeseen implications one needs to consider prior to obtaining this test beyond the issues the NYT article brought up. If the testing comes back positive, one runs the risk of:

1) Having your health insurance dropped or premiums increased... not just for you, but for your offspring (pre-existing condition)
2) Businesses may not want to hire you as you would "cost" them more (missed days from work due to illness, etc)

Though insurance may cover the testing... not sure if you actually want the insurance company to pay and have them potentially find out the results, especially if positive.

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