Cigarettes Contain Radioactive Polonium

Cigarettes are known to cause cancer...

But we now know there's another reason why... they contain radioactive material, specifically polonium-210!

Tobacco companies also have known about it since 1959. As reported in ABC, historical documents reveal tobacco companies not only knew about the radioactive substance, but studied it, then refused to do anything about it!

They figured out that:

1) It caused "cancerous growths" in the lungs of smokers,
2) Calculated how much radiation a regular smoker would ingest over 20 years

Then they kept the research secret. The level of deception is breath-taking.

The radiation alone from cigarettes can account for up to 138 deaths for every 1,000 smokers over period of 25 years.

Even more disturbing, is that ALL tobacco products on the market today still contain radioactive polonium. This is in spite of washing techniques available since 1980 to remove the radioactivity but refused by tobacco companies to perform whether due to cost or the fact that washing would remove the addictive nicotine component as well.

Take home message?

STOP smoking! It's killing you through not only harmful chemicals, but also radioactivity!

Read the ABC article here.

Reference:
Cigarette Smoke Radioactivity and Lung Cancer Risk. Nicotine Tob Res (2011) doi: 10.1093/ntr/ntr145

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Oral Exam Using a Finger

For a good physical exam, physicians use their senses (eyes, ears, nose) to detect disease processes that may not necessarily be obvious to a lay person. Beyond these obvious senses, fingers and hands are also utilized to feel for unusual bumps or masses that may not be obvious to the naked eye.

Take a neck mass for example. Neck masses may not be necessarily visible, but by feeling the neck, may become obvious. To use an analogy, a bowling ball under a mattress may not necessarily be obvious, but if you lay on the bed, would become painfully obvious.

Physicians also use the hands/fingers to examine areas that may not be visible... such as the unpleasant digital rectal exam (inserting a finger up a bung-hole) which is done to detect blood in the stool, rectal/anal cancers, anal muscular incompetence, etc.

However, I find it odd that the mouth is a body area that is not often "felt" around... physicians included.

A finger can appreciate unusual mouth pathology that may not necessarily be appreciated by looking alone. Furthermore, just like the rectal exam, a finger can appreciate base of tongue pathology that cannot be visualized by having a patient go "ah".

I truly feel that actor Michael Douglas would have been diagnosed with his base of tongue cancer much earlier if only a doctor stuck a finger and swept that back area of the tongue. One can "feel" cancer as it is rock hard and very tender. True... it may cause a person to gag, but for a cancer test, it's dirt cheap, fast, and reliable.

However, it does not just have to be areas of the mouth that can not be seen. Even for those ulcerations and bumps of the mouth that one can clearly visualize (or not), it does help to touch it. Is it hard? Soft? Ulcerated? Tender? Grooved? Papillated? Fungating? Rubber-like? Blottable?

Each characteristic provides information to achieve a more accurate diagnosis.

To an ENT way of thinking, if a doctor regularly performs a digital rectal exam, than one can certainly do the same thing at the other end. It's less invasive and provides just as much information.

Say "ah"!!!

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New Webpage on Bumps or Lesions of the Mouth

Our practice has created a new webpage describing the various bumps and lesions commonly seen in the mouth that leads to a doctor's visit.

Such abnormal things seen in the mouth that's discussed include:

• aphthous ulcer
• herpetic ulcers
• pyogenic granuloma
• fibroma
• papilloma
• cancer

Click here to read more!

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Robotic Mouth Sings the "Natural" Way

When it comes to robotics, the sounds they make is either due to the machinery that runs them or an electronic recording that comes out of a speaker.

Well, there's a scientist, Hideyuki Sawada, who is working on a robotic "mouth" that produces sound the same way humans do.

- Lungs to power the voice using airflow
- Vocal cords to create the noise to create a voice
- Pharynx (Throat) to create the space and harmonic overtones that affect the "quality" of the voice
- Articulators (lips, teeth, tongue) to produce speech

In this picture of the robot, the lips are pretty obvious (the oval fish-mouth appearing aperture). The lungs are the glass jar on the right. The vocal cords are located where the glass jar connects to the pharynx which is represented by the skin-toned plastic pipe with the pistons attached at the bottom.

Here's a video showing it in action.

Here's another video showing a REAL human voice in action.

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The Doctors TV Show Does the Mouth

The Doctors TV actually got something totally right!

Actually there are two segments here... One on the mouth followed by another on what happens when food/liquids go down the wrong way causing a reflexive cough.

Enjoy!

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The Man With the World's Largest Mouth!

Francisco Domingo Joaquim's 6.69 inches wide mouth has earned him the dubious title of the 'World's Widest Mouth' by the Guinness Book of World Records.

His main claim to fame is the ability to put a can of Coke into and out of his mouth with ease as well as spin it around inside his mouth with his tongue. Watch a video here.

Read more about him and his amazing mouth here.

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Coffee Decreases Risk of Head & Neck Cancer

Researchers at University of Utah found that regular coffee drinkers who drank more than four cups of coffee a day had a 39 percent decreased risk of two types of head and neck cancer: oral cavity and pharynx cancers. In the study published in the journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, they found however, that coffee did not decrease the risk of laryngeal cancer. Coffee contains over 1,000 different chemical compounds, including cancer-fighting antioxidants, and it’s those antioxidants that may provide a “plausible explanation” for reducing the cancer risk.

However, patients should not take this study as an excuse to increase their coffee intake specifically to counteract known cancer-causing behaviors including smoking, drinking alcohol, and chewing tobacco.

Read a CNN report on this here.

Reference:
Coffee and Tea Intake and Risk of Head and Neck Cancer: Pooled Analysis in the International Head and Neck Cancer Epidemiology Consortium. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev, June 22, 2010; 1055-9965.

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There's Always Someone With a Bigger Mouth

Continuing the spirit of Halloween with semi-relevant ENT random news...

Someone forwarded me this picture of a TEN foot great white shark which was bitten by an even bigger great white shark. Apparently, the poor shark was still alive when it was captured in Australia.

Click here to read the story and watch a video!

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