Poor Quality Sleep Contributes to High Blood Pressure

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is known to cause all sorts of health problems beyond sleepiness. Medical problems include increased risk of stroke, heart attack, peripheral vascular disease, high blood pressure, etc. However, what researchers have recently found is that even if you do not have obstructive sleep apnea, if a person does not have enough "deep sleep" per night resulting in poor quality sleep, that also can increase risk of hypertension.

Researchers collected data on 784 men over the age of 65 who didn't have high blood pressure initially and followed them over the next 3 years. At home sleep studies were obtained initially and at follow-up to look at their sleep patterns as well as their blood pressure.

What they found was that individuals with poor quality sleep, reflected by reduced slow wave sleep (deep sleep), puts individuals at significantly increased risk of developing high blood pressure, and that this effect appeared to be independent of obstructive sleep apnea.

Read a CNN report here.

Reference:
Decreased Slow Wave Sleep Increases Risk of Developing Hypertension in Elderly Men. HYPERTENSION AHA.111.174409. Published online before print August 29, 2011,

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Nasonex Sinus Implant for Chronic Sinusitis

The FDA on August 15, 2011 approved of a novel dissolvable sinus implant that slowly releases mometasone furoate steroid (same active ingredient as Nasonex steroid nasal spray) directly onto the sinus mucosa.

The spring-like implant is placed at the time of sinus surgery and automatically expands and conforms to the sinus cavity regardless of size and shape.

The theory is that by continuously delivering a low dose steroid directly to the sinus cavity, sinus inflammation will decrease and risk of scarring will decrease resulting in an overall decrease in chronic sinusitis for the patient after sinus surgery.

This is a GREAT idea and studies have born out its effectiveness. Hopefully other drug-eluting dissolvable stents like this will be developed in the future!

Developed by Intersect ENT, the implant is called "Propel."

Read about the FDA approval here.

References:
Safety and efficacy of a novel bioabsorbable, steroid eluting sinus stent. INTERNATIONAL FORUM OF ALLERGY & RHINOLOGY. 2011;1(1):23-32.

Advances in the Surgical Management of Chronic Sinusitis and Nasal Polyps. CURRENT ALLERGY AND ASTHMA REPORTS. Published online 08 February 2011

Controlled steroid delivery via bioabsorbable stent: Safety and performance in a rabbit model. AMERICAL JOURNAL OF RHINOLOGY & ALLERGY. November–December 2009, Vol. 23, No. 6.

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Gluing Cut Blood Vessels Together

Gluing blood vessels together, just like gluing a cut garden hose together, does not seem like a great idea at first, but Stanford researchers just might have figured out how to do this safely and effectively.

Over the past century and still currently used today is to hand-sew the cut ends of the blood vessel together using stitches. This method of reattaching blood vessels is time-consuming and tedious, especially when the blood vessels are tiny.

In this new glue method which is FIVE times faster, a special substance is injected into the cut blood vessel on both ends called a poloxamer. This substance has the unique property of becoming an elastic solid when heated above body temperature which than turns into a biodegradable liquid that dissolves away when cooled.

In a nutshell, the steps are as follows:

1. The poloxamer is inserted into the blood vessel where is solidifies using a halogen lamp thereby keeping the lumen open.
2. The cut edges of the blood vessel are precisely reapproximated and "glued" together using dermabond, a substance currently used to "glue" together cut skin.
3. The blood vessel is allowed to cool down by taking away the halogen lamp and the poloxamer contained within the blood vessel melts and dissolves away.

So far, this procedure has only been done in animals, but since all of the components of this technique has already been FDA-approved for human use for other purposes, if proven to work, can rapidly be adopted for microvascular surgery in humans.

Reference:
Vascular anastomosis using controlled phase transitions in poloxamer gels. Nature Medicine (2011) doi:10.1038/nm.2424

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Actress Maggie Q Suffers From Hearing Loss

American actress Maggie Q of Mission: Impossible III and TV show Nikita fame suffers from significant hearing loss due to a loud noise exposure from a movie set explosion.

Apparently, during shooting of an explosive stunt, her left eardrum was blown out while her right ear suffered mild hearing loss.

Such an injury could have been prevented with hearing protection.

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Jay Leno Has a Degree in Speech Therapy

Image by Lee Stranahan from Wikipedia

Yes... It is true!!!

Jay Leno admired by many for his comic personality had his beginnings as a speech therapist. He graduated in 1973 from Emerson College with a bachelor's degree in speech therapy. In order to help pay for his education, he worked in comedy clubs as well as an emcee in talent shows.

Who knew?

Reference:
Wikipedia

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Earthquake Helps Man Regain Hearing... Perhaps Not!

Fox News reported on Aug 25, 2011 about Robert Valderzak who suffered conductive hearing loss for a few months... until the earthquake shook him and the rest of the East Coast after which he was able to hear.

Though this may sound miraculous, conductive hearing loss is one of those reversible type of hearing loss. It is not permanent. Example of conductive hearing loss include:

• Earwax
• Fluid in the ears
• Ear infection
• Eustachian tube dysfunction
• Problems with the middle ear bones

All these problems can be "fixed" and the hearing loss reversed. Permanent hearing loss is due to nerve damage and a reversal of a nerve type of hearing loss could be considered "miraculous."

Now how could an earthquake conceivably reverse a conductive hearing loss? Without benefit of having examined Mr. Valderzak, perhaps he had a lot of earwax and the quake "shook" the earwax out or free (kind of like when a person goes swimming and gets some water in the ear that requires head-shaking to get it out).

It could also be coincidence. There are thousands of people who suffer conductive hearing loss every day for one reason or other. Often, this type of conductive hearing loss will spontaneously resolve one day after days or weeks or even months go by even if not aggressively treated medically. That's why in kids who have fluid in the ears (which causes conductive hearing loss), we sometimes wait 3 months before we put ear tubes in. Quite a number resolve on their own spontaneously.

Now if there are thousands of people with conductive hearing loss and we expect a few to spontaneously recover their hearing each day... and the earthquake was felt by millions throughout the East Coast... I'm surprised that this particular patient is the only one who regained his hearing after the earthquake. I suspect there's at least a dozen that probably regained their hearing that day that the media has not heard/reported about... as well as the day before and the day after. I also suspect that there's probably a few hundred that "lost" their hearing during the earthquake due to earwax, fluid buildup in the ears, ear infection, etc.

Read the Fox New article here.

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Shape of Human Nose Influenced by Climate

The basic function of the human nose is to warm and humidify the air before it reaches the lungs. Because of the wide variation of human habitats from the polar cold and dry air to the equatorial hot and humid weather, one would expect the nose to accommodate to these climate extremes accordingly thru evolutionary pressures.

In essence, logically one would expect the nose to change shape to enhance time that air is in contact with the warm and moist nasal interior in cold and dry climates compared to the opposite environmental extreme.

German scientists evaluated this hypothesis thru 3D modeling of 100 skulls to analyze the shape of the bony nasal cavity of 10 modern human groups living in five different climates and found that the bony nasal cavity appears mostly associated with temperature effects and the nasopharynx with humidity.

Humans living in cold, dry climates tended to have nasal cavities relatively high and long with an abrupt narrowing in the upper nasal cavity than those living in hot, humid climates. Such characteristics enhance contact between the air and the nasal mucosal tissue that helps to warm and humidify that air.

What does such a nose look from the outside? A narrow, longer internal nasal cavity is generally linked to a relatively narrower and more projected nose.

Read a magazine article about this research.

Reference:
Climate-related variation of the human nasal cavity. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Volume 145, Issue 4, pages 599–614, August 2011

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