WeirdMedical™

Want to look much younger then your years?

As humans advance in science, more and more interest is shown in the field of anti-aging drugs. The Juan Ponce de León’s mythical Fountain of Youth may one day become a reality if biologists have their way.

Recently, a new discovery was made about a drug that tricks the body into thinking it is on a calorie restrictive diet. Calorie restrictive (CR) diets have historically shown to expand the lifespans of mice and it appears the principle reaction to this can be triggered through drugs.

Anti-Aging in Action (Source: NYTimes, Nicholas Wade)

The major drug candidates are “sirtuin activators” which appear to provide similar reactions to a lower calorie diet. The leading drug of this type is resveratrol by Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. The drug appears to detect and activate when a cell’s energy reserves run low, which is mimics the outcome of calorie restrictive diet.

As many other drugs begin evaluation for their anti-aging effects, it is very likely that we will start to see the fruits of these scientists’ labor. (Source: NYTimes, Tests Begin on Drugs That May Slow Aging).

Weird but…let’s start starving on CR!

Something’s causing twins in a remote Indian village…

In Kodinji, a small village in India with about 15,00 people, there are 230 sets of twins. This is four times the the standard rate of twins occurring naturally. It’s no wonder the village has been dubbed “twin village” by locals.

A local doctor has hypothesized that increased rate of twins could be caused by the water near the village, although no formal studies have been performed.  According to current knowledge, there are no pollutants, toxins or other unnatural chemicals that the villagers interact with.

Two Twins from Kodinji Village (Source: Reuters)

While it remains to be seen what the cause of this is, we do know that just growing up there can sometimes be difficult. Twins can have difficult lives with people often confusing one person with another. And at least one boy, not a twin, feels a little left out in a village that makes twins trendy. (Source: Reuters “Doctors baffled by Indian village of over 200 sets of twins“).

An awesome feat of medical engineering!

In a brilliant surgical move, physicians in the UK have managed to repair a 42 year old man’s eyesight by implanting material from his tooth into his eye socket.

Martin Jones lost his eyesight in a 1997 construction accident. The reason tooth material was used was to provide a living anchor for a man-made replacement lens to be accepted by the eye.  Read more… , and see below.

Congratulations to Mr. Jones and Dr. Christopher Liu, the corneal specialist and Consultant Ophthalmic Surgeon based at Sussex Eye Hospital, Brighton, who performed this surgery!

Blind man sees after tooth implanted into his eye for repair (Source: Daily Mail, UK)