WeirdMedical™

…not spontaneous combustion as previously thought.

Seriously…Researchers at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Northwestern University’s medical school have found that women experiencing hot flashes during the earlier years of menopause tend to have a lower risk of heart attack and death than their older counterparts who experience hot flashes and night sweats near the end of menopause.

The possible mechanism? The “blood vessels dilating in response to the normal hormone fluctuations of menopause” allows more fluid blood flow and, therefore, more efficient heat transfer from more dilated capillaries located at the surface of the skin. This apparently is healthy cardiovascular reaction for a younger woman, but for an older woman in her 60′s can signal blood vessel abnormalities that could affect the heart.

Thus NO spontaneous combustion!

Read more…

NASA…no need to say more.

Some of the most weird and heart-warming stories of 2010…

Mother’s touch revives premature twin pronounced dead…

“Kangaroo Cuddle”

Afghani teen receives nose transplant in California…

Afghani Teen Harmed by Family

All 33 Chilean Miners Survive Ordeal…

All Chilean Minors Survive

…and seven more…

Thank you, AOL, TIME, LWA, AP, Getty Images & Youtube.com!

This is tough to believe given the AHA/ACC guidelines and thousands of healthcare services ranking the leading nutritionally balanced weight loss programs…

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

But Professor Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University is proof positive. There’s a dichotomy here – you can loose weight and be healthy but not eat healthy.

The net-net is if you eat too many calories – no matter how healthy their sources – and do not exercise enough to burn the excess – you get chubby!

We know that exercise is good for us and why, right?

Wrong. None of us do. No one knows the granular biochemistry. But here’s a S.W.A.G. (click to first term)…

Translucent Woman Running Illustration by Bryan Cristie

A new study suggests it offers both acute and long term benefits:

“These findings suggest that exercise has both “acute and cumulative” effects on your body’s ability to use and burn fat,” says Gregory Lewis, a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and an author of the study. After only 10 minutes of exercise, even the least fit showed evidence that their bodies were burning fat; the more fit, the more metabolic evidence of fat burning.”

Read on McDuff!

Number ten in the Top 10 new tech advances of 2010 goes to an ancient material…

Implanted under the skin, an array of light-emitting diodes could signal the concentration in the blood of biomarkers such as insulin. Over time, the array will dissolve away, eliminating the need for surgery to remove the implant. Flexible silicon electronics (inset) are held in place with a silk film. Incorporating antibodies or enzymes into the film will allow devices to detect biomarkers. Credit: Bryan Christie Design. Source: MIT's Technology Review

According to MIT’s Technology Review, such “dissolvable devices make better medical implants.”

And what is that mysterious yet familiar bioabsorbable material for advanced implantable electronics­?

Silk!  It can be engineered to transmit images via light waves along its fibers, deliver drugs, measure vital signs or test blood, and can be resorbed over hours or as long as two years depending upon how long it is needed. And all from the belly of a worm? Amazing. For more amazing apps…read on.

Got silk?

“Experts have discovered that an extract from the white flower commonly known as Baby’s Breath can boost the efficiency of anti-cancer drugs by a staggering million times,” stated on the British MailOnline website by its Healthcare Section editors.

Apparently this staggeringly significant discovery was made by scientists working for the charity, Leukaemia Busters, based in Southampton, Hampshire. The scientists extracted the molecular substance called saponins from the Gypsophila Paniculata plant. Saponins appears to break down the membrane of cancer cells leaving them vulnerable to antibody-based drugs, known as immunotoxins. Immunotoxins can then more easily attack and kill the cancerous cells.

Baby's Breath Flower Million Star

Leukaemia Busters name and its logo were both devised by Simon Flavell the son of the researchers, Dr David Flavell and his wife Dr Bee Flavell. Drs. Flavell run the charity that was set up in memory Simon who died from the disease aged 10. Simon was a great fan of Ghost Busters.

To learn more about this dedicated research team and their findings read on…

Now this is a good use of our federal tax dollars…

In the northwestern reaches of Washington (D.C. that is) sits a museum that is a “must see” if you like the slightly off-taste, arcane, twisted and in some cases, down-right gross medical oddities. Visit the bricks and mortar “Roadside America of American medicine,” the National Museum of Health and Medicine, America’s oldest taxpayer-funded Cabinet of Curiosities near Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

A row of little skeletons.

At the National Museum of Health and Medicine you can see precariously displayed and disturbingly barely described:

• hanging display of a complete brain and spine, suspended in liquid in an eerily lit glass cylinder
• girl’s head preserved in arsenic
• well-preserved hairball from the stomach of a 12-year old girl who compulsively ate her own hair
• skull with a huge civil war bullet buried in its frontal lobe
• and the list goes on…

To visit…virtually go to the RoadsideAmerica.com Team Field Reporters or National Museum of Health and Medicine, or in real life visit:

6900 Georgia Avenue, Washington, DC

Hours:     M-F 10 am – 5:30 pm, Sa, Su, Hol call ahead

No kidding. This is for real – so when you go to the NMHM in D.C., tell them you want your tax dollars’ worth!

If you are struggling for therapeutic relief from multiple sclerosis, you’ve got a lot of competition…

An new investigational procedure using an old “Gold Standard” technology is causing MS patients to apply in droves for a single site clinical trial. Over 1,000 patients applied for 3o positions at a lone study site in Buffalo, New York in its early trial. And the technology?…Is it a drug or an active agent?…no…it’s “POBA” –> Plain Old Balloon Angioplasty!

The theory of balloon angioplasty’s anticipated success in this new indication for use? This  provocative new theory proposes that abnormal blood drainage from the brain may cause or play a role in multiple sclerosis. According to early studies by an Italian vascular specialist, Dr. Paolo Zamboni, who was running out of treatment options for his wife, poor deoxygenated blood drainage caused by twisted, narrowed or blocked cerebrospinal veins may cause “leakage of immune cells into the brain that starts a cascade of inflammatory problems.” In this venous application, balloon angioplasty opens these vessels to increase the volume and rate of drainage…and patients can not wait to receive treatment.

“A lot of people are starting to go to fly-by-night places,” according to Dr. Carlo Tornatore at Washington’s Georgetown University Hospital. “It’s a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint. We have to be very careful.” (Source: Seattle PI, Seattle, WA)

The indication is chronic cerebrospinal venous insufficiency or CCSVI. Further studies of 65 patients by Dr. Zamboni reveal this therapy may be most effective in treating the relapsing-remitting form of MS. But there appears to be a significant relapse rate nearly 50%, similar to that for POBA for coronary arteries in the 1980′s and 1990′s.

Stay tuned…this opens a whole new opportunity for peripheral vascular device manufactures as well as their new MS patients!

Obstetricians will not find this weird but those in other medical specialties may…

Mother’s hormonal balance during gestation can have a weird affect on their newborns. An over-production of estrogen can cause neonates, male or female, to present with enlarged breasts.

MedlinePlus Encyclopedia: Hormonal effects in newborns

In fact, these neonates can experience a type of milk production with the white discharge called, “witch’s milk.” This witch’s milk or colostrum is just like mother’s initial fluid before breast milk production is established. For more on this condition, visit the iVillage website.

But not to worry…this condition usually disappears within 2-3 weeks…a relief for already nervous new mom’s!