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ALMANAC 1992, by Jeff Napier & Another Company MEDICINE AND THE HUMAN (YOUR) BODY _____________________________________________________________ There is a mental disease called Tourette syndrome in which sufferers suddenly and uncontrollably yell out things they have heard. They may bark like dogs, or hiss like cats. Probably the worst manifestation, and rather common among sufferers of the disease, is to cuss loudly in a crowd when everyone else is quiet. _____________________________________________________________ Giuseppe De Mai was a normal man in every respect except one: He had two hearts. _____________________________________________________________ A mathematics major with a higher than average IQ estimated at 130, and seemingly normal in every other way, was referred to a brain specialist because his head seemed a bit larger than normal. The brain specialist was amazed to find that the student had an extreme case of hydrocephalitis, also known as "water on the brain." His brain cavity was mostly filled with fluid, not neurons. The cortex, the main thinking part of his brain, was merely a coating one twenty-fifth of an inch thick on the inside of his skull! _____________________________________________________________ According to one scientific study, 33% of shy people suffer from hay fever, but almost no extroverts have the problem. _____________________________________________________________ Recent scientific research indicates that garlic is a natural cancer-fighter. It also seems to lower cholesterol. _____________________________________________________________ It has been found that citrus fruits, peanuts, and possibly cheese help reduce the incidence of tooth decay. _____________________________________________________________ Every year 1.2 million Americans get sicker in hospitals than when they came in. _____________________________________________________________ 28% of cataract surgeries are unnecessary. 30% of all heart bypass surgery is contra-indicated, it would be safer not to do the surgery. _____________________________________________________________ One out of every four modern pregnancies ends with a cesarean section. Twenty years ago, the figure was one out of 20. There has been no reduction in birth defects or mortality due to the additional surgeries. Some people are alledging that cesarean sections are often performed because: 1) It makes more money for the hospital and doctor. 2) It reduces the risk of lawsuit because the doctor can say, "Every possible procedure was performed. 3) The doctor has more fun. _____________________________________________________________ A woman was admitted to the hospital for plastic surgery to her jaw and nose to repair damage from an automobile accident. They wired her jaw shut and bandaged her nose. Her husband, who was present as she was waking up from the anesthesia noticed that she couldn't breathe. He quickly got a nurse who said, "Don't worry about it," and then left for an appointment at a beauty parlor. The woman died. _____________________________________________________________ One out of four second opinions by doctors don't confirm the first doctor's opinion. _____________________________________________________________ If you must go to a hospital for a procedure, check how many times the doctor has performed the procedure and how many times the hospital has done it. Obviously, you don't want inexperienced people using you to practice on. Statistics have confirmed that having your surgery at a hospital which has hosted the procedure many times before gives you a greater chance of complete success. _____________________________________________________________ A new development in prosthetics allows the wearer of an replacement leg to feel at the bottom of his artificial foot with electrical sensors which send a signal to the nerves in the stump. The brain soon learns to interpret these signals as if they were actual feedback from a real foot, helping the wearer to balance better and compensate for stepping on rocks and uneven ground. _____________________________________________________________ In the new science of zoopharmacognosy, scientists patiently watch animals to learn about how they medicate themselves. In the most profound case, chimpanzees who are not feeling well seek out a plant called aspilia and eat one of its leaves whole. Upon studying this plant, scientists have found a chemical in it which is a strong antibiotic which may even reduce some cancers. Elephants and bears also treat themselves pharmacologically. _____________________________________________________________ A child born to a mother under age 30 has a 10% chance of being left-handed, but if the mother is over 40, there is a 20% chance the child will be left-handed. _____________________________________________________________ Men are more sensitive to subtle changes in lighting than are women. _____________________________________________________________ All the information in this database is reliably calculated from or based on what others have written. However, you may wish to conduct your own research to make absolutely sure of the facts. _____________________________________________________________ It seems amazing that the little-tiny chains of DNA in each cell of your body contain the complete blueprints for your whole self. Even more amazing, scientists have determined that only 1 percent of that DNA seems to contain all the information for building, repair, fighting diseases and so on, and the other 99 percent has no know function! _____________________________________________________________ Many garden plants have more DNA in each of their cells than we do in ours. _____________________________________________________________ The difference between the DNA of a human and the DNA of an ape amounts to about 1.1% of the total. _____________________________________________________________ One out of every 22 Americans is bionic, having artificial parts in their bodies. These parts include heart valves, pins, tubes, joints and more. _____________________________________________________________ Where did the flu, influenza, get its name? At one time people thought the sickness was caused by the 'influence' of the stars and planets. _____________________________________________________________ You are more likely to have a heart attack in the morning than at other times of the day. _____________________________________________________________ There is a woman in India who can multiply a 13-digit number by another 13-digit number in her head in less than a minute and come up with the right answer. _____________________________________________________________ One out of every four Americans has a blood cholesterol level high enough to be risking heart attack. _____________________________________________________________ About one out of every 120 Americans have some form of epilepsy. _____________________________________________________________ A common misbelief is that you are supposed to jam a spoon into an epileptic victim's mouth when they are having convulsions. This is wrong, and it may lead to a broken tooth, or an injury to the person administering the 'care.' _____________________________________________________________ In a magazine article, one epileptic described his seizures this way: "A seizure is like flushing a toilet in your brain." _____________________________________________________________ If a person has had a bone-marrow transplant from a donor who has an allergy, the recipient may develop the same allergy. Brand-new allergies to hay fever and nickel have been documented. Furthermore, if the recipient has an allergy and gets a transplant from a non-allergic donor, the recipient may not only be cured of the life-threatening disease, but also be relieved of the allergy. _____________________________________________________________ Our hearts pump about 40 million gallons of blood in a lifetime. Your heart could fill a built-in swimming pool in about 25 days if you had enough blood to spare. But that might be difficult because your whole body contains just a little more than one gallon of blood. _____________________________________________________________ There is a gland approximately in the middle of the brain of humans and in lesser animals called the pineal body. Scientists have always been curious about this gland because they don't know exactly what it does, if anything in humans, yet its location would seem to make it a very important organ. In frogs other amphibians, and many reptiles, because they are so small and because part of their skulls are thin, light actually reaches this gland. Evidently, the pineal body triggers the chemical changes that allow some of these critters to change color to match their environment. In studies with rats, it has been determined that those kept in light tend to breed more, while rats in darkness breed less. Evidently the pineal body is behind this, receiving its information from the optic nerves, which enter the brain at the same location. _____________________________________________________________ Does acupuncture work? Yes, many people have suffered less pain for up to 4 weeks after acupuncture treatments. However, in a study where half the people were given needles in the traditional "meridian points" and the other half were poked at any random locations, the results were equally effective. _____________________________________________________________ Some people with multiple personalities have exhibited an interesting fact: Those who have a personality with diabetes and another personality without diabetes change between needing insulin regulation and not needing it depending on which personality is active. _____________________________________________________________ Older peoples' skin becomes wrinkled because the sub-cutaneous layer disappears. _____________________________________________________________ Note: Looking for something specific? Press the [S] key to search this chapter. _____________________________________________________________ Children get far more colds than adults. One theory to explain this is that we acquire a permanent immunity to a cold once we get it. But there are many variations of the virus, we'd have to catch one of each kind of cold before we would would be immune to all colds. _____________________________________________________________ Four out of five patients surveyed leaving doctor's offices say they did not receive sufficient treatment for their problem. _____________________________________________________________ Patients on waiting lists to see psychiatrists have been found to get better during the time they are waiting than when they are receiving treatment. _____________________________________________________________ After age 30, we lose 18 million brain cells per year. However, we also grow billions of new dendrite connections as we age. Scientists recently busted the age-old belief that as we grow older, we naturally start losing intelligence and memory. In tests matching healthy 70-year-olds and 20-year-olds, the old folks out-performed the youngsters in long-term memory tests, and fell slightly behind in short-term memory. However, with practice, they could learn to hold their own in short-term memory tests too. _____________________________________________________________ Researchers at Ohio University accidentally proved that love and attention is good preventive medicine. They were doing experiments with rabbits to test effects of cholesterol blocked arteries. All the groups of rabbits got sick as expected except one group. Everything was the same for this group except one thing: Each rabbit in this group was being held and stroked by the student in charge of feeding them. Later experiments specifically involving loving some rabbits and ignoring others proved that the effect is real. _____________________________________________________________ There are about 50 trillion cells in a human - 10,000 cells for every human living on earth. _____________________________________________________________ The liver has been cataloged at over 500 specific functions in the human body to date. _____________________________________________________________ One out of every 100 cells in our body is for defense against disease. So if you weigh 150 lbs, 1-1/2 pounds of you are for self-defense. _____________________________________________________________ Note: You can change the colors with the keys [F3] - [F10]. _____________________________________________________________ If a new treatment passes FDA approval, half of all gallbladder surgery can be eliminated. The new way is to inject methyl tert-butyl ether (the same stuff used in gasoline to reduce knocking) directly into a gallbladder filled with stones and dissolve them. _____________________________________________________________ An experimental drug is undergoing testing that stops hiccups. _____________________________________________________________ By the year 2010, holistic medicine will be the standard, and surgery, and 'internal' (using chemicals to cure things) medicine will be used far less often. Preventative medicine will be practiced widely, restorative medicine will be used infrequently. The term 'holistic' means regarding the body as a whole, rather than as a composition of separate parts. Treating the mental state and physical state together is given much emphasis. At the present time, this has sort of a 'mystic' or 'hippie' stigma to it, but in the future, successes of holistic medicine will be too obvious to ignore. The whole scientific way of doing business will fall into disuse, as we learn more and more to use a system of general observational analysis. If a medical technique seems to work often enough, then it will be assumed that it probably does work. Absolute proof will not be necessary except in the domain of philosophical arguments. It will be shown that absolute proof is more trouble than it is worth. With 1,000 rats you can get absolute proof that a certain drug will cure these rats of some illness or another. But even with 1,000,000 rats you can't prove that the same drug will have the same effect on humans. On the other hand, if the drug cures 20 humans and hurts none of them, it will be accepted as usable. This author predicts the downfall of the FDA within 15 years due to a major scandal. While I can't predict the exact turn of events, it appears that the agency will be held responsible for the loss of thousands of lives in a case where the cure was available, but not "approved." _____________________________________________________________ If you are cold, if you are shivering, try adding up numbers in your head. Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine found that shivering volunteers stopped shivering when they were given lists of numbers to add up. _____________________________________________________________ There is a new sickness sometimes called, "mechanical, disillusioned mentality" which is affecting a few teenagers and adults who spend countless hours writing computer programs. The symptoms seem to be a general loss of interest or ability to interact with people on the informal terms that people do tend to use. They can no longer follow instructions unless they are perfectly stated, and they have no tolerance for discussions with people who relate a story imprecisely or in the wrong order. Your author may be suffering from minor symptoms of this disease. Recently I stated without looking away from the computer monitor, "If pizza, I'm ready." No response was acceptable other than, "It's ready to eat." _____________________________________________________________ A scientist went into some old-age homes where the residents averaged 80 years old, and taught some of them Transendental Meditation. Three years later he returned and found that 24% of the residents had died. Of the ones who learned to practice meditation, none had died. _____________________________________________________________ Hypnotized subjects have been made to form blisters on their skin simply from carefully worded suggestions. _____________________________________________________________ The Mayan Indians have medical cures that date back thousands of years, some of which are better than 'conventional western' medicine. For instance, the Mayan herb used to treat athlete's foot actually kills the bacteria completely, whereas the modern medicine only reduces the discomfort and reduces the bacteria count. _____________________________________________________________ Casio now makes a wristwatch that monitors your blood pressure. You can get a watch from Fidelity Electronics called The Swiss Lady Watch, which helps women calculate their most fertile times. _____________________________________________________________ Some scientists at Ohio State devised an experiment in which volunteers were given an opportunity to give strangers pleasure. It was set up so that one volunteer was seated in a special chair with a vibration cushion that supposedly would give a pleasurable vibration, if another volunteer, who was not acquainted with the first, would press a button. Many of the button pressers refused to press. One out of every ten of the people confronted with the button not only refused to press it, but also expressed moral outrage at the experiment on one grounds or another. In another experiment, conducted several years earlier, other scientists had a similar arrangement between pairs of unacquainted volunteers. The difference, however, was that the button pressers were told that if they pressed the button, the other volunteer would be given a painful, possibly even dangerous electrical shock. Guess what? Most of these button pressers gladly pressed the button! Back to the pleasure experiments, it was also discovered that men were more likely to give pleasure to attractive female strangers than males, and women pushed the pleasure button more for attractive males. _____________________________________________________________ For asthma sufferers: Scientists have proven that many sufferers can reduce or eliminate symptoms with self-hypnosis. Try to imagine or actually view a pleasant image, or imagine yourself in a situation where you are enjoying yourself and are symptom-free. It often works. _____________________________________________________________ Evidence indicates that women who are or could be pregnant should avoid hot tubs because the rise in body temperature may cause birth defects. _____________________________________________________________ A group of scientists exposed pregnant or nursing mice to moderate amounts of THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) or CBN (cannibinol), the active ingredients in marijuana and discovered surprising results in their male offspring. Once mature, the males had smaller testes and almost no interest in female mice. _____________________________________________________________ Professor Julian Jaynes has written a controversial book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. In the book he hypothesizes that consciousness as we know it did not develop in man until about 2000 BC. Until then, we did not think introspectively, he says. In fact, people were probably more like modern-day schizophrenics, in whom there appear to be two minds. One, controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain takes actions, and the other, controlled by the right side, dreams and hears voices. For proof, Mr. Jaynes (he walked away from the title of Phd although fully qualified) looks at ancient books including the Bible. In the Old Testament he says there is no mention of the subjective I, no introspective thinking, no sense of self. But in the later New Testament, the features of modern consciousness take shape. How could the pyramids and other construction take place then? Introspective thinking was not necessary, he asserts, just as you can drive a car without theorizing about what the car is doing and why you are driving. _____________________________________________________________ If you watch Star Trek, The Next Generation, you know that they have syringes that painlessly push medicine through the skin. We have that in 1991 too. For $475 a doctor can purchase Biojector, which blasts medicine through the skin with a high pressure squirt of carbon dioxide. It is painless and because no needle penetrates the skin, it is also disease-safe. _____________________________________________________________ In North Carolina statistics indicate that childbirth is safer at home than in a hospital. _____________________________________________________________ Take a guess: How many vertebra do you have? You have 33. How many bones? 206. Babies start with 305 bones. _____________________________________________________________ Almost 90% of people who consistently dye their hair develop eye cataracts because of a chemical in the dye called paraphenylenediamine. _____________________________________________________________ If you use eyedrops often, you can get varicose veins on your eyes. _____________________________________________________________ Asthmatic children have often been cured when their parents quit smoking. _____________________________________________________________ Some researchers have determined that more than half of all Americans get an hour per day less sleep than they should, leading to symptoms of stress. _____________________________________________________________ Sweat glands are little coiled up ducts. If you stretched them out and lined up all of the sweat glands in one human end to end, the line would be 1972 miles long. _____________________________________________________________ A new gadget has been invented for potential kidnap victims and possibly people with alzheimer's disease. It is a radio transmitter the size and shape of a large coin which can be implanted under a person's skin. Missing people can be tracked by their radio signals. _____________________________________________________________ Women who have had liposuction, the removal of fat from the abdominal area, have shown increases in their breast size. Evidently the body makes up for lost fat tissue by building it up elsewhere. _____________________________________________________________ chapter end.