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MEDICINE
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1991-08-29
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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.