Hearts and minds
Suffering a heart attack or other severe cardiac event is a life-threatening and life-changing event. Every year, roughly 805,000 people in the U.S. have a heart attack, about one every 40 seconds.
Physical recovery can be arduous and lengthy, but there’s a mental toll as well. One in 3 heart patients, according to a 2023 meta-analysis of more than 100 studies, live with anxiety, depression and ongoing stress.
“The technology of cardiology is locked down. People get that. What’s not locked down is the patient experience,” Sam Sears, a professor of health psychology at East Carolina University and author of more than 200 research studies on psychological interventions for heart health, told STAT. “The human factors in all this just don’t get addressed as a standard of care.”
An improved standard of care, Sears and others advise, is helping patients embrace and accept their new lives in addition to changing lifestyles and habits to become heart-healthier.
Body of knowledge
The human brain makes up 2 percent of a human’s body mass. A shrew’s brain is about 10 percent of its body mass, the greatest brain-size percentage relative to body mass with one known exception: An especially tiny genus of ant called Brachymyrmex boasts a brain roughly 12 percent of its body mass.
Get me that. Stat!
Females are typically found to suffer from dental cavities more than males: 8.8 percent vs. 4.5 percent, according to one study. Three factors help contribute: 1. Teeth come in earlier in girls, lengthening exposure; 2. Easier access to food and frequent snacking during food preparation; 3. Pregnancy.
According to the National Institutes of Health, 2.2 percent of American adults ages 20 to 64 have no teeth, while the same age demographic has, on average, 25.5 remaining teeth. A full complement of teeth is 32, including wisdom teeth.
Stories for the waiting room
In 1854, a doctor in Logansport, Ind., named Alpheus Myers devised a treatment for tapeworms, a malady he saw often in his rural practice. Myers patented a “trap” consisting of a small spring-loaded, hollow cylinder of gold, platinum or another rustproof metal that would be baited with something like cheese and swallowed by the patient. The cylinder was attached to a cord that presumably dangled out of the mouth.
After six to 12 hours, the cylinder would be retrieved, or sooner if the patient noted a tug on the cord like that of a fish on a baited hook. Inside the cylinder would presumably be a captured worm. If nothing happened during the 12-hour period, the trap would be pulled out, rebaited and swallowed again.
One year after Myers patented his invention, he claimed at least one success, as reported at the time in Scientific American, removing a worm “50 feet in length, from a patient, who, since then, has had a new lease on life.”
Most tapeworms, of course, are significantly smaller, though Taenia saginata (beef tapeworm) can grow to approximately 75 feet.
Doc talk
Mania of the week
Never say diet
The Major League Eating speed-eating record for lamb meat sandwiches is 81 4-ounce sandwiches in 10 minutes, held by Joey Chestnut, famed mutton for punishment.
Best medicine
The doctor told his patient to stop using Q-tips, but the advice went in one ear and out the other.
Observation
“Seize the moment. all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart.”
Ig Nobel apprised
The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 1997, the Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to a trio of researchers for their discovery that listening to Muzak stimulates the immune system and may help prevent the common cold.
Med school
Can you match the top five most prescribed drugs in 2023 by their chemical and market names?
1. Levothyoxine
2. Vitamin D
3. Amoxicillin
4. Lisinopril
5. Amphetamine/dextroamphetamine
a) Adderall
b) Synthroid, Levoxyl, Tirosint
c) Drisdol, Calciferol
d) Prinivil, Zestril
e) Moxatag, Trimox
Answers: 1-b; 2-c; 3-e; 4-d; 5-a
Bonus quiz: List the market names of these popular drugs: fluticasone, sertraline and omeprazole
Answers: Flonase, Zoloft and Prilosec
Last words
“Weep not, friend, for me, who dies innocent, by the lawless act of wicked men. My condition is much better than theirs.”
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
