For The San Diego Union-Tribune
Body of knowledge
Most people have experienced it on occasion: those moments when your eyelid suddenly and involuntarily twitches or wiggles for a couple of seconds. They’re typically harmless and the exact cause isn’t known, though stress, lack of sleep and caffeine use have been suggested as possible causes.
The reason eyelid twitches are so noticeable is because of the muscle involved — the orbicularis oculi. This eyelid muscle is the fastest working muscle in the human body, able to close an eyelid in less than 100 milliseconds and reopen it in about 200 milliseconds. That’s roughly equivalent of time it takes the human brain to process a single thought.
So when the orbicularis oculi muscle spasms, it really spasms.
Keep reading if you want to know what to call these twitches.
Dire prior
Almost 80 percent of physicians surveyed say that the prior authorization process “often or sometimes” leads their patients to abandon treatment. Prior authorization is a cost-control measure used by health insurance companies that requires patients and their doctors to get approval from the insurance carrier before care or treatment can proceed.Almost 95 percent of physicians surveyed by the American Medical Association said that prior authorization sometimes, often or always delays patients trying to access care. Almost 20 percent of doctors said prior authorization had resulted in a serious adverse event that hospitalized their patients.
Get me that. Stat!
It’s only a modest decline, but good news after years of bad: Provisional data from the CDC suggests drug overdose deaths dropped slightly from their peak last year. The total is still a whopping 100,000 per year, with a large percentage due to fentanyl overdoses.
The decline in deaths wasn’t uniform, dropping across much of the eastern half of the U.S. but increasing in the western half.
The tempering news was that deaths from cocaine and methamphetamine have increased.
Mark your calendar
September is awareness month for blood, ovarian, prostate and childhood cancers, food safety and cholesterol, sickle cell disease, sepsis, polycystic ovary syndrome, atrial fibrillation, childhood obesity, head lice and “recovery,” which seems needed after a month like this.
Doc talk
Blepharospasm — an eyelid spasm that causes one or both eyes to close involuntarily. Although benign, they can become chronic and, over time, increase in frequency, making some tasks more difficult, such as staring contests.
Phobia of the week
Acerophobia — fear of sourness
Best medicine
Moments before a surgery is to begin, the surgeon says to the patient, “Relax, Jim. It’s just a small scalpel incision. No reason to panic.”
The patient replies, “Doctor, my name isn’t Jim.”
The surgeon responds, “I know. I’m Jim.”
Observation
“May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”
— An inscription on a 3,700-year-old lice comb (apparently made from a tusk or bone) unearthed in 2016 at an Israeli archeological site called Lachish, once a Canaanite city. The inscription, written in Sumerian, is the oldest known sentence written in an alphabet.
Medical history
This week in 1978, U.S. scientists announced the production of human-type insulin by a strain of E. coli bacteria, which had been genetically engineered. The work was a t effort by research teams in California at Genentech Inc. and City of Hope National Medical Center.
Normally, the body produces insulin in the pancreas, programmed by certain genes. The scientists synthesized copies of those genes and inserted them into a weakened lab strain of the intestinal microbe Escherichia coli.
Self-exam
Q: How many bones are present in the human wrist?
a) 32
b) 8
c) 4
d) 12
A: b) 8
Medical myths
Walking is good exercise, but alone, it’s not enough to keep you fit as you age. Walking has been shown to lower the risk of heart disease and certain cancers, plus the risk of premature death. But it doesn’t address the need to build and retain muscle mass, which begins to progressively decline in your 30s. Experts recommend complementing walks with at least two 20-minute strength-training sessions each week.
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
