For The San Diego Union-Tribune
Just take two aspirin
A year ago, researchers published findings in the august New England Journal of Medicine reporting that aspirin was just as effective as injectable blood thinners at preventing life-threatening blood clots after surgery.
They argued that this was good news. It improved health equity (cheaper meds) and quality of life (no needles). But much to their dismay, the researchers report that a recent survey found no dramatic change in hospital practices, which continue to rely primarily on injectable blood thinners.
Body of knowledge
In a single day, each foot can sweat the equivalent of half a glass of water. (Each foot has roughly 125,000 sweat glands.)
Get me that. Stat!
The U.S. spends nearly 18 percent of gross domestic product on health care, yet Americans die younger and less healthy than residents of other high-income countries, according to The Commonwealth Fund. Americans also have the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries — and the highest rates of avoidable deaths.
Stories for the waiting room
A new study reports that getting shingles — a reactivation in adulthood of the same virus that causes chickenpox in childhood — is associated with 20 percent higher long-term risk for subjective cognitive decline. That’s when someone’s memory gets worse or they become confused more often. The researchers did not explain how the virus might be linked to cognition.
Doc talk
Resting energy expenditure — The rate at which the body burns calories while at rest. Resting energy expenditure s for 60 to 75 percent of daily calories burned.
Phobia of the week
Koinoniphobia — fear of rooms full of people
Observation
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune, most of which never happened.”
— French philosopher Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), who popularized the essay as a literary genre, blending causal anecdotes with autobiography
Medical history
This week in 1683, the Dutch scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society reporting his discovery of microscopic living “animalcules” (live bacteria). He had made observations on the plaque between his own teeth: “a little white matter, which is as thick as if ’twere batter.”
Looking at these samples with his microscope, Leeuwenhoek reported, “I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort … had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a pike does through the water. The second sort … oft-times spun round like a top … and these were far more in number.”
Incidentally, what we now consider the modern toothbrush was not invented for another 97 years, so maybe van Leeuwenhoek gets a semi- on dental care, though other oral hygiene devices had already existed for millennia.
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 2000, the Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry went to three researchers at the University of Pisa and one at UC San Diego for their discovery that, biochemically speaking, romantic love may be indistinguishable from having severe obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Self-exam
Q: In a human, the left lung has two of these but the right lung has three. What are they?
a) Fissures
b) Muscles
c) Lobes
d) Pleura
A: c) Lobes. A person’s lungs are divided into lobes, which are separated from one another by tissue fissures. The right lung has three major lobes; the left lung, which is slightly smaller because of the asymmetrical position of the heart, has two lobes.
Medical myths
There is no empirical evidence proving that eating a lot of sugar causes hyperactivity in kids. Multiple studies have found that neither sugar nor the artificial sweetener aspartame affected behavior or cognitive function among children whose parents perceived them as high-energy “sugar sensitive,” even when intake exceeded typical dietary levels.
In other words, when kids get hyper at a birthday party, it’s the party (and all its stimuli), not the cake, that is revving them up.
Epitaphs
“Laugh. Don’t Weep. It Feels Better.”
— Headstone of James R. Bechtold (1956-2007). The headstone also features busts of Moe, Curly and Larry, the Three Stooges.
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
