Just a reminder: Vitamins aren't inert. They actually do things in your body and
we don't totally understand yet what all they do, how they do it, and how much extra vitamin supplementation is too much. Meanwhile, the vitamin and supplement industry remains largely unregulated. Most doctors probably wouldn't tell you to stop taking vitamins, but the concerns voiced by Dr. Paul Offit in a story at CNN aren't ridiculous and should help convince you to make sure that you're talking with your doctor about the supplements and vitamins you take, and to be leery of megadosing on any vitamin.
— Maggie
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In general, women outlive men. This is not a new idea. But what you might not know is that the effect can't be explained by some simple hand-waving about risk-taking men, or war, or the allure of the Marlboro Man. In fact, the tendency for men to die at a higher frequency than women happens at every age group — even in utero. Fetal males die more often than fetal females.
So what makes the men-folk so delicate? NPR's Robert Krulwich investigates.
— Maggie
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Two doctors have written a really fascinating analysis of the history and economics of health insurance that
will make our current U.S. system seem even more ridonculous than it already did.
— Maggie
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Cory Doctorow at 12:09 pm • • 
Shintaro Hayashi, a Tokyo prosthetics maker, spent most of this life making medical prostheses for people who'd lost breasts, limbs, etc, but now does a booming trade in fake pinkie fingers for ex-yakuza gangsters who don't want to broadcast their criminal past (yakuza members who screw up have their pinkies lopped off in retaliation).
The doctor molds silicone prosthetic pinkies, made to seamlessly mask the amputation, making for a smoother transition to the outside world. Priced at nearly $3,000 each, the fingers are carefully painted, to match the exact skin color of the client. Former yakuza members, who make up 5 percent of Hayashi's business, often keep several sets of fingers for different seasons – the light skinned version for winter, and a tanned look for summer.
Hayashi sums up his clientele in three categories: Those who are dragged into his office by girlfriends worried about their reputations, ex-members who are eager to move up the corporate ladder but worried about the repercussions of their past being exposed, longtime yakuza who have no intention of getting out, but need to cover up for a child's wedding or grandchild's sporting event.
"Many people keep a fist, to prevent detection," he said. "But there comes a point where you can't hide your fingers any longer. Some people have one joint severed, others have worse," he said.
Prosthetic Fingers Help Reform Japan's Feared Yakuza Gangsters [Akiko Fujita/ABC]
Cory Doctorow at 7:00 am • •
Miss Cakehead writes, "The Depressed Cake Shop will be like nothing ever seen before as it will sell ONLY grey coloured cakes. Raising money for mental health charities, it will also provide a platform for discussion of the illness. The pop up is based in the UK but with other events starting to be planned around the globe."
The Depressed Cake Shop
Despite
regulatory headaches, a growing community of people with Crohn's, ulcerative colitis and other IBDs, as well as those with
C. difficile, are turning to fecal transplants,
often resorting to DIY poop-enemas.
— Cory
•
An
effective cure for a brutal bacterial infection is gaining popularity, but there is a price to recognition:
the FDA is clamping down on the procedure while researching it as an "investigational new drug." Now that doctors have to do a mountain of paperwork, will it result in a black market for backstreet blendastools?
— Rob
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Cory Doctorow at 4:00 pm • •
Elijah sez, "Recent news has been all about the commercial use of 3D printing - from food to weaponry. But recently, doctors at the University of Michigan used quick thinking and 3D printing technology to save the life of a 2-month-old child with a rare disease."
The scaffold was made of a bioresorbable material, polycaprolactone, so it would dissolve and be absorbed by the body after about three years. At this point, his airways should be fully developed and no longer need the stent.
The doctors used high-resolution X-ray scans of one of Kaiba's healthy windpipes to design a computer model for the life-saving brace.
Laser-equipped 3-D printers crafted the device in a few hours, and the university obtained emergency clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implant it on February 9, 2012 at C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Ann Arbor.
"It was amazing. As soon as the splint was put in, the lungs started going up and down for the first time and we knew he was going to be OK," said Green.
3-D Printing Saves Baby's Life [VIDEO]
(Thanks, Elijah Wolfson!)
The oldest person in the world died this year. But don't worry if you missed the event.
The oldest person in the world will likely die next year, as well. In fact, according to mathematician Marc van Leeuwen, an "oldest person in the world" will die roughly every .65 years.
— Maggie
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Cory Doctorow at 11:38 am • •
They just don't make ads like this anymore. "Guy with pince-nez" is great visual shorthand for "Authority figure."
Contest Entry.. Away with trusses!
Cory Doctorow at 6:00 am • •
Gmoke sez, "Susan Murcott and her team's factory making clay filters for Pure Home Water in Ghana. Over 100,000 served, so far."
They're shooting for 1,000,000.
Pure Home Water, Ghana: AfriClay Filters
The Body Horrors blog has a new recurring series called Microbial Misadventures — all about times when people met disease-causing microbes under less-than-normal circumstances. It starts with an interesting question:
Given the fact that most anthrax infections come from eating tainted meat, how did a vegetarian end up with the disease in 2009? Two-word hint: Drum circle.
— Maggie
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You've probably heard before that
people with schizophrenia are more likely to have been born in winter than other seasons — and that this weird fact could be linked to their mothers coming down with the flu, or suffering from Vitamin D deficiency. A new study has now found that
people with bipolar disorder had a greater likelihood of being born to women who had had the flu while pregnant. It's a strange connection, and might just be correlation. So far, doctor's don't really understand why a virus-infected mama would lead to her child developing mental illness later in life.
— Maggie
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Our great, collective, ongoing realization that wiping out all the bacteria in our bodies may not actually be a great idea marches on. At Scientific American, Deborah Franklin writes about chronic halitosis — the sort of bad breath that doesn't go away with a simple brushing — and
scientists' efforts to cure it by encouraging the growth of some mouth bacteria, instead of pouring Listerine on everything and letting God sort it out.
— Maggie
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Mark Frauenfelder at 10:22 am • •
Two recent papers about heart disease from the Cleveland Clinic are making the rounds. The studies report that red meat and eggs cause heart disease because our gut bacteria converts carnitine and choline into Trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO), a heart disease trigger.
At Huffington Post, Chris Kresser has questions about the papers:
[W]hile at first glance the papers from Dr. Hazen's group might appear to be the final nail in the coffin for the omnivorous among us, a closer inspection of their data reveals some troubling questions. First, a study back in 1999 found that seafood generates much higher levels of TMAO than red meat, eggs, or any of the other 46 foods tested. One species of fish, halibut, produced 107 times as much TMAO as beef, and 53 times as much TMAO as eggs. If high TMAO levels cause cardiovascular disease, and eating fish increases TMAO more than any other food, we'd expect to see high rates of heart disease in people who eat the most fish. Yet that is the opposite of what research shows. In fact, some studies have found eating more fish (particularly cold-water, fatty fish like salmon) reduces the risk of heart attack by a greater margin than statin drugs!
In fact, whole grains could play a role in elevating TMAO levels:
In their second paper, Dr. Hazen's team raises the possibility that the foods we eat aren't the primary driving force behind our TMAO levels, because most people are able to excrete excess TMAO that accumulates in the blood via the urine. This suggests that something else may be to blame for high TMAO. What could that be? One possibility, which the researchers themselves demonstrated in the first paper, is that differences in our gut bacteria could account for the higher TMAO levels observed in some people. They showed that those with greater amounts of a type of bacteria called Prevotella in their gut generated more TMAO after eating carnitine. And what might lead to a higher concentration of Prevotella in the gut? Ironically, previous research has shown that the people who eat large amounts of whole grains are the most likely to fit this pattern. This would suggest that a diet high in whole grains -- and not red meat or eggs -- could increase the risk of heart disease by elevating TMAO in the blood.
Red Meat and Eggs on Trial Again, But Jury Is Still Out
