Sunny Sneezes

There are so many myths when it comes to sneezing, like your eyes will pop out if you keep them open while sneezing. This, has been disproven by the myth busters. However, the myth that “staring at lights or the sun will help you sneeze,” is,  believe it or not, true!

However only to 18-35% of the population. They have what is called the photic sneeze reflex or (PSR). Some silly scientists like to call it the ACHOOS though which cleverly stands for Autosomal-Dominant Compulsive Helio-Opthalmic Outbursts of Sneezing. 

By shifting your eyeballs (oh yes. that’s right I’m back to the eyes. get used to it.) to bright light, the pupils have to dilate very quickly, and this sudden change in light intensity triggers the optic nerve. But for some weird reason, in the 18-35% of the peoples who have the ACHOOS mutation,  their brains mistake this signal for that of the trigeminal nerve, which is one of the other 13 cranial  nerves… we’ll get into cranial nerves later ;) 

Well anyways the trigeminal nerve is all up in your nasal pathway, the brain mistakes this mistaken firing as irritation to the nose and AAACHOOO. There ya go. a big ol’ sneeze for ya. 

How Alcohol Kills…. Bacteria

Purell and all those other hand sanitizers are often made up 60+% ethanol content, and at work we use 20% Ethanol to to clean our benches and kill bacteria. I always took it for granted, but here’s actually what happens. 

The membranes of cells is comprised of phospholipids. easy enough right? normally these are hydrophobic, however, ethanol (and other short chained alcohols) are an amazing organic solvent, it’s also miscible with water! (and we used it a ton in o-chem) anyways, because alcohol can get through the cell membranes, unlike water, it’s able to disrupt the structure and therefore function. As it enters further into the cell is goes ahead and wreaks havoc onto the proteins by denaturing them. 

Apparently using lower concentrations of alcohol is actually more effective in killing bacteria than 100%. When there’s some water the bacteria absorbs the alcohol at a slower rate, so that the bacteria doesn’t “realize” what is happening. Where as 100% may kill some of them very quickly, but some bacteria are able to bounce back? I’m not sure. the source for this can be found below

source

Restless Leg Syndrome

My Mom thinks it’s genetic, this incessant need to practically vibrate my legs in almost all situations. (and no that is not sexual in any way) As a matter of fact, as I type this right now, my legs are swinging back and forth right now, but I don’t have any desire to stop, and I know that if I do, I’ll just start up again.

My mom says her yoga teacher said its good for you.. but then again, we all know how I feel about the validity of advice given by Yogis. 

One of the college essays I had to write had the prompt, “What’s a habit you have and how does it define you?” I completely BS’d this whole thing about my leg shaking and how it just shows how eager I am to participate, and be involved. I tried making it metaphorical, figurative, the whole deal.

Well  now I’m here to find out why I really do shake my legs like a dog wags his tail. 

Now apparently there are those who experience RLS even during sleep, luckily I’m not one of those. 

RLS which also falls under the name of Willis-Ekbom Disease, is categorized as a neurological disorder. 

The NIH considers it idiopathic, meaning there is no known cause.

     But research has shown that it can be related to the Dopamine and Iron system. 

So they think Iron deficiency could be a contributor to RLS, but only 20% of RLS sufferers seem to have such a deficiency. 

     They’ve conducted Iron studies, and they look that it affects the substantial nigra in the brain, so, they think that part of the brain is important for the wiggly. 

BUT! My mom is right! more than 60% seem to be genetic resembling, (Wiki says, [it is] inherited in an autosomal dominant fashion with variable penetrance”) Which would explain why almost all the females on my moms side be waving their legs like me! 

Meh. This wasn’t as interesting as I thought. My leg has been shaking through this whole time though, if that is interesting. Probably more annoying than anything. 

Hot Yoga

^ Defintiely one of the harder poses (Holding a wide lunge, with your upper body adding weight to the side where you already have to support more)

It always makes me laugh when the yogi (I think thats the right term) says stuff like, “twisting your spine will remove toxins from your body”, or “grabbing your foot harder will help your arthritis.” 

Either way, Hot yoga is no joke. I always used to think Yoga was silly, to me sitting and holding a pose was for models, there was no physical stress involved. It was something old asian people and hippies did in the park. But then I had these two buff male friends of mine rave about how awesome it was, they even sported male lululemons (it’s a yoga brand thing) So eventually a groupon came up and I tried it, holy shit. 

I used to do XC, and this made running 8 miles seem easy, in some ways you’re basically doing p90x or ballet (depending on the type of hot yoga) in slow motion, in a 105 degree room (like a sauna). So it is the equivalent of running 6 miles, in that you burn approximately 600 calories. 

Anyways, this isn’t much about science, but it is about health. I really think you should all keep a lookout for hot yoga deals (google offers, groupon, livingsocial, etc…) and try it! You feel sooo relaxed after. Today, I had a pretty fast-paced and therefore stressful LONG day in lab, and came back with a headache, but after going to hot yoga, I feel like I could go on a run! It also makes you very conscious of how you live. Like you have to eat well and drink well in order to perform well in Hot Yoga. 

AND It’s not just for girls, guys, you should all go because a.) you’ll meet flexible ladies in sports bras ;) and b.) it’s really really good for you!! I always see these superrr elderly guys being more flexible than me, and I am simply bewildered. 

Okay there goes my hippie rant of the … time unit here. 

LOLS this is funny:

Elephantiasis [NSFW?] oh nvm it’s Tumblr

Elephantiasis, often mispronounced elephantitis, at least by me, is well as you can see from the picture, when your legs experience extreme thickening of underlying tissues, and makes your legs, or other limbs, look like “those of an elephant”

In often cases, the genitalia can be affected. For males the scrotum becomes enlarged, and according to wikipedia, there have been cases where they grow to the size of a firkin basketball. Holy moly. And then the penis basically becomes retracted into all the other skin thats become super thick, anndd to make it even ore gross, or whatever, the spermatic cords are longer?

Normal penis v. elephentiasis… 

For females the vulva just gets nasty large.— btw I did not search the above pics they showed up when I was researching this lol, and because no vag’s showed up, I am not gonna go look, cus that’s going to give me some serious nightmares.

There’s two ways people can get elephantiasis, lymphatic filariasis, or nonfilarial, which basically just means, parasitic and non parasitic respectively. 

Parasites that can be responsible for elephantiasis are “Wuchereria bancrofti”, “Brugia Malayi”, and “Brugia Timori.” These tend to be roundworms, and these roundworms are transmitted by mosquitos. 

Non-Parasitic reason is often from exposure to certain chemicals that can be found in the “red soil” of Africa, and these penetrate through the soles of people’s feet, and end up blocking their lymphatic system.

So I kind of went into it, and you could probably tell because of the name, but it’s a lymphatic problem. Some people even have hereditary lymphedema, which mirrors a lot of what elephantiasis is, basically what happens is your lymph nodes get do not develop properly, in this case however, they’ve been infected. And because these lymph nodes had now been infected to the point where they block the flow of lymph,  the swelling and inflammation of the lymphatic vessels (streptococcal lymphangitis), and when these swell too much, it triggers for other vessels around it to swell as well, and they just begin  that snowball effect of… well you already got it. 

Demographically, Africa seems to be the most affected, due to the soil and exposure to the parasitic mosquitos. I think. 

Alsoo something really gross, is the surgery to remove all the excess, I won’t shatter your eyes like I already have with basketball sized scrotums, but if you’re curious: http://www.documentingreality.com/forum/attachments/f149/363936d1337429154-elephantiasis-removal-surgery-elephantiasis-4.jpg

Optimism means you’re defunct

Recently I got an iPad which means that now when I go to the gym, I just watch loads of Ted Talks… 

anyways, 

something that I had come across before was the concept that optimism was a defect in the brain, and in some ways, it has been scientifically proven that optimism bias is indeed a sign that something isn’t working right. Your right inferior frontal gyrus doesn’t respond as much or as well if you are overly optimistic. But actually, I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with that, it could be easily said that your right frontal inferior gyrus is overreacting as a pessimist. 

They even have these weird magnetic things that can temporarily play with that region of your brain, decreasing it’s function and making you “more optimistic”

Something interesting that was said during the talk was that a lot of people think, those with high expectations will not be happy, because they will keep getting disappointed. But a lot of what happiness is, comes from the building of expectation, and the anticipation. The truth is that you spend more time anticipating something, say a kiss, or a prize, than the actual time you spend receiving, or doing whatever action it is supposed to bring you happiness. So if you do get disappointed in the end, wasn’t the buildup fun? So, according to the TEDtalk, that’s why optimists, and those with high expectations are generally more happy people. 

Sorry this is getting all philosophical, just me rambling… THEN again there’s also the good ol’ Oedipus Rex tale, where the famous quote, “Don’t judge a man happy till he’s dead.” can be assessed. Does this mean that if you live a long life of happiness, but the last month, you are absolutely miserable to the point where, well you should read oedipus. But this is such a somber way to look at everything. 

I am sure I am one of those delusional optimists, thinking that everything will be okay, to the point where sometimes I don’t prepare enough precautions, and just cross my fingers and hope everything will be okay. I can honestly say that I think I am happy most of the time, but I really need to change lol. It’s ironic because several of my dads favorite quotes include, “hope for the best, prepare for the worst” and “People don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan” He’s one of those types who has learned to balance optimism and realism, pragmatic. When it comes for him to give talks, he makes sure he has several backups on his computer, brings a USB, and a CD with the presentation on it, makes sure to link it to drop box, and email himself a copy, just so that he never ends up empty handed and screwed. 

This probably should belong on my personal blog… 

Doubts

I’m having serious doubts on pursuing Medicine. I will have to pay my debts for 30 years, meaning till im 65. I hope through this blog people know how much I love what I believe “medicine” to be, and that I genuinely enjoy it. However, there is SO much shit you have to deal with. Only 54% of doctors say they would do it over again, and 11% consider them rich. I’m not in it for the money, but I really believe debt is slavery. I’m scared at the prospect of the competition, right now in undergrad, I feel like I am my own competition. But at medical school, choosing specialties and what not, it’s going to be scary. 

But then just now. Mid-typing this, I read this article
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/21/why-would-anyone-choose-to-become-a-doctor/

and I know that this is what I want to try to do. No matter how much of a fucking pain the ass its going to be.

I recently worked with a third-year student who’d just interviewed a patient with chest pain. The chest pain turned out to be nothing serious, just some acid reflux — a fairly ho-hum case in a medical clinic. But the student’s eyes were ablaze with fervor. “This was such an exciting case,” she said. “I had the chance to figure out whether or not the chest pain was life-threatening. And the patient was so happy when I reassured him that it wasn’t.”

The awe of discovering the human body. The honor of being trusted to give advice. The gratitude for helping someone through a difficult illness. These things never grow old. 

THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE. Is why, I’m going to stick with this. Sometimes doubts are good, I guess, because now I know why I’m here.