Who's minding the mint?

At first, this sounds like the symptoms of watching a presidential debate, but in all seriousness, it is truly scary.

When Satnam Singh's Indian American relatives gathered for dinner Tuesday night in Gaithersburg, they shared a typical meal, including a potato stew flavored with mint.

What happened later was far from typical. Singh woke to find six members of his extended family in medical distress: nauseated, disoriented and worsening quickly.

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The six became lethargic, and as the night wore on, they experienced a variety of symptoms, including heart palpitations, vomiting, sweating and loss of consciousness.

Authorities suspect that the mint may have been sprayed with a pesticide and not properly washed. On the other hand, six other family members were not sick, so who knows?

When I was young, we used to drink homemade iced tea with homegrown mint. I guess we didn't spray it with pesticides. That wouldn't have done anything to stop the neighborhood dogs, anyway.

UPDATE (7/11): Probably, it wasn't mint, after all, but rather "a potential deadly weed that apparently was mistakenly used as a cooking ingredient."

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\/\/@t3rm3l0n, the new spam subject line?

Here's a news report that's bound to make guys eat their fruits and vegetables:

Forget the oysters. Texas A&M scientists say watermelon contains ingredients that deliver Viagra-like effects to the body's blood vessels and may even increase the libido.

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Watermelon and some other fruits and vegetables contain phyto-nutrients, including lycopene, beta carotene and citrulline, which are compounds that produce healthy reactions in the body, Patil said.

Specifically, scientists believe it's the citrulline that has the ability to relax blood vessels, much like Viagra does.

(via HotAir) But here's a drawback. Most of the citrulline is found in the rind, so you can just throw out that red stuff with the seeds and eat the green, bitter rind. Mm, mmm!

Oh, yes, one other thing. "Watermelon may not be as organ-specific as Viagra," says Patil. It can do its work throughout your body.

So you should call your doctor if you can't bend your limbs after more than four hours.

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Cutting it

When you get a bunch of doctors together, the talk inevitably turns to bagel injuries. Those of you who don't eat bagels may not realize this true fact: that so many people arrive in the emergency room having sliced their hands in a foolish attempt to slice a bagel that the ER personnel can tell immediately what the cause of the injury is.

So this weekend, during one such discussion, I explained the proper way to cut a bagel, which involves holding the bagel on its edge from above and running the knife through the arch formed by your thumb and forefinger so that it won't slip and cut your hand.

Someone jokiningly suggested that I write a book about the zen of cutting bagels. But I think if I wrote about cutting bagels, I would also want to write about cutting other things, too.

Here's the chapter outline of my book, called "Cutting It."

1. Cutting a bagel.
2. Cutting classes.
3. Cutting up.
4. Cutting corners.
5. Cutting the cheese.
6. Cutting the crap.
7. Cutting bait.
8. Cutting loose.
9. Cutting in line.
10. Cutting the mustard.
11. Cutting to the chase.
12. Cutting taxes.
13. Cutting wit.

I've found that most of these are far safer than cutting a bagel.

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Monday evening linkfest

I've been collecting items that don't necessarily warrant their own post, and I'm going to dump them all here. Don't thank me. It's for your own good.

1. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Sure, Barack Obama is a well groomed and articulate young Negro, but what has the gentleman done for me?" Think no longer. Barack Obama is your new bicycle. Don't forget to keep clicking once you get there. (via Ace)

2. I'll tell you, though, what Barack Obama's done for a little townhouse in Greenwich Village that disappeared one day in 1970. Undoubtedly out of compassion for their loss, Obama has befriended some of the folks in the Weathermen unit with the guys who blew it up.

3. Speaking of Obama, an Obama supporter was choking his Hillary-supporting brother-in-law, who responded by stabbing the Obama supporter. Did you understand that? No? Well, read this, then. (via JammieWearingFool, via HotAir) And here's the punch line from the article: "On a side note: Voter registration records reveal that Ortiz, who supports Clinton, is registered Republican." Although that doesn't mean a heck of a lot these days.

4. Nobody but nobody gives Governor O'Malley credit for dealing with the crime problem other than the superannuated WaPo columnist David Broder. Maryland Conservatarian has got the goods.

5. Martin Kramer has great news for you if you enjoy being majorly depressed about the state of academics at certain Ivy League universities located in Morningside Heights. Amnon Rubinstein, a visiting Israeli professor has written a column about his time at Columbia. In Kramer's words: "Rubinstein discovered that the only truly active friends of Israel on campus were orthodox Jewish students. For him, a self-avowed secular humanist, it came as crushing disappointment that like-minded Israelis weren't standing up." Disappointment, yes; surprise, no. As Kramer points out, a professorship of Israel studies was set up in 2005, but the search committee included two notoriously anti-Israel professors. The result is that an Israeli was hired who "isn't a hard-left post-Zionist, but [is] far enough left to have signed a May 2002 open letter by some Israeli faculty" supporting Israelis who refused to serve as soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.

6. On the lighter side, if The Graduate were being produced today by the U.N., it would not be "plastic" but rather "bugs." The headline says it all: "U.N. Conference Promotes Insect-Eating for Everyone From Famine Victims to Astronauts." (via Fark)

7. For those of you who are afraid to undergo a colonoscopy, please read this important public service announcement. From Dave Barry. (also via Fark) This will ease the fear, or at least keep you laughing about it. Regarding the "prep" -- that stuff you're supposed to drink to clean out your colon -- Barry writes: "The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground."

8. How do you know if your newspaper is on life support? One answer is: The entire 8-page sports section has two quarter-page ads, and they're both for non-medical remedies for erectile dysfunction. And I use the word "remedies" loosely. (via Ace)

9. Related: How do you know if your country is on life support? Answer: Your hospitals buy unisex underwear for the patients: "Male and female patients admitted to Swedish hospitals will soon be required to wear the same underwear." But there's a silver lining to these underwear. Now, some moron on MTV can ask Hillary this question: "Boxers or briefs?"

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Up in the air

If you're an Israeli pilot in the air, you've got a lot to worry about. But maybe you're also thinking of this or this or this.

Which leads to the question why "Israeli fighter pilots may soon be receiving Viagra-style pills to help them to perform better at greater heights, according to a study by military officials released yesterday."

Apparently, a study of mountain climbers at high altitudes found that the substance found in various E.D. drugs helped fight fatigue and dizziness. Keeping the pilots up in the air. You can even use it on Passover with the right preparations.

(hat tip: fee simple)

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Yeeeeeeek!!

DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE (or my post).

It's about Morgellons, the weird disease in which the victim has horrible itching and strange fibers can be seen coming out of the skin. Here's one researcher's theory:

It all boils down to this: mutant worms.

Harvey hypothesizes that a type of nematode, a wormlike parasite that lives in the soil as well as in the guts or lungs of about half the animals on the planet, mutated somewhere in the 1970s in Southeast Asia and jumped from animals to humans. The parasite is easily spread through the fecal-oral route if someone, for example, is out working in the garden, fails to wash his or her hands thoroughly and then eats an orange. Or it gets into the lungs by inhaling sputum or by kissing. The worm then takes up residence in the colon, Harvey theorizes, and the body's immune system holds it in check.

But when the immune system falters, the worms swarm in the body. That's what happens, Harvey hypothesizes, after a human is infected with a strain of bacteria first reported in 1986, Chlamydophila pneumonia. These bacteria like to live in immune cells, Harvey says, and they feast on those cells' energy. With the host's immune system compromised, the mutant nematodes begin reproducing exponentially, Harvey suspects. They burrow a hole in the wall of the colon, then usually travel at night through the bloodstream or the lymphatic system or crawl in hordes between the layers of the skin, like other species of nematodes are known to do, to the parts of the body with the most blood flow: the face, head and nose. There, a cranial nerve leads right into the brain. A pileup of worms could jam blood and oxygen flow to the brain, Harvey says. "That may explain the psychological symptoms," including the hallucinations, he says.

It may explain why Pam Winkler took herself to the emergency room recently. She said that a huge bump had appeared on the side of her skull in the middle of the night. By morning, she said, the bump was gone, but she could feel crawling all over her face. She wasn't making it up, she swore. And she put her stepsister, with whom she's been living since she got out of the state hospital, on the phone. "I can see them. They're moving down from her head to her eye," said Karen DeWeese. "They're about one and a half inches long and a half-inch wide. They look like bubbles under the skin." The ER doctor later found nothing.

The fibers, according to Harvey's theory, are really the hard shells, which he calls cuticles, that these worms shed at five stages as they grow from egg to larvae to adult. The red fibers are the males, he says. Blue fibers are female. "Using a 2,000-power microscope, you can see inside them," he says. "They look like little stovepipes to me. I can tell the blue ones are female because there's a kink in the middle for the sexual organs and some kind of pouch. And we have pictures of them laying thousands of eggs."

"If you write this theory, it's probably going to sound like someone's come from the mental institution," Harvey says. "But the fact is that this is a real disease, and it appears to be growing."

Other researchers think this theory "goes too far."

Me, I've been itching since I read this, and I know I'm going to have nightmares.

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Some of what she's having

I regret to report that this story appears to be rather questionable. (Content NSFW.)

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Visitor of the Day -- 11/1

I seriously recommend that she see a doctor, dude.

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The medical problems of evil

First, we hear that Karl Marx's skin condition may have "influenced" his writings. (via HotAir)

"In addition to reducing his ability to work, which contributed to his depressing poverty, hidradenitis greatly reduced his self-esteem," said Shuster, who published his findings in the British Journal of Dermatology.

"This explains his self-loathing and alienation, a response reflected by the alienation Marx developed in his writing."

Yeah, that's the ticket. Self-loathing and alienation caused by his medical problems. He didn't really believe any of that stuff about the owning the means of production and the exploitation of labor.

Next, we hear that Hitler had a major problem with flatulence. (via Fark)

It may sound like a Woody Allen scenario, but medical historians are unanimous that Adolf was the victim of uncontrollable flatulence. Spasmodic stomach cramps, constipation and diarrhea, possibly the result of nervous tension, had been Hitler’s curse since childhood and only grew more severe as he aged. As a stressed-out dictator, the agonizing digestive attacks would occur after most meals: Albert Speer recalled that the Führer, ashen-faced, would leap up from the dinner table and disappear to his room.

This was an embarrassing problem for a ruthless leader of the Third Reich. With uncharacteristic concern for his fellow human beings, Hitler had first tried to cure himself when he was a rising politician in 1929 by poring over medical manuals, coming to the conclusion that a largely veg diet would calm his turbulent digestion as well as make his farts less offensive to the nose.

At least, the article doesn't claim Hitler devised the Endlösung as a result of that condition. And as much of a fan of flatulence humor as I am, I strongly object to anything like this that humanizes the man, even if it also makes him look silly. I'm not saying it's not true; about that, I'm not going to do any independent research. I'm just saying that spending time discussing his aroma instead of his evil is not, on balance, a good thing. (Having just done it myself.)

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The dangers of externomingent acts

What is it with the Croatians, anyway? Last year, a Croatian lumberjack gets a kidney transplant from a woman and suddenly starts doing housework.

And now, a Croatian biker, minding his own business, does his own business outside and gets hit by lightning. Bad enough, but after waking up in the hospital, he has a chat with the doctors.

"Doctors said the lightning went through my body and because I was wearing rubber boots it earthed itself through my penis."

Maybe he was wearing rubbers on the wrong part of his body.

But it seems all's well that ends well:

"Thankfully, the doctors said that there would be no lasting effects, and my penis will function normally eventually."

Although if I were in his place, I'd definitely check out that word "eventually."

(via HotAir)

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Practicing with privates in public

Have you ever gone in to see the doctor and -- I'm directing this question mostly to the men, because the answer for the women is obvious -- the doctor examines your personal regions? And by "personal regions," I mean somewhere south of the equator?

Well, during those moments in which you're not thinking "Why me?" does it ever cross your mind to wonder how doctors learn to do examinations of personal regions? Or do you assume that medical schools are still using those old Mr. Penis and Ms. Vagina hand puppets that we had in our "health" classes in high school?

Ha, ha! You are so behind the times.

Out at the medical school at Northwestern, they're going to pr0n shops to buy anatomically correct body parts for students to practice on. As Dave Barry, whose blog was my source for this article, would say, I'm not making this up.

[Dr. Carla] Pugh, 41, has patented technology that combines portions of fully formed anatomical mannequins with computers to teach medical students to do exams on the body’s most private and sensitive areas — genitalia, breasts and rectums.

These are the exams, she said, that students are often most afraid of and that many medical school instructors, themselves often long-time practicing physicians, still find to be a source of embarrassment.

I know you guys have trouble even speaking a coherent sentence to women who have breasts. Can you imagine what it's like for a doctor to have to speak to women who also have genitalia? Much less to men who have penii.

As Dr. Pugh says: "These guys have to be able to do it and act professional, so that adds a lot of pressure."

So good old Dr. Pugh invented simulators, and I'd bet my bottom (heh!) dollar that the med students call them "stimulators."

Simulators are arranged at various stations according to exam type. At the prostate station, for example, several models of the male posterior are arranged on a table in various positions.

Inside each plastic model — yes, they have a fully formed anus and rectum — are paper-thin sensors that measure a student’s touch and send individual readings to an attached computer monitor.

You remember the board game "Operation," right? Well, these simulators are basically real-life versions of "Operation." If you touch the simulator's anus the wrong way, a human voice shouts, "Get your hands off me!" and you get a nasty shock. Oops, sorry, wrong "Operation" game. Here's actually what happens:

Students show up at the station for a brief overview from an instructing physician and then moments later, fingers are inserted, line readings from sensors go up and down on the computer screen, questions are asked and answered.

Sounds pretty boring, eh?

Well, not to worry. You can spend your time as a med student making scatalogical jokes: "An instructor assures a student that, yes, you can tell a patient it’s OK to pass wind if necessary during the exam and ask for a warning first."

This is why we love the medical profession so much. Almost as much as lawyers.

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Naptime

I often nap on the Metro into work and again on my way home, so I was pleased to learn that a study showed that "a little midday snooze seems to reduce risks for fatal heart problems, especially among men."

But the news for women was equivocal:

It's likely that women reap similar benefits from napping, but not enough of them died during the study to be sure, said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, the study's senior author and a researcher at Harvard University and the University of Athens Medical School.

Sometimes women can be totally uncooperative.

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