For The Union-Tribune
How to prevent your first stroke (which might also be your last)
More than 600,000 Americans suffer their first stroke each year, but up to 80 percent may be preventable through measures like treating hypertension, elevated cholesterol, high blood sugar and obesity.
The American Stroke Association just added three new recommendations for prevention:
1. Consider taking a GLP-1 drug (Ozempic, Wegovy and others) to lower weight and reduce cardiovascular risk.
2. Recognize and address social determinants that boost stroke risk, such as structural racism, lower access to health care and less availability of healthy food or walkable neighborhoods.
3. Focus on sex- and gender-specific factors that raise risk, such as oral contraceptives, high blood pressure during pregnancy, premature birth, endometriosis, premature ovarian failure, early onset menopause and taking estrogens for gender affirmation in transgender women and gender-diverse people.
Body of knowledge
Some animals, including dogs and cats, have specialized taste buds and can taste water. Humans cannot; what we taste are chemicals and impurities in the water.
Get me that. Stat!
By 2070, it’s projected that overlap between humans and more than 22,000 vertebrate species will grow to nearly 57 percent of the Earth’s land surface — a consequence of human population growth.
That does not bode well for many animals, because humans don’t share well.
Doc talk
Melgrim — a synonym for migraine, as in the headaches, but the word can also mean “a whim” or “fancy”
Phobia of the week
Barophobia — fear of, weight for it, gravity; also the fear of possibly falling from a height, being hit by a heavy object or seeing images of outer space where, ironically, there may not be any gravity
Best medicine
A man goes to the doctor. The man has a strawberry growing out of his head. The doctor says, “Let me give you some cream to put on that.”
Hypochondriac’s guide
Akinetic mutism is a “disorder of diminished motivation,” which is not to be confused with being lazy or a laggard. Sometimes called “coma vigil,” sufferers are not able to move or speak, but appear to be conscious and alert.
The condition is usually caused by damage to the frontal lobes of the brain, either from a viral infection, stroke, brain tumor, carbon monoxide poisoning or physical trauma. There is no cure. Treatments are limited.
Observation
“Health food makes me sick.”
— American writer Calvin Trillin (1935-)
Medical history
This week in 1933, freeze-dried human blood serum was prepared for the first time in the U.S. at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Blood serum is the clear fluid in the blood that contains the proteins and antibodies formed by the body’s immune system to protect against infection. The powdered blood serum, mixed with sterile water, was used successfully for transfusions to prevent childhood diseases and widely employed by the military during World War II.
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 2003, the Ig Nobel Prize in interdisciplinary research went to three Stockholm University researchers for their report “Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans.” Specifically, they found chickens preferred faces consistent with the human sexual preferences of college students.
Med school
Q: What do these medical imaging technology acronyms stand for?
1. CT
2. MRI
3. PET
4. X-ray
A: 1. Computed tomography, also known as computerized axial tomography or a CAT scan. 2. Magnetic resonance imaging. 3. Positron emission tomography. 4. The x in X-ray stands for “unknown,” coined by German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen, who could not identify the mysterious radiation he had discovered.
Epitaphs
“Here lies one Wood
Enclosed in wood
One Wood
Within another.
The outer wood
Is very good:
We cannot praise
The other.”
— Headstone for Beza Wood, age 45, who died in 1837 and is buried in Winslow, Maine
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
