Tag Archives: medicine

This just in: U.S. vet says get pets high, maaaaan!

Posted by gruesomegreg on

With a couple states having legalized the herb on the West Coast, it’s probably just a matter of time before medical marijuana starts to be commonly prescribed to…  dogs and cats!?  At least that’s what Dr. Doug Kramer advocates.  The L.A. based veterinarian told Vice that pot prolonged the life of his ailing pooch.  “At the first dosage, she was up and around. I didn’t cure her. It was just a question of increasing her quality of life and putting off inevitably euthanizing her. ”  See that, folks?  Weed makes your life better—at least if you’re a dog.

But Kramer says he also prescribes pot to cats, telling Vice “We’re using it on cats as much, if not more [than on dogs], as an appetite stimulant. Cats are finicky, especially when they’re really sick.”  Hmm, I wonder if the same treatment could be provided to kids who don’t eat their Brussels sprouts…  Maybe not, but the vet suggests that pigs, chickens, monkeys and rats could also use a little THC.

Just don’t blow the smoke in their faces.  “It kills me because it devalues what I’m trying to do,” Kramer tells Vice, adding “ the last thing you want is for people to do that. The dog doesn’t need the medication in that situation.”  Instead, the good doctor recommends “a glycerin tincture,” which can be used in place of oil or butter in homemade dog biscuits—or brownies, if your pet is into that. ;)

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COMMENT OF THE DAY: If he comes too soon, he probably can’t cook, either…

Posted by gruesomegreg on

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2271121/Sexercise-Forget-Average-person-burns-21-calories-having-sex.html

A shocking study from the New England Journal of Medicine has dispelled several commonly-held weight-loss myths, most notably that banging—with friends or strangers—burns calories.  As the University of Alabama at Birmingham discovered (just when I had already exhausted my redneck sex jokes, dadgummit!), the average sex session only burns off 21 calories, about as much as a brisk walk.  Perhaps even more disappointing, it only lasts an average of six minutes.

Thus, in seizing the day, one Englishwoman has decided to publish the results of her own, completely unscientific findings; namely that men who can’t last in the sack don’t spend much time with a vacuum cleaner, either:

cotd131

This appears somewhat contradictory to yesterday’s scientific study, which determined that men who do less housework have more sex.  Then again, you can probably do it more often when you only do it for six minutes at a time…

FRENCH WORD OF THE DAY: Bedaine

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Bedaine: A large, distended stomach, ie pot belly or beer belly.  Sometimes spelled with an accent on the e.

As seen in: « En plus d’être utile aux hommes souffrant de troubles de l’érection, ce “sexo-actif” pourrait peut-être un jour être utilisé comme “pilule minceur” pour éliminer la bedaine ! »

(Translation: “In addition to being useful to men suffering from erectile difficulties, this sexual stimulant could also one day be used as a diet pill to get rid of the beer gut!”)

http://www.rtl.be/pourlui/article/Insolite-le-viagra-aiderait-aussi-les-hommes-a-mincir-176527.htm

Scientists create fake poop—for larger, firmer bowel movements?

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Seeing as breast implants are often considered unattractive nowadays and butt implants are fraught with complications from the use of industrial-grade silicone, I suppose it’s only natural that the synthetic transplant industry looks for a new product to market.  That said, reports suggest that their latest efforts have gone to shit—literally.  “The fake stool, dubbed ‘RePOOPulate,’ is intended to replace donated human stool used in fecal transplants,” according to The Canadian Press.

Mind you, people won’t be getting rePOOPulated for cosmetic purposes or as a part of the latest fad diet.  It’s actually meant to be used in treatment of C. difficile, a noxious bacteria in the colon that really is the shits, causing “severe and often debilitating diarrhea,” as per the CP.  It was developed by microbiologists at the University of Guelph as a less-disgusting alternative to having someone else’s fecal matter shoved up your rectum.  No, really.

Y’see, Clostridium difficile often becomes a problem when people take antibiotics that kill the friendly bacteria in their stomachs in order to treat an infection elsewhere in their body.  This allows C. diff, the illest of the ill, to own the colon as the biggest gangsta in the hood.  Even when other antibiotics are used to flush out C. diff, it often comes back the very next day, like a cat in a Fred Penner joint.  (Gangsta rap and Fred Penner in the same paragraph?  Booyah!)

As it turns out, doctors found they could treat C. diff by injecting someone else’s dookie, but that procedure proved to be problematic.  “Patients don’t like it,” Guelph microbiologist Emma Allen-Vercoe told the CP. “A lot of them will put up with it because they’re desperate … and donors are not terribly keen usually.”  Mind you, I can’t say I’ve seen too many poop-donation clinics around town.  They don’t seem to advertise in the Globe or the Star, in any case.

Nevertheless, by using one generous donor’s stool sample, Guelph U was able to produce a secret blend of 33 bacteria and fungi that’ll rock your body right.  “It looks a little like a vanilla milkshake,” Allen-Vercoe told the CP. “And it doesn’t smell nearly as bad as poop, I must say.”  While only two elderly patients have been rePOOPulated to date, both showed no signs of C. difficile for six months, even after taking other antibiotics.  The doctor who performed the transplants also noted “stool samples from the women showed that some features of the synthetic stool had stabilized and persisted in their colons.”  So maybe it does enhance your defecating experience after all… ;)

Grapefruit: The silent killer!

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Mixing grapefruit with a variety of medications could lead to some serious consequences, a new study has found.  As British tabloid Mirror reports, “Adverse effects can include acute kidney failure, respiratory failure, internal bleeding and sudden death.”  That’s right, kids—eating grapefruit could kill you.

But only if you eat it before taking your medicine, mind you.  And according to the study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, “the number of medications with the potential to cause serious harm by interacting with grapefruit increased from 17 to 43” within the past four years.  As per the Mirror, these meds range from “treatments for anxiety, depression, allergy, HIV infection, seizures, heart rhythm abnormalities and high cholesterol,” also noting that six new grapefruit-killer drugs are being prescribed each year.

So, what does grapefruit do to your body, anyways?  The report states that “chemicals, called furanocoumarins, act on an enzyme in the gut that normally reduces the potency of medication. This can effectively boost the dose of some drugs many times.”  In other words, eating grapefruit—or drinking grapefruit juice—makes it easier to OD, even when taking the daily recommended dosage.

The study’s authors, from Lawson Health Research Institute, find the lack of grapefruit-related precautions to be disturbing.  “Unless healthcare professionals are aware of the possibility that the adverse event they are seeing might have an origin in the recent addition of grapefruit to the patient’s diet, it is very unlikely that they will investigate it,” they wrote.  ”Thus, we contend that there remains a lack of knowledge about this interaction in the general healthcare community.”

Hmm, perhaps putting warning labels on grapefruits might not be a bad idea…

 

They called him Dr. Love, I presume…

Posted by gruesomegreg on

A Winnipeg doctor was not only prescribing Oxycontin to a pair of massage-parlour workers in exchange for sexual favours, he was also billing Manitoba Health “for reported house calls which he made for the purposes of personal and sexual relations with the two women” according to the Winnipeg Free Press. 

Dr. Randy Raymond Allan had practiced at Main Street Medical Centre until June 2010, when the investigation first got underway.  He pleaded guilty to professional misconduct on September 11th, though the guilty plea was just made public as of this morning.  “There are people who say this was taking too long and I might be inclined to agree with that,” Manitoba Health Minister Theresa Oswald said, seemingly apologizing to the prostitutes for not getting the word out sooner.

The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba ruled that Dr. Allan “failed to maintain appropriate boundaries with two female patients, and specifically that he had personal and sexual relations with them during the same periods that he was providing medical care to them” as per the Free Press.  He is also said to have “Issued prescriptions for Oxycontin to both patients… because of his personal and sexual relations with them.”

One has to wonder if he could also be charged for prostitution, as he was being paid for his sexual encounters by the provincial health service.  And to think, he used to be someone’s family doctor. Hmm, I wonder what else he prescribed to his “patients”…

Peruvian boy to receive life-altering penis implant

Posted by gruesomegreg on

A feel-good story has emerged out of Miami, where the International Kids Fund’s Wonderfund has teamed up with Holtz Children Hospital to provide a 17-year-old Peruvian villager with a new penis, ABC News reports.  Luis Canelos will be undergoing a 20-hour phalloplasty at no cost to his family, though the Wonderfund will need to raise 50 Gs in order to pay the doctors.  That’s quite a price to put on a pee-pee, dontcha think?

But penis replacement isn’t a procedure you can get done at some back-alley clinic.  “It’s a superspecialist kind of job,” Dr. Andrew Panossian told ABC. “You’re doing very fine work and it’s all sort of minutia that make this life changing thing happen.”  If things go wrong, according to the report, Canelos could end up pissing out of the side of his new dick.  I don’t even wanna know how that works.

The Peruvian teenager accidentally shot himself with his father’s gun when he was nine, blowing off all “his external genitalia except for a small portion of his right testicle.”  He is understandably ecstatic at the opportunity to become a man.  “I am so happy. I thank God for allowing me to come here with the nonprofit. I thank them for giving me this opportunity,” he said, adding that he hopes to have kids.  Somehow, I doubt he’ll need to be reminded to keep his weapons out of the reach of his future children.

Forget beer, drinking TEA will give you cancer!

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Researchers at the University of Glasgow have found that men who drink tea have a higher risk of prostate cancer, the Toronto Sun reports.  I guess that goes a long way in explaining when men don’t drink tea.  On the other hand, I drink iced tea all the time when I’m not drinking beer (which explains why I’ve never tried that Coors Light Ice T stuff)…

Though the study makes no mention of the iced variety, it does present research that flies in the face of previously-held beliefs that tea was beneficial, and could actually prevent cancer.  That said, the study also states that this might simply be a case where correlation does not equal causation.  As the Sun reports, men who drink tea tend to avoid other unhealthy lifestyle choices, and thus live to an age where cancer can kill them, as opposed to dropping dead of a heart attack at 31 while having a threesome with “a friend” and another woman who’s not your wife.  (At least that guy left his family a large malpractice settlement…)

“We found that heavy tea drinkers were more likely not to be overweight, be non-alcohol-drinkers and have healthy cholesterol levels,” the study states.  “However, we did adjust for these differences in our analysis and still found that men who drank the most tea were at greater risk of prostate cancer.”

Then again, even if you enjoy a spot of tea before dinner, it seems that alone won’t decrease your lifespan.  The study found that “those who drank more than seven cups of tea a day were 50% more likely to get prostate cancer.”  Man, who drinks more than seven cups of tea a day, anyways!?  Only in England, I suppose…

Hello Kitty sez… Do Not Resuscitate?

Posted by gruesomegreg on

Medical tattoos are on the rise, according to the Toronto Sun, although their effectiveness is currently up for debate.  An article published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal concludes that “paramedics and emergency doctors might not notice the tattoos, let alone treat them as proper instructions.”

Not only are medical tattoos a fairly new phenomenon, but there’s no standard, documented procedure as to what they are supposed to look like.  According to the Sun, “A Google image search turns up designs with angel wings, snakes, butterflies, skulls, hearts and even Hello Kitty, on shoulders, backs, forearms and wrists.”  And even if someone has “Do Not Resuscitate” inked on their lower back, how is a paramedic to know that it’s a medical instruction and not just the name of their favourite Testament tune?

On that note, while I haven’t seen Hello Kitty saying DNR on anybody’s skin, there are at least a couple people who use the anime character to tell the word they have diabetes.  Case in point:

(The hearts on the i’s are an interesting touch…)