September 29th, 2011 by HarvardHealth in Health Tips
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I love bread, pasta, and many other foods made with wheat. Luckily, I can eat them all without having to worry about gluten. But I have to admit that the growing public awareness of gluten and the problems it can cause has got me thinking.
Gluten is an umbrella term for the proteins gliadin (in wheat), secalin (in rye), and hordein (in barley). Bakers know it as the substance that makes dough resilient and stretchy. In some people, gluten triggers an immune reaction and causes inflammation of the lining of the small intestine, which can eventually interfere with the absorption of nutrients from food. This is called celiac disease. Some of the more common symptoms of celiac disease are:
- Gas
- Bloating
- Abdominal cramps
- Diarrhea
- Foul-smelling stools
- Fatigue
- Weight loss
- Skin rash
Some people have Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Harvard Health Blog*
May 9th, 2011 by GruntDoc in News, True Stories
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Absent other information, the referred to ‘rodent poison’ is probably a superwarfarin. It’s like regular people-coumadin, but superconcentrated. It kills rodentia by causing them to bleed to death.
Which makes the ‘gas effect’ seem really odd, but possibly explainable.
A patient who apparently ingested rodent poison and is emitting potentially harmful gasses has created a hazardous material situation at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor.
The man is isolated in his room in the medical intensive care unit on the hospital’s sixth floor, 5301 McAuley at East Huron River Drive, hospital spokeswoman Lauren Jones said this afternoon.
via Patient emits potentially harmful gas; hazmat called to Ann Arbor hospital | Detroit Free Press | freep.com.
Two thoughts: 1) I sincerely hope this patient recovers, and 2) if this is just upper GI bleed smell someones’ going to have rotten egg smell on their face.
I looked up superwarfarins, found a couple of interesting case reports, but none that talk about abnormal gases.
(For the uninitiated, the smell of digested blood is amazingly awful. It’ll make experienced, hard ED staff retch). I can understand why the smell would set off alarms, except that it’s not that uncommon, so it shouldn’t be a surprise.
It’ll be interesting to see what come of this.
Lighting matches in the hospital is a nono, by the way.
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
April 26th, 2011 by Bongi in Humor, True Stories
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Yes, I have an alter ego. Yes, I dress in funny clothes with a cap covering my head and a mask covering my face. And yes, dressed as such I try to fight the powers of evil (mainly sepsis and bleeding and cancer and the like). I am … a superhero. But there is often little understanding for what goes on under the paper thin masks and baggy gowns we wear. certain …um…occurrences, well, occur with us just as much as with other people.
A common cold behind a theatre mask is no small thing. Remember you can’t blow your nose. Sniffing loudly only works for a while and attracts all sorts of strange stares. Just leaving it is really the only option. The positive side of this is you suffer less from the mild dehydration that accompanies massive loss of …mucus. There is, after all, fluid replacement (it is a very short trip from your nostrils to your mouth over your upper lip). ‘Nuf sed. Somehow this never appealed to me though. So, for all you budding surgeons out there, when you have a cold, plug your nostrils with tissue before scrubbing up. once you’re scrubbed, it is too late. The side effects are only a slight change in voice which is a small price to pay to avoid the constant lip licking and salty taste throughout the operation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
