Introducing....A New Product in the Tylenol Line: Tylenol N&V

At last, it's here. New Tylenol Nausea and Vomiting Formula. No need to take Ipecac when you have overdosed on Nitroglycerine! Treat BOTH the Headache and the Overdose with New Tylenol N&V.

It rapidly relieves your headache while making you throw up to remove the toxin. No need for old fashioned Ipecac Syrup. This one product does it all!!

Of course I am being tongue in cheek with this posting. I am sure you are aware, though, that the Tylenol people have announced a massive recall of certain Tylenol products because they contain a chemical that had somehow gotten into the empty bottles.

Here is an ABC News clip on the recall.

"Hey, Anybody Seen My Bottle of Ginkgo?" I Can't Seem to Remember Where I Put It!"

Ginkgo supplements are among the most wide-selling of all dietary products. Anecdotal evidence suggest that these products can improve cognitive function, improve memory, and proved an overall feeling of well being.

"Not so fast, my friend," as a popular sports broadcaster would say.

A paper published recently in JAMA concludes that this product is ineffective for this and other medicinal uses. Here is a link to the paper: http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/302/24/2663

Naturally, there will be critics of this study saying that there were design flaws, the wrong dose was studied, the wrong extract was used, etc.

Here's what viewers of ABC News saw when they turned on their TV sets. Now, if I could only remember where I filed that video........!!

Neal Beal Stars as "Scrooge" in Dickens' Christmas Carol

Some of you indicated in your survey results that you were not terribly fond of Neal Beal. Admittedly, he could be a little passive aggressive at time, trying to heap guilt onto the poor health professionals who were just trying to do their jobs.

Well, you will be pleased to know that Neal has undergone a transformation of sorts. In fact, what has happened to him parallels the character Scrooge in the timeless feel-good story, A Christmas Carol.

Watch the video below to see a condensed verion of his transformation. You might even see some other "recognizable" characters in this video.

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I've Heard of Giving Your Boyfriend the Finger, but Never Giving Him YOUR Finger!

Now, this guy's totally messed up. In Arizona recently, a man got angry at his grifriend and cut off her finger. There are some real freaks in this world. Read about this freak from an article in the Arizona Republic newspaper:

Police arrested a man suspected of cutting off his girlfriend's finger with a samurai sword while locking her and his mother in his northern Arizona home Saturday.

A woman called police after her boyfriend, Ronald Gene Olivier, 48, of Rimrock, reportedly cut off a portion of her left pinky and threatened to kill her and his 86-year-old mother if they tried to leave the home, authorities said.

Yavapai County Sheriff Office deputies arrived at the home at approximately 12:30 a.m. on the 4700 block of Drifting Sands Road, Rimrock, to find Olivier's mother, who then told officers he had fled before police arrived.

When asked about the incident, Olivier's girlfriend told police he had been drinking all day and became upset at her over her attitude toward him. Police suspect Olivier locked his girlfriend and mother in a room for an undetermined period of time and threatened to harm them with the sword if they attempted to escape.

Yavapai County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Dwight D'Evelyn said Olivier's temper had been culminating, and the angrier he got, the more violent he became. Olivier's girlfriend told police that, at one point, he came in the room and began striking her with the sword. After two failed attempts by the girlfriend to escape, Olivier told her she needed to be punished by demanding she give up her finger in return for his trust, D'Evelyn said.

Police believe that under threat of death, Oliver placed his girlfriend's hand on a table and cut off a portion of her left pinky finger with the double-edged, 2-foot samurai sword. When Olivier refused to let her recovered the severed finger, she ran to a neighbor's home and sought help, police said.

Police immediately went on a search for Olivier in the surrounding areas. A couple hours later, while the search was still ongoing, deputies were informed Olivier had returned to the home, where police arrested him.

Medics at the scene were able to locate the victim's finger and take her to Verde Valley Medical Center, where doctors were unable to reattach her finger.
Olivier faces charges on counts of kidnapping per domestic violence, aggravated assault, preventing use of a telephone per domestic violence, criminal damage, and resisting arrest.
D'Evelyn said Olivier has a history of domestic violence with at least one assault case earlier this year.

He remained in custody on a $150,000 bond and was due in court the following Friday.

This Research is a Rip-Off!!

Your mother probably told you when you were a kid that taking a band-aid off quickly would actually be LESS painful than removing it slowly. While we accepted her at her word, now comes scientific information to verity that "Dr. Mom" does, indeed, know what she's talking about.

It seems that some researcher in Australia who didn't have much else to do, did a clinical study to determine which method is less painful. Here is the report:

"A randomised trial has found that fast band-aid removal is less painful to healthy young adults than slow band-aid removal, according to a report published in the Medical Journal of Australia.Operators applied medium-sized band-aids to 65 Second and Third Year medical students at James Cook University and removed the band-aids using slow and fast techniques. The students were asked to rate their pain using an 11-point scoring system, with 0 representing "no pain" and 10 representing "worst pain imaginable". "The average overall pain score for fast band-aid removal was 0.92 and for slow band-aid removal was 1.58. The average overall pain scores for women were significantly lower than for men (0.91 compared to 1.64). This may be due to higher pain tolerance, although men did tend to have more body hair," study co-author Dr Carl O'Kane said. "A high body hair score was, not surprisingly, associated with higher pain scores, and it seemed that preconceptions about pain also had an appreciable effect. "The pain experience is a complex and incompletely understood process that incorporates many aspects of patients' social and cultural beliefs, as well as previous experiences. Our observation that preconceptions were associated with pain scores should therefore not be surprising." Students with wounds, documented or suspected allergies to adhesive dressings, chronic pain, or anxiety disorders were excluded from the study. "These results would not be applicable to patients with wounds, particularly chronic wounds and ulcers, which may adhere to band-aids, or other simple dressings. Our sample consisted of healthy young adults and our results may not be applicable to other age groups such as children and older people," Dr O'Kane said. Dr O'Kane said students who were tested by one of the two operators reported higher pain levels than those tested by the other operator. "This may indicate that there are skilled band-aid removers and less-skilled or unskilled band-aid removers," he said.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association. SourceAustralian Medical Association

All in Favor Say....Ouch?????

During the past presidential campaign we heard all kinds of similes and metaphors used to describe the competing interests of the political parties. For example, we heard this: "We are taking our fight to New Hampshire." Or, "the parties are battling one another on the issue of Health Care Reform." Finally, we were likely to have heard "the parties are bashing heads in a hard fought campaign."

Apparently, the politicians in Argentina mis-translated these words and acted them out, quite literally. Watch as you see important political issues being "debated" in the Argentine Legislature.

I think they were arguing over who should "chair" the session.

Marijuana in California: Is it Legal or Not?

This is the second of the NPR Reports. This is curious to me: how can weed be legal, yet also the target of police eradication programs. Make up your minds, California. Is it legal or not?

Medical Marijuana in Humboldt County, California: A NPR Report

Here is Part I of a two part series from NPR about medical marijuana. It speaks to the "growing" (pun intended) interest and use of marijuana as a treatment for several diseases or conditions. It especially speaks about the economics of supplying weed as medicine and the clash of cultures that can follow.