Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled

O! M! G! This is my new favorite non-profit:

"Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers for the Disabled is a national nonprofit serving quadriplegic and other people with severe spinal cord injuries or mobility-impairments by providing highly trained monkeys to assist with daily activities.

"We raise and train these monkeys to act as live-in companions who, over the course of 20-30 years, will provide the gifts of independence, companionship, dignity and hope to the people they help."

http://www.monkeyhelpers.org/

Burning Mouth Syndrome

This is a weird disease that I'd never heard of until last week, when I found out that someone I know has it:

Glossodynia or burning mouth syndrome (BMS) (also known as "Burning tongue" and "Orodynia") is a condition characterized by a burning or tingling sensation on the lips, tongue, or entire mouth.

Typically, there are no visual signs like discoloration that help the diagnosis.

Possible causes include nutritional deficiencies, chronic anxiety or depression, type 2 diabetes, menopause, oral disorders such as thrush or dry mouth, or damaged nerves (specifically, cranial nerves associated with taste).

One cause of burning mouth pain, which may be often misdiagnosed as burning mouth syndrome, is a contact sensitivity Type IV hypersensitivity in the oral tissues to common substances such as sodium lauryl sulfate, a surfactant commonly used in household products, cinnamon aldehyde or dental materials. There are now several toothpastes on the market specifically without sodium lauryl sulfate or other preservatives which have been found to be associated with sensitivities.

This condition appears more often in women, specifically women after menopause, than men. Pain typically is low or nonexistent in the morning and builds up over the course of the day.

Low dosages of benzodiazepines, tricyclic antidepressants or anticonvulsants may prove to be an effective treatment.

Alpha-Lipoic Acid 600 to 800 mg administered daily in three or four doses has been found to reduce symptoms. Trials have been small, but alpha-lipoic acid may be an appropriate adjunctive treatment option.

Evil Genes

This is the book I'm reading right now, and I recommend it. The author is insanely smart and a very good writer. She's good at explaining science in a way that non-science-y people (like me) can understand. She also writes about her own family and historical figures and all kinds of interesting stuff.

From the title, I was afraid her writing style might be too cutesy, but it's not at all. It's entertaining and readable, but also substantive.

From Publishers Weekly:

"Borne out of a quest to understand her sister Carolyn's lifelong sinister behavior (which, systems engineer Barbara Oakley suggests, may have been compounded by childhood polio), the author sets out on an exploration of evil, or Machiavellian, individuals. Drawing on the advances in brain imaging that have illuminated the relationship of emotions, genetics and the brain (with accompanying imaging scans), Oakley collects detailed case histories of famed evil geniuses such as Slobodan Milosevic and Mao Zedong, interspersed with a memoir of Carolyn's life. Oakley posits that they all had borderline personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder, a claim she supports with evidence from scientists' genetic and neurological research. All the people she considers, Oakley notes, are charming on the surface but capable of deeply malign behavior (traits similar to those found in some personality disorders), and her analysis attributes these traits to narcissism combined with cognitive and emotional disturbances that lead them to believe they are behaving in a genuinely altruistic way. Disturbing, for sure, but with her own personal story informing her study, Oakley offers an accessible account of a group of psychiatric disorders and those affected by them."

Homeopathic A&E

This is a hilarious skit from season three of That Mitchell and Webb Look. If you're familiar with homeopathic medicine, it's funnier. Guy wasn't as familiar as I am with that stuff, so I explained to him about how homeopathic medicine is usually like a tiny drop of essence in a big container of water. He was glad I explained that because there are a few jokes related to that idea in the skit.

The Better Marriage Blanket

This is one of the most creative euphemisms I've seen in a while. I love their suggestion that you could give it as an anniversary present.

Estonian Pharmacy

Estonians: they just may be the cutest people in the world. They have names like Ulle Noodapera and they have pharmacies that sell love potions and anti-love potions.

Regular Beebo readers John and Tiny Miss Fran will be traveling to Estonia soon--don't forget to stop by Tallinn and pick up some weird potions at this Estonian pharmacy, circa 1422!:

Heartsick? An Estonian Pharmacy May Have A Cure

At an international summit, leaders often have time to get out and explore. But the NATO foreign ministers who met in the former Soviet state of Estonia last week were running behind schedule because of the volcanic ash cloud hovering over Europe. They were happy to have made it at all.

"The only regret I have is that I had to spend all my time in meetings, instead of enjoying Tallinn once again," said U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, referring to Estonia's small capital on the Baltic Sea.

I escaped the meetings long enough to look around — and I'm happy the foreign ministers didn't.
Surely, they would have stopped at a major attraction in the town's cobblestone square — the Raeapteek, or Town Hall Pharmacy.

The Town Hall Pharmacy in Estonia's capital may be Europe's oldest continuously operating pharmacy.

My guide, local historian Juri Kuuskemaa, told me the place opened in 1422 and may well be Europe's longest continuously operating pharmacy. Legend has it that in the 18th century, a former owner, Dr. Johann Burchart V, nearly saved a Russian czar.

"When Peter the Great, Russian emperor, was dying and nobody could help him, he called Johann V," Kuuskemaa said.

But things didn't work out. The czar died before Burchart arrived.

The pharmacy is also legendary for its herbs, wine and medicines — and its love drugs.

"You can go to pharmacy and buy special materials, so-called aphrodisiacom, and when you give to her or her, it is fate. Both could do nothing against it. And lady would love you to the end of their lives," Kuuskemaa explained.

But that's not all. "When you have two or three wives, for example, and you see one is happy but two are unhappy, you can buy here special materials to give to these two unhappies and they forget you, and they could find happiness with another man, not with you," Kuuskemaa said. "So it stops the love. It is an anti-aphrodisiacom, yeah. So love could be regulated with drugs."

On display inside, readily available, was the pharmacy's famous anti-aphrodisiac. Each individually wrapped piece of candy is packed with the secret ingredient: almond powder. People struck by love use it to cure themselves.

"How long we have sold it? ... I think 500 years," said pharmacist Ulle Noodapera.

But Noodapera said visitors will also just come in and taste it — despite the risk. That's why I was worried about the foreign ministers dropping by.

Noodapera says she didn't see any of the world leaders partake of the anti-love confection.

Which is a good thing. The last place you'd want to kill the love is at a meeting of the NATO military alliance. Kuuskemaa agreed.

"Love has more power as rockets in the world and it is the main power of the world and for humanity, and this power really can protect us," he says. "Love. Not rockets."

Allergies

Unlike the rest of the country, Seattle has been experiencing balmy, Spring-like weather for the past few weeks.

This is nice but also not-so-nice for people like me who suffer from allergies. I never had any major allergies in New York, but as soon as I moved here, they hit me really hard. When Spring rolls around, my eyes get really itchy and watery, my nose runs (even more than usual), and I sneeze a lot. I haven't found any over-the-counter medicine that helps much. Claritin does nothing for me.

I should probably go to my doctor and try to get a prescription. I did try a prescription nasal spray once, but it didn't seem to work that well either.

When I was in Hawaii, all my allergies disappeared.

The Amazing Abilities of Oscar the Therapy Cat

I don't think Oscar sounds creepy at all. I think he sounds comforting. We all have to go to that big litter box in the sky eventually. Why not have a little cat by your side to ease the way?:

Doctor casts new light on cat that can predict death

Tue Feb 2, 12:00 pm ET

SYDNEY (Reuters) – When doctors and staff realized that a cat living in a U.S. nursing home could sense when someone was going to die, the feline, Oscar, was portrayed as a furry grim reaper or four-legged angel of death.

But Dr. David Dosa, who broke the news of Oscar's abilities in a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2007, said he never intended to make Oscar sound creepy or his arrival at a bedside to be viewed negatively.

Dosa said he hopes his newly released book, "Making Rounds With Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat" will put the cat in a more favorable light as well as providing a book to help people whose loved ones are terminally ill.

"After the New England Journal article you got the feeling that if Oscar is in your bed then you are dead, but you did not really see what is going on for these family members," said Dosa, an assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

"I wanted to write a book that would go beyond Oscar's peculiarities, to tell why he is important to family members and caregivers who have been with him at the end of a life."

Dosa said Oscar's story is fascinating on many levels. Oscar was adopted as a kitten from an animal shelter to be raised as a therapy cat at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, which cares for people with severe dementia and in the final stages of various illnesses.

When Oscar was about six months old the staff noticed that he would curl up to sleep with patients who were about to die.

So far he has accurately predicted about 50 deaths.

Dosa recounts one instance when staff were convinced of the imminent death of one patient but Oscar refused to sit with that person, choosing instead to be on the bed of another patient down the hallway. Oscar proved to be right. The person he sat with died first, taking staff on the ward by surprise.

Dosa said there is no scientific evidence to explain Oscar's abilities, but he thinks the cat might be responding to a pheromone or smell that humans simply don't recognize.

Dosa said his main interest was not to delve further into Oscar's abilities but to use Oscar as a vehicle to tell about terminal illness, which is his main area of work.

"There is a lot to tell about what Oscar does, but there is a lot to tell on the human level of what family members go through at the end of life when they are dealing with a loved one in a nursing home or with advanced dementia," he said.

"Perhaps the book is a little more approachable because there is a cat in it. We really know so little about nursing homes, and this tries to get rid of this myth that they are horrid factories where people go to die."

Dosa said the story of Oscar, who is now nearly five years old, initially had sparked a bit more interest in families wanting to send their loved ones to Steere House.

Oscar has even been thanked by families in obituaries for providing some comfort in the final hours of life.

But he said Oscar remains unchanged by the attention, spending most of his days staring out of a window, although he has become a bit friendlier.

"The first time I met Oscar, he bit me. We have warmed over the years. We have moved into a better place," said Dosa.

"I don't think Oscar is that unique, but he is in a unique environment. Animals are remarkable in their ability to see things we don't, be it the dog that sniffs out cancer or the fish that predicts earthquakes. Animals know when they are needed."

"Oinkies"

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm reading a really interesting book right now called The Family That Couldn't Sleep by D.T. Max. It's about an Italian family that is prone to an extremely rare neurological illness--rare for the general population, that is, but not for them. About one person in 6 million gets fatal familial insomnia, but in this family, it's more like one in two.

It's a fascinating book that covers all sorts of ground, everything from Italian culture and history to the personalities of brilliant, egotistical scientists, and the mad cow scare in England in the 1990s.

I'm up to that last part (mad cow) right now, and I've been learning some really interesting facts about BSE or "bovine spongiform encephalopathy." I remember in the 90s, the common belief about mad cow disease was that if you happened to eat infected meat just once in your life, you could end up developing mad cow disease 50 years later. That's no longer really believed to be true (although, who knows?):

"It can be estimated, based on a European Union scientific committee's work, that the English ate as many as 640 billion doses of BSE during the crisis as a whole [1980s-1990s]. As it happens, BSE crosses from cow to human only with difficulty, but this fact wasn't anything the British government knew. They underestimated the initial threat, ignored the unique nature of the disease agent, and allowed bureaucracy and cattle industry profits to trump speed and openness. When in doubt, they formed a committee. The one thing they had on their side was luck. Fortunately, prions aren't as infectious as, say, the flu. If they were, only long-time vegetarians would be alive in England today."

In other words, the good news is, it's not that easy for humans to get mad cow disease. The bad news is, the English government didn't actually know that during the 10 year lag between realizing there was a problem and actually doing something about it. It's only dumb luck that kept millions of people from dying of mad cow, instead of the 160 or so people (mostly teenagers, for some reason) that actually did.

Anyway, getting back to that decade-long lag during which the British government pretended they were protecting the public and that they had it all under control when, in reality, they totally did not...Here's a morbidly funny anecdote from the book about that:

"British beef and its promoters fought back. The agriculture minister, John Gummer, fed his daughter a hamburger at a TV photo-op. (But four-year-old Cordelia made a face that suggested she'd rather be eating anything else--it was later reported that she found the hamburger too hot--and the moment registered in the British mind as only a failed photo-op can. The phrase 'doing a Gummer' remains in British political lexicon for such moments.) Officials went on tour to try to persuade English schools to put beef back on the menu. The Meat and Livestock Commission, a government-funded organization that helped promote British farm products, sponsored a contest to find 'the tastiest and most innovative children's novelty meat product.' The winner was 'Oinkies,' a combination of sausage meat and cheddar balls."

Mmmm, Oinkies. I have to admit, that actually sounds delicious to me. But it also reminds me of this Kids In the Hall skit about "Poreef," the disgusting pork-beef hybrid that featured "low price" as its only convincing selling point:

Una Notta In Bianco

How do you lose sleep in Italian? I just learned (from a book I'm reading called The Family That Couldn't Sleep about an Italian family with a rare neurological disorder) that suffering through a sleepless night in Italy is referred to as "passer una notta in biano," literally "spending a white night." The origin of this phrase has something to do with summer solstice and polar latitudes and midnight sun. I don't know, I'm not a scientist. The French have a similar expression, "faire une nuit blanche."

Wikipedia informs me that all-night arts festivals (which borrow their names from this expression) are popular in Europe. In America, we don't really support the arts per se, but we do have our own proud tradition of drunken co-eds flocking to our beaches every year during the popular "Spring Break" celebrations, occasionally documented by independent filmmaker Joe Francis (currently serving time in prison for getting a little too "enthusiastic" in the making of his art films). What? Don't you like art?:

"Nuit Blanche (literally White Night or All-Nighter in French) is an annual all-night arts festival. Its exact beginning is disputed between Paris, St Petersburg, and Berlin, but, taking elements from all of these, the idea of a night-time festival of the arts has spread around the world since 1997, taking hold from Montreal to Madrid and Lima to Leeds. A Nuit Blanche will typically have museums, private and public art galleries, and other cultural institutions open and free of charge, with the centre of the city itself being turned into a de facto art gallery, providing space for art installations, performances (music, film, dance, performance art), themed social gatherings, and other activities.

"Some cities use the French phrase Nuit blanche (or Nuits blanches, if the event is spread over more than one night). Some use the same words in their language: White Nights, La Notte Bianca (Italian), La Noche en Blanco (Spanish), Noaptea alba (Romanian), Nata e Bardhe (Albanian), Baltā Nakts in Latvian. Others invent their own names, such as Lejl Imdawwal ("Lit Night") in Maltese, Virada Cultural in São Paulo, Taiteiden yö ("Night of the arts") in Finland, and Kulturnatten ("Night of Culture") in Copenhagen.

"The current all-night festivals have their roots in several cities. St Petersburg, for two hundred years capital of the Russian Empire and still a major European cultural centre, is one of the world's most northerly cities, and as such has long summer days broken only by a brief period of twilight from mid-May to mid-July, the celebrated phenomenon known as the white nights. This led to the annual celebrations known as the White Nights Festival, which features months of pop culture (e.g. the Rolling Stones in the open air at Palace Square) and high culture events ("Stars of the White Nights Festival" at the Mariinsky Theatre), street carnivals, and the Scarlet Sails celebration, known for its fireworks. So "white nights" in the Russian context is both a natural phenomenon of the summer, and a long-standing cultural festival that spreads over weeks or months in midsummer.

"Another similar festival that contributed to the White Nights came out of Germany. The first Long Night of Museums took place in the newly re-united Berlin in 1997 with a dozen participating institutions and exhibitions; the number has risen to 125, with over 150,000 people taking part in the January 2005 night. The idea has spread to other cities: in addition to the Langen Nacht der Museen in Berlin, there is a museums-n8 event in Amsterdam. The third strand that has contributed to the international Nuit Blanche concept is the event of that name launched by the Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë in 2002.

"Wherever the idea originated from, and whatever names are used, the White Nights have expanded dramatically, with events in over 120 cities."

Shocking Johnny Hallyday News

Johnny Hallyday in drug-induced coma after surgery
'French Elvis' in hospital in Los Angeles as family seeks legal advice over original operation in Paris

guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 December 2009 18.51 GMT

One of France's favourite rock stars, Johnny Hallyday, was tonight in an induced coma after doctors in the US performed an emergency operation to remove lesions on his back.

The 66-year-old singer, dubbed the "French Elvis", whose ailing health in recent months has held a devoted nation in suspense, was rushed to hospital in Los Angeles yesterday, suffering complications from earlier surgery in Paris. After briefly waking up and opening his eyes "to recognise his wife", he was put back in an artifical coma to aid his recovery, said his producer, Jean-Claude Camus.

Hallyday, a superstar in France who has sold more than 100m records, has seen a gruelling valedictory tour disrupted this year by repeated health scares. Ever since the revelation over the summer that he had been suffering from colon cancer, his legions of fans have been obsessively following his condition.

Speaking today in Brussels, President Nicolas Sarkozy said he had spoken to the singer's son David on the telephone. "It provokes great emotion in France because he's a much-loved man and, for each of us, he represents a bit of our personal history: memories, feelings, songs, music," he said.

Today, concern over the singer's health was mixed with anger by those who accused his French surgeon of botching the original back operation last month.

Stephané Delajoux, a "surgeon to the stars", whose former clients include the actor and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, denied any accusation of malpractice. But Camus said the Hallyday family was considering taking legal action over allegedly sloppy surgery.

He claimed on French radio that American doctors had told him they "repaired things" that had allegedly gone wrong with the original surgery.

Laeticia Hallyday, the wife of the ailing star, was "distraught", he added. "[She is] very angry," he said. "He came close to the worst."

David Koubbi, Delajoux's lawyer told journalists the operation had "gone ahead perfectly well", and that post-surgery examinations had indicated nothing unusual.

Beebo's note: And this just in! (Take-away message: Do not mess with Johnny Hallyday! He is insanely beloved by the French, and if you mess with him, there will be consequences):

Johnny Hallyday's doctor assaulted
PARIS, Dec. 14 (UPI) -- Police in Paris say they are looking for two men who assaulted French rocker Johnny Hallyday's surgeon during the weekend.

Hallyday, 66, has been placed in a medically induced coma at the Los Angeles hospital where he is being treated for complications stemming from surgery he underwent in Paris for a slipped disc.

Investigators told the BBC French surgeon Stephane Delajoux was punched and kicked by two men wearing hoods Friday night.

He reportedly was treated for his injuries and released from a hospital Saturday.

The BBC did not suggest a motive for the alleged assault.

Nazi Mystery: Twins from Brazil

This is airing Saturday, December 5. Sounds interesting!:

Joseph Mengele, the escaped Nazi war criminal and SS physician, known as the Angel of Death, spent years doing bizarre medical experiments on twins at Auschwitz working to determine if twins held the key to building a blond-haired, blue-eyed master race for Adolf Hitler. Now a historian says he has evidence that Mengele's attempts may not have ended at Auschwitz, and that his obsession to engineer an Aryan master race continued, and that succeeded while he was on the run in South America. Deep in the Brazilian outback in a tiny town among the 80 households in a one-square-mile area are reportedly some 38 pairs of twins. Blond, blue-eyed twins. Bizarre and inexplicable, could they be the product of Mengele's machinations? Now, with exclusive access, EXPLORER goes inside the investigation; From the secret agents who trailed him, to the scientists now uncovering the facts behind the fantastical phenomenon, no stone is left unturned.

Photo: Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil: Twins Fountain in Linha Sao Pedro, rural area of Cândido Godól - where many twins come from.

From: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/explorer/4087/Overview?source=link_tw_02#tab-Overview#ixzz0YfTNbkNL

Not Swine Flu

I'm sick today. It's just a cold. Not swine flu.

Repeat: NOT SWINE FLU.

Lamborghini's Monster

"Composite" parts? A laboratory with a "lightning-strike generator"? Come on, UW, we're not stupid! UW is sooooooo conducting modern-day Frankenstein research. If you're an out-of-work mad scientist, now you know where to apply:

UW's newly named 'Lamborghini Lab' brings composite parts to sports-car arena

Composite materials are made up of distinct parts -- plywood, fiberglass and polyester are all composite materials. High-end industries are beginning to use materials such as carbon fiber combined with epoxy, itself a composite material, to build stronger and lighter components.

"Composites are no longer the future, they are the present of structural materials for anything that's high-performance, whether it's aerospace or golf clubs or sports cars [or monsters]," said lab director [and mad scientist] Paolo Feraboli, a UW assistant professor of aeronautics and astronautics [and quite insane, really]. "Monolithic materials like aluminum just won't cut it anymore."

Feraboli, a native of Italy [Transylvania], earned his undergraduate degree in Bologna and worked at Lamborghini on composite materials in 2001 and 2002. He continued a relationship with Lamborghini while establishing the UW's Advanced Composite Structures Laboratory in 2007.

The lab's equipment includes a lightning-strike generator for simulated lightning strikes up to 100,000 amps; a drop tower for inflicting damage from foreign objects; a pneumatic crash sled capable of crushing full-size vehicle prototypes; [an assortment of human body parts] and a high-speed video camera that can take 82,000 frames per second. Research focuses on short-term, industry-driven testing of new materials in scenarios such as bird strike, lightning strike or, in this case, crashes [mobs of angry, torch-wielding villagers].

http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleID=52479

Guy Is Feeling Better

What a relief!

Sick Day

Guy had to stay home from work today with a bad cold.

Stigmata

I just found out from Guy that I don't have stigmata, after all. What a relief!

"Stigmata are the wounds of Christ as reproduced in a human body. Visible stigmata are frequently located in both hands and both feet, and on the right side of the chest, replicating the sites of Christ's wounds, which he showed to the disciples in his post-resurrection appearances (Luke 24: 36-40 and John 20: 19-29). The most famous of the stigmatics, St Francis of Assisi, received the stigmata in these places. Occasionally wounds on the head, in the shape of a crown (copying the crown of thorns), and marks on either shoulder (representing the carrying of the cross and scourging) are evidence of stigmata too. Stigmata might also be invisible, marked by the pain of wounds in the classic places, or alternately invisible and visible. St Catherine of Sienna received the stigmata of the five wounds in a vision but asked God to make them disappear, after which she experienced only the pain of the wounds.

"Stigmata are often accompanied by other bodily phenomena such as pain, blood, sweats, levitations, or even lameness or blindness, and they quite often occur in people who are already ill or are voluntarily abstaining from food for religious reasons. Many of the women nuns and saints who fasted and/or existed on the host alone, in late medieval and early modern Europe, received the stigmata, such as St Catherine of Sienna, who fasted — except for eating the blessed host — for eight years. Stigmatics often receive religious visions or ecstasies, having visions of Christ and various saints, and also ‘re-living’ or seeing parts of Christ's passion and sharing in his suffering."

Painting on oak from Cologne, Germany, 1465, entitled "Christ on the Cross with Mary, John and Mary Magdalene." Artist unknown. Quotation from Wikipedia.

Eye Exam

I have 20/40 or 20/60 with a stigmatism in one eye.

I might get reading glasses but it depends how much it'll cost, I don't want to spend a fortune on glasses.