Here are some medical news items of interest. Enjoy!
Candles in church? Holy smoke!
A news item by Karen Birchard in the Medical Post (December 7, 2004) reports that church air, filled with the particulates from burning candles and incense, is likely a health hazard.
Dutch researchers found the air quality was worse inside the church after normal incense use coupled with daylong candle burning, than measurements taken outside in areas used by 45,000 vehicles a day
This study was published in the European Respiratory Journal. The air pollution inside the church could affect the heath of priests and perhaps devout churchgoers who might be in church several times a day.
Is Vitamin E any good?
A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association reports that taking 400 IUs of vitamin E each day did nothing to prevent heart attacks or strokes. In fact vitamin E may slightly increase the risk of heart failure.
But Vitamin E is not useless. It is known to delay the onset of macular degeneration (which causes blurred vision and ultimately blindness) and boost the immune system in the elderly.
Who makes the house call?
You wont have to make a house call to Preda residence. Mom, Dad and triplets are all doctors. At the age of 24, the triplets graduated together as doctors from University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
According to a report in the Medical Post, this is the first time triplets have simultaneously graduated in medicine anywhere in the world.
The triplets will be doing internship in the same Sydney hospital. Two of the sisters are identical and the third one resembles the other two strongly. Now how would you know who is your doctor?
Wondered about sleep sex?
A doctor in Sydney, Australia says that sleep sex is a recently identified condition that will likely be included in the International Classification of Sleep Disorders. Sleep sex is a behavioural disorder, in which the body is free to move during sleep and act out dream activities.
The Medical Post reports that Australian doctors claim to have cured a middle-aged woman who regularly left her unsuspecting partners bed and had sex with strangers while asleep. This was thought to be stress-related behavior which disappeared after psychiatric counseling.
For your Tuesday smile!
A guys wife asks him, If I were to die, would you get married again and share our bed with your new wife?
And he says, I guess I might.
What about my car? she asks. Would you give that to her?
And he says, Perhaps.
Would you give my golf clubs to her, too? his wife asks.
No.
Why not? asks the wife.
She is left-handed!
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