JOSH'S CONDITIONS & TREATMENTS BLOG

Stretching the Lies

Remember your gritty, old P.E. teacher with a head like a can of baked beans and a body like a public mailbox?  He was horrible, his knuckles white with rage, his life painfully unexamined.

In my P.E. class before my classmates and I were allowed to mindlessly pelt each other with red balls, we had to stretch. We were told that we needed to stretch in order to protect ourselves from soreness and injury.

Your P.E. teacher was wrong about the choices that he made in his life, and he was wrong about stretching. Numerous studies have found that stretching does nothing. It's the bric-a-brac of doing things.

Some say that stretching may even be harmful, because it makes your muscles all pliant and more vulnerable to injury.

Others claim that some light exercise before the main event may help get circulation going, but that it's more like exercise foreplay and doesn't have a whole lot of therapeutic value.

According to experts, (even those who still claim that stretching is key) the best way to avoid exercise injury is to stay active and listen to your body. If you leg hurts, maybe you should rest it.

Talk to a Sports Medicine Physician about the risks of exercise injury.

Find a local doctor.

All Hail The First Born!

First-born children are the most loved. (If love = time) In your faces second and third born! A new study out of Utah shows that parents tend to spend more time with their oldest children.

The second born, known as the already-been-there-and-done-that child and third born, known as the who-is-that-oh-yeah-I-forgot-about-that-one-child get about 22 fewer minutes with dad and a whopping 27 minutes fewer with mom. Smooth move moms!

Researchers believe that this extra parent-time explains why first-born children have higher IQs, are less likely to engage in risky behavior, have a higher level of achievement, don't get teenage pregnant as often and land in juvie less.

Then the researchers got all preachy. "Blah, Blah Blah," they said. "Don't watch as much TV. Instead read to your offspring and lovingly stroke your child's corn-silk hair. Use travel time to talk instead of listening to Howard Stern. This will make up for the inherent injustices of life."

"Blah," they added.

On the flip side, younger siblings usually have more money spent on them, because their parents are usually in a better economic situation by the time those younger, lesser siblings are born.

Basically, first-born children are like a fun project and the rest of the siblings are like a leaky pipe that money needs to be thrown at.

Anyways, a good way to get back at your parents is by putting them in a home. Talk to a geriatrician or a doctor who specializes in palliative and hospice medicine.

Find a local doctor near you.

Antidepressants may be Anti-Doing-Something

Antidepressants may not actually do anything for the average or even severely depressed person. They still work for the extremely depressed, however.

Researchers found that placebos worked just as well as most prescription antidepressants. There are over 115 million people on antidepressants in the United States and most of them, as of now, are taking medications that help as much as a sugar pill.

The rushed US healthcare system is being blamed for the over-prescribing of these pills. Primary care physicians might feel compelled to make snap judgments in order to deal with the overwhelming flow of patients. 

Many of these drugs are also prescribed for other ailments, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and panic disorder.  Do the drugs work better as a placebo in these incidents? 

Doctors recommend old-school couch therapy to cure mild depression. You know, the kind where you talk about your parents and that dream where you're a Dutch pelican.

Doctors also recommend exercise. Cause, you might as well be buff and depressed. Just don't slip in your tears while you're doing push ups.

Personally, I get a kick out of existential angst.

Whenever I'm sad, I think about a girl who has always wanted a pony. For her whole childhood, this girl wants a pony. She grows up, drops out of college, gets pregnant very young and ends up working at the Safeway until she dies from smoking Laramies.  She never stops wanting a pony, which, in all fairness, isn't the hardest thing to obtain in the entire scope of obtainable things in the world. She never gets her pony, but she lived each day and never complained.

This makes me happy, because I think that even if I wanted a pony, and that pony seemed like it was completely unobtainable, I'd at least be able to eke out a three-legged donkey despite the impossible odds. It isn't a pony, but it is a pathetically tri-hoofed mammal, a beacon of my spiteful victory over the bleakness of the cosmos.

I hope that makes sense.

If you are depressed, see a psychiatrist.

Find local doctors near you.

Pets Linked to Urinary Tract Infections

Pets, man's best friends, furry little pals who mooch, co-dependent evolutionary offshoots or whatever you call them, are non-human creatures who you share your life, your love and your space. Humans and pets share more than space. They share germs.

One of those germs is E. coli. Your pets are lousy with E. coli. Your pets are gross.

Nearly 70% of domesticated animals have some E. coli in their bodies.  The pets spread that germ to humans and, sometimes, it causes low-grade urinary tract infections in those humans.

Doctors are hoping to find ways to prevent pet-borne, E. coli-caused urinary tract infections, but only in their spare time and only if it is raining.

It has long been known that owning excessive amounts of cats results in husbandlessness in some women, and that men who wear black, sleeveless fishnet shirts and bring their pet snakes to the parks and show them off to passersby are often stricken with wifelessness. The researchers plan to see if there is a similar root cause at work here.

Urologists can treat urinary tract infections, and Infectious Disease Specialists can treat E. coli.

Find a local doctor near you.

Snowboarder's Ankle

Snowboarders, people who ride boards on the snow, are common sufferers of an ailment known as lateral talus fracture, sometimes called snowboarder's ankle. This fracture is caused by jumping the snowboard and then landing on an uneven surface such as a mountainside or a waffle.

The problem, according to orthopedic surgeons, is that the fractures are small, serious and hard to detect. When detected, the foot usually needs to be realigned using screws or plates. Sometimes small bits of bone can fall into to the fracture and surgery is required.

In order to prevent such injuries, snowboarders are urged to use only proper equipment and to practice often.

"It is most important to practice not fracturing your ankle," said a rail-thin man with a beard. He chewed gum loudly. "I'm practicing right now. Notice that my ankle isn't fracturing as we speak. That takes skill."

Other common snowboarder ailments include:

• Mountain Dew Coma
• Phish Withdrawal
  
• Shoulder-Length Hair Caught in Bus Door
• Problem with Authority
   

If you are a snowboarder, then you are probably from Boulder, Colorado. Click here to find an orthopedic surgeon.

Find a local doctor near you.

The Attraction of the Attractive

Good-looking people, standing on the prows of yachts with their full heads of thick, wavy hair blowing in oceanic zephyrs, have a better chance staying with their significant others than unattractive people.

Ugly people, sometimes known as Morlocks, toil away in dark factories deep below the earth's crust. They live hard lives, their pelts covered in dank moss, their words are basic, possibly slurred. Their hopes are simple, their dreams simpler. Most can find joy in a shiny pebble or a poem about geese.

"I married my wife for her personality and her ability to find food in a lightless environment," said an ugly man who was found trembling in a dark stairwell in Sioux City, Iowa.

But seriously, this study, probably undertaken by shallow researchers, found that people who were considered attractive usually attracted a mate of greater-than or equal-to attractiveness. Men who were slightly less attractive were often able to attract women of greater attractiveness. Women, on the other hand, were less likely to approach or date a man of greater attractiveness. (Remember that beauty, of course, is in the eye of the blah blah blah.)

The study also found that people who deemed themselves less than attractive usually switched what was important to them in a mate. They would often cite sense of humor or kindness as reasons to marry someone. Oh, those poor fools.

This study finds that sense of humor, human decency, heroism, magnanimity and love all pale in comparison to "hotness." People who find each other attractive are more likely to stick together. That's it. Attractiveness is a randomly attributed virtue distributed to the virtuous and wicked alike, and it was predestined at birth. TOO BAD!

in the future they may be able to improve marriages by meddling with DNA and eliminating ugliness forever. Until that day comes, however, I'll have to keep putting loads and loads of product in my hair, continue speaking in a false, vaguely European accent and save up for cosmetic surgery. I plan to have my beady eyes unbeaded and my uni-brow split.

A Geneticist can tell if you carry the ugly gene. A Plastic Surgeon can help also.

Find a local doctor near you.

Wrestling Fanaticism

Professional wrestling may be fake, but its influence on its teenage fans is definitely real. Teenage fans, aged 16-20, take more health risks then kids who watch that show where all the teenage characters whine for about forty minutes even though they are all attractive and come from opulent families.

In fact, these pro-wrestling fans were more likely be violent, have unprotected sex and smoke. If these "wrasslin" fans increased their viewership, the chances that they'd hurt someone with a weapon would increase by 19%, chances of having an argument would shoot up 16% and the chances of having unprotected sex would increase by 13%.

Apparently, watching a guy get hit on the head with a chair by a man named The Junkyard Dog is an aphrodisiac to some people.

My favorite pro-wrestler is Starman because of his flip-kick attack.

"Wrestling, to me, is a metaphor. Every struggle, whether it be man against man, man against nature or man against his inner demons, is played out in convention centers across the nation. Being hit by a chair from behind is like getting a parking ticket," said one teenage fan. "I watch these shows because I love life, because I know that I am mortal and could die at anytime, I try to live on the edge like my heroes, The Undertaker, Jake "The Snake" Roberts and "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan. I don't wrestle, go on adventures, test my physical endurance or mental fortitude; I don't grapple opponents in a test of both body and will. I don't boast like the mighty Ulysses, 'that I will lay my hands about you and knock out your teeth like so many boar's tusks'  or exercise. Mostly, I watch TV, but that, my friend, is still pretty edgy."

If you get hit in the head with a chair or, possibly, piledriven into a mat, you might want to see an orthopedic surgeon. If you experience violent tendencies after watching wrestling, see a psychiatrist.

Find a doctor near you.

 

Bikers Beware!

A new study, straight out of the land of Austria, suggests that men who are EXTREME! about their mountain biking are more likely to suffer from injury and trauma to the scrotal sac. Over ninety percent of these bikers, the ones who biked in rugged terrains, had a scrotal anomaly, most likely a cyst or a calcium deposit.

Those bikers who stayed on the nice, flat cement had a little less than a fifty-fifty shot at having similar problems. 

Most biker's must suffer from mirrorlessness as well, because no one would besides a fictional superhero would dress up in cartoonish, bright-yellow spandex on purpose. Also, they all wear sunglasses, but biker's make sure to call these glasses "shades", inserting the word inappropriately into every possible sentence: "Hey, check out my shades!" "I'm ready, cause I got my shades."  and  "I fell into a chasm and landed on my shades."

Biking, both on paved surfaces and in the mountains, is known to cause impotence in men, but I still think it's the outfits.

According to the researchers, in order to safeguard manparts, cyclists need to make sure they have a well-padded seat, a good set of shock absorbers, snug, yet supportive shorts and proper riding technique.

If you are an avid cyclist, talk to a Urologist or a Sports Medicine Physician to ensure your safety.

Find a local doctor.

Pity for the Cranky Ones

Each of us, as mortal beings, are in one way or another heading blithely towards our doom, but the cranky, the crabby, the grouchy, the cantankerous and the ornery seem to get their faster. They take the surly express.

Cheeful, well-adjusted people reported fewer health problems than relentless squabblers. These squabblers lead desperate, spiteful existences living in drafty attics and dank basements gazing at others with horrible, spiteful envy through floorboards, their wretched teeth gnashing, knurled and white knuckles tearing at their hair, beating their breasts; a scornful croaking escapes their throats—a sound so horrible but so disgustingly human that it stirs something in all of us, making us want to bury it deep within the recesses of our consciousnesses— and when we see their sunken eyes, their coyote gauntness and their scarecrow demeanors, a gasp escapes our lips and "there but for the grace of God go I," is said in hushed prayer-like voices, before we cry a little into our gloves.

666 people took part in this study, a study apparently funded by Metallica. The study was a survey that compared the interpersonal interactions of older adults against their own views of their own health. Cranky people tended to say that they were more unhealthy then cheerful people. 

Maybe the cranky people were just being cranky and the cheerful people were just being cheerful. It almost seems like this research is just a bunch of tautologies.  Did this study actually find something out? 

"The findings don't prove a cause-and-effect relationship between social life and health,"said study lead author Jason T. Newsom, associate professor at the Portland State University School of Community Health in Oregon.

So. Nope.

A psychiatrist can help with those interpersonal relationships. Find other doctors near you.

Maybe Your Child's Brain is Okay, Maybe.

The brain of your child could be in danger. Doctors don't think it isn't, but they aren't sure. If you have time, you should worry, but only if you have time.

Dentists have been putting possibly harmful fillings into the teeth of your children. Amalgam fillings, composed from a variety of metals, have small amounts of mercury in them. Some of this mercury leaks out of the filling over time.

"This probably won't affect your children," said a doctor. "I'm like ninety percent sure of it, maybe."

Believe it or not, these filling are kind of controversial. Doctors and researchers have half a mind to do something about this possible but unlikely problem.

Many scientists are looking for replacements for amalgam fillings. Here is a short list of materials that they've rejected out of hand.

• Cement
• Asbestos/Lead
• Smaller Teeth
• Plutonium
• Pancake Batter

Mercury poisoning is hard to detect. The symptoms are vague. Some of the more noticeable ones are  loss of attention, loss of appetite, irritability, anxiety, low self control, bad breath (this describes everyone in Los Angeles so far) increased timidity, mouth ulcers, weight loss, stiffness and frequent headaches.

Don't worry too much about filling-related mercury poisoning. The studies all indicate that it is safe, probably. You should just relax, possibly.

A doctor who is clinically interested in Toxicology can help you detect mercury poisoning. Find a local doctor.