JOSH'S CONDITIONS & TREATMENTS BLOG

Gullibility IS in the Dictionary, Apparently

Mike Wallace may have an ally when it comes to exposing defrauders of the elderly, and that ally is neurological science.

Remember all those old people who were defrauded by Nigerians? Weren't you laughing at them, beer in hand, with your whole life ahead of you, turning to your buddies saying things like, "Greatest Generation more like Greatest Bunch of Suckers!" Then you'd say this, "When I get old, I'll know better."

Guess what? You won't. When people get old their minds turn to soup. It will happen to all of us. Too bad, Charly Gordon!

Researchers at the University of Iowa, a state just brimming with elderly, discovered that over 40% of seniors have suffered some neurological damage. This causes the oldsters to become as gullible as a mid-eighties TV character from a small Midwestern town or obscure island country.

Apparently, the test subjects who had decision-making problems all suffered damage to their ventromedial prefrontal cortex, affecting their decision-making abilities. 

The researchers plan to test regular-aged joes and see how their prefrontal cortexes react when they make good and bad decisions.  And one day, a cure for these shenanigans!

A Neurologist can help out with all that brain damage. Find a doctor here.

EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE!

This is a portion of a researcher's transcript that I obtained by putting it in my pocket:

Researcher: You are on a train. A man without a uniform says he is collecting fifty dollars from all the passengers so the train won't run out of gas.

SubjectX: Are we on a train?

Researcher: No. It's a test to see if you're senile.

SubjectX: Why would you make me ride the train to see if I was senile. That's seems rather stupid. You'd be better off in a lab.

Researcher: We are in a lab.

SubjectX: A lab on the train?

Researcher: We're not on a train.

SubjectX: Then why do you need fifty dollars?

Researcher: For gas.

SubjectX: Will you take a check?

Researcher: Yes.

The Hair of the Dog

A poisoned Italian man turned up at a hospital in Brisbane, Australia. He had ingested a large quantity of ethylene glycol.  Drinking ethylene glycol causes depression, labored breathing, heart palpitations, renal failure, brain damage and death.  It is also one of the active ingredients in antifreeze. 

If you don't know what antifreeze is, find your nearest 81' Pontiac Grand Prix. There will be a puddle of it underneath the engine. Trust me.

Antifreeze is full of alcohol and alcohol-like chemicals, and people will drink it to get drunk. There are over 3,400 cases of human ethylene-glycol poisoning a year. Nearly 80% percent of those cases are full-grown adults who know what they are drinking.

I'm sure that every now and then some redneck sets down his Mason jar full of electric-green Kool-Aid next to the Mason jar where he keeps his antifreeze. Then the old switcharoo occurs and Billy Joe Bob Jim Jack Joe Bob Bill Clampett, Jr. has to hightail it to the emergency room. Most of the cases are not as innocent as mislabeled jars.

The cure for antifreeze poisoning is alcohol. (It''s like treating diabetes with Charleston Chews.) It inhibits the toxicity of the ethylene glycol. 

When Australian paramedics brought the Italian man to the hospital, they hooked him up and started dripping medical-grade alcohol into his veins. The hospital was low on their supply of alcohol and quickly ran out.

Apparently, the Italian man had been at the hospital before he found the antifreeze.

The Australian doctors had to go to the store and buy a case of vodka. They dripped about three drinks an hour into the man's veins. They had to keep the poor guy drunk to keep him alive. That will teach him.

If you're thinking about drinking antifreeze, let a nephrologist talk you out of it. Actually, any doctor you talk to will tell you it's a foolish thing to do. Click here.

Girls: Concussed and Nonplussed

Girls, it seems, are no longer immune to concussions. This may have something to do with their civil rights being expanded in the mid-Twentieth Century, but it might have more to do with their increased interest and participation in contact sports.

The rates of concussion are higher among female athletes than male athletes. Doctors believe that this is due to weaker neck muscles which absorb less shock or that girls are more likely to come forward and report their injuries than boys are.

Another problem is that coaches of female athletes aren't as likely to check for concussions. Football and hockey are the greatest concussion causers, but those two sports remain predominately and sexistly  male.  Females, traditionally speaking and in no way trying to create a bold and hasty generalization,  tend to stick to sports like soccer, volleyball or girl's-rules basketball. 

Soccer and volleyball aren't exactly concussion country. 

A concussion is caused when the brain slams against the skull. Sometimes, amnesia--which is only funny on TV, because in real life it's desperately, desperately sad to the victim and the victim's family--occurs. Other times, the person might get knocked out like a character in a Raymond Chandler novel, but those things don't necessarily have to occur to obtain a concussion. It is also a good idea to let a concussion victim get a lot of rest. That old myth about not letting them sleep is hogwash, flapdoodle, flummery, gobbledegook and balderdash.

What's best for a concussion victim is not letting the victim take another blow to the head for a good, long while. Repeated head trauma can cause long-term brain damage.

An internist, family physician or general practitioner can manage a minor concussion. If you're a boxer whose taken a few dozen blows to the head, you may want to see a neurologist.

To have discussion about a concussion, click here.

"Save it for Queen Dopplepopolis!"

In the New York Times, there is an article about a patient with a confounding disorder. The disorder is known as Capgras Delusion. People who suffer from this illness believe that their loved ones, most likely the spouse, are being replaced by nearly-identical replicas. Which, in a perfect world, would be great for spicing up the old marriage. Unfortunately, the experience is usually rather frightening for the sick person, and they may even begin to believe that inanimate objects and pets have been replaced.  Amazingly, even their own reflections are often believed to be impostors.

     Capgras Delusion is thought to be caused by a head trauma or lesions/tumors that break the connections between the facial-recognition area of the brain and the area associated with emotions. The syndrome often accompanies epilepsy, schizophrenia, strokes and malformed lobes.

  This seems like an off-the-wall disorder, absurd and unrelatable, but we all experience a little taste of Capgras Delusion when we have feelings of deja vu or jamais vu. 

Basically, the area of the brain where the idea of the yourself is stored becomes traumatized. You can no longer access your feelings and thoughts about yourself and your relationships to other people. So when you see your friend, your brain knows that he looks like friend but you are unable to access any sort of familiarity with that person. It's a complete breakdown of the "sense of self." 

It doesn't sound so absurd now.

There are treatments for this condition, both pharmaceutical and psychiatric. If someone you think you know suffers from Capgras Syndrome and needs to see an unreplacable doctor, click here.