Medical Science

Hi: Let's the say the villi of an obese patient's small intestine are modified -- via gene therapy -- to prevent him/her from absorbing any carbs he/she eats. The carbs are still digested as they normally would be but are not absorbed into the bloodstream. The villi continue to absorb all nutrients other than carbs. This will cause starvation of glucose and will result in the body breaking down fat for energy. Will this cure obesity? What are the obstacles to doing this? Thanks, Green Xenon

I see a machine used to create oxygen with high concentration, means larger than 21%, I just want to ask what is its utility in hospital, why need high concentration, and why they let oxygen flow into a bottle with some water in it ? Thanks !

does anybody have some insight to cutting edge cancer treatment? A close friend of mine has some tumor growth that is inoperable in one of his lungs and some tumors in the lymphoid tissue of his chest. Anybody have any ideas? I know NK cells can be used, what research is showing promise? What about drugs any medication showing promise without destroying the body while its at it?

I read a little into REM and sleep patterns, so if someone a bit more knowledgeable in this area could point out any mistakes or wrong assumptions below, that would be helpful. This diagram shows a typical sleep pattern at night The graph shows the stages of REM and outlines the top one in dark red to outline the times when you are most likely to dream. This is also the lightest stage of sleep where you are able to wake up with ease. My questions are: 1) How are you able to time it so you wake up during the REM 1 stage? 2) If REM 1 occurs 4/5/6 times then doesn't that mean that you can have several dreams within these periods? 3) What's the best …

Hi: What is the most potent topical anesthetic? Thanks, Green Xenon

Back in the day, every so often you'd get a good bout of diarrhea, and lose quite a bit of weight. For the most part we no longer get seriously sick, not nearly as often anyhow. One of the things that happens when you are really sick is that you lose weight, no? Sure, we still get sick once in a while, but not nearly as often as before, and much less of the diarrhea based sicknesses. If we factored in the amount of weight we "should" have lost due to sickness, does that account for our weight gain?

To me, the question, can anyone become smarter, is like asking, can anyone increase their lung capacity. Unless you're a professional runner, and even then, this can be debated, you aren't close to realizing your potential. I believe that every human brain has a potential, and also, a set limit to which they can no longer improve, but this limit is completely unknown to most of us. Many people would say, there is no limit to the human mind, that it is like time and never reaching it's limit, but in this case, I would strongly disagree because time does have a limit (obviously). It's limited to it's parts which keep going forward. It doesn't increase it's potential an…

Everyone's had sleeping limbs, but is it normal if you're completely unable to move or feel a sleeping arm for a full minute? When I got up this morning, for a while it felt as if my forearm felt like it was a plastic attachment to the rest of my body. I shook it, trying to revive it, but for a while it dangled limply from my elbow. It was quite a frightening feeling. Later that day, my fingertips went completely numb due to cold — again, it's normally quite normal, but this time the numbness was complete. What could this signify? I'd been sleeping on my arm, but I'd assume it's still not normal even in that case.

Hello everybody, i need help, could you post me some web pages where i could find information about most significant biochemists and their developments; milestones of biochemistry. I need articles or books about it, i tried to find by myself, but i can't find. please HELP!!!!

Hi all- I was reading about psilocybin in the Erowid vaults, and it says: "The ED50:LD50 ratio is 641 according to the NIOSH Registry of Toxic Effects; compare this with 9637 for vitamin A, 4816 for LSD, 199 for aspirin and 21 for nicotine" Am I missing something or is that ratio backwards? Wouldn't that mean a user would have to kill themselves 641 times over to facilitate any psilocybin-induced effects? The way it's written, the effective dose is 641 times greater than the lethal dose, right? Am I missing something or should the ratio be LD50:ED50? Thanks

Supposedly there are terms that relate to how drugs work and the emphasis of their effectiveness when mixed with something else. So, let's say I take one drug and another: these cause the effects to be twice as strong. (additive effect, right?) And let's say I take drug y and drug x: drug x causes the effect to triple: multiplicative effect, right? I think there are terms for these effects, but I think I have the terms wrong. I cannot really remember what the terms are, but I use to know.

Hi: Burn victims must undergo a painful debridement of their wounds in order to prevent infection. Normally, they are given morphine and other non-anesthetic pain-killers. Sadly, this does not work. They still yell in pain during the operation, which is why they have to be housed seperately from other patients. Why aren't the burn patients given anesthesia [local or general] prior to the operation? Is there a safety issue with anesthetics? Thanks, Green Xenon

I'm doing a project in school on the medicine we have now and medicine in the past or years ago in the past.The only things I can think of ar. 1.liver, heart, kidney ,face transplant we have now not possible 50 yaers ago. 2.Working on a person brain or heart .No doctor would do that 50 years ago . 3.Microscope invented in 1800's allow us today to understand the microorganism and what causes diseases and illnesses. 4.The Microscope and computers / math allowed inventions in drugs. 5.People with HIV are living longer than 20 years ago. 6.People who have cancer is no longer a death sentence.( only some cancers are easier to treat and well others are harder to treat …

Hi - first post, and I was hoping some practicing clinicians/scientists might be able to advise. I've heard that in the odd case a drug may be approved for use where the precise mechanism for its efficacy is not known. I am guessing that this is because they are shown to be effective in clinical trials for certain conditions despite such a 'gap' in knowledge? Can anyone provide examples of such cases, and where I might be able to find out more? I am interested both in the circumstances around their discovery, as well as the criteria via which drugs with unknown mechanisms are approved. I should point out that I am not scientifically trained (I'm a layman!), althou…

They say that the optimal number of glasses of water one should drink per day is 8. I'm skeptical though. If we really needed that many, wouldn't we crave it? Lucky if I crave more than 3 glasses per day.

I have been using stevia as alternative to artificial sweeteners for a few years now. It was blocked from import to the US until fairly recently, and it's still not in widespread use here. It takes a bit of getting used to. It's level of sweetening doesn't increase the more you use like sugar does (at least to me - if I use more than one packet it has a bad aftertaste to me). I use it mostly in teas and find it gives a longer lasting sweet flavor than sugar and has none of the chemicals that artificial sweeteners rely on. I suspect that early studies that claimed it acted as a mutagen were attempts by the heavily subsidized US sugar industry to associate stevi…

http://www.labnews.co.uk/laboratory_article.php/5059/2/nano-scale-drug-delivery-for-chemotherapy-drugs

Have you ever experience disease so severe you couldn't explain it? And when you went to the doctor she/he could not diagnose it? Or any weird symptoms in general?

6 cell phone safety wake-up calls http://health.lifestyle.yahoo.ca/channel_section_details.asp?text_id=4711&channel_id=1030&relation_id=34757 I mean really science today is not about facts but short studies and want they think is bad or not . There are scientist that say EMF is bad and others saying EMF is only bad if it is ultraviolet ,x-rays ,gamas rays are bad and radio waves long wave and radio wave short waves , microwaves ,visible and infrared cannot go through the skin or brake down cells. Well the army have been doing re-search into using high power microwaves to do harm to the other army to burn their skin and pain has a way not to kill them. But rea…

Anyone know of some OTC blood thinners? Perhaps a type of aspirin with the side effect of thinning blood? Aspirin is a generic term. Anyone know of some brands or chemical names?

Im building a general blue print for a list of jobs. The list of jobs involves every job needing to be done if we were to hypothetically go out and cure every disease, dissorder, affliction and dissabling health condition with in the next 50 years. What I need now is to explain the concept to somebody who knows how to write up the idea in the form of a proffessionally organized and thorough proposal. If I can just get the proposal drawn up like that so I can feel confident in promoting it then I will doing some heavy, heavy marketing and persuading to get people to look at it and get some initial funds pouring into this project so we can accelerate its completio…

Hi, I've been reading about stem cell therapy for stroke with a particular interest in the work being done by University of Pittsburgh neurosurgeon Douglas Kondziolka. He's transplanted neuronal cells to the site of injury in the brains of stroke patients and reported that patients began to improve in both physical and cognitive abilities. I know that this is a vague question, but I've been curious if a similar procedure could be done to patients with MS since they have similar symptoms due to brain lesions. I know on average they have more lesions, but even if all of them were not able to be targeted, it seems as though some hope for repair in severely disabled patie…

Hi everyone! I wanted to share an online medical education course I just completed. CME-University is hosting a free online cardiology CME which reviews the Updated STEMI & NSTEMI guidelines. In addition, it discusses ways to dose antiplatelet and anticoagulant therapy to maximize efficacy and minimize bleeding risks for those undergoing PCI and for those undergoing fibrinolysis. I’ve recently completed this and found it was truly one of the most useful and relevant courses available. The course is for cardiologists, emergency physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners, hospitalists, physician assistants and anyone else with an interest in acute coronary syndromes (…

Does any of you out there feel something like this? I mean, maybe I'm crazy or something but I enjoy learning stuff. I mean, not just stuff that you need to know in order to, say, perform decently at your job or because you are acquiring a new hobby, no... I can literally spend hours at a time watching videos or listening to lectures on astronomy and then the next day do the same but on subjects like 'designing websites', 'fixing your car', 'athlete biographies', 'autism', 'chess', you name it. I always feel like I have this insatiable thirst for knowledge. No, no, no!! Don't get me wrong! I'm not some kind of genius, I'm light-years away from owning any kind of guru bra…

People tell me there is a slow down of drugs being made now and it is getting harder for new drugs or cures now.Say there was time the drug companies where making lots and lots of drugs and now it is harder and harder to come up with new drugs now.Is this true? Are we coming up to brick wall with new drugs or what we can come out with? Also I know in past alot of peopel use herbs , spices ,tress ,plants ,flowers , microorganisms , incests ,shrubs so on. And alot did nothing or make person sick. But has scientists look into the properties of these and done re-search to back up science proof. And I hear some drug companies are looking into it and using it is th…