We’ve heard of Low Carb Diet, South Beach Diet, Low Fat Diet, Atkins Diet, Low Sodium Diet, Vegetarian Diet and a variety of other diets.

Penis Diet, what the heck is that? Sounds like what some desperate pornographers would be peddling in junk e-mail. You know, the kind that arrives uninvited in your inbox with headers like Add four-inches to your…, Surprise Your Girlfriend and the like.

But Penis Diet is not the desperate attempt of an e-mail marketer to fleece you out of your money. 

Penis Diet is actually what two U.S. doctors have come up with for men who are not quite convinced that drugs like Viagra are the best way to achieve an erection.

Penis Diet is also the name of a 75-page book co-authored by the two doctors Damon Z. Cozamanis, D.C. and Marc D. Grobman, D.O., F.A.C.P.

Since we were utterly flummoxed by the Penis Diet, we called one of the authors of the book Dr.Grobman and interviewed him about this new Diet.

According to Dr.Grobman, the Penis Diet Continue Reading…

This is a story that could happen only in India.

Apparently, 500 poor people in the North Indian city of Gurgaon have lost their kidneys to an unscrupulous gang of greedy doctors who removed the kidneys and sold them to rich Indians and foreigners.

Describing the literal theft of the kidneys of poor folks, the New York Times writes:

Although several kidney rings have been exposed in India in recent years, the police said the scale of this one was unprecedented. Four doctors, five nurses, 20 paramedics, three private hospitals, 10 pathology clinics and five diagnostic centers were involved, Mohinder Lal, the police officer in charge of the investigation, said.

“We suspect around 400 or 500 kidney transplants were done by these doctors over the last nine years,” said Mr. Lal, the Gurgaon police commissioner.

Sadly, the latest Gurgaon kidney scam is not an exception.

In the mid-1990s, there were media reports that several poor people in Bangalore had their kidneys removed without their consent.

What’s wrong with America?

In the supposedly richest country in the world, 47 million Americans are uninsured and have no access to even basic healthcare. Even those with health insurance are routinely denied treatment by greedy insurance companies.

Now comes more disturbing news.

The U.S. has been ranked last in providing effective healthcare to its citizens, according to a new study of 19 industrialized countries by Commonwealth Fund.

In a study of amenable mortality (i.e. potentially preventable deaths from certain causes before the age of 75 with timely and effective healthcare) published in the Jan/Feb issue of Health Affairs, the authors estimate that 75,000-101,000 deaths could have been averted each year in the U.S. if it had achieved the average of all countries analyzed (except U.S.) or the average of three top-performing countries.

The study included a total of 19 countries. Besides U.S., the survey Continue Reading…

If you really, really care about your life, you’d better read this piece.

No kidding. This is scary stuff.

Although we’d registered Dr.Atul Gawande’s name on the periphery of our consciousness a while back, his new piece in the December 10, 2007 issue of the New Yorker was the first time we took a dekko at his writing.

And we are impressed. Make that mighty impressed by his new essay on how extraordinarily complex and dangerous (for patients) the practice of intensive care medicine a.k.a critical care medicine has become these days.

As our life spans and prosperity increase, it’s more than likely that most of us will end up in an intensive care unit at some time or the other.

While some of us will survive the ICU experience, many will not. Of those who do not, perhaps their lives could have been saved if only doctors followed checklists before embarking upon extremely complex procedures. Well, since the future is still not upon us, maybe there’s some hope for those whose lives will hang in the balance during their ICU stay.

Gawande’s thesis is simple - when doctors use checklists in intensive care, infection rates are dramatically reduced and lives are saved. 

To hold our interest, Gawande, an Assistant Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, draws a compelling analogy of the increasing complexity of intensive care medicine with the complexity of piloting a Boeing B-17 bomber in the early days of the aircraft’s launch.

Dr.Atul Gawande
(Pic: Brigham & Women’s Hospital)

As Atul Gawande writes in the latest issue of the New Yorker:

Medicine today has entered its B-17 phase. Substantial parts of what hospitals do—most notably, intensive care—are now too complex for clinicians to carry them out reliably from memory alone. I.C.U. life support has become too much medicine for one person to fly.

Yet it’s far from obvious that something as simple as a checklist could be of much help in medical care. Sick people are phenomenally more various than airplanes. A study of forty-one thousand trauma patients—just trauma patients—found that they had 1,224 different injury-related diagnoses in 32,261 unique combinations for teams to attend to. That’s like having 32,261 kinds of airplane to land. Mapping out the proper steps for each is not possible, and physicians have been skeptical that a piece of paper with a bunch of little boxes would improve matters much.

After describing research studies conducted at Johns Hopkins in 2001 and later by Dr.Peter Pronovost on the use of checklists to tackle line infections and improve care for patients on mechanical ventrilation, Gawande has no doubts as to the conclusion of the study:

Checklists established a higher standard of baseline performance.

And how do checklists help in improving medical care for very sick patients?

Checklists help by improving memory recall - particularly with mundane matters that may get overlooked in the hectic frenzy of events in the ICU - and in explicitly outlining the minimum expected steps in complex procedures. Then, there’s the cost savings that could easily run into hundreds of millions of dollars if not more.

But Gawande cautions us that checklists are not a grand panacea for all

Continue Reading…

After several years of tormenting consumers and businesses alike with shoddy Internet Explorer, Office and Windows software rife with massive security holes, Microsoft is now peddling an Internet-based healthcare network.

On Thursday, Microsoft rolled out a web site called HealthVault to let individuals store and share personal health information online.

The company also rolled out a specialized health search engine called HealthVault Search on the HealthVault web site to provide online health content.

When Microsoft’s main search engine is floundering even after sucking in hundreds of millions of dollars in development costs, it’s hard to believe that this new health search engine will be worth anything.

Microsoft hopes that HealthVault will bring the health and technology industries together to develop new applications, services and connected devices. It has released a HealthVault software development kit for independent software vendors looking to build products and services on the HealthVault platform.

In an op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Microsoft’s top honcho Bill Gates writes:

We envision a comprehensive, Internet-based system that enables health-care providers to automatically deliver personal health data to each patient in a form they can understand and use. We also believe that people should have control over who they share this information with. This will help ensure that their privacy is protected and their care providers have everything they need to make fully-informed diagnoses and treatment decisions.

Wow, what noble ideals!

But given Microsoft’s past track record of repeatedly delivering software with huge security holes in them, only the most gullible would entrust their precious health care information to this software company.

The Canadian government is asking Canadians not to use the Neem Active Toothpaste with Calcium manufactured by an Indian company Calcutta Chemical Co Ltd.

Canadian health officials say tests on the Neem Active Toothpaste with Calcium have revealed unacceptable levels of diethylene glycol as well as high levels of harmful bacteria in the product.

Diethylene glycol - a poisonous chemical used in antifreeze and as a solvent - may cause kidney failure, breathing problems, coma, convulsions, urinary problems, dizziness, abdominal pain, nausea and even death.

The harmful bacteria may cause adverse effects like urinary tract infection, severe vomitting, diarrhea and life threatening dehydration.

Although Neem Active Toothpaste with Calcium is not approved for sale in Canada, it has been found in several stores in Western Canada and Atlantic Canada.

Brazil’s state-run public health system will pay even for sex-change operations.

Brazil’s Health Ministry said Saturday that the public health system would provide free sex-change operations to citizens in compliance with a court order.

Brazilian lawyers successfully argued that sexual reassignment surgery is covered under a constitutional clause guaranteeing medical care as a basic right.

Transsexuals are said to represent about 0.001% of the population in Brazil.

While medical care is a basic right of citizens in several countries like Brazil, Canada and U.K., it is not so in India and the U.S. where Continue Reading…

Health dangers lurk in the oddest of places.

True. Very true. 

An Australian professor Lidia Morawska has found that laser printers emit fine particles that can enter the lungs, causing respiratory and cardiovascular problems and potentially even cancer.

Professor Morawska told the Brisbane Times:

Ultra-fine particles are of most concern because they can penetrate deep into the lungs where they can pose a significant health threat.

Morawska and her team tested 40 laser printers and found that 13 were high emitters of particles from their toners, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Morawska compared the clouds of ultra-fine particles from the printers to cigarette smoke and motor vehicle emissions.

Professor Morawska plans to analyze the chemistry of the particles, which will also have health implications for people working around these printers.

Morawska is a Professor at the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, and Director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at QUT.

Medical researchers in the U.S. have discovered that Turmeric, a key ingredient of Curry that gives the spicy Indian food its distinctive yellow color, has properties that can fight the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease.

Named after the German physician Alois Alzheimer, Alzheimer’s is a disease that attacks the brain and is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which gets worse over time and makes growing old a harrowing experience for many millions.

Alzheimer’s symptoms include forgetfulness, confusion, trouble with organizing and expressing thoughts, misplacing things, getting lost in familiar places and, personality and behavior changes.

A team of researchers including Milan Fiala and John Cashman have isolated bisdemethoxycurcumin, the active ingredient of curcuminoids, which is a natural substance found in turmeric root.

Bisdemethoxycurcumin may help boost the immune system in clearing amyloid beta, a peptide that forms the plaques found in Alzheimer’s disease.

With the help of blood samples from Alzheimer’s disease patients, researchers found that bisdemethoxycurcumin boosted immune cells called macrophages to clear amyloid beta, which clogs the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and kills brain cells.

Some five million Americans have Alzheimer’s.