989 On: Health

These days, an unpleasant-tasting food usually doesn’t mean more than you’ve encountered a flavor outside your comfort zone. Wait a minute! This is neither a cheeseburger, nor a french fry! I declare!! But back in the hunting and gathering days, a sour or a bitter taste was often a warning flag that a food was spoiled or poisonous.

Today we explore Brandon's teaching efforts and his experience as a student.

Today we explore how Brandon got into medicine, how the clinic is going, and how he needs to sleep more. Don't forget to check the show notes for the good stuff Brandon mentioned.

The existing official human food definitions for ‘egg’ is over four decades old. There’s a great link in the Washington Post article to a scanned PDF of an old federal register of food regulations. On page 175 of the PDF, the creaky, yellowed pages of the regulations state, quote, “Dried whole eggs, frozen whole eggs, and liquid whole eggs may be declared as eggs.”

A couple of weeks ago, one of my family members had a stroke. Among the many things I didn’t know about strokes is that if you have one, you might lose the ability to swallow properly. It’s turns out, there is a very complex series of steps that have to occur in just the right way for a person to swallow without inhaling the food or liquid they’re trying to get down. From Gould’s Pathophysiology for the Health Professions - 5th Edition - Page 432 “When food is ready to be swallowed, the tongue pushes the bolus of food back to the pharyngeal wall, where receptors of the trigeminal and glossopharyngeal nerves relay the information to the swallowing center in the medulla. Because the reflex is activated at this point, deglutition becomes an involuntary activity. The swallowing center coordinates the actions required to move food or fluid into the stomach, without aspiration into the lungs, by means of cranial nerves 5, 9, 10, and 12 in the following steps: The soft palate is pulled upward The vocal cords are

There's Tamiflu and there's also Theraflu... How are these different, and do they really have an impact on the flu?

So now, apparently, margarine will kill you. It’s right up there with arsenic, apparently. Fun story - my Grandma used to call it Oleo, and no one knows why! I kid - it’s short for ‘oleomargarine’.

This week’s question is: "I have asthma and I’m always surprised by how little the average person knows what to do in an asthma emergency - can you spread the word on how to help out a person in need?"

People tend to re-gain weight after they lose it - but this might not be entirely because we relax our vigilance - chemicals in our environment such as PFA's might be making things more difficult.

I could go on and on about electron clouds and atoms, but let’s talk about Oxygen and Iron as if they are people, with personality traits. So let’s describe Iron as a very outgoing person - it likes to give out lots of hugs and companionship - Iron is a giver. And Oxygen is desperate for attention. Oxygen is a needy friend. When the iron in our blood meets the oxygen in our lungs, the two cling together, but very conveniently for all us red-blooded lifeforms, they cling together in a very fragile connection, just exactly strong enough to be carried to all our body tissues, but not so strong it becomes trapped in the blood. It all seems pretty unlikely if you ask me. But it works! Iron and Oxygen - They're like packages from FedEx - you want your precious cargo safely stowed on the truck, but if it’s glued to the truck, it’s no longer useful - it needs to be just secure enough to arrive safely and be easily handed off.

Okay, elderberry, elderberry… You know, as a child of the 1970’s, the word ‘elderberry’ has a strong ‘Monty Python’ association for me. My family was never into herbals, so the only place I’d ever heard about elderberry is the scene in the film ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ where the French Knight is taunting King Arthur, and says, “Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries”. Which I always assumed meant elderberry wine, which is actually a thing. Oh Monty Python. You so crazy.

One of the most common instances of self-infection (as I'm choosing to phrase it) is in children, who are often a lot less discriminating about what - and where - they touch. Kids - or adults for that matter, that transfer microbes from their nose to their butt can end up with ‘Proctitis’ which is an inflammation of the anus.

The exact way that a person becomes allergic to something is still a mystery. But for whatever reason, your body identifies a substance it deems problematic and then begins producing specialized immune-system receptors tuned to the allergen that has been identified.

Most people’s first thought if you were to tell them “I’m an addict” would be that the person is addicted to drugs - and these days, the number one addiction is… well, SURPRISE, it’s complicated. It...Depends. There are a series of tiers breaking down age groups, substances, and behaviors. What is addiction? Actually, most of the snooty web sites call it Substance Use Disorder, or Substance Dependence, right? But that’s confusing! I could be addicted to... gambling, or addicted to binging old episodes of Murder, She Wrote. Those... are not substances!

In its most basic form, yogurt is milk that has been fermented by carefully chosen bacterial cultures, giving it a thicker texture more tart taste than milk.

There’s a surprisingly wide variation in the shapes, styles and formulations of incense - - thousands of them in fact - - but in its most basic form, it’s a mixture that produces fragrant smoke when burned. Cultures all over the world have a long history of burning incense, often in religious ceremonies, and many of these traditions continue to the present day, but there are numerous non-religious uses of incense as well.

If you’re the squeamish sort of listener, this episode might not be for you. It might actually be better to rephrase the question asking ‘why does caffeine’ have this effect, rather than specifically coffee. You can ingest caffeine from a variety of sources...

Many of us non-farming folks have very quaint ideas of what modern agriculture is. We might imagine that, unless there is an obvious problem in a crop field, it’s largely left alone - but in fact, there’s a lot of preventative pesticide use.

I’ve been eating unwashed produce my entire life, I’ve never had a problem… But have I ever taken the time to research it? No. It turns out that many of these fruits and veggies - especially those that are eaten raw - like bean sprouts, carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and strawberries - can easily transmit bacteria like Salmonella, Listeria, and E. coli, along with a whole host of other nefarious critters, including tiny parasites usually carried by snails, which can lead to meningitis - that is, inflammation of the brain.

Today we describe and discuss three interesting studies/news articles. We have not spent the many hours of research that our typical episodes require, so prepare yourself or an ‘off the cuff’ discussion.