The Best Interesting Random Facts
Dirty laundry, as you might have guessed, certainly contains plenty of germs, including many that are pathogenic. Any cloth that touches your body is likely to become contaminated with whatever organisms are on your skin, and we know what can happen in the special case of underwear. But the Centers for Disease Control agrees with […]
The most common cause of serious respiratory tract infections, pneumonia and bronchiolitis (infection of the small vessels in the lungs called bronchioles), in infants and children is a germ called respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. This is another very common virus, so common that by the age of three almost every kid has been infected […]
Parents of a preschooler know that games are not always fun. A young child often insists on playing by her own rules and gets upset if she loses. This typical preschool behavior can make it difficult for you and your child to genuinely enjoy playing games. It takes time, often not until the kindergarten years, […]
Bacteriologists are quite proud when their name becomes attached to a disease causing organism. This is not true of other people, American Legion members are not at all happy about having Legionnaire’s disease named after them, and homeowners and real estate agents in Lyme, Connecticut, could have done without having their city’s name permanently attached […]
Every medication is unique in terms of how long it stays in the body. The term “half-life” is used describe the length of time it takes the body to clear/eliminate/metabolize 50 percent of a dose. This concept leads to the goal of a “steady state,” which is where the daily dose equals what the body […]
Yes, it is possible to be hospitalized for OCD. This can occur for several reasons. First, it may be a way to help stabilize someone whose rituals have become so problematic that all he or she does all day long is perform rituals. Often in these cases family members will bring someone in to a […]
In July 1989, Minnesota held a three-week statewide wrestling camp and 175 high school wrestlers aged 14 to 18 came to participate. Everything went fine until the final week, when many of them started breaking out in rashes around their heads and necks or on their extremities. Several had eye infections. Some had swollen lymph […]
Giardia lamblia is the other common protozoan parasite that infests drinking water. During the 1990s, reports of giardiasis increased all over the country. In 1997–1998, the latest years for which the CDC has published statistics, New York State, including New York City, had the largest number of cases, 3,673. But before you conclude from this […]
On September 3, 1999, 10 children in counties near Albany, New York, were hospitalized with bloody diarrhea, and everyone wanted to know why. Health officials quickly discovered two facts: they were all infected with E. coli O157:H7, the most deadly form of the E. coli bacterium, and they had all attended the Washington County Fair, […]
Some people never learn. In October 1996, a three-week-old boy was brought into a hospital emergency room in Arizona suffering from a fever of 103.6, plus vomiting and bloody diarrhea that had been going on for more than two weeks. Why it took two weeks for the parents to bring him in is almost certainly […]
In 1918, the flu season came on a bit early, in April, but a few weeks before that 84,000 additional American troops had set out for Europe to fight the Germans, so there were more important things to worry about than the “grippe.” That some people died during the spring was unremarkable, before there were […]
Warts, the kind that appear on the skin, often of older children, are common and benign. There are various treatments that can get rid of them, but most of them go away by themselves after a year or two. Yet there are many viruses, probably 60 or more, that cause warts, and the warts these […]
Prozac (generic name: fluoxetine) was one of the first new antidepressants classified as an SSRI, and it is still popular. Prozac helps the body increase serotonin at low doses and norepinephrine at higher doses. Research has also demonstrated that, like most antidepressants, Prozac helps the brain produce more of the natural neurochemicals that heal brain […]
A chemist at the University of California, Davis named Gang Sun apparently felt that the smelly sock was a neglected area of research, so he set about finding a solution to this problem. According to a press release dated October 3, 2000, textiles are a great place for bacteria to grow, and bacteria and yeasts […]
Weddings are happy occasions, but the physical and emotional demands of a wedding can provoke your body’s stress reaction, releasing damaging stress hormones into your brain and triggering your depression. Some other pleasant occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and vacations can initiate the stress response as well. It really does not matter whether an event is […]
Yes, this is an irrational thought, but there are things you can do to challenge it. First, look at this fear from a rational perspective: How many people do you know who have contracted hepatitis? Second, how many people have contracted any disease from a garbage can? Third, how many people have contracted hepatitis from […]
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek loved to look at stuff through his microscope. One day in 1681, he was closely examining a sample of his own feces and described a parasite that was probably the one we now know as Giardia lamblia. It got its name, however, in 1859 from a biologist named Lambl. It is the […]
OCD is not a new disorder. In fact, OCD has been written about for centuries, as far back as the sixth century. According to Ian Osborn in his book Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals (1999), there are numerous references to what we now call OCD in early religious and Greek writings. Many of the early […]
Malaria is not the only insect-borne disease now afflicting Americans. Lyme disease, named after the city in Connecticut where it was first identified, comes from the bite of a tick infected with a spirochetal bacterium. Two species of tick, Ixodes scapularis and I. pacificus, are the primary villains. I. scapularis lives in the East and […]
You’ll find that the rice flours are as common to gluten-free baking as wheat flour is to traditional baking. There are subtle differences between these three flours, primarily with respect to baking performance. From a dietary fiber and protein perspective they are similar to each other, except that brown rice flour has approximately forty fewer […]
Children in day care probably get more antibiotics prescribed for them than children who stay at home. A May 2001 Danish study followed children from birth in 1997 to the age of two years and found that enrollment in a day care center doubled a child’s likelihood of being prescribed an antibiotic. Whether this is […]
The Italians call it the French disease; the French call it the English disease. Russians blamed the Poles, the Poles blamed the Germans. At least since the sixteenth century, Europeans have been blaming each other, if it isn’t English, French, Polish, Russian, or German, then it’s Venetian or Neapolitan. Some believe Columbus brought it back […]
Shigellosis is another disease kids risk contracting in day care centers and passing on to their families. In 1991 there was an outbreak of Shigella sonnei infection in Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky, that involved 14 licensed day care centers, making a lot of people sick but, every cloud has a silver lining, giving researchers a chance […]
The group of viruses that are transmitted by insects are called (and this is not a technical term) “arboviruses.” The term is a coinage based on “ARthropod BOrne Virus.” West Nile, transmitted by a mosquito, is one of these. There are several other viruses transmitted by insects to humans, all of them quite rare in […]
Swenson’s Wild Midwest Exotic Petting Zoo is apparently a popular attraction in Clermont, Iowa, and in August 1999 they featured a bear cub. It was really cute, and it let people touch it and wrestle with it. Occasionally it would nip at people, but it never really hurt anyone. The cub was also brought to […]
Why do they print directions on the back of your liquid antibacterial hand soap bottle? Do you really need “directions” on how to use soap? Antibacterial products used to clean bathrooms or kitchen sinks are not drugs, and therefore their labeling is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission. Same for ordinary (i.e., non-antibacterial) soap. But […]
Kids are unquestionably messy, and the younger they are the messier they seem to be. Growing up involves an incessant series of encounters with germs of all kinds. Babies begin by fouling themselves with germ-laden feces, then as soon as they’re able to they start putting everything they can lift into their mouths. Next they […]
Botulism is extremely rare in adults, is somewhat more common in infants (there are about 80 or so cases a year, while 2 or 3 cases of adult botulism per year would be about average). The effects of the disease in infants can range from fairly mild to death, in fact, it is one of […]
You may remember Chlamydia trachomatis, it’s the bacterium that causes the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, chlamydia. A closely related species, Chlamydia psittaci, infects pet birds (and more rarely certain wild birds as well) and can be transmitted to humans, who can get flu-like symptoms from it, and sometimes more serious […]
Gluten is a funny-sounding word, but it will become one of the most important words in your vocabulary. It sounds like glue, and it acts like glue. Most people, unless they are a chef or baker, don’t know what gluten is. So, if you have never heard of gluten before, you’re not alone. But this […]
John Lynn, of Austin, Texas, thinks people don’t wash their hands often enough, and he thinks it’s about time someone did something about it. According to Patent Number 6,147,607, Mr. Lynn has designed a way of preventing people from slipping away from the bathroom without washing. He proposes a mechanism attached to a toilet handle […]
You go to a hospital to get well, but you have to remember that a hospital is one public place that’s bound to be filled with germs, after all, it’s people with germs who wind up there, all kept close together with a staff of caretakers who are almost inevitably going to transmit germs from […]
This is actually a more common OCD experience than people would think: You saw a story on the news about a hit-and-run accident in the town next to yours. You called the police to tell them you might have done it, and they came to your house and questioned you. When you told them you […]
Once again, a gluten-free diet has the power to bring international flavor, tradition, and culture into the North American gluten-free kitchen with ingredients that you may never have otherwise discovered. One of the lesser known gluten-free ingredients, ragi is a gluten-free cereal grass that is not regularly mentioned in the lineup of gluten-free grains that […]
Rotavirus is a good example of the kind of disease that is easily transmitted in child care settings. There are others as well, most of them considerably less serious in their effects than rotavirus, but nevertheless things to watch out for. Among them is hepatitis A (HAV). Although there is a vaccine for it, hepatitis […]
It may be some time before Mr. Lynn’s clean-hands identification mechanism is in widespread use, but in the meantime, you might want to wash your hands more often anyway, whether you can be caught at it or not. There is indisputable evidence that washing hands, we’re talking about the general public here, not surgical personnel, […]