The Best Interesting Random Facts
If some evil genius wanted to create a really virulent and versatile bacterium, he might model his creation on Staphylococcus aureus, a spherical gram-positive organism that grows in clusters that under a microscope look like bunches of grapes. This is a germ that really has what it takes. It can grow in temperatures ranging from […]
Suffolk County, New York, has beautiful beaches and beautiful people. Rich New Yorkers own elaborate summer houses there, in different neighborhoods from the local year-rounders who serve them, of course. Those who don’t own can rent them, rentals at $20,000 a month and more are common. Some people commute to jobs in Manhattan from Suffolk. […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Alliance, Ohio, is a town of about 25,000 people southeast of Akron. It is famous, if we use the word loosely, as the site of a yearly carnation festival every August and the home of the particular variety of carnation that President William McKinley favored as a lapel decoration. But one day in June 2001, […]
The CDC couldn’t figure out why, but in June and July 1982, almost 900 people in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas came down with diarrhea, abdominal pain, and in most cases fever from an infection of Yersinia enterocolitica. The best guess was that it came from a single milk plant in Memphis that distributed a large […]
On June 30, 1994, a 47-year-old man was admitted to a hospital in Arkansas. He was nauseated and his vision was blurry. His speech was slurred, and he was having difficulty swallowing. His gag reflex was impaired. His eyelids were drooping and his face muscles weren’t working properly, he seemed to have some sort of […]
In late August 1999, the New York City Department of Health discovered an unusual outbreak of encephalitis (inflammation of the brain) concentrated among a group of elderly people living not far from La Guardia Airport in the northern part of Queens, one of New York City’s five boroughs. The Department of Health, in cooperation with […]
In May 2001, a Swedish researcher named Carl Erik Nord made news by announcing at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology that the bacteria that causes severe acne, Propionibacterium acnes, were developing resistance to the antibiotics used to treat the affliction. This may have been news to the reporter who wrote the […]
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, […]
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 […]
The recovery model, or philosophy, has much in common with the harm reduction approach. Fueled by dissatisfaction with the status quo and the paternalistic “trust me, I’m a doctor” medical model, the recovery model is about giving control back to the person with the psychiatric disability and/or coexisting substance disorder. In the recovery model, the […]
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 […]
Although you might not think of the flu as a killer disease, an average of 20,000 Americans die of it every year, that’s about four times as many people as die from the diarrheal illnesses caused by eating contaminated food. Yet many people who are sure they are going to suffer an agonizing death from […]
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 […]
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 […]
Hand washing is unquestionably a good idea, and we’ll have more to say about that below, but at the same time, personal hygiene may not be all it’s cracked up to be. Bathing and showering, for example, are generally pleasant activities, but as far as infection control is concerned, they probably don’t do much good. […]
Ever get your nails done at a nail salon? A lot of people do: nail care is a $6 billion a year industry in the United States, and there are tens of thousands of nail salons all across the country, 7,500 in California alone. One day in 2001 a dermatologist called the health department and […]
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 […]
In the late summer and fall of 1998 Listeria monocytogenes, a gram-positive bacterium that lives everywhere in the world except Antarctica, caused about 40 illnesses in ten different U.S. states. The CDC in cooperation with state health departments in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee determined that all these cases came from a single strain […]
Although the FTC doesn’t regulate the production or labeling of over the counter drugs, it does have a say in the way they are advertised. And they can be just as fussy as the FDA when it comes to making claims about antibacterial products. A complaint the FTC filed against Unilever in 1999 is illustrative. […]
We all know it’s healthy to go to the gym regularly, but did you ever wonder what’s in the sweat of the guy who used the exercise machine just before you? Sure, he wipes off the machine with that towel, but that’s not exactly sterilizing, is it? Are you supposed to touch that stuff, and […]
If the bottle label reads “well water,” “artesian well water,” “spring water,” or “mineral water,” that certainly sounds healthful, and may even be healthful, but such sources can be polluted with cryptosporidium, too. There is a large variety of water brands, and an almost equally large variety of sources from which the water comes. A […]
E. coli is usually transmitted in food, but it sometimes turns up in drinking water, too. In Wyoming in 1997, 157 people were infected with E. coli O157:H7 when a community water system supplied by a spring and two wells became contaminated. The water in this system is usually safely used untreated, but this time […]
The Internet can be a significant source of misinformation about vaccines. There are numerous sites that gather scare stories about vaccination based on little more than anecdotal reports from parents, and many chat rooms discussing vaccination in hysterical voices and without benefit of scientific information. This doesn’t mean that vaccines are without dangers, there are […]
Well loved for its nutrition, taste, texture, and culinary versatility, quinoa is a gem in the repertoire of gluten-free grains. A time-honored food staple of South America and an essential food of the ancient Incas, quinoa is packed with cultural significance and history. Scientifically speaking, quinoa is a seed, but it’s commonly referred to in […]
A microorganism is a living entity that is so small it can only be seen with the aid of a microscope. A pathogen is an organism that causes disease. Examples of pathogens include bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi. Note that a pathogen does not have to be a microorganism; some parasitic worms cause disease and […]
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 […]
Since 1989, when it surpassed the number of outbreaks caused by salmonella, Campylobacter has been the most common cause of bacterial gastroenteritis in the United States. An estimated 2.4 million people get infected with it every year. It’s a gram-negative rod-shaped bacterium, and there are three species of it that cause human disease. C. coli […]
Bacillus cereus is a rod-shaped aerobic organism that comes in two different forms, neither one of which is fun to have. The one that causes diarrhea doesn’t cause vomiting, but the one that causes vomiting also causes diarrhea. The only good news is that either way, you get sick and get well fast: symptoms can […]
If we want to search for something good to come out of the 1918 disaster, perhaps we can find it in the spur to research in virology that it provoked. In the 10 years after 1918, thousands of books and articles were published about the flu. One large problem posed by the flu virus is […]
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 […]
In 1999, the CDC tracked nine different food-borne illnesses caused by bacteria, and confirmed by laboratory analysis 10,697 cases. Salmonella infection accounted for 4,533 of these, a little more than 42 percent. Salmonellosis is actually caused by a group of bacteria. The most common serotypes in the United States are called Salmonella enteriditis and Salmonella […]
On July 15, 1994, the New Jersey State Department of Health reported to the CDC that six people who had traveled to Bermuda on the cruise ship Horizon had come down with pneumonia. The CDC quickly discovered that 14 people on the ship had been infected with Legionnaire’s disease. It was pretty clear that the […]
Seafood is good for you, and many health-conscious people make it an important part of their diet. But some seafood is really bad for you, and we’re not just talking about contaminated shellfish. There are certain kinds of food poisoning you can get from fish that can’t be prevented even if you wash your hands […]
