Whether it’s an artificial leg, a cast for a broken arm, or even a corset for an injured back, you can use these items to express yourself and have some fun if you want. You can make your prosthetic yours and really, the only limit is your imagination.
You can choose to have a functioning but unique leg that extends for rock climbing or you can have a glass leg that you can fill up with something decorative. Your artificial arm could be tattooed from shoulder to wrist or you could decide to cover your stump with a wing. Even casts …read more

Ever wonder what it’s like to have prosthetic legs?
Aimee Mullins – athlete, model, and actress – lets us into her world with this interesting talk at TED.
Born without fibular bones, Aimee had both legs amputated below the knee when she was an infant and learned to walk and then run on prosthetics. The running led to competing as a sprinter and resulted in her becoming a world record breaking runner at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta.

Okay, honestly, I was a little surprised to see the list of jobs below. These, my friends, are listed as the Unhealthiest Jobs in America, based on nonfatal injuries and illnesses that caused workers to miss at least one day of work in 2006.
The jobs I thought would be more risky (construction work, heavy truck driving) could barely touch the others. Interested? Take a look:
1. Laborers and Freight / Stock / Material Movers (Okay, lots of heavy lifting involved, so no surprise here).
2. Office/Administrative Workers (Huh?!?)
3. Sales Staff (Again, huh?!?)
4. Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers
5. Nursing Aides / Orderlies / …read more

Image details: Vegas or Bust served by picapp.com
You think you have weight loss goals? Well, I’m guessing Manuel Uribe has you smoked. His goal is to be able to walk down the aisle at his own wedding. And we’re betting he’ll do just that.
The 43-year-old Uribe has dropped an astonishing 550 pounds over the last two years after breaking the Guinness World Record of 1,235 pounds. He’s now down to about 700 pounds and has dreams of whittling down further.
Currently living in Northern Mexico, Uribe attributes his obesity to the American way – a nonstop diet of …read more

Remember Lakshmi Tatma, a Indian girl who was born with four arms and four legs. We first wrote about her in December 2007, saying…
The people of her rural Indian village did not see this as a deformity. They believed that she was a ‘gift from God’, christened her ‘Lakshmi‘ after the four-armed Hindu Goddess of wealth, and queued outside the house to be blessed by the girl.
But the actual cause of the extra limbs was that the girl had a twin who hadn’t fully developed and instead became attached to Lakshmi’s body at the pelvis.
Lakshmi made headlines around the world …read more

Meet Mathew Rudes, a 21 year old college student due to graduate with honors from the University of California Los Angeles this spring and will attend law school in the Fall.
But Mathew is not your average college student. He wrote a book before he was 11 years old and was valedictorian of his law and government magnet high school in North Hills, Calif.
And he did all this despite being inflected with a severe form of Marfan Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes the mutation of the fibrilin1 gene. This mutation causes the body’s connective tissue of the eyes, blood vessels, …read more

Phantom pain felt by amputees in their missing limbs is nothing new. This bizarre phenomenon has been around since at least the Civil War era. But as the U.S. marks its fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq, we are finally seeing the emergence of a new and very unlikely source of phantom pain therapy: mirrors.
That’s right, mirrors. Dr. Jack Tsao, a Navy neurologist with the Uniform Services University remembered reading a paper in grad school which concluded that using a mirror to cast a reflection of the amputee’s remaining limb – which the amputee flexes and moves – tricks …read more

Rehabilitation therapy is an integral part of recovery for those suffering from accident injuries, combat wounds, and medical conditions such as strokes. But it involves routine, repetitive, and boring exercises such as stretching, lifting, and balancing – physical tasks that many patients find stressful and tedious.
Nintendo’s Wii video game system is changing all that. Using the game consoles motion sensitive controller, Wii games such as baseball, golf, and tennis involve body movements akin to those of traditional physiotherapy and occupational therapy. Not only that, the Wii gaming system is so engrossing, that patients often forget the pain while they’re playing …read more

Meet Lakshmi Tatma, a two year old Indian girl born with an extra four limbs.
The people of her rural Indian village did not see this as a deformity. They believed that she was a ‘gift from God’, christened her ‘Lakshmi‘ after the four-armed Hindu Goddess of wealth, and queued outside the house to be blessed by the girl.
But the actual cause of the extra limbs was that the girl had a twin who hadn’t fully developed and instead became attached to Lakshmi’s body at the pelvis.
Lakshmi made headlines around the world last month when a team of surgeons spent 27 …read more

Deep brain stimulation.
Imagine being born with a genetic abnormality that compels you to swear uncontrollably, to hurt those you love, and to compulsively destroy yourself.
This tragic syndrome predominantly affects males, and most of these boys never live beyond their thirties (most die of renal failure). It’s a rare genetic disease called Lesch-Nyhan.
There are no initial clues when a Lesch-Nyhan child is born. But within the first year, the syndrome begins to manifest symptoms. A deficiency in a critical enzyme results in problems such as mild retardation, spastic behavior, and excessive uric acid levels which cause pink-orange, sand-like urine and …read more