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.

Image: Newscom

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 / Attendants

6. Janitors & Housekeepers (I thought this would have ranked higher)

7. Construction Workers (Also would have thought this would rate higher)

8. Nurses (Being married to an ER nurse, I know that your chances of being assaulted are pretty much a daily work hazard. Of course, I don’t suppose this is the case all across the nursing board. But still, nursing can be dangerous, for sure.)

So what do you think of this list? Is your job on here?

For more on the deadliest jobs, see our post from last year.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics

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 soda and junk food - after he came to the US in 1988 to live for a few years. He also claims that a liposuction surgery gone bad left him with huge tumors on both legs weighing a total of 220 pounds.

Now, the cause, I ’spose, is beside the point. The fact is that Uribe is currently sticking to a doctor-monitored diet and exercise program which he does in bed (he hasn’t been able to leave his bed in 6 years) is what’s important. His fiance is thrilled with his progress and can’t wait to tie the knot.

We wish him luck in all his weight loss endeavors and hope to hear the happy follow-up news of their wedding.

Source

Are you looking to lose weight? Be sure to visit one of the latest and greatest blogs in our channel, Weighting Line, where the awesome Hope makes it her mission to inspire you throughout your quest for health.

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 last month when a team of surgeons spent 27 hours removing the extra limbs, separating her spinal cord and kidney from the twin, re-orientating the bladder and genital systems, and then closing up the pelvic girdle.

It was an amazing story with a heartwarming ending…

Now, just three months after the surgery, she is taking her first steps. According to Sharan Patil, chief orthopedic surgeon and chairman of Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore where the surgery was performed, Lakshmi is ‘… “now moving with a walker, holding onto objects — a table, a chair — and moving a little bit…”

Now you can watch Lakshmi’s journey on National Geographic Channel this coming Sunday (22 June) at 9pm Pacific.

If, like me, you can’t get the National Geographic Channel you can still get learn more about Lakshmi by visiting National Geographic online.

View the picture gallery, read a Q&A with Doctor Sharan Patil (lead surgeon), and see a preview of the hour long episode at the National Geographic website.

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, skeleton, heart, and skin to weaken. As a result, their joints can become weak and over flexible and they often develop scoliosis. But most concerning is that the weak connective tissues of the blood vessels could easily result in aortic aneurysm or dissection - a life threatening situation.

1 in 5,000 people have Marfan Syndrome but many only have a mild form that is discovered in adulthood.

Mathew, on the other hand, suffers from severe Marfan Syndrome and according to Rena Falk, a geneticist at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, is “…probably one of the oldest surviving, if not the oldest surviving infantile Marfan case…”

Mathew is defying the odds.

Having Marfan Syndrome and dealing with all the painful complications that go with it has not stopped him from pursuing a full and purposeful life.

Here’s what he has to say…

“I have survived my disabilities. I have survived my pain syndrome and I have survived the burning gaze of people who assume that I must be mentally retarded because I am in a wheelchair.”

“You cannot let disability, pain, or worse — people’s assumptions — rule your life: this is my life mantra. I live or die by these words.”

Words we could all live by.

You can learn more about Marfan Syndrome at the National Marfan Syndrome Foundation.

(Source: ABC)

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 the brain into thinking the missing limb is still present. This is an incredibly important treatment discovery since phantom pain is rarely cured or effectively controlled with medication. What’s more, a staggering 95 percent of amputees experience some form of phantom limb pain.

While no one really knows the exact cause behind phantom limb pain, current thinking is that the neurons which control leg movement are still in place, but in the absence of a limb, become “confused”, and fire randomly. The brain receives mismatched signals between those visual neurons (which know the leg is not there) and the neurons in charge of the body’s ability to sense a limb’s positioning (which thinks the limb is still there), and somehow the brain is not able to sort these conflicting messages out. The result is a sensation that the limb is frozen or in pain.

So far, Dr. Tsao has treated over 550 amputees, with 100 to 125 patients there any given day.

It’s so great to hear stories like this and to know that sometimes science and health can actually be simple.

Full story

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 the game.

In fact, wii-hab is becoming a big hit with patients of all ages.

Check it out…

Rehab or Wii-hab - which would you prefer ?

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 hours removing the extra limbs, separating her spinal cord and kidney from the twin, re-orientating the bladder and genital systems, and then closing up the pelvic girdle.

Prior to surgery, Lakshmi had been unable to walk or crawl and had little chance living past adolescence.

Now she can stand with help and is expected to be able to walk and led a normal life.

No wonder she (and her family) were smiling as they left the hospital the other day.

Ain’t medical science and technology great…

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 gout. By age two, Lesch-Nyhan children begin injuring themselves. The most common self-attacks are chewing off the fingers and lips, though some Lesch-Nyhan children will also attack other body parts, even going so far as to remove their own noses and eyes.

A recent exploration by Richard Preston in the New Yorker (Aug. 13) explains how affected children’s basal ganglias have only one-fifth the dopamine levels of the average human brain. This section of the brain plays a role in motor control, higher-level thinking, and impulse control. Children with Lesch-Nyhan will do the very opposite of what you ask them to do, often earnestly apologizing as they do it. They are hyperkinetic - they push too hard, they stop too late. It’s rather like the reverse of Parkinson’s disease. The oldest living Lesch-Nyhan man in the world, James Elrod, says simply that you do something harmful, completely against your will, and then you feel bad about it. Preston recounts how on a particular visit, the man attacked his head in a vise-grip, and then proceeded to apologize profusely as he assisted in prying his own fingers away. And it’s not that those with the syndrome don’t feel the pain of their own behavior; it’s a terrifying and short existence.

Until the 1970s, Lesch-Nyhan sufferers were often diagnosed with cerebral palsy. But a study of rats, in which dopamine levels were manipulated, yielded similar self-mutilation behavior. That got scientists exploring Lesch-Nyhan brains. Though they look just like any other human brain, the circuitry is different and the dopamine levels are weak.

One researcher ponders the implications for free will: is fingernail-biting or cuticle chewing so different from actual biting of tissue and bone, save for intensity? How much of a role does dopamine and the impulse response play in addiction, gambling, compulsion, obsession, or even creativity? And what can this teach us about depression and personality disorders? Scientists are only beginning to unlock the mysteries. Preston writes, “The genome could be thought of as a kind of piano with twenty-five thousand keys. In some cases, a few keys may be out of tune, which can cause the music to sound wrong. In others, if one key goes dead the music turns into a cacophony, or the whole piano self-destructs.”

Deep-brain stimulation has been helpful for some Lesch-Nyhan sufferers, though this advanced technique is risky and does not cure what Poe termed poetically as the “imp of the perverse”. It merely seems to quell it for a while.

References:

The New Yorker: “An Error in the Code”
NIH: About Lesch-Nyhan

Images after the bounce - not for my sensitive readers.

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Is Obesity a Virus?

It’s making for lots of buzz, but it’s unlikely. Though stem cells infected with adenovirus have been shown to convert to fat cells (in the lab), this hasn’t been proven in humans and the chance that this would play a legitimate role in skyrocketing obesity rates is, um, slim. (Adenovirus-36 causes the common cold and eye infections.)

Woman Delivers Natural Identical Quadruplets

The chance of a woman having identical quadruplets without the use of fertility treatments is 1 in 13 million. Karen and J.P. Jepp plan to avoid mixing up their four new identical girls by coding them with different nail polish colors. They also have a two-year-old boy - good luck, young man.

Understanding the Roots of Traumatic Memories

Scientists are studying a neurotransmitter than may explain why traumatic memories become permanently seared into the minds of their victims. Norepinephrine (commonly referred to as adrenaline) helps the brain to handle trauma, but it also tattoos the memory in the mind.

Man Survives Removal of Largest Facial Tumor on Record!

Incredible! A young Chinese man is recovering successfully from a life-threatening operation that removed a 10-kilogram tumor from his face (one of several facial tumors totaling nearly 50 pounds). He will have to relearn to walk as his sense of balance has been affected. To see the amazing video, click Read More. (But I do have to warn you that this moving story is not for the faint of stomach.)

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