Chocolate helps eliminate cough.

Theobromine, an ingredient in over-the-counter chocolate bars, has shown promise as an anti-coughing agent. 

Researchers have discovered that a chemical compound, theobromine, a methylxanthine commonly found in dark chocolate and other substances derived from the cocoa plant have shown great promise as an anti-cough medication.

24 Hours of Trauma

Experience first-hand the day-to-day life of physicians in South Africa's largest hospital, and the trails and tribulations they have to cope with.

As I write this I'm extremely exhausted from studying for my ever present, ever annoying examinations. However, during one of my 56 breaks throughout the day I managed to find time to look at some interesting medical videos.

This one is actually a series of videos that cover different specialists and the days (and nights) they spend working in Bara hospital, South Africa's largest hospital. It's a real treat to see how medicine is practiced in other countries, but more importantly it's a huge wake up call to how good we have it in the west.

In this video, you get to follow the emergency department staff for a 24-hour shift.

The amount of problems they have to deal with are astonishing: power outages, no beds, no ventilators, a large portion of HIV-positive patients.

I highly recommend watching the other videos in the series. They detail the lives of many other specialties, all of which are amazing to watch.

Facing Your Mortality

An examination of the chronically-critically ill. How end of life care occurs in a modern US hospital. And how it can teach us about our own mortality. 

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

This is a 1-hour PBS documentary I stumbled on showing the growing issues faced by medical practitioners dealing with the chronicaly critically ill, and how their constant circling-the-drain health status impacts those around them. 

It's quite hard to watch at times because the patients are going through so much, as are their families, and they have minimal prospects of getting better.

The most interesting quote from the documentary, that these patients are in a state of limbo, a suspended animation, really outlined what modern medicine can do. It can keep people alive almost indefinitely, but is that necessarily an improvement on their quality of life? Millions of questions arise from this, hopefully we have answers one day, someday.

Multiple Sclerosis patient dies after controversial new treatment

A controversial and yet unproven treatment has claimed the life of a Canadian patient suffering from MS.

There has been a lot of buzz recently over a suggested treatment for patients suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS). A recent, yet obscure, research paper published by Zamboni P. et al. (2009) has suggested that multiple sclerosis, a debilitating neurological disease that can leave one with severely impaired movement and motor function, is caused by blocked or impaired veins in the head / neck that lead to problems in blood flow. The paper thus suggests that treatment for MS would be possible by opening up these blocked veins.

An Invisible Killer Substance. How It's Creeping Around In Your Very Own Home.

How a silent killer may be closer to home than you think.

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

I thought that I would finally post something in depth from my field of study. I've had trouble picking a topic (there are so many interesting ones), but I've finally settled on something that very few people seem to know about, yet may affect hundreds of thousands every year. I'm of course referring to lung cancer. We all know about the dangers of smoking and how it can vastly increase your chances of getting lung cancer, but can any other substances cause lung cancer? Did you know that another less well known substance can cause up to 10% of the reported lung cancer cases every year? Or, and here's the scary part, that you have probably been exposed to it sometime today? Or how about that this chemical is all-natural? In this article, we will take a look at the mysterious and deadly Radon.

Are Text Messages Helping HIV Victims with Treatment?

Text messaging and its influence on HIV treatment.

Posted by Ari Morgenthau

Image Credit: Alton, wikipedia.org Creative Commons 3.0.

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Author's Update:

A recent study by Dr. Frank Scott is currently under dispute because of its small sample size relative to its conclusions, therefore the first part of this article covering that research was removed until the conclusions of the study are resolved. It is felt that the conclusions made in the study, that individuals who hyper-text and hyper network (send more than 120 text/day or spend 3 or more hours social networking) are more likely to engage in risky behavior including sex, alcohol, fighting, and drugs. The study was conducted in the Cleveland area and may not be representative of the general population. For more on the study please watch the video bellow.

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Saving a Life. A Simple CT Scan Away

How the NLST has found a breakthrough method to screen for lung cancer, and how it may save millions of lives. 

The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST) was a study performed by the National Cancer Institute to evaluate the efficacy of using CT scanning in the prevention and detection of lung cancer. In other words, it was trying to determine if medical x-ray imaging could be used to find lung cancer before symptoms even arose in patients. On November 4, 2010, before the trail was even complete, they revealed to the public a resounding "it works!". Now, why on earth is this so important, and more importantly why should you care?

Another Late Night....

How sleep deprivation is becoming all too common, and why you should be worried about it.

As I sit here writing this I noticed that I've been awake for a very long time. To properly estimate I don't think I got more than five hours of sleep last night, or the previous night for that matter. But have you ever wondered about how much you sleep? It's a necessity for proper functioning, but it seems that more and more people in today's society are not getting enough sleep, and it may seriously be impacting their health and performance.

FSH receptor found on tumors

So it appears that a receptor for FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone), a hormone that stimulates follicle development in the ovaries and testes of humans,was found (to an extent) in the blood vessels of specific kinds of tumors!

This receptor was found in over 11 kinds of tumors, many at different stages of development.But here is the cool part: normal tissues located mere millimeters away from the tumor cells didn't express the receptors!

It's still really early in development stages but this could have some very profound consequences on cancer detection and treatment. The main problem with current methods of cancer treatment is that they have no specificity for cancerous tissues, but because this receptor seems to be so common to so many varied forms of cancer it makes development of specialized treatment methods a much more realistic possibility. My main question about any new treatments is if methods specifically target this receptor, what will they do to other cells that express these receptors, namely ovaries and testes? Only time and more research will show what they make of this new information.

Here's the link to the New England Journal of Medicine source:

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1001283