Despite my efforts, my backblog appears to be growing faster than I can deal with it. Here's a quick look at several interesting health-related issues that have come my way recently. (Where "recently" is defined as "sometime within the last year or two"; that's how old some of my backblog is.)
Acknowledging Preindustrial Patterns of Sleep May Revolutionize Approach to Sleep Dysfunction Do you worry when you awaken in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep? Your body may be rebelling against unnatural sleep patterns imposed by artificial lighting and our frantic schedules.In the course of gathering information for his book, At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, which is about night in preindustrial times, A. Roger Ekirch, professor of history at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Roanoke, uncovered the fact that in preindustrial times before artificial illumination was widely used, persons typically slept in 2 shifts. They called the shifts "first sleep" and "second sleep." In those times, sleep was more closely associated with sunset and sunrise than it is now. Within an hour or so after sunset, persons retired to bed, slept for about 4 hours and then woke up. They remained awake for a few hours and then returned to sleep at about 2 am for another 4 hours or so.
Written records from before the first century onward indicate that the period between first and second sleep afforded persons a chance for quiet contemplation, but persons also rose from bed during this interval and did household chores or visited with family and friends. Although diaries, court documents, and literature of the time indicate that this sleep pattern was widely acknowledged, this bit of history had been lost until the debut of Ekirch's work. The pattern of sleep he describes as the norm in days past is no longer the norm in developed countries where artificial light extends the day. Anthropologists, however, have observed a similar pattern of segmented sleep among some contemporary African tribes, such as the Tiv of central Nigeria, who even refer to their customary sleep patterns as first sleep and second sleep, just as the early Europeans did.
In-Body Stem Cell Therapy Has Enormous Potential for Bone Injuries If you're as sensitive as I am to the violence committed in the name of stem cell research, rest easy: this amazing breakthrough from the University of Rochester Medical Center uses the body's own stem cells, in vivo.
At the heart of the research is the drug teriparatide . . . which was approved by the FDA in 2002 for the treatment of osteoporosis. Astute observations led a team of clinicians and researchers to uncover how this drug can also boost our bodies’ bone stem cell production to the point that adults’ bones appear to have the ability to heal at a rate typically seen when they were young kids.
“I had patients with severe osteoporosis, in tremendous pain from multiple fractures throughout their spine and pelvis, who I would put on teriparatide. . . . When they would come back for their follow-up visits three months later, it was amazing to see not just the significant healing in their fractures, but to realize they were pain-free—a new and welcome experience for many of these patients.”
Circumcision Is Found to Curb Two S.T.D.’s This New York Times article left me both confused and concerned. First, even if subsequent research verifies the protective effects of circumcision, the question still remains, why? What would drive men to choose major, irreversible surgery on a most sensitive and important body part over simple hygiene and sexual fidelity? If we needed further evidence that our sexual drive is broken and gangrenous, this would be it. I am not one of those who would ban circumcision, not even for infants who have no say in the matter. For those without religious or other strong convictions, however, administration of the procedure under the mere assumption that one's newborn son will inevitably engage in illegitimate sex seems bizarre. (I wouldn't subject a daughter to the HPV vaccine, either.) Newborn circumcision is a lucrative practice, however, so I wouldn't be surprised to find doctors using this study as an excuse to encourage it.
Women must toughen up for birth—expert A British midwife is mocked for saying that normal childbirth without anesthesia is better for mom and baby. The article does allude to hospital practices, such as leaving the laboring mother alone, that increase pain and subsequent desire for anesthesia. "He urged women to use yoga, hypnosis and massage to overcome pain."
Or they could swear.
Curses can foil pain, scientist discovers According to an English study, swearing lessens pain, though only if it's an unusual response to the stimulus and not a habitual part of one's vocabulary. This may bode ill for our profanity-saturated culture.
Though both sexes experienced a reduction in perceived pain while swearing, females did so to a greater extent. Similarly, swearing increased the heart rate of both sexes, but more so for females. . . . [T]hat result may have stemmed from differences in the way swearing figures in men's and women's vocabularies.
"I suggested for prisoners who commonly swear, the words kind of lose their shock value, whereas a nun who never uses those words may be more emotionally aroused by cursing."
