Icing That Migraine

So a lot of people I know get excruciating migraines in the Washington, D.C. area. 

I don’t know the statistical incident rate here for migraines, but anecdotally it seems significantly higher.

Is it the weather patterns, pollution, toxic chemicals or something else in this geographic area?

While medicine seems to be critical in actually getting rid of the migraine, I do notice that sustained use of ice packs or freezing water on the head also seems to help. 

Cold generally constricts the blood vessels, so I am not sure why this provides migraine relief.

Note: I am not giving medical advise or guidance to anyone, but just sharing my experiences. 

I would be interested to see a medical study done on treating migraines with freezing cold–from my experience, I think it definitely helps.  😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Five Phases Of Medicine

In many respects, medicine has come a really long way, and yet in other ways it seems like it still has so far to go.

For example, while antibiotics are used to routinely treat many bacterial infections, there are few antiviral treatments currently available–and we are left with the proverbial, “take two aspirin and call me in the morning.”

Similarly, heart attacks, strokes, cancers and so many other ailments still take their victims and leave the bereaving family asking why?

In thinking about medicine, there are five major historical phases:

1. Do nothing: Get hurt or ill, and you’re as good as dead. You shudder at the words “There is nothing we can do for you.” Average lifespan for folks, 30s. If you’re lucky (or wealthy), you may make it into your 40s or even reach 50.

2. Cut it: Diseased or damaged limb or body part, chop it off or cut it out surgically. I still remember when the people in my grandparents generation called doctors, butchers.

3. Replace it: When something is kaput, you replace it–using regenerative medicine, such as stem cell therapy (e.g. for bone marrow transplants or even for growing new tissue for teeth) and bio printers (like a 3-D printer) to make new ones.

4. Heat it: Envision a future with self-healing microbes (based on nanotechnology) in the blood and tissues that detect when a body part is dangerously ill and deploys repair drones to fix them. There is no need to cut it off or replace it, you just fix it. And perhaps with DNA “profiling”(don’t like that word), we’ll be able to tell what a person is predisposed to and provide proactive treatments.

5. Eliminate it: Ok, this is way out there, but could there come a time, when with technology (and of course, G-d’s guiding hand) that we can eradicate most disease. Yes, hard to imagine, and with diseases that adapt and morph into other strains, it would be hard to do–but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

I still am shocked in the 21st century with all the medical advances and technology that we have that the doctors still say for everything from routine colds, to viruses, sores, growths, and more–“Oh, there’s nothing we can do for that.”

Yet, there is what to look forward to for future generations in terms of better medicine and perhaps with longer and better quality of life.

My grandfather used to say, “No one gets old without suffering”–let’s hope and pray for less and less suffering with future medical technology advances. 😉

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

Sniffing Out Cancer

A few years ago, researchers found that Dogs could actually identify people with cancer at a 99% accuracy rate by simply smelling human’s breath.

One of the problems with this diagnostic method though is that hospitals and doctors offices have not been inclined to house and care for these animals in medical facilities treating people.

Technology to the rescue and this one has no dog in the fight…

The Metabolomx is a computing machine with attached breathing tube that can be rolled over to a patient who breathes into it for just 4 minutes to can get a diagnose on the spot.

This is very different from current methods and is without painful and intrusive tests (such as biopsies) or waiting weeks for lab results to come back and be read by your doctor.

The machine captures and analyzes the chemistry of the person’s exhaled breath in the form of aerosolized molecules and determines it’s “smell signature”.

According to Bloomberg BusinessWeek (5-11 March 2012), by comparing the sample smell to the biomarkers for cancer, the Metabolomx has already achieved an 80% success ratefor detecting lung cancer.

A newer version of the machine is 100 to 1,000 times more sensitive, which should greatly improve accuracy, hopefully hitting at or above 93%, which will make it viable for commercial use.

The Metabolomx is envisioned be able to detect and differentiate between various types of cancer such as lung, breast, colon, and more.

Moreover, this technology is not limited to just cancer–but other companies such  as Menssana are testing it with tuberculosis and pediatric asthma.

Further, another benefit of the Metabolonx is that is can not only be used to diagnose cancer, but to signal reduction or elimination of the cancer with various treatments.

I hope the next step for technology like the Metabolomx is to not only detect the cancer, but be able to “zap it” and rid it from our bodies–then we’ll have a technology that can really snuff out the cancer.