1 Out of 10 Doctors Recommends: Drinking Urine, Eating Worms, and Other Weird Cures, Cases, and Research from the Annals of Medicine
224
1 Out of 10 Doctors Recommends: Drinking Urine, Eating Worms, and Other Weird Cures, Cases, and Research from the Annals of Medicine
224eBook
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Overview
Have you ever wondered what that 1 outlier would say when you see commercials and products boasting that 9 out of 10 doctors recommend something? Well here’s your answer....
Three doctors explore and explain the least recommended techniques and cures lurking in the darkest corners of medicine through the ages.
Entertaining and informative, (and sometimes just plain gross), 1 Out of 10 Doctors Recommends examines the strangest and most unusual medical practices, including drinking your own urine to fight infection, using live eels to relieve constipation, and licking a patient’s head to diagnose cystic fibrosis. As licensed medical physicians who believe that humor is the best medicine, the authors decode the methods behind the seemingly mad science.
Fascinating examples include:
* the use of bee venom to treat herpes
* infecting yourself with intestinal parasites to relieve allergies
* “natural” ways to make your genitalia larger
* how the insertion of a potato reportedly stops post-delivery bleeding
* the effects of salt pork on a sore throat
* the supposed benefits of “vampire facials”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250073136 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 08/02/2016 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 5 MB |
About the Author
H. ERIC BENDER, M.D., divides his time between his private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, lecturing, and consulting with media outlets on popular culture and mental health.
DR. MURDOC KHALEGHI, M.D., splits his time between the emergency department, working with cool companies, and trying to stay warm during youth hockey games.
Dr. BOBBY SINGH, M.D., practices in a large teaching hospital, as well as maintaining a private practice in forensic psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry.
H. ERIC BENDER, M.D., divides his time between his private psychiatry practice in San Francisco, lecturing, and consulting with media outlets on popular culture and mental health.
DR. MURDOC KHALEGHI, M.D., splits his time between the emergency department, working with cool companies, and trying to stay warm during youth hockey games.
Dr. BOBBY SINGH, M.D., practices in a large teaching hospital, as well as maintaining a private practice in forensic psychiatry and geriatric psychiatry.
Read an Excerpt
1 Out of 10 Doctors Recommends
Drinking Urine, Eating Worms, and Other Weird Cures, Cases, and Research from the Annals of Medicine
By H. Eric Bender, Murdoc Khalegi, Bobby Singh
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2016 H. Eric Bender, MD, Murdoc Khalegi, MD, and Bobby Singh, MDAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-250-07313-6
CHAPTER 1
The Creepiest of All Treatments
Ever had a cut that just does not seem to get better? Ever wonder what you might have to do if it doesn't heal? Stop wondering, as you may then decide it's not worth fixing.
Before getting to the dirty truth, it's worth knowing how to avoid getting into this sort of situation. Our bodies naturally have an amazing ability to heal themselves, an ability we have evolved — or "intelligently designed," some might say — over millions of years. We tend to heal fairly quickly, making us just slightly slower versions of Wolverine.
We are not all so fortunate, though. Blood flow is essential to healing, as it carries various nutrients to the injured tissue. Anything that interferes with blood flow, such as vascular disease or diabetes, can impair our ability to heal. The simplest wounds can cause tissue to die and become infected, prompting more tissue death and infection. If only there were some way to get rid of dead tissue, or more specifically, something that could eat dead tissue — other than zombies.
Enter the maggots. Since the 1930s, doctors have observed that maggots can help remove infected and dead tissue from wounds. Soon after, they came up with something even better to kill bacteria: antibiotics. So unfortunately, the tiny worms fell out of favor. We became hooked on the antibiotics, as we do on many drugs, and started using them excessively. As a result, the last two decades have seen the emergence of antibiotic-resistant "superbugs." As we have learned from SyFy-channel movies, the best way to fight superbugs is with other bugs. Reenter the maggots.
Now maggot therapy is used at more than eight hundred health care institutions, and maggots can be readily prescribed as a regulated medical device. Apparently, even maggots can't escape bureaucracy. We do not know what the charge is for maggot therapy, but we assume there is an impressive markup, making one man's trash another man's treasure. Maggots are especially helpful in preventing infections from getting past knees and elbows, as they congregate well in those areas. Perhaps maggots like to hang out in knees and elbows so they can ask each other, "What's a nice maggot like you doing in a joint like this?"
More Doctors Smoke Camels ... Well, What Else Would You Do to a Camel?
As cigarette smoking rose in popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, an equally large concern in the medical community loomed about the negative effects of smoking. In order to combat the growing worry among the public, cigarette companies' advertising agencies began to picture physicians in ads for their products, reminding us of why we love Mad Men. In 1946, one of the most iconic advertisements pictured a man in a white coat holding a cigarette and smiling. The words printed alongside the picture read, "According to a recent Nationwide survey: More Doctors Smoke Camels than any other cigarette!" This guy was presumably a doctor, although when did you last see your doctor smile?
It turns out that the marketing group for the cigarette company conducted this "nationwide survey" at medical conferences and in physicians' offices right after providing the doctors with complimentary cartons of Camels. The "researchers" then asked the doctors which brand of cigarettes they preferred or had in their pockets. And you thought pharmaceutical reps were bad!
Perhaps so as not to just focus on the public's concern about health issues, some cigarette companies also tried to allay anxiety over physical appearance. A 1929 ad for Lucky Strike cigarettes showed a woman puckering her face, bearing the world's first official Duck Face, below the words "To keep a slender figure no one can deny ... Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." A 1949 ad for Viceroy Filtered Cigarettes pictured a dentist who held a dental mirror and exclaimed, "As your Dentist I would recommend Viceroys." Luckily most people don't listen to their dentists anyway.
If we look beyond vintage advertising, even in our clinical experience we have run across patients whose doctors talked to them about cigarettes, but not in the way you'd hope. One of our colleagues saw a man who had pica as a child. Pica is the persistent eating of substances that are nonnutritive, such as sand, clay, gravel, glass, paper, or other materials. In order to get the patient to stop his pica, the patient's pediatrician told him to start smoking cigarettes. So he did. At age five. Because the taste of a cigarette is better post-afternoon story time and naps.
Stuck on You
If you've ever watched Stand By Me, you probably remember the horrific scene after the four boys wade through the swamp when Gordie, played by Wil Wheaton, reaches into his tighty-whities and pulls out a leech. It's hard to imagine, but some medical doctors actually order leeches to be applied to various parts of the body — though typically not the part Gordie's leech glommed on to.
Leeches use suckers on their bodies to attach to their hosts and consume the host's blood. For this reason, in medieval times, leeches were used in the process of bloodletting. Bloodletting was performed to balance the four humors, or bodily fluids, believed to affect one's health and disposition. We can't imagine that having leeches suck your blood would balance anything. In modern times, however, leeches have been used to prevent clots, because they naturally produce a blood thinner. This innate blood thinner is one reason that leeches themselves don't die right away after they gulp and guzzle a bunch of blood.
Dr. David Kim, a plastic-surgeon colleague of ours, told us of the involvement of leeches in his practice — and he wasn't talking about insurance companies. He explained that leeches can be used to decrease venous congestion in patients who have had tissue transfers. Venous congestion is the number one cause of failure immediately following such procedures, because congested blood can stagnate, leading to decreased fresh blood flow into the tissue. Leeches provide new outlets for congested blood, allowing arteries to deliver nutrient-rich blood. Ta-da! The tissue is saved.
Dr. Kim even described his method of applying the cute little guys. He cuts a hole in the bottom of a coffee cup and then directs the leeches out of the hole toward their destination. "Those guys are really fast!" he added. "With this method, you avoid having to chase leeches all around a patient's room." While it's hard to imagine this happening, we like to think that "Yakety Sax" (think Benny Hill) plays when it does.
Just be glad you're not a medical student on Dr. Kim's service — and double-check to be sure you picked up the right coffee cup.
Want Fries with That?
Medical-school lore often includes the tale of a woman who went to see her family practitioner exclaiming that she had "flowers growing down there." When the doctor checked, sure enough, she had leaves between her legs. Upon further examination, the "flowers" were found to be sprouting from a source a few inches inside of her: a potato. The woman, whom you might expect to be shocked, actually remembered having the potato placed in her vagina after she had given birth to stop the bleeding.
While this sounds absolutely vile, there might be some basis for the use of spuds to stop bleeding. Per some research, microporous polysaccharide hemispheres (MPH), or potato starch, may dehydrate blood and accelerate clotting. In one study, MPH decreased the time that it took for bleeding to stop in rats whose femoral arteries were pierced. In fact, there is a hemostatic product called Bleed-X, made in part from potato starch, that helps to stop bleeding in certain types of bleeding disorders in humans. There have been reports of potato-based powders that stop bleeding in small cuts on the forearm as well. This spud's for you.
Rat arteries and small cuts are one thing, but postnatal potato insertion is clearly another. So what happened to the woman with a spud in her birth canal? Well, the potato was removed, and typical vaginal flora was able to grow in place of what had clearly been an atypical vaginal floral arrangement.
Unwrinkling a Wizard's Sleeve?
Botox. It's been all the rage in Hollywood for years. Thanks to this neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, everyone from Heidi Montag to your local newscaster can prohibit their true emotions from showing when pondering the demise of their careers.
Botulinum toxin, otherwise known as Botox, is a protein that can interfere with signals sent through the nervous system. As a result, the muscles that are downstream from those inhibited nerve impulses become as dysfunctional as Sarah Palin talking about ... anything. When too much of the toxin is present, an illness called botulism can occur. The most common type of botulism occurs in children under age one: floppy-baby syndrome, and it can be fatal. This syndrome occurs when these children ingest something, such as honey or microscopic dust particles, that contains spores of the Clostridium botulinum bacterium. The young child's large intestine is ripe for germination of the spores and production of the toxin, leading to floppy-baby syndrome.
Injection of controlled amounts of the toxin can have a cosmetic purpose. When facial muscles are paralyzed, fewer wrinkles are visible, and one would also expect fewer wrinkles in the future. However, when excessive "controlled" amounts of Botox are used, you can end up looking like that star of Real Housewives. Yes, it is the one you are thinking of, as it doesn't really matter whom you are thinking of.
In reality, Botox has tremendous therapeutic use that is often overshadowed by its reputation among the stars. Botox can frequently relieve conditions such as blepharospasm (excessive blinking), hemifacial spasm (spasm of half the face), and torticollis (head and neck spasms). Botox is also used to treat vaginismus, which is a physical or psychological condition that results in uncontrollable vaginal muscle spasms upon vaginal penetration. In fact, one doctor treats this condition often enough to want to stake his claim on the practice with a website, vaginismusMD.com. Maybe this is the modern-day equivalent of having the "Assman" license plate in that Seinfeld episode.
You would think that having your genitals injected with a toxin would cause increased psychological and physical trauma, but the relief from this treatment has been reported to be quite effective and to last up to ten months in some cases. There is no report on whether repeated treatments lead to floppy-vagina syndrome.
Placenta: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore
Next to the baby that grows inside a pregnant woman's uterus is the placenta, an organ with a vast network of blood vessels that supplies the fetus with nutrients necessary for it to develop. At birth, the newborn seems to get all the attention, and most people forget about the placenta, in much the same way as we all forgot that Friends had a Joey spin-off. In fact, the baby's once indispensable womb-mate is frequently called the "afterbirth" and gets relegated to a lowly bucket — but not always.
Some mothers, and some unsuspecting fathers who get dragged into this, are consuming some of the placenta after birth. According to the United Kingdom's Independent Placenta Encapsulation Network (IPEN) — yes, that exists — the practice of eating placenta, also called placentophagy, has been a part of traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Modern spins on this age-old practice are reflected in creative cuisine: placental pills, ice cubes, soups, and even pizza topping.
Why eat this seemingly unappetizing organ? Some believe that the placenta is rich in iron and other nutrients that can benefit the adult as well as the baby. Others claim that placental ingestion decreases postpartum depression, improves energy, and enhances breast-milk production. For a fee, IPEN will take a chunk of the placenta and make capsules or a smoothie, if you prefer. Watch out, Jamba Juice!
Despite the anecdotal reports of the effects of placental ingestion, formal studies do not show any significant benefits. On the other hand, we haven't seen studies showing harmful effects, either. So don't let us get in the way. Actually, does anyone else envision the next great Quickfire challenge on Top Chef?
Does This Jersey Make Me Look Fat?
Fans of the National Football League (NFL) give their hearts, their souls, and extremely large sums of money to their teams. According to a study by professor of marketing Pierre Chandon, NFL fans also give up their girlish figures. In the (incredibly lengthy-titled) study "From Fan to Fat? Vicarious Losing Increases Unhealthy Eating, but Self-Affirmation Is an Effective Remedy," Chandon reveals that the day after their team loses, particularly when it loses by a narrow margin, football fans eat more and eat up to 28 percent more saturated fats, like butters and meats, than they typically would. On the flip side, fans eat up to 16 percent fewer fatty foods after a victory.
Some fans have recognized a change in their eating habits and waistlines throughout the season and admit to chomping down on fatty foods — everything from pizza to Hot Pockets. So why do they do it? And why are people still eating Hot Pockets?
Researchers suggest that fans might use eating as a coping mechanism when their identities are threatened after a loss. Well, it's no surprise that NFL fans do identify with their teams; just look at the Black Hole in Oakland. We have no idea what — or who — that crew eats after a loss.
It's also true that this could be comfort eating, which people frequently do — you know who you are. Recall The Golden Girls and their cheesecake habit? But even more realistically, c'mon, would you rather eat a cinnamon roll or a salad? The answer is pretty much going to be the same any day of the week, no?
Not necessarily, when it comes to your football team. Per Chandon, after your team wins, you feel strong enough about yourself to "delay gratification and resist temptation." This then explains why fans in Cleveland and Buffalo aren't exactly known as the sultans of svelte.
A Sting to Treat a Sting
When you hear the term "venom," our guess is you typically think poison rather than cure (although the second-most-common association seems to be "Ann Coulter," based on an informal survey we did). While many products have been promoted as cure-alls, not many are nearly as promoted, or as scary, as bee venom. In fact, the medical use of honeybee products is so promoted that it has its own term — "apitherapy" — to make it sound less unpleasant. There is even an American Apitherapy Society and so of course a Journal of the American Apitherapy Society. We question whether they might be a little biased for the bee venom in the research they publish.
Honeybee-venom therapy has been promoted as a treatment for viruses, autoimmune diseases, cancer, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, scars, and nearly everything else — all but the treatment of allergic reaction to bee stings and a bad case of lovin' you.
Unlike many panaceas, honeybee venom actually does have some evidence for effectiveness in very specific settings. For example, a toxin in bee venom, melittin, has demonstrated the ability to destroy HIV while preserving normal cells, and has also demonstrated some efficacy against hepatitis and herpes. Before you throw away the condoms, it is important to know that this has just been in the lab, and only when the bee toxin was injected into nanoparticles that poked holes in the outer protective shell of HIV. Don't try this at home, because you couldn't even if you tried.
In other words, if you have some burning or stinging down there, don't think you can simply cure this by sitting on a beehive. If you do try this method and get stung repeatedly, assuming you don't immediately die, there are various cures for the allergic reaction. Beyond the standard treatments of allergic reactions with antihistamines and steroids, we bet someone somewhere is investigating herpes as a cure for bee stings.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 1 Out of 10 Doctors Recommends by H. Eric Bender, Murdoc Khalegi, Bobby Singh. Copyright © 2016 H. Eric Bender, MD, Murdoc Khalegi, MD, and Bobby Singh, MD. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Introduction,
1. The Creepiest of All Treatments,
2. More Doctors Smoke Camels ... Well, What Else Would You Do to a Camel?,
3. Stuck on You,
4. Want Fries with That?,
5. Unwrinkling a Wizard's Sleeve?,
6. Placenta: It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore,
7. Does This Jersey Make Me Look Fat?,
8. A Sting to Treat a Sting,
9. You Can't Redo Everything,
10. Country Music Can Be Deadly (for White People),
11. Dark Days: Experimentation on Mentally Challenged and Mentally Ill Patients,
12. Stretch Armstrong's Got Nothing on This!,
13. Two Eyes, Two Ears, Two Noses?,
14. I Need This Like I Need a Hole in the Head!,
15. Asthma, Allergies, and Long-Term Worms,
16. The G-Spot Shot: Spot On or Spot Off?,
17. Chakra the Monkey Tonight!,
18. Moxibustion: Not Quite Smoking Banana Leaves, but Almost!,
19. Maybe They Just Passed Gas,
20. As If Birth Weren't Traumatic Enough,
21. An Eerie Enema,
22. They Say Stripes Are Slimming,
23. Ping-Pong, Anyone?,
24. Treating Hemorrhoids: A Real Pain in the Butt,
25. Sore Throat: Better or Worse After These Remedies?,
26. Facing the Facts When, in Fact, That's Not Your Face,
27. Stocks Drop, So Might the Bodies,
28. It's Just a Flesh Wound,
29. When Blood Is Green and Urine Blue,
30. Prosthetic Limbs of Today: Beyond Pegs and Hooks,
31. Want Bigger Breasts? Have a Thai Stranger Slap Them Repeatedly,
32. Truly Giving a Shit,
33. "Hands-On" Help for Hysteria,
34. Kim Kardashian's Vampire Facial (No, Not That Kind!),
35. MADW Wasn't Quite as Catchy,
36. A Load of Bully,
37. Why Didn't They Call It Uranus?,
38. Kill Your Television ... Except If Watching Modern Family,
39. Holy Mackerel!,
40. Take the Lead. It's Prescription.,
41. You Won't Always Be Able to Control Everything,
42. What If They Were Lactating?,
43. Well, Who Is Going to Open the Pickle Jar?,
44. Don't Blame the Irish,
45. And It Makes You Look Cool,
46. Not Just Good for Serving Revenge,
47. Does the Carpet Match the Drapes?,
48. We Are Not Suggesting You Suck on It,
49. So That's What the Track Marks Are From,
50. Good for the Birds, Bad for the Worms,
51. You Mean It Won't Fall Off?,
52. How Many Licks Does It Take?,
53. Try Not to Bruise It,
54. The Only Time You Would Rather Deal with a Prick,
55. It's All in Your Head,
56. Forget the Eye of the Tiger,
57. They Eventually Get Their Revenge,
58. You Don't Need to Re-prove Gravity,
59. Are They Crooked?,
60. Dying for Sleep,
61. Drinking to Improve Thinking,
62. Your Mane or Your Manliness?,
63. Paging Dr. Dracula,
64. Hurling at High Speed,
65. Possibly a Posset for Parity?,
66. Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme,
67. Finally, a Medical Reason to Not Exercise,
68. Poor Pooh Bear,
69. And It Burns, Burns, Burns, the Ring of Fire ...,
70. Snow in Your Nose,
71. Aspire to Respire, but Avoid to Not Expire,
72. Liquidating Lousy Lice,
73. A Cup Should Not Go Up,
74. Lettin' Go Lentigo,
75. Hashing Out Headbanging Hazards,
76. Heroin: The All-Time Addictive, Snorting, Injecting, Smoking, Disorienting, Constipating, So-You-Can-Throw-It-All-Away Medicine,
77. Halting Harassing Hiccups,
78. The Importance of Impotence,
79. When the Treatment Is Worse Than the Disease,
80. I'd Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me Than a Frontal Lobotomy,
81. To Do or Not,
82. Take Two Skulls and Call Me in the Morning,
83. Itching to Add Inches,
84. Pacifying Mr. Gandhi and Quieting Mister Ed,
85. Everybody Gettin' Horny,
86. Click It or Ticket!,
87. Sleep Divorce to Prevent Real Divorce?,
88. Doctor's Orders: Twelve Bottles of Beer, by Mouth, Daily,
89. Beating the Stick,
90. No Wrinkle in Chyme?,
91. Honey, I Healed the Wound!,
92. The Sad Story and Salvation of Thalidomide,
93. Finding Frankenstein's Fountainhead,
94. Guess I'll Go Eat Worms,
95. One of the Few Practices We Endorse,
96. Getting Pissy,
References,
Index,
About the Authors,
Copyright,