Category Archives: Medical Musings

For the sake of my (soon-to-arrive) baby niece, go get your flu shot

Cloudy Media, Medical Musings, , ,
Colorized electron micrograph of influenza. Credit: National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID)
Colorized electron micrograph of influenza. Credit: National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID)

It’s that time of year again.  The sequences are in, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have made their recommendations, and the vaccine has been prepared.  As an immunologist, I’m sad to say that I know far too many people who decide to forgo their flu shots each year.  When I ask why, I’ve gotten a variety of answers including:

“I never get the flu”  
“I once got flu from the shot”
“The flu shot never works, it’s just a guess”
And my all-time favorite:
“My body is stronger than the flu”

I’d like to set the record straight since each of these statements is ultimately and ridiculously flawed.

Continue reading For the sake of my (soon-to-arrive) baby niece, go get your flu shot →

Your brain is messing with your mind, or is it the other way around?

Cloudy Media, Medical Musings, Scientific Pondering, TV & Movies,

dress-color-illusionSo, we’ve all seen this stupid dress.  It’s beaten us over the head with the white & gold or blue & black debate that I won’t belabor anymore now, we’re over it.  But the truth is, this was a great optical illusion, probably the best I’ve ever encountered.  Unlike all of the colored circles and squares, lines and zig zags that make up most of the illusions out there, this is a dress.  It’s something that someone could wear out on the town.  How often have you turned to a girlfriend and remarked, “wow, I really love that white & gold dress,” just to be rebuffed, “thanks, but it’s black & blue”? Could we really interpret colors differently out in the real world?

 

 

Continue reading Your brain is messing with your mind, or is it the other way around? →

HAPPY BIRTH-AVERSARY!

Medical Musings

CMB logoAs Cloudy Media Blog turns 1 years old, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the past year and announce some exciting goals for the coming year.

First, none of this would be possible without the support of our followers.  A special thanks to Steve Kerfoot, Shannon Grande, and Becky Sweet for being the top social media likers, commenters, and retweeters (look out for a special gift coming your way!).  Without you guys the only person reading the site would likely be my mom (thanks for your faithful following mom!).  Second, I’d like to thank a friend, colleague, and guest contributor to this blog, Saheli Sadanand.  It’s quite amazing when you can find someone as passionate about the same things as you, whether that be science or football, and I’ve found that in Saheli.  On top of that, she has an amazing gift of story telling and I am excited to see where this ability takes her through her career.

For the first year of a new blog, managed by a nonfamous webmaster newbie, we’ve hit some incredible marks.  With more than 1,000 views and 30 non-spam comments, I am thrilled for the year we’ve had.  Check out our top posts here: CMB Yr 1 stats.  But I’m not content.  I challenge us to TRIPLE these numbers in the upcoming year.  To do this, I’m going to need your help.  I know that everyone is busy and it’s so easy to skip the CMB posts on Facebook and Twitter, but with each click, like, retweet, and comment we are all helping to end the scourge of science ignorance.  In the next year, I also plan to recruit at least 2 new guest contributors and increase publication by 100%.   With more content, we can expand into various new territories of science.  So continue to email me about things you’re interested in and we’ll try our best to deliver what you want to read.

With that, thanks so much and continue to be vigilant about science on the internet.  Question everything, even this blog!

-H

What you can do to help end a terrible epidemic

Medical Musings, ,

There is an epidemic currently sweeping up and down the west coast of the United States.  From Alaska to southern California, something wicked is causing lesions, malformations, and mass casualties.  To help support this cause, it’s not the CDC, WHO, nor Red Cross to whom you should send a donation.  Instead, pick this up at your local packie:

Rogue Ales & Spirits has teamed up with Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans (PISCO) to brew Wasted Sea Star Purple Pale Ale—a beer for drinking while thinking about the shrinking starfish population.  That’s right, the epidemic is not happening to people (thankfully, this time), but our star-shaped sea friends are being wiped out by an outbreak of sea star wasting disease.

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How MMR helps your immunity remember

Cloudy Media, Medical Musings, , , ,
measles rash
measles rash

For many years, we’ve known that measles virus infection messes with your immune system.  During infection, you are at greater risk of infections caused by other pathogens because measles thwarts the proper immune attack.  At the same time, your body makes a long-lasting response to the measles virus. This is often known as the “measles paradox”.

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How to thaw your brain

Medical Musings, ,
Courtesy of derek@
Courtesy of derek@abnormalbrain.com

Yesterday in the hot, hot sun, I sucked down a mango smoothie.  Immediately I stopped in my tracks, squinted my eyes, and put my hand to the pain in my forehead as I regretted my choice of beverage. In the July/August 2015 issue of Men’s Health, Dr. Jorge Serrador explains how cold beverages and foods cause this rapid-onset headache more widely known as “brain freeze”.

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The Park is Open – Again!

Medical Musings, TV & Movies, ,
A water dwelling compatriot of the dinosaurs, the Mosasaurus, joins the fun in Jurassic World (Universal Studios)
A water dwelling compatriot of the dinosaurs, the Mosasaurus, joins the fun in Jurassic World (Universal Studios)

When I first learned that Jurassic Park 4 aka Jurassic World had been greenlit, I was cautiously excited. Just kidding – I was mostly really excited. I’ve been a dinosaur enthusiast for, quite literally, forever and it’s been over a decade since the last sub-par Jurassic Park sequel, Jurassic Park 3 (whose highlight was a spinosaurus vs. T.Rex battle that I feel obligated to share with everyone). Obviously, we were overdue for an ill-advised return to the dinosaur-filled islands of the Caribbean. Continue reading The Park is Open – Again! →

Chew on this: the curiosities of Mary Roach

Books, Medical Musings, , , ,
courtesy of maryroach.net
courtesy of maryroach.net

Mary Roach, author of the weird sciency books Stiff, Gulp, and Bonk, should go on a comedy tour.  Her research about human physiology is not simply regurgitated on the page.  It is craftily masticated, suspensefully digested, and hilariously delivered for her readership to chew on.  Outside of this blog, I write about evidence-based medicine.  I do PubMed searches on things like “mycobacteria, prevalence, United States” and “typhoid fever, pathogenesis”.  For her work, Mary Roach searches for things like “cadaveric, penis” and “kegeling, urine dribble”. Here are some fascinating curiosities of Mary Roach. Continue reading Chew on this: the curiosities of Mary Roach →

Defending Science in Wastebook 2014

Cloudy Media, Medical Musings, Scientific Pondering

While I agree with Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) that there is an irresponsible lack of accountability amongst the leadership of the U.S. and that government spending requires much more oversight, Coburn goes way too far to single out and discredit scientific studies in his 5th annual Wastebook.

Screen Shot 2015-01-02 at 2.52.14 PM
Courtesy of Wastebook 2014

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