health news

Teen stowaway: Is it possible to survive a 5 hour flight in a plane’s wheel well

hawaii-plane-guy_2888132b

A 16-year-old California boy miraculously survived after reportedly stowing away in a plane’s wheel well during a 5 and a 1/2 hour flight from San Jose to Honolulu on Sunday.

So how do you survive being a stowaway in a jumbo jet?

Well, you have to be pretty lucky. For a stowaway travelling in a plane’s wheel well, the overwhelming odds are that he or she will die. But, there are several factors that can increase a person’s odds for survival after being placed in this kind of danger.

These factors include:

1) Age

2) Current medical condition

3) The length of the flight.

Let’s break these factors down one at a time.

The wheel well of a plane is not pressurized and of course has no temperature control. Typically, jumbo jets cruise at an altitude of about 35,000 to 38,000 fee – altitudes at which oxygen is incredibly scarce and temperatures can reach 80 degrees below zero. Needless to say, the most common causes of death for stowaways, aside from falling from the plane, are hypothermia and lack of oxygen.

This is where age and medical condition come into play: The younger and healthier the individual, the better chance he or she has of surviving these harsh conditions. If you happen to be in my kind of shape, there’s no chance you would make it.

The duration of the flight is also a factor in a stowaway’s odds for survival. Most individuals who have survived this kind of stunt have been on flights ranging between one to three hours in length. In 2004, the Associated Press reported that a man from the Dominican Republic survived a flight from Santo Domingo to Miami, after stowing away in a plane’s wheel well. But typically, that’s only a one hour flight.

In this particular case, this was a flight that lasted around five hours. Many who have attempted to stow away during a flight of this duration or longer have died.

For those that survive, some may have entered a state of suspended animation, meaning they simultaneously go into a state of hypothermia and lose consciousness. This combination minimizes a person’s need for oxygen, enabling them to potentially survive for several hours. A similar effect is sometimes seen in patients who drown in cold waters; they are often more likely to survive than patients drowning in warm waters due to their hypothermic state, which helps protect their organs from damage.

According to an FBI spokesperson, the boy was “was unconscious for the lion’s share of the flight,” indicating that suspended animation is likely the reason this boy survived with minimal harm. His system shut down for several hours, his oxygen consumption was decreased, and he was lucky enough to land in time for his body to recuperate and come out of a state of hypothermic shock with minimal side effects.

Source: Fox news

13-1/2 Pound Boy Born At Southeastern Pa. Hospital

9507428_448x252

A woman has given birth to a more than 13-pound baby at a southeastern Pennsylvania hospital.

Officials at Delaware County Memorial Hospital say Brian and Danielle Dwyer’s son born Monday is the largest baby they can recall there.

Waldo James Mysterious Dwyer tipped the scales at 13 pounds, 8-1/2 ounces.
The couple loved the “Where’s Waldo?” books as children, so that’s where they got their son’s first name.

Brian Dwyer said the middle name Mysterious is because Waldo was born under a lunar eclipse on April 14, 2014 — a date that reads the same forward and backward.

The Dwyers live in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia. New dad Brian is a co-owner of Pizza Brain, a popular pizza shop and pizza museum.

source: Lan caster online

College Soccer Player Severely ‘Allergic’ To Her Own Sweat

4bc4a_ht_caitlin_mccomish_split_sr_140417_16x9_992

College student Caitlin McComish loves to play soccer. The only problem is, she’s severely “allergic” to her own sweat.

According to a report this week, McComish, a student at the University of Toledo and a member of the school’s women’s soccer team, almost died last year after going into anaphylactic shock during a run. “I had a really upset stomach, tingly palms and the bottoms of my feet,” she said of the frightening experience. “I was really, really itchy. It hit me like uncomfortable heat waves. Then I could feel the swelling in my throat, and my tongue got tingly and thicker.”

Fortunately, the young woman was able to call for help and survived the sudden attack; but her ordeal had really only just begun.

In the following months, McComish reportedly went into shock a staggering 17 times.

McComish, it turns out, has severe cholinergic urticaria, a hives disorder triggered by exposure to heat and sweat. The condition is relatively common but its symptoms are typically mild. A 1994 study into the prevalence of cholinergic urticaria found that about 11 percent of young adults ages 15-35 exhibited symptoms of the disorder, but that “reactions were mostly mild and restricted to fleeting, pinpoint-size wheals.”

Avoiding triggers is one recommended treatment option for people who suffer from cholinergic urticaria, but for an avid sportswoman like McComish, that would’ve been a tall order.

Luckily, she has reportedly shown a “dramatic response” to Xolair, a drug typically used for asthma, and is now back on the soccer field

Source: Huff Post

Yale student claims university threatened to suspend her if she didn’t gain weight

Chan Final

A student at Yale University said she was faced with an unusual college dilemma for the past few months: gain weight or leave school.

According to a report in the New Haven Register, Frances Chan said she has been stuffing herself with ice cream and Cheetos, after doctors at Yale’s health center allegedly said she was too thin and needed to gain weight. At 5’2”, Chan weighs just 92 lbs, but she argued that she’s always been very skinny – just like her parents and grandparents were at her age.

Chan, a 20-year-old history major, said she has been fighting with the university for months over her weight, claiming Yale threatened to put her on a medical leave of absence if she didn’t put on enough pounds.

“It felt really bad to be this powerless,” Chan told the New Haven Register. “I ate ice cream twice a day. I ate cookies. I used elevators instead of walking up stairs. But I don’t really gain any weight.”

The entire ordeal reportedly began in September, when Chan went to Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven to have a breast lump checked. While the lump was benign, the visit ultimately led to a follow-up appointment, in which she said doctors told her she was dangerously underweight.

Since then, Chan said she has undergone weekly mandatory weigh-ins and has met with a nutritionist and a mental health professional to determine if she had an eating disorder. Chan claims one nurse even told her that her low weight would eventually kill her.

When asked by the New Haven Register about Chan’s case, Yale spokesman Tom Conroy said the university could not discuss the individual medical treatment of its students. However, he noted that, “Yale has a strong system of mental health care for students.”

After trying desperately to bulk up, Chan said she only managed to gain two pounds between September to April. Fed up with the whole process

She detailed her entire struggle with the Yale health center and vowed to stop her weight-gain diet. She argued the university places too much emphasis on body mass index (BMI), which she says is not always a proper indicator of overall health.

Chan said she and her parents have since met with a new doctor at Yale, who allegedly told the family the university made a mistake.

“She apologized repeatedly for the ‘months of anguish’ I went through and admitted that BMI is not the end all be all,” Chan wrote on her Facebook page.

Chan said she no longer has to undergo weekly weigh-ins, but since she has gone public with her story, other students have come to her with similar weight-gain struggles at their own universities. Chan said she has written to Yale President Peter Salovey to notify him of the issue.

“At Yale, you’re taught to be the change that you want to see in the world,” Chan said. “Well, this seems like an easy thing to change.”

Source: Fox news

Family Fights to Block Deportation of Comatose Exchange Student

A Pakistani exchange student, in a coma since a November car accident, faces possible deportation next week as his visa expires and the Minnesota hospital caring for him seeks to send him home amid mounting, unpaid medical bills, claims the man’s family.

The immigration status of Shahzaib Bajwa, 20, has gained the U.S. State Department’s attention, while near his bed at Essentia Health-St. Mary’s Medical Center in Duluth, his family wages a strained battle with the hospital to keep Bajwa at that facility, off an airplane, and in the United States. He was in a one-semester program at the University of Wisconsin-Superior before a car in which he was a passenger struck a deer.

“They asked us to sign a consent form to take him back to Pakistan in this condition. We just want what’s best for my brother, to stay here, to be treated in the United States,” said the student’s brother, Shahraiz Bajwa.

“There is one doctor at this hospital who has put a lot of effort in sending my brother back, and he must be very heartbroken that we are still here. He is doing it because my brother is costing them money,” Bajwa said. “In his condition, it would be a big risk. It would be 24 hours to get there. And they do not have the same medicines in Pakistan.”

The young man’s family is in the U.S. on visitors’ visas. His travel insurance plan was capped at $100,000 for emergency medical care.

Hospital spokeswoman Maureen Talarico said patient-privacy laws prevent her from addressing the family’s claims and allow her to report only that Shahzaib Bajwa is in fair condition.

“We are working collaboratively with Mr. Bajwa’s family and caregivers along with the U.S. and Pakistani governments to reach the best possible outcome for the patient and for his family,” Talarico said.

His family is watching both the calendar and the clock.

nbc

Bajwa has slowly regained the ability to open his eyes, wiggle his toes, and squeeze his mother’s hand – although inconsistently, and he remains unable to speak, his brother said, adding: “We don’t know what’s going on in his mind.” Based on a common neurological scale, Bajwa may be emerging from his coma.

While the ensuing months of bedside vigil may be many, the family sees the hours dwindling before his student visa expires Feb. 28.

“When we asked the hospital to convert his student visa into a medical visa, first they said they would help us. Then they took that offer from the table,” Shahraiz Bajwa said. His brother’s medical expenses, he confirmed, exceed $350,000, adding the family – visiting from Pakistan – does not have the money or medical insurance to cover to those bills.

Now, federal agencies are examining the issue.

During a Feb. 13 briefing, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf was asked if the agency had decided not to extend Bajwa’s student visa while he remains in a coma.

“No, that’s not true,” Harf said. “… The State Department is continuing to work with the hospital, with the student program sponsors. He is in the United States on a State Department-sponsored J-1 (student) exchange program …

“… It’s not accurate to say that the State Department isn’t extending the visa. That’s just not how the process works, right? So we’re working with his family as they decide on treatment options and we’ll help them maintain flexibility in terms of his status,” Harf said.

Minneapolis-based immigration attorney Saiko McIvor, working on behalf of the Bajwa family, said the State Department seems not to favor extending Bajwa’s student visa. She’s in talks with the local branch of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services – part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“We are working to get things resolved so that he would stay in legal status in the United States beyond Feb. 28. But trying to get a J-1 extended may be very difficult because that would require U.S. State Department’s cooperation and I don’t think they might be willing to do that,” McIvor said.

Source: NBC news

 

First Death from New H10N8 Bird Flu Reported

An elderly woman in China is the first person known to have died from a strain of bird flu called H10N8, according to a new report of the case.

The 73-year old woman, from Jiangxi Province in China, developed a fever, cough and chest tightness in late November last year, and was admitted to the hospital soon afterwards. Despite treatment with antibiotics and antivirals, her condition worsened, she developed severe pneumonia and many of her organs began to fail. She died on Dec. 9, nine days after her symptoms began.

Tests showed the woman did not have a seasonal flu virus, but rather, she was infected with H10N8, a flu virus that’s been detected previously in wild and domestic birds, but had never been seen in people. Late last month, another case of H10N8 was reported in a 55-year old woman living in the same province in China, and she is in stable condition, according to the World Health Organization.

Source: Live Science

Ghost white baby’ born without most of her blood

Hope Juarez’s first name is an appropriate one: The 6-week-old is only the second known “ghost white baby” born in recent years to actually survive. She’s so described because she was born with almost no blood, giving her a very white appearance.

The medical miracle, which began three weeks before 27-year-old Jennifer Juarez’s due date, when she realized the regular kicking she’d been feeling had ceased.

She went to her midwife, who asked the Fountain Valley, Calif., woman what her gut feeling was. “Something’s not right,” Juarez replied. And it wasn’t. While some fetal blood loss happens in all but 2 percent of pregnancies, Hope had suffered a fetal-maternal hemorrhage, and doctors estimate she lost around 80 percent of her blood.

An emergency C-section allowed Hope to get a life-saving blood transfusion. Why fetal-maternal hemorrhages occur remains largely a mystery; “a lot of it just happens spontaneously,” says a neonatologist at Kaiser Permanente, Irvine Medical Center, where Hope was born.

What is clear is that Juarez’s quick reaction saved her daughter’s life; doctors say Hope could have died had she spent just a few more hours in the womb.

on 2012 a 6-month-old who was the other baby to recently survive a similar complication. Olivia Bearman’s mother also noticed the baby had stopped kicking.

After birth it was discovered the child had “lost blood directly into her mum’s blood circulation,” explains a neonatal nurse.

Source: Fox news

Drivers With ADHD: Higher Risk for Crashes?

Drivers with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are nearly 50 percent more likely to be in a serious car crash, a new study suggests.

Further, men with ADHD can dramatically decrease their risk of traffic accidents if they take medication for their condition, the Swedish researchers said.

“This study confirms the importance of treatment and medication for adults with ADHD as well as teens,” said Ruth Hughes, CEO of Children and Adults With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, a patient advocacy group.

“The core symptoms of ADHD include problems with sustained attention and impulsivity, which can have an adverse effect on driving safely,” said Hughes, who was not involved in the new study. “All drivers with ADHD need to responsibly manage their treatment to reduce driving risks.”

The new findings come from a review of more than 17,000 people in Sweden with ADHD, aged 18 to 46. Researcher Henrik Larsson and colleagues at the Karolinska Institute used databases to track whether the patients had been in a car accident between 2006 and 2009, and if they had a prescription for ADHD medication at the time.

Overall, having ADHD increased a man’s risk of a traffic crash by 47 percent and a woman’s risk by 45 percent, the researchers found.

They then investigated the role of medication in preventing crashes by determining whether people involved in a wreck had filled a prescription for ADHD medicine within the previous six months.

Dr. Lenard Adler, a professor of psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York City, said despite a broad definition of taking medication, “men [who were] treated substantially lowered their risk for accidents.”

Access to ADHD medication reduced men’s risk of a car wreck by 58 percent compared to men who did not take medication, according to the study. Women with ADHD, however, did not receive any significant benefit from medication in terms of car crashes.

The study, published online Jan. 29 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, did not receive any funding from drug companies.

Breaking down the numbers further, the researchers estimated that between 41 percent and 49 percent of the car accidents involving men with ADHD could have been avoided if they had been taking their medication as prescribed.

About three out of five children with ADHD carry the disorder with them into adulthood, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. That amounts to about 8 million adults living with ADHD.

Previous research with ADHD patients in virtual-reality driving simulators found that they are more likely to speed, drive erratically, tap the breaks and accelerate into potential accidents, said Adler, who did not take part in the Swedish research.

Source: Web md

Sharing your stress can reduce fears, study shows

A new study from the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business in Los Angeles suggests stress isn’t something you should keep to yourself.

Research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests sharing your stress with someone who is having a similar emotional reaction may reduce stress levels more than sharing with someone who is not experiencing similar stress levels.

In the study, researchers measured participants’ emotional states, levels of the stress hormone cortisol and perception of threat when faced with the task of preparing and giving a videotaped speech. The 52 female undergraduate participants were divided into pairs and encouraged to discuss how they felt about the situation before giving their speeches.

Researchers found that when the pairs were in a similar emotional state, it helped buffer each individual against high levels of stress.

Their findings could be useful for people experiencing stress at work.

“For instance, when you’re putting together an important presentation or working on a high-stakes project, these are situations that can be threatening and you may experience heightened stress,” study leader Sarah Townsend, assistant professor of management and organization at the USC Marshall School of Business, told Medical News Today. “But talking with a colleague who shares your emotional state can help decrease this stress.”

Source; Fox news

A man dies of prostate cancer every 17 minutes!

If you are a man and are least interested in going to the doctor for those little ailments you have, its time you took notice. According to experts areas like cancer, heart disease and other lifestyle related diseases affect men two times more than women. This disparity is also seen in the national health programmes that focus mostly on communicable diseases and on children and women. ‘Men’s Health remains neglected and is not a focus of any national programme as most of them focus on mostly on communicable diseases, child and woman health’, say doctors. ‘The average life span of man is five years shorter than that of a woman in India,’ said Dr Rajeev Sood, head of department of Urology in RML Hospital,

He said cancer, stone disease (like kidney stones etc.) as well as those of heart and life style grip men 2-4 times more than women. To address the issue and discuss health programmes that can be framed for them on a national scale, the Urological Society of India is all set to host the 47th annual conference here from tomorrow.

‘Studies have shown that the incidences of prostate cancer are growing by one per cent every year. A new case occurs every 2.5 minutes and a man dies from prostate cancer every 17 minutes. ‘It has become the second most frequently diagnosed cancer after lung cancer. Of the 7.6 million deaths due to cancer worldwide, one-sixth are caused by prostate cancer,’ said Sood who is organising secretary of USICON 2014. Could you be at risk of suffering from the disease?

The conference aims at enhancing the skills of urologists in the performance of advanced urologic endoscopic surgery. The five-day conference will be attended by over 3000 urologists across India, SAARC countries, US, Europe (UK, France, Germany, Spain) and Australia.

India has a population of over 1.3 billion, but only a handful of Urologists to cater to urological problems. It will also address numerous important issues of national concern like organ donation and urinary genital cancers among others.

The conference will begin with the pre-conference live workshop which will feature robotic and laparoscopic surgeries in 3D. The focus will be the technological advances like Fusion Biopsy and Photodynamic therapy for focal ablation of prostate cancer and pharmacological advances in terms of newer molecules that can be disease altering. Recently scientists also discovered a way to assess the risk of prostate cancer recurring.

Here are some facts about the disease:

One new case of prostate cancer occurs every 2.5 minutes, and a man dies from prostate cancer every 17 minutes.

A non-smoking man is more likely to get prostate cancer than lung, bronchus, colon, rectal, bladder, lymphoma, melanoma, oral and kidney cancers combined.
Because prostate cancer is a relatively slow-growing cancer, the 5-year survival rate for prostate cancer survivours – at all stages – is 98%. The relative 10-year survival rate is 84% and the 15-year survival rate is 56%.

In the West, where a number of celebrities and high profile people have spoken publicly about the disease, awareness has steadily risen. Hollywood stalwarts Robert De Niro andMichael Douglas have undergone treatment for prostate cancer, so have South Africa’s iconic former President Nelson Mandela and former US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Age, genetic predispositions and diet all seem to have a direct correlation with the risk of prostate cancer. Some studies have also indicated that men with sexually transmitted diseases too, have a higher chance of getting afflicted with prostate cancer.

Of the 7.6 million deaths due to cancer worldwide, one-sixth are caused by prostate cancer which is also today the second most frequently diagnosed cancer type after lung cancer.

In India the awareness about the disease still remains low.
Wondering how you can prevent it? Here are some essential dos and don’ts to help you keep prostate cancer at bay:

Do’s

Exercise: Regular exercise and a constant weight go a long way in fighting diseases, especially prostate cancer. All you need is a brisk walk every day, find out how.
Eat healthy: Include cereals, fish, green leafy vegetables, and green tea into your diet. They help fight the ill effects of anti oxidants and prevent the onset of the disease.

Don’ts

Ignore the symptoms: The signs of prostate cancer are very easy to overlook. Don’t ignore the symptoms. Get then checked as soon as you notice anything amiss. An early diagnosis is the best way to successful treatment.

Eat fatty foods: Avoid red meat (as it contains a lot of fat that can lead to prostate cancer) and sugary and starch rich foods (both these components lead to inflammation and can speed up the process of formation of the cancer). Read about the top 5 ways to prevent the onset of prostate cancer.

Source: health India