Scientists have found that memories associated with sound can be reinforced by playing those sounds softly to people while they sleep. In one study, participants played a Guitar Hero-like game. They learned two tunes, then had a nap. While they were in deep sleep, one of the tunes played softly in their ears. And when the participants awoke, the tune that they’d heard while sleeping was the one they were better at playing from memory.

In a similar study by the same researchers, participants were asked to remember random locations of images on a screen, each of which was associated with a sound. When one particular sound was played to them during sleep, they were more likely to remember the original location of the matching object.

The scientists involved believe that we use our sleep to process and consolidate our memories. By associating a memory with a sound, we encourage our brain to absorb this particular memory while we’re asleep, rather than losing it among the countless other minor events from the day.

The jury’s out on what practical use this might have—but it at least suggests that we may be able to influence what we remember, with the help of a carefully chosen sound track.

As we get older, we tend to become more forgetful. Scientists have found that a distraction related to what you want to remember can be extremely helpful for older people. They conducted an experiment in which they asked two groups of people—one of them aged seventeen to twenty-seven, and the other aged sixty to seventy-eight—to study and recall a list of words. They sprung a surprise second test on each group after an unrelated picture exercise.

During the dummy picture exercise, some people in each group were exposed to background reminders of some of the words from the first test. There was a thirty percent memory improvement in those who had been prey to these —but remarkably, only among the older group. There was no difference at all in the younger group. This suggests that keeping ourselves surrounded by reminders—even if we don’t take them in consciously—can help with recall in old age.

Research by psychologist Gerd Thomas Waldhauser has shown that humans can train themselves to deliberately forget information. Using EEG scans, he has shown that the same part of the brain we would use to restrain a motor impulse—such as to stop ourselves from catching an object—is also activated when people suppress a memory. His studies show that we can learn how to control this natural suppression—allowing us, theoretically, to forget whatever we want to forget.

Waldhauser is keen to point out, however, that only neutral memories have so far been forgotten in this way. But he speculates that—were the technique to be developed further—it may be possible to forget even our worst memories. This would be immensely helpful to trauma victims, and those with chronic mental health issues such as depression.

As if we needed another reason to eat healthy food, science has found one. It turns out that a diet high in fructose or saturated fat can hamper our ability to learn and retain information. A poor diet can reduce the levels of a chemical known as DHA in your brain; and it just so happens that DHA is very important in forming memories.

High levels of saturated fat have also been linked to brain inflammation, which can cause memory loss. Increasing your intake of Omega 3 seems to be one of the best ways to counteract that, since it replenishes DHA—but reducing the amount of fatty foods in your diet will benefit the rest of your organs as well.

It might not be necessary to cut out all sweets just yet, however; some research has suggested that chocolate may be good for your brain, and your ability to remember things.

Learning a second language, especially as a child, has been shown to have benefits which last a lifetime. Speaking two or more languages can delay the onset of dementia by an average of four years.

Scientists have also discovered that “working memory”—the kind of memory that acts like RAM in a computer—functions more successfully in children who have learned a second language. Studies have shown that bilingual children performed better in working memory tasks than their monolingual counterparts—and the more complex these tasks were, the better the bilingual students would perform in relation to their peers.

Being bilingual does more than just enhance and protect our memory; it also helps us with focusing, and shutting out distractions.

“Washing your hands of guilt” is a popular phrase—but science has shown that the act of washing can actually have a deep impact on how we catalogue our memories. For a start, general cleanliness can impact how we feel about other people—and not necessarily because they’re dirty themselves. We’re more likely to harshly judge someone else’s moral misdeeds if we’re in a smelly room, for example.

And in relation to our own memories, washing ourselves really can help us feel less guilty about whatever evil deeds we’ve committed. It’s been found that gamblers who wash after a bad streak are likely to start making higher bets, as if they’ve washed away their bad luck.

If you make a difficult decision, wiping your hands afterwards can make you feel less doubt about it, since you’ve effectively wiped away your worries. But it goes both ways: if we wash after thinking about a positive experience, our happy memories can seem less satisfying.

Writing something down is an intuitive way to help you remember it. Scientists from Ohio State University, however, found that the way you treat the piece of paper afterwards can have an enormous impact on memory retention. They found that if people wrote down their thoughts, and then scrunched up the paper and threw it away, they were less likely to use those thoughts when making a decision. If, on the other hand, they folded the paper neatly and put it into a pocket to protect it, the thoughts would stay with them and influence them later on. Keeping thoughts on a desk instead of throwing them away had a similar impact.

As with washing, it seems our brains are influenced by metaphors in the physical world when it comes to controlling our memories.

Scientists have found that inflicting pain on ourselves can lessen the guilt we feel about a bad deed we remember having committed. In one experiment, researchers asked people to write about a time they had rejected or excluded someone. They divided them into two groups; the members of group one were asked to plunge their arms elbow-deep into ice-cold water, while the members of group two submerged their arms in luke-warm water. And when the participants rated the morality of their past actions, those who had experienced the pain of the cold water gave themselves a more forgiving score.

A third group of people were asked to write about an everyday interaction, with no guilt involved, and then to plunge their hand into the cold water. Interestingly, the people who had written about doing something bad actually kept their hands in the water longer, and reported more pain, than the control group. The scientists speculate that they subjected themselves to extra pain, as they felt the need for penance.

When you study, you’re more likely to remember information when it is presented in an unusual or difficult-to-read font. Scientists from Princeton University and Indiana University have conducted two different experiments to test the effect of fonts on learning. In one experiment, they gave participants some information to read for ninety seconds, either in Arial or Comic Sans. It was found that those who absorbed the information via the more difficult font had better recall fifteen minutes later.

To see if this result could have a real-world impact, the researchers designed another experiment. This time, they tampered with the fonts of learning materials used by high school students. Students who were given a difficult-to-read font performed better in tests than those who were given a simple font. So when you write your blog in comic sans, you are not only devoid of aesthetic taste, but also prevent your readers from remembering whatever it is you’re saying.

People suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder are often debilitated by horrific memories. Scientists have been working on a number of drugs that could be used to lessen, or even erase, memories. These drugs work because when we recall memories, we’re not just playing a tape—we’re actually recreating the memory in a different part of our brain. Some drugs can block the biochemistry involved in this process, and thereby cause the awful memories to fade, or even disappear.

Many people take issue with use of such drugs, however, arguing that artificially erasing our memories can have a fundamental impact on who we are. Proponents counter this argument by saying that millions of people debilitated by memories of terrible experiences could regain their lives—and their true selves—with the help these drugs can provide.

Alan is an aspiring writer trying to kick-start his career with an awesome beard and an addiction to coffee. You can hear his bad jokes by reading them aloud to yourself from Twitter where he is @SkepticalNumber, or you can email him at mailskepticalnumber@gmail.com.

The post 10 Things That Can Influence Our Memory appeared first on Listverse.

When cities pump water out to their residents, they put the water through a series of filtration and disinfection steps first. This is obviously beneficial because when you pull water from lakes and rivers it’s most likely going to be filled with bacteria. Filter it, and you can get most of that bacteria out. The important word there is “most,” because even the most advanced filtration techniques are not infallible. And for many people, that means drinking tiny doses of cryptosporidium every day.

Cryptosporisium is what’s known as a protozoan—a single-celled organism—and is most famous for giving people bouts of crippling diarrhea, a condition affectionately referred to as cryptosporidiosis. The protozoa works like a parasite, latching onto the intestines and laying eggs in a person’s fecal matter—and that’s how it spreads: when drinking water becomes contaminated with infected fecal matter, crypto moves on to new hosts. We have safeguards in place to stop it from happening, but on a good day it only stops 99 percent of the cryptosporidium. In 1998 a crypto bloom broke out in Sydney, Australia. Officials noticed the rise, but didn’t act for a few days because the levels were still “within acceptable health limits.” That means that there are acceptable levels for a diarrhea-inducing parasite that comes from poop in your water.

This pleasant looking slinky is Anabaena circinalis, a cyanobacteria that lives in freshwater reservoirs around the world, notably Australia, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and North America. Cyanobacteria like this are believed to be some of the first multicellular organisms on earth, and as such have evolved to do some very curious things. In the case of Anabaena spp., those things are the production of neurotoxins. The discovery of Anatoxin-a was one of the first cases of a neurotoxin being produced by cyanobacteria, and we found out in a big way: An outbreak in the 1950′s got into the drinking water supply and was responsible for a series of mass die-offs at cattle farms across the U.S.

In Australia, freshwater Anabaena bacteria have been found producing saxitoxins, a type of neurotoxin that causes respiratory arrest, followed by death. The military has even gone so far as to classify saxitoxins as Schedule 1 substances with “no practical use outside of weapons manufacture.” Fortunately, cyanobacteria are one of the easier microorganisms to filter out of drinking water. For now.

Rotifers are a relatively common microorganism that can be found pretty much everywhere in the world. And they’re also one of the most common drinking water contaminants, despite growing as large as 1mm at times (which is hardly microscopic—you can see that with your naked eye). Some of them swim, others crawl around with an inchworm motion, but none of them are known to be harmful to humans. And that’s good, because they show up in tap water fairly often.

What’s not good is that the presence of rotifers in a municipal water supply usually means that there is a problem with the filtration system—organisms that large should not be able to make it through. And rotifers are also known to act as hosts to protozoans (like cryptosporidium) and bacteria. That leads to a mirrored benefit, of sorts: rotifers can be used as a warning system to let officials know that there’s something wrong with their systems, but by the time they’re seen, there could be other things that got through as well.

The link in the previous entry pointed to a Connecticut public health bulletin meant to advise residents who might find tiny bugs swimming around in their tap water. It addresses two types of near-microscopic invertebrates: rotifers, and copepods. Of the two, copepods are larger, and possibly even more common. They can grow up to 2mm (double the size of rotifers), and they’re actually a type of crustacean, sort of like miniature shrimp. And they’re everywhere.

In the Connecticut incident, which happened in 2009, residents began finding thousands of them in small samples of water. One resident compared them to “tiny polliwogs,” and stated, “It was completely disgusting. We were drinking them, washing out clothes in them, and it was just completely nasty.” But if anything, copepods are beneficial because they often feed on toxins. Again though, the fact that they can make it through the filtration system means plenty of smaller bacteria can too.

We all know about E. coli, or Escherichia coli, a bacteria that lives in, on, and around fecal matter. It’s been publicized more times than you can shake a stick at, until by now it’s practically a legend of the bacteria world. From food to water to even more food, it’s hard to get away from. Which is why it’s sort of disconcerting to find out that all drinking water invariably has E. coli in it; it’s just kept down to levels that are considered “safe.”

Here’s the data sheet on drinking water contaminants from the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, of the United States. According to that sheet, E. coli is acceptable as long as it doesn’t appear in more than 5 percent of the water samples collected in a given month. So if the municipality tests their water 100 times in a month, 5 of those samples can be infected with E. coli, but the water will still be permitted to go out to the city’s residents. And once you get down to decimal places of hundredths or thousandths of a percent, you are pretty much always guaranteed to find some E. coli swimming and playing in your water.

In the world at large, the more colorful something is, the more fun you can probably have with it. And based on that logic, these mycotoxic mold spores are just a big barrel of laughs. Until they start showing up in drinking water; then you have problems. Rhizopus stolonifer is more commonly known as black bread mold; leave a piece of bread out in the open, and this will be just one of the molds that take over it.

Widely considered the most common fungus in the world, it’s not surprising that this mold shows up in tap water as well. Fungi reproduce with spores which, much like flower pollen, float through the air until they find a suitable place to land and grow. In 2006, a study looked at the concentrations of mold spores in tap water, and found that Rhizopus stolonifer appeared 2.9 percent of the time, which, arguably, is fairly low in the realm of contaminants (remember, E. coli can legally show up nearly twice as often). It’s believed to release toxins that are harmful to humans, although they’re only dangerous in higher concentrations.

This organism doesn’t look as terrifying as some of the other creatures on this list—really it just looks like a few mold splotches. It’s actually an amoeba, though, and it eats brains. To be scientific about it, the amoeba attacks a person’s nervous system by entering through their nasal cavities, killing 98 percent of its victims.

N. fowleri infections are rare, mostly because it isn’t effective if it’s consumed orally. But in 2011, two Louisiana residents died from meningoencephalitis (the disease caused by Naegleria) after making a nasal flush out of salt and tap water. When the deaths were investigated, the brain eating amoeba was found on the bathtub, shower heads, and sink faucets—the house was literally covered in it. Despite this case, most infections aren’t caused by tap water infected with N. fowleri. No, usually people get it by swimming in lakes and rivers. Have you ever accidentally sucked water up your nose while swimming?

With a name like Legionella, this bacteria already sounds dangerous. And since it was named after an American Legion convention in 1976 where it was responsible for 34 deaths and a total of 221 infections, that might be a fair assumption. The condition caused by L. pneumophila is now called Legionnaires’ disease, and it sends 18,000 people to the hospital every year. And it comes from, you guessed it, contaminated water. Symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease include confusion, fevers of up to 107 F (41.5 C), loss of coordination, vomiting, diarrhea, and muscle aches. It shows up sporadically; in 2001, more than 700 people in Spain were infected in one centralized area.

As if L. pneumophila wasn’t already dangerous enough, the U.S. military decided to take a crack at weaponizing it, leading to a genetically modified version with a 100 percent kill rate. But even if you’re not on a government hit list, you would do well to stay away from water in general.

Here’s another type of mold, and one that looks slightly more terrifying than the psychedelic funhouse in number five. Like black bread mold, Chaetomium species are fairly common in everyday life, usually floating through the air in moist locations, which can encompass everything from a swamp to your bathroom ceilings. This appears in tap water fairly rarely, but when it is there it usually makes the water taste and smell slightly “off”—normal signs to stop drinking a glass of water in any case.

Chaetomium sp. spores aren’t particularly dangerous, although in some cases they can cause an infection known as phaeohyphomycosis, which is something you definitely do not want to Google. They can also present a hazard to people who are allergic to the spores, and even that typically only happens with chronic exposure.

One of the first things we learn as children is that you always cook chicken, and if you handle it raw you better scrub those hands nice and good. The reason, of course, is salmonella, which has such a long history of infection it’s not even possible to link to them all here. Usually salmonella shows up on food such as beef, spinach, and of course, chicken (hedgehogs too, surprisingly). Less commonly, salmonella causes outbreaks through none other than our friendly neighborhood drinking water.

In 2008, Colorado tap water was responsible for 79 cases of salmonella poisoning, which caused fevers and vomiting. People with weak immune systems, like the elderly, are especially susceptible to salmonella. Another study looked at the water supply of Togo, Africa, and found 26 cases of salmonella contamination, suggesting that developing countries are at a greater risk for bacterial infections from drinking water. It’s sort of common sense, but it’s beneficial to have figures to see what exactly is causing illnesses in these areas.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” We’ll take the wine.

The post 10 Microorganisms You Can Find in Drinking Water appeared first on Listverse.

As the name suggests, the humble cat is the main carrier of Cat Scratch Disease. Transmitted through a scratch or bite, symptoms including painful regional and lymph node swelling and papules, which typically appear within one to two weeks of infection—although they can take up to to eight weeks to manifest. The majority of cases resolve themselves over time and do not require medical treatment with antibiotics, although in individuals with weak or compromised immune systems, such as children and sufferers of HIV, treatment is essential to prevent abscesses, pneumonia and even comas.

Endemic only to Australia, barmah forest virus is a non-fatal mosquito borne pathogen which is closely related to the equally non-fatal, but more common, ross river virus. The majority of individuals who contract barmah forest virus demonstrate no symptoms whatsoever, but in those who do the virus manifests itself within two weeks with a mild fever, headaches, lethargy, rashes and painful arthritis and swelling—particularly of the wrists and ankles. All of these symptoms, barring arthritis which can continue for up to six months or more, resolve themselves without treatment within a couple of weeks. Although relatively harmless, in susceptible individuals barmah forest virus has been known to cause Guillain–Barré syndrome or kidney inflammation, both of which can be fatal.

Carried almost predominately by sheep, orf is contracted when the virus comes into contact with cuts or abrasions on the skin. If normal wound infections procedures are followed, medical care should be unnecessary as there are no major complications which can arise from the disease. The main symptoms of orf are red papules or lesions at the site of infection.

With varying infection rates worldwide, Bang’s disease, or brucellosis, is a bacterial disease commonly contracted through the consumption of unsterilized and contaminated milk or meat from infected cattle, sheep, pigs or goats. It may also be contracted through cuts which come into contact with the bodily fluids of an infected animal. Symptoms arise within one month and initially include flu like symptoms such as fever, headaches, back and joint pain as well as fatigue. If left untreated Bang’s disease can lead to heart infection and liver abscess—both of which can lead to death—and also lasting symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. In pregnant women the disease can also cause miscarriages and birth defects.

Unlike many of the entries on this list, cryptosporidiosis can not only be frequently transmitted from animal to humans, but also from human to human. All infections result from the consumption of contaminated food or water. With an incubation period of up to ten days, the cryptosporidiosis parasite lives within the intestines of it’s host and can cause acute symptoms in the majority of patients, which can last up to two weeks. Symptoms include stomach cramps, vomiting, nausea, fever and dehydration. Treatments often target the symptoms rather the the parasite itself, and as long as one remains hydrated there should be few, if any, major complications. In patients with a compromised immune system, however, hospitalization is often required to prevent death from chronic dehydration.

Caught from contact with the infected feces of dogs, cats and foxes, toxocariasis is a parasite whose eggs can remain dormant within a host for up to two years before hatching. Once born, toxocariasis typically takes up residence in the intestines and cause moderate headaches, coughs and stomach cramps as well as a high fever should the parasite decide to relocate to an individuals organs. In rare cases the pathogen may infect the hosts eyes, leading to blurry vision and severe irritation, which if left untreated can lead to permanent blindness.

Probably the most well known entry on this list, rabies is of particular interest today as it’s no longer considered a total death sentence. Contracted through the bites and cuts from infected animals, rabies has an unpredictable incubation period followed by a rapid onset of destructive neurological symptoms, which eventually lead to death as the virus induces brain dysfunction. However in recent years the so called ‘Milwaukee Protocol’ has rose to prominence by saving around 8% of unvaccinated patients it has been used upon. That may seem low, but for a virus that once had a 100% mortality rate it is promising. During the Milwaukee protocol a patient with rabies is forcibly put into a drug induced coma and provided with high doses of antivirals. How exactly this technique works is unknown, although it is thought that by shutting down large portions of the brain it both prevents the brain dysfunction which typically kills, as well as providing more time for an individuals immune system to combat the virus.

Native to North America, Pahvant Vally Plague, or tulaermia, is a potentially fatal bacterial disease primarily transmitted from rabbits to humans via ticks and lice. One can also contract the disease by consuming contaminated food or water, or handling infected animal corpses. With an average incubation period of three to five days, many who have been infected are often surprised by the rapid onset of debilitating symptoms, which generally include a high fever, severe headaches, extreme weakness, lethargy, diarrhea, arthritis, chills, swollen lymph nodes and eyes as well as ulcers within the mouth or on the skin. Pahvent Vally Plague is considered a medical emergency which requires immediate treatment with antibiotics to prevent death from either dehydration, pneumonia or suffocation—resulting from respiratory depression caused by pahvant valley plague.

The severest form of leishmaniasis, black fever is a parasitic disease contracted from female sand fly bites in tropical and temperate regions of the globe. Infecting up to half a million people annually, and killing an estimated 50,000 of those, black fever is the deadliest human parasite known to man after malaria. With a untreated mortality rate of 100%, black fever’s symptoms are similar to to that of malaria—which often leads to a fatal misdiagnosis. Patients experience a high fever, blackening of the skin, ulcers, weakness, fatigue and anemia as well as spleen and liver enlargement. If left untreated black fever generally begins to attack the hosts immune system, which leaves the individual open to opportunistic infectious agents—many of which can cause pneumonia leading to death.

With a single colony hypothetically able to infect the entire human race, Q Fever is considered one of the most infectious agents known to man, as only a single Q Fever bacterium is required to be present for an individual to contract the disease. Although rarely transmitted from human to human (predominantly via sexual contact), the pathogen is far more commonly passed from livestock and domestic mammals to humans through contact with their bodily fluids—including milk, excrement and semen (There is a high rate of Q Fever amongst zoosexuals and zoophilies). Symptoms typically take up to three weeks to manifest and include, amongst others, a high fever, photophobia, extreme headaches and excessive sweating. Although there is a high risk of complications, including life threatening pneumonia and hepatitis, swift treatment with powerful antibiotics leads to a survival rate of over 90%. Antibiotic treatment for Q Fever typically has to be continued for months, or even years if necessary, as every single bacterium has to be eliminated fro the body to prevent relapse. There is typically less then a thousand Q Fever cases worldwide per year, and there is little threat of the bacteria mutating into something more powerful. Despite this, Q Fever is classified as a Class B bioterror agent due to it’s infectious and incapacitating nature.

Honorable Mentions: Anthrax, Avian Flu, Bovine TB, Cholera, Cowpox, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Dengue fever, Ebola, HIV, Plauge, Salmonellosis, SARS (Debatable), Streptococcus Suis, Swine Flu, Typhus, West Nile Virus, Yellow Fever, Leprosy.

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Rudy Santos, a 69 year old from the Philippines, suffers from the ultra rare condition known as Craniopagus parasiticus or parasitic twin. He is the oldest person with this condition. Attached to Rudy’s pelvis and abdomen are an extra pair of arms and a leg, which developed when his twin was absorbed into his body during pregnancy. Also connected to his body are an extra pair of nipples and an undeveloped head with an ear and hair.

Rudy became a national celebrity whilst traveling with a freak show during the 1970s and ’80s. He would earn up to 20,000 pesos per night as the main attraction. It was at this show where he gained his stage name—the ‘Octoman’. Rudy was likened to a god, and women would line up to be with him.

Strangely, Rudy vanished in the late ’80s and ended up living in extreme poverty for over ten years. In 2008, two doctors examined him to see whether surgery would be viable or not. They concluded that they would be able to remove the parasitic twin, but Rudy decided not to have the operation. He said that he had become fond the extra growth.

Manar Maged—born in Cairo in 2004—also suffered from parasitic twin. Manar and her twin sister were fused together at the head. Her twin had no limbs and could only smile, blink and cry.

At ten months of age, Manar was taken to a hospital in Cairo after she became very ill. It was decided that without the removal of the parasitic twin, they would both die. Unfortunately, after they were separated, the twin died as it used the blood supply of Manar and could not survive without her. Less than a year later, Manar also died due to a brain infection which was caused by complications from the surgery.

Minh Anh is a Vietnamese orphan who was born with a mystery skin disorder which causes his skin to flake and form scales. His condition is thought to have been caused by Agent Orange—the defoliate chemical used by the USA during the Vietnam War. This condition causes him to overheat and his skin can become very uncomfortable without regular baths. Fellow orphans have nicknamed him ‘Fish’. Minh used to be violent to staff members and other children at the orphanage, so they had to restrain him by tying him to his bed.

When Minh was young, he met Brenda, aged 79 from the UK and she travels to Vietnam annually to see him. They have formed a close bond over the years and have become good friends. Brenda has helped Minh in many ways at the orphanage—she persuaded the staff not to tie him up when he is violent and she has found him a friend to take him swimming every week, which is now Minh’s favourite hobby.

Probably the most well-known person on this list is Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. Born in 1836, the Englishman became a celebrity in London and also gained fame around the world. He was born with proteus syndrome—a condition which causes huge lumps to develop on the skin and the bones to deform and thicken.

Joseph’s mother died when he was eleven and he was rejected by his father. He left home at a young age and worked in Leicester before contacting a showman. He was the main act and gained his stage name—the ‘Elephant Man’.

Due to the size of his head, Joseph had to sleep sitting up. His head was so heavy that it was impossible for him to sleep lying down. One night in 1890, he attempted to sleep ‘like normal people’ and dislocated his neck in the process. He was found dead the next morning.

Didier Montalvo, from rural Colombia developed congenital melanocytic nevus, which causes moles to grow all over the body at an incredibly fast rate. As a result of this disease, a mole grew so large that it covered Didier’s entire back. He was dubbed ‘turtle boy’ by his peers as the huge mole looked like a shell.

Apparently, Didier was conceived on an eclipse and the locals believed his mole was the work of the devil. For this reason, he was shunned by other children and banned from the local school. When British surgeon Neil Bulstrode heard about Didier’s condition, he travelled to Bogota so he could operate and remove the mole. Didier was six years old when the surgery was performed. It was a success and the whole mole was excised. After the operation, Didier now goes to school and lives a normal, happy life.

Mandy Sellars, from Lancashire, UK, was diagnosed with proteus syndrome—the same medical condition as Joseph Merrick. Proteus syndrome is extremely rare and it’s thought to affect only 120 people worldwide. It has caused Mandy’s legs to become extremely enlarged, weighing a total of 95 kilograms and measuring one meter in circumference. As her feet are so large, she has to buy specially fitted shoes which cost around $4000 dollars. She also has a personalized car, allowing her to drive without using her feet.

Doctors decided to amputate one of Mandy’s legs after she contracted deep vein thrombosis and MRSA. After the operation, the remaining section of leg kept growing and became too heavy for her prosthetic. She has now received a new prosthetic leg which should last the rest of her life.

Petero Byakatonda is a boy from a small, rural town in Uganda who suffers from crouzon syndrome. This affects about one in every 25,000 births, but Petero’s case is an extreme one. Crouzon syndrome causes malformation of the skull, which in turn pushes the eyeballs out of their sockets and the ears down, leading to problems with sight and hearing. In developed countries, the deformities caused by crouzon syndrome are usually treated very soon after birth but Petero did not receive this treatment as he lives hundreds of miles away from a hospital.

Petero’s neighbors tormented and shunned him for his appearance and he locked himself away in his room, hardly ever leaving the house. A doctor noticed his condition when driving through Petero’s village. The doctor raised enough money for Petero to travel to Austin, Texas, for life-changing surgery. He spent six months there while doctors re-shaped his skull. This put a lot pressure off his optic nerve and brain. A second operation was needed to reconstruct the bone around Petero’s eyes. Complications occurred during the second surgery—he lost 80% of his total blood volume and his condition turned critical. Luckily, he survived and he now lives a happy life in his village.

José Mestre from Lisbon, Portugal, developed a huge facial deformity which started growing on his lips when he was fourteen. Over the years, this tumor grew to be over five kilograms in weight. It caused him to become blind in one eye and made it very hard for him to breathe, eat and sleep. He spent forty years of his life without treatment because of “years of medical misinformation, some misdiagnosis, lack of finances, and reluctance to undergo treatment due to religious beliefs.”

In 2010, José travelled to Chicago to undergo four operations to remove his tumor and restore his facial features. The tumor mass was removed completely in the first operation and the next three aimed to reconstruct the face. The operations were successful and José travelled back to Lisbon a few weeks after treatment.

Dede Koswara is an Indonesian man who, for most of his life, has endured the extremely rare fungal infection, Epidermodysplasia verruciformis. This causes large, hard fungal growths to protrude from the skin which looks remarkably like tree bark. This had become extremely uncomfortable for Dede, preventing him from performing basic functions with his hands, as they were so large and heavy. The fungus grows all over the body but it’s mainly found on the hands and feet.

In 2008, Dede received treatment in the USA to remove six kilograms of warts from his body. After this was done, skin grafts were applied to the hands and face. Unfortunately, this surgery did not stop the fungus from growing and he had further operations in 2011. There is no cure for Dede’s condition.

Fetus in fetu is an extremely rare developmental abnormality that occurs in one out of every 500,000 births. The reason for this condition is unclear, but many scientists believe that it occurs in the early stages of pregnancy, when one fetus is enveloped by the other. Many parasitic twins are small and undeveloped, but others can grow to a large size. Alamjan Nematilaev, from Khazakstan, had a parasitic twin that developed hair, limbs, teeth, nails, genitals, a head and a basic face. Alamjan’s twin had been living inside him for over seven years before it was discovered…

In 2003, Alamjan’s school doctor noticed the swollen abdomen and sent him to the hospital. Doctors examined him and believed that the lump was a cyst. The following week, Alamjan was operated on and to the doctor’s surprise, they found a baby measuring two kilograms in weight and twenty centimeters in length. The doctor who carried out the surgery said that Alamjan looked like he was in the sixth month of pregnancy. The boy’s parents believed that his condition was caused by radiation from the Chernobyl disaster, but experts have dismissed this idea. Alamjan fully recovered from the operation, but to this day, he still does not know that his twin grew inside him.

Caleb is a Listverse author and moderator from Cornwall, UK. You can follow him on twitter.

The post 10 People With Shocking and Extreme Deformities appeared first on Listverse.

Usually, a medical advance comes from years of high budget research. Sometimes it’s sheer accident. And sometimes, a small team of pioneers will step forward with a truly innovative discovery. That’s the case with Joe Landolina and Isaac Miller and their Veti-Gel, a cream-like substance that will instantly seal a wound and start the clotting process.

The anti-bleeding gel creates a synthetic framework that mimics the extracellular matrix, an awesomely named natural substance that helps cells in the body grow together. Here’s a video of the gel in action (warning, it’s fairly bloody). In the video, pigs blood is piped into a cut of pork. When the pork is sliced, it begins bleeding immediately, but then stops the instant Veti-Gel is applied.

In other tests, Landolino used the gel to stop the bleeding on the carotid artery of a rat, as well as a live liver that had been sliced. If this product becomes commercial, it could save millions of lives, especially in combat zones.

Artificial lung tissue grown with magnetic levitation: it sounds like something out of science fiction, and it was, until now. In 2010, Glauco Souza and his team began looking into a way to create realistic human tissue using nanomagnets that allowed lab-grown tissue to levitate above a nutrient solution.

The result was the most realistic synthetically grown organ tissue ever grown. Typically, lab-grown tissue is created in a petri dish, but elevating the tissue allows it to grow in a 3D shape that allows for more complex cell layers. That 3D growth pattern is a more perfect simulation of the way cells grow in the human body, which means that this is a huge step forward in creating artificial organs that can be transplanted into humans.

It’s obvious that the direction of medical technology is leaning more towards reproducing human tissue outside the body, allowing us to create “spare parts,” so to speak. If one organ isn’t working, we can just replace it with a new one, fresh off the assembly line. Now that idea is moving down to the cellular level with a gel that mimics the action of specific cells.

The material is formed in bunches that are only 7.5 billionths of a meter wide—for comparison, that’s about four times wider than a DNA double helix. Cells have their own type of skeleton, known as a cytoskeleton, which is made of proteins. The synthetic gel will take the place of that cytoskeleton in a cell, and when it’s applied to, say, a wound, it replaces any cells that were lost or damaged. In a practical sense, it would work like a tiny, tiny sewer grate. Fluids can pass through the cell, which allow the wound to continue healing, but the artificial skeleton prevents bacteria from passing through with the fluid.

In a sentence we won’t get to use often, researchers have turned pee into human brain cells. At the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health in China, biologists have taken waste cells from urine and modified them with the use of retroviruses to create progenitor cells, which the body uses as the building blocks for brain cells. The most valuable benefit to this method is that the new neurons created haven’t caused tumors in any of the mice used for testing.

See, embryonic stem cells have been used for this in the past, but one of their side effects was that they were more likely to develop tumors after transplant. But after only a few weeks, the pee-based cells had already begun to shape into neurons with absolutely no unwanted mutations.

The obvious medical benefit of getting cells from urine is that, well, it’s freely available, and scientists could work on developing neurons that are sourced from the same person, increasing the chance that they’ll be accepted by the body.

We know, we know, but hear us out—electric underwear really can save thousands of lives. See, when a patient is lying in a hospital bed for days, weeks, or months, they can develop bed sores—open wounds formed by a lack of circulation and compressed skin. And believe it or not, bed sores can be deadly. Roughly 60,000 people die from bed sores and resulting infections every year, draining $12 billion from the U.S. medical industry.

Developed by Canadian researcher Sean Dukelow, the electric underpants—dubbed Smart-E-Pants—deliver a small electrical charge every ten minutes. The effect is the same as if the patient was moving on their own—it activates muscles and increases circulation in that area, and effectively eliminates bed sores, thereby saving lives.

Flower pollen is one of the most common allergens in the world, and it’s so effective at what it does because of the way pollen is built. The outer shell of pollen is incredibly tough, tough enough to be resistant to the disintegrating power of the human digestive system. And that’s more than most vaccines can say—the majority of vaccines are injected because they can’t withstand stomach acids when they’re taken orally. The vaccine breaks down, and becomes useless.

But put the two together, and you have a match made in heaven’s medical sciences lab. Researchers at Texas Tech University are looking into ways to use pollen as means to provide life-saving vaccines to soldiers stationed overseas. The lead researcher on the project, Harvinder Gill, has a goal of cracking into pollen to remove the allergens, then injecting a vaccine into the empty space left behind. Research like this could vastly change the way vaccines and medications can be given to humans.

Remember the days when you would break your arm and then have to wear a cast for weeks while the bone naturally healed itself? It looks like those days are behind us. Using 3D printers, researchers at Washington State University have developed a hybrid material that has the same properties—the same strength and flexibility—as real bone.

This “model” can then be placed in the body at the site of the fracture while the real bone grows up and around it like a scaffolding. Once the process is complete, the model disintegrates. The printer they’re using is a ProMetal 3D printer—consumer technology available to anyone with enough cash. It was the material for the bone structure that was the real problem, but they’ve created a formula that uses a combination of zinc, silicon, and calcium phosphate that works well—so well, in fact, that the entire process has already been successfully tested in rabbits. When the bone material was combined with stem cells, the natural bone grew back much faster than normal.

The real benefit of this technology is that, feasibly, any tissue—even full organs—could be grown with 3D printers once we have the right combination of starting materials.

The brain is a delicate organ, and even slight trauma can have lasting effects if it’s bumped in the wrong places. For people with traumatic brain injury, extensive rehabilitation is pretty much the only hope of leading a normal life again. Alternatively, they could just get a zap on the tongue.

Your tongue is connected to the nervous system through thousands of nerve clusters, some of which lead directly into the brain. Based on that fact, the Portable NeuroModulation Stimulator, or PoNS, stimulates specific nerve regions on the tongue to hopefully focus the brain on repairing the nerves that were damaged. And so far, it works. Patients being treated with that type of neuromodulation showed vast improvement after only a week. Fair warning, you might get brain damage just trying to read that link.

Apart from blunt trauma, the PoNS could feasibly be used to repair the brain from anything, including alcoholism, Parkinson’s, strokes, and multiple sclerosis.

Sometimes a new innovation doesn’t necessarily take the shape you expect. Most of us think of groundbreaking new procedures or cures for cancer, but this example shows that thinking outside the box can make a world of difference.

Pacemakers are used in approximately 700,000 people right now to regulate their hearts’ rhythms. But after seven years or so, the device runs out of juice, prompting a replacement with an expensive surgical procedure. Well, scientists at the University of Michigan may have solved that problem by developing a way to harness electricity from the motion of a beating heart—electricity which can then power a pacemaker.

Piggybacking off lab tests that produced overwhelmingly positive results, Dr. Amin Karami is ready to try his device—made from materials that create electricity when they change shape—on a live human heart. If the test works, it could revolutionize not just the pacemaker industry, but medical science as a whole by using human-generated electricity to power a range of medical devices. For example, this device harvests electricity from the vibrations of the inner ear and uses it to power a small radio.

DNA works like the instructions for life, telling cells what they’re supposed to do. Change the structure, and the message changes. DNA is often referred to as the building blocks of life, but engineers at Harvard are now making that phrase a little more literal. They are using DNA as building blocks—nano-size Legos—to build structures.

The Lego image was one that was encouraged by Peng Yin, the head researcher on the project, because it helped the engineers visualize what they were creating. And the comparison didn’t stop there—DNA is basically coded with four different letters—A, T, G, and C. When DNA combines, G connects to C, and A connects to T. Always. So they created a DNA strand that contained two of each letter like the pegs of a Lego brick. Snap them together, and you can build anything.

The concept is taking the biology world by storm, and the possibilities are endless. The Harvard team created a genetic copy of a 284 page book by translating it into binary, then associating the 1′s and 0′s of binary with the A,T,G,C structure of DNA. The resulting strand of DNA can be decoded by anyone to get the full text of the book.

These researchers at Oxford built a DNA robot that follows instructions, opening a whole other world of medical-related potential.

The post 10 Medical Technologies That Could Shape The Future appeared first on Listverse.

Buying overpriced popcorn, slathering it fake butter and then gorging on the gigantic tub while we watch a movie is a time honored tradition, however, it turns out it may actually be really bad for you. Popcorn Kernels can easily get stuck in teeth, which can lead to infection, or other more serious problems, including getting your teeth chipped and even cancer. However, Dentists don’t seem much more fond of people chewing ice other, according to dentists eating popcorn kernels is “like eating stone” and that ice is “brittle”. Dentists state that especially if your teeth are not already at their strongest, you are taking big risks when chomping down on a piece of ice, or eating popcorn and risking biting down too hard on a kernel.

Drinking water seems like one of those things that you can’t possibly get wrong, but the truth is that drinking water can go horribly, horribly wrong. Apparently, you really can drink too much water, and it can kill you. This ailment is referred to as water intoxication and can be very dangerous. This is unlikely to happen if you are just sitting home relaxing, but if you are exercising or running, especially in the heat, and then drink lots of water, you are at risk. The problem occurs because you are replacing the water, but not other important electrolytes such as sodium, which can lead to a serious imbalance in your body. An easy way to prevent this if you are on the go is a sports drink, which will rehydrate you while also replenishing all of the electrolytes that you lost. If you are at home, you can replenish your potassium levels with a banana, and eat something salty along with your glass of water.

Teflon has long been popular for its properties as a non-stick surface; however, it is not entirely safe. While scientists do not believe that Teflon causes cancer, it is still dangerous. In fact, Teflon has been found to be present in people’s blood and in dust, food and water in people’s houses. When Teflon is brought to a very high heat, the coating can release toxic chemicals, which can cause a nasty condition in humans that may be mistaken for the flu. It can damage the immune systems of animals and give them cancer, while scientists are unsure just how much damage it causes to humans, so far the outlook is not great and they have found that most Americans have some level of the toxic chemical in their bodies.

While sunscreen is supposed to protect you from the dangers of the suns radiation, testing has continuously shown that most sunscreens have dangerous ingredients that make them not much better than the alternative, which is getting scorched by the sun. Many reports have found that these dangerous chemicals actually increase your chances of getting tumors on your skin and can mess with the hormonal balance of your body. There is also the fact that your body needs a certain amount of sunlight for the purpose of getting your body the proper nutrients it needs. However, it doesn’t need too much sun, and it’s a difficult balance to maintain. Some doctors suggest allowing yourself to get sunlight for about ten minutes before you lather the sunscreen on, and of course do a serious search to make sure the one you are using doesn’t contain anything toxic.

While certain foods with natural citric acid can be good for you, citric acid itself is actually extremely bad for your teeth. According to dentists it latches itself onto the enamel of your teeth and erodes it, which is very bad for your oral health. But it’s not only in food form that you risk this problem: if you drink something with citric acid it still manages to attach itself to your enamel and begin the process of breaking down your teeth’s natural protection. Some have pointed out that sugar free sodas are especially bad for your teeth in this way, and should be avoided if possible.

Formaldehyde is a natural chemical, colorless and used in all sorts of different applications, from lipstick, to toothpaste and many other applications. Most notably it is in most pressed wood products, which are found in all sorts of things from cabinets, to mobile homes and many different furniture products. It is a popular way to bond materials, which makes it common in glues of all sorts, especially of an industrial variety. While scientists have not yet done as much research on the subject as they would like, after some studies they believe it is a human carcinogen and in high amounts also leads to short term health problems.

Mothballs are used throughout the world to protect clothes and other items from mold and pests, especially moths. They are stuffed with pesticides designed to kill off the unwanted vermin. However, it has been found that the ingredients in mothballs are quite dangerous, especially for babies and balls containing naphthalene have been banned by some countries. Mothballs contain some other toxic ingredients as well, all of them insecticides that should not be ingested or inhaled by humans in any way. If you so much as smell a mothball, you have already managed to ingest the ingredients. As noted earlier young children are especially susceptible and if they manage to eat one you should get them to the emergency room right away.

While many think that skim milk is a great way to get the vitamins from milk without the fat, many researchers increasingly believe that skim milk is actually not nearly as good for you as full fat milk. The reason for this is that when the fat is removed, the vitamins are removed with it, synthetics are pumped back in but they are not nearly as good. To make matters worse, many of the manufacturers actually “fortify” their skim milk, using a powdered version of milk that can actually serve to oxidize the cholesterol contained in the milk. While this has not been tested thoroughly on humans, animals that drank oxidized cholesterol have had problems with something called arterial plaque, which can increase the risk of a heart attack. Given that saturated fats decreases bad cholesterol and reduces your risk of a heart attack—contrary to popular and governmental opinion—you are much better off drinking full fat milk.

This may be controversial to some, because it contains some caveats, jogging can be good for you under certain conditions. However, under other conditions jogging can be very bad for you. If you run fast, or over very long distances instead of just jogging, you are increasing your chances of arthritis and other problems. But when it comes to jogging itself, it seems the real problem is that many who are jogging are doing so on hard surfaces like concrete that your body was not made to run on, which is very bad for your joints, especially your knees. The most important note of warning seems to be that if you are overweight, you are putting great pressure on your knees and joints when jogging, and should probably just walk until you are down to a more manageable weight.

Right now you are probably reading this from a computer, and that is actually very bad for you. For starters environmental groups have found that many computers and monitors contain dust with toxic properties that can cause serious neurological damage. More interestingly though, studies found that just the very act of sitting even as much as three hours a day can take about two years off your life. However, more specific to computers, the way we sit and type is bad for our posture, the bright lights cause eye strain and the position of our hands on the keyboard can cause carpal tunnel. Doctors suggest mitigating this by getting up, stretching and resting your eyes every half hour to hour when using your computer.

Gregory Myers is holed up under his bed hiding from all the things can kill him, if you want to try to coax him out you can follow him on twitter.

The post 10 Things That Are Surprisingly Bad For You appeared first on Listverse.

There’s nothing wrong with eating horse meat: it’s disgusting, sure, but it’s also a very lean and nutritious meat. But if you were to buy something that advertised itself as “beef” and found that you were actually eating scabby ground-up Romanian horses and donkeys—you’d probably flip your lid.

Which is exactly what people in England did when they found out that local supermarkets had been inadvertently stocking products in which horse meat had been used as a substitute for beef. Then again, considering what British people normally eat, they probably got off easy.

Remember that episode of The Simpsons in which Bart goes and lives in a French vineyard and discovers that the evil Frenchmen who live there are lacing their wine with anti-freeze? Well, it was based on a true story—in Austria.

By lacing the wine with diethylene glycol (a common ingredient in anti-freeze), wine makers were able to make up for a poor growing season of sub-par grapes, since seasoned wine lovers apparently preferred the taste of poison to sour grapes. Though no deaths were reported, the wine industry in the area was crippled—and when government officials poured thousands of gallons of the poison down into the sewers, they killed a bunch of fish in a neighboring town. Proof, if any be necessary, that fish just can’t handle their drink.

Even during the height of prohibition, people still managed to get drunk, and probably enjoyed it more than if they had been allowed to do so. A popular method of the time was to drink certain alcohol-based medical tonics, diluted with whatever mixer they had on hand.

Jamaica Jake was one such tonic: though marketed as a headache cure, it for some reason had a seventy percent alcohol content. The supplier, in an attempt to keep up with demand and cut costs, laced the tonic with tri-orthocresyl phosphate, which caused paralysis in thousands of people drinking the product. Back in those days, it seems that you didn’t need to test the stuff designed to make people feel better.

In China, so-called “gutter oil” is exactly what it sounds like: it’s oil that has been scooped out of the gutter or sewer to be reused. Far from being used in shady, back-alley kitchens, the oil has reportedly been found in such unlikely products as antibiotics. The demand for the oil grew so lucrative that some people opted to make it themselves by rendering decomposing animal fat and organs. And they call America the land of opportunity.

Elixir sulfanilamide was an improperly prepared medicine that poisoned and killed nearly one hundred people. By improperly prepared, we mean that the chemist who made it chocked it full of diethylene glycol, which already sounds pretty damn dangerous if you ask us. But he then crammed in loads of raspberry flavoring, after which the pharmaceutical company said, “yeah, that’ll sell” and put it on shelves.

When people started dying in horrible pain, fingers were pointed—and when asked if he’d accept any culpability for the deaths, the the owner of the company basically said “no.” The chemist who mixed it, on the other hand, committed suicide—which kind of lends itself to the theory that it was perhaps somebody’s fault.

Selling horse under the label of “beef” is one thing—but this next story would be genius if it wasn’t so disgusting. A Swedish company, upon noticing the unusual moistness of their latest beef delivery, decided to test it and discovered that they’d actually been sent pork that had been dyed red to make it look like beef.

Along with the obvious threat of contamination by injecting the meat with chemicals, it’s also worth noting that there’s a significant part of the population that can’t eat pork for religious reasons. Which means that it’s a very real possibility that a less-than-honest company out there may have actually sent someone to hell. Do we even have the ability to prosecute someone for that?

Though people were able to get nice and drunk during prohibition, it’s important to note that the government didn’t want them to. Which is presumably why they allegedly poisoned the hell out of as much alcohol as they could lay their hands on.

Known as the “chemist’s war of prohibition,” the era reportedly saw alcohol laced with everything from kerosene to mercury—an act which is said to have led to the deaths of around ten thousand people. People back then didn’t have an addiction to alcohol—they had a commitment to it.

Rotting meat is probably one of the most off-putting things under the sun. But it seems that where some people see disease, other people see dollar signs.

The story goes that in Britain, just after an outbreak of foot and mouth disease, gangs bought up thousands upon thousands of diseased carcasses on the cheap. Then they simply cut off the nasty bits (like cancerous growths and weeping abscesses)—and as soon as they had reasonably acceptable-looking cuts of meat, they’d dip them in salt and bleach, then sell them on. The buyer is unknown, but Ronald McDonald sure does look pretty pleased with himself lately.

Lean meat powder is a banned chemical used in animal raising that you probably shouldn’t consume, mainly because it makes people violently ill when they eat the meat of whatever animal on which it was used.

In China (where else?) it was noted that hundreds of pigs were contaminated with this substance, which could have been incredibly dangerous for anyone consuming it. Especially if that person decided to order pork soup from a particularly cheap, gutter-oil-buying restaurant. Then again, that’s not the worst thing they’ve done to food in China—not by a long shot:

The stuff we shove down the throats of babies is very heavily regulated, because people like babies and generally don’t want them to die. Which is why this story of contaminated milk powder is China is particularly harrowing.

Thought it’s not clear if the melamine present in the powder was included deliberately, what is certain is that the company selling it knew months beforehand but decided not to tell anyone. Thousands of babies were affected; somebody had refused to think of the children.

Feel free to follow Karl on Twitter and if you’re so inclined you can read more things he’s written on his own website.

The post 10 Disgusting Things Done to Food and Drink appeared first on Listverse.

In most jobs, screwing up big time means losing a client, back-chatting a customer or accidentally emailing your MLP/Jersey Shore slash fiction to the entire board of directors. If you work in a hospital or pharmacy, chances are it means something a lot worse.

Take the case of pregnant Mareena Silva. After visiting her pharmacist for some antibiotics, she took one only to realize she’d just swallowed a home-abortion drug. Luckily her unborn kid survived. Others haven’t got off so lightly: Amy Francis went into a UK hospital to have a kidney removed, only to die when the surgeon set about extracting her liver. In Italy a mix up between an oxygen and anesthetic tube wound up killing eight people, while an Australian hospital tagged an elderly woman as a middle-aged man, killed her with the wrong prescription then tried to cover it up. According to the Institute of Medicine, mistakes kill around 44,000 US patients a year—a terrifying number that becomes even worse when you realize it’s the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every single day.

Just like politics, the medical profession comes with perks. And by perks I mean ‘bribes’. Seriously: just last year GSK were whacked with a $3bn fine for giving doctors kickbacks to promote their products. And we’re not talking a measly few bucks here and there—doctors who went along for the ride could expect to be flown to five star hotels in places like Bermuda and treated to luxury daytrips while there. Nor was this a one-off: in 2011, Johnson and Johnson was caught throwing money at Greek doctors in an evident misunderstanding of South-European economics, while drug supergiant Pfizer may have even bribed the Chinese government. Currently, at least another four major Pharma companies are facing trial for similar offences—including some of the biggest names in the business.

Most businesses have some aspect of performance-related pay. After all, targets speed up productivity, get lazy asses in gear and improve performance. What’s not to like?

Well, according to this story, government-imposed targets at one UK hospital were so damaging they were actually killing patients. By piling pressure on doctors and managers to achieve unrealistic goals, bosses were simply ensuring patient safety took a back seat—with predictable consequences. In 2008, a Royal College of Nursing survey concluded 78% of nurses felt patient care was compromised by the need to hit these impossible figures, with a further 93% saying they felt under ‘undue pressure’. If there’s one person in your life you really don’t want stressed out to the point of distraction, it’s the one who’s meant to be saving it.

When we get a virus or an infection, most of us go to our doctor, get a fistful of antibiotics and knock it on the head. Simple.

Only it really isn’t. See, antibiotics aren’t big money-spinners, meaning those bribe-factories up there aren’t interested in investing in new ones. Then you have an utterly terrifying phenomenon known as ‘antibiotic resistance’. Put simply, the super-fast process of evolution in bacteria allows strains with resistance to certain drugs to multiply until nearly all of them are immune. Then we’re in trouble: all those nasty Victorian illnesses we thought we wiped out a century or so ago might come back with a vengeance. Already, gonorrhoea and E-coli are shrugging off antibiotics like it ain’t no thang and it might be about to get a whole lot worse. Gee, thanks Darwin.

We all know the scene: the patient lies on the hospital bed, near death’s door. The doctor quietly asks if they would like to try a new ‘experimental’ drug that, though untested, just might work. The tired patient nods. After all, it couldn’t possibly make them worse.

Uh, yeah, about that – turns out there’s a big difference between ending your life in hopeless misery and hopeless agony. In a wide-ranging study, the Journal of Clinical Oncology found that less than a third of experimental drugs had a beneficial effect on the patient, while two thirds resulted in at least one severe or life-threatening side effect. You may be dying anyway, but taking these drugs is more likely to speed the process up than save your life.

We like to think of surgery as a last resort, something hospitals do only when they have to. The idea of someone knocking us out and digging around inside our body for no discernible reason is more than many of us can bear. So look away now.

One report found that 4,000 women a year are opened up to treat benign breast tumors that would never have harmed them in the first place. Given the trauma that often results from such invasive surgery, those numbers aren’t great. If you think that’s bad, wait till you hear about (ex) Dr Ian Paterson: according to this story, he stands accused of opening up and mutilating 450 women because psychosis, that’s why. Equally depressing is this recent story on a Kentucky hospital being sued by 400 patients for performing surgery with the sole intention of raking in the subsequent insurance payouts.

What could possibly be worse than needless surgery? How about neglect so bad it borders on abuse?

A recent report into deaths in UK hospitals found so many instances of death-by-neglect it would be impossible to list them all here. One 22 year old, Kane Gorry, managed to die of thirst in his bed after staff refused to give him water; a thought so awful it could only be topped by the knowledge that 110 others suffered a similar fate last year, while another 43 starved to death. Let me repeat that these are people in hospitals, in developed nations, under supposedly round the clock care. Then there’s the systematic ill-treatment of elderly patients—ranging from bullying to harassment to outright abuse—with complaints totaling over 36,000 in 2012 alone. Keep in mind these are up-to-date figures—meaning that, in 2013, thousands of scumbags still look at vulnerable people in their care, and can think of nothing but hurting them.

Even when not being actively neglectful, some doctors endanger patients through sheer laziness. Long Island North Shore University Hospital was found a few years back to have a hand washing rate of ten percent. Keep in mind we’ve known since 1847 that by washing their hands, doctors can reduce basically all of the death. Wait, it gets worse. According to a report, hundreds of doctors and nurses are neglecting to check routine things like patient blood pressure, either because they forget, or simply can’t be assed. Things have gotten so bad where basic care is concerned, that doctors in a Worcestershire hospital were forced to prescribe tap water just to make sure the nurses bothered to give patients the fluid they needed to survive. I would go on, but honestly some of these stories are just too depressing.

As we all know from hospital dramas and endless reruns of M*A*S*H, sometimes there’s just no way to save a patient. They might be brain dead, in a coma from which they’ll never recover or otherwise impossible to save—and taking up much needed beds. With a heavy heart, doctors consult the family then pull the switch, knowing they did the best they could.

Except for the times they totally didn’t. According to a very scary UK story, some hospitals are pushing patients onto a ‘path for death’ designed to help the terminally ill before they’re ready for it. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, six doctors claimed this procedure was sometimes used to reduce strain on hospital resources, meaning there are medical professionals who put their downtime watching House above their duty to save your life. One disabled member of the UK House of Lords was even told by doctors on a hospital visit that she ‘wouldn’t want to be resuscitated’—something most of us would probably rather decide for ourselves.

After all that, it’s easy to forget that not every doctor is a cross between Jack Kevorkian and Genghis Khan. Some just happen to be genuinely decent people who want nothing more than to help patients. Too bad the rest of their profession is stopping them.

Thanks to things called gagging orders, doctors are often restrained from speaking out against colleagues or hospitals—even if the seats of said hospital are literally dripping in blood. In some states it’s even worse: according to this story, NY doctors are now asking patients to sign these orders—meaning the bozo who endangers your life can take you to court if you try to warn anyone.

But what about those doctors who speak out anyway? Yeah, most of them get their asses handed to them. Out of 26 whistleblowers surveyed in that link, 13 reported significant stress-related illnesses, while 8 lost everything. Of the 2 who managed to cling to their careers, both claimed that—were they given the chance to do it over again—they’d just take the damned bribe. Dr Stephen Bolsin was the only person to speak out against a Bristol hospital that was systematically killing children and was hounded out the country for his effort. Simply put, the system not only doesn’t reward whistleblowers, it actively destroys them, meaning fewer come forward and we remain at risk. Good luck not thinking about that next time you go for a check-up.

The post 10 Ways Doctors Are Trying To Kill You appeared first on Listverse.

Although it makes sense in a strange way that we are capable of doing this, there are certain aspects of the placebo effect that even scientists and doctors have nearly an impossible time explaining. Here are ten examples of the placebo effect manifesting itself in truly remarkable ways.

Fact: Placebo Also Occurs Amongst dogs (and other animals)

Pharmaceutical companies employ the same double blind procedures on Dogs when testing K9 medication as they do for human medications. They use two groups—in this particular study all dogs with epilepsy—and give one group the medication and the other group a placebo. It turns out the Placebo phenomenon transcends the human/dog continuum because the placebo group reacted extremely positively to the drugs.

New studies observing siberian hamsters reveal that most animals have something similar to the placebo effect that kicks into gear depending on surroundings and available body energy. When the hamsters are made to believe it is winter time, their immune system goes into a more dormant state to preserve energy. This mechanism helps to explain why we can’t simply will our way toward recovery, but need to take a pill. In essence, we need some sort of external influence to initiate the sequence of events that lead to the placebo effect.

Fact: Antidepressants Are (basically) A Total Sham

Depression undoubtedly sucks and there is no question about its relation to brain chemistry. However, in recent years doctors have been throwing around prescriptions for depression medications like candy on halloween. This is because they seemingly work, curbing depression for a large percentage of those who take them. However, several high profile studies are showing that placebos basically do the same thing, minus the adverse side effects.

These findings are of course being downplayed by major pharmaceutical companies who would lose out on billions of dollars of profit if antidepressants become less popular. On the other hand, this is very promising news for those who suffer from mental illness because it essentially shows the manner in which these maladies are occurring in our heads and are wholly reversible without the help of nasty chemicals.

Fact: You Can Placebo Yourself Into Inebriation

It is often remarked that women have it easy because of their comparative ability to become inebriated with the help of less alcohol than men (hence the term ‘cheap date’). Well no more $100 ill-advised bender-induced bar tabs, because we can simply trick ourselves into thinking we are drunk. Researchers have found that those who believe they have been drinking vodka (which was actually simply tonic water and lime) had impaired judgement. They did worse on simple tests and their IQ became lower.

The youtube video here recounts a similar albeit less scholarly situation where college freshmen attend a “kegger” that is full of non-alcoholic beer. The results are hilarious.

Fact: Where You Live Affects Placebo

Americans tend to exhibit hypochondria more so than anyone else on earth, but who can blame us with the constant bombardment of medication advertisement on TV and in print? For some reason, we tend to assign a lot of power to drugs that can be injected into our veins (likely because we have been conditioned to respect the power of injections since birth). Europeans, on the other hand, react more positively to placebo pills than injections.

It would appear that cultural factors strongly influence the manner in which placebo effect manifests itself. Placebo drugs used in a trial for treating ulcers worked much better in Germany than in Brazil. However, a trial testing for hypertension drugs found that Germany was the least reactive to the placebo pills. These respective cultural factors are powerful in shaping our hopes, fears and expectations in a way that causes the placebo effect to morph when traversing borders.

Fact: Placebo Still Works even Though You Know its A Placebo

The entire premise of the placebo effect that patients who believe are they receiving real medicine, are cured. But, it turns out that even when patients find out they are receiving a sham drug, it still functions effectively which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

In trials where patients were being administered sham drugs, they are eventually told that the medication that they have been taking is a placebo. One would think that upon learning this, the positive benefits may diminish or at the very least weaken. On the contrary, the positive effects remain and many elect to continue taking the drug. In the future this could mean doctors will be prescribing sugar pills to patients who have full knowledge they are taking placebos.

Fact: You can Derive Positive Placebo Through Fake Infections of Unrelated Diseases: Sufferers of Asthma Infected with Hookworm

As far as experiments go, this one must have seemed pretty far-fetched to absolutely everyone involved. A group of doctors wanted to see if infecting people suffering from asthma with Hookworm would relieve their symptoms. They divided the group of asthma sufferers into two groups and actually infected one with hookworm while making the second group think they had also been infected with hookworm.

The group that had actually been infected with hookworm saw improvement. But so did the group that had been infected with fake hookworm, showing that both groups’ improvements had been the handy work of the placebo effect. Stranger yet, much of the group that had been infected chose to keep the infections after the study finished because of the perceived benefits.

Fact: Placebo Has An Evil Twin Named “Nocebo”.

Just as our expectations of a drug’s effectiveness can influence our reaction to a placebo, an expectation of side effects can cause us to experience them as well. This has manifested itself in a multitude of very extreme ways and has come to be known by the extremely sinister sounding “Nocebo.”

One notable study documenting the effects of Nocebo took place in Italy where both people with and without lactose intolerance took what they thought was lactose (it wasn’t). Sure enough forty-four percent of those with intolerance and a staggering twenty-six percent without it developed symptoms of gastrointestinal discomfort.

As if tricking yourself into diarrhea and stomach cramps weren’t bad enough, imagine losing faith in your penis working because of what your doctor told you. “Nocebo” effect regrettably works on those taking real pharmaceuticals as well, as revealed by a study conducted on men taking Finasteride for their enlarged prostates. Half were told by the doctor that erectile disfunction was a possible side effect and the other half were not. Of the group told about the side effect, forty-four percent reported erectile dysfunction compared to only fifteen percent of the group that had not been told.

One patient participating in a trial for antidepressant medication swallowed twenty-six of the placebo pills in a suicide attempt. Even though they were completely harmless, his blood pressure somehow dropped dangerously low.

Fact: The Color Placebo Pill You Take Affects How Well It Works.

Humans like shapes and colors. We are very profoundly affected by them on a subconscious level and it turns out that our perception of how well a pill works will often determine how well it actually ends up working. This perceived effectiveness is based in large part on the size, shape and color of the pill.

Researchers have learned that yellow placebo pills are the most effective at treating depression while red pills cause the patient to be more alert and awake. Green pills help ease anxiety while white pills soothe stomach issues such as ulcers. The more placebo pills taken the better, with those taken four times a day more effective than those taken twice daily. Pills that have a “brand name” stamped on them also work better than pills that have nothing written on them. It appears that we humans are superficial even when it comes to the fake drugs we ingest.

Fact: Placebo Surgeries Are Also Effective In Curing Injuries, Somehow.

Imagine suffering an injury that necessitated surgery and undergoing the procedure, resulting in a fixed limb and no pain. Now imagine that the after the doctor’s check up a month later you were told that they hadn’t actually fixed anything during the surgery, just cut you open and had you think a procedure had taken place.

That is essentially what has been going on in medical testing and the results have shown that fake surgeries can be just as effective as the real thing, taking the placebo effect to the next level. The best part is obviously that fake surgery is way cheaper than real surgery.

Fact: Placebo Effect Has Become More Powerful Over The Years.

Placebo effect was first noted in the late 1700s, but the true physiological implications weren’t really understood until the 1970s. Still, it seems that the more testing medical experts conduct, the more powerful the placebo effect has become over time. This is largely thought to be a result of our social conditioning; we place a lot of faith in medical professionals. As medical technology improves, mortality decreases and our faith in medicine becomes stronger.

We take comfort in the routine of going to the doctor, being examined, going to the pharmacy and getting pills to take. We expect it to cure us and over time this expectation has become even more pronounced as our faith in science has strengthened. In the middle ages there would have been very little reason to have faith in the medical procedures that killed most people. But today, as medicinal abilities become perpetually more advanced, the impetus to have faith in drugs will continue to grow. With this, the placebo effect will simultaneously grow.

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Known officially as apitherapy, the practice of using bee venom to treat medical conditions like rheumatism goes back for thousands of years, some believe as far as ancient Greece. So you would think that it’s something that would have been phased out at least a few hundred years ago, but that’s not the case.

Bee venom has recently been used by hospitals around the world as a treatment for arthritis, tendonitis, and herpes, among others. The treatment itself also varies: Some doctors will prescribe milked bee venom, while others will literally sting the patient with a live bee.

Interestingly enough, there has been a lot of research recently in the Western world for bee venom as a potential cure for cancer. So who knows, maybe it’s not as ridiculous as it might seem.

Maggot debridement, also known as maggot therapy, has been used off and on for most of human history, especially during times of war. “Debridement” is the removal of dead tissue, like you would get in an open wound. So as you can imagine, maggot debridement is a way of removing dead tissue – by putting live maggots into the wound.

While it would make sense for modern medicine to have moved past something as seemingly barbaric as dumping maggots into an open wound, it’s actually picking up steam again in the medical community—so much so that it’s now covered by some insurance plans. It’s usually used to treat post-surgical wounds that have difficulty healing.

Although it’s not a mainstream treatment just yet (or ever, hopefully), there are plenty of doctors who have taken up the age-old claim that hookworms, an intestinal parasite, are an effective treatment for allergies. Since the ’70s, researchers have noticed a strange connection: countries with high instances of hookworm infections have pretty much no allergies or autoimmune diseases.

Scientists are now studying why that happens, and they’re doing it in the only possible way that makes no sense: by infecting people with parasites. Other people are going after it themselves, like this man who traveled to Africa and walked around restrooms barefoot in the hope of somehow picking up the intestinal parasites. He was quoted as saying, “ . . . my feet were very itchy, so I felt very confident that I was infected.”

Most doctors warn their patients against setting their face on fire, but Chinese medical practitioners are reviving the cure more and more often, through burning moxa leaves. They apparently use the remedy to treat everything from facial paralysis to brain atrophy.

The treatment involves placing rolls of dried moxa leaves on the ears, mouth, or cheeks, lighting them on fire, and allowing the smoke to waft across the patient’s face. Sometimes walnuts will be placed in the patients’ eyes as well, which helps the process of restoring Qi, according to some medical specialists in the city of Jinan, China.

The practice of trepanation, in which a hole is drilled directly into the side of a person’s skull, is believed to have been used since the days of cave men. At least one 7,000 year old burial site has been discovered in which the skulls had circular holes cut away, and there are similar examples from every single period in human history.

The reasons for doing this have changed just as much as the techniques, and over time it’s been used to cure everything from migraines to mental disorders. The holes were first drilled with flint, then steel; sometimes a large hole was made by drilling several smaller holes and then connecting them; sometimes it was done by the agonizing process of scraping away layers of bone to make a hole.

And yep, we’re still doing it. These day’s doctors use trepanation to treat a condition called subdural hematoma, which is caused by blood pooling under the skull and around the brain. It just seems like we’d have figured out a better way to do it by now.

Meet the Bathini Gauds, an Indian family that has been administering live fish for over 160 years as a treatment for asthma – and they’re still doing it today. The treatment involves just what you might (hate to) think: The patient swallows a live fish along with a ball of secret medicine, then sticks to a strict diet for the next forty-five days.

According to the family, millions of people have been cured by the treatment, and over half a million come to see them every year. They claim that the fish must be alive, because it cleans out the throat as it squirms down into the stomach. But not everybody’s ready to swallow such a seemingly ridiculous remedy—the Indian Medical Association is threatening to open a lawsuit against the family unless they reveal the ingredients to the medicine.

Thalidomide, the devil’s sedative, has a history as infamous as Nazi Germany. It was heavily used during the 1950s as a cure for morning sickness in pregnant women—until they realized that it was responsible for more than 10,000 birth defects over just a few years. The FDA immediately stepped in to regulate the drug, which was being sold over-the-counter in nearly fifty countries, but the damage had already been done. Of the children who had been born with defects from thalidomide, about fifty percent died after only a few months. Pharmacists were actually instructed to destroy their thalidomide supplies.

Now, the FDA has once again approved thalidomide for medical use—this time as a treatment for bone marrow cancer. There are a lot of mixed feelings on this, but one thing is for sure: they’re double and triple checking patients for signs of pregnancy before even mentioning the word thalidomide.

First developed in 1938, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is the practice of using an electrical shock of up to several hundred volts to induce a seizure. Eventually it fell out of use in the medical community due to minor side effects like confusion, muscle aches, bone fractures, and memory loss that can last for months.

In 2001, however, the American Psychiatric Association decided that electrocuting patients was cooler than not doing it, and ECT made a comeback. These days it’s mostly used to treat chronic depression and it’s legal in most countries, although only a few thousand treatments are reported every year.

Some old-fashioned medical procedures dip their toe in the shallow end of the barbaric, but lobotomies go straight for the swan dive. One of the most controversial practices in history, lobotomies were used in the 1930s to separate the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, allegedly as a cure for schizophrenia and other mental disorders. One psychiatrist famously performed his with a hammer and an ice pick, ramming the pick through the back of the eye socket and wiggling it around to find the right part of the brain.

It wasn’t until the 50s that lobotomy was phased out in favor of drugs and medication, but it’s still managed to cling to the coattails of the medical fringe, popping up now and then when you’d least expect it. For example, they were performed in France up through 1986, and in 1995 a US psychiatrist was experimenting with burning dime-size holes into patients’ frontal lobes.

Surprisingly enough, lobotomies are still performed, they’re just called lobectomies now, and they’re used for extreme cases of epilepsy.

If there’s any one “medical” treatment we definitely should have done away with by now, it’s exorcism. And yet, many people still believe in demonic possession, to the point where they are willing to eschew more modern treatment in favor of old-fashioned hocus pocus.

But here’s the really, really weird part: sometimes, it works. There are countless anecdotes of exorcism working to cure diseases, especially mental diseases. But that’s the thing—psychiatry is still largely speculative, and any form of personal demon (like past trauma) can be seen as a real demon, depending on what the person believes. Believe in the cure strongly enough, and it just might work. Strong placebo or evil spirits: What do you believe?

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