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Skin-Lightening Cream Could Cause Nerve Damage

A skin-lightening cream from Mexico that contained toxic mercury left a California woman with significant central nervous system damage, doctors report in a case study.

Many weeks after her initial hospitalization, the woman requires “ongoing tube feeding for nutritional support” and can’t speak or care for herself, according to the authors.

The cream contained a form of organic mercury called methylmercury. This is the first known case of methylmercury poisoning in the United States in nearly 50 years.

“Most harmful skin-lightening creams are intentionally tainted with inorganic mercury. But in this case, the patient used a skin-lightening product containing organic mercury, which is far more toxic,” said study senior author Dr. Paul Blanc, of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and California Poison Control System.

Organic mercury can cause “profound damage” to the central nervous system that may even worsen after use ends, he said.

The woman first sought medical help for involuntary muscle movement and weakness in her shoulders and arms, the case study reported. After two weeks of outpatient care, she was admitted to a hospital with symptoms that included blurry vision, unsteady gait and difficulty speaking. Blood and urine tests confirmed mercury poisoning.

Her family told doctors that she had been using skin-lightening creams from Mexico twice a day for seven years, according to the case study published Dec. 19 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The woman underwent chelation therapy, a treatment for heavy metal poisoning, but her condition didn’t improve. She was transferred to UCSF, where tests found that the skin cream she used contained methylmercury.

“Central nervous system toxicity, as in this case, is the hallmark of organic mercury — it typically comes on after weeks to months of exposure. Once manifested, it quickly progresses and often worsens, despite removal of any further exposure,” Blanc said in a UCSF news release. “Unfortunately, chelation therapy, which is effective in inorganic mercury poisoning, has not been established to be efficacious for methylmercury.”

Consumers can take several steps to protect themselves, said study co-author Dr. Craig Smollin, of UCSF’s emergency department and medical director of the California Poison Control System’s San Francisco Division.

When buying skin creams, check that the product has a protective foil seal under the lid, Smollin advised.

“Purchase creams from well-known stores and avoid those with hand-made labels or without labels. Ingredients must be listed, and directions and warnings should be in English,” he said in the news release.

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Ankle Injuries: Causes and Treatments

Ankle injuries are often thought of as sports injuries. But you don’t have to be an athlete or even a “weekend warrior” to turn your ankle and hurt it. Something as simple as walking on an uneven surface can cause a painful, debilitating sprain.

Ankle injuries can happen to anyone at any age. However, men between 15 and 24 years old have higher rates of ankle sprain, compared to women older than age 30 who have higher rates than men. Half of all ankle sprains occur during an athletic activity. Every day in the U.S., 25,000 people sprain their ankle. And more than 1 million people visit emergency rooms each year because of ankle injuries. The most common ankle injuries are sprains and fractures, which involve ligaments and bones in the ankle. But you can also tear or strain a tendon.

What Kinds of Ankle Injuries Are There?

Sprains, Strains, and Fractures

Ankle injuries are defined by the kind of tissue — bone, ligament, or tendon — that’s damaged. The ankle is where three bones meet — the tibia and fibula of your lower leg with the talus of your foot. These bones are held together at the ankle joint by ligaments, which are strong elastic bands of connective tissue that keep the bones in place while allowing normal ankle motion. Tendons attach muscles to the bones to do the work of making the ankle and foot move, and help keep the joints stable.

A fracture describes a break in one or more of the bones. A sprain is the term that describes damage to ligaments when they are stretched beyond their normal range of motion. A ligament sprain can range from many microscopic tears in the fibers that comprise the ligament to a complete tear or rupture. A strain refers to damage to muscles and tendons as a result of being pulled or stretched too far.

Muscle and tendon strains are more common in the legs and lower back. In the ankle, there are two tendons that are often strained. These are the peroneal tendons, and they stabilize and protect the ankle. They can become inflamed as a result of overuse or trauma. Acute tendon tears result from a sudden trauma or force. The inflammation of a tendon is called tendinitis. Microscopic tendon tears that accumulate over time, because of being repeatedly over stretched, and don’t heal properly lead to a condition called tendinosis. Tendons can also rupture. Subluxation refers to a tendon that slips out of place.

Read more…

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Muscle Strain

Muscle Strain Overview

Muscle strain, muscle pull, or even a muscle tear refers to damage to a muscle or its attaching tendons. You can put undue pressure on muscles during the course of normal daily activities, with sudden heavy lifting, during sports, or while performing work tasks.

Muscle damage can be in the form of tearing (part or all) of the muscle fibers and the tendons attached to the muscle. The tearing of the muscle can also damage small blood vessels, causing local bleeding, or bruising, and pain caused by irritation of the nerve endings in the area.
Muscle Strain Symptoms

Symptoms of muscle strain include:

Swelling, bruising, or redness due to the injury
Pain at rest
Pain when the specific muscle or the joint in relation to that muscle is used
Weakness of the muscle or tendons
Inability to use the muscle at all

When to Seek Medical Care

If you have a significant muscle injury (or if home remedies bring no relief in 24 hours), call your doctor.

If you hear a “popping” sound with the injury, cannot walk, or there is significant swelling, pain, fever, or open cuts, you should be examined in a hospital’s emergency department.

Exams and Tests

The doctor will take a medical history and perform a physical exam. During the exam, it’s important to establish whether the muscle is partially or completely torn, which can involve a much longer healing process, possible surgery, and a more complicated recovery.

X-rays or lab tests are often not necessary, unless there was a history of trauma or evidence of infection.

Muscle Strain Treatment Self-Care at Home

The amount of swelling or local bleeding into the muscle (from torn blood vessels) can best be managed early by applying ice packs and maintaining the strained muscle in a stretched position. Heat can be applied when the swelling has lessened. However, the early application of heat can increase swelling and pain.

Note: Ice or heat should not be applied to bare skin. Always use a protective covering such as a towel between the ice or heat and the skin.

Take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) such as naproxen or ibuprofen to reduce pain and improve your ability to move around. Do not take NSAIDS if you have kidney disease or a history of gastrointestinal bleeding or if you are also taking a blood thinner — such as Coumadin — without first talking with your doctor. In that case, it is safer to take acetaminophen, which helps lessen pain but does not reduce inflammation.

Protection, rest, ice, compression, and elevation (known as the PRICE formula) can help the affected muscle. Here’s how: First, remove all constrictive clothing, including jewelry, in the area of muscle strain.

Then:
Protect the strained muscle from further injury.
Rest the strained muscle. Avoid the activities that caused the strain and other activities that are painful.
Ice the muscle area (20 minutes every hour while awake). Ice is a very effective anti-inflammatory and pain-reliever. Small ice packs, such as packages of frozen vegetables or water frozen in foam coffee cups, applied to the area may help decrease inflammation.
Compression can be gently applied with an Ace or other elastic bandage, which can both provide support and decrease swelling. Do not wrap tightly.
Elevate the injured area to decrease swelling. Prop up a strained leg muscle while sitting, for example.
Activities that increase muscle pain or work the affected body part are not recommended until the pain has significantly improved.

Medical Treatment

Medical treatment is similar to the treatment at home. The doctor, however, also can determine the extent of muscle and tendon injury and if crutches or a brace is needed for healing. The doctor can also determine if you need to restrict your activity or take days off work and if rehabilitation exercises or physical therapy are required to help you recover.

Next Steps Prevention

Help avoid injury by stretching daily.
Start an exercise program in consultation with your doctor.
Stretch after you exercise.
Establish a warm-up routine prior to strenuous exercise, such as gently running in place for a couple of minutes.

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Antibiotics discovered that kill bacteria in a new way

A new group of antibiotics with a unique approach to attacking bacteria has been discovered, making it a promising clinical candidate in the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

The newly-found corbomycin and the lesser-known complestatin have a never-before-seen way to kill bacteria, which is achieved by blocking the function of the bacterial cell wall. The discovery comes from a family of antibiotics called glycopeptides that are produced by soil bacteria.

The researchers also demonstrated in mice that these new antibiotics can block infections caused by the drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus which is a group of bacteria that can cause many serious infections.

The findings were published in Nature today.

“Bacteria have a wall around the outside of their cells that gives them shape and is a source of strength,” said study first author Beth Culp, a PhD candidate in biochemistry and biomedical sciences at McMaster.

“Antibiotics like penicillin kill bacteria by preventing building of the wall, but the antibiotics that we found actually work by doing the opposite — they prevent the wall from being broken down. This is critical for cell to divide.

“In order for a cell to grow, it has to divide and expand. If you completely block the breakdown of the wall, it is like it is trapped in a prison, and can’t expand or grow.”

Looking at the family tree of known members of the glycopeptides, researchers studied the genes of those lacking known resistance mechanisms, with the idea they might be an antibiotic demonstrating a different way to attack bacteria.

“We hypothesized that if the genes that made these antibiotics were different, maybe the way they killed the bacteria was also different,” said Culp.

The group confirmed that the bacterial wall was the site of action of these new antibiotics using cell imaging techniques in collaboration with Yves Brun and his team from the Université de Montréal.

Culp said: “This approach can be applied to other antibiotics and help us discover new ones with different mechanisms of action. We found one completely new antibiotic in this study, but since then, we’ve found a few others in the same family that have this same new mechanism.”

The team is led by professor Gerry Wright of the David Braley Centre for Antibiotic Discovery within the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster.

The research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Ontario Research Fund.

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MS: Dietary interventions may ‘calm down the immune system’

A study in mice has shown that a change in diet may slow diseases that involve the activation of the immune system, such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Could the findings lead to improved treatments in humans?
In the United States, nearly 1 million people over the age of 18 are living with a diagnosis of MS, according to estimates.

MS is the most common of the inflammatory disorders with an autoimmune component, which refers to the immune system attacking and damaging healthy tissue.

In MS, the immune system attacks the myelin sheaths that protect the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, disrupting nerves’ messages to and from the brain.

The result can involve muscle weakness, numbness, trouble with balance and coordination, and cognitive decline, all of which get worse over time.

Doctors most frequently diagnose MS in young adults, although the diagnosis can be made at any age.

At present, no medical treatment can prevent or slow MS without greatly increasing the risk of infection or cancer. But what if dietary changes could delay the disease’s onset and progression in high risk individuals?

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Easy Mindful Eating Tips That Are Actually Worth Following

See other great workout at home videos at Grokker.com.
By now you know that what you eat is important for achieving weight loss goals. But did you know that how you eat also plays a role in your success? At its simplest, mindless eating is defined as “eating food without paying attention,” and this kind of distracted (and often emotional) eating can cause you to ignore your body’s signals that you’re full. That, in turn, can lead to weight gain, says Chris Mohr, Ph.D., R.D. (Did you know these words sabotage your weight loss goals?)

In the video below, Dr. Mohr shares his best strategies for becoming more mindful with your eating habits. Don’t have time to watch? Bookmark these tips to help you become a more mindful eater.

When you plan to eat, set a timer for 20 minutes. Take the entire 20 minutes to eat the meal, focusing on each bite so you don’t wolf it all down in five minutes.
Try eating with your non-dominant hand. This won’t feel as natural, forcing you to slow down and be more conscious about your food.
Eat silently for five minutes, thinking about what it took to produce that meal—everything from the sun’s rays to the farmer’s work, getting it from the grocery store and finally cooking the meal.
Take small bites, and thoroughly chew your food before reaching for another forkful.
Before opening the fridge or cabinet, take a breath and ask yourself, “Am I really hungry?” You can even do something else first, like reading, drinking water, or going on a short walk, to help you figure out the real answer.

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Affordable Ways to Make Self-Care Your ‘New You’ Resolution

Every year around this time, we start to think about how we can be better “for the new year.” It’s time to stop thinking in terms of January 1st because you matter the rest of the year, too. Instead of making goals you probably won’t work toward past February, make a resolution to yourself to take care of your needs. The best part: Self-care is affordable.

Here are a few ways to get started.

Ditch the soda and tea, and drink water.

You already know that you should drink water. Not only does it supply the cells in your body much of what they need to function, but it also flushes out toxins. Unfortunately, the sugary beverage industry is thriving (though soda sales are down). Americans consume nearly 13 billion gallons of soda each year, according to MarketWatch. However, if you knew what a single can of carbonation did to your body, you might think twice. First, it doses your bloodstream with sugar, which turns into carbs. While carbs are not a bad thing, your muscles don’t need the excess, so your liver takes over converting them into fat. Sugar also sticks to your teeth (hello, cavities!) and, even worse, has an effect on your brain similar to drugs. Drop your soda habit in favor of water, and you’ll not only save at the grocery store, but on your overall health as well.

Do something that makes you feel beautiful every day.

Beauty is only skin deep, right? Well, yes, but feeling confident on the inside starts with looking the part on the outside. You don’t have to hit the salon to achieve a look that makes you feel your very best. Whether you choose to try one of Marie Claire’s 10-second hairstyles or don a new makeup look, you can save money on all of your beauty accessories. There are many health stores that offer discounts on skincare and makeup products in the form of sales and coupon codes. Blogs like Rakuten Smart Shopper offer tips and tricks for finding the best deals while you shop. You can also emphasize your healthy glow by supplementing your daily nutrition regimen with vitamins and minerals that boost collagen growth and supply nutrients to your hair and nails. Incidentally, if you have been drinking your water, your skin will look fabulous.

Grab your sneakers and go for a walk.

Walking is one of the easiest forms of exercise and one that won’t cost you a dime. In addition to helping you burn off fat around your midsection, a simple 30-minute stroll around the neighborhood can improve your overall quality of life. According to Reuters Health, women who walk for 200 minutes each week are less depressed, have elevated energy levels, and are more socially engaged. And if you are over 50 and suffer from mental health issues, walking may have an even more profound effect on your psychological wellness. Make a point to walk after dinner — bonus points if you can convince your spouse, kids, or a neighbor to go with you.

Give yourself a predictable sleep schedule.

Sleeping for seven to eight hours each night is an essential form of self-care that far too many adults neglect. However, the truth is that sleep should take precedence over pretty much everything else. When you haven’t gotten enough rest, you make more mistakes. You’ll also have less emotional control and will probably forget where your keys are more often than not. Poor sleep can also lead to reduced problem-solving skills. Push sleep to the top of your to-do list by turning off all devices 30 minutes before you go to bed. Schedule yourself to settle in approximately eight hours before you have to be awake, and go to bed at the same time every night. You can promote healthy sleep habits by getting into a routine, such as taking a warm shower and then stretching before putting on your favorite pajamas and turning out the lights.

You don’t have to have a movie star’s budget to shine. But you do need to put yourself first this and every year. The ideas can get you going and might be the start of a new you.

Image via Pexels

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When to Call a Pediatrician

It’s 2 a.m. Your baby is crying and you can’t soothe her. She has a fever and a stuffed nose. Do you call the pediatrician, or do you wait until morning?

New parenthood is full of uncertainty. When you’re a first-time parent, it’s easy to second-guess every decision you make.

“It can be hard sometimes to know when or when not to call,” says Katie Lockwood, MD, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “I reassure parents to follow their instincts. If something doesn’t feel right or if they’re not sure if something is normal or not, pediatrician offices would rather you err on the side of calling us.”

A few key symptoms can be your guide as you decide whether to grab your phone and call your pediatrician.
Fever
How to handle a fever depends on your child’s age. In a baby under 2 months old, a rectal temperature of 100.4 F or higher is an emergency.

“Go straight to the ER,” advises Lockwood. “Sometimes babies can have a serious infection, and the only sign is a fever.” The hospital will do a full workup that includes blood and urine tests, and sometimes a spinal tap.

In older children, the number on the thermometer is less telling than other clues. “Most important is how the child is acting with the fever and how long they’ve had it,” Lockwood says. “If a child has a 101 [degree] fever but they’re really irritable, they won’t eat, they’re not acting like themselves, or they won’t stop crying, that’s concerning to me.” This rule applies for vaccinated children; in unvaccinated infants, most fevers should be seen by a doctor right away.
Three days is usually the magic number for viral fevers to last, she says. Any fever that lasts longer deserves a call to your doctor. It may have turned into a bacterial infection like pneumonia.

Vomiting and Diarrhea
These symptoms usually signal a viral infection. On their own, they’re nothing to worry about. But when they’re too intense, they can be a problem.
Read more

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Beauty sleep could be real, say body clock biologists

Biologists from The University of Manchester have explained for the first time why having a good night’s sleep really could prepare us for the rigours of the day ahead.

The study in mice and published in Nature Cell Biology, shows how the body clock mechanism boosts our ability to maintain our bodies when we are most active.

And because we know the body clock is less precise as we age, the discovery, argues lead author Professor Karl Kadler, may one day help unlock some of the mysteries of aging.

The discovery throws fascinating light on the body’s extracellular matrix -which provides structural and biochemical support to cells in the form of connective tissue such as bone, skin, tendon and cartilage.

Over half our body weight is matrix, and half of this is collagen — and scientists have long understood it is fully formed by the time we reach the age of 17.

But now the researchers have discovered there are two types of fibrils — the rope-like structures of collagen that are woven by the cells to form tissues.

Thicker fibrils measuring about 200 nanometres in diameter — a million million times smaller than a pinhead — are permanent and stay with us throughout our lives, unchanged from the age of 17.

But thinner fibrils measuring 50 nanometres, they find, are sacrificial, breaking as we subject the body to the rigours of the day but replenishing when we rest at night.

The collagen was observed by mass spectrometry and the mouse fibrils were observed using state of the art volumetric electron microscopy — funded by the Wellcome Trust — every 4 hours over 2 days.

When the body clock genes where knocked out in mice, the thin and thick fibrils were amalgamated randomly.

“Collagen provides the body with structure and is our most abundant protein, ensuring the integrity, elasticity and strength of the body’s connective tissue,” said Professor Kadler

“It’s intuitive to think our matrix should be worn down by wear and tear, but it isn’t and now we know why: our body clock makes an element which is sacrificial and can be replenished, protecting the permanent parts of the matrix.

He added: “So if you imagine the bricks in the walls of a room as the permanent part, the paint on the walls could be seen as the sacrificial part which needs to be replenished every so often.

“And just like you need to oil a car and keep its radiator topped up with water, these thin fibrils help maintain the body’s matrix.”

“Knowing this could have implications on understanding our biology at its most fundamental level. It might, for example, give us some deeper insight into how wounds heal, or how we age.

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Tick-borne encephalitis

The size of the problem

Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain, which can cause serious illness and death. The prevalence of encephalitis has proven difficult to ascertain, due to diagnostic and coding challenges, but recent estimates suggest 5.23 cases per 100,000 population per year. Viral causes predominate, with herpes simplex being the commonest aetiology. However, in up to 60% of all cases of encephalitis in the UK, there is no specific cause delineated.

Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE)

The tick-borne encephalitis virus is an RNA flavivirus, which can cause a potentially fatal and untreatable neurological infection across Europe and Asia. The diagnosis of TBE in this area has increased by over 400% since the 1970s. It is thought that some of this increase is as a result of increased vigilance and suspicion of the disease, but also as result of an increase in the tick population and in changing patterns of human behaviour, resulting in greater exposure to ticks. These behaviours include hiking and fishing in affected areas.

A rising prevalence

The question which inevitably arises from this increased prevalence is ‘why has the tick population risen?’

The answer appears to be one comprising elements of changes in land use, increased transportation of animals, and increased co-feeding by nymphs and larvae on the same rodent host. The extent to which this co-feeding occurs depends upon the patterns of seasonal host activity, which is influenced by ambient environmental temperature.

Influence of global warming

The apparent increase in incidence of TBE over the last five decades has therefore been attributed to climate change, which affects both tick and host rodent and other mammalian population dynamics.

New evidence of zoonotic pool of disease

Recent evidence of an increase in the potential TBE viral pool in the UK has emerged in the Thetford Forest area. In summer 2019, a single case of TBE was acquired in the New Forest area. As a result, a study was undertaken by Public Health England and the Emerging and Zoonotic Infections National Institute for Health Research, University of Liverpool to look at the prevalence of tick-borne encephalitis virus in the likely host organisms in this area.

Their results included a finding that almost 48% of deer in the Thetford Forest area were seropositive for TBE virus. They concluded that “this detection of TBEV genomic sequence in UK ticks has important public health implications, especially for undiagnosed encephalitis”.

What could happen next?

Although most TBE infections in the UK are imported, the finding of a high incidence of TBE seropositivity in deer and a case of UK acquired TBE is cause for concern. A similar pattern of disease expansion occurred in South Korea some years ago with the consequence of increasing TBE prevalence and the fact that it is now a notifiable disease.

With the further advance of global warming it is therefore possible that tick-borne encephalitis could become a more common pathogen in the UK and should be considered by clinicians in areas of risk.