My nose resembles a big shiny copper tap and I daresay, going by the pile of balled up tissues strategically placed within a tight ten inch radius of the tiny pretense of a wastebasket next to my table (yet not quite daring to venture inside the basket), my aim is a bit off today.
Oh for a tablet of cetirizine!
What wouldn’t I give just to roll it in my mouth.. To feel the molecules disperse and be absorbed and course through my bloodstream till they race to where I desperately need them and restore some semblance of sanity to the throbbing disarray inside my head..
Wait a bit.. lets not branch off on crack here..
Coming back to my glorious sneezes which would for once and all silence all those who shake their heads reprovingly and tell me that I sneeze like a lady and that that shall be the death of me (phffft! to you, Anupam); after having combed all medicine cabinets and dresser tops and peered behind shelves in search of a tablet in vain, I decided that there might be solace to be had in looking at their brand names on the internet (don’t even ask. I make no claims to sanity right now) and maybe I could find some foods with antihistaminergic properties. (Steam did provide some relief, but it was rather short lived and it felt much worse after)
I came across stinging nettles as a promising candidate antihistaminergic. The glaring ‘alternative medicine’ tag put me off a bit, but the old limerick about nettles (which seemed to point at it being histaminergic) from the storybook mum would read out to us had me hooked.
A few more searches, and this is what I came across.
Not what I came here looking for, but I am going to bed amused by the thought of how our surgery Profs would react if we were to quote these clinical trials at a viva:
Popa, G., et al. “Efficacy of a combined Sabal-urtica preparation in the symptomatic treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia. Results of a placebo-controlled double-blind study.” MMW Fortschr. Med. 2005 Oct; 147 Suppl 3:103-8.
Lopatkin, N., et al. “Long-term efficacy and safety of a combination of sabal and urtica extract for lower urinary tract symptoms--a placebo-controlled, double-blind, multicenter trial.” World J. Urol. 2005 Jun; 23(2): 139-46.
Durak I, et al. “Aqueous extract of Urtica dioica makes significant inhibition on adenosine deaminase activity in prostate tissue from patients with prostate cancer.” Cancer Biol. Ther. 2004; 3(9): 855-7.
Sokeland, J. “Combined sabal and urtica extract compared with finasteride in men with benign prostatic hyperplasia: analysis of prostate volume and therapeutic outcome.” B. J. U. Int. 2000; 86(4): 439-42
nettles as a cure for benign prostatic hypertrophy.. I knew I'd get to wear my peace necklace and earth-mother smock someday.
Showing posts with label science and medicine?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science and medicine?. Show all posts
Friday, October 26, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"Respect our hard work for uploading the media.
Do not use this media for your own site.
If you do, and we find out about it, we will take measurements."
- dbz-media.nl
Be a sweetheart and fry my perisylvian cortex with a blowtorch while you're at it, wontcha?
Do not use this media for your own site.
If you do, and we find out about it, we will take measurements."
- dbz-media.nl
Be a sweetheart and fry my perisylvian cortex with a blowtorch while you're at it, wontcha?
Friday, September 08, 2006
Schrödinger's cat
I was sitting around wondering whether sending someone a text msg at three in the night would constitute apalling egregiousness. And, well, i came to the conclusion that the situation is sorta like that of schrödinger's cat. I can't really be booked for being apallingly evil unless my msg does wake the person up. Right..?
Schrödinger's cat isnot dead.
the 'not' in that line has blink tags. which IE no longer supports. woe is me.. :(
anyhow, do read the side-splittingly funny 'The story of Schroedinger's cat (an epic poem)' by Cecil Adams from The Straight Dope. It made my night.
How sad Is my life.. (to the sound of acerbic laughter)
n.b. : 'I don't hold with cruelty to cats.'
Schrödinger's cat is
the 'not' in that line has blink tags. which IE no longer supports. woe is me.. :(
anyhow, do read the side-splittingly funny 'The story of Schroedinger's cat (an epic poem)' by Cecil Adams from The Straight Dope. It made my night.
How sad Is my life.. (to the sound of acerbic laughter)
n.b. : 'I don't hold with cruelty to cats.'
Monday, August 28, 2006
Ask Onnie
Why is it that so many of us end up with a person who is completely wrong for us? Let’s dissect the problem scientifically. The guy seemed amazing enough when you started out, right? So what is it that now makes you want to sock him in the eye whenever he is within a 5 kilometer radius?
Oh I know, he was just sooo cute back when! His elbows would stick out at angles from the rest of him, his hair was always endearingly mussed up and he would whistle while he worked.
And now he is just so irritating! He whistles while he works, his elbows stick out at angles from the rest of him and his hair is always mussed up. Yetch!
A rational reason for this could be that we rush in headlong without grokking the situation. No, it’s not an old wives’ tale. Just imagine, you are all worked up and your sympathetic nervous system is on overdrive. Your pupils are perpetually dilated and you look at the world as if through a soft focus lens, with all the jagged edges blurred out. All capacity for rational thought goes right out the window. Is it any wonder then that the person you have a crush on seems most enchanting and perfectly perfect?
But how long can this precarious phase last?
A couple of months down the lane the endorphin induced high peters off and all the kinks you found so endearing in the person can now be seen for what they truly are. Six months and they begin to grate on your nerves. Throw in a couple of weeks and you are now wondering what in heaven’s name were you thinking!
A crush usually runs its course over four months (to a maximum of one year if you are the really soppy sort. Anything longer than that and you might want to consider making an appointment with your family psychiatrist to discuss obsessive compulsive disorder). This process of course, takes half the time if you strike up a relationship with the object of your infatuation. For the simple reason that that would involve being bright eyed about slave labour.
(unless you are one of the rare species that lend the girl their jacket, rate B&B and the OC over football; remember anniversaries and favorite ice cream flavors and buy thoughtful yet utterly useless presents out of habit) (You are?! Erm... are you straight? May I have your phone number?).
Now, this dude/dame you have a crush on could be a genuine A1 sweetheart with a heart of gold, an infinite improbability drive and the works, but you can’t really rule out the possibility of their being cold, calculating slave drivers who can’t tell people from disposable diapers.(you are incapable of rational thought, remember?)
All I’m saying is that if lady luck never quite liked the shape of your ears it might not be such a bad idea to consider the situation before going on your knees to profess undying love.
Which of course, is useless advice since you are incapable of rational thought, but anyhow.
p.s. :
By saying all this I do not intend to sound disillusioned or disgruntled. The ‘true love’ phenomenon might just exist in spite of the superior smirks with which we settle the issue. This could of course be entirely due to the fact that I’m an agnostic and not an atheist; a point of view that isn’t limited to religion alone. Anyhow, we might as well keep room for the possibility, in which case I suggest the contingency plan be to not waste time making contingency plans
Oh I know, he was just sooo cute back when! His elbows would stick out at angles from the rest of him, his hair was always endearingly mussed up and he would whistle while he worked.
And now he is just so irritating! He whistles while he works, his elbows stick out at angles from the rest of him and his hair is always mussed up. Yetch!
A rational reason for this could be that we rush in headlong without grokking the situation. No, it’s not an old wives’ tale. Just imagine, you are all worked up and your sympathetic nervous system is on overdrive. Your pupils are perpetually dilated and you look at the world as if through a soft focus lens, with all the jagged edges blurred out. All capacity for rational thought goes right out the window. Is it any wonder then that the person you have a crush on seems most enchanting and perfectly perfect?
But how long can this precarious phase last?
A couple of months down the lane the endorphin induced high peters off and all the kinks you found so endearing in the person can now be seen for what they truly are. Six months and they begin to grate on your nerves. Throw in a couple of weeks and you are now wondering what in heaven’s name were you thinking!
A crush usually runs its course over four months (to a maximum of one year if you are the really soppy sort. Anything longer than that and you might want to consider making an appointment with your family psychiatrist to discuss obsessive compulsive disorder). This process of course, takes half the time if you strike up a relationship with the object of your infatuation. For the simple reason that that would involve being bright eyed about slave labour.
(unless you are one of the rare species that lend the girl their jacket, rate B&B and the OC over football; remember anniversaries and favorite ice cream flavors and buy thoughtful yet utterly useless presents out of habit) (You are?! Erm... are you straight? May I have your phone number?).
Now, this dude/dame you have a crush on could be a genuine A1 sweetheart with a heart of gold, an infinite improbability drive and the works, but you can’t really rule out the possibility of their being cold, calculating slave drivers who can’t tell people from disposable diapers.(you are incapable of rational thought, remember?)
All I’m saying is that if lady luck never quite liked the shape of your ears it might not be such a bad idea to consider the situation before going on your knees to profess undying love.
Which of course, is useless advice since you are incapable of rational thought, but anyhow.
p.s. :
By saying all this I do not intend to sound disillusioned or disgruntled. The ‘true love’ phenomenon might just exist in spite of the superior smirks with which we settle the issue. This could of course be entirely due to the fact that I’m an agnostic and not an atheist; a point of view that isn’t limited to religion alone. Anyhow, we might as well keep room for the possibility, in which case I suggest the contingency plan be to not waste time making contingency plans
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Maharashtra Resident Doctors' strike
After a gruelling 12 days the indefinite strike by the resident doctors has been called off by the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD) (wonder what they were thinking when they came up with the acronym. On second thoughts, I’d rather not know). The impasse between the negotiating parties ended after over nine hours of negotiations.
“The Government has agreed to all our demands and we will be joining duties from tomorrow 8 a.m. (those in Mumbai) and within 24 hours (in other parts Maharashtra).” says yesterday’s post on the MARD blog covering the strike. The 10 point demands included improvements in the hospital working conditions, security, doctor-patient ratio and stipend as well as timely MCI recognition and livable accommodation for the doctors.
Commendable yet surprising is the alacrity with which the government has handled the situation (I could’ve said Jack Robinson a couple of million times over, yes, but 12days is still pretty good for an apathetic bureaucracy. And as for the strike, it was no walkover).
Since as far as one can look back strikes by resident doctors once every three to four years have become the rule rather than an aberration. The demands too are predictable: better working conditions, a rise in stipend and better accommodation. And why wouldn’t they be. Imagine having to share a poky , ill ventilated room with 7 people, sleeping on mattresses and linen infested with bed-bugs - that is if you get time too sleep at all from your 24x7 schedule. Add to this toilets that stink worse than the ones at public bus-stations, regular thefts of belongings from hostel rooms, the constant threat of contracting work related diseases like TB, AIDS and Hepatitis B, duties of as much as 48 hrs at a stretch; all this for a measly Rs. 8340/month, while their counterparts in Delhi get around Rs. 20,000*. And to top it all they get manhandled by irate relatives of patients.
This significant issue of security at the workplace has come into sharp focus since the August-September 2005 strike at JJ. What else do you do when push comes to shove, literally. Bihar has witnessed several protest strikes by the medical fraternity in the wake of the kidnapping of doctors. The junior doctors in Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad struck work this January because their colleagues were allegedly manhandled by police recruits on a train. The latest in a series of incidents in the country where the safety of doctors has been compromised is the assault on a doctor of the Forensic Medicine department in Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Delhi on 8th March while conducting an autopsy.
In the past, the other consistent feature of these strikes has been that they have all failed. Miserably.
The doctors have been able to save face, yes, but that is about all that majority of these protests have amounted to.
What, then, was so different about this strike?
Was it the sheer scale of the protest? Was it the threat of nationwide repercussions by the IMA? "The government of Maharashtra should realize that the Indian Medical Association which has around two lakh doctors, will go on country wide strike and lot of skeletons will tumble out of the cupboards, not only of the state government, but also of the central government." stated Dr Ajay Kumar, the President elect, of the IMA.
Or is there anything different at all...
As per the compromise formula, resident doctors will now be accorded the status of public servants within the state of Maharashtra. This means that an assault on them would be a non bail able offence. That is one issue resolved.A four-member committee will be set up to look into their demands for better work hours and improved living conditions. "This will be a permanent committee and will meet frequently, take review of situations, and whenever required, will come to the government," Minister for Medical Education, Dilip Valse Patil, said. The Cabinet will discuss providing resident doctors a stipend of Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 per month. The government however, said that the MARD's demands can only be fulfilled when the necessary laws are amended. The stipend will be increased only after the cabinet approves it.
What this really means is that whether the terms of the agreement are fulfilled now depends on the follow-up by MARD. Which is in turn greatly affected by the fact that these are doctors and are busy working and learning and have exams to face at the end of it all. To assume that the government would not rely on this to bail it out would be a bit myopic.
All this needs to be taken into consideration before we take to the streets celebrating the victory. Can we really term it a victory?
I suppose time shall tell.
*click here for a comparative list of stipends in various state hospitals.
The MARD blog and website:
http://mard-strike.blogspot.com
http://www.mardtoday.bravehost.com/
Other related and articles and posts which make for an interesting read
(these are about earlier strikes):
Damned if you do, damned if you dont.
bandbajao.blogspot
P.S: the acronym made me think of many quite inappropriate things it might stand for, a brand name for sildenafil being one of the more chaste ones.
N.B.: It is pronounced mārd / maard, rhymes with card.
“The Government has agreed to all our demands and we will be joining duties from tomorrow 8 a.m. (those in Mumbai) and within 24 hours (in other parts Maharashtra).” says yesterday’s post on the MARD blog covering the strike. The 10 point demands included improvements in the hospital working conditions, security, doctor-patient ratio and stipend as well as timely MCI recognition and livable accommodation for the doctors.
Commendable yet surprising is the alacrity with which the government has handled the situation (I could’ve said Jack Robinson a couple of million times over, yes, but 12days is still pretty good for an apathetic bureaucracy. And as for the strike, it was no walkover).
Since as far as one can look back strikes by resident doctors once every three to four years have become the rule rather than an aberration. The demands too are predictable: better working conditions, a rise in stipend and better accommodation. And why wouldn’t they be. Imagine having to share a poky , ill ventilated room with 7 people, sleeping on mattresses and linen infested with bed-bugs - that is if you get time too sleep at all from your 24x7 schedule. Add to this toilets that stink worse than the ones at public bus-stations, regular thefts of belongings from hostel rooms, the constant threat of contracting work related diseases like TB, AIDS and Hepatitis B, duties of as much as 48 hrs at a stretch; all this for a measly Rs. 8340/month, while their counterparts in Delhi get around Rs. 20,000*. And to top it all they get manhandled by irate relatives of patients.
This significant issue of security at the workplace has come into sharp focus since the August-September 2005 strike at JJ. What else do you do when push comes to shove, literally. Bihar has witnessed several protest strikes by the medical fraternity in the wake of the kidnapping of doctors. The junior doctors in Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad struck work this January because their colleagues were allegedly manhandled by police recruits on a train. The latest in a series of incidents in the country where the safety of doctors has been compromised is the assault on a doctor of the Forensic Medicine department in Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, Delhi on 8th March while conducting an autopsy.
In the past, the other consistent feature of these strikes has been that they have all failed. Miserably.
The doctors have been able to save face, yes, but that is about all that majority of these protests have amounted to.
What, then, was so different about this strike?
Was it the sheer scale of the protest? Was it the threat of nationwide repercussions by the IMA? "The government of Maharashtra should realize that the Indian Medical Association which has around two lakh doctors, will go on country wide strike and lot of skeletons will tumble out of the cupboards, not only of the state government, but also of the central government." stated Dr Ajay Kumar, the President elect, of the IMA.
Or is there anything different at all...
As per the compromise formula, resident doctors will now be accorded the status of public servants within the state of Maharashtra. This means that an assault on them would be a non bail able offence. That is one issue resolved.A four-member committee will be set up to look into their demands for better work hours and improved living conditions. "This will be a permanent committee and will meet frequently, take review of situations, and whenever required, will come to the government," Minister for Medical Education, Dilip Valse Patil, said. The Cabinet will discuss providing resident doctors a stipend of Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 per month. The government however, said that the MARD's demands can only be fulfilled when the necessary laws are amended. The stipend will be increased only after the cabinet approves it.
What this really means is that whether the terms of the agreement are fulfilled now depends on the follow-up by MARD. Which is in turn greatly affected by the fact that these are doctors and are busy working and learning and have exams to face at the end of it all. To assume that the government would not rely on this to bail it out would be a bit myopic.
All this needs to be taken into consideration before we take to the streets celebrating the victory. Can we really term it a victory?
I suppose time shall tell.
*click here for a comparative list of stipends in various state hospitals.
The MARD blog and website:
http://mard-strike.blogspot.com
http://www.mardtoday.bravehost.com/
Other related and articles and posts which make for an interesting read
(these are about earlier strikes):
Damned if you do, damned if you dont.
bandbajao.blogspot
P.S: the acronym made me think of many quite inappropriate things it might stand for, a brand name for sildenafil being one of the more chaste ones.
N.B.: It is pronounced mārd / maard, rhymes with card.
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