There’s no air there
As bad as air quality has been in parts of the U.S. due to smoke from the Canadian wildfires, there are places where it’s just bad on a regular basis. Based on IQAir’s World Air Quality report, the 20 most-air-polluted cities all are currently located in Pakistan, China, India and Iraq.
The U.S. city with the worst air quality (for the moment) is Oakridge, Tenn., checking in at No. 382 on the list. Much-maligned Los Angeles comes in at No. 2,891.
Runner’s sigh
People who run marathons are indisputably to be ired, and the best of them possess a sort of loping grace as they bound 26.2 miles from start to finish. Sometimes, though, that finish line does not come soon enough.
Among marathoners, it’s called “catching the gingerbread man,” a picturesque term for what is also known as runner’s diarrhea, a condition that involves the sudden, explosive need to empty one’s bowels in the heat of a race.
Though runners take precautions, the act can become a biological imperative. During periods of physical stress, the body redirects blood away from organs not necessary in the moment, which includes the intestines. The lack of blood flow to the gastric tract causes disruptions to normal function, irritation and, ultimately, pressing movement of the bowel sort.
Such moments are not uncommon, including in high-profile marathon races. During the 2005 London Marathon, for example, Paula Radcliffe suffered multiple episodes, but still proved victorious in the end.
Get me that. Stat!
Incidence rates of HIV infections declined 12 percent between 2017 and 2021. That’s the good news. The less good news is that the infection rate decline was uneven. Young gay and bisexual men drove the decline among 13- to 24-year-olds, reports STAT, but disparities persist among Black and Latino boys and men. For White males of this age, the decline was 45 percent, compared with 36 percent for Hispanic or Latino and 27 percent for Black males.
Counts
Stories for the waiting room
Six ways to make a bug bite stop itching:
1. Use hydrocortisone cream, a steroid that alleviates inflammation and related itching and swelling.
2. Use ice.
3. Use Benadryl, an antihistamine that can reduce itching and swelling (but not for more than seven days if used topically since it can cause skin irritation).
4. Use calamine lotion, a blend of ferric oxide, zinc oxide, antiseptics and astringents to reduce discomfort and cool skin.
5. Apply steady pressure for 10 seconds, not breaking skin.
6. Don’t keep scratching the bite, which just introduces the chance of a secondary bacterial infection.
Doc talk
Mania of the week
Best medicine
The seven stages of life: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.
Observation
“Objection, evasion, joyous distrust and love of irony are signs of health; everything absolute belongs to pathology.”
Medical history
This week in 1897, Felix Hoffmann successfully created a chemically pure and stable form of acetylsalicylic acid, which was eventually trademarked as aspirin. It was a better pain reliever for his father’s rheumatoid arthritis than the salicylic acid previously used, which had an unpleasant taste and side effects, such as stomach bleeding. Hoffmann improved on earlier work of French chemist Charles Frederic Gerhardt, who derived acetylsalicylic acid from plants, but only in an impure, unstable form.
Self-exam
Q: What’s the highest-calorie item on the McDonald’s menu?
A: If your first thought went to the Double Quarter Pounder or Big Mac, wrong. The chain’s Big Breakfast with Hotcakes (hash browns, hotcakes, sausage and biscuits) weighs in at 1,150 calories (plus 35 grams of fat and 2,090 milligrams of sodium.
If you wash that down with a McFlurry with M&Ms (well, somebody might) that adds another 930 calories and approaches the entire recommended daily calorie intake for an adult male. (It exceeds the recommended intake for an adult female).
Ig Nobel apprised
The Ig Nobel Prizes celebrate achievements that make people laugh, then think. A look at real science that’s hard to take seriously, and even harder to ignore.
In 1999, the Ig Nobel Prize in sociology went to Steve Penfold of York University in Toronto for his Ph.D. thesis exploring the history of doughnuts in Canada. Convivial Canadians eat more doughnuts per capita and claim more doughnut shops per capita than any other nation on Earth. According to Penfold’s thesis, they are not just a ubiquitous, mass-consumed commodity, but the edible symbol of Canadian-ness, giving new meaning the phrase “it’s cruller to be kind.”
Epitaphs
“I knew if I waited around long enough, something like this would happen.”
LaFee is vice president of communications for the Sanford Burnham Prebys research institute.
