First, there was the ice bucket challenge and the Tide Pod Challenge. And now, another fad hops on the Internet challenges carrousel. Called the Deodorant Challenge, the latest thing to make teenagers go gag-gaga has already made its first victim in the United Kingdom, as a deeply concerned mother reveals.

Deodorant Challenged Sends UK Teen to Hospital for Surgery

Jamie Prescott, a Bristol resident and the mother of a 15-year-old daughter, recently posted a warning on her Facebook page.

As Prescott reveals, the role of her post is to raise awareness on an emerging Internet trend called the deodorant challenge.

The Bristol mom accompanied her post with graphical images depicted her daughter’s wounds.

According to the woman, this new fad involves emptying a can of deodorant on someone’s arm or leg.

It might sound silly, but the consequences of this action are far-reaching, as the University of Utah’s Health blog reveals.

The purpose of this challenge is to hold on as long as you can while someone sprays deodorant on you.

Normally, this wouldn’t be much of an issue, but prolonged exposure to aerosol deodorant can land you in the emergency room first-, second-, and third-degree burns.

University of Utah dermatologist David Smith declared that the pressurized gas inside a can of deodorant could severely damage the skin. Moreover, exposure to aerosol deodorant can actually freeze the skin, producing frostbite-like wounds.

Conclusion

Following her exploit, the Bristol teen is now forced to go almost every day to the local hospital for surgery. More than that, according to Prescott’s post, the child might require skin grafts.

Smith argued that the so-called deodorant challenge isn’t that new, the first cases being reported in 2015.

Prescott ended her post by saying that her daughter’s arm wounds haven’t healed even after three weeks of treatment.

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Surgeons from Connecticut’s Danbury Hospital established a new medical record, after removing a massive ovarian cyst which completely covered a woman’s digestive track. The surgery, which took five hours to complete, was deemed a success. Patient received a clean bill of health and was allowed to return home.

Ovarian Cyst Grew in Two Months, Surgeons Declared

Last week, the Danbury Hospital admitted a 38-year-old with a distended abdomen. A close examination revealed that the patient had a massive ovarian cyst, a benign tumor, which completely covered her digestive tract.

Dr. Vaagn Andikyan, the surgeon who performed the operation, declared that the female patient was severely malnourished as the tumor made it impossible for her to gain weight. Still, given the fact that the ovarian cyst weighed 130 pounds, the woman had to use a wheelchair to go around the house.

The lab analysis revealed that the tumor sprouted approximately two months ago and continued to grow at a rate of 10 pounds per week. When the patient was admitted, she also complained of severe pain in the lower abdomen.

During a press interview, Dr. Andikyan confessed that this was the biggest ovarian cyst he ever saw in his entire career. Before the woman was admitted to the hospital, the doctor never saw tumors bigger than 25 pounds.

The patient was rushed into the OR where Andikyan and a team of two dozen doctors, nurses, and OR technicians worked side-by-side to remove the massive formation. Five hours into the surgery, the doctors were not only able to remove the gargantuan ovarian cyst but also to reconstruct the woman’s abdomen and to save the other ovary.

Conclusion

According to Dr. Andikyan, the surgery was uneventful. As for the patient, the woman who preferred to keep her anonymity is expected to make a complete recovery. She was discharged from the hospital a few days after the surgery.

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Once a revered figure who opposed and criticized the Nazi regime’s master-race obsession, Hans Asperger was found to actively support the national-socialist party’s methods of ‘sanitizing’ the population.

Newly-found document shows that Hans Asperger, the psychologist who identified the syndrome named after him, sent ‘mentally-unfit’ children to a Vienna where they were systematically murdered in the name of an abominable ideal.

Hans Asperger Considered One of the Founders of Modern Child Psychology

In a recent paper, Herwig Czech, a medical historian and member of Vienna’s Medical University, states that Hans Asperger, the child psychologist whose World War II studies broadened our understanding of autism, was ‘just another cog’ in the Nazi regime’s murder machine.

The paper, which was recently published in the Molecular Autism journal, shines a different light on Asperger’s personality and academical career.

Widely known as a champion in the fight against Nazi eugenics, new documents, including Asperger’s journal and case files reveal that the man who vehemently refused to join the party sent thousands of ‘mentally unfit’ children to the infamous Am Spiegelgrund clinic in Vienna, where they would perish.

As Hitler’s offensive move forward, a different type of warfare ravaged the Fatherland – the quest for race purity, an ideal that will ultimately lead to millions of people being slaughtered in death camps and clinics such as Am Spiegelgrund.

Czech’s research reveals that the revered scientists would perform a ‘selection’ of children who might be a burden to the society and, thus, unfit for the master-race.

Conclusion

Some 5,000 children diagnosed with mental conditions were shipped to the Vienna-based clinic where the medical staff would employ various methods to euthanize them. Czech’s paper reveals that the preferred method was administering a sedative overdose, patients being declared dead within a couple of days. In most cases, pneumonia was the cause of death.

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A recent preliminary study shows that people who prefer a well-done meat might have some blood pressure problems. Those who choose this type of meat have an increased risk of hypertension. This research was made on more than 100,000 adults from the US.

Good News for Those Who Like Their Meat Rare

It was observed that those who enjoy their meat broiled, roasted or grilled have a higher risk of developing high blood pressure. The same result was for the ones that like well-done meat instead of medium rare. In the course of 12 to 16 years, people who ate well-done meat had a 15% higher risk of hypertension compared to those who preferred rare or medium-rare meat.

Researchers mentioned that they were unable to find a cause-and-effect relationship. Despite this fact, their study helps people pay more attention to the way they choose to cook meat. It is important to pay attention to what you eat and how that meal is prepared.

Avoiding the use of open-flame or high-temperature cooking methods may potentially aid in [high blood pressure] prevention.

Other researchers who were not involved in the study suggested that cooking any product up to the point of burning them might be the issue. This process is the one that produces certain chemicals which are not normally found in our bodies. Due to this fact, these chemicals might increase the blood pressure.

Summing Up

A well-done meat might actually cause more problems in the body. Some of the chemicals produced by frying the meat up to the point of burning are PAHs and HAAs. These can lead to several health problems including cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. This is the first study that links well-done meat to high blood pressure. Researchers mentioned that more studies need to be made on this topic.

A 72-year-old Ontario psychiatrist has been barred from practice after the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario discovered that he sexually abused two of his patients during therapy. The doctor was an adept of the theory that homosexuality is a mental condition and, therefore treatable.

Ontario Psychiatrist Asked Patients to Masturbate Him

Recently, Ontario’s College of Physicians and Surgeons has unanimously decided to suspect Dr. Melbyn Iscove’s medical license pending a complete disciplinary investigation.

The medical commission uncovered that Iscove has had multiple sexual encounters with at least two male patients. Furthermore, as the commission pointed out, Dr. Iscove was well-known in the medical community for being partial to issue strictly related to homosexuality, later to be discovered that he was an adept of Edmund Bergler’s theories.

During the early 50s, Bergler, an Austrian psychoanalyst claimed that homosexuality is a mental condition and should be treated in consequence. Moreover, threading in Freud’s footsteps, Bergler would name homosexuals as being “psychic masochists” and described them as being undesirable individuals.

Of course, modern psychiatry dismissed Bergler’s claims and later removed homosexuality from the international list of mental conditions. In Canada, homosexuality was no longer considered a crime by the late 60s.

The two male victims the Ontario psychiatrist abused declared that the doctor told them that the only way to be rid of their ‘condition’ was to vent it out in a controlled environment. As a result, all Iscove’s sessions began with patients telling him about their sexual fantasies and would end with the doctor asking them to have sex in his office.

Conclusion

The first victim told the commission that the doctor’s abuse began when he was only 20 years of age, whereas the second victim claimed that the doctor vowed to cure him of homosexuality even though he expressed that he’s straight.

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A 14-year-old boy from Gowa, the regency in Indonesia’s South Sulawesi province, has managed to baffle doctors for the past three years after laying 20 chicken eggs. The doctors admitted they are indeed chicken eggs but believe that the boy or his father might have shoved the eggs inside the teen’s rectum for the purpose of maintaining the illusion.

14-Year-old Indonesian Boy Claims Laying His First Chicken Eggs in 2015

Akmal, a 14-year-old from the South Sulawesi province, has become the subject of debate in various medical circles after the boy and his father claim that he began laying chicken eggs in 2015 and never stopped.

According to Akmal’s father, the boy’s ‘ability’ is legitimate, with no ‘voodoo’ or foul play involved. The man told the doctors that his son that over the past three years, Akmal laid 20 chicken eggs, one or two per month.

He also added that in order to convince himself of his son’s ability, he cracked a few of the eggs that he laid. On the first month, the man cracked an egg and said that the contents were all yellow. One month later, he cracked another one and claimed that its contents were all white, with no traces of yellow.

In order to determine whether Akmal’s case is legitimate, the boy and his father were taken to the Syech Yusuf Hospital where the boy laid two eggs in front of the doctors.

Although from a scientific standpoint Akmal’s accomplishments border on the impossible, as chicken eggs could not survive inside the human digestive tract, doctors are unable to explain how the boy does it.

Some of the more skeptical doctors declared that they are convinced either the boy or his father shoved eggs inside Akmal’s rectum in order to make it look like the teenage is laying eggs.

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A 23-year-old law school graduate and gym addict managed to make a complete recovery following a physical training injury that left her paralyzed from the neck down. Being diagnosed with tetraplegia, the doctors told the woman that the chances of ever walking again were slim.

Woman with Tetraplegia Aced Physiotherapy Sessions and Walked Unassisted

Marcelle Mancuso is a 23-year-old Sao Jose do Rio Prato law graduate and a fitness addict, with a passion for everything related to Muay Thai, jogging, and bodybuilding. Mancuso would spend hours at an end at a Brazilian gym, working her body with the help of her trainer.

However, last year, the gym addict had an unfortunate accident that could have left her bedridden for the rest of her life.

According to Mancuso, while at the gym performing inverted sit-ups, the device she was using broke down. The woman fell and landed on her head. Mancuso recalls that after the fall she could no longer fell anything from the neck down and that she could only move her eyes.

The woman was rushed to the hospital where the doctors determined that the fall shattered her fifth vertebrae, dislodged another, and the third one was compressing her spinal cord. Mancuso underwent surgery, where the doctors used bone grafts order to replace the damaged vertebrae and used a titanium plate to keep the bones in place.

Following the surgery, the woman was diagnosed with tetraplegia, and the doctors told her that she might be paralyzed for life. However, despite her misfortune, the woman never gave up, thus managing to make a complete recovery in only a matter of months.

Conclusion

Mancuso told the reporters that the improvements were gradual – some movement in the toes and then standing upright unassisted. By the end of her fifth month in the hospital, the woman could run and be no longer feeling any dizziness.

Now, Mancuso has returned to the gym, where she resumed her training, inverted sit-ups included.

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Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) compared slices of brain from a consortium of individuals. By comparing ribonucleic acid (RNA) and gene activity in brain cells, they discovered molecular similarities between some of the major known psychiatric disorders. This study paves the way for further research and new methods of treating mental illnesses.

 

A Deeper Look Inside

 

UCLA neuroscientists Dan Geschwind and Mike Gandal wanted to compare the role RNA and gene activity from the cerebral cortex play in mental illness.

The outer layer of the brain, the cerebral cortex, is known for controlling attention, awareness, memory, and other high cognitive functions. RNA plays a role in gene activity, including gene expression and coding. It also contains information that directs how specific proteins are synthesized.

Building upon the work of the global Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, Gershwin’s and Gandal’s team took 293 control samples from people without any known mental illness, and 197 samples from people with inflammatory bowel disease.

They also took 700 samples from individuals with major psychiatric disorders, including alcoholism, autism, depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. The researchers compared gene expression patterns between the samples to look for biological similarities in their gene activity.

The new study showed molecular similarities in the major psychiatric disorders. For instance, autism, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia presented a reduction in the expression of neuronal firing genes.

However, schizophrenia and autism shared a possible overexpression of other genes and high levels of gene activity. They did not return the same type of results as the other samples.

Gandal’s and Gershwin’s results show substantial work is still to be done in understanding what role variations in gene activity play in the manifestation of specific illnesses. However, finding similarities at a molecular level provides new insights into why certain treatments do not work. It may also help develop new ones.

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An 8-year-old boy recently passed away at a Portland Children’s Hospital after contracting flesh-eating bacteria. The boy’s parents said that his symptoms started to surface after a minor injury he sustained while riding his bike.

Minor Bike Accident Invites Flesh-Eating Bacteria

Sara Hebard, the mother of 8-year-old Liam Flanagan, declared that her son was out playing outside, riding his bike down a hill. The event that would change the family’s life forever took place on the 13^th of January.

While riding his bike down the slope, Liam lost control and crashed into a dirt mount. During his fall, the bike’s handlebar came loose and lacerated Liam’s thigh. After arriving home and telling his parents what happened, the family decided to take him to the local hospital.

As the laceration was deep enough, Liam required seven stitches. However, the doctors decided that the wound was a minor one and did not require antibiotics. Liam was sent home and expected to make a complete recovery.

Still, the days went by, and the Oregon boy did not show any signs of improvement. More than that, the child complained of pain in the sutured area. His parents first dismissed this sign, as this was the boy’s first injury which required stitches.

However, several days later, the child complained that the pain was much worse and, after undressing him, his parents discovered that his entire side area was discolored. A second trip to the hospital followed.

After consulting the boy, the doctors decided to airlift him to a Portland hospital for emergency surgery, as he has contracted necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating bacteria.

Despite the doctors’ best efforts to stem the infection through amputations and antibiotics, the boy passed away several days later at the hospital. The family has set up a GoFundMe account to cover for Liam’s medical and funeral expenses.

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