Medical Questions I'd Like Answered...

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 4:09 pm

no CLUE < = DAS heisst keine Ahnung.
no GLUE < = DAS heisst kein Kleber ^^

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:41 pm

I don't speak German, but I understand this conversation. Awesome.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Wed Nov 25, 2015 7:16 am

Stahlseele wrote:no CLUE < = DAS heisst keine Ahnung.
no GLUE < = DAS heisst kein Kleber ^^

I'm relieved, I was'nt that far off.
Thanks

Stahlseele · Post by **Stahlseele** » Wed Nov 25, 2015 10:30 am

The other thing:
Lamb = Lamm
Lamp = Lampe

But no, you were comically close ^^

Rasumichin · Post by **Rasumichin** » Sat Nov 28, 2015 11:07 pm

RobbyPants wrote:
Korwin wrote:I heard day light lambs are a good solution.

Korwin wrote:No glue, it sounds plausible to me
You make some of the most interesting, one-letter/still-a-word typos.

These "exchange one letter and get a different word" things are actually something that linguists care a lot about. They call them "minimal pairs" and use them to identify the smallest elements a language consists of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_pair

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 5:06 am

So I was recently (about a week and a half ago) in an accident, relatively minor, and at first I thought no issues. However, about 3 days ago I noticed swelling behind my knees (both). I've already done a fair amount of googling and basically came away with the understanding that while many things could have caused that, it was probably some damage to my knees from the accident that I didn't feel as any pain. At the time I was still in no pain, and I responded by taking ibuprofen and doing hamstring stretches, as things that were supposed to help. Now my right knee (and just my right) is hurting in the knee when I exert significant pressure (walking when it is the only foot down). My general advice so far has been to rest the knee, also some stuff about icing it, compression wraps, and elevation.

The main problem I have right now is that I'm not very clear on what resting the knee consists of. Should I try to avoid moving the knee joint? putting weight on the knee? Should I prefer straight/bent/slightly bent? What is a good sleeping position.

Doctor said avoid using the knee and putting weight on it as much as possible, but I'm not 100% sure what the best ways to do either of those are. How should I best sit or sleep? Also, since the pain only came after the swelling, how concerned should I be about the other leg? Since for the most part keeping weight off the one leg involves putting it on the other (I now drive with left foot on gas, I favor that leg when standing, ect.)

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 6:05 am

When my brother messed up his knee, he had it in a brace that held it straight and would sit with his foot on another chair at the same height and inced it regularly. If the left leg isn't hurting it's probably okay to put most of your weight on it.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Dec 01, 2015 7:51 am

Since the thing that is causing you pain is putting downward pressure from your femur onto your knee joint, you should avoid doing that. Knee position doesn't matter so much as not letting your torso be pressing down on the injured joint.

As far as elevation goes, remember the point is to let your blood vessels rest in that leg. It takes more effort to move blood against the force of gravity than it does to go with the force of gravity, and the vessels that are normally going against the force of gravity get tired sooner than the ones doing the opposite. The ideal during the day is to equalize the pressure between the two by keeping your leg as close to parallel as practical. While sleeping, you want your leg slightly above parallel so that you can "make up" for the time you spend standing during the day. So:

When standing, rest your weight on the left leg as much as is possible. You will have a natural urge to shift back and forth between legs. Do not do that in this case. Keep your weight on your left. Do not lock your left knee, however, as that is very bad for it. Keep your left knee straight and not locked while keeping your right leg slightly bent.

When walking, consider using a cane or walking stick to allow you to lift your other leg without resting your weight on that knee. Plant cane, shift to resting weight from left to cane, lift left, step, shift from cane to left, lift right, step, repeat. It will become natural soon enough and you'll know if you're doing it right because your knee will stop hurting.

When sitting, try to keep your right leg straight and, if practical, elevated. Elevation is good for knee problems and a straight leg is the most comfortable position for elevation as well as the best for circulation. Again, there will be a temptation to lock your right knee while it is elevated. Don't do that, it is bad for your knees.

While sleeping, you still want elevation. Put a pillow or a folded up towel lengthwise underneath your right calf, starting just below the joint. This will keep it elevated an inch or two above parallel for you while you sleep which is, as I mentioned before, ideal for while you are asleep.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Dec 23, 2015 2:13 am

So, question that came up on a web serial: how badly would an injection into a vein (specifically the one people inject heroin into) of 0.7 mL of a 10% Sodium Hypochlorite solution murder you?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:36 am

name_here wrote:So, question that came up on a web serial: how badly would an injection into a vein (specifically the one people inject heroin into) of 0.7 mL of a 10% Sodium Hypochlorite solution murder you?

That's very concentrated bleach, but it's also a very low dose. We're talking an order of magnitude too little to cause bleach toxicity. You could die, because bleach that concentrated is going to kill all the blood cells it touches until it gets diluted. That in turn is going to start some clotting in your arm which could travel up the vein into your lung. It would be very painful at the site, but you'd live or die depending on whether your body processed the clots before they turned into an occlusive pulmonary embolus.

These things usually form in the leg because the deep leg veins are bigger and more prone to stasis. But introducing a corrosive agent directly into one of the veins in the arm could potentially create a lot of clot material in a short period of time. The thrombus would come through from the top, but the effect would be the same if it reached the heart.

Absolutely don't do this. But I would suspect that if you did it to ten people that more than half of them would survive.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:09 pm

I've been sick since about Tuesday (I felt it coming on that morning). I'm not entirely sure what I have, but the symptoms have been fever, achiness, inability to focus, inability to sleep more than about four hours at a time, and a wheezing cough. I haven't had much appetite since Thursday, so since then I've basically consumed-
-a large mcdonalds milkshake and some fries
-two pieces of sushi
-a couple cups of tea
-a cup of coffee with soy milk
-half a bottle of Dr. Pepper
-more water than I typically drink, but not a lot

because I just don't have the appetite. I'm sure this is the cause of my weakness and my getting dizzy in the shower today, even though the fever broke last night.

Is there something I can do to basically make eating more appealing while I'm still sick rather than waiting for this to actually end?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 7:24 pm

Prak wrote:Is there something I can do to basically make eating more appealing while I'm still sick rather than waiting for this to actually end?

You can smoke a bunch of weed, but that's not good to do if you already have a cough.

Mostly you just want to eat and drink things that are concentrated and keep you going if you lack the appetite to eat enough of regular meals. Orange juice, dried apricots, peanut butter. Stuff like that. You need liquids, you need vitamins and minerals, and you need calories. So stay away from empty foods like sodas and drink fruit juice or milk. Chicken or vegetable soup is pretty good as well.

But as I understand it, you're not actually in any danger of wasting away during this period, so really you just need to take in enough fruit to keep up your vitamin needs while you live off your camel hump.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sat Jan 02, 2016 8:08 pm

Thanks Frank. I'm having some toast now, if I'm up to going out later I'll pick up some orange juice

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Sun Jan 03, 2016 6:00 am

What about vitamins in pill or chewable form?

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Mon Jan 04, 2016 9:45 pm

IME those tend to have offtastes that make it harder for people with impaired appetites to consume 'em.

Assuming a reasonably healthy prior diet, the vitamins that would be important over a short time would be the water-soluble ones that the body doesn't manufacture itself - vitamin C is probably the most critical.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 7:05 pm

If someone experiences a sudden[1] loss of energy and will to exercise and whatnot, what are some likely causes?

[1]: Identified to a specific month

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 9:58 pm

Coming off the test result of 6 for Vitamin D... Vitamin D deficiency.

erik · Post by **erik** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 11:49 pm

Not exercising can cause having less energy and vice versa, so if one preceded the other a bit then that could account for a drop.

Diet/nutrition is a big suspect since that's something that can change suddenly and have an impact. But it's gonna be really hard to say anything definitive. Given the season, if there's no vitamin D in your diet and you aren't getting much sun outside that could do ya.

Change in sleep patterns could happen too. Maybe someone gets a new smart phone for the holidays and the light keeps them up later and screws with their sleep cycle. So many suspects.

Now, loss of energy and will is somewhat nebulous. Hell, there's a catch-all of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome where people have low energy and there's no fuckin clue why. Since they don't know the cause, they don't have a good battery of tests either. They mostly focus on trying to treat by relieving symptoms.

And sometimes things happen in our lives that cause us to re-evaluate our health and notice things that have actually been happening gradually and it seems as it was a sudden change, or they just reach a tipping point where it is noticed. So if matters weren't hard enough for diagnosis, the sudden part is further nebulous.

With all that in mind, it is also important is who/where they are and other recent life changes. For example if this person is having tons of unprotected sex with prostitutes in South Africa then they should get checked for AIDS. But that goes even if asymptomatic. Pregnancy is another possibility potentially. Hell, having a newborn will do it too.

Your PCP is the best resource since they will know you best. Otherwise you're just looking at long, long list of what is most common and striking out the things that you don't have symptoms for (if no fever so rule out most infections, if male can rule out pregnancy, etc.).

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 10:41 am

Suppose you needed to get 2000 calories from human flesh. How many humans' worth of flesh is this exactly? Or, perhaps more precisely, what weight of human flesh would deliver 2000 calories if eaten?

On a related note - for a typical, healthy adult human, what percentage of their blood would be sugar? I'm curious how it compares to, say, apple juice.

On another related note - could you ferment blood into an alcoholic beverage?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:26 am

koz wrote:Suppose you needed to get 2000 calories from human flesh. How many humans' worth of flesh is this exactly? Or, perhaps more precisely, what weight of human flesh would deliver 2000 calories if eaten?

On a related note - for a typical, healthy adult human, what percentage of their blood would be sugar? I'm curious how it compares to, say, apple juice.

On another related note - could you ferment blood into an alcoholic beverage?

Flesh is about 2 calories a gram. So you'd need to eat two kilos of flesh per day. Average humans are 70 kilos, of which about 40% is skeleton and shit. So you could get 21 days of food off one human. Fatter people would keep you going longer, and thinner/smaller people less long.

Normal blood sugar levels are about 1 gram per liter. So that's a sugar percentage of 0.1%. That's free sugar, and obviously total sugars are going to be higher if you somehow have a means of getting at the sugars in cells and shit.

You can ferment anything. But the amount of alcohol you would get from fermenting human blood would be so low that the resulting fluid would be classified as non-alcoholic. Even a diabetic in severe hyperglycemia would generally have a blood sugar of less than one percent.

-Username17

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:36 am

I asked my culinary professor the fermenting blood thing once (spurred by a shitty Halloween bottle label), and he said the protein would just rot/decompose. So you can't really make blood wine, because there's too much protein to, as Frank says, too little sugar.

Occluded Sun · Post by **Occluded Sun** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 8:49 pm

Adding blood to a sufficiently sugary substance would work. In fact, many ciders had pieces of meat suspended in them to give the yeasts a protein boost, and would end up being digested by the time the cider was ready.

This is said to have begun when people noticed that brewing vats that rats had fallen into and drowned in produced higher-quality cider than uncontaminated ones.

If you let blood coagulate, grind it up, and then sprinkle it into a fermenting mixture, you could produce bloodwine. Especially if the sugar source were sufficiently flavorless. Like rowan wines.

koz · Post by **koz** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:06 pm

Prak wrote:I asked my culinary professor the fermenting blood thing once (spurred by a shitty Halloween bottle label), and he said the protein would just rot/decompose. So you can't really make blood wine, because there's too much protein to, as Frank says, too little sugar.

So how much sugar would you have to add to blood to make it fermentable to even beer-strength? Or better, wine-strength?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Jan 27, 2016 11:29 pm

koz wrote:
Prak wrote:I asked my culinary professor the fermenting blood thing once (spurred by a shitty Halloween bottle label), and he said the protein would just rot/decompose. So you can't really make blood wine, because there's too much protein to, as Frank says, too little sugar.
So how much sugar would you have to add to blood to make it fermentable to even beer-strength? Or better, wine-strength?

Ethanol is about half the mass of the sugar that it comes from (the rest goes off as carbon dioxide). So if you want something that's 4% alcohol, you'll need over 8% sugars.

-Username17

DrPraetor · Post by **DrPraetor** » Thu Jan 28, 2016 3:09 am

Blood also contains a lot of other stuff which is hostile to yeast - even if you sterilized it / boiled it first (which would denature the proteins and give you a giant scab also), I don't think you could get yeast to grow regardless of the sugar content. So you'd make botulism toxin rather than ethanol, even with an added 8% sugar.