How to turn your skin blue—permanently

In 1995, Stan Jones, a Montana survivalist and Libertarian, became obsessed with the Y2K computer crash. As one who is in tune with conspiracy theories, he wanted to be prepared for the upcoming apocalypse, including a potential lack of antibiotics. He decided he needed to prepare his immune system by ingesting silver—which does have some sterilizing effects if applied topically. Unfortunately for him, he believed the claims that colloidal silver can prevent numerous diseases, including heart disease and cancer (no medical evidence supports these claims).

 Rather than purchase a ready-made elixir, Jones made his own heavy-metal “moonshine” in his backyard by dipping silver wires attached to 9-volt batteries into tubs of water—a method that dissolved way too many silver ions into his concoction. He drank it faithfully for four and a half years until Y2K fizzled out in January 2000. The result: his skin turned a Smurf-like grayish blue. 

He wasn’t sorry. In fact, he ran for the Senate in 2002, and, a year after losing, he maintains that “…it’s the best antibiotic in the world…being alive is more important than turning purple.”

 The blue skin condition is called argyria, which is caused by excessive exposure to silver (experts don’t know the amount needed to create this condition). One woman, whose has blue skin, says that her agyria is the result of taking nose drops prescribed by a doctor when she was eleven years old. She was told to take them “as needed.” The coloring is permanent. Not funny in her case.

 

In any event, think twice before taking home remedies to beef up your immune system--and that includes drinking Clorox.

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Itching

 We usually think of itching as a skin thing, maybe caused by an insect bite or some other kind of irritant or condition. But itching can be an indicator of something far more serious. I recently read about a woman who suffered from a terrible itchiness under her skin that never went away. Nothing helped. She spent a year visiting doctors, none of whom could solve her problem until one of them finally figured it out: she had Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of white blood cells. After treatment, her itching went away.

 Plenty of non-skin conditions can cause itching, including hyperthyroidism, iron deficiency, liver disease, and other cancers. Persistent outer-arm itching that worsens in sunlight is caused by a crimped nerve in the neck. Intense, diffuse itching upon getting out of a bath or shower is a symptom of a rare condition in which the body produces too many red blood cells.

 

Our bodies are studded with receptors for itch, and our itch sensations are exquisitely tuned. A single itch nerve fiber can pick up an itchy sensation more than three inches away. These fibers have been traced to the spinal cord and all the way to the brain, where specific areas light up in response itch activity.

 

Some people suffer from chronic itch—itch that last more than six months. Chronic itch is often a brain malfunction: “sensors” in the brain go haywire and start misfiring, making people perceive an itchy condition. As such, it’s a difficult condition to cure. You can easily become aware of the brain’s role in itching just by thinking about it. Sorry. Now you’ve probably got an itch.

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It’s best to keep microbes in our lives

 At the beginning of the pandemic, I was careful not to touch the handrail at the post office. When I got home, I washed my hands. I only followed this regimen one time. I just couldn’t get into it, mostly because I’m not a fearful person but also because the rate of infection in our area was low. (I also bought no bleach, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper.) Lucky for me, researchers have now learned that the risk of infection by touching contaminated surfaces is also low: a 1 in 10,000 chance.

Nevertheless, people are still madly sanitizing everything, which is probably not a good thing. Some health experts fear that many of the sanitizing efforts may pose a threat to a threat to human health if they continue. The problem is that excessive hygiene practices—including social distancing and inappropriate antibiotic use—will affect our microbiome, the trillions of bacteria that live on and inside our bodies. Such effects include promoting sickness and imperiling our immune systems. As one scientist remarked, “We’re starting to realize that there’s collateral damage when we get rid of good microbes, and that has major consequences for our health.” 

Another scientist likens our immune systems to a computer: the microbes around us are the data that our immune system relies on to program and regulate its operations. In fact, in addition to training our immune systems, our bacteria produce molecules that affect the workings of every cell and organ, including our brains, spinal cords, and joints. To counteract this threat to our immune systems and nourish our microbial communities, we’ll need to go back to our old ways, learning to live with germs again.

 

Incidentally, my casual attitude toward hygiene doesn’t mean I’m an antivaxxer. I’m vaccinated and believe others should be also.

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Hormone replacement therapy for menopause

 I must admit that I’m not much interested in menopause these days. Been there; done that. But menopause was tough for me: mostly the hot flashes, awful night sweats, and weight gain (ten pounds, seemingly overnight). I sought medical help.

There are those who object to “medicalizing” menopause—turning previously nonmedical problems into medical ones. While I generally lean toward this attitude, where menopause is concerned medicine can help. Besides, it wasn’t until 1908 that a woman’s life expectancy topped 51, which is the average age of menopause onset. In other words, it didn’t used to be an issue. Today, American women can spend a third or more of their lives in this state. In an AARP survey, 84 percent of women say their symptoms interfere with their lives.

What to do? Hormone (estrogen) replacement therapy seemed to be the solution until 2002 when researchers discovered that under this standard of care, which was combination of estrogen and progestin, significantly more women were dying of heart attack, stroke, blood clots, and breast and ovarian cancer. Later, it turned out that the early interpretations of this data had been partially wrong—mostly because those women over 60 who had started hormones more than a decade into their menopause were already suffering from such diseases. In fact, in an 18-year follow-up study, researchers found that women ages 50 to 59 who took hormone replacement therapy had a lower mortality rate than those who were not taking hormones. (Incidentally, there are estrogen receptors on every organ in the body.)

Now it appears that hormone replacement therapy, when properly applied for an appropriate period of time, can have wide-ranging benefits. One study, in London, indicated that postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy for an average of eight years had better cardiac health than those not receiving the therapy. The current thinking is that hormone replacement therapy should be used primarily as a short-term solution for symptoms of menopause. That’s what I did and I’m OK.

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A crisis in nursing

 The crisis is about burnout, shortages, disrespect, and lack of support. Obviously, the pandemic is responsible for much of the burnout. Unsafe levels of staffing, a continuing lack of personal protective equipment, and an overwhelming number of patient deaths are the reasons some nurses are quitting their jobs. Many felt that hospital administrators didn’t care whether they lived or died.

A recent survey revealed that nearly 80 percent of nurses said their "key challenge" in providing quality care was a shortage of nurses. Covid I.C.U.s have reported nurse-to-patient ratios as high as one to four, rather than the recommended one to one or two. As one I.C.U nurse reported, “people are not getting the best care because we’re overloaded.” The severe shortage of nurses is occurring just as the need for nurses is growing significantly. To ameliorate the shortage, an average of nearly 176,000 registered nurse positions will need to be filled every year through 2029.  Nursing schools don’t have enough faculty members to expand the nursing work force.

As to hospital management, the bulk of the failure to support nurses in the US comes down to money. Even though nurses are the largest labor group in hospitals, they don’t bring in revenue the way physicians do. For this reason, hospitals wanting to cut costs fire them. Thirty-six of America’s 60 largest hospital chains have either laid off, furloughed, or cut the pay of nursing staff during the pandemic, despite having received government bailout funds. Tenet Healthcare, a hospital chain, furloughed about 11,000 workers during the pandemic, but made nearly $399 million in profit.

For good reason, nurses feel disrespected and unsupported. One doctor reported that he had no idea what nurses do all day. A nurse reports, “Nobody ever says to the staff, ‘How are you doing? Nobody cares. The illusion that the institutions that employ us ever cared about us is shattered.” Another nurse adds, “Knowing that the system cared more about money than patients ruined nursing for me.”

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.