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20 doctors share their favorite 'health hack' from their specialty

Doctor Mike gathered colleagues to offer tips from 20 different areas of medicine in less than 12 minutes.

Photo credit: Canva

There are many fields of medicine doctors can specialize in.

The human body is complex, which is why there are dozens of medical specialities for different body parts and systems. Keep all of those parts and systems functioning optimally is what we call "health," but considering how many years of schooling doctors go through to learn about their chosen speciality, a lot of things about our bodies remain a mystery to most of us.

Wouldn't it be nice to ask a doctor in every specialty for their No. 1 "hack" for better health in their specific field? Wouldn't that be a super efficient way to boost our overall knowledge of our bodies and hopefully make life a little easier on ourselves?

 group of doctors, doctor specialties Two doctors is better than one. Photo credit: Canva

Thanks to "Doctor Mike," we've got it. Doctor Mike is a popular YouTube account run by Dr. Mikhail "Mike" Varshavski D.O., an actively practicing board certified family medicine doctor. In a video with over 5 million views, he asked 20 doctors from 20 different specialties to offer one health tip they often give their patients. The result is nearly 12 minutes of solid, expert advice.

For instance, Doctor Mike shares that he tells patients never to put anything smaller than their elbow into their ear canal. "Too many people are using tools like Q-tips to pull out earwax, when in reality they're only packing earwax deeper in and even damaging the skin, potentially leading to an infection."

 

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

 

Opthamologist Will Flanary (who goes by Dr. Glaucomflecken online) shares that if you lose a contact lens in your eye, don't worry about it migrating back to your brain. There's tissue that keeps that from happening, and your lens is most likely just stuck way up in your eyelid.

Emergency room physician Ed Hope shares that it's super helpful to bring to an ER visit a list of any diagnoses you have and medications you're taking, the dates of any operations or significant illnesses you've had, and a phone charger (since the wait is often longer than one would hope).

Period stains, ladies? OBGYN Danielle Jones says powdered meat tenderizer is the key to saving your underwear. Yes, really.

 health hacks, health advice, teeth brushing, dentist, dental hygiene How you hold your toothbrush makes a difference.Photo credit: Canva

Did you know you've likely been brushing your teeth wrong your whole life? Dentist and orthodontist Benjamin Winters says most people brush their teeth back and forth, with the toothbrush flat against their chompers, but the key is turning it at a 45-degree angle and going in circles.

Ever dealt with a toenail fungus? Podiatrist Dana Brems says Vicks VapoRub is one of the most effective ways to treat it. "It has eucalyptus and menthol, which are both antifungal," she says.

Not all medicine is about health, of course. Plastic surgery can be for purely cosmetic reasons, but according to plastic surgeon Anthony Youn, you don't have to go under the knife or even involve needles to plump up your lips. "Put a drop or two of food-grade peppermint oil into your lip gloss, and then mix it up, and then apply the gloss to your lips," he suggests. "It should create a very mild tingling sensation, and your lips will gently plump up a bit." If you don't feel the tingle, add a little more oil. If it burns instead of tingling, toss it and start over with less peppermint oil.

 nasal aspirator, nasal suction, snotty kids, cold and flu season Helping kids out with their snot might be gross, but it can make them feel better.Photo credit: Canva

Dr. Alok Patel, a pediatric hospitalist, suggests that parents help our their snotty babies and toddlers with a nasal aspirator or nasal-suctioning device. "It clears their nose, helps them sleep better, eat better, improves their mood, and potentially prevents a problem from getting worse," Patel says. "It's also kinda satisfying."

Gastroenterologist Austin Chiang explains that the best way to prevent colorectal cancer is by being screened with a colonoscopy. During a colonoscopy, doctors can find precancerous growths and remove them before they have a chance to become cancerous.

Speaking of bowel health, general surgeon Karan Rajan says the the most underrated life hack for optimized bowel health is eating plenty of fiber: "Just increasing your fiber intake by 10 grams of fiber per day reduces your colon cancer by 10%. It's not a bad exchange."

Ten other docs weighed in with their best advice, from a urologist telling people to drink when their thirsty (not necessarily 8 glasses a day) to a psychiatrist advocating for daily personal check-ins with our feelings. Watch the full video here:

  - YouTube  www.youtube.com  

 

You can follow Doctor Mike on YouTube.

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Health

Doctors share bizarre things about the human body that we still can't explain

No one knows why anesthesia actually works.

Photo credit: Canva

We know a lot, but we clearly don't know everything.

Ever watch a period piece movie or TV show where the well intentioned doctors used maggots in hopes of cleaning a wound? Or when lobotomies were the tried-and-true method of relieving mental disorders? We’ve come quite a long way in terms of medical progress since those days, but in other ways, we are just as much making our best guess about how the human body actually works as we were in the maggot days.

Even doctors can admit that many biological ins-and-outs remain a mystery, which can be frustrating as a patient when you’re told to take certain medications "because it helps” this or that ailment, without actually knowing why. But at the same time, you have to kind of marvel at how much there is yet to discover, even within us. It only further shows the need to continue investing in medical research, but that’s a different conversation.

Recently, several doctors online shared many things that we still don’t really know about the human body, and some of the answers were pretty surprising:

“I’m an anesthesiologist. We still don’t really know why inhaled volatile anesthetics like sevoflurane, the principal anesthetic agent used to maintain general anesthesia, work. We kind of have an idea of maybe how it happens, but really we don’t know. It’s commonly said in my field that whoever figures this out will win the next Nobel prize in medicine.”

doctor providing anesthesia to a patientWeird...but effective. Photo credit: Canva

That’s interesting. And now for something a tad grosser…

“We apparently don't know precisely how our bodies can distinguish gas from poop. We have some ideas, we know there are a ton of nerve endings in the area, but the precise mechanism of our bodies telling our brains ‘this is a fart, let loose’ isn't really understood. What blows my mind is, it's distinct enough that we even pass gas while asleep. That difference must be wired DEEP!”

a person holding their behind that's glowing red to signify gasWe don't know how our bodies know, but thank goodness they do. Photo credit: Canva

Quite a few answers pertained to some topics we might never actually solve. 

“The Role of Our DNA: We’ve sequenced the human genome, but a large part of it remains unexplained.”

a hand holding a strand of DNASeems pretty important. Photo credit: Canva

“I’m a derm. We don’t know what exactly causes itching, like the molecular pathways for it. That’s why it can be so hard to find a good treatment when a patient comes in for itchy skin.”

a woman scratching her armTrial and error.Photo credit: Canva

“I'm a sleep specialist. While we do have some good theories about some of the functions of REM as far as how it affects the brain and health, we still don't fully understand the purpose of dreaming. Like, why do we dream at all and why do dreams have a narrative instead of random incomprehensible imagery? Unfortunately this is unlikely to even be solved..”

a woman sleepingMaybe our brains get bored while we're out and want to watch a self-made movie? Photo credit: Canva

There were a few mysteries that pertain specifically to women’s health. Historically, women's health research has been significantly underfunded and understudied, so this is fairly unsurprising. 

“OBGYN here: we still don’t know exactly what makes labor start. We know all about the mechanics and physiology, but we don’t know what makes the average uterus say it’s ‘go time.’”

pregnant woman holding her stomach in pain When the body knows, it knows. Photo credit: Canva

“Apparently we know next to nothing about fibroids, which like 75% of women have at some point in their lives. That's great, considering that the largest one removed was 100 lbs- so not exactly a minor issue. There are theories about different hormones and what things put you at higher risk, but aside from having surgery to have your existing ones removed, there is basically no information on what you can to do prevent them from coming back.”

doctor presenting a model of a uterus while a woman sits on a medical chair in the backgroundIt's a big deal and we need to understand it. Photo credit: Canva

There was also talk of how our gut—how we process nutrition, and how that affects our mental health—is somewhat of a final frontier in medicine. 

“We don't know the precise mechanism by which B12 deficiency causes nerve damage. We know that it happens, but not why.”

collection of foods around a sign that says, "Vitamin B12"B12, the final frontier.Photo credit: Canva

“Not MD but PhD, right now we are working on the connection between our intestinal microbiome and neuropsychiatric disease and brain aging. For instance, people with inflammatory bowel disease are more likely to develop dementia and experience co-morbid anxiety and depression, but we don't know why.”

“The Gut Microbiome: While it's well-known that the gut plays a huge role in digestion, researchers are discovering just how much our gut bacteria affect other parts of our health, like mood, immunity, and even brain function.”

diagram of the digestive system with a close up of gut bacteriaSome say we have two brains: in the head and in the gut.Photo credit: Canva

For those who have ever taken anti-anxiety medication…

“Benzodiazepines, BZD, are medications like Xanax and Valium. They produce anti-anxiety effects. And they have a very distinct chemical shape to fit into the BZD site in a group of five proteins. But we don’t know what is supposed to go there. Many medications are analogs of naturally binding molecules that we copy and then use to create an effect. The BZD site is for something, we just don’t know what.”

close up of a bunch of pillsPhoto credit: Canva

By and large, mental health is still the Wild Wild West for medical professionals, it seems.

“Doctor here. Off the top of my head, here's a few deceptively big ones:

  1. Psychiatry is still shockingly infantile in our understanding of human disorders. It's constantly in a state of flux, we don't understand a lot about the meds we currently use, and the diagnostic criteria for disorders still changes as we realize "hey maybe all these behaviors aren't the same source disorder". It's incredibly hard to diagnose when the criteria is largely based on self report and subjective observations.
  2. To a lesser degree than #1, neurology is still learning a lot. It's further because you can observe more objective findings in neuro than psych, but we still struggle a lot with how brains function."

a red cut out of a head with a tangle of string where the brain would be; a blue cut out of a head with a spiral of string where the brain should beAren't we all just brains trying to understand ourselves? Photo credit: Canva

And yet, another doctor writes:

“One of the few ABSOLUTES in medical science is that nobody born blind has ever developed schizophrenia.”

Goes to show, we might be in the age of information, but there is still so much of the unknown to marvel at. Hopefully it keeps us humble and curious.

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Health

Impossible-sounding surgery cures blindness by implanting a patient's own tooth in their eye

"Tooth-in-eye" surgery sounds like something out of science fiction, but it permanently restores vision in 94% of patients.

Canva Photos

You have to see it to believe it.

About 12 million people in the United States live with significant visual impairment. About a million of those people live with blindness. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for blindness. Therapies exist to slow vision loss, and some vision loss can be improved with treatment, but complete vision loss has proved to be a very tough nut for scientists to crack, in part because there are so many different potential causes of blindness.

Medical researchers have and continue to look into lots of diverse options, including stem cell therapies, gene therapies, bionic eyes, and now...teeth. Yes, you read that right. Teeth.

A 33-year-old man recently became the first person in Canada to have their sight restored by a rare and outrageous-sounding procedure: Osteo-odonto-keratoprosthesis, or OOKP.

OOKP has been around since the 1960s and has been performed around the globe, but is still relatively rare overall. Invented by Professor Benedetto Strampelli, the procedure is better known by its easy-to-remember, and fairly gross, nickname: "Tooth-in-eye surgery." Why in God's name is it called that? Buckle up if you're squeamish. Here's how it works:

gif of man buckling seatbeltBuckle up; this is going to be wild. Giphy

First, a tooth is removed from the patient. A small rectangular section of the tooth is shaved off and a hole is drilled in the middle of it. Imagine cutting a small circle out of the middle of a sheet of paper.

Then, a small plastic lens is inserted into the hole, almost like a window covering or a makeshift camera lens. The section of tooth acts like a frame to hold the new lens.

OK, now for the really wild part: The rectangular shaving of tooth, complete with plastic lens, is then embedded into the patient's cheek in order to grow new tissue and blood vessels. It will stay there for around two months while the new tissue develops.

The tooth is then removed from the cheek and surgically embedded into the patient's eyeball, effectively replacing the damaged cornea. The new eye is pink and bloodshot in appearance, and a little bulbous, with only a small block hole as an iris. But, miraculously, it works!

The patient's own teeth are used to prevent the body rejecting foreign tissue or materials. Tooth-in-eye surgery only works for vision loss caused by corneal damage, or damage to the surface of the eyes. It won't heal or replace the optic nerve or retina, so it's not a miracle cure for all forms of blindness. It also comes with some risks, but when it works, it works. One study showed that 94% of successful cases still had good eyesight almost 30 years later, with some formerly blind patients seeing well enough to drive cars.

The Canadian man became blind at the age of 13 after a terrible autoimmune reaction to ibuprofen. After dozens of surgeries and therapies, OOKP was his last-ditch effort to permanently restore his sight. Other treatments had helped but his sight would fade away over time. For now, his story is a massive success that doctors are hoping will inspire others to give the controversial procedure a try.

The video below shows the procedure and its aftermath:


@garcidltth1

#popularscience #knowledge #fyp #tiktok

We have to keep funding bizarre, off-the-beaten-path scientific research.

This sounds like one of those wacky things you'd see in the news and say, "Why are we spending millions of dollars trying to see if we can grow new eyeballs from teeth?!" But without critical and creative research like this, we'd be no further in treating conditions like blindness. A version of OOKP was performed successfully in the United States at The University of Miami in 2009.

Amazing medical breakthroughs can come from the strangest places. Fascinating discoveries have been made by making people drink their own blood and monitoring the effects, studying the chemical makeup of goose poop, and looking for answers in tree bark, snake venom, and rat poison.

Cheers to Professor Benedetto Strampelli, and his weird but effective stroke of inspiration.

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Identity

A Black woman came out of surgery with more braids than before. Here's why that matters.

India Marshall's 'mystery braids' turned into a beautiful surprise.

India Marshall

A woman's story of how a surgeon handled her braids during a head surgery has gone viral, not just for the thoughtful actions of the doctor, but for what it shows about the importance of representation in medicine.

India Marshall posted her heartwarming story on Twitter:

"So y'all know how I said I woke up from surgery w/more braids in my head than I came in w/and I thought it was the black nurses? I found out today at my post op appt that the surgeon (he's black) did it," she wrote. "He said he has 3 little girls & they have wash day... I almost cried."

"While removing my staples he said, 'Your braids look better than mine, I hope I didn't do too bad,' and I was like excuse me??? YOU did my hair???..." she continued. "You could tell he was so proud to tell me too lol."

"He also said he used staples to close my incisions instead of stitches to avoid cutting my hair when removing stitches," she added.

Marshall explained that she'd had a rare condition of bone growths in her forehead region and the surgery to have them removed meant three incisions behind her hairline. "The surgeon parted and braided my hair to create clean incisions without shaving," she wrote.

On her way home from surgery.India Marshall

"Thinking about this black man braiding my hair to prepare to cut my head open is hilarious and endearing at the same time," she added. "Also the fact that he's that active in helping his wife with their girls, I love it. Moral of the story: find black doctors."

People loved the story—the consideration of the surgeon, the image of him doing his own daughters' hair, and the difference it makes to have a doctor who has personal experience with a patient's culture.

As one person pointed out, "THIS is among the millions upon millions of reasons why we need diversity in medicine. There is a level of care that only people who have walked in your shoes... even just a little bit... can provide."

"This is why the world needs more Black & Brown folks at every level," wrote another person. "Reminds me of Peruvian Indigenous women who showed scientists how they do a specific weave unique to them that taught the medical AI how to stitch skin so that the patient has a quicker recovery time." [The person clarified in a later tweet it was Bolivian, not Peruvian Indigenous women.]

"This experience was meaningful to me because this simple gesture showed I was being cared for by a surgeon that saw me," Marshall told Upworthy. "He saw me as a black woman that would appreciate extra precaution taken with her hair. Not only did he understand this as a black man, but he had the ability and took the time to braid my hair himself."

India Marshall

Marshall added that since she's the oldest of four girls herself, it was extra special to hear that he did the same for his own daughters.

This is why diversity in medicine, as well as other fields, matters. It isn't just about equal opportunity or making a nod to inclusive values. Representation can make a direct, marked difference in people's experiences, and the value of being seen and having a need understood—without having to explicitly explain it—is priceless.


This article originally appeared five years ago.

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