How Much Urine in Swimming Pools?

Image courtesy of Exsodus at  FreeDigitalPhotos.net In 2013, I wrote a blog article about how much fecal matter (i.e., poop) is typically found in swimming pools (up to 2.2 pounds in a typical pool if 100 different people enter the pool). We now have an estimate of how much urine (i.e., pee) is found in a typical pool. According to Canadian researchers , a 220,000 gallon pool, which is about one-third of an Olympic-sized pool, had 75 liters of urine while another smaller pool (110,000 ga…

3/02/2017 0

Continue Reading

Does Magnetic Stimulation Help Tinnitus? (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation)

Image from NeuroStar Given media exposure, there has been greater public interest in the use of powerful magnetic impulses applied to the head in order to treat tinnitus . It is hypothesized that this treatment called repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) works by temporarily disrupting abnormally hyper-excitable brain circuits within the auditory cortex and resetting it to a more "normal" baseline. At this time, rTMS is FDA approved to treat depression only, but an…

8/01/2015 0

Continue Reading

Weight Loss After Tonsillectomy in Adults

An adult undergoing tonsillectomy experiences some of the worst pain they could potentially encounter in their lifetime. Not only that, it may last up to 3 weeks. With such pain, it is not surprising that dehydration is one of the most common risks of this surgery. Along with such pain, weight loss is a not unexpected occurrence given oral intake substantially decreases for such a long time. Typically, I've told patients around a 10 pound weight loss is not unusual, but that's just…

4/10/2015 0

Continue Reading

How Much Bacteria Gets Transferred During Intimate Kissing?

Researchers in the Netherlands quantified how much bacteria gets transferred from one person to another during an intimate kiss (tongue on tongue action). What they found was that an average of 80 million bacteria gets transferred per 10 seconds of French kissing. How did they come up with this figure? Samples were obtained both before and after an intimate kiss of 10 seconds duration. One partner was  than asked to consume 50 ml of a probiotic yoghurt drink which contained organisms no…

11/17/2014 0

Continue Reading

Do Nosebleeds Cause Stool Blood Tests to Become Positive?

As a general rule, an ordinary nosebleed will not cause a screening stool blood test  (hemoccult or guaiac) to come back positive. However, if the nosebleed is bad enough to consider going to the emergency room... and you are swallowing a lot of it... only than will it be likely that such stool tests will come back positive for blood. To be precise, such stool tests turn positive only if there's at least 2+ teaspoons of blood leaking into the digestive system everyday (or swallowed…

5/31/2013 0

Continue Reading

How Much Caffeine is Present in Coffee? Decaff? Chocolate?

©  Radu Razvan Gheorghe  |  Dreamstime Stock Photos There are quite a few ENT problems that can potentially be due to caffeine intake. Even death has been attributed to high caffeine intake in young adults who drink a lot of energy drinks like Red Bull. In any case, caffeine can contribute to (some proven, some suspected, some debatable): •  Tinnitus • Meniere's Disease •  Migraine Headaches •  Headaches •  Dizziness •  Reflux •  Lump in Throat Sensation (Globus) •  Chron…

2/06/2013 0

Continue Reading