Health Reads 30 Mar 2017

I find it much easier to browse lately than to get in touch with the poor battered Muse from yesteryear. Alas, she is requesting a DNR order and who can blame her in such times?

And so I have broad-brush Google News alerts for topics impossibly broad like HEALTH. Perusing keeps me off the streets and gives me the illusion I’m “doing something.” Just my previous ordinary writing is NOT doing something, the wife claims. So

It’s pretty interesting the variety of things that turn up in said search that I would not otherwise have run across. And from this morning’s ramble, a few of interest–at least to me. YMMV

PANDAS – Wikiwand   | No, not the cuddly black and white creatures. It is a rare disorder of children, onset following the common strep infection, that can result in OCD, tics, and other sudden-onset brain-disordered behaviors. Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections

What’s to blame for the surge in Lyme disease? | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  | Blame acorns and coyotes, this article says. Not so sure about the coyote part. (Rationale: They eat foxes and foxes eat white-footed mice. But so do coyotes present in greater numbers than the foxes they displace.)

Deadly bacterial disease spreading among dogs in Northern New Jersey | abc7ny.com   | Leptospirosis is the name, and it rang a bell because the vet says Gandy is due her vaccine for this pathogen I’d never heard of.

Didn’t we cure “Mad Cow Disease?!?” – The William & Mary Blogs   | This offers the alarming fact that 1 in 2000 Brits has evidence in their bodies of the prions that cause Mad Cow. Latent, sleeping, potential time bombs. Would you want to know such a thing, really?

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fred
fred

Fred First holds masters degrees in Vertebrate Zoology and physical therapy, and has been a biology teacher and physical therapist by profession. He moved to southwest Virginia in 1975 and to Floyd County in 1997. He maintains a daily photo-blog, broadcasts essays on the Roanoke NPR station, and contributes regular columns for the Floyd Press and Roanoke's Star Sentinel. His two non-fiction books, Slow Road Home and his recent What We Hold in Our Hands, celebrate the riches that we possess in our families and communities, our natural bounty, social capital and Appalachian cultures old and new. He has served on the Jacksonville Center Board of Directors and is newly active in the Sustain Floyd organization. He lives in northeastern Floyd County on the headwaters of the Roanoke River.

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  1. Oh, Fred. You are getting in so much trouble web-surfing. Please go cold turkey, and resuscitate your muse before you drive yourself nuts. It’s spring, too. Get outside with your camera. An old friend has spoken.