Dantavedantam in Telugu - దంతవేదాంతం

Dantavedantam in Telugu - 

దంతవేదాంతం

An article of mine about teeth!

Fun and Pun

What are Headaches?

తలనొప్పి అంటే ఏమిటి?

తలలో రకరకాల భాగాలున్నాయి. అయినా, నొప్పి ఏ భాగంలో కలుగుతున్నదో తెలుసుకోకుండా, ఠోకున, తలనొప్పి అనడం మనకు అలవాటయింది. ప్రశ్న అడిగేదాకా చాలా మందికి ఈ విషయమే తోచదు.


తలలో అన్నిటికన్నా ముఖ్యమయిన భాగం మెదడు. చిత్రమేమిటంటే మెదడుకు నొప్పి తెలియదు. పుల్ల పెట్టి కుచ్చినా, కత్తి పెట్టి కోసినా పట్టించుకోని భాగం ఏదయినా ఉంటే, శరీరంలో మెదడు ఒకటే. అంటే తలనొప్పి అంటే, మెదడు నొప్పి మాత్రం కాదన్నమాట. తలనొప్పి అంటే, ముఖం, మెడ, తలలోని ఇతర భాగాల నొప్పి, అని చెప్పుకోవాలి. మిగతా భాగాలంటే, పుర్రె, ఎముకలు, చర్మం, కండ్లు, ముక్కు, చెవులు, నోరు. వీటన్నింటికి రక్తాన్ని అందించే రక్తనాళాలు ఉన్నాయి. వాటికి నొప్పి బాగా తెలుసు. మైగ్రేన్ లేదా పార్శ్వపు నొప్పి అనేరకం తలనొప్పికి ఎక్కువగా ఈ రక్తనాళాలే కారణం.


అన్నింటికన్నా ఎక్కువగా, తలనొప్పి, టెన్షన్ వల్ల వస్తుంది. అంటే తలలో కండరాలు బిగువయి, అసౌకర్యంగా ఉంటుంది. ఆ నొప్పి తెలుస్తుంది. మెడలో కండరాలుగానీ, నమలడానికి పనికివచ్చే దవడ ఎముకలమీది కండరాలుగానీ బిగుతు కావడంతో, ఈరకం తలనొప్పి పుడుతుంది. ఈ నొప్పికి బజార్లో దొరికే బామ్సు, మాత్రలు, ఏవయినా పనిచేస్తాయి. అంతకంటే ఎక్కువగా తలనొప్పి వచ్చిందంటే, చాలా సందర్భాలలో కారణం తెలియదు. కనుక ఏ కంపెనీ వారి ‘బాం’ పూసుకున్నా లాభం ఉండదు. ‘అనాల్జెసిక్స్’ అని, నొప్పి తెలియకుండా చేసే మాత్రలు ఉంటాయి. ఇవి నొప్పిని మెదడుకు తెలియకుండా చేస్తాయి కానీ, తగ్గించలేవు. వాటిని వాడినందుకు ఉపశమనం కలిగితే మంచిదే.


ఇక నాడులు, రక్తనాళాలు చాలా సున్నితమయిన భాగాలు. వీటి కారణంగా వచ్చే తలనొప్పి ఇంకొక రకం. వీటికి అసలు కారణం తెలుసుకుని దాన్ని తొలగించాలి తప్ప మామూలు మందులతో పని జరగదు.

తలలో ఒక వేపును మాత్రమే వేధించే పార్ళ్వపు నొప్పికి, ఆహారం, పని ఒత్తిడి, ఎక్కువ వెలుగు, పడని వాసనలు, ఇతర వాతావరణ అంశాలు కారణాలు. నాడులు పాడయినందుకు, మరి కొన్ని కారణాలవల్ల వచ్చే తలనొప్పులకు కూడా సరయిన వైద్యం జరగవలసిందే తప్ప మామూలు ‘టాబ్లెట్ వైద్యం’ పనికిరాదు.


సైనసులు నిండిపోయి, తల భారంగా ఉండడం కూడా తలనొప్పిగానే లెక్క! అన్ని రకాల తలనొప్పులకూ మందులున్నాయి. అన్ని తలనొప్పులకూ ఒకటే మందు అంటే మాత్రం తప్పు!




What are headaches?

There are many parts in the head. Without identifying the part in which pain is there, we tend to say, on the whole, there is headache! Many will not even realise this even when told!

The main part in the head is the brain. Wonder of wonders is that the brain can never sense pain. If there is a part in the human body which would not react when poked or even sliced with a knife, it is the brain. So, headache, after all, is not a pain in the brain. Then headache per se is pain in the other parts like, the face, neck, and the other areas. These other areas are again, skull, bones, skin, eyes, nose, ears, and the mouth. Then there are the vessels that supply blood to all these parts. They are very sensitive to pain and they are the victims for what is usually called the migraine.

The most usual kind of headache is due to tension. It means that the muscles in the head become tense and cause discomfort. We perceive this pain. Muscles in the neck, and those involved in macerating, like in the jaw, would become tense and cause headache. Any of the balms and tablets sold across the counter would do well for these pains. But, if the pain is severe, many a time, we wouldn’t know the cause. Then no balm would help! There are medications under the name of analgesics. They would only block the sensation of pain from reaching brain; they would never reduce the pain. If they give relief, there is no harm with them. Then theer are the ever sensitive nerves and the blood vessels. They cause another kind of headaches. The cure then should be for the root cause and not temporary like balms and tablets.

The pain that comes up in only one side in the head, namely migraine, is a result of food allergies, stress, bright light, certain smells, and other environmental reasons. Medication for the headache due to nerves also calls for expert advice.

Sinuses being clogged and the resultant discomfort also is a headache for us. There is cure available for all kinds of headaches. But, we are wrong, if we think that one medicine would cure all of them!

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You are not what you think you are!

When you look at yourself in the mirror, it would be perfectly reasonable for you to assume that what you are looking at is mostly you.

Sure, there might be some bacteria living on your skin, maybe a flea that might have jumped off a passing dog, perhaps even some lice from a friendly neighbourhood preschool lice plague, but by and large, you should be mostly you.

But it turns out that hardly any of you is actually you.

Surprisingly, a lot of the science in this story comes from nursery rhymes.

You probably remember the one in which little girls are described as being made of "sugar and spice and all things nice". This is totally correct, because they are indeed made of sugars, fats and proteins.

But, would you believe it, another line from the same rhyme is also kind of correct when it says that little boys are made of "slugs and snails and puppy dogs' tails".

Yep, it's true. We humans are mostly made from other life forms.

So here's the really weird part.

Only about 10 per cent of the cells in your body actually belong to you. These add up to about 1–10 trillion cells.

The other 90 per cent of the cells in your body belong to other living creatures. The vast majority of these other living creatures are the 10–100 trillion single-celled beasties (such as bacteria) living in your gut.

In total, these bacteria and their little friends weigh about 1.5kg. The reason that they weigh so little, even though there are so many of them, is that these cells are much smaller than human cells.

The result is that each of us is a strange bacterial-human hybrid. On a cellular level, we are more microbe than man.

The bacteria started colonising your gut as you came down the birth canal, and were pretty well established by the time you were two years old.

Your gut is surprisingly large. If you rolled it out it would be as long as a bus, and if you flattened it out, it has the surface area of a football field.

There are at least 1000 different species of these single-celled critters colonising your gut.

It's quite a fair and reasonable relationship that we have with them.

On one hand, they do their own thing, in the comfort and safety of the human gut. They make little baby copies of themselves, and they communicate with each other.

And when we eat, they eat. They store and redistribute energy, and they maintain and repair themselves.

But in return, they do stuff for us. They make vitamins for us. They also break down carbohydrates that we cannot digest, and extract energy from them.

We humans have about 98 enzymes that can break down carbohydrates. The bacteria in our gut have over 240 enzymes to turn carbohydrates into energy.

In fact, if it wasn't for the single-celled creatures in our gut, we'd all be a lot thinner.

In one study, mice were delivered by Caesarean section in sterile conditions, so they had no bacteria (or their little friends) living in their gut. The mice were then raised in sterile environments, and fed only sterile food.

Compared to their 'regular' germ-laden siblings (who were fed the same food), they ate 29 per cent more and yet, were very skinny, carrying 42 per cent less fat.

And then, when their mice guts were colonised with the single-celled creatures of their 'regular' siblings, they simultaneously ate less and got fatter.

Back in the old days, when food was hard to come by, having bacteria in your gut was an advantage. They would help you extract extra calories from the food. And both you and the bacteria would benefit.

But these days, food is easy to come by. Even so, there are some people who swear blind that they eat hardly anything, and yet put on weight.

If that's true, maybe they just have super-efficient bacteria, wringing those extra calories out of their diet.

Flu or Flew?

Everyone you talk to, complain about someone who fell a victim of Dengue fever.
My wife suffered from it last year.
Mosquitoes are there nad Malaria is there.
I heard of this new fever when in Delhi.
The scourge has spread all over India.
In this context I bring to you an article I read on the diseases.

We humans might think we're pretty clever because we invented digital watches, colour TV, poetry, and income tax. But as far as viruses and bacteria are concerned, we're just meat.


Over the last 20 years we've seen a few diseases, such as AIDS, pop up from virtually nowhere. And now we're finding more and more diseases that jump from one species to another.

Sometimes, these diseases spill over from domestic animals to wildlife populations. In Australia, a disease called Sarcoptic mange 2 has jumped from dogs to wombats.

Sometimes the disease can jump from one animal to another, and even make it extinct. This happened with the wild dogs in the Serengeti in 1991. Domestic dogs in the area had a canine distemper, which hopped across to the wild dogs, and wiped them out completely.

Sometimes, the disease can spread to many different species. In August 1999, a range of creatures in New York and nearby Long Island were struck with a very strange and unusual viral encephalitis (an inflammation of the brain).

By the time it was all over, the encephalitis had killed several thousand wild crows, nine of the 23 horses that had been infected, and seven of the 60 people who had caught the disease.

After a lot of hard scientific work, the villain was found to be the West Nile Virus. It's carried by mosquitoes. It's well known to cause encephalitis in humans and horses in the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Europe, but this was its first entry into America.

Sometimes, the disease is just a new version of an old disease. In early 1998, there was a very unusual outbreak of influenza A (H5N1) in Hong Kong. H5N1 was known, but had previously infected only birds such as poultry. This was the first time that it had attacked people.

Very quickly, six of the 18 people who were infected died.

The government officials acted with brutal efficiency, and slaughtered all of the millions of poultry birds in Hong Kong.

We'll never know for sure, but many infectious disease scientists say that this quick action stopped the spread of what could have been another killer influenza epidemic.

The last big influenza epidemic — called the Spanish Flu — occurred just after World War I, and killed over 20 million people worldwide. So H5N1 might have been a repeat offender.

But sometimes the disease comes from domesticated animals, and is previously unknown. This happened in late 1994, in the town of Hendra, in southeast Queensland.

Some horses in a stable run by a Mr Vic Rail became very ill. Fourteen of these horses had very high fevers of 41°C. They soon died of lung disease, with frothy blood coming out of their noses.

Both Vic Rail and his stablehand got this disease. The stablehand recovered, but Vic Rail died. The virus turned out to be a paramyxovirus, which had successfully jumped from horses to humans.

The area was quickly quarantined, causing severe disruption to the Queensland horse industry. But thanks to the quarantine, there was very little impact interstate, and the Melbourne Cup was able to go ahead, and stop the nation.

But there could have been a bigger cost. The very first case of this disease was in a mare that had come from Cannon Hill. There's an export meat works in the Cannon Hill area.

Luckily, the paramyxovirus, now called the Hendra virus, did not cause damage to Australia's export meat markets.

But diseases do cost money.

In New Hampshire in 1994, 665 people had to be treated because of a single kitten with rabies in a pet store. That cost $1.1 million.

In Australia, there was a recent infection of pilchards, which left us with dead fish scattered across our southern coasts. That cost the Australian fishing industry $12 million over three years.

Back in the USA, the cost of introduced diseases to the health of crops and livestock, and to humans, is about $41 billion every year.

Sometimes the cost of these viruses or bacteria moving into previously unexposed populations is not measured in dollars, but in human grief.

In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Spanish Conquistadors bought smallpox, typhus and measles into South America, and 50 million native South Americans died.

Diseases have been with us for millions of years, and there is no easy solution.

There are a few things we can do about it. Domesticated dogs that live near the Serengeti National Park are now vaccinated against rabies. This seems to be stopping rabies in wild dogs.

In a similar way, mountain gorillas in Africa are being vaccinated against measles, while chimpanzees are being vaccinated against polio virus.

But we'll need to look harder at known viruses and bacteria, and look even harder for unknown ones in the environment.

We need to involve many different types of scientists and medical specialists from different fields to work out what is making these diseases spread, so that we can stamp them out.

Because if we don't, the Doomsday Bug might stamp on us.