We told you about Wolfram|Alpha in the past. Now it seems that the answer engine (as opposed to search engine) can help you if you were diagnosed with a disease or are on a drug treatment.

The new features allow you to compare your situation to others with your condition. You can enter the name of your disease and see, for example. how many others have been diagnosed with it, what were their symptoms, what other diseases they commonly have, and relevant blood tests.

For example, entering diabetes into the engine shows this data (among other things):

You can see info about other patients, their symptoms, and the drugs that were prescribed for them. You can also learn about those drugs by clicking “show drugs”, which will give you the names of the drugs as you see on the bottle, including other data.

If you or someone you know have been diagnosed with a new condition, or even if you suffer from a condition and want to know more about it or about the treatment you’re taking, Wolfram|Alpha can be a fascinating place to start your discovery.

Wolfram|Alpha

Related posts:

1. 5 Searches in Wolfram Alpha to Make You Healthier
2. Wolfram|Alfa and Health – Improved
3. 5 Genetic Diseases You Might Have And Not Know About, and What You Can Do About Them

Last December Brittany Murphy was found dead at her home. Many rumors were raised regarding the cause of her death – from drug overdose, to a cardiac arrest, and also possible murder by her husband Simon Monjack. An autopsy found that she had died of complications of pneumonia.

According to TMZ, another cause was suggested early during the investigation – mold that was found at the couple’s home. It was deemed “not to be a contributing factor”. A few months have passed, and Monjack also died mysteriously inside that same house, also of pneumonia, leading authorities to investigate into the mold issue.

Photo by Rob & Jules

The connection between mold and respiratory health

According to an article published by the American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology in 2005, even though mold is present normally in all homes, it’s usually harmful only in large concentrations to allergic or sensitive individuals.

There are tests you can take to see if you’re allergic to fungi (a mold is a type of fungus). In people who are allergic to fungi, a wide range of allergic illnesses can occur, from asthma to rhinitis (an inflammation of the nose causing a runny nose). The article also mentions other illnesses that can happen after exposure to mold:

• Respiratory infections – By a fungus called aspergillus.
• Irritant reactions – These include sneezing, coughing, etc.
• Toxic reactions – That usually happens after you eat food contaminated with mold.

Should you check your house for mold?

As you can read above, most of the problems caused by mold are related to allergic reactions, such as sneezing, coughing, shortness of breath, etc.

The article mentioned that respiratory infections can be caused by the fungus aspergillus. Aspergillus usually doesn’t cause infections in healthy people, and usually only attacks people whose immune system is weak (such as those taking steroids for a long time, treated with chemotherapy, or people that have AIDS). In healthy people an inflammation of the lung may occur, but it usually recovers by itself.

It may be that other factors played a part in Brittany Murphy’s case, apart from the mold itself.

Photo by inspire*dream*create*

What can you do if you’re still afraid?

According to the article, "The best known management of indoor fungal contamination is prevention". "Regular inspection for sources of moisture and their elimination is the most important strategy to control indoor fungal growth. Since fungal growth depends on moisture and a carbon source, the most important strategy for reducing or eliminating its growth is controlling the amount of moisture present."

They recommend the following steps to prevent mold growth:

1. Maintain indoor relative humidity at no greater than 50 percent.
2. Seal all leaks to prevent water accumulation and use a sump pump in basements prone to flooding.
3. Increase the use of bathroom and kitchen ventilation by using exhaust fans.

If you do discover areas of mold growing in your home, you should clean it with a dilute bleach/detergent solution. There are commercial products available for this purpose.

Related posts:

1. Brittany Murphy Dead at 32 from Cardiac Arrest
2. Allergies: All You Wanted to Know (As Seen on House MD)
3. From The Forums – Diabetic Foot and Allergy Medications

A pandemic, according to Google Dictionary, is “an occurrence of a disease that affects many people over a very wide area”. Examples of pandemics include the cholera, smallpox, and malaria pandemics, as well as a pandemic that happened not so long ago – swine flu.

Now what if such a pandemic would hit your neck of the woods and affect your close ones? Discovery and Facebook decided to give you a rather creepy taste of how it would feel. Visiting this page will take you to their project, in which you are taken to a fictional Facebook page, in which you and your Facebook friends are involved in an imaginary crisis, including status updates, pictures, and comments about the disease.

The whole experience is meant to promote Discovery’s new show, The Colony, debuting July 27 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, in which 7 volunteers are dropped into a town and told that there’s a biological disaster in the area.

What do you think? Are you going to watch it after experimenting with their Facebook app, or are you too freaked out?

Related posts:

1. The New HIV Discovery – What Does It Mean?
2. Updates – Now Also on Facebook!
3. Congenital Insensitivity To Pain – From the Comments

The following guest post was contributed by Wendy Graham who writes for CRNA Schools

A study conducted at the University of Minnesota, roughly 20 years ago, disclosed that there might be early signs in our writing that indicate a connection to Alzheimer’s disease. The “nun study” was conducted to examine aging women over time, and the focus of the study was at first on four women, not actual nuns, but sisters with similar history and background.

Photo by churl

David Snowden, the conductor of the study, signed on eventually close to seven hundred sisters, age 75 and older, and all of them agreed to donate small portions of their brains to the experimental study after they died. Each year, a researcher would visit in order to set-up memory tests for the elderly women, and upon one of these visits, Snowden made an unlikely discovery. A collection of biographies that many of the women had to write upon entering the school fifty years ago displayed some very pertinent information. Snowden and his research team looked at the following two criteria: grammatical complexity and the amount of distinct ideas within every ten words. An idea-laden sentence appears as follows:

“It was about a half hour before midnight between February 28 and 29 of the leap year 1912 when I began to live, and to die, as the third child of my mother, whose maiden name is Hilda Hoffman, and my father, Otto Schmidt…”

And here’s an example of a sentence with less ideas in it: “I was born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin on May 24, 1913, and was baptized in St. James Church…”

The discovery for Snowden and his research team was that the sisters who did poorly regarding these two measures were much more likely to develop dementia. And those sisters at the bottom third of the sample were close to sixty times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease than those at the top third of the study. According to this test, ninety-two percent of the time, researchers were able to predict that the brain in question had some of the lesions and plaque associated with the disease. Opposing beliefs claim that the study is merely an association, which does not mean simple writing points to Alzheimer’s disease and dementia later on in life. Further analysis concludes that Alzheimer’s can be detected early, following a number of methods, but it is uncertain whether writing can be justified as a discernable method for doing so.

Related posts:

1. Tragedy of Rebecca Doig – A 31 Years Old New Mother with Alzheimer Disease
2. Alzheimer Disease – Are You at Risk?
3. Women Have Inbuilt Fear of Getting Fat

Ask every pediatrician and they will tell you that vaccines do no harm. At least nothing but side effects, like every drug can. Ask Dr. Andrew Wakefield, and he will tell you otherwise. In 1998 Dr. Wakefield published a study which linked the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella to autism. That study influenced millions of parents to refuse the shot for their children, in spite of doctors’ recommendations.

Now, according to MSNBC, Dr. Wakefield was banned from practicing medicine in his own country, Britain.

Abandonment of the vaccine has led, according to the article, to a resurgence of the disease in Western countries where it had been mostly stamped out. Even US celebrities such as Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy have endorsed Dr. Wakefield’s approach.

Photo by alvi2047

We have already covered a possible consequence of measles here on A Disease A Day (called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis).

Now, as mentioned above, the UK have decided to deal with the problem, starting with Wakefield himself, as “Britain’s General Medical Council, which licenses and oversees doctors, found Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct and stripped him of the right to practice medicine in the U.K.”.

On our end, all we can do is try and convince you, if you’re a parent, to give the vaccine to your child. We hope that the following links will help:

• MSNBC’s article – “Britain bans doctor who linked autism to vaccine”
• Study dispels link between autism and measles vaccine – The Washington Post
• Anti-measles campaign saves seven million lives – The Independent

Having read that – are you convinced of the benefit of the vaccine? Or have you never had any doubt? Let us know in the comments below.

Related posts:

1. China to Provide First Swine Flu Vaccines
2. Soda Fountain Machines Contain Fecal Bacteria
3. Subacute Sclerosing Panencephalitis (As Seen on House MD)

In case you’re not European or simply avoid the news, a volcano by the name of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland erupted on the 21st of March, for the first time since 1821, and again erupted on April 14th. The resultant cloud of volcanic ash brought major disruption to air travel across Europe.

As the saying goes: What goes up must come down. Now first evidence of the ash falling down to street level is starting to accumulate, starting from the UK, and also in Iceland and Norway.

Turns out all that ash isn’t very healthy for you. For example, after some of it fell across the Shetland Islands, people reported soar throats after venturing outside.

The ash cloud migrating from the Volcano into Northern Europe. Photo by NASA.

Spokesman for the WHO (World Health Organization), Daniel Epstein, said the microscopic ash is “potentially dangerous for people when it starts to reach the Earth because inhaled particles can enter the lungs and cause respiratory problems”. The WHO’s official recommendation is “to listen to local public health officials for the best guidance for individual situations”… "If people are outside and notice irritation in their throat and lungs, a runny nose or itchy eyes, they should return indoors and limit their outdoor activities." They also advice to take normal precautions, i.e. avoidance of strenuous exercise by people with asthma and respiratory symptoms in days with high air pollution.

Other experts don’t share the concern and say the WHO’s warnings were “hysterical”, claiming the volcanic ash is much less dangerous than cigarette smoking or pollution. In a Yahoo! News article, Ken Donaldson, a professor of respiratory toxicology at the University of Edinburgh says that most Europeans’ exposure to volcanic ash would be negligible and that only those in the near vicinity of the Icelanding volcano would likely be at risk. He said after previous volcanic eruptions, little impact has been seen in people’s health, except for those with lung problems who were close to the volcano.

Other experts say the irritants in volcanic ash are likely to be very diluted by the winds by the time they hit continental Europe, and that any rainfall would also lessen their effects.

In short, unless you have a lung problem, you shouldn’t be concerned or stay inside, at least according to most experts.

What’s your take? Has the ash fallen in your area? Did you feel anything? Let us know in the comments.

Related posts:

1. Top 100 Health Experts on Twitter
2. The New A Disease A Day Health Forums
3. 10 Harmful Health Myths

According to a new study, it turns out that not only women with anorexia nervosa feel very strongly about gaining fat. The study found that when healthy women see an overweight woman, their brains react negatively, “increasing feelings of unhappiness and even selfloathing”.

Men in the study showed no such response. The study shows that under society’s pressure of conforming to a lean body type, even happy and healthy women have a subconscious fear of getting fat.

An obese woman. What crosses your brain at the moment? Photo by Tobyotter

Let’s conduct a small unofficial research of our own here. When you’re done, you can read the full article over at the Daily Mail.

Women have inbuilt fear of getting fat that does not exist in men [Daily Mail]

Related posts:

1. 7 Foods to Build Muscle, Lose Fat, and Improve Health
2. Heart Attacks and Women
3. 100 Best Twitter Feeds For Women’s Health

Yesterday we covered Alzheimer disease, a disease which usually occurs after the age of 65. Rebecca Doig’s case, however, is different.

What should have been the happiest moment of Rebecca’s life – the birth of her first baby girl, has become a moment of indifference for her. 31 years old Rebecca has a rare form of Alzheimer disease. Her symptoms started about two years ago, but deteriorated rapidly.

This case is thought to be the first case of an Alzheimer patient giving birth.

This video is from a TV show that aired a month before the birth:

The couple’s healthy daughter Emily was delivered by caesarean section last week. Rebecca hasn’t been able to hold her yet and she can’t recognize her own baby.

Related posts:

1. Alzheimer Disease – Are You at Risk?
2. Predicting Alzheimer’s Through One’s Writing
3. As Seen On 24 – Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease – A Disease Caused by Prions

We’re happy to announce that you can now follow us on Google Buzz to get site updates delivered right into your Gmail account.

All you have to do is visit our Google Profile page and click on the “Follow diseaseaday” button to the right.

Starting today, you can also share stories from the site to your Google Buzz account (you’ll see a button at the top of each article).

Hope you enjoy the new addition. If you have any requests for other features, let us know at comments@diseaseaday.com

Related posts:

1. Updates – Now Also on Facebook!
2. New on A Disease A Day – The Meebo Bar
3. Tweetboard – Twitter Inside A Disease A Day

If you haven’t tried blueberry juice before, now may be a good time to start. According to WebMD, a new study shows that drinking a daily dose of wild blueberry juice improved the memory of older adults with age-related memory problems.

Previous studies done on animals have already shown that materials found in blueberries, called anthocyanins, increase signaling in brain centers associated with memory and improve how the brain gets rid of glucose – both of which can help slow memory decline.

Blueberries. Good for your memory. Photo by Kyle McDonald

The study also says that the juice may help with depression and maybe even diabetes.

The question remains – If it helped older people, will it help you if you’re not kissing your 80s? Since brain cells start dying at age 20, the answer may be yes.

    Blueberry Juice May Boost Memory [WebMD]

Related posts:

1. Predicting Alzheimer’s Through One’s Writing
2. Use Wolfram|Alpha To Learn About Diseases and Drug Treatments
3. Alzheimer Disease – Are You at Risk?