Hydrochloric Acid In The Stomach Is Strong Enough To Melt Razor Blade - New Study

In the following article, Eric Troy writes on the recent report from medical research that the Hydrochloric acid found in the stomach is strong enough to melt a razor blade.
There is a report that your stomach acid is so strong that it can dissolve a razor blade. I'd hate to be the guy to test that assumption, but it is true that the hydrochloric acid in your stomach is some strong stuff. While your blood has a pH of around 7.4, your stomach acid has a pH of 1. That means it is a strong acid indeed. But surely, if your stomach acid could dissolve the metal of a razor blade, it would dissolve itself? Surely not! It turns out, according to at least one study, that stomach acid can do a pretty good number on a razor blade.
Of course, if there was a razor blade in your stomach, it would do a lot of damage. So, researchers did not have someone ingest a razor blade to test this. Instead they studied metal corrosion by stomach acid in vitro, meaning "outside the body in a simulated environment." According to the study by Paul K. Li, et al. corrosion of razor blades occurs fairly rapidly in the normal stomach. Now, I think that this is a stretch, because a stomach with a razor blade in it probably wouldn't be a normal stomach for long, and the  oesophagus wouldn't be very happy, either. Nevertheless, according to the research, double-edged blades become fragile and easily-breakable within 24 hours, having only 63% of their original mass. You should note, however, that the stomach acid had no effect on pennies within this time-frame, nor did it cause disc batteries to spring a leak within the same amount of time.
It would be a stretch to say that stomach acid would have a large effect on a big chunk of steal within 24 hours, and of course, things do not sit in your stomach for that long. Razor blades are already very thin and flexible pieces of metal, so to corrode them enough to be brittle is perhaps not as much a feat as it seems. We do not know how long it would take to completely dissolve one.
Regardless, stomach acid, it appears, can begin to dissolve a razor blade in a reasonable time period, perhaps underscoring just how awesome our digestive system is. But if the acid is so strong, how can your stomach hold it without the acid eating right through? If you eat a steak, it will be nothing more than a liquid slurry of mushy nastiness in no time. And your stomach is, essentially, meat, right? At least, it is made of proteins. Well, the truth is that your stomach acid would happily digest your stomach if given a chance. And, when things don't go right, we get things like ulcers, which are open sores or raw areas in the stomach. When this happens, it is because a large enough amount of acid has come into contact with the stomach wall on a regular enough basis.
Normally, however, the stomach has a protective lining. This lining consists of a layer of mucosal protein (just think mucus) that is covered with molecules of sugar, held together tightly through the magic of chemical bonds. The sugars are really good at resisting the acid. You have a bunch of specialized epithelial cells that produce this mucous stuff.
It's not perfect protection, and some stomach acid gets through now and again. Now, there is a lot of blood flow in the stomach wall, so that helps to neutralize and wash away some of the acid, but it still does damage and it destroys some of the cells of the stomach. In fact, a whole lot of your stomach cells get destroyed, all the time. Thankfully, they are such busy little buggers when it comes to reproducing themselves. They do NOT take days off, at least normally. When cells are damaged, newly generated cells move up to take their place. In fact, the entire stomach lining is replaced about every three days.
When things go wrong and the mucus lining is damaged, and more acid than normal gets through, damage can occur faster than cells can be renewed, and thus a sore, or even a hole, can form. This is called an ulcer. People used to think that ulcers were caused by a bad diet. Spicy foods or fatty foods were often blamed, as well as cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and just a predisposition for producing excess stomach acid. While there is not a lot of evidence that food habits or stress causes ulcers, some of these other factors may be at work. Mostly, though, these earlier beliefs about the causes of ulcers were a matter of correlation. It is true that the pain and discomfort of ulcers can get worse when we eat spicy foods, drink alcohol, or during periods of stress.
The theory now is that the most common cause of an ulcer is a bacterial infection. It usually happens when the stomach becomes infected with a bacteria called Heliobacter pylori (H. pylon). Most of us already have these bacteria in our digestive tract. These bugs can secrete an enzyme around them that protects them from the stomach acid, and then they can invade the mucosal layer, taking up residence there and weakening the stomach lining, allowing too much acid to leak through, resulting in an ulcer. That is why one of the standard treatments for ulcers, today, is an antibiotic.

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New Revolutionary Cancer Vaccine Ready For Try

The University of Helsinki, Finland, has developed a vaccine that can prevent and possibly cure cancer without any other form of treatment, including chemotherapy.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. “A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe, its toxins or one of its surface proteins.”
If all goes according to plan, the first human clinical trials for the vaccine will be run in South Africa, on Melanoma patients with triple negative breast cancer. Vaccine trial is considered very cheap in Africa and South Africa has remained a big industry for it.
Speaking more about the vaccine at the just-concluded Slush 2016, an annual global conference for start-ups and venture capitalists, the Director, Life Sciences, Helsinki Innovation Services, Dr. Milla Koistinaho, told The Media that the university required at least €6 million to commercialize the revolutionary drug.
She explained that about €3 million would probably come from Finnish government sources as a Research and Development (R & D) loan, while the remaining €3 million would come from equity funding.
Plans for the trial in Africa notwithstanding, there are concerns that the drug may only be affordable to the rich.
“Investors are really interested in funding the commercialisation of the vaccine. Basically, we just founded the company and now we are talking to investors globally,’’ Koistinaho said. “We have had good discussions with investors in Asia, United States, in Europe and Finland. We expect that the first seed round will happen definitely in less than two months.”
Global interest in commercialising the vaccine may not be unconnected with the fact that in 2015, there were an estimated 17.5 million cancer cases around the globe and 8.7 million deaths, according to a new report from the Global Burden of Disease Cancer Collaboration published online by the JAMA Oncology.
Furthermore, statistics from the National Cancer Institute indicate that “The number of new cancer cases will rise to 22 million within the next two decades.
“While more than 60 per cent of the world’s new cancer cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, 70 per cent of the world’s cancer deaths also occur in these regions.”
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. The cancer cells grow and divide to create more cells and will eventually form a tumour.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death worldwide and estimates of its burden around the globe are vital for cancer control planning. There are more than 100 types of cancers. The treatment may include chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery.
Elaborating on the technological and scientific breakthrough, Koistinaho said “the vaccine was invented by a professor at the Faculty of Pharmacy, the University of Helsinki. This project got its origin from an invention disclosure that the professor filed to the university two years ago.
“We first of all evaluated whether it was scientifically interesting and whether it was something that could be commercialized and the answer was yes. So we filed an application in 2014 and then attracted governmental commercialization funding for this project for two years. Now this concept has been tested in several animal models with cancer and it was discovered that the technology cured the mice of cancer, so this is really a revolutionary treatment.”
She disclosed that the vaccine has not yet been tested on human, adding that “the company has now been permitted to exploit the technology further and the intellectual property has been transferred from the university to the Spinout, and now the Spinout is fund raising to enable starting the clinical trials in humans.
“Most probably, the first indications where we will try this technology in humans will be melanoma, in triple negative breast cancer. The plan is that most probably the first clinical trials, especially in melanoma patients will be run in South Africa.”
With regard to the rate of cure, Koistinaho said: “Basically this only cured mice so far, but the rates are remarkable. Typically, we have run animal experiments where first, the mice were inoculated with melanoma (a type of malignant cancer that develops from the pigment-containing cells known as melanocytes) cells and they created melanoma tumors and then we treated them with this technology and the tumors disappeared completely.”

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Over 90 Percent Of Nigerian Female Prisoners Are Pregnant

An alarm has been raised over the poor health conditions of female inmates of Nigerian prisons.The National Council of Women’s Society (NCWS) has disclosed that 90 per cent of female prisoners in the country were either pregnant or nursing mothers.
The society’s president, Mrs. Gloria Shoda, made the disclosure a couple of days ago in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital at the inauguration of new executives.
She appealed to the Federal Government to formulate policies to protect female prisoners. She also urged the National Human Rights Commission to intervene to stop all forms of discrimination against female prisoners who are awaiting trial.
According to her, assisting women with the relevant skills could help in building a better society.She said: “It is only when women are considered as the center of development that the economy could be better developed.
“We urge government to integrate gender into its developmental agenda by including them in public policy and governance. Women and girls are facing so many unpleasant challenges in the country. Everyday, the newspapers report incidents of violence against them even in the internally displaced persons camps.”
She urged them to embrace the nationwide slogan of “change begins with me,” to support one another.
Investigations carried out by Nigeria Natural Health Online shows that these pregnant women do not have a standard prenatal attention that a normal pregnant woman should have. There are a range of adverse health effects associated with maternal under-nutrition. It can affect both the pregnant woman and developing baby in the short and long-term.
A woman’s nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant influences her health during pregnancy and the health of her baby. It is determined largely by her nutritional intake before pregnancy. If a woman is under-nourished prior to conception because she does not eat enough, she may be malnourished and underweight at the time she conceives. This will have an ongoing effect on her nutritional status throughout the pregnancy. Her nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant is also an important factor influencing the health of the foetus, as well as the long term health of the infant.
Women who are under-nourished (have a BMI of <18 .5kg="" m="" sup="">2

) at the time of conception are unlikely to improve their nutritional status during pregnancy, when their bodies have additional demands due to the growing baby. They may fail to gain sufficient weight during pregnancy and have a higher risk of maternal mortality (dying whilst pregnant) than normal weight women. Under-nourished women may also lack the nutritional stores required to support embryo growth. Embryo refers to a fertilised egg, before it begins to take on human characteristics (at which stage it is referred to as a foetus). In the first few days after conception the embryo exists in the woman’s womb but has not yet implanted into the lining of the womb where it will grow throughout the pregnancy. This is known as the pre-implantation period and is the period of pregnancy in which cells divide and replicate most rapidly. Maternal malnutrition can adversely affect the division and replication of cells in the embryo at this stage, impairing its development. Impaired embryo development in turn adversely effects the development of the foetus in the later stages of pregnancy.
A woman’s nutritional status at the time she becomes pregnant also influences the differentiation of cells in the embryo into foetal and placental cells. When the embryo implants into the wall of a woman’s uterus, it develops two types of cells, those that will become the foetus and those which will become the placenta (the structure which nourishes and supports the foetus during pregnancy). In undernourished women, a greater number of cells are likely to form the placenta compared to the foetus, meaning that the foetus begins its life smaller than it should do. This can lead to restricted foetal growth and increases the risk of the baby being born at a low-birth weight (<2 .5kg="" a="" associated="" birth="" in="" is="" low="" of="" range="" strong="" turn="" weight="" with="">adverse outcomes
in childhood and later in life.In the light of the above revelations, analysts who spoke with Nigeria Natural Health Online, said the federal government of Nigeria should pay attention to the alarm raised by NCWS and come to the rescue of these pregnant female prisoners.

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Under-Cooked Chicken Could Cause Paralysis

Researchers have alerted the public that undercooked chicken could trigger a potentially fatal neurological condition that makes sufferers paralysed.
The warning came ahead of public preparation for the Yuletide, a season of celebration when millions of families cherish chickens as part of the delicacy consumed to celebrate both Christmas and the coming New Year. These are the findings of a research published in the ‘Journal of Autoimmunity’.
A common bacteria, ‘campylobacter jejuni’, which lurks in the raw flesh of chickens has been found to cause Guillain-Barre syndrome, GBS, a lifethreatening disorder where the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system.
Early symptoms include feeling weak and experiencing tingling sensations in the legs. ‘Campylobacter jejuni’ infects more than a million people yearly in the United States, U.S and is also known to trigger other autoimmune disorders such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Reiter’s arthritis. Scientists at Michigan State University have shown how the bacteria triggers GBS, and hope that discovery will help formulate a cure.
If chicken isn’t cooked to a proper minimum internal temperature, harmful bacteria can remain, posing a threat, the UK Edition of ‘The Sun’ reported. It is well known that some bacteria in undercooked chicken can cause a nasty bout of food poisoning.
But now, the evidence points to a far more important reason to ensure your chicken is cooked thoroughly. Reacting to the development, Lead Author of the study, Professor Linda Mansfield, said: “What our work has told us is that it takes a certain genetic makeup combined with a certain campylobacter strain to cause this disease.
“The concerning thing is that many of these strains are resistant to antibiotics and our work shows that treatment with some antibiotics could actually make the disease worse.”
GBS is the leading cause of acute neuromuscular paralysis, yet the exact cause remains a mystery to experts. Prof. Mansfield and her team have created three preclinical models of GBS that represent two different forms of the syndrome seen in humans.

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Why Syphilis May Soon Become Untreatable

Amid concerns over a new drug-resistant strain, doctors have alerted the public that Syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease (STD), could become impossible to treat with key antibiotics.
This is the findings of a new study published in the journal ‘Nature Microbiology’. Although, Syphilis was once a death sentence, the vast majority of syphilis cases today are curable with penicillin injections.
However, a new study has revealed an aggressive new strain of the infection is more widespread than previously thought – and there are limited ways to control it.
Syphilis is a highly contagious disease spread primarily by sexual activity, including oral and anal sex. Occasionally, the disease can be passed to another person through prolonged kissing or close bodily contact. Although this disease is spread from sores, the vast majority of those sores go unrecognised.
The infected person is often unaware of the disease and unknowingly passes it on to his or her sexual partner. Pregnant women with the disease can spread it to their baby. This disease, called congenital syphilis, can cause abnormalities or even death to the child. Similarly, Syphilis cannot be spread by toilet seats, door knobs, swimming pools, hot tubs, bath tubs, shared clothing, or eating utensils.
Estimates suggest that there were 10.6 million cases worldwide in 2008, with many carrying the disease unaware they are actually infected. Cases of syphilis are common among both heterosexuals and men who have sex with men – but the latter group has been more affected.
There are two common types of syphilis: Nichols and Street Strain 14 (SS14). In an analysis of syphilis samples, researchers by the University of Zurich in Switzerland, found the most common to be SS14-Ω, a subset of SS14.
Alarmingly, 90 per cent of the SS14-Ω samples they analysed were resistant to antibiotics. It was reported that although, scientists have yet to detect any penicillin- resistant strains, the discovery is an ominous sign that it is adapting to modern medicine.
Cases of the chronic bacterial infection have shot up by 71 per cent in England since 2011, according to the latest figures. Syphilis cases are also increasingly more common in the United States, with infections rising 15 per cent between 2013 and 14; and another 19 per cent from 2014 to 2015, according to data issued by the U.S. Centre for Disease Control, CDC. Data obtained from other sources indicate that the disease is also rising in countries such as South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria.
Scientists are unsure just how many of these cases can be put down to the relatively new strain that is growing resistant to key antibiotics. But they said the emergence of a drug-resistant forms could make syphilis, a potentially fatal sexually transmitted infection, STI, even harder to treat.
A study of syphilis infections in 13 countries in 2012 to 2013 shows how a drug resistant strain of the disease is far more widespread than previously thought. SS14-Ω is particularly resistant to the class of antibiotics called macrolides, the researchers from the University of Zurich said.
The possibility that the second-line medication for the disease – used when penicillin injections are not appropriate – might lose their effectiveness has alarmed experts.
Reacting to the development, Lola Stamm, an epidemiologist at the University of North Carolina in the United States, said the findings should serve as a warning to doctors not to oversubscribe antibiotics. “Physicians need to be extremely wary about using macrolide drugs to treat syphilis,” she said.

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Marijuana Can Cause Blindness

Scientists have warned those who indulge in regular use of Cannabis, also known as Marijuana that it could damage eyesight. These findings are published in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’.
The small study in France found prolonged marijuana use could wear down retinal ganglion cells, the nerves that sit just behind the retina. A retinal ganglion cell (RGC) is a type of neuron located near the inner surface (the ganglion cell layer) of the retina of the eye.
It receives visual information from photoreceptors via two intermediate neuron types: bipolar cells and retina amacrine cells. These cells are key for transmitting information back to the brain in order to form an image.
The study found people who smoked weed for around six years experienced a delay in neural signals to the brain – even after giving up the drug. The finding complicates scientific understanding on the link between cannabis and vision, since previous studies have shown the drug helps patients with glaucoma, and even improves night vision.
Reacting to the development, Lead Investigator, Dr. Vincent Laprevote, of the Pole Hospitalo-Universitaire de Psychiatrie du Grand Nancy in France, said: “Our findings may be important from a public health perspective since they could highlight the neurotoxic effects of cannabis use on the central nervous system as a result of how it affects retinal processing.
“Independent of debates about its legalisation, it is necessary to gain more knowledge about the different effects of cannabis so that the public can be informed.
“Future studies may shed light on the potential consequences of these retinal dysfunctions for visual cortical processing and whether these dysfunctions are permanent or disappear after cannabis withdrawal.”
The small study involved 52 participants – 28 cannabis users, 24 never users. All of the cannabis users stopped consuming the drug before the trial started, but had been regularly using it for at least six years.
The researchers used a standard electrophysiological measurement called pattern electroretinography (PERG), which involved averaging a high number of responses.
After adjustment for the number of years of education and alcohol use, there was a significant increase for cannabis users of the amount of time it took for the retina to transmit signals to the brain.
There are many known effects on the body when using marijuana. Some of these relate to the eyes while others impact other areas of the body. Studies have found that attention, memory and learning are all impaired by heavy marijuana use, even after stopping the drug for more than 24 hours. Marijuana users also exhibit impaired driving abilities, slower reaction times and difficulty concentrating. Marijuana can also impact perception, making colors appear brighter, etc. When it comes to eyesight marijuana commonly alters peripheral vision. 

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