Universal Medicine

Can your surgeon make a roll of sushi with just one grain of rice? Can your surgeon make 3 miniature origami's in 15 minutes? And can your surgeon reassemble an insect with merely glue and tweezers? Well, if you happen to need an operation in the Japanese city of Kurashiki, you may be in luck! As of April 2016, new recruits (medical students) hoping to become fully fledged surgeons at Kurashiki Central Hospital (倉敷中央病院) are required to pass 3 completely unique and rigorous tests in order to be accepted to the Hospital as a surgeon. These three tests include everything that was mentioned in the introductory paragraph and are as abstract as they sound. Specifically, the tests that the recruits must pass are as follows: 1) To create three miniature cranes 5mm in height, in 15 minutes using nothing but tweezers and their hands. 2) To reassemble an insect in 15 minutes with glue and tweezers and in such a way so as not to destroy the fragile structures of the insect. 3) Their f...

  JUNIOR DOCTORS: Is their patience running out?   Channel 4 put forth an intimate and honest look into the life of a junior doctor’s first taste of their career in a hospital environment, complete with patients in critical condition within the first three hours of one woman’s day and another deciding whether oncology is the field in which she wants to specialise. Set in Northampton General Hospital, the documentary follows the junior doctors paralleled with the inescapable truth of the deteriorating state of the NHS causing moral amongst professionals to be low. Doctors are an incredibly vital aspect of any society, and it is even more vital that there are people willing to commit themselves to the years long training to ensure the care and support that patient’s need is able to be provided. Yet it appears that the biggest problem is not finding individuals, but rather ensuring that they are able to actually do their job once they have completed training and feel able t...

First Fight Last fight?  What if you were told your child has cancer? What if you were told there was no cure... In this week’s post, we look at one of many cancers that affects children and infants across the country, leaving them fighting a battle with little or no known knowledge of why they are experiencing something so awful or how long they will remaining fighting for. Neuroblastoma is a rare type of cancer most commonly found in babies and young children under the age of five. The initial cause of the disease is unknown, but it is understood that it is related to body signalling that causes cells to grow from primitive baby cells to more mature adult cells, and the defect in the control of such signalling that causes these primitive cells to mature into malignant tumours.  It develops when neuroblasts which mature into neurons (nerve cells), continue to mature causing a tumour to begin, hence the word "Neuro" means nerve and "blast" means cells in e...

Everyone wants the brightest, whitest, smile in town. We’re all buying into the latest DIY whitening kits that promise amazing results in just one use, or splurging out at the dentists to remove those deep rooted stains that will not come off no matter how hard you scrub. However, if we just took a closer look at some of the causes of tooth erosion/decay, we would find that there are many lifestyle changes we can make at home to keep our teeth as healthy as possible. Not only would this save us hundreds of pounds but it will also help our teeth in the long run. Oral hygiene is vital, despite the constant reminding of the “two times a day for two minutes” it is rarely done. Most people spend less than half the recommended two minutes of brushing their teeth and some even fail to brush their teeth at all. Although the most obvious reason for oral health issues being not effectively brushing the teeth there are other ways in which oral problems occur. Such as teeth wear- the three ma...

What comes to your mind when someone says "stem cell donation"? Most people would imagine an incredibly painful process consisting of huge needles burrowing into their arms or spine, right down to the bone, and drawing up a substance the doctors call 'bone marrow'. However contrary to popular belief, only 10% of stem cell donations require needles going deep into the body and the other 90% of donations are carried out entirely differently to how people envision it in their minds. I want to shed some light on the stem cell donation procedures and encourage  those of you reading this today to join the stem cell donation register. So, what exactly are stem cells? Embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells are the two main types of stem cells. Embryonic stem cells are cells that can divide indefinitely and turn into any type of cell within the body. Say there were two different embryonic stem cells in an embryo, one could differentiate and become a heart cell,...