Maggot Therapy - The Smallest Surgeons

For centuries, maggots have been well known for their ability to accelerate the healing of wounds. During warfare, the military doctors observed that the wounds of soldiers that were infested by maggots had a faster recovery rate and the soldiers' chances of death from infection of wounds were much lower than those whose wounds were not infested with maggots. However, after the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin, the Maggot Therapy is outdated due to several reasons. People believe that the use of penicillin to cure wounds is a more hygienic method, and patients find the antibiotic much more acceptable as compared to the use of maggots.

Source: Click here.

Many years later, the ideal healing rate of wounds induced by the maggots resulting in the reintroduction of maggot therapy (also known as Maggot Debridement Therapy) in modern medical field. One of the reasons is that the bacteria that causes infections has grown to be immune to antibiotics. The medicinal maggots work in three actions:

1. Remove (by eating) the dead necrotic, infected tissue on the wounds. In order for a wound to heal, it is vital to remove the dead tissue as it will promote the growth of bacteria on the wound and thus resulting in further infections.
2. Disinfect the wounds by killing bacteria. The secretion by the medicinal maggots create a condition that is not suitable for bacteria to strive.
3. The secretions of the maggots also found to have the ability to stimulate the growth of new tissues (human fibroblasts).

After seeing the benefits of maggot therapy, let's have a look at the limitations of it.

Maggot therapy does not work on dry wounds and the wounds on body cavities. For a medicinal maggot to feed, the wounds must be moist, and adequate amount of oxygen is present. Also, many patients may reject the use of live maggots on their wounds. As a result, a dressing is applied to the wounds where the maggots feed to prevent escape and hide the sight of maggots having their meals on the wounds from the patients.

The Man Who Lives Within the Present

In real life, there are people experiencing the same condition as Lucy Whitmore in the movie ' 50 First Dates'. In the movie itself, Lucy has memory of only one day, meaning that everyday she wakes up no longer having memories of the previous day. This could be a real big problem in life!

Clive Wearing, an expert in early music at the peak of his musical life back in 1985, contracted a virus which supposedly only causes cold sores. In Clive's case, the virus damaged the part of his brain which is resposible for storage of memory. Clive suffers from an acute and long lasting case of Anterograde Amnesia since then which greatly changed his life.

From that day onwards, Clive can no longer form new memories. To him, every moment is like waking up from a dream, he cannot remember things that happen seconds ago. Instead, Clive's memory only lasts for 7 seconds! As a result, he becomes a man without past. He is unable to remember any of his friends. However, he still recognizes his wife Deborah, but remembers her as his girlfriend. He greets Deborah happily every time they see each other, as if they have not seen each other in years, though she may have just left the room to deliver him a glass of water. Clive also lost the ability to link a type of food with taste, as he has forgotten.

Deborah has written a book titles " Forever Today" based on the condition of her husband's condition.

Axolotls, Pink Body Creature!

What is that actually?! This thing looks like an alien, don't you think so? When I first saw this creature, I thought it is a mutated lizard with human-like features. Though it looks weird, it's smiley face does show some friendliness.

Actually, this creature is called Axolotl, the best known of the Mexican neotenicmole salamanders. At the baby stage of this species, the larvae fails to undergo metamorphosis (eg the process whereby a tadpole grows into a frog). As a result, the adult Axolotl remains aquatic and has gills instead of lungs.

At adult stage, this species is around 15 to 45 cm in length. Just like the salamander larvae, the Axolotls have the same features as the typical types, with external gills and a caudal fin extending from behind of the head. They have lidless eyes, and a wide head. They also have long, thin digits on their underdeveloped limbs. And Axolotls feed by suction. Axolotls strive at temperatures ranging from 14°C to 20°C.

With the pinkish body and the big wide smile on their faces, Axolotls can be adorable.

Meet the Alien In Deep Sea

Anglerfish is a type of very rare creature living in the deep sea. In most Anglerfish species, there is a long filament protruding out above the fish's eyes, at the tip of the filament there is an irregular growth of flesh (looks like a bulb, called esca). The long filament can move in all directions, while the esca acts as a bait to lure prey to the Anglerfish. When the prey is close enough, the Anglerfish will open its huge jaws and devour the prey whole! The Anglerfish can swallow a prey that is twice its own body size.

In some species of Anglerfish that lives deep under the sea where sunlight is scarce, the esca will emit light due to symbiosis with bacteria. The bacteria enters the esca, starts to multiply rapidly till their collective glow is bright enough to attract other fishes to become the prey of Anglerfish.

Here comes the interesting part, the reproduction of Anglerfish. As Anglerfish is extremely rare, it is very difficult to find a mating partner. In order not to become extinct, the Anglerfish has a very distinct way of reproduction.

At birth, the males are born with well developed olfactory organs (sensory system for smell). When the male Anglerfish mature, its digestive system starts failing, resulting in not able to feed independently. As a result, before the male dies from failure of digestive system, it has to find a female using its powerful olfactory organ. The male can detect pheromones from a mature female using its olfactory organ. So what will happen after the male found his mating partner?

After the male found a female, the male will bite into the female's skin, and digest the skin of his mouth and her body using a type of enzyme secreted. This will enable the couple to fuse with each other to the blood vessel level. The male then degenerates into a pair of gonads that parasites on the female. The gonads (male) release sperm in response to the hormones in the female's bloodstream signalling eggs release. This ensure that, whenever the female is ready to spawn, there will be sperm available to fertilise the eggs.

One of the species of Anglerfish, the little thing protruding

out at the back of the fish is the male that fused with the female

For the Anglerfish, the males reduce to parasites on females after maturation. The males are deemed to sacrifice in the reproduction system in this species, in order to ensure the survival of the species of Anglerfish.

Deadly Bites

Have you ever been bitten by a snake before? What will happen if you are bitten by a Rattlesnake?

Rattlesnakes are venomous and they were given the name due to the rattle located at the end of their tails. This species is a little bit different from most of the snake species, they give live births instead of laying eggs.

When rattlesnake bites, it will inject hemotoxic elements which results in tissue damage and affect the circulatory system by destroying blood cells, skin tissues thus leading to internal hemorrhaging! Its venom contains neurotoxic that can paralyse the nervous system of a person, sometimes stopping the breathing of its victims. Therefore, being bitten by rattlesnake is very dangerous!

After rattlesnake's bite

Once bitten, these are the symptoms:

• extreme pain at the location of the bite, together with burning sensation
• swelling
• bruising and discoloration occurs
• numbness
• nausea, vomiting, light-headedness
• breathing difficulty
• swelling of mouth and throat

You should NEVER:

• cut the bitten area
• apply ice pack on the swollen part
• immerse bite location into water
• use your mouth to suck out the venom ( you're not acting in a movie)

And you SHOULD:

• wash the bite with water and soap
• Immobilize the bitten area and keep it lower than the heart
• Seek medical attention immediately

Do not think that you are safe after you kill the snake that threatens you and start to play with the dead snake. I mean it, many people have the tendency to examine the specimen that they have killed in the wild. Snake can still bite after it dies, this can last for one hour after its death!

Creepy Surgeons

There is a type of surgeons who do not have hands, legs, but they can be considered as a professional especially in the field of reconstructive surgery.

With them around, patients' reconstructive surgeries will have higher chances of success, and time taken for the wound to heal will also be much faster.

However, even though the surgeons has such a good reputation in this area, many patients do not like to be treated by them.

This is because, the surgeons are flesh-craving and uses their mouth to treat patients!

The use of leeches to cure illnesses took place more than 2500 years ago in Egypt, where the Egyptians used leeches to drain "impure blood" from the body to cure many kind of illnesses. Nowadays, leeches are still widely used in post surgical treatments. The components in the saliva of the leeches have quite a number of therapeutic values, the saliva can relieve venous congestion (accumulation of blood abnormally) and improve blood flow to the compromised free tissue flaps.

The leeches' saliva contains anticoagulants that prevent blood from clotting. After a full meal of blood, the leech will detach itself from the patient, the anticoagulants left behind will still be effective for up to several hours. As a result, blood will continue to ooze out of the wounds.

Source: Click Here

This may sound scary, but this is essential to prevent venous congestion and encourage re-establishment of blood flow through the tissues after reconstructive surgery. If venous congestion occurs, and blood does not flow through the replanted tissue, the reconstructive surgery is deem to fail. Without proper blood flow, the replanted tissue is unable to get oxygen supply, it will turn black and become useless.

During leech therapy, leeches ensure constant blood flow in the areas, new veins will extend into the reconstructed part from the healthy tissue and promote re-establishment of adequate blood drainage.

However, there are still some adverse effects in leech therapy.

• Patients may experience local pain during the therapy. As the anesthetic effect of the leech saliva may take a while to occur, the initial biting may trigger pain.
• Local itching will happen after the bite.
• Infection may take place if the leeches are not properly sterilised.

Leech therapy is an effective post surgical treatment, though it has its shortcomings, its advantages still shouldn't be overlooked.

Parasitic Twins

In my opinion, it is really awesome to have a twin sibling, as in identical twin. Not only your appearences are exactly the same, many of the twins will have telegraphy which is so cool! However, when you look at your identical twin sibling, other than the striking resemblance, what will be in your mind?

Just imagine...

For non-identical twins, two eggs are fertilised by two sperms in the ovary. For identical twins, an fertilised egg is split into two, and grows into two individuals. The person right in front of you is your closest sibling, but none of you is older or younger. You two are of the same age, exist at the same second of time.

Long long time ago when both of you were in the womb of your mom, actually is not "both" of you, as there is only one egg. Therefore, the person living with you is not your sibling! The person used to be a part of you, or you are just used to be a part of the person.

Above is just my personal opinion. In the following, I am going to write about Parasitic Twins.

Parasitic twin occurs when a twin embryo fail to separate fully during development in the uterus, and one of the twin fail to develop as per normal. The undeveloped twin will be incompletely formed on the fully developed twin.

An example is Sanjay Kumar in India. In the case of his, it is known as fetus in fetu. This is a condition whereby one of the twin envelops the other as they grow in the womb at early pregnancy. The poor twin that has been wrapped inside the other will attach itself to the blood vessels in its sibling and feeding off him as a parasite! So the undevelop twin in the body is alive, absorbing nutrients from its host sibling and continues to grow in size!

Sanjay Kumar before the sugery

At the age of 36 back in 1999, Sanjay had been living his life with a huge bulge on his belly, he looked like 9 months pregnant. At that time, he could hardly breathe due to his extremely swollen belly. He went through a surgery to remove the "tumor" which would threaten his life sooner and later.

As the surgeons cut the lump in Sanjay's stomach, gallons of pus gushed out from the lump. Finally, he decided to get rid of the "tumor" in order to lead a more normal life. To the horror of the surgeons operating on the tumor, they found Sanjay's twin sibling! The weird, strange half-formed body of Sanjay's sibling had fully developed limbs, its finger-nails were long signifies that it was still living and growing inside Sanjay at the time of removal.

The deformed twin

For the deformed twin, it could not survive by itself, but through the blood vessels of its brother host, it could acquired nutrients to grow in size. After the sugery, Sanjay explained "Before the operation, life was very tough, but now I'm much better". Sanjay now leads a normal life without the burden of his parasitic twin that feeding off him for as long as 36 years!

Living "Sausages"

Watch the video, what would you name these creatures? Don't let your mind run wild!

Those weirdos are known as Spoon worms (they are one of the spoon worm species). Yes, they do look a lot like uncooked sausages, but they are alive. Spoon worms are unsegmented and soft-bodied that live in the sand or mud in the water and they are also marine burrowing creatures. Usually, these worms have a body length of 3 to 15 cm, however, they can grow to as long as 75 cm in some cases.

Spoon worms secrete a lot of sticky mucus which forms a net attaching to the inner wall of its burrow funnel that acts as a filter to trap small marine organisms. Once the net is loaded with food particles, the Spoon worm will then swallow the whole net together with the food particles. After that, it will create another mucus net.

The Spoon worms are a type of delicacy in some countries. For those who have never seen these "sausage-like" creatures before, eating one of them may be a huge challenge just like those challenges in Fear Factor. I have never tried before, and never will.

Blood Suckers

First glance at the words "Blood Sucker", many will start to think of vampires or mosquitoes. BUT, I am not going to talk about either of them. The two extreme creatures that I am going to talk about, not only do they have disgusting appearances but are also blood-thirsty creatures.

They are the Fleas, and the Ticks.

Some facts about Fleas

Larva of a Flea. Source: Click Here

• Flea larva may live on the carpets, or any fabric surfaces.
• The flea larva actually feeds on the poop of an adult flea besides dead skin debris of animals.
Eventually, it will spin itself into a cocoon, and can stay inside for more than a year waiting for a host to arrive.
• Flea can jump 150 times its body length, which is about 240m high for a human being of 1.6m! In order to attach itself onto its host.
• The flea has a very poor eyesight, it can only sense its hosts through movement and concentration of carbon dioxide.

• It can drink blood of up to 15 times its body weight. In conversion, it is approximately 750kg of liquid consumed by a person with 50kg body weight!
  
• The poops it produces are rich in nutrients for larvae to grow.
• One of the best way to get rid of fleas, is the use of vacuum cleaner.

Some facts about Ticks

• A tick is an eight-legged bug, a relative to spiders.
• Very similar to fleas, a tick tracks its host by following the trail of carbon dioxide released by the hosts.
• A tick locates the blood vessels closest to the skin surface of its host, at which it will bite and start leeching for blood.
• The horrifying fact is that, a tick can drink up to a maximum of 600 times of its body weight of blood! (which is 30,000kg of fluid for a 50kg-person)

A female tick with eggs. Source: Click Here

• Once latched on a host, a tick may be 'glued' onto the host and suck blood for up to a few days. Until its body weight increases about several hundreds times its original weight!

Gosh! What's On Your Eyelashes!

I believe that many people know that there are tiny bugs living in the human hair called 'mites'. Do you know that there are also lots of mites living in the roots of your eyelashes? Don't be surprise, everyone has mites on the eyelashes, including you and me.

Close up view of a Demodicid

The scientific name of these tiny mites is Demodex folliculorum, also known as demodicid. They are very small, only about 0.4mm in length. They live in pores and hair follicles on the face. There are countless of them nesting on our faces!

A female mite will lay about 25 eggs in a hair follicle, which will hatch and mature and move to other follicles. These disgusting mites live head down in a follicle, dead skin is their food source. If there are too many of them living in a single follicle, the hair shaft will fall off, that's one of the reason for your precious eyeslashes falling off!

The white color tips are the tails of the mites, 3 of them!

If these mites are living in the pores on the face, the outcome may be skin disorder or acne formation. Mites have tiny mouth which feed on the dead skin cells. The fortunate thing is that, mites do not poop, as they only have one opening on them which is the mouth.

Don't get freak out, everyone of us have them on our body, not ten, not hundreds, but millions of them!