It has been only 7 months since the beginning of the year but there are already 3 new "diagnoses" published in the professional and mainstream media:
Prostatempathy is the reported tendency for male physicians of a certain age to order prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening more than what deemed appropriate. The term was first used in a paper published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Wiiitis is acute tendonitis due to playing too much with the new Nintendo video game console called Wii.
Blogger in Draft is the test version of the popular blogging platform by Google which I also use to power many of our educational web sites. The Blogger team just introduced 2 new features: Podcasting Enclosures and Polls:
"Starting today, we’re automatically adding enclosure information for Blogger video uploads, so your blog with video has instantly become a video podcast. Your readers can watch your videos on your blog with the Flash player, or they can subscribe to your videos with their favorite podcatcher."
The Blogger team sense of humor is admirable:
"We’re not 100% versed in podcasting ourselves (thoseguysleft), so this is an area where we’re really listening to you for advice."
Those guys are Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jason Goldman who started the original Blogger and added such great features as audioblogging which we used extensively to discuss EKGs, X-rays and clinical management. Ev and Biz (shorter names are easier to remember) created the podcasting web site Odeo which did not really take off and was sold some time ago. Unfortunately, our audio files have been unavailable for several months although the new Odeo owners are reportedly working to fix the problem. The latest (and wildly popular) project by "those guys" is Twitter which Joshua Schwimmer of Kidney Notes uses for microblogging -- just scroll down his sidebar to see the Twitter widget.
In conclusion, the video upload and podcasting make an already good blogging platform by Google even better. I would recommend it as a starting point to any aspiring blogger/medical educator.
Study volunteers ate a tiny amount of dark chocolate daily for five months - one square from a 16-square German chocolate bar called Ritter Sport (6 grams/30 calories/30 mg of polyphenols). This daily tidbit of dark chocolate lowered the blood pressure without weight gain or increase in cholesterol and blood glucose. The average decrease in blood pressure in the study participants was a 3-point drop in systolic blood pressure and a 2-point drop in diastolic blood pressure.
This is likely the most delicious "pill" (square) these volunteers have ever tasted. Speaking from personal experience, I have to confirm that both Ritter Sport Dark and Ritter Sport Dark with whole hazelnuts taste great.
The best headline award goes to: Dark chocolate helps keep arteries open for business (from a web site in New Zealand).
Chocolate could lower blood pressure but the required dose may be too much - BMJhttp://goo.gl/uoBN
