Zombies Pt 2 (or how I distracted my students)

Last week I mentioned how my students sidetracked me in a tute regarding introductions to the origins of life and in particular the acronym HOMR standing for Homeostasis, Organisation, Metabolism and Replication by initiating a discussion of whether or not zombies technically were alive. Well, the following week they had a test that occupied half the allocated tutorial time so instead of letting them out early I extended the discussion to real world zombies.

Exploding Head Syndrome - No pun required

This is an old post from my previous blog. Recently it has been seeing a lot of activity so I thought I'd play around with it a bit and re-post it here. Enjoy :)

Sometimes when searching for disease to write about a wonderful thing happens. The clouds part, cherubs descend, angels play intricate harp-based musical compositions, and a beam of light illuminates the link to a wonderful disease. This happened to me the other day, and now, without further ado, let me introduce you to Exploding Head Syndrome. Best. Disease. Name. Ever.

Acute Exploding Head Syndrome sufferer (screenshot from the 1981 movie Scanners)

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome

Well I’m back! I’m not going to pretend like you missed me but I hope your glad to see another post out of me. I did a bit of writing during my time off to build up a bit of a backlog so hopefully I can keep posting regularly for a while. Anyway, without any further ado…

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine Syndrome

Best. Disease. Name. Ever.

This disease was first observed in 1878 by the neurologist Dr. George Miller Beard, a guy I will definitely talk about again, in French-Canadians, lumberjacks and presumably some French-Canadian lumberjacks living in northern Maine. So that explains the “Frenchman” and “Maine” parts but lets look at what makes this a “Jumping Syndrome”.

Saturday Night Palsy

This time of year is party season. Just in the last 2 weeks I’ve been to three Christmas parties, a retirement party and a 21^st with Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years and my birthday (24^th, I think?) to look forward to inside the next month. So alongside all the other important health notices like trying to avoid over-eating and binge drinking I’d like to present another disease that deserves its own PSA. Saturday Night Palsy.

Sickles, blood disease and the Greek god Priapus

I saw the Carnal Carnival was coming up and this month’s theme is Blood. Blood disease, that shouldn’t be too hard I thought.

So I started thinking about blood diseases and remembered a disease I learnt about in undergraduate genetics classes called Sickle Cell Anaemia.