Every year the British Medical Journal adds to the jollity of nations with a holiday issue packed with silly research. Rather than trying to decide which paper to cover this year, I’m highlighting lots of them for you…
‘Champagne: the safer choice for celebrations’ – Robert J Douglas
After removing a beer bottle cap from inside a 24 year old Australian rules football player, who had ingested it after drinking from the cup his team had just won, Dr Douglas conducted a ‘comprehensive Medline search’ for similar examples involving champagne corks. He failed to find any examples of similar problems. His conclusion: “Since the 18th century, champagne has been the beverage of choice for celebrations and on current evidence should remain so.”
Doctors sometimes explain bone structures to patients by comparing bones to either a ‘Crunchie’ chocolate bar or to an ‘Aero’ bar. However after dropping the bars from various heights to simulate fractures and running bone density tests the researchers concluded: “Using Crunchie and Aero chocolate bars to explain bone structure to patients may be visually attractive but oversimplifies the situation.”
Those wanting more chocolate related medicine can read about why the change of another product’s shape is causing problems for those attempting to assess testicular volume: Dissent of the Testis
Sex, aggression, and humour: responses to unicycling – Sam Shuster
What do responses to a unicycling doctor tell us about humanity?
“As boys matured to men their response became more verbal and evolved into the concealed aggression of a humorous verbal put-down, which was lost with age. In contrast, the female response was praise and concern for safety,” says Sam Shuster. The evolutionary explanations of this are considered.
Energy expenditure in adolescents playing new generation computer games – Lee Graves et al
In a blow for those who hoped messing around on their Nintendo Wiis would count as exercise, researchers have concluded that “the energy used when playing active Wii Sports games was not of high enough intensity to contribute towards the recommended daily amount of exercise in children.”
Although more energy was burned playing ‘active’ games than ‘sedentary’ games in the six boys and five girls sample, even the most vigorous game burned only 202.5 (31.5) kJ/kg/min. “Playing new generation active computer games uses significantly more energy than playing sedentary computer games but not as much energy as playing the sport itself,” is the startling conclusion.
If hearing about a Jack Bauer who can’t deal with a Hasselhoff ‘cause of a testiculating Ringo makes perfect sense to you you don’t need to read this. For the rest here’s some of the current medical vernacular.
Medical myths – Rachel C Vreeman, et al
Do you think that you need to drink at least eight glasses of water a day? That reading in dim light ruins your eyesight? That mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals?
Maybe you’ve only been using 10% of your brain then because all of the above are medical myths.
And finally…
Medical student Tracy Sorkin was set the task of reviewing the last 20 Christmas BMJs and classified their articles as ‘serious’ or ‘lighthearted’. In a horrific example of the suppression of research the BMJ is not revealing this number. They have however released a break down of the categories of the ‘lighthearted’ articles.
Surprisingly (at least for those of us who have met some doctors) proverbs, literature, and art were more popular than sex, alcohol and money. [This is a joke, the Great Beyond has nothing but respect for our country’s great doctors, who have in the last six years saved this poor blogger’s life no less than three times…]