If you’ve ever had one drink too many at a party, you probably already know what a hangover feels like. Luckily, thanks to the new Bytox pathes, you never have to experience the morning-after feeling ever again.

When you consume too much alcohol, the vitamin B complex as well as other nutrients get depleted rapidly from your body, due to the diuretic effect of alcohol. This has some unwanted effects on the central nervous system, which translate into the dreaded condition we all know as “the hangover”. Symptoms include headaches, nausea, sensitivity to light and thirst, and are usually experienced the morning after a person has consumed alcohol. Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually do something to prevent hangovers, and still drink as many beers as you like? Well, apparently, all you have to do is apply a patch on your body and enjoy yourself. The makers of Bytox, an anti-hangover patch, say it replenishes all the vitamin B and nutrients lost during the drinking process, and prevent changes to the central nervous system and restoring the body’s natural balance.

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40-year-old Julia Abdullah, from Malaysia, was obsessed with her self-cleaning rituals. Her bizarre behavior started 20 years ago, but it gradually got worse to the point where she was washing her hands up to 300 times a day, spending 5 hours in the shower and shampooing her hair 25 times per day.

Julia first noticed something was amiss two decades ago. She was working as a laboratory technician, and often handled urine and stool culture samples, as well as blood samples for HIV tests. She started spending increasingly more time on washing her hands, for fear of contamination, and although she suspected she had developed OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), she didn’t seek help. “I thought I could will myself off the washing,” Julia remembers, but her condition only got worse. She eventually lost her job as her obsession caused her to be constantly late for work, and needed to find other ways to pay her rapidly increasing house utility bills. At one point the  woman became so desperate that she started scavenging through her neighbors’ trash looking for stuff she could sell. In a short period of time she amassed a collection of junk that occupied the two-room flat she shared with her mom. The hoarding got so bad that her mother had to sleep at the stairwell as there was no ventilation or natural light in the flat. “It finally got too much for me to bear. I got so angry that I stopped bathing for three months,” Ms Julia told the Malaysia Chronicle, but her obsessive-washing habits were hardly cured.

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How long can you survive without food? It all depends on a person’s weight, overall health and metabolic rate, but according to scientific data, a human being can’t go much longer than 3 weeks without food. Now, a 22-year-old man from China means to challenge this theory claiming he has survived 12 years on water alone.

Ning Xuefa, a young man from China’s Henan province, has recently made headlines for claiming he hasn’t had a bite of food in the last 12 years. Looking at the 1.50-meter-tall, 40-kg-heavy Ning one can tell he doesn’t like to eat much, but his story seems almost impossible to believe. He told Chinese media that he completely renounced food when he was just a 10-year-old child. Just looking at bread or vegetables at the dinner table made him nauseous, and he always had a dry throat and a weird sensation like something was stuck there that made him drink lots of water all day long. He currently consumes up to 15 liters of water in a day, and his father back up his story that he never touches a single scrap of food, whether it’s rice, steamed bread or meat.

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Sun Jifa, a Chinese farmer who lost both his arms after a homemade bomb exploded prematurely, built his own functional prosthetic limbs after he couldn’t afford to buy the one offerd by the hospital.

A few years back, 51-year-old Sun Jifa, from Guanmashan, Jilin province, northern China, was working on explosives designed for blast fishing when a bomb blew up prematurely leaving him without both his arms. He was taken to the hospital and treated, but when doctors proposed he wear a pair of prosthetics designed to make his everyday life easier, Sun realized he just couldn’t afford them. At the same time he knew he needed both his arms in order to work on the farm and provide for  his family. That’s when he decided to built his own artificial arms out of scrap metal. After eight years of planning and several prototypes, He finally has a pair of functional arms.

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Haemolacria is a real physical condition that causes people to actually cry tears of blood. The tears of people suffering from this condition may range from being just tinged red, to entirely made of blood. While the exact cause or cure for this condition is not clear, it is known to be a symptom of several blood-related diseases or tumors. Let’s take a look at the three most talked-about cases of haemolacria in recent years: Read More »

I used to think that there were only a handful of people over the age of 100 in the world. How wrong was I! The Japanese island of Okinawa alone has about 457 of them. It is considered to be the healthiest place in the world, where the average life expectancy of an Okinawan woman is 86, and man’s is 78. Not only do they live long lives, they live very healthy and happy ones too. A fine example is 96-year-old martial artist Seikichi Uehara, who, at his age, defeated a thirty-something ex-boxing champion. And also Nabi Kinjo, the 105-year-old woman who hunted down a poisonous snake and killed it with a fly swatter.

The Okinawans’ secret, I’ve come to understand, lies in two things – their food, and their attitude towards life. As a happy bunch of people, the elders seem to have no worry etched on their faces, stress seems to be a foreign concept to them. An 88-year-old farmer who still works 11-hour days at the field, says, “I hardly ever get angry. I enjoy life because I’m happy at work and I think that’s the medicine for a long life.” I completely agree, and I wish I could look at life the way this brilliant guy does…

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If a man came at you with a meat cleaver, your first instinct would obviously be to run for your life. But  not for the people of Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan. Because for them, being tapped with the sharp end of a cleaver is actually a form of therapy that is known to cure many ailments. They line up in large numbers to meet the therapist, who prepares by sharpening the instrument on a wet stone and rubbing iodine all over the blade.

The Chinese knife massage is probably a treatment you’d only expect in hell, but in reality it’s said to increase blood flow, release the body’s stored energy and wash away harmful toxins. The treatment itself is pretty simple: all the therapist does is hold a couple of cleavers and strike the patient repeatedly with the sharp edge. No, don’t be horrified, there’s no blood involved. The trick is to bring down the cleaver with just the right amount of force, and then to not push or pull it once it touches skin. The up-and-down movement of the cleaver is said to release static energy, which leads to self- cure. “Chop, chop, chop, and the pain will go away,” is the motto that the knife therapists use to convince clients. Read More »

The path to gaining eternal happiness has long since eluded man, but apparently it can be achieved through something as simple as a hip surgery. Meet Huug Bosse, a Dutch man who had hip surgery a couple of years ago, and hasn’t stopped laughing since. His wife finds it annoying, his brother and daughter have become exasperated, but all Mr. Bosse can do in response is slap his knee and laugh uncontrollably.

His laughter is infectious, I myself started to giggle aloud after watching the video about him. But it does get a little silly after a while. And imagine having to live with a person laughing in the house all the time. It must be impossible to hold serious conversations with the man, and that must be quite taxing for his family. The cause for his condition isn’t exactly clear, but it’s probably due to the anesthesia he was placed under, during the operation. In spite of all the mirth, there still is one thing that can move Mr. Bosse to tears. He calls it the most beautiful song – the Dutch national anthem. Perhaps they should have it playing in the background whenever they want to get a serious word out of the man.

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“Violet, you’re turning violet!” That’s the classic line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, spoken by a dad to his naughty daughter who eats blueberry candy and ends up looking exactly like one. It’s funny in the movie, but it’s hardly something anyone would expect to happen in real life. But as it turns out it can and it has. There’s this 4-year-old kid in the UK, Leo Barnett, who turns a bright shade of orange when he eats carrots.

Leo actually suffers from a condition called hyper-beta carotenemia. This means that his body lacks the necessary enzymes to digest carotene, the substance that provides the orange color to carrots and other foods. So carotene just builds up in his body, turning him orange over time. Leo’s mother Angie says the boy is now on a diet devoid of any food containing the substance. The only vegetable that he’s allowed to eat is cauliflower. According to Angie, the problem was first noticed when he was 6 months old and suffered from pneumonia. His kidneys and liver were failing so they had mistaken the color to be a symptom from the disease. But a month after recovery, he was still orange and that’s when they discovered his allergy to carotene.

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Just yesterday, we wrote about Dr. Life, the man with a 70-year-old’s face and a 20-year-old bodybuilder’s physique. Well, now in the news is another 70-year-old who seems to have found the secret to eternal youth, only hers doesn’t imply using growth hormones and testosterone. Annette Larkins doesn’t look a day over 40, thanks to the diet and lifestyle she maintains. She looks so young that people mistake her to be the daughter, when she’s out with her husband of 54 years, but I suppose he isn’t complaining.

Mrs. Larkins says the secret to her beauty lies in the raw vegan diet, consisting of organic vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts grown in her own garden, she calls the ‘fountain of youth’. The woman doesn’t touch anything that has been cooked. And another strange thing she does is collect rainwater, to keep her garden blossoming, but also to drink. But the resident of Miami-Dade County, Florida, didn’t always have such a healthy lifestyle. In fact, she consumed meat regularly, as her husband used to own a meat factory way back in the 1960s. It was then that she decided to change her eating habits forever. And what a great decision that was. I mean, just  look at her!

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Her eyes looked dazed, her expression blank. And yet, her hands worked in perfect coordination, shooting a basketball through the hoop with practiced precision. This is the story of 18-year-old Maggie Meier who was able to shoot hoops while comatose, at age 14.

In 2008, Maggie started to complain of headaches and suffered nonstop seizures. At the time, she was a freshman and star athelete at Blue Valley High School in Overland Park, Kansas. When she was taken in to the hospital, she was diagnosed with a rare brain infection called mycoplasma meningoencephalitis that causes swelling in the brain. Maggie soon slipped into a coma, and remained in a vegetative state for nearly three months. During that time, her family made sure she was moved every two hours so her limbs didn’t stiffen up. And so that she wouldn’t forget her identity, a basketball was put in her hands as she sat upright on a wheelchair. It was then that her dormant memory kicked in and she could shoot hoops for a while, before slipping back into a coma.

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Drew Barrymore’s character has a weird memory condition that makes her relieve the same day every time she wakes up. This pretty much the basis of the romantic comedy 50 First Dates. It’s a pretty interesting concept for a film, but in real life it would be considered a nightmare. Unfortunately, 19-year-old Jess Lydon has to go through something similar to this every day.

Instead of returning to the past, Jess is actually trapped in the present. She has been affected by a rare condition known as Susac Syndrome that only allows her to remember what happened in the past 24 hours. Needless to say, this is highly upsetting to Jess and her family. It gets so bad sometimes that she cannot remember what she had for dinner the previous night, or what she did on Christmas and for her birthday. Looking at family pictures confuses her, as she can’t recollect any of the events that took place. The worst part is that although she split up with her boyfriend almost 2 years ago, she wakes up thinking they’re together every morning. Imagine having to relive a heartbreak every single day of your life.

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In a weird karmic twist, a man suffered a heart attack while dining at a place called the Heart Attack Grill. A sign outside warns customers: “Go away. If you come to this place, it’s going to kill you.” I suppose all that the restaurant owners could say to this guy is – ‘we told you so’. We did a story about the restaurant here on OC a few years ago, but ittle did we know back then that it would one day cause someone to go into cardiac arrest.

The man remains unidentified, although a video shot by an onlooker shows that he might be in his 40s. The video captured paramedics rushing him out of the Las Vegas branch of the restaurant. When the disaster struck, he was actually chowing down a whopping 6000-calorie Triple Bypass Burger. Needless to say, he soon started to experience chest pains. and now he may actually need a bypass.

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Cancer epidemics are practically unheard of. That’s why I was quite shocked when I read about this small village in Germany where almost every household has been hit by the deadly disease. Wewelsfleth, located near the Elbe River in northwest Germany is now being called the ‘village of the damned’. With a population of only 1,500, the spread of cancer in the area is about 50% above average. What makes the condition of these villagers even more pathetic is that they feel abandoned by authorities, who are unable to provide any explanations.

The cancer situation in Wewelsfleth is not a new one. In fact, several cases have been reported as early as 1998, steadily rising over the years. The phenomenon is not limited to any particular part of the body. Cases of cancer affecting the breast, lung, womb, stomach and esophagus have been observed. It is not surprising in the least to note that there are three nuclear power plants in the vicinity and also a shipyard where vessels were sprayed with highly toxic paint. Quite understandably, the villagers are upset and do not intend to give up on their demands for a serious enquiry into the situation.

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Here’s something I never thought I’d hear, let alone write an article about – faecal transplants. Yes, it’s exactly what you think  it is. Taking the poop out of one person and putting it into another. It’s a lot, more disgusting that it sounds, but this medical procedure actually has the potential to save lives. And would you believe, it’s been around since the late 1990s?

Dr. Alisdair MacConnachie is perhaps the only doctor in the UK to have ever performed the transplant. Calling it a proven treatment, this is how he says it’s done. A patient is put on antibiotics up until the night before, after which pills are given to control the stomach acids. The next morning a donor will come in and provide a stool sample. The donor is usually a close relative who tends to eat the same kind of food and lives in the same environment as the patient. Next, 1oz of the sample is taken and churned with salt water in a blender. Eww, right? No wait, it gets worse. The fluid is then poured through a coffee filter to produce a very watery liquid. And now, for the worst part – a tube is inserted up the patient’s nose that goes all the way down to the stomach. 1fl oz of the liquid is poured right in. I will now give you a moment to recover.

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