What, you didn't hear? The FDA finally approved Salmonella!

[www.theonion.com]

It's Grrrreat!

I will never, ever, ever get Botox. Ever. Nasty shit.

One thing that stinks about having so many off label uses is that it opens up opportunity for abuse by sketchy physicians and patients. My boyfriend's brother has severe cerebral palsy which was helped greatly by Botox. Unfortunately, his insurance company no longer covers it because so many women were getting cosmetic Botox under insurance by finding doctors who would prescribe it for "muscle spasms."

I'm too scared to use the Google on this, so any lurking doctor types want to explain what an anal fissure is? Old Faithful is a fissure, isn't it?
(whimper)

@Trai_Dep: An anal fissure is an unnatural crack or tear in the skin of the anal canal. Anal fissures may be noticed by bright red anal bleeding on the toilet paper, sometimes in the toilet.

I refused to go any farther than that in the the Wiki article.

@Trai_Dep: Just a tear in your anus. It can happen from shitty (lol) toilet paper, or because you took a big, hard poo (it's really common in people who get constipated), or anal sex can cause it. You've probably had one, but for most people they are mild.

@jessi5000: Wow, that really sucks for his brother. I heard of someone the other day getting the injections to stop excessive sweating. Just watching her get those needles jabbed in her armpits put me off my lunch. Thanks, Discovery Health!

@Trai_Dep: Hopefully nonterrifying explanation: sometimes the thing that stretches can't stretch as much as the situation demands; sometimes the thing that stretches gets slightly injured by what was making it stretch. The result is a bit of tearing.

I suspect the Botox is useful because the thing that stretches will spasm and reinjure the tear when it's irritated.

@jessi5000: That's a shame, especially since the insurance company already has documentation that he has cerebral palsy and that the Botox is therefore an appropriate treatment.

Can his doctor write a letter of medical necessity and appeal to the insurance company? Particularly if he'd been receiving the Botox in the past, there's a fair to moderate chance that they'll authorize it on a single-case basis. Even moreso if the Botox helped him to, say, be independently mobile or perform self-care, and now that he's not getting it he's lost those abilities.

I'm sure they'd have to take it through an ombudsman, patient advocate, or whatever that insurance company calls them, but it's worth a shot if they haven't tried it already. Most physicians that I know (and I have worked in the healthcare field for ~20 years) will gladly do a LMNA at no charge, as long as it's an appropriate request.

Isn't it also used to combat excessive sweating under the arms? Not sure where I heard that...

@Penny Plastic: yep that is another use.

Not to poop on the thread, but isn't "deathly poison in the wrong hands but awesome medicine if you know what you're doing" pretty common in medicine? Examples: curare, morphine, even aspirin.

And jessi5000, you have no one to blame but yourself for seeing something nasty on Discovery Health. What else do you expect from a show titled, "Born Without A Face?" ;-)

I'm curious as to how Botox could prevent hair loss...

"Now if someone could just figure out something useful for salmonella..."

Weight loss?

My wife gets botox injections in her back for tension headaches. They are NOT migraines, and standard migraine meds never worked. But she goes about once a month for botox injections, and they work for her.

As a bonus, the doctor squirts anything left in the needle in her forehead...

My Mother has Dystonia, which is a rare neurological condition and one of the symptoms is her facial muscles tense and completely close her eyes, with one side being worse than the other.

I'm taking her next friday to the doctor to get Botox injections, because they help her still be able to see most of the time. It does have legitimate uses besides rich b*tch beauty aid, and it's covered by medicare (after the deductible).

@redskull: I think it's only one certain type (or a few types) of hair loss, and not the standard aging-related hair loss. Not sure, though; I'm not having much luck finding any "good science" info, just a bunch of hype and advertising.

@h3llc4t: I got married in North Carolina in August and I very seriously, if very briefly, considered the anti-sweating botox injections for the big day with the potentially big humidity. (Then I was like, "Try not to be crazy, Eyebrows. Try harder.") But I understand that for people with hyperhydrophoresis (is that right? the "sweat too much" thing?) it's a Godsend.

@redskull: Warfarin! Rat poison repurposed to prevent heart attacks! Thanks Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund!

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle): Is that seriously where the name is from? How bizarre. Was it to protect the cheese?

@floraposte: I think warfarin is the commercial drug name; it was called something else as a rat poison.

Drug companies, depressingly, spend billions coming up with these stupid names.

@nakedscience: I think you'd change your mind if you were afflicted with "anal fissures"

@SexCpotatoes: Exactly. Botox gets lots of negative press for its popularity amongst the "make-me-pretty" crowd, but I've known someone who also benefits greatly from it as a serious reliever of intense pain and discomfort.

I actually could not convince some university students I knew a few years ago that Botox is poison. They would not believe me. I said, "Duh, the TOX is as in TOXIN" and they still didn't buy it.

I was told I was a party-pooper and just shitting on a good thing because I didn't like it.

So yay for clueless morons who will let you inject anything into them if you market it right! Whoopee!

@floraposte: Seriously. The story behind it is even bizarrer. This farmer allegedly brought a cow carcass to UW Madison's agronomy building in his pickup and basically carried it in, dumped it on the ground, and said, "Find out what's killing my cows." A couple of the researchers got interested and isolated a compound in clover that the cows grazed on that was so effective a blood thinner that it made an excellent rat poison ... and after a US Army soldier attempted suicide with it in the 50s and fully recovered, they started research into its medical potential and found it markedly effective as a human therapeutic blood thinner.

But yes, it was funded by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund, so warfarin is the chemical's name. I think Coumadin is the most common trade name for the people drug.

@BlackMage66652, nakedscience, floraposte: Thanks all. Not as horrific as it sounds. I was picturing Grand Canyon sized ruts, geysers, eruptions and pants-covered pyrotechnics. Ha! It's mere chaffing!

So Botox relaxes everything. Doesn't that have certain implications for sphincter structural integrity?

It seems like there are SO many ways that marketing this new use for Botox can explode in their feces. Err, faces.

What no picture of Kevin Smith for an anal fissure story?

aboooooooooooo!

@Eyebrows McGee (on Twitter: LPetelle):

Yes, Coumadin. I took it for a year. I knew they used warfarin in rat poison, but I didn't know about the cows!

For some reason, after taking it that long, I can no longer eat broccoli. Bummer because I love me my little trees. :(

@Penny Plastic: Scrubs.

now where is that video of the looney tune (was it bugs bunny?) taking a hypo to a can of mushrooms for the botchilism??

@nakedscience: There's something about the thought of injecting a substance called botulism toxin into the ol' body that feels just a tad discomforting.