Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent When I am in the operating room, I am a very good decision maker. I make the right decision, and I make it quickly. Place a burr hole here instead of there. Extend the fusion to T1 instead of C7, or use a fenestrated clip instead of a straight one. I am good at those decisions. Ask me to pick out a tie in the morning, and I am seemingly paralyzed until my sleepy wife comes over and yanks one out and hands it to me. It is always the perfect tie and no surprise; she thinks I am a terrible decision maker. She thinks I can be wishy washy. When it comes to decision making, I am apparently not alone. And, thanks to Sam Wang, a neuroscientist from Princeton, (read study) I may have a pretty good defense. There is no question there are still a lot of people who are undecided when it comes to picking a president, and Sam has a pretty good idea why. He, along with his colleagues think peering into the brain may offer a few clues. Generally speaking, decision-making can be broken down into two distinctive pieces. The first part is when you gather evidence, and then second part is when you commit. That can be like a switch going off. In the brain of an undecided voter, it may be that “evidence gathering” part that is simply taking longer. It’s not that these undecided are indifferent, according to Wang, but they are more willing to take their time, essentially trading off speed for accuracy. At some point though, they typically hit a tipping point and the decision is activated. Other undecided voters may have an even more interesting process happening. They have already made up their minds, but they haven’t committed yet. They will tell you they are undecided, even though their brain has gathered the necessary evidence and a decision has been activated. Often times, people around them already know the individual’s decision, before the individual does. When my wife picks out that tie for me, she may already know that tie is my preference, even though I haven’t decided yet. There is a third group as well. This is a group that thinks they have decided, but when it comes to actually voting, they switch their minds at the last second. They thought they were committed emotionally, but the brain had gathered evidence and pointed them in a different direction. It gets a little confusing… Read More…        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent I’m not a big fan of massages. As a neurosurgeon, I’ve never been completely convinced that the science behind them is all that sound. Yet there’s no denying that they’re popular — particularly among baby boomers and others who try to get active and stay fit with bodies that seem to grow achier all the time. But increasingly, research is showing that all those boomers may be onto something — that there are solid reasons for just about everyone to consider getting a good rubdown. Investigators at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine recently took a close look at the effect of massage on a very specific group of people who might be most in need of pampering: cancer patients. In a study of 380 adults with advanced-stage cancer and at least moderate pain, the researchers found that those who received massage therapy had greater improvement in pain and mood than patients who were touched in a manner similar to massage but without the precise motion and pressure a trained therapist uses. For these patients, even a little relief can mean a lot. Generally, about a third of cancer patients experience significant pain. As for mood, according to the National Cancer Institute, 15% to 25% of cancer patients become clinically depressed at some point during their illness. And the very nature of treatment for a serious illness often makes things worse. Read more        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviews Leslie and Jack Warden in Herculaneum, Missouri. A. Chris Gajilan CNN Medical Senior Producer It’s been one of the toughest and most complex stories I’ve ever worked on: Smokestacks belching dark clouds of lead, arsenic, cadmium into the air; children live with more than four times the safe limit of lead pumping through their blood; people who believe they have lost loved ones to the toxic conditions of where they live. Dr. Sanjay Gupta and I have been traveling for the upcoming documentary “Planet in Peril: Battle Lines.” We visited the small town of La Oroya, Peru a couple of times during the past year. This town nestled in the Andes mountains is home to the Doe Run Peru smelting complex, where metal-laden rock is brought for processing into raw materials such as lead, copper and zinc. It is a place where the air irritates the eyes, befouls the mouth, stings the nostrils and heavies the chest. In this town of 35,000 people, 99 percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits, according to studies carried out by the director general of environmental health in Peru in 1999. Consider this: People shouldn’t naturally have lead in their bodies. The upper safe limit set by the World Health Organization is 10 mg/dL. But even more recent findings from La Oroya show that the situation is still very grim. We were joined there by Fernando Serrano, a St. Louis University researcher, whose 2005 study found that children had an average blood lead level of 36.1 mg/dL to 32.4 mg/dL. That’s more than three times the safe limit! Lead poisoning is insidious. Children who have high levels of lead in their bodies can appear healthy but may suffer long-term consequences such as developmental disorders, mood disorders and in some cases, retardation. The young are most at risk because their tissue is more susceptible to the toxicities of lead. Read more…        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviews Leslie and Jack Warden in Herculaneum, Missouri. A. Chris Gajilan CNN Medical Senior Producer It’s been one of the toughest and most complex stories I’ve ever worked on: Smokestacks belching dark clouds of lead, arsenic, cadmium into the air; children live with more than four times the safe limit of lead pumping through their blood; people who believe they have lost loved ones to the toxic conditions of where they live. Dr. Sanjay Gupta and I have been traveling for the upcoming documentary “Planet in Peril: Battle Lines.” We visited the small town of La Oroya, Peru a couple of times during the past year. This town nestled in the Andes mountains is home to the Doe Run Peru smelting complex, where metal-laden rock is brought for processing into raw materials such as lead, copper and zinc. It is a place where the air irritates the eyes, befouls the mouth, stings the nostrils and heavies the chest. In this town of 35,000 people, 99 percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable limits, according to studies carried out by the director general of environmental health in Peru in 1999. Consider this: People shouldn’t naturally have lead in their bodies. The upper safe limit set by the World Health Organization is 10 mg/dL. But even more recent findings from La Oroya show that the situation is still very grim. We were joined there by Fernando Serrano, a St. Louis University researcher, whose 2005 study found that children had an average blood lead level of 36.1 mg/dL to 32.4 mg/dL. That’s more than three times the safe limit! Lead poisoning is insidious. Children who have high levels of lead in their bodies can appear healthy but may suffer long-term consequences such as developmental disorders, mood disorders and in some cases, retardation. The young are most at risk because their tissue is more susceptible to the toxicities of lead. Read more…        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta takes us into a small village near Lima, Peru hospital where tuberculosis is running rampant, in part due to the impoverished living conditions. He looks at the work Partners in Health and the Peruvian government are doing to prevent and contain outbreaks of infectious diseases.        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent While on assignment in the mountains of Peru, Dr. Sanjay Gupta experienced the dangers of altitude sickness firsthand. After ten minutes of pure oxygen treatments, he felt much better and returned to work reporting on a dangerous public health threat in a nearby village.        Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent A few weeks ago, my producer Chris Gajilan and I got on the phone to talk about a series of stories we wanted to do on space medicine. I was really excited because since I was a kid, I have always been interested in space and had dreams one day of going there. Life, though, does sometimes take you in different directions, and I opted for the brain surgery job, instead of the rocket scientist…ba dum. I’ll be here all week… Seriously, though, when I heard NASA scientists had come up with a model of weightlessness here on Earth, I jumped at the chance to investigate. It wasn’t exactly what I expected. In order to re-create the fluid shifts that are seen with prolonged space travel, scientists decided to put a group of patients at bed rest… for 3 months. Head down about 6 degrees, feet up, and absolutely no getting out of bed. As I learned, while extremely cumbersome, it is a pretty good model. Over time, lots of things start to happen to your body, things that can be devastating. Turns out, as human beings, we like a little gravity. It keeps just enough pressure on our joints and bones to keep them strong. Without the usual gravitational force, our bones start to wither away. And, the calcium that starts seeping out of the bones finds its way into our bloodstream and can cause painful and sometimes dangerous kidney stones. Astronauts can develop advanced bone loss. As astronauts push farther into space on longer missions, the concern is that they will face debilitating osteoporosis so severe they can spontaneously break bones… Read More… Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta | Bio AC360° Contributor CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Every year in the United States, there are around 200,000 ACL injuries a year. As you might guess, they are most common in soccer, football and basketball. So, when you heard about Tiger Woods golf injury, you may have been a little surprised. In fact, he has had four knee operations since 1994, with the most serious one being on June 24th of this year. As you watch this video, pay close attention to the left knee and the amount of torque that is placed on it. There is a pivot like motion that orthopedic surgeons seem to believe caused the problem. The operation itself is a fairly straightforward one but now the name of Tiger’s game is rehab. Woods tell us in his blog that he is more mobile than a month ago, and that he spends most of his rehab time riding a stationary bike. It sounds like he would look a lot different as well. He says he has lost 10 pounds of muscle and is mainly eating a raw and organic diet. The kicker is that he is not even planning on swinging a golf club until next year. That’s quite a change of lifestyle for someone who has played golf for almost his whole life. Read More… Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent A few years ago, a woman called me in the middle of the night to tell me her son-in-law had been taken to jail. This was a woman I knew pretty well, and I was stunned to hear the story she proceeded to tell me. Her grandchild (his daughter) had been found unconscious at the house and taken to the hospital. Doctors there quickly figured out the child had been shaken. Just a few months old, her little neck muscles had not been strong enough to stabilize her head, which in young children is relatively bigger with respect to their bodies. She developed a blood collection on her brain and shearing of small blood vessels deep inside. Ultimately, she never recovered; she died in her mother’s arms. The little girl’s dad had been the only one in the home and subsequently admitted to handling the child in a rough manner when she was persistently crying. In a moment of anger, he had killed his child and essentially sentenced himself to imprisonment. As a dad, I can’t imagine the incredible grief he is still suffering today, so many years later. As a neurosurgeon, I have seen this story play out more times than I care to remember. Read More… Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta Chief Medical Correspondent With the Olympics coming up, there is a lot of concern surrounding the pollution. As the athletes have started to arrive, many of them are wearing masks. They say it is to protect themselves, whereas some in the Chinese government say it is only to be insulting. Here are a few things to consider. According to a new study out of Northwestern University, the level of particulate matter in the air in Chicago is 20 micrograms/m3. That probably means nothing to you, other than telling you the average level of pollution of a big U.S. city. Here is what caught my eye. The level of particulate matter in Beijing: 260 micrograms/m3 — 13 times as much as Chicago. (See Study) It is well known that high levels of particulate matter can cause inflammation in the lungs, and that a protein called Interleukin 6 is released in response. The end result may be that your blood gets a little stickier and thicker. That can cause problems such as heart attacks or strokes, especially in those with a pre-existing history. Read more… Less

Dr. Michael DeBakey Dr. Sanjay Gupta Chief Medical Correspondent If you mention Michael DeBakey’s name to just about any surgeon in the country, you are likely to get a colorful story. Called a “rock star,” and the greatest surgeon of the 20th century, Dr. DeBakey no doubt had a profound influence on the world of medicine. He saved tens of thousands of lives, created the modern MASH unit, and helped found the National Library of Medicine. On a personal note, it was Michael DeBakey who pioneered the coronary artery bypass procedure to prevent heart attacks, which is the reason my own father is with me today and doing so well. More recently, Debakey in his 90s developed a ventricular assist device. It is an incredible machine that is used to give patients with heart failure a little boost while they are waiting for a transplant. If you ask him where he got so much life inspiration, he will tell you he read a new book at least once a week, and in his case it was the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He read it cover to cover. While he was a professor and a “maestro,” it turns out he was also an eternal student… Read more… Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent It’s a curse. It is something I have dealt with as far back as I can remember. And, now I even see it in my 16-month-old daughter. In fact, I was the first to diagnose the reason she absolutely hates riding in her car seat for long rides. Like me, she has what doctors will call a mismatch of her sensory system. Others know it as motion sickness. Awful motion sickness. My first clue was that the video player we thought might help, really made things worse. Have her look out the window and even suck on a little ginger, and she is a new baby. You may know the feeling. Your heart starts to race, you feel queasy and you start to sweat. It is one of the worst things, and it is often hard to get any relief. The problem is that there is a mismatch between your eyes and your inner ear. If you are in a car, your ear knows you are moving, but unless your eyes are being given constant inputs that confirm that movement, the process of feeling “out of sorts” starts to occur. If you happen to be looking down and reading a book or turning around and looking into the back seat to soothe an upset baby, it gets even worse. For my daughter, looking at a stationary movie picture while her ears are telling us we are barreling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour proves to be just too much. ( Watch Video ) The treatments are fairly simple… keep reading Less

Hey Bloggers, The Planet in Peril team just sent us a vlog straight from the jungles of Cameroon… Conditions can get pretty rough out in the jungle, and water can be hard to come by. On desparate situations though, you can always rely on the vines to give you some much needed hydration as Dr. Sanjay Gupta shows us. Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta Chief Medical Correspondent BIO In a small town called Akonolinga, which is approximately an hour outside Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, there is a strange disease going around that primarily affects children. It starts as an ulcer on the skin that quickly spreads. Untreated, it can start to affect the bones and eventually even get into the bloodstream. If it gets to that point, there is little that can be done, and the child will often succumb to the disease. They try everything in this small village town to not let it get to that bad. They scrape away the skin, cutting out the diseased areas. They give injections of various medicines, and they keep people in hospitals for months. I met a young boy named Naturale, who had to have his left arm amputated at the shoulder. I almost cried when I met him. By the time he came into see a doctor, the disease was too far gone, his bones literally crumbling apart. As I visited the clinic, I learned they had given this disease a name: Buruli. I also learned something that stunned me — what many in this town believe is the origin of Buruli. Witchcraft. It goes like this — as a punishment for taking something or some other trivial thing, these children had been cursed by witches and sorcerers living in the nearby areas. Take someone else’s mango for example, and soon after the child will get an ulcer. In Naturale’s case, he was born out of wedlock, and the witches in the area thought it would be better if he were dead. I was told they cursed him with a particularly severe infection, and he barely survived. Now he stays at the hospital trying to shield himself from the wickedness that put him there in the first place. Now, if you think what you are reading is too far fetched, you may be interested to know I sat down with an educated medical anthropologist with her PHD, named Karen Saylors, who explained all of this to me. Along with researchers associated with Johns Hopkins, they are studying the origins of Buruli. Karen introduced me to traditional healers, who knew all about placing a hex on someone and even how to cure the disease with some herbs and a piece of bark. While Karen and her colleagues don’t really buy into the idea of witchcraft, they also recognize what a widespread belief it really is here. Instead, Karen has busied herself studying the possibility that Buruli may in fact be a microbacteria that is zoonotic, spread from animal to human. As it has many similarities to a staph infection, which can cause flesh to be ulcerated and “eaten” appearing, the doctors have started using powerful antibiotics with good success. Karen has even studied the particular traditional medicine herbs, which are often effective. What she found was that particular plant had some of the same ingredients found in streptomycin, an antibiotic. As a doctor, it was amazing to see this previously unrecorded disease slowly become deciphered. It was also a fascinating glimpse into the very real connection between animals, plants and humans. Not only is the Buruli causing pathogen likely from an animal, but the medication used to treat it is from a local plant. And, if we look deep enough, we find this is in fact the case with many diseases. Today, I will be in the wilderness of DRC, specifically a village called Lodja. We will be visiting a monkeypox surveillance clinic. I promise to report back on how the locals here are working to contain the virus so it doesn’t spread around the world. I can’t help be struck by the fact that we are in the middle of a very strong interface between man and animal. It has been here for millions of years, but it is only now that we are starting to understand its awesome culture, power and possible danger. Less

Editor’s Note: This blog (and vlog) was brought to you from the southern jungles of Cameroon. Dr. Sanjay Gupta Chief Medical Correspondent BIO Today I did something I am unlikely to ever do again in my life. For eight hours, I trekked through a jungle in southern Cameroon. Now, I have been on hikes before, but this was unlike anything I ever experienced. As soon as we entered the jungle with a local hunter named Dede Donddong, we were immersed in the feel of the jungle. You could immediately hear the sound of Hornbills and an African Gray Parrot in the distance. It was loud and melodious. You could also feel the intense heat and humidity uniquely experienced in a jungle – within seconds, we were drenched. You could smell the centuries of foliage mixed with the live scent of animals and everything around us was green, almost unimaginably thick. I didn’t know how we would even make our way through the jungle, as there wasn’t a path that I could immediately see. Eddie smiled and wielded a machete. He started a path and began our 8 hour journey. For us, we were in pursuit of a story for Planet in Peril: Battle Lines, looking at the bushmeat trade and the reliance of locals on these animals for protein. For Dede, it was a mandatory trip to find some sort of bush animal, so that his family might eat that night. As we left, his three kids, two parents, his wife, and three neighbors bid him farewell and good luck. They were all hoping he would come home with something, really anything. But, his kids told us their favorite bushmeat was porcupine. Yes, porcupine. Along with snakes, rodents, primates, antelope and many other animals, they are collectively referred to as “bushmeat”. We learned about the concerns of a bushmeat crisis in western and central Africa. According to some estimates, 4.5 million tons of bushmeat was extracted from the Congo basin last year, putting a few animals on the endangered list, and a few others on the protected status list. In fact, the ape population in 96% of protected areas is declining. Within the next 10-50 years, the apes face extinction. Excessive hunting, along with deforestation is a large part of the problem. There is no question Dede alone is not to blame. And, don’t forget, his family is dependent on his ability to hunt and bring bushmeat back to the village. Buying food from larger villages is simply not an option as the towns are too far away and the food is too expensive. What we saw today was a part of the daily life and culture for so many living in the jungle. Still, the bushmeat crisis appears to be real, with no evidence of slowing down. This is one reality of the food crisis in central Africa. Oh, and by the way, Dede brought home a porcupine today and his kids were happy. You can read about this and other Planet in Peril stories here. Less

Some of the deadliest viruses in the world come from this 'Bush Meat', but it still remains a necessary part of the diet in Cameroon. Dr. Sanjay Gupta Chief Medical Correspondent This week, I am in Cameroon investigating a piece for the CNN documentary “ Planet in Peril: Battle Lines. ” I am writing this from a small village called Nyabissan. Don’t bother trying to find it on a map. It is in the heart of the jungle and one of the more remote places I have ever been. In fact, you are reading this blog because Neil Hallsworth, our camera man, was able to point a small, portable satellite dish in the sky and get a signal and then send this piece along with some of the video we shot back to Atlanta. We picked this place because it is a hot spot in the world of viruses. It turns out there is a constant exchange of viruses here between animals and humans. There is a very cozy relationship here between humans and animals, such as rodents, snakes, mammals and other primates. Just today, we passed two men who had killed an enormous viper, another hunter with a pangolin (also known as a scaly anteater) and two young kids with two dead monkeys. While this “Bush Meat” represents a necessary part of the diet, it can sometimes be a problem. Read the rest of the blog… Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent As a doctor, I have never reviewed medical records quite the way I did today. Senator McCain’s staff gathered a handful of reporters to Fountain Hills, Arizona at a small hotel. It was sort of a strange day. For starters, it was raining today, and from what they tell me, it hardly ever rains here in May. Then, after days of getting specific rules and regulations about how exactly this would work, the McCain staff decided to leak the records ahead of time to the Associated Press. Nice. Gather reporters from all over the country on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend for a super secret document release, and then leak them beforehand. Needless to say, a few of the reporters were pretty frosted. Read the rest of Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s report here. Less

Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent I am one of those people who is on his cell phone all the time. Between the hospital and my job as a reporter, I get a lot of calls, especially when I am on the road. So, like many people, I pay attention when I read new studies about cell phones and possible health effects. The good news is that most of the studies out there have shown no reason to worry. In fact one study out of Denmark of 52,000 cell phone users who’d used cells for 10 plus years found the incidence of tumors was even less than the general population. The cell phone industry is quick to point out that “the overwhelming majority of studies show wireless phones do not pose a health risk.” So, what to make of the fact that Dr. Vini Khurana out of Australia and Dr. Keith Black out of Los Angeles, who are both neurosurgeons, have voiced concerns about cell phones and brain cancer? And, just today, there is a new study of cell phones and pregnant women. That study found women who used cell phone two to three times a day while pregnant had children that were 54 percent more likely to develop ADHD and other behavioral problems. And, if those children used cell phones before age 7, they were 18 percent more likely to develop ADHD. (Watch Dr. Gupta’s report here) Read full story Less

Sanjay Gupta CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Last week, I sat down with Dr. Bernadine Healy at CNN’s Women’s Health Summit in New York City. She is a remarkable person who has been the “first” at many things, including the first woman to head the National Institutes of Health. We talked about many things, including the persistent brain fog patients and their doctors have when it comes to heart disease and women. Everyone should know that heart disease is the biggest killer of women; in fact heart disease kills ten times as many women as breast cancer. What I wanted to blog about today, though, is her response to a question I asked about autism. She had written a column about the topic in U.S. News and World Report and told me she believes the link between vaccines and autism is “biologically plausible.” Of course, that spurred several more questions from me (click here to watch). Healy went on to say that many in the scientific world have been quick to dismiss the concerns of parents and have not conducted the necessary studies of causation to definitively rule out a vaccine/autism link. Healy’s comments have become a lightning rod in the medical community - with an infectious disease expert with the American Academy of Pediatrics calling CNN twice yesterday to express concern parents will misconstrue Healy’s comments and stop get their kids vaccinated - and that vaccines save lives. Read full story Less

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is on assignment in Lima, Peru.  Watch his behind-the-scenes look at how the country is dealing with a looming food crisis. How has the rising cost of food affected you? Less