My wife has been kidding me about my memory for as long as I can remember. This could go back more than 17 years, but I can’t be sure. The good news is that I have never had a photographic memory. Not even close. She, on the other hand, remembers things. She always has, always will.

It’s been an egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk kind of summer here even for the nation’s capital, but the other day, we got a refreshing break as the temperature mercifully stayed in the 80s. But when I got out of the car and hit the black asphalt in the parking lot of a local shopping center, I swear the temperature jumped 10 degrees. ...

What exactly is the deal with green chili peppers? They totally confuse me. I like Mexican food very much, but I have a problem with those green chilies. One time I eat them and they are red hot. Another time they are not. I never like super-hot foods because to me the heat masks the flavor. So I have a need-to-know rule when I order food in general.

I have a kind of funny relationship with fish. So far, I’ve never met one I didn’t like for dinner. On the other hand, I have never had much patience to spend the day on the water, trying to catch one. Until I was about 13, though, I tried. ...

I have very strong feelings about Jell-O®. I have had them since I was a child.  I like virtually all of the flavors but one: green. I find artificial green flavor in just about any food or candy is, well, too artificial. To me, it just doesn’t come close to emulating the taste of lime. Yellow, red or orange Jell-O®, on the other hand, is flavorful.

My first memory of eating eggs as a child is not a happy one: I clearly remember gagging on them. To persuade me to eat soft-boiled eggs, my parents would add some pieces of toast and serve the mixture to me in a brightly-colored egg cup. I don’t know if they sell these cups today, but we still have one at home, though we never use it. I forced myself to eat some of this concoction, but it was never a favorite of mine.

The nation’s commercial airlines deserve a little credit for consistently carrying out their jobs. Rain or shine, their 35,000 daily flights ferry people of all kinds — the college graduate, the business executive, the vacationer — throughout the country and around the world.

It’s uncommon for research to emerge that instantly connects to everyday people while also challenging conventional wisdom. A new study in ACS’ bi-weekly ...

Please hurry! Please hurry! Time is running out. In about two weeks I will once again become a human pincushion and I would love to avoid the needle. You are my only hope, you scientists at the University of Minnesota. Without you, on June 2 I will settle into the dentist’s chair and get my full dose of topical anesthesia –– right in the cheek and gums when I have my first tooth pulled to make way for a dental implant.

How can these scientists help me? They have just announced a breakthrough: An anesthesia inhaler that could one day replace that needle.

I know it’s impossible that the device could miraculously make it into the health care delivery system, in the next two weeks, but you can’t blame me for dreaming…

Scientists are reporting evidence that a common local anesthetic, when administered to the nose as nose drops or a nasal spray, travels through the main nerve in the face and collects in high concentrations in the teeth, jaw, and structures of the mouth.

The discovery could lead to a new generation of intranasal drugs for noninvasive treatment for dental pain, migraine, and other conditions, the scientists suggest in American Chemical Society’s bi-monthly journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. The article is scheduled for the journal’s May-June issue.

William H. Frey II, Ph.D., and colleagues note that drugs administered to the nose travel along nerves and go directly to the brain. One of those nerves is the trigeminal nerve, which brings feelings to the face, nose and mouth. Until now, however, scientists never checked to see whether intranasal drugs passing along that nerve might reach the teeth, gums and other areas of the face and mouth to reduce pain sensations in the face and mouth.   

Neil Johnson, working in the labs of Frey and Leah R. Hanson, Ph.D., at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minn., found that lidocaine or Xylocaine, sprayed into the noses of laboratory rats, quickly traveled down the trigeminal nerve and collected in their teeth, jaws, and mouths at levels 20 times higher than in the blood or brain. The approach could provide a more effective and targeted method for treating dental pain/anxiety, trigeminal neuralgia (severe facial pain), migraine, and other conditions, the scientists say.

To read more about this innovation, go to painless.     

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