chemistry

Burning Mouth & Pepto Lips – Episode 107

 in Podcasts  tagged bismuth / burning / chemistry / lips / mouth / Pepto-Bismol / syndrome / tongue / upset stomach by

An image of black lips, partially open to show some of the top and bottom teeth. Maybe the person has a burning mouth, or just had too much Pepto!

 

Burning Mouth Syndrome

Burning Mouth Syndrome is defined as a burning sensation with no underlying cause.  It may include dry mouth sensations with no true symptoms of dry mouth.  BMS is accompanied by unremitting burning or pain but no mucosal changes or signs of injury or swelling.

3 Categories

  • Increases throughout the day after waking
  • Stays the same morning, during the day, and at night
  • Has no pattern

Common Symptoms

  • Bilateral pain of the tongue
  • Chronic pain labeled as moderate to severe, or a 6-10 on the pain scale.
  • Worsened by talking, stress, fatigue, or hot, spicy, or acidic foods.

Subjective Descriptions

  • Dry mouth
  • Change in ability to taste
  • Accompanied by a headache
  • Decreased appetite
  • Improved by cold foods or drinks

Those who suffer from BMS may see temporary relief with topical analgesics (i.e. lidocaine or benzocaine) but see no improvement from systemic medications.  Fifty percent of the cases have no apparent cause but do have some correlation with depression.  This is a case of “the chicken or the egg”.  Are people with depression more likely to have symptoms of BMS?  Or are people with BMS more likely to become depressed?

Before someone can be said to have Burning Mouth Syndrome, many other issues must be ruled out.

  • Deficiencies (iron, folate, B vitamins, zinc)
  • Dry mouth
  • Nerve damage
  • Hypothyroidism
  • Type 2 Diabetes
  • Nocturnal habits (clenching, grinding, tongue-thrusting)
  • Infection (thrush, herpes, HIV)
  • A hiatal hernia (GERD)
  • Medications (ACE inhibitors, anticholinergics)
  • Myeloma (a blood cancer involving plasma cells)

Pepto Lips

Pepto-Bismol, aka Bismuth subsalicylate, has been used for decades for a variety of stomach complaints.

Bismuth is a good binder of toxins, in a similar way that carbon is in activated charcoal.  And yes, bismuth is one of those elements on the periodic table.  Subsacylate activates into salicylic acid (related to aspirin) and works to decrease inflammation of the gastric lining.

When bismuth binds with sulfur that is naturally in your saliva, it becomes bismuth sulfide, which has a black color and can stain your tongues and lips temporarily.  Pepto overuse is the obvious cause of black lips.

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Music Credits: Up In My Jam (All Of A Sudden) by – Kubbi https://soundcloud.com/kubbiCreative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b…Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/tDexBj46oNI

When I Was A Little Girl…My Story

 in Blog  tagged cheerleader / chemistry / girl / growing up / medicine / pharmacist / story / teacher by

My story starts like this…

When I was a little girl…

Don’t freak out, this is not my whole life’s story.
When I was a little girl, I told everyone that I wanted to be a cheerleader when I grew up. Later, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to be a teacher, like my mom (*Hi Mom!*). That was my career of choice until my favorite Jewish Physics teacher from New Jersey, with one leg shorter than the other, and a love for hiking pointed me in the direction of medicine. I ruled out every option that involved large amounts of blood and high risks of smelling people’s bath breath and settled on being a Pharmacist. And this is the trajectory I’ve been on ever since.

Yet something was missing from my story…

So, I ask myself “Is it possible to be a cheerleader, a teacher, AND a pharmacist?”
That is how the Pharmacist Answers Podcast was born. It is a place that I can take my expertise as a pharmacist, teach it to you, and cheer you on to independent and collaborative decision-making in your own health (rather than the amorphous entity we call Healthcare or Big Pharma making those decisions for you)!
Visit my Patreon page to see how you can help support this dream of mine and get another chapter of why The Pharmacist Answers Podcast is here!

Pre-Pharmacy Existential Crisis

 in Blog  tagged biology / chemistry / ethics / evolution / health / pre-pharmacy / relationships by

Day 1

When I got accepted into college and declared my major as Pre-Pharmacy, the next step was to meet with an advisor and register for my classes. The typical advice for Pre-Pharmacy was to be assigned to the Biology department. It was also recommended to register for 18 credit hours per semester to complete the Pre-Pharmacy requirements in the coveted 2 years. So, there I was, a Pre-Pharmacy Biology student with 18 credit hours on her schedule. This included Bio 1101 plus lab, Chem 1101 plus lab, English Composition 1101, some freshman intro orientation course, World History, and Philosophy & Ethics. Awesome!
The year started off with a bang!  Chem 1101 was a little review from the high school chemistry I took, and then much more. Bio 1101 was a review of the Hierarchy of Life and then dove straight into evolutionary taxonomic Latin.  Literally, I was learning Latin!  The only other stunner was Philosophy & Ethics. Here I was, brought up in the Christian faith, and the best advice I got regarding my spiritual survival of university-level Evolution and Philosophy & Ethics was “learn just what you need for the test and ignore the rest”. Oh great!

Crisis Ensues

So, at 18 years old, I have my first major existential crisis.  A 2-pronged crisis regarding the battle between humans’ philosophy of life and my belief in spirituality, as well as the evolution of life and my belief in Creation. This results in several C’s on my transcript (which caused another, albeit slightly less severe crisis).
When I knew there was no recovering of my grades, I sat in my advisor’s office, distraught and holding my head in my hands. I remember saying “all of this taxonomy means nothing to me on the path to becoming a Pharmacist”. In the Biology department, this path was leading me to classes like Botany and Evolutionary Biology. He simply nodded, and said, “what if you moved to the chemistry department?” “What?! Change departments? Pre-Pharmacy Chemistry? That’s a thing?!?! Why did nobody tell me that was a thing?!?! Where do I have to sign????”. We filled out the “Change of Major” form to get me to the Chemistry department and he happily signed off as my former advisor.

A Clear Path

When 2nd-semester registration opened, I met with my new advisor – a Chemistry professor. I still had 16 hours of credit hours.  Bio 1102 plus lab, Chem 1102 plus lab, English Composition 1102, PE, and Spanish were ahead of me. The weight was lifted because I could finally finish Biology and “learn just what I needed for the test”. This semester’s transcript has many more A’s and B’s on it and my path to Pharmacy was much more clear.  I knew the future held stops by Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics, and Physiology on the map.
Why did this change from Biology to Chemistry make such a big difference? Part of it was because my original plan was to graduate with a Bachelor’s degree before I went to Pharmacy School. (That plan changed, but that’s a story for a different day.) Another part of it was because Chemistry was the first science that allowed me to reconcile science with my faith on a scale that I was comfortable without another soap opera-worthy existential crisis.

So what’s the point of this story?

You have to find what works. What fits with your natural bent and the values and beliefs that are planted so deep inside of you that nothing that you can perceive could remove them from you. If you approach your health and your healthcare relationships and decisions in this way, you will find what works for you.

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How to Become a Pharmacist

 in Blog  tagged anatomy / board exam / chemistry / license / math / pharmacist / pharmacy school by

How did you become a pharmacist?  How many years did you have to go to school?  Was it hard?  Do you have to be good at math? I get asked all the time, whether at the pharmacy counter, on Facebook, or just out and about in town.

What does it take to be a Pharmacist?

  1. Decide you want to be a pharmacist.
  2. Go to college and make Pre-Pharmacy your area of focus.
  3. Take lots of chemistry, biology, anatomy, and physics. Take a little history, literature, and speech communications, and probably some PE…
  4. Research and apply to Pharmacy Schools.
  5. Take the PCAT (only after taking Organic Chemistry).
  6. Get invited for an interview.  Dress nice, comb your hair, practice good eye contact, and not saying “um, like” so much.
  7. Get accepted! *You don’t have to graduate with a degree before starting Pharmacy School*
  8. Start Pharmacy school. Move across town or across the country, if necessary.
  9. Study your brains out.
  10. Gain experience in different pharmacy settings through practical rotations and getting a job in a pharmacy.
  11. Pass all your classes (even if just barely).
  12. Graduate and get called Doctor.
  13. Study your brains out some more.
  14. Take a 3-hour test called the NAPLEX (North American Pharmacy Licensure Examination).
  15. Take a slightly shorter test called the MPJE (Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Exam) – aka Pharmacy Law.
  16. Pass your board exams and become a licensed Pharmacist.
  17. Start work.  *Somewhere between your last year of school and passing your exams you should have applied for and accepted a job*

This is not the only path to becoming a pharmacist.  It is just one option, the straightest option.  You can take many other paths to become a pharmacist, and any path you choose is going to give you personalized experiences and a unique story.

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