Ice cream helps to identify serious disease

the TV channel “Russia 1” the doctor Alexander Myasnikov told the story of his medical practice, when the ice cream helped to identify the patient’s serious illness.

the Patient Myasnikov, earlier in survivors of open-heart surgery, complained of the disruptions of the heart. Since the patient was diagnosed with diabetes with high cholesterol and problems with the thyroid gland, the right to determine the cause of the onset of angina was not easy. And related complaints were serious – people could not swallow, especially cold food. For example, ice cream.

“the First thing that came to mind is cancer. We began to examine the patient. And literally in the first blood test we found that the hemoglobin of the patient was reduced to 9.5, that is, we discovered he had anemia that only underlines and confirms our thoughts about the cancer”.

Anemia is decreased level of hemoglobin in the blood, special blood cells, which carry oxygen. Often think that anemia is caused by iron deficiency in the diet, but sometimes anemia warns about the terrible problem of internal bleeding. They can occur in stomach cancer, bowel cancer or cancer of the uterus. In this case, anemia is a sign of cancer. But how to understand, Oncology or just iron deficiency? What are the blood counts need to know in order not to miss serious disease?

the butchers advised me to remember 3 letters of blood: Latin MCV, represents the average volume of red blood cells. “MCV is low – less than 80, or high – greater than 100. If you have a low hemoglobin, it is considered one of the three options, the classic iron-deficiency anemia: lack of vitamin B12 or foliat folic acid, or a number of other problems, including decreased thyroid function.

Myasnikova in a patient with impaired swallowing ice cream, cold water, drinks revealed moderate anemia with elevated MCV: "We begin to wonder, because we made a gastroscopy and found nothing. We make him a colonoscopy and found nothing. We examine his liver, pancreas, lungs, we explore, we’re doing a spiral scan, but find no traces of cancer. But what we encounter? Certain biochemical changes – slightly elevated bilirubin and some enzymes. And that’s exactly the symptom that he it responds to cold, brought us to believe in one very specific disease, the so-called “cold agglutinin disease”, when temperature decreases, the body begins to produce antibodies to red blood cells, which destroy them leading to anemia.”

Probing questions about how the patient tolerates the cold helped to make an accurate diagnosis. The patient said that he always has a red nose in the cold, “the impression that I’m an alcoholic, I’m sorry, I have red cheeks”. It turned out that there is and Raynaud’s phenomenon with cold cyanotic fingers.

“And now we had a diagnosis. And immediately became much appreciated. The patient was prescribed a medication which is given on the deactivation of these antibodies and recommended not to go out in the cold” – resulted in a positive outcome of this medical history butchers.

Earlier, he told about the so-called “protivoallergichesky diets” and listed products, limiting the development of cancer.