Warts

BurpsWhy do you burp after drinking soda pop?Connie Fu` Centerville, OhioThere are two reasons. We swallow air every time we swallow food or drink. The fizz in soda pop is the gas carbon dioxide. Pop releases lots of it when it hits the rough surface of your stomach. This air and fizz gas have to get out. So you burp.My favorite doll's...Hair won't brush or comb. Why is that?Brittney DawsonBaltimore, MarylandDolls can be like living things to us. But someone actually made your doll, probably in a factory.

With two outs in yesterday's eighth inning the verdict was obvious.A Camden Yards crowd of 43,930 rose to embrace Mike Mussina, usually allergic to public displays of emotion. This time, as he yielded the mound to Arthur Rhodes, Mussina returned the deafening gesture with a wave of his right hand, the same hand that forced him to the disabled list April 17 because of a ruptured wart.The same hand that had just locked down the Minnesota Twins in a 2-0 win.The same hand that apparently holds a veteran team's confidence to a greater extent than previously known.

You've read this stuff before. Young man has a talent, struggles to get fame and recognition, hits the big time, uses the obscene amount of money he's making to indulge his insatiable appetite for drugs and women, and, to no one's surprise, self-destructs.Sam Kinison was the son of a minister who turned from preaching religion to preaching (actually screaming) comedy. His signature "Oh! OHHHHHHHHH!" became the battle cry for many.When I first saw Sam Kinison on an HBO special, I found him to be funny, in a manic kind of way. I still have his first album, "Louder Than Hell."

Infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV) is becoming an epidemic. Reports indicate that about 170,000 Americans sought help for genital warts in 1966, and by 1984 this number had climbed to 1.15 million -- an almost seven-fold increase.Although the rapid increase in this sexually transmitted infection is relatively recent, medical interest in warts is not. The infectious nature of human warts has been known since 1907.Over the last 50 years, we've learned that papillomaviruses are a family of viruses that cause warts at various sites in the body.

According to his latest biographer, H. G. Wells ought to have been a prophet without honor in his own land -- or any other.Michael Coren has little good to say of Wells, who dominated British letters in the early decades of this century with novelistic visions of a brave new tomorrow. The title of this book, "The Invisible Man" (borrowed from one of Wells' novels), is meant to suggest that Mr. Coren has gotten the goods on a subject who hitherto managed to hide his sins.In fact, no one else left such a paper trail of his faults as did Wells, who died in 1946 just short of his 80th birthday.

Our 9-year-old has two warts on his left hand. They've been there for more than a year, but he didn't seem to mind till now. Since they didn't seem to worry him, we ignored them, assuming they'd go away eventually. What should we do now?Your predicament is not unusual. Warts are common in school-age children. They are caused by a type of virus that infects skin cells and makes them overgrow in size. Most people develop immunity to the viruses after a period of time, and the warts go away.

THE LATEST figures regarding American college an university students majoring in history are nothing to write home about. In recent years history has been given the academic cold shoulder. Bachelor's degrees awarded in history fell from 43,386 in 1970 to 16,048 in 1985, master's degrees from 5,049 to 1,921, doctorates from 1,091 to 543.The most recent data covering the 1988-89 academic year show that undergraduate and master's degrees have increased modestly, but doctorates are at their lowest point in recent history, leaving the American Historical Association not only puzzled but concerned.

Finding truth in advertisingIn the Food and Drug Administration's first victory against deceptive labeling, Kraft General Foods has agreed to pull the "90 percent fat-free" claims pasted across some of its product boxes. It's a meaningless claim. As the FDA points out, all it means is that 90 percent of a product's weight is fat-free. But many foods contain lots of water, a rather heavy substance. So a food can be 90 percent fat-free by weight and still get 90 percent of its calories from fat. The FDA has also warned that companies that continue to slap a "cholesterol-free" label on products containing vegetable oils, like cookies and crackers, will be penalized.

AS LONG AS NOTHING HAPPENS, NOTHING WILL. By Zhang Jie. Translated by Gladys Yang, Deborah J. Leonard and Zhang Andong. Grove Weidenfeld. 196 pages. $18.95. CHINA achieved material gains in the 1980s. But it also became a society adrift. In unchaining itself from the rigid doctrines of Chairman Mao Zedong, it seemed also to break loose from all its moral and philosophical anchors. Chinese no longer believed in their old revolutionary myths, but found no new ones to replace them.That disillusion, which underlay the 1989 protest movement centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, also lies at the center of Zhang Jie's "As Long as Nothing Happens, Nothing Will."

Q**My 18-year-old daughter recently became sexually active. Her first PAP smear showed "changes consistent with HPV." What does that mean for her? Whatever the doctor told her really upset her.A**It's wonderful that you and your daughter have the kind of honest relationship that made her feel comfortable enough to share with you this personal information. She will be able to use your support in the months ahead.HPV stands for Human Papilloma Virus, the kind of virus that causes warts on the hands, feet and genitals.

Question: : I started taking lisinopril for high blood pressure in December. Soon after, I developed a nagging dry cough that wouldn't stop. I have thrown up because the coughing was so bad. I also have had blood tests and chest X-rays. They all came back negative. In desperation, I went to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who told me this kind of cough is common in people my age (50) due to postnasal drip. He knew I was on lisinopril but gave me an antihistamine and cough suppressant.

Question: : You recently wrote about rubbing a cut onion on a bee sting to ease the pain. Swiss farmers have practiced this for centuries. In 1949, when I was stung by a bee right near the kneecap and was hurting badly, my farmer grandmother gave me a freshly cut onion and told me to rub it on the sting site for five minutes. After that, I could not even feel the sting or any pain anymore. I have used this remedy many times since. Answer: : Thanks for this historical perspective. Onion contains compounds that can break down the proteins in bee venom.

My daughter had several warts on her hands and was able to kill them quickly with lemon juice. She dabbed the warts with a sliver of lemon three or four times a day, and all of the warts fell off within four days. Four years ago, we heard from another mother whose daughter also had warts: "Years ago, my daughter had eight plantar warts on the bottoms of her feet. She could hardly walk, and I tried everything to no avail. "A friend of mine suggested squeezing fresh lemon juice on them three or four times a day. We had nothing to lose so we tried it. Those warts turned black and fell off so fast she was completely healed within four weeks.

Is there any way to get rid of warts other than duct tape? I have more than 20 of these ugly things on my hands, and I can't imagine trying to get on with daily life with that much duct tape on. I have had these warts frozen off, burnt off and surgically removed, but they still grow back. I am desperate, but I must say the duct tape really does not appeal to me. There are many home remedies for warts besides duct tape. We will skip some of the stranger ones. That still leaves taping a piece of banana peel to the wart, with the inside of the peel against the skin.

My husband's doctor told him to put duct tape on his foot to get rid of plantar warts. Do you just cut a small piece and place it on the wart? How long does it take? The duct-tape treatment for warts is quite controversial. The few studies that have been published provide contradictory results. Nevertheless, it is cheap, easy to use, and some readers report surprising success. Here's just one example: "I had a cluster of plantar warts treated by a dermatologist. She used a liquid nitrogen spray, which was excruciatingly painful.

We gave our 6-year-old daughter a heartburn medicine, cimetidine, for her warts. It's amazing! After months of visits to the dermatologist, the warts on the back of her hand are gone. She had up to 40 big and tiny warts, and they were starting to spread to her wrist and other hand. Finally, we gave her cimetidine daily for eight weeks, and they just disappeared. The cimetidine (Tagamet) "cure" for warts was first written about in the early 1990s. This was an unusual use; Tagamet was a popular prescription drug for ulcers at that time.

I just read your column on plantar warts. My doctor suggested I use fingernail polish, covering the wart twice a day for three weeks. I believe the wart died within 10 days of doing that treatment. It was easy and painless. Have you ever heard of this, and do you know why it worked? We've heard of using fingernail polish or instant glue on warts to "smother" them. We doubt if that is why it works, though, since the virus that causes warts doesn't need to breathe. Whatever the mechanism, this trick seems to be effective for some people.

Some of the people in my multiple sclerosis support group use the gin and raisins remedy for achy muscles and joints. Does the alcohol evaporate entirely? Would there be cause for worry if a person ate 15 or 20 raisins and was pulled over by a state trooper? The recipe for gin-soaked raisins calls for barely covering golden raisins with gin in a shallow bowl. Allow the gin to evaporate, and eat nine raisins per day. Under these conditions, there is only about a drop of alcohol in the daily dose.

What are warts and how can you get rid of them? Warts are benign growths caused by the human papilloma virus, or HPV. Because they are caused by a virus, they can spread from person to person by direct skin contact, and indirectly by coming in contact with the shed skin of a person with warts. This can happen in public showers or on pool decks. There are more than 100 types of HPV, and each type causes infection in a specific part of the body. Some strains cause "common" warts, which grow on the fingers, feet and knees.

For five years, our pink-flowered magnolia had large black ants on it. Now it also has black and white bees. The leaves are turning black. It gets full sun. Any suggestions? It's likely that your magnolia tree suffers from a scale insect. Magnolias are susceptible to three types. Look for bumps along the 1- to 2-year-old twigs of the tree. Scale insects excrete a sweet substance called honeydew. Honeydew provides an ideal substrate for black sooty mold to develop. Usually foliage blackened by sooty mold is the homeowner's first clue that there is a scale problem.