Vomiting

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a drug to treat the severe nausea and vomiting that some women experience during early pregnancy. The Canadian-made medication will be marketed as Diclegis. It is the only prescription medication approved for pregnant women experiencing "morning sickness" that does not go away with a bland diet of small meals that are low in fat. Diclegis was once known and marketed in the United States as Bendectin and taken by as many as one in 10 pregnant women.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved a drug to treat the severe nausea and vomiting that some women experience during early pregnancy. The Canadian-made medication will be marketed as Diclegis. It is the only prescription medication approved for pregnant women experiencing "morning sickness" that does not go away with a bland diet of small meals that are low in fat. Diclegis was once known and marketed in the United States as Bendectin and taken by as many as one in 10 pregnant women.

One night in 2009, during a drunken conversation, Jacqueline Viens said her father told her why her stepmother had recently vanished. Dawn Viens had been needling him and he just wanted to sleep, Jacqueline Viens recalled her father saying. He'd tried barricading their bedroom door with a dresser to keep his wife out. When that didn't work, David Viens tied her up and taped her mouth, according to his daughter. The next morning, Dawn Viens was dead. Jacqueline Viens said her father told her that his wife had choked on her own vomit.

I was so pleased to read that doctors can no longer be accountable for suggesting marijuana use to patients when needed ("Medical Pot Use Given a Boost," Oct. 30). I just finished a year of treatments for breast cancer. While in chemotherapy treatment, nothing could control my severe nausea and vomiting. I was prescribed the so-called best prescription drug: Zofran. I even had it in IV form. After being so weak from vomiting that I didn't have enough strength to crawl back into bed, I tried marijuana following my fourth chemo treatment.

As a psychologist who specializes in and teaches a university course on the psychology of modern music, I appreciate Steve Hochman's review of Neil Young's "Are You Passionate?" (April 7). The cathartic value of music can't be valued enough in this age of new rage. But there's a marked difference between vomiting up emotions like the band Disturbed does so disturbingly, or delivering those same bottled-up emotions with both grit and grace. When it comes to the latter, Neil Young is king.

A small college is shutting down for several days after 100 students and staff members were sickened by a virus that causes a type of stomach flu. Students and faculty have been afflicted with severe nausea and vomiting at Babson College in Wellesley, west of Boston. State Department of Public Health spokesman Tom Lyons says the norovirus is "miserable" but isn't life-threatening. He says most people get better after a few days. The college is expected to be closed until at least Wednesday while campus buildings are cleaned.

Re "Movies Ad Nauseam" (by Amy Wallace, May 12): If any Hollywood big shots are reading this, here's a word to the wise: The last thing people want or need is more on-screen vomiting. Believe me, movie audiences are quite capable of leaping the gap from the character who looks sickened to his or her off-screen retching, and figuring out what exactly is happening, without your having to show us every last viscous drop. What's next, on-screen defecation? Of course, sometimes in-your-face heaving serves a legitimate artistic purpose, as did Linda Blair's memorable pea soup geyser in "The Exorcist."

REGARDING writer Caitlin Flanagan ["The Mother Lode," by Gina Piccalo, April 12], the happy housewife: That snickering sound you hear is 100,000 working moms gleefully laughing at the thought of Flanagan embarking on her book tour. As soon as she gets on the plane, the family gerbil will die, the 8-year-old twins will come down with fever and vomiting, the plumbing will spring a leak and the husband will score a business trip, all of which will require that housewife Flanagan cancel the book tour and return home on the very next flight.

A new vaccine to prevent the potentially deadly whooping cough is effective in 71% of cases and produced no side effects, according to a study of 3,450 Swedish children. published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, causes a severe cough that lasts for about six weeks and can result in vomiting, choking, an inability to breathe and injury to the brain due to lack of oxygen. The vaccine used in the Swedish study is awaiting approval for use by the Food and Drug Administration.

"Mercy" NBC 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 10 Episode: "I'm Fine" The premise: Nurse Chloe Payne ( Michelle Trachtenberg) is taking care of Molly, an 11-year-old who has been admitted to Mercy Hospital with right upper-quadrant abdominal pain and intractable vomiting. When Molly suddenly develops a heart arrhythmia (ventricular tachycardia), Dr. Joe Briggs ( James Van Der Beek), the hospital's ICU chief, shocks Molly back into a normal rhythm with a defibrillator.

. -- More than 50 followers of spiritual guru James Arthur Ray had endured five days of fasting, sleep-deprivation and mind-altering breathing exercises when he led them into a sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona. People were vomiting in the stifling heat, gasping for air and lying lifeless on the floor, according to participant Beverley Bunn. One man was burned when he crawled into hot rocks, seemingly unaware of what he was doing, she said. "These people, including myself, were really just searching for a better way to live and a better life," she said.

Chemotherapy could soon become less grueling. Simply adding about half a teaspoon of ginger to food in the days before, during and after chemotherapy can reduce the often-debilitating side effects of nausea and vomiting, a large, randomized clinical trial has found. And a newer type of anti-nausea drug, when added to standard medications, can help prevent such side effects as well.

Elizabeth Edwards writes in a memoir being published this month that news of her husband's affair made her vomit in a bathroom. "I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up," Edwards, 59, writes in her book, "Resilience." Edwards says her husband, John, admitted the betrayal just days after declaring in 2006 that he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination. She says she wanted him to drop out to protect the family from media scrutiny, but stood by his side anyway.

A small college is shutting down for several days after 100 students and staff members were sickened by a virus that causes a type of stomach flu. Students and faculty have been afflicted with severe nausea and vomiting at Babson College in Wellesley, west of Boston. State Department of Public Health spokesman Tom Lyons says the norovirus is "miserable" but isn't life-threatening. He says most people get better after a few days. The college is expected to be closed until at least Wednesday while campus buildings are cleaned.

If you throw up, you get a free T-shirt. But that was little consolation to Pam Wood, 58, as she was about to roll down a hill while strapped to the inside wall of a large plastic ball: up and down, left and right, round and round, tumbling like clothes in the dryer. Beside her grandchildren at the bottom of the hill, Wood had been the picture of bravery. But at the top, she began to doubt. "Boy, it seems a lot shorter looking up than down," she said.

"Mercy" NBC 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 10 Episode: "I'm Fine" The premise: Nurse Chloe Payne ( Michelle Trachtenberg) is taking care of Molly, an 11-year-old who has been admitted to Mercy Hospital with right upper-quadrant abdominal pain and intractable vomiting. When Molly suddenly develops a heart arrhythmia (ventricular tachycardia), Dr. Joe Briggs ( James Van Der Beek), the hospital's ICU chief, shocks Molly back into a normal rhythm with a defibrillator.

Watching Alzheimer's disease steal away the memory, talents and very selves of its victims is hard enough for the people who love them. Now, a new pill formulated by a respected pharmaceutical company and approved by the Food and Drug Administration will do little to help most patients and will bring misery to some, say two medical investigators. The drug, Aricept 23 mg, is no more effective on the whole than the disappointing ones already on the market - but is more likely to cause gastrointestinal problems, wrote Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical College in an article published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ. The new formulation was devised to serve commercial objectives, they say, and was approved despite a poor showing in company-sponsored tests.

REGARDING writer Caitlin Flanagan ["The Mother Lode," by Gina Piccalo, April 12], the happy housewife: That snickering sound you hear is 100,000 working moms gleefully laughing at the thought of Flanagan embarking on her book tour. As soon as she gets on the plane, the family gerbil will die, the 8-year-old twins will come down with fever and vomiting, the plumbing will spring a leak and the husband will score a business trip, all of which will require that housewife Flanagan cancel the book tour and return home on the very next flight.

Five miles over the Gulf of Mexico, a pilot gunned the engines of a turbojet and rocketed up at more than 50 degrees, steeper than the face of Mt. Everest. Anu Bhargava and Michael Scott, two recent Purdue University graduates, had been lying on the floor of the fuselage. Now they were pinned there. I was too. The force of the climb pooled the blood in our legs, pulled our cheeks toward the floor and made us feel as if our stomachs were mashed against our spines. We couldn't have been happier.