I recently received a trial of Afrin’s PureSea saline rinse for review. As with my prior reviews of the Neti Pot and Saline Rinse, I’ve tested out the odds and ends of this new product. This product is a nasal lavage device to help clear out your sinuses during a sinus infection.

The main difference between the Pure Sea rinse and its precursors is that this is a self-contained apparatus with sterilized saline. No mixing of solution packets, no heating of water, and no hassle of maintenance.

A 4oz bottle retails for $14.99, which is considerably more expensive than its competitors. It appears that the saline was purified from the Bay of Saint-Malo off the coast of France, which explains the increased manufacturing cost. The bottle itself is constructed from standard soft plastic, which is sealed at the top by a metal stopcock. The rinse includes a detachable plastic spigot that you can rinse after each use.

PureSea uses an active pressure mechanism to rinse your sinuses, much like the Sinus Rinse, by Ketan Mehta. You squeeze the bottle, and the saline squirts out the spout. The difference is that PureSea uses a narrow spout, approximately 0.5mm on my estimate. In contrast, Sinus Rinse has a relatively wide spout of maybe 5mm. With a smaller area, you get a higher velocity but a much smaller volume of flow. The higher velocity may be useful to help dislodge any dessicated mucus from your sinus, but may also be more uncomfortable.

It is clear from assessing the volume of PureSea that it is designed to clear your sinuses through a high velocity jet rather than high volume. The 4oz PureSea bottle is designed for multiple uses at qid dosing while each refill of a Neti pot (8oz) serves as a single use. Whichever modality you prefer is subjective, but I’ve found that a larger volume at a slow flow tends to be more effective in clearing nasal passages. In order for you to remove the mucus from your sinuses effectively, the mucus needs to be hydrated adequately. Read more…

medicine saline rinse, stuffy nose

Several days ago, I attended a medical meeting in which Sandeep Jauhar was a guest speaker. I had recently finished reading his book, and was excited to have the opportunity to meet an author. A real book author! As fate had allowed, I ended up getting an autographed copy of Intern, and got to be in a picture with him! I felt like the kid in Slumdog Millionaire who dived through the bottom of a latrine in order to get a celebrity’s autograph.

The irony is that if I were a medical resident at LIJ, I’d see him every day in rounds at the cardiac unit. He would have been no different from any other teaching attending, prodding residents rationalize their medical decisions. Would this guy still hold celebrity status in my book? How is this guy any different from Gerald Appel, Richard Axel, or Eric Kandel?

He isn’t. Each one of these people has his own celebrity factor.  All of them are book authors. Axel and Kandel are Nobel Prize winners, and Appel cares for high profile people. Jauhar writes guest columns for NYT and NEJM. The bottom line is that I have his autograph and photo. Coolness.

medicine life, medicine

Many airports in the U.S. offer free WiFi access, although those that do are tend to be smaller airports that you’re unlikely to pass through.  Exceptions include the McCarran (LAS), Denver (DEN), and Kansas City (MCI). All other airports usually have a pay-per-use service or monthly fees that are not practical for the occasional traveler who needs to send a quick email or transfer some data. For many travelers these days, however, airport-offered Wifi isn’t even necessary.

A portion of travelers will likely have a data plan on their cellular phones to push email anyway, especially with the growing popularity of phones that mandate a data plan agreement with their providers. With some technical expertise, you could tether your phone to your laptop and surf off of a 3G data network or Verizon’s DataConnect.

What about the average Joe who has a cellphone mended together with electrical tape (certainly does not have a data plan) and usually gets caught up in 2-3 hour layovers at airports? Here are some tips that can help maximize your chances of getting some free airtime during your layover:

1. At one point, Boingo‘s wireless service had a holey firewall that didn’t really block any outgoing traffic to the web. I was able to append something like `?.jpg’ to my web addresses and jump the wall instantaneously.  I believe that they have since “secured” their services, and this trick no longer works. Interesting idea nonetheless.
2. If you subscribe to AT&T‘s DSL service at home, you are actually entitled to use their airport wireless networks by simply using your login, provided that they are the carrier for the airport. I believe that Seattle, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Raleigh, and St. Louis are just some of the airports that use AT&T.
3. Some airports have an unencrypted, unbroadcasted networks for their internal use. You can fire up Netstumbler or Macstumbler, identify the SSID, and connect away. I’ve never done this, for ethical and legal reasons.  This should NEVER be done, and is listed for academic purposes only. In fact, any business that does this needs to fire its IT department. Security through obsfucation is no security at all.
4. If you are a member of an airline lounge, you get free wireless inside.
5. Actually, if you’re NOT a lounge member, you can STILL get free wireless. This is where the money is.  Some wireless signals of the exclusive airline lounges extend right outside of the entrance doors. Just park outside the Gold Club lounge and fire up your wireless card. Sure, you won’t get the free booze, food, and leather chairs that airline lounges offer, but you’re also not paying for membership. There are some strong signals outside the club lounges at O’Hare, Midway, San Francisco, Dulles, and Narita. If you have a laptop with an antenna built into the screen (IBM Thinkpad or MacBook are two that do), you will get an even stronger signal.

Be forewarned, if you connect on unencrypted wireless networks, be sure to lock down your system with a good firewall, and be wary of sending sensitive data. You could also route your traffic through a secured VPN. If you stick your hand in a honeypot (or sugarcane), do not be surprised if you get stuck…

Note: The aforementioned information is listed only as a theoretical exercise. Ophthosurgery.COM holds NO responsibility for the content listed here.

computing hobbies, travel

Several weeks ago, I experimented with competitive brand saran wrap. There was no doubt that the alternative brand was inferior. Since I don’t learn from past experience, I acquired a roll of brand-X aluminum foil. Fortunately, I also had a roll of Reynold’s wrap aluminum foil, which served as the gold standard in my head-to-head trial of foils.

As usual, the name-brand product was about 2.5x as expensive as the competitive equivalent. At first glance, it was clear that the cardboard packaging on the Reynold’s wrap was sturdier. The perforated sides of the box was cut with precision, allowing smooth unraveling of the roll while creating sufficient tension to keep the roll inside the box. The serrated edge of the Reynold’s box also appeared more substantial. However, I was able to cleanly tear a specified length of foil from both boxes, unlike with the saran wraps. Mostly likely, it’s due to aluminum’s tensile strength. The Reynold’s foil was at least 50% thicker than brand-x, which helps minimize risk of perforation by heavier foods in the oven.

For food preparation purposes, I feel comfortable in using a cheaper brand,  as long as the aluminum doesn’t melt in the oven (that should NEVER happen anyway unless there are impurities in the roll). My baked chicken tasted no different with either brand.

Of course as a techie, I also use my aluminum foil as a reflector material for increasing gain on satellite discs.  More on that subject in another post…

misc food, hobbies