BRAINY BLOOD-SUCKING NURSES

Do you think all creatures have brains? How many? One? Wrong. Leeches have more than one brain. Can you guess how many brains do leeches have? Two? Three? Not even close.

Yes, leeches have more than one brain. They have 32 brains. Unbelievable, isn't it? How can a creature so small have 32 brains? Why do humans only have one?

Leeches are blood-sucking worms which range from half an inch to ten inches long. They are neither brown nor black in color and feed on decaying plant material or on blood and animal tissues. They live anywhere near water. They find a person thorough one's skin oil, blood, heat and even the carbon dioxide you breathe out. Leeches don't feed often because when they feed, they take in a lot of blood. These little vampires suck your blood in two ways: using proboscis to puncture your skin and using their three jaws and millions of tiny teeth. A leech's bite is painless due to its own anaesthetic.

Leeches were not been made for just pure sucking, or living in the water, sticking on rocks and leaves. Like maggots, leeches do have some uses especially in the field of medicine. Doctors often used leeches to draw blood in the past. Today, scientists have been conducting a study on the use of a leech's saliva. They believe that the substance that prevents blood clots will be soon used on humans. The clotting properties of the substance is believed to be as useful as a drug for the treatment heart attacks. Leeches act as special nurses in a way that they help doctors in curing the patients by restoring blood circulation to grafted tissue and reattached fingers and toes. A leech can remove any congested blood to allow the normal circulation to go back to the tissues.

A leech's talent is to make a wound bleed for hours. A substance in its saliva anaesthetize the wound, prevents clotting and expand vessels to increase blood flow. For over 2000 years, humans have been using leeches for blood removal or bloodletting. Finally, these filthy creatures has found its rightful purpose on Earth.

DR. MAGGOT

Maggots are larvae of flies. Flies lay eggs on decaying tissues. Maggots come out from the eggs in warm weather and they instantly nosh on and develop on where the flies laid their eggs.

For many years, maggots have been renowned to clean wounds. Maggots feed on rotten flesh and leave the wound clean. Now, if maggots came from flies, does it mean that maggots are not clean too? If maggots are not clean, then why can they clean wounds? Wouldn’t the wounds be infected?

Since maggots came from flies, they’re not really clean creatures; Scientists are now raising sterile flies—the Greenbottle fly, Lucilia Sericata, which would eventually produce sterile maggots. They put the flies in a lab with a sterile milieu and when the flies lay eggs, they separate the maggots and put it in another sterile setting. They are then applied to the wound when they are still smaller than a grain of rice. They will be removed after two days when they have grown to more than a centimeter.

Maggot therapy is not new. It’s as old as the civil war. Mayans and Aboriginal tribes in Australia have reported of the successful maggot treatments.

Recent studies revealed that maggots heal wounds than a professional surgeon. Maggot therapy has been made known to speed up debridement of necrotic wounds which leads to fast healing. The enzymes maggots secrete are able to kindle the growth of human fibroblasts. These enzymes contain a substance, allantoin, which gives the patient a soothing effect on the skin.

Of course, we can’t avoid the “yuck” factor when we hear of the creepy maggots crawling in and eating the rotten tissues of our wounds. This factor could be a barrier to the usage of the therapy. Researchers who have been scrutinizing the advantages of this kind of treatment alleged that we should ignore the “yuck” factor for the betterment of our health.