Doctors are baffled at the case of Nguyen Thi Phuong, a 26-year-old Vietnamese woman who says that an allergic reaction caused her skin to sag and wrinkle, effectively aging her 50 years in just a few days.

In case you were thinking about heading to Britain and having a ton of unprotected sex—don't! Because the United Kingdom's Health Protection Agency believes that its septic little archipelago is "heading to a point when [gonorrhea] is incurable unless new treatments can be found."

So, here is the kind of care you can expect if you are a migrant worker in China who cuts off his own thumb in an accident: The doctor will, over your objections, replace the missing thumb with one of your toes. Aaaaand... that's basically it. You say your foot hurts and your new thumb-toe is useless? No, sorry, that's actually not true: "Huiyang Bone-setting Hospital... insists that the thumb has recovered." We tend to agree with this commenter: "Strongly recommended that the doctor transplant his buttocks onto his head!" [ChinaSmack]

As if global warming hasn't already done enough for us, guess what we're gearing up for now? That's right: "one of the worst, and longest, allergy seasons yet." Don't worry, we're here to help!

Why is health care so goddamn expensive in the United States? One major factor is that "Doctors are paid higher fees in the United States than in several other countries," according to a new study. Related: Doctors demand a raise!

Scientists examining surveys of health and drug use have found that people who smoke pot regularly are less likely to be obese—a shocking rejection of a series of experiments I performed over the course of my junior year of college.

Charla Nash, who had her face and hands ripped off by her neighbor's chimpanzee in 2009 revealed her new face on the Today show today. For a woman who was mauled by an animal, she looks pretty damn good.

According to a Harvard psychiatrist, about 25% of psychiatric patients don't have anything wrong emotionally, just physically, and treating their illness can cure their mental problems. So, you're not depressed after all, you just have lupus, Lyme disease, or maybe cancer. Yay!

The Online Dermatology Journal has a fascinating paper concerning "Pseudomamma on the foot," which is to say "An unusual presentation of supernumerary breast tissue," which is to say: This woman grew a goddamn nipple on the bottom of her foot. There it is! You can see it for yourself! A foot-nipple!

Haven't you always wondered if mouth-to-beak resuscitation—"bird CPR"—would actually work? Well! We can confirm that, yes, in at least one instance it has: Bend, Ore. veterinarian Jeff Cooney saved a bald eagle (named, boringly, "Patriot") this week by performing CPR on it. Patriot, whom Dr. Cooney is rehabilitating from an apparent car accident, was under anesthesia at the time; KTVZ provides the image above, though we're not sure if the photograph is a staged re-creation of the event or an actual action shot of the heroic lifesaving attempt. Either way, it's good to know that, in the event that you come across a dying bird, you may have a shot at saving its life. [KTVZ]

Are you one of millions of Americans who looks down with pride at the powerful stream of colorless, translucent fluid flowing out of your body every time your empty your bladder? Who takes great personal satisfaction in knowing you've downed enough bottled water in a single day to satisfy the hydration needs of your average circus elephant? Well, a new study suggests you might be wasting your time.

James Verone, a 59-year-old former truck driver, was having serious medical problems that he couldn't afford to get checked out or treated. If only North Carolina had a free, state-run health-care system!, he thought. Then he realized it does: in prison.

Today we read about a man who shot off his finger in an attempt to remove a wart. It's Red State Medicare! Dizzy8 offered a better solution:

A mom and daughter are poised to make medical history—the daughter, born without a uterus, could receive her mother's as a transplant. [Jezebel]

Dr. Michael Kamrava, the Beverley Hills fertility doctor who shoved 12 embryos into the baby parts of soon-to-be-"octomom" Nadya Suleman in 2008, will lose his license to practice medicine as of July 1. Kamrava, the California Medical Board argued in its decision, should have referred Suleman herself to a mental-health evaluation instead of helping her give birth to eight future therapy patients; it also found that the doctor had not exercised "sound judgment" in the cases of two other patients, neither of which were as bizarre or interesting as "octomom." [People; image via AP]

TV health guru Dr. Mehmet Oz explained yeast infections today, and the result was like going to a muppet gynecologist while on PCP. Here's the trippy segment, in which Dr. Oz pretends to be a molecule of bacteria in a lady's vagina and explains how thong panties make vaginas poopy.

There are already many good reasons to drink alcohol, but we won't begrudge science for coming up with another: Seniors over 75 who have about a drink a day are significantly less likely to develop dementia or Alzheimer's disease.

Ten-year-old Dugan Smith was diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer in his thigh bone, leaving him with a softball-sized tumor. Usually, similar patients have their legs partially amputated and are given cadaver or prosthetic thigh bones. But Dugan wanted to keep playing baseball.

In 2009, the Cerdas, a Las Vegas family whose two daughters suffered from immune deficiency disorders, appeared on the reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Their old, moldy house was torn down, and new one, designed to protect the young girls, was built in its place. But as it turns out, the Cerda girls may not have been sick at all.

Political prop and fecund fameball Bristol Palin has admitted to getting surgery on her jaw: "I had corrective jaw surgery." Like a starlet "correcting" a deviated septum, Bristol insists that the alteration was a medical necessity.