After reading about a menopausal werewolf (fictional) I decided that it was probably a sensible idea to read up on the reality.

Dr Lundy has an inclusive and relaxed tone of writing. She methodically goes through every aspect of the menopause in great detail. The book is sprinkled with humour to lighten what is otherwise an intimidating topic.

This is almost solely focussed on the medical side of menopause. While honest about the limitations of science (and the shocking lack of knowledge among some practitioners) it never lowers itself into the "woo" of crystals and chakras. It goes from a GCSE biology lesson all the way up to cutting-edge medical research. This isn't a casual pamphlet; you will almost certainly want to take notes.

Although it strives to be accessible, it does get a little bogged down in the science. There's an array of acronyms to remember, a hilarious assortment of product names (I'd love to see the marketing exercise which came up with Kyleena, Mirena, Provera, and all the others), and some rather tedious descriptions of exactly how many mg of X should be used in combination with Y.

At times it is like the book doesn't know if it is for the patient or the doctor. I suspect a few people will be put off by some of the overly formal and detailed descriptions of the exact biological changes occurring. It also is, frankly, not for the squeamish.

The books is divided into logical chapters. If you don't need to know about, for example, how Lupus affects the menopause, you can safely skip it. Each chapter ends with a few bullet points of practical information.

It is trans-inclusive - with a whole chapter about the realities of the experience, while being honest about the lack detailed research available.

One of the things which is missing is the role of friends, family, and wider society. There's nothing about accessing social support networks, or workplace adjustments, or how one's family can be useful. This is very much geared to "here are the medical interventions available."

It is also a little lax about privacy. There's a discussion about period tracking apps, but not about the data protection risks. Similarly, there's mention of a menopause discussion group for doctors which, of all places, is hosted on Telegram! I hope none of the 800 participants are sharing confidential medical data on there.

If you or someone you know is going to experience The Change, this is a good book. You may need to gird your loins for some of the more frank and intimate discussions, but Dr Lundy's warmth and humour do a good job of making a difficult subject accessible.

Last week - following some dental trauma - I had another scan of my head. The dentist took great delight in showing me my bones in 3D. So I asked for a copy.

This was something he'd never done before! So, together, we navigated the software, found the export button, and generated a copy. Even zipped up it was half a gigabyte - a bit too much for email and, not unreasonably, he didn't want me plugging in strange USB devices to his medical equipment. So he sent it over WeTransfer. Possibly not the most secure method for my medical data, but I didn't really have time to set up a personal SFTP site or teach him about installing WSL so he could SCP the content. Ah well, needs must.

Unzipped, the folder was about 700MB. Of that, 400MB was taken up by the included Windows app "Ez3D-i". Unsurprisingly, it didn't run on Linux.

The other 300MB was taken up by 450 .DCM files. These are medical images in the DICOM format. This is a relatively open standard which uses JPG plus lots of metadata. There are dozens of Linux programs which can read this - although many haven't been updated in years.

The easiest GUI for viewing the images is Mango. It presents a view of the CT Scan that you can move around.

It isn't the most intuitive app in the world, but it is good enough for browsing the scan.

If you want a 3D model of your scan, I recommend Aliza. Again, not the simplest interface:

But once you get the hang of it, you can manipulate the 3D scan and view it from all angles. It's possible to peel away the soft tissue and do all sorts of other fancy trickery. Even on my laptop without a fancy graphics card, it was fast. Here's a quick animation showing the (false colour) version.

If you have had a CT scan, please do ask for a copy of the DICOM files. It is great fun to explore around your own body.

Now I just need to find a way to import this into my Meta Quest so I can enjoy these teeth in VR!

As per the meme:

This book demonstrates how popular culture can be successfully incorporated into medical and health science curriculums, capitalising on the opportunity fictional media presents to humanise case studies. Studies show that the vast majority of medical and nursing students watch popular medical television dramas and comedies such as Grey’s Anatomy, ER, House M.D. and Scrubs.

This book is currently free on the Springer website - and it's a brilliant read.

I thought this was going to be an "Everything I know about X, I learned from watching Y" type book. You know, Philosphy/Buffy, Physics/Doctor Who, Law/The Bill. But it isn't!

It's a thorough look at whether people learn about medicine via popular media (they do!). It also covers what they learn and how it can be misleading. There's a great discussion about the medical ethics shown on TV and how that influences clinicians to behave.

I found it fascinating just how deep our prejudices go - even when discussing fictional characters.

There were also eight mentions that a character was overly emotional, annoying or ‘whiny,’ but these criticisms were exclusively directed at female characters.

And, while we're living in the age of pandemic, there's a nice little look to the future:

When looking at release dates we realised there was a possible link between ‘zombification’ cause and global health events.

To test our hypothesis, we mapped the year of release of pathogenic zombie films against the World Health Organization’s list of infectious disease outbreaks. This demonstrated a correlation between the two, with an increase in the release of infectious biohorror films in the years following outbreaks such as SARS and pandemic influenza . So it appeared that global health threats have an impact on pop-culture media. This is also reported in the literature, where horror films are identified as a barometer of society’s fears, anxieties and cultural consciousness.

An excellent and timely collection of essays.