In Klagenfurt, Austria, a health spa is providing clients a chance to be dipped in a tub of chocolate, like strawberries. Yahoo! says the tasty treatment is drawing “dozens” of visitors. Only dozens? I guess if you live in Austria, you might be sick of chocolate.
Nina Sabitzer, a cosmetologist at the spa, told state broadcaster ORF the bubbly brown baths include cocoa butter she claims has restorative properties that include helping protect skin from developing wrinkles.
And where exactly are those bubbles coming from?
Yummy chocolate on the outside, icky maggots on the inside. It’s long been known that the larvae of the blowfly aid in the healing of wounds, that in the two or so days they live in a wound they produce, um, substances that kill bacteria and stimulate growth of healthy tissue. Now comes news that, last January, the maggots of California physician and maggot champion, Dr. Ronald Sherman aka Dr. Maggot, became the first live animals to win FDA approval as a medical device, reports Salon.com.
This has been quite a year for wormlike critters. In June, FDA also gave its seal of approval to leeches, those bloodsuckers that help plastic surgeons save severed body parts by removing pooled blood and restoring circulation. And in the spring, University of Iowa researchers reported early evidence that drinking whipworm eggs, which causes a temporary, harmless infection, might soothe inflammatory bowel disease by diverting the overactive immune reaction that causes it.
