Fear of Shingles

My mom lives alone in an "over 55" apartment.  A big topic of conversation there this year has been related to shingles (no, not the kind on the roof).

Periodically one of neighbors or friends will suffer from a break out.  Most, being elderly, suffer significantly from it.  Recently a close friend of hers had shingles - she's in her 90's.   Unfortunately she ended up in the hospital for a brief time.

Apparently this took a significant toll on her friend - to the point where she was never quite the same.  "Never quite the same" is a code word for "have to go to the nursing home" or "have to go to assisted living".

This is a big fear where my mother lives.   One day the ambulance pulls up, wheels someone out, and they never come back.  Its frightening and depressing.

Shingles, herpes zoster, can do this to someone over night.  Her and her friends fear it.

So, when the local pharmacy and newspapers pop up with "get your shingles vaccine" there is cause for concern.

Concern you ask?  Why?  Doesn't the vaccine cure shingles?

No, it does not.  In fact, I think it may trigger it.  The vaccines themselves also make my mother worried.  The usual sites like WebMD are all "rah rah" for vaccines and traditional treatments - which is always suspicious in and of itself - even to her.

So I did some research and found this link:

"If you had chicken pox as a child, then you're at risk of developing a case of shingles. Long after the chicken pox is gone, the virus that caused it (varicella zoster virus, VZV) lies dormant in nerve roots. VZV may rest quietly there for all your days. But for certain people whose immune systems are compromised by immunity-suppressing drugs or stressful events, VZV may suddenly come roaring back as a case of shingles.


Obviously, no one wants that. So: To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? When I put this question to HSI Panelist Allan Spreen, M.D., he said that although he doesn't know exactly what the vaccine contains, he wouldn't take it for a king's ransom. Why? Dr. Spreen: "Because ALL vaccinations are suspect until they've been monitored for decades (for long-term dangers), and this vaccine obviously could not fall in that category"

Needless to say everyone in her apartment complex is constantly bombarded with the "get the shingles vaccine" chorus from doctors, friends, and family.  But, as you can see from the above quote, perhaps this is not such a good idea.

My mom doesn't like to take new medications for a variety of reasons.  So the idea of this vaccine does not appeal to her.  Nor does the long list of potentially nasty side effects that is provided with it.  Being the oldest child I am often asked "what should I do".

I don't have all the answers but I certainly can research these types of problems.  In this case I discovered the above link and the notion that shingles can be held in check by Vitamin B-12.

The article goes on:

"I had shingles once...and badly: Zoster ophthalmicus affects the eyes and can even cost you your vision. I was working on a ship (enclosed, recirculated air environment), and had had some poor dental work in port. From that I got the flu, had to stay up late treating patients, and that led to shingles. I was one miserable guy, but I had the nurse give me B- 12 shots everyday for 3 days and that was the end of it (though my vision was foggy for a week before clearing)."

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Bumping the ratio
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When I asked Dr. Spreen about preventing shingles with vitamin B-12, he suggested that 500 mcg per day would probably be a good insurance policy because B-12 protects the nerves. Supplementing with lysine (anessential amino acid) is a little more complicated.

Dr. Spreen: "With lysine you have to be more careful, as you're playing with something called the lysine/arginine ratio. Lysine competes with arginine in the body, and arginine is a stimulant of growth hormone, so you don't want to drive that down unless you have a real reason. And an arginine supplement isn't a solution because you're trying to alter the ratio to make it less favorable to the virus.

"That said, if you GET shingles, then 3 grams (3,000 mg) of lysine daily can do a lot (a LOT) to shorten the duration and lessen the pain/itch right off). Given that a person has developed shingles (or, rather, gets them fairly often), at that point I'd go on 500 mg of lysine daily (between meals) as insurance after kicking the previous outbreak. But I wouldn't take lysine just because I had chicken pox as a kid."

In supplement form, high doses of lysine may raise cholesterol levels and increase the risk of gallstones, so lysine supplementation should be monitored by a nutritionally oriented physician. Dietary sources of lysine include meat, fish, dairy products, legumes and brewer's yeast."

After reading this you get the idea that perhaps the cause of a case of shingles might be nutritionally related.  Then there is this final note in the article:

"The main reason I would not get the shingles vaccine is that it is manufactured by Merck. I do not trust most pharmaceutical companies, anyway, but Merck tops the list, especially after they got in trouble for making up research studies and articles and then paying respected scientists to put their names on them.

Here are the ingredients of the shingles vaccine (as put forth by Merck):

ZOSTAVAX is a lyophilized preparation of the Oka/Merck strain of live, attenuated varicella-zoster virus (VZV). ZOSTAVAX, when reconstituted as directed, is a suspension for subcutaneous administration. Each 0.65-mL dose contains a minimum of 19,400 PFU (plaque-forming units) of Oka/Merck strain of VZV when reconstituted and stored at room temperature for up to 30 minutes.

Each dose contains 31.16 mg of sucrose, 15.58 mg of hydrolyzed porcine gelatin, 3.99 mg of sodium chloride, 0.62 mg of monosodium L-glutamate, 0.57 mg of sodium phosphate dibasic, 0.10 mg of potassium phosphate monobasic, 0.10 mg of potassium chloride; residual components of MRC-5 cells including DNA and protein; and trace quantities of neomycin and bovine calf serum. The product contains no preservatives. (Source)

Just out of curiosity, is there a reason why this vaccine contains a flavor enhancer (monosodium glutamate, MSG)? Is it so the sucrose tastes better to the live herpes zoster virus?

Zostavax was licensed in 2006 by Merck, the same year Gardasil (Merck's HPV vaccine) was also licensed. Zostavax is recommended for people 60 and older, and it only protects half of those vaccinated. The attenuated virus (which means it's still alive, just "weakened") is 14 times as potent as the chickenpox vaccine. (Source)

Basically, if you have any health problems and your immune system is weak, this vaccine could cause a whole lot of harm."

The elderly are, for the most part, shoved off into medicare for this type of thing.  Everything is "by the book or the doctor doesn't get paid" - so there is little margin to make adjustments.  If you don't take the vaccine your doctor may choose not to keep you as a patient.  If you want a more holistic or natural approach medicaid probably does not cover it.  So you're left with towing the party line, as it were, or venturing off into the wilderness on your own.

Clearly no one wants shingles.  But do you want the potential side effects of the vaccine?  Vitamins, on the other hand, pose less risk.

Another concern I have is that most elderly people eat very poor diets.  Sure, there are vitamins, but vitamin absorption may be low.

At any rate I am suspicious of vaccines at this point - particularly when off-the-shelf vitamins may do as good a job.

Ritual Surgery or Surgical Ritual?

You've got to hand it to medical science - its always moving forward - they've discovered the checklist!

From this link: 

"Which hip is being repaired? Is this the right anesthesia? Do we have all the right surgery tools?

Answering such basic questions from surgery checklists — and involving everyone as a team, even patients — saved lives in Veterans Affairs hospitals, according to one of the most rigorous studies of patient safety in the operating room.

Surgery deaths dropped 18 percent on average over three years in the 74 VA hospitals that used the strategy during the study. Surgery team members all created checklists and discussed them in briefings before, during and after surgery. "


What's not said here is that surgery teams without checklists killed more people with easily preventable mistakes than those with checklists.


Its astonishing that these articles don't outrage people.

What, you're a doctor, one of the most highly educated and trained professionals in the world, and you run your surgical practice without the benefit of a simple checklist?

After all, soccer mom has a checklist when little Johnny goes to camp.  You and I take one to the grocery store.  Why doesn't her surgeon have one?

Read a little further and you'll find this: 

"Teamwork problems are ubiquitous in health care but in operating rooms, they're so problematic because ORs are so hierarchical. They're full of ritual and for so many years it's been the surgeon (who) dictates," Pronovost said.


The VA's program began in 2003 and over time has been adopted at virtually all of its 130 surgery centers. Before sedation, patients identify themselves and the reason for their surgery, hear the checklists being read off, and can speak up if something doesn't sound right. The idea is to give everyone in the operating room an equal voice in helping ensure patient safety."

Ritual? Really?

You mean like this?

It's good to see that all that money we're spending on new health care laws has a good foundation in history.  

Imagine if we simply passed a health care law that required surgeons to use a checklist like the one described in the article.  Imagine a world the patient or a nurse know more about what's going on than the surgeon - like person who's being operated on (no - my left arm!).

I have experience with this.  Several years ago I broke my left wrist.  A trip to the ER left me with an appointment to see a specialist who had to do surgery.

After some consultation the surgeon and I agreed to have him put a metal bracket in and re-set the break.

The morning of the surgery sees me in the giant bullpen of "out patients for surgery" with many dozen of people where there.  Once I am called into the OR prep area I am installed in a bed and set up with IV's and other things.

I joke I need a red marker to write "NO" in big letters on my arm.

No one laughs.

Then someone says "don't do that! Don't write on your arm!"

Eventually the surgeon comes in.  He checks me over a bit and then takes my broken arm and writes mysteriously on it (doctor scrawl I suppose).

"What's that for?" I ask.

"So we operate on the right arm." he says.

"But my left arm is broken" I joke.

He didn't laugh either.

I've read up on this a bit - one day in the Borders - and its not just the VA hospital, either:

"Jauhar feels responsible when he botches the blood pressure check on a patient who later dies during an aortic dissection and when he misses the high blood sodium level of a man who then suffers irreversible brain damage."

Ah!  Medical science also has its own idea of responsibility as well. No doctor ever causes a problem - they merely misidentify or miss characterize one.

Read the part in the book where they handle failures.

I guess that's why they call it practicing medicine.

I'll have to keep all this in mind.

Chips, Cookies, Cocaine & Heroin

Like big business and big government big food is out to kill you make you an addict.

That's right - a food addict.  Like any had drug certain types of food trigger biological responses in your brain that make your crave more - so, surprise - you'll buy more.  (They really don't want you to die from their products - then you wouldn't buy more.)

"There are specific biological mechanisms that drive addictive behavior. Nobody chooses to be a heroin addict, coke head, or drunk. Nobody chooses to be fat, either. The behaviors arise out of primitive neurochemical reward centers in the brain that override normal willpower and overwhelm our ordinary biological signals that control hunger..."

And here are some of the scientific findings (links to studies in the link above) confirming that food can, indeed, be addictive:

• Sugar stimulates the brain's reward centers through the neurotransmitter dopamine, exactly like other addictive drugs.
• Brain imagining (PET scans) shows that high-sugar and high-fat foods work just like heroin, opium, or morphine in the brain.
• Brain imaging (PET scans) shows that obese people and drug addicts have lower numbers of dopamine receptors, making them more likely to crave things that boost dopamine.
• Foods high in fat and sweets stimulate the release of the body's own opioids (chemicals like morphine) in the brain.
• Drugs we use to block the brain's receptors for heroin and morphine (naltrexone) also reduce the consumption and preference for sweet, high-fat foods in both normal weight and obese binge eaters.
• People (and rats) develop a tolerance to sugar -- they need more and more of the substance to satisfy themselves -- just like they do for drugs of abuse like alcohol or heroin.
• Obese individuals continue to eat large amounts of unhealthy foods despite severe social and personal negative consequences, just like addicts or alcoholics.
• Animals and humans experience "withdrawal" when suddenly cut off from sugar, just like addicts detoxifying from drugs.
• Just like drugs, after an initial period of "enjoyment" of the food, the user no longer consumes them to get high but to feel normal.

Just like cigarettes, cocaine and heroin "industrial foods" are designed to make you an addict. 

Its simple - high-sugar and high-fat foods work just like heroin.  Heroin bonds to your bodies own opioid receptors.  Sugar and high-fat food trigger your body to release its own opioids which bond with the same receptors.  Hence the wrong diet makes you dependent on food to get that "heroin high" that gets you through the day.

The proof of this is drugs that block the brain's receptors for heroin or morphine also reduce the consumption and preference for sweet, high-fat foods in both normal weight and obese binge eaters.

Is this any different than cigarettes?  Nope...

Is this even new?  

Nope - see this web page for the history of other addictive consumer products.

In fact, Paregoric an opium derivative, was available it the state where I live without a prescription until 1970.  I know people who swear that their adulthood drug problems stem from the use of this by their parents to calm their childhood ills.

"Little Johnny's crying in his crib because his tooth hurts, I'll swab some paregoric on it..."

"Here little Suzy, have another cookie, it will make you feel better..."

In either case the seeds for addiction were planted very early in life.

But fear not, you can over come these issues.  

It takes some work and determination but you can do it.

Here's a list of 50 blogs related to beating food addiction.  Or you could ask my "old lady".  She's lost close to 50 pounds based on her own scientific researches over the last many months.

I think the crucial point is to break out of the consumer-based mentality.  You are what you eat and eating the latest food wonders pushed out by "big food" is not the way to go.

It's Midnight...

Its midnight.  Dark. Smokey.  A small, happy crowd of regulars clinging to the bar.

The benefit is winding down.  I showed up around 5:00 PM today in order to get things set up.

I didn't know the guy who died - though from his picture he looks familiar.  No matter, its a benefit.

What looks like his mom is sitting over by the jukebox - white hair, walker.  Probably a brother and a couple of kids or a niece and nephew. Standing off to the side - not part of the regular crowed.  Going through an old photo album.  The kind with a three-ring binder and clear plastic sheets covering the pictures.

They sit, looking at the pictures - commenting to each other.  Sometimes pulling back the plastic for a better look.

We've played for our share of tragedy over the years - more than a few benefits - gas explosions, accidents, childhood foolishness.

Its the life that's important - not the aftermath.

There's a pig roasting in the parking lot.  I buy a couple of wrist bands for food - not that I need to as I'm part of the entertainment - but it goes to the family and I have a job.  No one looks too sad so I guess it wasn't a surprise or it happened a while ago - but I'm not sure.

I've been to the ones where its a surprise - injuries or death - its never fun.

My friend is in the rehab right now - physical therapy - trying to get him back to where he was before his accident.  He'd been coming out to hear us every Tuesday without fail for years.

The doctors gave him up for dead.  He was in the hospital and showing no response.  One of the team of neurosurgeons told the family to "pull the plug" because there was no hope. Fortunately, the boss came in and said "not so fast..." Today he's in the rehab walking and talking on his own.  Nearly a victim of modern medical science.

I miss him.  He's one of the good fans.  I hope he's back soon.

Back to midnight.  The "old lady" is talking R.  R.'s drunk and having a good time.  The PA crapped out and we had to ride over and pick up a backup.  Two hours lost but probably not a problem.  The bikes will clear out before dark anyway - at least most of them - and probably early because we're not their entertaining them.

Maybe this will help forgo another accident.

"Maybe the guy died on his bike", my partner in crime says while we ride over to get the other PA.  "Here they are, drinking, riding their bikes to the memorial, riding home drunk, all without helmets."  He smiles "I swore that off years ago..."

Death by lack of helmet or death by modern medical science?

Which is worse?  Which is more Politically Correct?

The "old lady" and I, we're both dog tired.  There was a minor mishap at the farm today.  An empty car ended up in the ravine - no one was hurt - dumb, in fact, not just dumb but a new benchmark in dumb. Young people are always in too much of hurry to do things right - relying too much on mechanical things prone to failure.  The "old lady" had to baby sit until the tow trucks took care of the problem.

The "big black dodge" could have pulled it up and out.  In fact, it got all the way down there and had the chain on but the plastic bumper and crappy sheet metal frame would have been trashed or pulled completely off.

No insurance payout if you save yourself.  Keep that in mind.

There was another benefit a few weeks back.  Guy hated dialysis so he quit it cold turkey - just stopped doing it.  His old lady hung around like one of Ebenezer Scrooge's Christmas ghosts - talking about how his ghost was spooking the cat; very weird and creepy.

I leave early from the benefit.  The door is open and its cold.  The "old lady" complaining...


The dogs are waiting patiently even though we're late.  They're always happy we're home.

Where do you find so much to write about someone asks...  It finds me.

1-800-Autopsy

I love to see people doing business in new and creative ways.   This is clearly one of them.

I happened upon this one the other day: 1-800-Autopsy.  From the site:

"1-800-AUTOPSY bases our mission on commitment, respect and service to those that place their trust in us. 1-800-AUTOPSY is committed to never lose our focus and broaden society's perspective of death.

1-800-AUTOPSY, established in 1988, is a totally autonomous and mobile-based thanatology specialty company. Vidal Herrera of 1-800-AUTOPSY has cultivated a distinguished reputation of autopsy excellence within the funeral industry, hospital and research institutions, procurement tissue and organ foundations, private families and the legal community."

This is very cool - they offer:

• Forensic Autopsies
• Private Autopsies
• Exhumation & Disinterment Autopsies
• Toxicology Analysis
• Med. Mal. Practice & Wrongful Death
• Tissue Procurement
• Post-mortem Neurological Diagnosis
• Post-mortem Asbestos Procurement
• Post-mortem DNA (Paternity) Analysis
• Hospital Services Autopsy Support
• Contract Autopsy Services
• Medical Photography Services

And they're mobile...!!

The best part of all is on the main page - upper right hand corner:  The Gift Catalog.

There's some really cool stuff there!

What's Your Colon Transit Time?

As educated as Americans are supposed to be, with a trillion dollars in school debt to show for it, its surprising how little most know about the most basic facts about their own bodies.

Let's take digestion as an example - something that, as it turns out - impacts all aspects of your life.

Well, you say, what could I know about my own digestive system?  Its all hidden away on the inside.

As it turns out, you can tell a quite a bit.

(GROSS WARNING)

Let's be a bit scientific and see what we can infer about our digestion system.   To do this we need to start somewhere where there is something, er, concrete to look at... and that takes us to the end product of digestion.

So let's start there...

First of all, that tendency to take a look after you've done your business is completely natural - just watch the dog or cat.  Besides, what you leave behind (no pun intended) can tell you a lot about what's going on inside of you - which is what we are interested in.

From "What is Normal...?" - "Normal feces contains water, indigestible fiber, undigested food, sloughed off intestinal cells, living and dead bacteria, bile, and worn out red blood cells. A normal stool should be brown to light brown, formed but not hard or too soft, cylindrical but not flattened on any side, fairly bulky and full bodied but not compact, easy to pass, and it shouldn't have an extremely foul smell. Each bowel movement should be in one piece, about the size and shape of a banana being tapered at the end. Sometimes this will not be discernible if the feces breaks up in the toilet."

This is generally what is agreed by everyone (science, doctors, web sites) on as far as I can see.  Whether its a floater or sinker - well, that's apparently up for debate and you can do your own research. There are many signs of trouble in your digestive system, which the linked article points out, that can be discovered by a quick check each day.

But good bowel health is more than the end results, as it were.

According to the Royal Society of Medicine, ‘over 90% of all chronic diseases are due to an infection of the gastrointestinal tract’. 

That's right - 90% of all chronic disease - not just digestive disease - but all chronic disease.

The longer waste remains in your body the more likely you will suffer from chronic problems.  While comprehensive list of the problems can be found here problems include all the classic digestive diseases, circulatory problems, problems with eyes, skin, and muscles and joints, urinary and reproductive problems, and general mental health issues, e.g., depression, etc.

Imagine if all household waste (including waste of humans and animals) sat around in the house for a few days.  Compare that to taking it out once a day.  Big difference...

You may already have heard it said that ‘death begins in the bowel’ and this is indeed true.

And this is where we cross paths with "colon transit time".  This is the time that elapses between the time the food enters you mouth until it departs your body at the other end - normally 8 to 14 hours.  That's right kiddies - 8 to 14 yours - in by 9 PM, out by 8 AM, as it were.  A good rule of thumb is one bowel movement per meal per day.  (Again, let rover be your guide.)

Modern Americans have, on average, a colon transit time of 60 hours.  Medical science says anything less than 72 hours is okay.  But Americans suffer from digestive problems a lot - and its getting worse.  While there is always variation from person to person just make sure that you're not significantly contributing to your own poor health.

That 60 hour average transit time leaves 5 to 10 pounds of waste in your colon at any given time - just hanging around - spending an extra 50 hours in your intestines.  What it does to you?  Well, you can just imagine...

Here's a list of some of the poisons that can accumulate in your bowels if your transit time is low: Indol, skarol, phenol, cresol, indican, sulphurretted hydrogen, ammonia, histidine, urrobilin, methylmercaptan, tetramerhy-lendiamin, pentamethy lendiamine, putrescin, cadaverin, neurin, cholin, muscarine, butyric acid, bera-imidazzolethy-lamine, methylgandinine, ptomarropine, botulin, tyramine, agamatine, tryptophane, sepsin, idolethylamine, sulpherro-globine.

Like my post on sinus flushing says, compacting waste of any sort inside your body that should, in fact, be eliminated on a regular basis, is asking for trouble.

This is no different.

Fortunately you can boost your colon transit time relatively easily.  There are many sites devoted to this topic but to summarize:

• Eat unrefined foods whenever possible.
• Make approximately 50% of your diet raw food
• Eat cultured foods regularly (yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, borscht, sourdough grains)
• Avoid sodas; drink less coffee and tea and more water
• Exercise

There are lots of other treatments as well - but those are up to you and/or your doctor.

Healthy eating, as usual, seems to be the most bang for the buck.

Simply Remarkable...

Every once and a while its good to find someone so good at his craft that you literally feel humbled.

Henrik Sundholm

Portfolio.

Deviant Art.

Flickr.

ICP = Insane Christian Posse?

I happened upon this by accident the other day.  Who knew?

This is some remarkable stuff. 

I have to hand it to these newspaper guys over in the UK.  They find the most interesting things out about our culture - which we somehow miss or never catch on to.

Insane Clown Posse - not the sort of thing, at least in my experience, you'd want your kid to listen too - but they do.  Sort of shock, horror rap.  I'd post a link to a video but even I have standards.  I had a kid that listened to this - but it was probably a decade ago now.  Fortunately for me they tend to outgrow it.

(In case you don't know ICP is made up of "Violent J" and "Shaggy 2 Dope" - a couple of white rappers from the Motor City area.  Violent J is Joseph Frank Bruce and Shaggy 2 Dope is Joseph Utsler.)

Teenagers like this because its a slap in the face for their parents and teachers.  The lyrics are horrific (PARENTAL ADVISORY):


I'm hating sluts
Shoot them in the face, step back and itch my nuts
Unless I'm in the sack
Cos I fuck so hard it'll break their back.

Nice, huh?

Except these guys came out of the closet, as it were, as evangelical christians.  There have been leaks to this effect for years and the interview above makes it pretty plain.

A recent song addresses a list of miracles:


Hot lava, snow, rain and fog,
Long neck giraffes, and pet cats and dogs
Fuckin' rainbows after it rains
There's enough miracles here to
blow your brains.
The song climaxes with them railing against the very concept of science:
Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?
And I don't wanna talk to a scientist

The author of the UK newspaper piece, Jon Ronson, finds some revealing things out from these guys related to their song about miracles and how their fans are taking their new religious revelations:

"Did you anticipate this kind of reaction?" I ask them.


"No," sighs Violent J. "I figured most people would say, 'Wow, I didn't know Insane Clown Posse could be deep like that.'


But instead it's, 'ICP said a giraffe is a miracle. Ha ha ha! What a bunch of idiots.'"


He pauses, then adds defiantly, "A giraffe is a fucking miracle. It has a dinosaur-like neck. It's yellow."


Yeah, technically an elephant is not a miracle. Technically. They've been here for hundreds of years…"


"Thousands," murmurs Shaggy.


"Have you ever stood next to an elephant, my friend?" asks Violent J.


"A fucking elephant is a miracle. If people can't see a fucking miracle in a fucking elephant, then life must suck for them, because an elephant is a fucking miracle. So is a giraffe."



Geniuses to be sure.

While I have to applaud there conversion to Christianity it would seem that the business of rapping still has a way to go as far as reflecting that.

N'uff Said

Weekly Summary...

In case you missed these...


Obesity - It's What's for Dinner


Rehab? - I said "no, no, no"


Irresponsible Responsibility


Sexual Devolution


Trojan Whores - A new twist on an old tail...


Anitbiotics - Scourge on Humanity


Obesity - A nation security threat...


Zig Zag Acoustic Benefit TONIGHT!

Thanks for reading!

Obesity - A threat to national security...

One of the most popular posts to date for this blog has been about obesity.  That's right, about being over weight.

Now it would appear that obesity is threatening our national security.

As Pogo used to say "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Back in 1971 I entered high school.  I lived in the rural mid west at the time and high school was a 15 mile bus ride.  When I started there the graduating seniors were going to Vietnam via the draft.  Its probably hard to imagine for you kiddies reading this but this was real serious business in those days.

The commies where threatening our security - our freedom and way of life.

Now its our own laziness.

I recall sitting in study hall and lunch with seniors my first year of high school.  Though not much explicitly was said the potential trip to southeast Asia was always the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

In those days you were a man at 18.  A lot of guys lived on their own and went to high school where I lived.  I rode on the bus each day with girls who would get married when the graduated.  Some left early, which you could do in those days, to get married at 16.  They raised families.  They were grown up.

Families were large in those days, too.  You'd sit in church and see a family take up the entire pew - mom, dad, 8-10 brothers and sisters - usually from 18 or 19 down to infants in arms.

Mom worked in those days - at home.  Cleaning, feeding kids, canning, you name it.  She had no time for your kiddie bullshit either.  My buddy - see below - had married brothers - she was probably about 7 years old at the time.  Mom worked the garden and farm with dad.  My buddy was lucky - some of our peers sat in the truck all day while dad ran the plow because mom was too busy to watch them working around the house.

But back to obesity...

In those days no one to speak of was overweight.  I think there were many reasons for this.

One was that you didn't eat the crap you do now: sugary soda, candy bars, fatty chips of all sorts.  And you didn't eat it all day long either.  One of my pals in those early days (probably the mid 1960's) lived on a farm.  It was a two mile trip to her house on my bicycle so I didn't get there much.  I was a weenie.  She road over on her bike.

She used to come over with other kids after school - but she always left on time.  One day I asked why.  She said "If I'm home late I don't get dinner - its all gone."  I was astounded.  "What do you mean", I asked.  She said when dinner goes on the table its in big bowls.  If you're not there to grab a helping you don't get any.  Needless to say she always left on time.

There was no eating extra food in my house for the most part either.  Maybe you could have an afternoon snack after school but in general you ate only at meal times.

If I wanted soda or a candy bar it had to buy it myself - as part of my $1 allowance per week.  In those days a soda machine charged $.10 USD for soda and the same for a candy bar.  These machines weren't ubiquitous like they are now.

If I wanted a snack before dinner I got celery.

Another reason is that you didn't just sit around as a kid.

My other buddy lived about a mile away on another farm.  I used to ride my bike down there after school and work for his dad - I was probably 7 or 8.  We plowed fields, put corn in the corn crib, milked cows, whatever his dad needed us to do.  I got paid in change.  This guy could drive the tractor over to my house on the road - I was impressed - he was my age.

If I wasn't doing that we were busy outside basically year round - playing baseball or kick the can or ice skating.  (In those days it was your fault if the ice broke an you fell through.)

We were also taught that what you see advertised on TV was probably bad for you - especially junk food.  Today advertising has been lifted to fine art - but not then.  It was something to be suspicious of.  Why, if the product was sooo gooood did they need to push it on TV?  We were taught it was a commie conspiracy to take over the country. (Most of our dads had been in wars or the military.  WW II hung like a pal over us - Nazi's in particular.)

This wasn't just "out on the farm" either - my cousin lived "in town" - same deal as me - more to do, more trouble to get into, but you didn't sit around the house all day eating and doing nothing.

The only comparison I have to this experience is my own grandchildren.  They are now in the age range I am reminiscing about.  There lives are much different.

They don't go outside off of the property alone because its dangerous.  So no running, no bike riding, none of that.

They are glued to the television.  (Yes I know this is cliche but its still true.)  They come over and often as not there they sit with movies playing over and over.  The kids immobile.

They always need to have food while all this goes on.  Snacks and goodies - all sugar and fat.

This is not new and has been going on since I was probably in high school.  Kids I new that had younger brothers and sisters exhibited this same behavior - probably starting in the late 1960's.

My guess is that this more or less parallels the introduction of "color TV" and working mom.  With no one there to watch over things things went down the tubes.

Well, from where I set today I think the commies succeeded - just like we were told.

Our national security trashed by us and our own very own laziness - all for a tube Pringle's and can of Coke.

"We have met the enemy and he is us."

Antibiotics - A Scourge on Humanity

Antibiotics kill bacteria - right?  Everyone knows this.

Well, did you know that each of us has thousands of species of bacteria on and in our body - that's species - most not know until recently by their only by their DNA, if at all.  There are on the order of 10^14 (ten with fourteen zeros after it) bacteria in our bodies - yet our bodies are made up of only about 10^13 cells.

Some bacteria are so specialized that they can only live on our elbows.

But the bigger picture seems to be that we are not just human, but in fact human-bacteria hybrids.   What I mean by this is that, as humans, without bacteria in and on our bodies would could not live.  That's right - apply enough bleach and Lysol and you will die - not because these are potential poisons, but because they will kill off the bacteria in your body you need to live.

And what do antibiotics do to these bacteria - they kill them.

(That's right.  Think about it.  Penicillin doesn't have a little dictionary of healthy human bacteria it carries around to check if the bacteria that's about to die is necessary for your life.  It just kills all bacteria regardless.)

So let's think about this.  When little Johnny runs in the house with his nose running mommy wisks him off to the doctor to get a prescription of penicillin.  After all, little Johnny is sick, right?  (Never mind the cold is caused by a virus - which antibiotics don't affect.)  Perhaps so, but that prescription of penicillin may do a lot more harm to little Johnny than good.

In fact, a whole generation of children have been raised to adulthood this way.  In fact, not just humans, but most food animals as well.

Their gut or skin flora killed off by well meaning idiots without a clue as to the consequences. And there are many insidious digestive and other problems that people and vets do not associate with antibiotics that science is just beginning to recognize

I believe that there is a lot of evidence now (and more so to come as modern medicine and business wakes up from its "What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas" mentality about antibiotics) that will show that we have inflicted huge and unnecessary pain and suffering across the face of the planet.  (I can see the lawyers rubbing their hands together with excitement - this is way bigger than the Mesothelioma shake down - hell, everyone in the modern world has used antibiotics.)

Dr. John Pitt, on Penicillum in 1979 stated (from):

"It is very ironic that this humbled fungus, hailed as a benefactor of mankind, may by its very success prove to be a deciding factor in the decline of the present civilization". 

Simply stated, antibiotics are dangerous mycotoxins, fungal metabolites, that kill bacteria, even the good bacteria that is present in our intestines and essential for good health. This upsets the delicate balance of the yeast to bacteria ratio in your digestive system, giving the yeast fungi the upper hand in creating a yeast infection. Without the good bacteria in your system to control yeast, it spreads and becomes a toxic fungal parasite known as candida.

Penicillin is a good example of a fungal by-product called a mycotoxin. It was discovered from a mold (mold is a fungus) experiment that Dr. Fleming was performing on a bacteria colony. He added some mold from bread to the colony and observed that the fungus killed all the bacteria; producing the substance he later named penicillin.

The number one cause of yeast infection was born in 1928 and is so over-prescribed today that yeast infection is a growing epidemic.

Before you reach for those handy antibiotics do a little research.

Do I really need antibiotics?

What will the antibiotics do to me?

Trojan Whores - A new twist on an old tail.

Over on Lone Wolf...  Sort of works on both blogs.

Sexual Devolution...

So I was down at the local U the other day working on some math stuff (and no, its not maths or university, its mathematics and the (or "a") university, unless you don't know how to spell).  It was a beautiful day - sun shining, temperature was around 65-70, light wind, fall colors - just stunning.

Now, in the olden days when I was at another U this always brought out the love birds - happy couples necking, holding hands walking to their classes, laying the sun or under a shade tree, that sort of thing.

So I arrived a few minutes early for my appointment so I had time to walk around and get something to eat.  As I was walking back to my meeting it struck me - there was not a single "couple" to be seen.  Not one.  Not anywhere.

On the drive back I had some time to reflect on this - how odd - beautiful weather always puts "love in the air" - or so I thought.

Apparently, a lot has changed in the intervening decades since I was in school...

For one thing, it looks like feminism has given the "male on the prowl" his dream as scientifically documented here. Some related posts here and here.

Full PDF here.

No strings attached love (as in "free" of obligation of any kind) (called NSAL) - well this is a new development - at least since the wild and free 1970's.

Or is it...

A quick read of the article reveals that while there is plenty of NSAL in the air on your local U campus, but "free", as is usually the case, turns out to be not so "free" after all.

(In case you are wondering, those that had sex, starting say around 17, without any casual intentions or with the "intent of a lasting relationship" do not suffer what I will describe below.  This is science - created at the same institutions which I describe - I am not making this up and no, its not fanatical right-wing religious Nazism.)

So the idea is that we can separate love and sex, and, having divided things up, freely go about one without the other.  Seems like a good idea, right?  Well, as the research documents, no, its not.

The first thing you see is that while the great "feminine mistake", er, mystique, didn't get the memo out to either gender about the "falling in love" part - as in how to not do it.  So, yes, we (as in "we the collective of kiddies" - not me personally) can all have free sex but, low and behold, and according to scientific research, secret expectations of love and relationships muck up the fun after the fact.  Usually this happens with depression - though there are other negative consequences as well.  One of them, in fact, is having more casual sex.

So, let me get this straight.  Casual sex (particularly in women according to the study) causes depression.   Depression causes more casual sex (as documented here) which in turn causes even more depression...  This would not appear to be a positive thing for those involved - or am I wrong?

As we all know in these modern times the big "D" depression = prescriptions happy pills.  So, following the maths as it were, we get casual sex = depression = happy pill prescriptions.

So, let's look at this.  (Try Googling "antidepressants sex").

Looks to me that happy pill perscriptions = unhappy/no sex.

This leaves us with our final equation: "casual sex = depression = happy pill presriptions = no sex/unhappy sex".

So what have we done to ourselves (me personally excluded as I have been with the same wife for going on 35 years) and our children?

(And no, I don't think women should be back in the kitchen without a vote or equal pay.  My wife thinks that feminism has robbed her of much (see, science backs you up) - particularly as it relates to our daughters - but, as they say, that's for another time.)

To my original comment on the "U".  Today's kids have been over-exposed.  They've lost the magic, as it were.  No need to hold hands or fall in love when a simple text "booty call" will reel in a casual partner.

Is this fair to them?  After all our generation created feminism in the first place.

Sadly it looks like this is robbing our sons and daughters of happy, fulfilled relationships and sex lives.

Robo-signing...

From forbes.com regarding the mortgage "robo-signing" scandal:

"In a joint statement, the officials said they would review evidence that legal documents were signed by mortgage company employees who "did not have personal knowledge of the facts asserted in the documents. They also said that many of those documents appear to have been signed without a notary public witnessing that signature - a violation of most state laws."

"What we have seen are not mere technicalities," said Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray. "This is about the private property rights of homeowners facing foreclosure and the integrity of our court system, which cannot enter judgments based on fraudulent evidence."

(Let's not confuse this with a different problem as outlined here.   This is the problem that liens associated with the mortgage were transferred improperly when rolled up into investments.  So "robo-signing", if done without proper ownership, will be a problem, and, if done right, won't be.  But this is a court issue - only the court can decide if the lien-holder who appears in a foreclosure has standing.  Basically its up to the foreclosee to handle this... they signed the mortgage - which is also really just a legal agreement.)

This is insane:  "did not have personal knowledge of the facts asserted in the documents".

Like there hasn't ever been a foreclosure before? Are all the past foreclosed mortgages invalid?  Oh please!

Does anyone reading here think that they ever had all the facts required on something like a loan document?

This will come back to bite everyone if it gets taken seriously. 

Its a court issue - let the banks show up and fail to prove standing - after one or two the'll get things figured out.  That's why there is law.

Anyone can make this same claim - for anything:

"Yes, your honor - I never understood that paragraph."

Poof - car loan gone!  Mortgage gone!  Business agreement gone!

Don't think some clever lawyer will figure this out...

Irresponsible responsibility...

I saw an old friend last night.  He's in a bad way.

His adult child (30ish) lives at home having lost his job, the adult child's child (my friends granddaughter) is emotionally abandoned by her dad leaving my friend (grandpa) to take care of her.  The adult child is lazy, sleeps all day, burns through family resources by the boat load (food, gas, etc.), and brings home "bed pigs" every night while leaving his little daughter to fall asleep on the couch in front of the TV.

My friend's job is killing him.  Outside consultants come in and tell him they can't believe how much he gets done and tell him to hire three more people in order to reduce his workload.  He takes care of all his underlings and helps them do their jobs right.  His boss spends his day ordering useless crap online and telling my friend he needs to "step it up a notch".

I haven't seen him in four months because he's too busy - he has zero time for himself.  He's got serious health problems that aren't being addressed because he doesn't have time.

Sound familiar?  Sound like someone you know?  It does at least to me because that's how I used to be.

He's my age - we grew up in the 50's and 60's - we learned to be responsible, to take care of ourselves, to do what was right, to put others before ourselves, to sacrifice our needs before those of others, to be compassionate for those in need, blah, blah. blah.

I know where my friend is in his life.  We're like the old plough horses of the 1800's (that's funny - Google spelling doesn't even know the word "plough").  Solid, strong, quiet, reliable, dependable, always ready for work. 

Of course, everyone loves the plough horse - he never complains, always pulls his load no matter what it is, and without him the farm would fail.   Sounds too good to be true for the farmer's family, doesn't it...?  After all they never have to pull the plough themselves and when they want more, the old plough horse obliges.

So what does the family do - it becomes more and more reliant upon the plough horse - day after day, year after year: adding a bigger blow, fancier harnesses, more comfortable wheels and seats, larger fields.  Does the plough horse complain?

No.

He just keeps on pulling the load.  That is, he just keeps on pulling the load until the day he simply falls over dead in the field.  Why?  Because to do less would be irresponsible.

As I said - I used to be there too - in fact, I still am in some ways and probably always will be, but that's not important here.

My friend, you, just like the plough horse, suffer from what I call "irresponsible responsibility". 

Responsibility - you know what that is.  Its why you are where you are.  Its what your mom and dad made you - its as it should be.  And, like the plough horse, you just keep pulling that ever-growing load. But, I doubt you made your mom and dad take care of you when you were thirty.  Why?  Because you are responsible - and responsibility works both ways.

I know you feel responsible for your little granddaughter.  But ask yourself this - if you in fact ARE responsible for her who will be there for her when you fall over dead in the field?  Junior?

I say taking on a level of responsibility you cannot manage is in fact irresponsible.

How so, you ask?  I ask would you go to jail for your son?  Would you pay all his fines?  His taxes?  Where do you draw the line?  If you destroy your life for his (or for your boss) - how is that meeting your definition of responsibility?

The solution is actually easier than you think - you're responsible to your own child.  Did you go to your mom and dad and ask them to raise your kid?  No.  If you truly want to help your granddaughter you're going to have to "man up" with some tough love for junior and kick him in the ass.

That's your responsibility.  Kicking his ass.  How will you know when you're getting somewhere?  Junior will start to pick up the slack.

(Unless he's on dope - in which case just send him to jail ASAP - six months will do it - otherwise you'll spend six years.)

Taking on his "load" of responsibility for his daughter simply delays his growing up.  If he doesn't grow up eventually your granddaughter will - in fact she will outgrow him.

I know how responsible you are and I am willing to bet that a lot you rubbed off on junior.  Its in there somewhere - all you have to do is figure out how to bring it to the surface.

Right now your level of responsibility is irresponsible because it jeopardizes your granddaughter's future.

If you die before junior learns to grow up where will she be then?
 
You're thrashing right now because you're making junior dependent on you instead of himself.

If you die, where does that leave him?

Though it doesn't seem like it the right thing to do is to use some "tough love" on old junior and get him to man up to his responsibilities.  That doesn't mean your granddaughter has to live in a cardboard box with junior under the highway - it just means junior has to think that your okay with that.

As for your boss?  Well, your enabling all this there too.  We he says "step it up a notch" you'll have to push back.  Again - its irresponsible not too - because dropping dead in the fields will f*ck up all you've accomplished there.

Hey - don't be a stranger any more...  If you need a hand let me know.  That's why I'm here.

Taking time for you recharges your resources - it lets you get a better grip on shit - let's you see where you need to go to - let's you psyche up for the ass whooping for junior - it makes you more responsible to see things as they should be and be prepared to steer the bad things in a new direction.

BTW - I hate to have to use this same tough love on your scrawny ass but you know, that's what needs to be done.

Rehab? - I said "no, no, no"...

My mom lives in an "over 55" apartment.

She's in her eighties now.

Her generation has always had a lot of "respect" for doctors and the medical community.  I suppose this comes from growing up in the Great Depression in the 1930's when someone like a doctor had a huge standing in the community and society in general.  You always "trusted" the doctor because he had "scientific training", etc.

In that era Doctors dealt with whooping cough, TB, and all sorts of other diseases with treatments we would today consider primitive.  Penicillin didn't start in common use until about 1945 when its chemical structure was first figured out.  Once penicillin was prevalent doctors, at least in the view of my mother's generation, were elevated to god-like status.

Until fairly recently medicine had a relatively narrow focus. What I mean by this is that doctors dealt with concrete things: broken bones, treatable disease, simple operations (appendix, etc.) and so on.

But today things are far different - and that's what I want to talk about.  For one, pain is a no-no.

Fortunately mom is reasonably healthy.  But that's not the case for he neighbors.  So here's one little scenario that I heard about...

Let's take the case of H.  This is someone my mom has known since childhood.  I talk with my mom frequently and a while back we were discussing pain medication.  So there we are, talking away, and she mentions that H. is on 3 x OC-80 a day for her "pain" from doctor A (OC-80 = Oxycontin 80mg), plus more for doctors B, C, D and E and she is constantly shopping for new doctors (H. is also in her eighties).

So I point out that this is very bad - that this much pain medication on a regular basis is bad - its effects are bad - and on and on.  I tell her that H. is basically a heroin addict and needs help.

My mother say, yes, she understands because her neighbor B. is using fentanyl suckers for her pain.  I ask how that's working out for B. She says "oh, she's a little loopy".

So some time later my mom mentions that H. is going to the "pain doctor".  H. has always suffered from a variety of unexplained pain and is always seeking medical treatment.  Then she says

"Well, H. got to the pain doctors office.  The doctor took a look at all her medications and called the ambulance.  The ambulance took her directly to hospital X and checked her in.  She's not allowed to get out for a week - and she can't have any visitors."  What she meant and didn't quite understand was that H. was in the rehab.

So I explained that this much pain medication was like a 20-bag a day heroin habit.  BTW - most street heroin you buy from the local dealer, we'll call him G. for the purposes of this blog, is probably fentanyl as opposed to true heroin - but that's another story.

So about a week later H. gets out of rehab, comes home, and, near as I can tell, goes back to the doctor shopping.

Meanwhile B. apparently figures out that fentanyl suckers are not such a good idea for pain and manages to get off of them on her own.

Apparently in this apartment complex the "little old ladies," as she sometimes calls her neighbors, swap all sorts of these "pain medications" on a daily basis.  Now, this is one apartment in one small urban area in the midwest.

So what's going on here?

Well, for one thing it seems pretty clear what the deal is on Oxycontin.  Why is this around your child's school, your work place, your watering hole, and everywhere else? Because grandma needs it for her pain.  

Sadly, it would appear that doping grandma up to a minimum 5-bag a day heroin habit is the new status quo for medical science.  Apparently doctors will happily prescribe as many pills as grandma needs - if grandma needs more than another doctor will cover it.  Not enough pills to cover you till next week, then just swap S. down the hall for a few dozen extra OC-80's.

Does anyone, like Medicaid (meaning you and I), bother to check or control this situation?  Nope.

Does anyone but me even see this going on?

And most of these folks believe that this stuff is good for them.  Not that their pain goes completely away - it doesn't.  Is it numbed a bit - sure.  But now they suffer all the side effects from opioid addiction like

• Loss of appetite
• Weight loss
• Nausea
• Headache
• Paranoia
• Hallucinations
• Confusion and Forgetfulness
• Runny nose
• Glazed or red eyes
• Anxiety, mood swings

Now, once these good folks a are on this stuff and exhibiting these new symptoms what does the good doctor do?  Why prescribe event more pills to address the new symptoms.

Does the drug company making this stuff care - sure they do - that's why they send the profession drug dealers (as opposed to G.) to the local doctor's office to push these pills and offer free samples - so the doctor will prescribe more - not less. 

(A comparison of a pro drug dealer to G. will probably make another good post.)

When little Johnny goes to grandma's apartment next time for a visit  it will be easy to scoop 10 OC-80's for that next middle school party.  Grandma will probably just think she lost them and get more and little Johnny will soon be singing the rehab song...

Obesity - It's what's for dinner...

Well, the big research dollars for global warming are probably on the wain so it time to switch horses and "obesity" is probably going to be the winner (from the WSJ): "An international research consortium says it has identified 18 new gene sites linked to obesity and 13 others associated with how fat is distributed in the body, advances that shed new light on the complex biology underlying one of the world's most pressing public-health problems."

and

"About a third of U.S. adults are obese, as measured by a ratio of height and weight known as body mass index, or BMI. Around the world, developed nations and emerging economies alike have seen alarming rises in the prevalence of obesity, which is associated with higher risks of heart disease, cancer and other serious ailments as well as soaring health-care costs."

Before you read further dig out some old photos of your family and friends from 50 years ago and look at them.  Notice anything (like they are all, on average, much thinner)?  Hint: the people in those photos have the same "obesity" genes as you and they weren't over weight.

So let's think about this study and what its telling us. 

First, there's the incredibly stupid BMI.  This one size fits all indicator will probably determine your fate under ObamaCare - but that's another story.

BMI is a total failure because it doesn't account for the composition of your body, i.e., it can't tell if your all muscle or all fat or anything in between.  Muscle is denser than fat.  Comparing one pound of each you will find the fat takes up more space (about 18% I think - Google this for your self if you are interested).

Now I'm 6 feet tall and I weigh around 200 pounds (and no, I never get on a scale - last time was probably several years ago - but not much has changed since then - I've had the same waist size on my pants for a decade - in fact I shrank some.  When I was 18 I wore a size 32" waist.  Today I wear size 36".).

I am also 53 years old.  My BMI of 27 says I am obese - which is absolute nonsense because I am reasonably muscular.  BMI cannot tell the difference.  So, someone with the same BMI as me might have a larger waste and correspondingly more fat, or a smaller waste and correspondingly less fat, than I.

So look at some quotes from the "research" - they use BMI to test for "higher risks of heart disease, cancer and other serious ailments as well as soaring health-care costs".

Let's think about heart disease.  Well - instead of a useless measure of height vs weight how about measuring heart "function".

My personal heart function test (don't try this - it might be dangerous): take 1/4 your body weight and carry it up and down a full flight of stairs three times within two minutes.  Can you do it?  Are you winded?  Breathing hard? Sweating?   Answer yes to any of these and you should be concerned about your heart health.

To go along with the bogus BMI test there is now the "high blood pressure test": Blood pressure greater than 119/79?  You're prehypertensive so you must need a drug to lower your blood pressure.

Bullshit.

My blood pressure has been the old standard of "normal" at 120/80 for my entire adult life (35 years or so).  Suddenly, due to a change in measurement, I am suffering from "prehypertension".

This new measurement system is not designed to help me.  It's designed to sell drugs like Lipitor to lower blood pressure - nothing more.

Then there is the cholesterol myth that cholesterol causes heart attacks which is nothing more than an additional scheme to sell drugs.  If you bother to look at the side effects of these drugs you would see how bad and dangerous they are.

So after all this what's the real reason for all this obesity?

Consuming too much high-calorie food.  Just like muscle and fat food has a caloric density and choosing foods with the right caloric density (lower) is good and reduces obesity.

Think about this:  Drink 3 cans of soda each day = 3 x 180 calories = 540 calories x 7 days a week = 3,780 calories a week = one full day of normal eating.  So just three cans of soda a day = 8 days a week of eating.  More than enough to go "obese" <-- see for your self.

Now add desert, lots of goodies, and see where it goes.

My simple rule for obesity prevention:  Eat one week's worth of calories in one week.

People don't know this - and don't expect the FDA or the drug companies to waste time telling you what to do - if they did they wouldn't have jobs.

Why are things like this?

Because of MONEY.

Big government and big drug companies don't want obesity to go away - they want more of it - why?  So you or the government can buy more drugs.

Why do we need the BMI and blood pressure values to make you obese and unhealthy - so you or the government can buy more drugs.

I don't need to go on...

You are getting ripped off by the government/health care/media complex - both financially and health wise.

If you value your health do the research - that's what Google is for - and find things out for you self.

Look at what your prescriptions are or can do to you.

Where has all the Iodine gone...?

Beerzoids and the sinus flush are years old now and have made such an amazing impact on my life its really hard to express it.   

This time you'll get a chance to start at the ground floor.

So check out this list of symptoms:

• Fatigue
• Depression
• Modest weight gain
• Cold intolerance
• Excessive sleepiness
• Dry, coarse hair
• Constipation
• Dry skin
• Muscle cramps
• Increased cholesterol levels
• Decreased concentration
• Vague aches and pains
• Swelling of the legs 

Sound familiar?  Probably 90% of humanity has several of these according to any number of measures.  This list is from a University of Michigan web site on health and iodine deficiency.   My wife has always suffered from a number of these, cold intolerance and muscle cramps in particular.  And lately a few more starting rearing their heads.


According to the old U of M iodine deficiency is "now rare in the U.S. as a result of widespread distribution of foods from iodine sufficient areas. The incidence of iodine deficiency occurs in certain geographical areas at higher altitudes with iodine depleted soil - usually in areas away from the seacoast and in countries where salt is not fortified with iodine." 

So she tells me "these symptoms sure sound like me" so she starts digging.  Eventually she comes up with this:

Most people have serious iodine deficiencies.  While what's recommended (RDA level) is "19 years and older, 150 micrograms of  Iodine per day" many people, for example the Japanese, have much higher intakes (in the 12mg range - note 150 MICRO grams versus 12 MILLI grams - probably 100 times more).  Then she tells me she found a test to tell her if she's iodine deficient - it's called iodine painting (some examples are here and here - I prefer this second site).

So she gives it a try and sure enough she comes up short.

So she tells me she can keep on paining this stuff on herself and it will increase her iodine daily iodine intake.

We're about a month into this now and I have to say it really seems to be doing positive things for her.  Her complaint level on the various symptoms is way down, she has A LOT more energy, sleeps better, and on and on.  

So here I sit now with my painted on patch to see what it does...

Tea, Crackpots and A Rolling Stone

I don't read the magazine "The Rolling Stone" any more.  Actually I probably haven't looked at one except now and then for probably twenty years.

I find this unfortunate because I really like music journalism and I am always interested in what goes on with it.  In my early days in the 1970's it was something of interesting to read.

But I guess I grew up.

So I happened upon this article written by Matt Taibbi in upcoming addition while doing some research for this blog.  (It's long but I linked to the page in question - please read the rest for yourself.)

"Buried deep in the anus of the Bible Belt, in a little place called Petersburg, Kentucky, is one of the world's most extraordinary tourist attractions: the Creation Museum,  ..."

Well, that's a polite intro - I guess he doesn't like Kentucky much...

But then we find this paragraph:

"Even more disturbing is an exhibit designed to show how the world has changed since the Scopes trial eradicated religion from popular culture. Visitors to the museum enter a darkened urban scene full of graffiti and garbage, and through a series of windows view video scenes of families in a state of collapse. A teenager, rolling a giant doobie as his God-fearing little brother looks on in horror, surfs porn on the Web instead of reading the Bible. ("A Wide World of Women!" the older brother chuckles.) A girl stares at her home pregnancy test and says into the telephone, "My parents are not going to know!" As you go farther into the exhibit, you find a wooden door, into which an eerie inscription has been carved: "The World's Not Safe Anymore."

Well, Matt Taibbi, I have to agree about the disturbing nature of the exhibit but I suspect we disagree on exactly why this exhibit is disturbing.

Now any responsible adult raising children knows these issues all too well and that, in fact, for your kids and grand kids "the world's not safe anymore" is true.  I could post links to any number of stories about the tragedy kids suffer today - but what's the point - since this guy no doubt believes that today's society and its effect on children is progress.

As you read on further into the article you see the real point is "The Tea Party is many things at once, but one way or another, it almost always comes back to a campaign against that unsafe urban hellscape of godless liberalism we call our modern world." (I struck out the world "godless" because, after all, we need to banish God from society... at least that what I think the point of the "Scopes trial" comment is.)

Which leaves us with the truth - that our kids must live in a "unsafe urban hellscape of liberalism we call our modern world".

Its sad to see this guy writing sarcastically about the difficult world our children have inherited.

Too bad it thinks its all a sad joke.

Sinus Flushing with Beerzoids

Many years ago I stumbled onto Beerzoids and sinus flushing.

I had had periodic sinus pain over the years and would routinely get a bad cold or two over the winter which would always end up in some kind of long-lasting sinus misery.

This misery would usually manifest itself as sharp pains in my sinus area.  It would take weeks to go away on its own and it seemed to be getting worse year to year.

I searched in vain for a solution - tried all the usual over the counter stuff which never worked right - and finally I ended up in some sort of Health Forum with this 40-page series of posts by a guy named Beerzoids.  Apparently he had had it far worse than me but had somehow, due to extensive experimentation, figured out that if you knelt down, put your head on the floor, and poured a diluted hydrogen peroxide solution into your nose it fixed your sinus problems.

(As a side note the original chain of posts seems to have been rolled up in to some sort of summary posting.)

Now I was not interested in the usual heavy duty antibiotic and surgical treatments because of their side effects (more on the side effects of antibiotics in future posts) so this seemed like an attractive option.

(I am not squeamish about this sort of thing though I know that others are so please bear with me.)

Following the instructions from the site I whipped up a batch of diluted peroxide and, armed with a little blue dropper bottle from my lovely wife set about fixing my sinus problem.  It did take some nerve the first time to do this because they talked about "bad things" like burning your eustachian tubes.

So, as per instructions, I knelt down in front of the bath tube, bent over and stuck my head onto the bottom of the bath tube, and shot the stuff into my nostrils. 

They were right - there is a burning sensations.  Now, I have a high tolerance for pain, but this stung like hell.  Plus, you could feel it foaming and gurgling just like pouring peroxide onto an infected wound or cut.  After the bubbling and burning die down I stood up and blew my nose.

The point here is that the diluted peroxide gets up into your sinuses. Sort like getting water up you nose when swimming.

You know your doing it right when you can swing you head around and feel it running into the various parts of your sinuses.

Out came the first bits of a long standing sinus infection (no need for further description, at least at this point).

I struggled to do this regularly for a while and within a couple of days the sinus pain was gone.  I was able to work out when and how to do it and soon I ended my sinus suffering completely.

I was able to dispose of a whole medicine cabinet full of "Cold Remedies", Zicam, and such.

I would still get the yearly flues but I was always able to clear the sinus infection quickly there after.

So now the gears are turning and I think to myself - I wonder what will happen if I use this during a cold or flu?  I was now in uncharted territory relative to my hero Beerzoids but I figured what the hell.

The next time I felt a cold coming on I doused my sinuses - probably two to three times a day. 

Something magical happened.  My colds and flues was never really able to "take hold" like it usually did.  Generally I would start out with a sore throat, then a runny nose, then a cough, then misery for a several days, then a week or two of getting over it.

With my new experiments I was able to bypass 95% of the usual cold and flu misery - usually just feeling a bit feverish for two days.

So I started to think about why this was so.  The only conclusions I could come to was this:  Colds and flues (though not all flues as will cover in another post) don't work like you (or modern medical science) think they do.

When you start a cold it begins in your sinuses producing lots of mucus.  Pre-1970's or so you would blow your nose until the cold was over.  Starting the 70's people began taking decongestants that "dried up" their cold.  So let's think about that.

Here's a normal  bodily function that, when we get sick, we halt instead of letting it run its course - with the side effect that all the crud and nastiness is backed up and compacted inside our body - in this case our sinuses.   Does this really make any kind of sense?

So what if we applied this principle with any other bodily function?  (Say, treating a stomach flu by not expelling from either end until it was over.) How would that feel and what would it do to you?  Nothing good, I imagine.

I think colds and flues start in your sinuses by filling them with mucus.  Naturally your tendency is to blow your nose to clear them (that's why grandma always told you not to "sniff").  But these days your first reaction is to "dry up" the cold with some over the counter medication.  Unfortunately, instead of fixing the problem it compacts all the junk in your sinuses and it gets infected.  This is why you blow out all that colorful crud over the usual course of cold or flu.

As the infection expands post-nasal drip carries that infection down into your lungs and viola - you now now have a cough.

So my theory, born out by my own personal experimentation, is that if you break the cycle of letting that crud in your sinuses get infected in the first place by sinus flushing you end up with only the cold and none of the rest.

Modern medicine has, in my opinion, made this sort of cold and flu far worse by creating tools to compact this infection in your sinuses.  Coupled with over prescribing antibiotics to try and clear the infection once it takes root you have a prescription (no pun intended) for misery.

So for me, in the last five years, including one really nasty case which I will talk about another time (known as the "nasty yellow mucus flu" around my house) I have not missed a single day of work, music, or anything else due to either a cold or flu and I have not had one cough - not one - including the during the "nasty yellow flu".   Have I been sick over that time with a cold or flu - sure - but its no longer debilitating and it no longer lingers for more than a couple of days.

Now there is more here to cover but that's all for this post.

California Pot and Federal Law

An article appeared in the opinion pages of the WSJ today regarding California and its attempt to legalized pot.

The authors are former US DEA Administrators.

-------------------

This is an open post in response to the article.

Marijuana is ubiquitous in our society and its freely available to virtually everyone.  It is commonly used by grandmothers to reduce glaucoma, soccer moms to relax after a days work and grade school children seeking thrills or relief from boredom.  Growing up in the 60's and 70's the usage was not nearly as accepted or widespread.

In the intervening forty years the expansion of acceptance and the present widespread use has come under your collective watches.

You make the claim that federal law will trump California states rights.  But I view this statement as a righteous justification for what is left unsaid in the article: that federal marijuana law is a complete and utter failure.

The question is why and the answer is simple:  The acceptance of marijuana has followed the liberal ideals of college educated flower children from their free and easy lives in the sixties and seventies to virtually every power center in today's society including all levels of government where those in power can easily turn a blind eye and, because of their position, escape scrutiny and investigation.

If you want to eliminate drug use from our society you must start at the top, not the bottom.  Use your powers to investigate and raid federal, state and local offices in all branches of government and prosecute those you find their breaking federal drug laws.  Marijuana's ubiquitous nature, the liberal nature of those often employed by government, and the lack of enthusiastic enforcement by federal officials will guarantee your investigations and raids to be a success (that is, if no one is tipped off).

Make an example of those you find breaking the law at the very top - not some laid-off California working man taking a drag on his CA-approved and taxed joint with his buddies in his car after work. 

Righteous indignation is a symptom of the problem - not a solution.   The working man follows leadership, not rhetoric, and big speeches from the top server merely to "tip off" the offenders so they have time to hide.

I got burned...

My laptop burned my legs?  Do we really need to fund this sort of "health research"?

I have to say that intentionally letting something hot sit on your legs for a long enough period of time to cause measurable damage is beyond stupid.

Why it was just five years ago or so that the real threat of using a laptop in your lap, at least if you were male, was thought to be the heating of testicles to the point of failure as discussed here.

Of course, the real list of laptop danger also includes eyestrain, posture related stuff like arm, shoulder and neck problems, and stress.

On the other hand these injuries are not caused by the laptop, i.e., I was working on my laptop and, like a giant rat trap, it snapped shut on my hand.  Now, at least in my mind, that is what I would call "caused by a laptop".

So after finding this article I became curios - why do people use computers and video games to the point of injury?

I found this site which was quite a good start.  In part the article says:  "The United States bureau of Labor Statistics reported more than three hundred thousand cases of cumulative trauma in American business in 1993, up from a steady annual rate of around seventy thousand in the early 80s. Some of those include work settings with a history of the problem such as meat packing houses, grocery clerks, sign interpreters, and others. But looking at the numbers it is clear that the level of reported cases has dramatically increased beginning in 1984 when desktop computers began to appear. As processing speed increased, prices came down, and the software market matured, computers spread into our work environment at an amazing pace."

Now this is not scientific but it points to at least an element of the problem - there are a lot more computers than their used to by - 50 million by an estimate in the same article - all with people sitting for long periods in front of them.

So I understand about the work aspect of this - I have to sit there for my job - but what about the video gamers out there?

So I did some research and found this site - Video Games and Politics - where they talk about injuries - but these are "hard' injuries like cases where I wack my buddy in the head with the game controller while playing video tennis.


The "I burned my legs with my laptop" problems seems to me best described by this site.  Basically doing something this long so that it results in injury is covered by behavioral addiction disease - the warning signs are these: A demonstrated “lack of control” when trying to stop or limit the amount of time your loved one spends on the video game or laptop.  There's a whole long list of "symptoms" at the bottom.

Personally calling this a disease seems a bit much.  People spend a lot of time on things and have done so over the years - often to very good results, e.g., practicing a sport, art, writing, and so forth.

I think the real issue is one of perspective.  In my youth doing something like getting burned with a laptop for using it far to long would have resulted in ridicule by older cousins or siblings or gotten me a good swift kick in the ass by a parent or uncle.

Inaccurate Weather...

I used to like the weather.com site.  As a runner it was very convenient have a browser tab set up to my local radar.  That way on rainy days I could wait for a break in the green "rain" area and hit the road. 

At least that was true back in 2005 when I started this blog.

In the intervening years the accuracy of this has changed dramatically for the worse - which to me is a remarkable thing.

I used to be able to time the passing of the "green" rain areas very accurately - down to a few minutes either coming or going.  In those days "green" meant actual on the ground rain.

Fast forward to 2010. 

Now the radar output is basically meaningless.  You can see the "green" rain areas but they are often completely missing from the display while we're getting a good rain and you can see a heavy rain over the house and outside there is no rain at all.

Now I have check this out at both weather.com and accuweather.com and the results seem to be about the same.

The only reasons I can see for this kind of change would be money and dumb.  As in charge some customers more for the accurate weather or report things like rain "in the air" as green.

Either way it makes both sites pretty useless for anything other than just checking the basic conditions.

Don't get me wrong - there is still some small value here.  I have the AccuWeather iPhone app and its nice for watching big, nasty thunderstorms roll in on picnics in the summer - and you can see big gaps between parts of storms fairly reliably.  But you can't rely on the "green" = "rain".

Five years ago... (Report #1)

I posted this related to health.

For the last two decades or so I have been an runner.  Nothing big - a few 10K's (40:40 was my best ever) - some 5K's - but, most of the time, just grinding out the miles every day - which amount to about 2.5 a day these days.

In my original post I talk about exercise and vitamins.  In the intervening years I have learned a lot more - much from experimenting on myself.

Probably the key item has been my discovery of pomegranate juice.  I drink probably one of those large POM bottles (either pomegranate or pomegranate with blue berry) every two weeks plus a bottle of Welch's grape/pomegranate/blue berry stuff.

At first it tasted like shit - nasty - very hard to take.  It took a few years to really get to appreciate the taste - and some times it still tastes bad - I guess the taste is seasonally dependent.

So why did I drink it?

I was getting close to 50 years old and my brain was not as sharp as it used to be - I felt dull - like stuck under a sheet or something - it was getting harder to concentrate for long periods - I didn't feel as mentally productive - that sort of thing.

So I stuck with this for about 6 months before I really started to notice anything.

(Now I am rather scientific so I was careful not to change anything else I was doing in this regard - diet, exercise, all of that.)

Things started to become clearer - not a lot - but some - enough to be encouraged that over all the pomegranate was probably doing something good for my brain.  I kept at it - for several more years.  All the while things became incrementally clearer.

Its sort of like being in "Flowers for Algernon" - which was a staple of high school English in the early 1970's.  In summary from Wikipedia: "The titular Algernon is a laboratory mouse who has undergone surgery to increase his intelligence by artificial means.  The story is told as a series of progress reports written by Charlie, the first human test subject for the surgery, and touches upon many different ethical and moral themes such as the treatment of the mentally disabled."

(Does this mean I was becoming mentally disabled?  The book was apparently banned in the US and Canada over the years according to Wikipedia (foot note #6).  I remember nothing about "ethical and moral themes" for the treatment of the mentally disabled.  B.S. I think....)

So in the last five years my mental acuity has increased substantially - to the point where I feel as able as I ever have been mentally.

So what happens the the FTC bans the stuff?  I guess you'll have to wait for the last report from Charlie.

The last time I felt as I do now was about 1998 when I wrote the first version of pdfExpress.

Fecal Transplants, er, I mean bacteriotherapy

And, more detailed, here, though you might need a login (and a strong stomache) to read this...

Its been some years since I posted here - I suppose near death by neglect - but, with a topic like this how could I resist?  (And I've been quite busy over at the Lone Wolf blog so I figured why not add to the blogging fun.)

And yes, you read the title correctly.  I will spare you with the ghastly details of how, precisely, this is accomplished - feel free to read the above article at Medipage to learn about that.

The concept here is actually quite good and makes a lot of sense - at least in theory.  Let me explain...

Your intestines play host to a variety of bacteria that assist your body in digestion.  Now, as for bacteria on humans, there are apparently many specialized types (see this for some ideas).  The theory is that if these bacteria get killed off (say via antibiotics) or suffer other calamity your health can suffer severely.

The good news here is that there are many other ways to reboot your intestinal flora besides fecal transplants - various probiotic supplements are designed to the same thing.

I've had personal experience with this ... drum roll ... through my dog.  Poor old Mugs (a giant Boston Terrier) came to me in mid-life suffering from all the usual mid-life misery - chief among the misery - screwed up bowels (I'm sure you can imagine the details).   When I first got him he had been on antibiotics most of his life for his ear problems.  Long story short he would scratch his ears, they would get full of cuts and infections, and he'd get antibiotics.  This went on for years.

The antibiotics killed off his intestinal flora - they were kaput.  My lovely wife recommended that we "fix" this with some probiotics she happened to have laying around the house.  So, for about a month, each meal old Mugs got a shot of probiotics.  And, sure enough, the results of his food digestion process significantly improved.

(Of course we also stopped the antibiotics and figured out how to fix his ears homeopathically.)

It took a few more years of tinkering with his ear problems to finally get him back to full health, but we did, and now he is as spry as our 2 year old Boston Terrier/Pug mix - leaping vertically about 3 feet when needed.  These days old Mugs can eat trash, garbage, paper, plastic, you name it, with the best of them and by next morning everything has been passed on.

I am glad that this new fecal transplant thing came about after Mugs had his problems...

I guess I am really tired..

I keep hearing about how someone's private life is separate from their public life: "Oh, let's not judge Bill Clinton by his actions with Monica, they're personal."

Well, let's see... Elliot Spitzer - can't seem to keep his wedding vow, and, oops, out soliciting prostititues...

Kwame Kilpatrick... oops, a sex and lying scandal... can't seem to keep a vow either...

And on it goes...

Oh, and let's not judge others either. Well, as a voter what are we supposed to do? Not judge the candidate? Only judge the candidate on what they "say" they should be judged on?

So, what criteria are fair game for "judging" a candidate that will a) run for office and b) get sworn in if they win. Isn't it fair to judge them on how they handle their other vows?

Google - what nonsense...

I haven't logged in a while... So when I do I suddenly have to have a "google account"...

Then, just like all the other big companies I go through a painful, stupid, non-deterministic process to "transfer" my account to a "new" google account. I have to bail out and re-log in after spending five minutes trying to log in during the transfer... and then "ta da" - magically my account works - after it tells me five times my password is bad...

[Sigh]