Thursday, April 30, 2015

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

It's Everywhere

Bankers Are Taking ADHD Medicine to Get Ahead

This is an indication their brains are waning, not some clever voluntary enhancement.
And it makes them more impulsive.  
And they have your money.

Heh

Ladies, you might want to swap the bourbon for a bong 

Alcohol increases intestinal permeability.
Weed reduces it.

So yeah, you might...

Yo Doctors

You might want to think about the consequences of dealing with infected people all day.
And all those powerful aromatic molecules that permeate your environment.
And your frakking low fat diets.


Doctors Throwing Fits
One of the hardest parts of being a nurse is dealing with bullying doctors.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Yo Psychs

How to avoid committing suicide
I was a good college student obsessed with ending my life. What to do when your own brain is out to destroy you?
This is the state of your "science".
The same state it was in in 1937.
You fuckin suck.

A few for you

Madness and Meaning
Andrew Scull shares some pictures from his new history of insanity book.  
I like the images, but after reading his other books, mostly I think his research and conclusions are a result of his own vigorous pathology.

Fat signals control energy levels in the brain
The hypothalamus is a part of the brain known to have important roles in maintaining the body's physiology, including regulating body temperature, sleep cycles, heart rate, blood pressure, thirst and appetite. Mice with low NAMPT in fat tissue had low fuel levels in the hypothalamus. These mice also showed lower measures of physical activity than mice without this defect.
 Sugar and carbs, not physical inactivity, behind surge in obesity, say experts
"Celebrity endorsements of sugary drinks and the association of junk food and sport must end," they declare, adding that health clubs and gyms need to set an example by removing the sale of these products from their premises. "The 'health halo' legitimisation of nutritionally deficient products is misleading and unscientific," they write.Public health messaging has unhelpfully focused on maintaining a 'healthy weight' through calorie counting, but it's the source of the calories that matters, they point out. "Sugar calories promote fat storage and hunger. Fat calories induce fullness or satiation," they write.

Sugary drinks boost risk factors for heart disease, study shows
Beverages sweetened with low, medium and high amounts of high-fructose corn syrup significantly increase risk factors for cardiovascular disease, even when consumed for just two weeks by young, healthy men and women.

Regular consumption of yogurt does not improve health

Coffee protects against breast cancer recurrence, detailed findings confirm
My aunt was specifically told to eliminate it from her diet after treatment.
And eat more frakkin fruits and vegetables.

PTSD common in ICU Survivors
That's expected, because it's not post traumatic stress disorder, it's post sepsis endotoxemia.

Dietary supplements shown to increase cancer risk if taken in excess
One trial exploring the effects of beta-keratin supplements showed that taking more than the recommended dosage increased the risk for developing both lung cancer and heart disease by 20 percent. Folic acid, which was thought to help reduce the number of polyps in a colon, actually increased the number in another trial.

Drinking just 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks a day linked to liver disease
Yes that's because it increases intestinal permeability and allows endotoxin into your bloodstream that poisons your liver trying to filter it out.     And then your fat metabolism goes haywire.

Sorry I've been slacking off on the blog.
I hope what's coming will be worth the wait.

Sunday, April 19, 2015

SSDD

Slippery Slope: $ in, Diet Drugs Out, How Five Drugs Came to Market
Makers of diet drugs spent more than $60 million on payments to doctors, organized medicine, and lobbyists to get their drugs approved.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

Drive By

Sorry, was super busy last week.   Got that last yard project done though (cutting up a downed saguaro-  those things are massive!).    I will be pulling out my notes and starting writing soon.

Here's a few things that caught my eye-

Difficult to break the soda habit? Sugar-sweetened beverages suppress body's stress response
Drinking sugar-sweetened beverages can suppress the hormone cortisol and stress responses in the brain, but diet beverages sweetened with aspartame do not have the same effect, according to a new study.
People less focused on recurrent bad feelings when taking probiotics


'Plaque Bank' launches a new model for noninvasive disease prediction, treatment
 Scraped from the gums, teeth and tongue in the form of plaque, the researchers behind Canada's first plaque bank are betting that the bacterial content of plaque will open up a new frontier of medicine. By collecting and analyzing plaque samples gathered from the fecund bacterial environment of the mouth, researchers at the newly formed Oral Microbiome and Metagenomics Research Lab (OMMR) at the Faculty of Dentistry argue that plaque can be used can be used to predict, identify and even treat disease.

There's a couple good new scientific articles too...

Sex differences in feeding behavior in rats: the relationship with neuronal activation in the hypothalamus.
Apparently fasting increases orexin activity in female but not male rats.


Orexin receptor 1 signaling contributes to ethanol binge-like drinking: Pharmacological and molecular evidence
This one shows that unlike sugar, ingesting alcohol does not lower orexin levels.
Yeah, that explains a whole lot of things now doesn't it...

Sunday, April 12, 2015

Saturday, April 11, 2015

Same as it ever was

The sugar lobby’s sour tactics
 The head of the Sugar Association wrote to the advisory committee to say there was no “proof of cause and effect” linking “ ‘added sugars’ intake with serious disease,” nor any “significant scientific agreement” to justify telling the American public sugar is “a causal factor in a serious disease outcome.” Added Briscoe: “There is not a preponderance of scientific evidence for conclusion statements that link ‘added sugars’ intake to serious disease or negative health outcomes or for a recommendation to limit ‘added sugars’ intake to less than 10% of energy.”
Yes, well that's all about to change.   And then  this sociopath will no longer have that plausible deniability to hide behind. 
 I feel the sugar lobby’s toothache. It seems all kinds of dietary villains are getting off the hook these days. This week came a report in The Post that salt may not be as bad as previously thought. The British Medical Journal reports that saturated fat isn’t really a problem. It’s as if we’ll soon discover, as Woody Allen did in “Sleeper,” that cigarettes are actually good for us.
Heh.   I actually have found quite a few beneficial properties of nicotine.  Especially for infection and sepsis control.

My kind of Gal

The Godmother of American Medicine
In the late 19th century, Mary Putnam Jacobi proved women could be great scientists—after a Harvard professor's discriminatory book claimed otherwise.
Yeah, after a lifetime of observation I have noticed...   Men in positions of authority are really good at forming conclusions about subjects that they haven't actually studied or measured.    Especially on the topic of women.

Let's change that, ladies.

Monday, April 6, 2015

I Cheated

For the Record:

Jack in the Box Tacos are exactly as perfect as I remember.
Nothing else I shouldn't eat ever has been.   It's always disappointing.

But-
After 45 minutes I went into a fist and jaw clenching, fetal position coma for seven hours.
With severe sleep drunkeness afterwards.

Go figure.

Thursday, April 2, 2015

Microbial Whak-a-Mole

A Virus In Your Mouth Helps Fight The Flu
Young people infected with a type of herpes virus have a better immune response to the flu vaccine than those not infected, scientists at Stanford University report Wednesday. In mice, the virus directly stops influenza itself.
The findings, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, add to growing evidence that some viruses may help calibrate the immune system. They tell immune cells which pathogens to assault and which ones to leave alone.
Now, we're not talking about a rare virus that only a few people harbor. We're talking about a ubiquitous critter, called cytomegalovirus. About half of all Americans carry it. And so do nearly 100 percent of people in developing countries.
I read Martin Blaser's book Missing Microbes today. (Thanks Jamie!)
He worked on the research for Helicobacter pylori and ulcers.   He's now convinced that HP also modulates immunity and eradicating it via antibiotics is causing all kinds of problems like obesity and asthma.   I'm not sure he's right about a direct link to a lack of HP in modern western society, it's a more general effect of antibiotics, but it's a really good book, he actually covers the history and explains the basics very well.