from street art utopia
Monday, May 19, 2025
Old Mens' Prostate Problems
Seem to be causing everyone's problems these days.
Maybe we should fix that.
Saturday, May 17, 2025
NO they are not
How weight-loss wonder drugs are redefining the way our bodies work
They affect one symptom. They do not solve the problem.
Same as it ever was.
Friday, May 16, 2025
The other half of the brain
Impact of oft-overlooked cell in brain function revealed
Astrocytes can turn on and off neuron's ability to respond to chemical neurotransmitters in the brain, such as dopamine and glutamate.
Oh, that explains a few things...
bonus article
Overlooked cell type orchestrates brain rewiring
Rather than neurons, brain cells known as astrocytes take charge in shaping response to signal involved in vigilance.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
State of the Insanity
Not even in my most demented, delirious moments did I doubt that germs were real.
Monday, May 12, 2025
Friday, May 9, 2025
Drive-by
In short, our results suggest that chronic P. gingivalis-LPS release (occurring in chronic periodontitis) ...could harm the brain before the blood–brain barrier is disrupted; continuous local P. gingivalis-LPS release might do harm to the brain before exhibiting adverse effects systemically.
Monday, April 28, 2025
Rerun
This is something I wrote about ten years ago:
Germs that kill you aren’t usually very successful.
They get a lot of attention. They motivate people to avoid them. Pretty sure you’ve heard of Ebola.
Over time they also kill off all the susceptible people and leave the ones who are immune. Burn themselves out.
Really successful microbes don’t kill you. You don’t even know they’re there.
They're insidious.
Either they're imperceptible, or intermittent, or the symptoms are variable.
So you don't ever notice that you're infected.
For that reason, some of them are now ubiquitous.
Everyone has them. Everyone has them all over.
There are many organisms that live within us and are known to cause long term complications. Many of them are also found in people with those chronic illnesses. The problem is- the correlation between them is often not at a statistically significant level. Since there are often many ways to get the same effect, most medical studies are flawed.
The statistical requirements to prove validity assume a minimum threshold of relevance.
Experiments generally assume a one to one relationship between factors. Unless they are specifically designed for an interaction- they do not detect multiple causes. If x or y cause z, and you're only testing for x, well you're half right, but your results will not register statistically.
Similarly if x and y together cause z, your results will show no correlation.
Conversely, this is also true if your illness has multiple or variable effects. If you are only looking for a subset of the possibilities, your experiment will not show a relationship.
Likewise, they do not account for less than threshold activity. If your illness is extremely mild or intermittent, it will never be statistically relevant in a study. They just won't even see it.
Update:
P. gingivalis fits all these criteria. It masks itself by altering the immune response and reducing pain- making people think it's harmless. It has many different reservoir locations. It combines with other microbes to create many different effects. It alternates between acute and chronic symptoms...that is why it is everywhere.
It is also why my brain sounded like a casino when I read the PG review article. It rang all my bells at once. At 2am…
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Change of Plans
I became a widow today.
All my synapses are breaking.
I will not be doing research for a while.
Keep up the good fight for me. Thanks.
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
Meanwhile, in reality
Our cells carry their own sexual identity. That's science, not ideology
This is the topic I want to write about next. Sex differences in immune response. There are distinct differences in the neurological responses to infection.
I'm really busy right now, though, this is a pretty good article on general sexual dimorphism.
Sunday, April 20, 2025
Happy Zombie Day
No dentist. Bread and Wine. Obesessive. Itinerant. Lack of impulse control. Public outburst. Arrest.
State of the Insanity
Video shows doctor with measles treating kids. RFK Jr later praised him as an ‘extraordinary’ healer
Yes, well the goddess Nemesis will not ignore such hubris.
That doctor has now lost any immunity he had to any other infection. We'll see which microbe wins...
Wilkommen
I think I have some German narcoleptics in the audience...
I would like that. After they can think again, they will be unstoppable.
They will figure out if eradicating PG makes it possible to drink beer safely... LOL.
Friday, April 18, 2025
See the spectrum
10-year-old girl set to graduate from college: ‘I just enjoy learning’
Easily trainable children. Sounds familiar.
I met a lot of people like this in library school. We were all weird as adults. Barely able to deal with eachother, much less the real world.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Interesting
Somebody found this back in my archives-
Narcolepsy and odor: preliminary report
Sweat samples from narcoleptic and healthy controls were tested independently by two trained dogs and their positive or negative detection compared to the gold standard diagnosis for narcolepsy. Neither trainer nor dog knew the source of the sample selected or its placement in the search device. Twelve narcoleptic patients, both sexes and various ages, recruited from April 2011 to June 2012 and diagnosed according to standard criteria, through their clinical records and nocturnal polysomnography plus multiple sleep latency test, made up the patient group. The control group was made up of 22 healthy volunteer without sleep disorders, both sexes and various ages. Sweat samples from both patients and controls were collected following the same protocol to avoid contamination, and tested independently by two trained dogs.
Results: Eleven narcoleptic were detected positive by the dogs while only three controls.
Now that we know that narcolepsy is caused by bacteria, these results are even more interesting. Bacteria have a very distinct odor profile.
Those three positive controls were surely infected too.
Somebody should see if Narcolepsy sensing dogs cross-detect Parkinson's people... and vice versa.
Monday, April 14, 2025
Friday, April 11, 2025
Some light reading
Having a father with Alzheimer's disease may be tied to a greater spread of tau protein in the brain
Because they are both symptoms of herpes infection. Which is contagious...
Killer smile? An oral pathogen increases heart attack damage
Titanium microparticles prevalent in oral tissue around dental implants,
New Insights in Natural Bioactive Compounds for Periodontal Disease
Morganella morganii, an Emerging Cause of Bloodstream Infections
This one likes to cohabit with PG. In your urethra...
Researchers develop nasal spray for H5N1 avian influenza vaccine
Study in hospitals study finds C. diff spreads three times more than thought
Newborns treated with antibiotics respond less well to vaccines, study shows
Insomniac fruit fly mutants show enhanced memory despite severe sleep loss
Surveillance study spots long-term rise in invasive group A strep infections among children
Discovery reveals protein involved in Parkinson's disease also drives skin cancer
I have to research this. I'm guessing it's related to fungus.
Fiber consumption protects gut from serious bacterial infection, study suggests
Certain nasal bacteria may boost the risk for COVID-19 infection, study finds
Does anyone know if PG can metabolize isopropyl alcohol? I haven't been able to find that info. I have a hunch putting alcohol on wounds is a bad idea...