Dear Sinead

You have saved my life many times.
You helped me endure until it got better.
I just wanted to say thanks for that.

The Glucose-Industrial Complex

Have a coke and diabetes: The beverage giant’s shady research practices, exposed

Once one of America's most-trusted brands, Coca-Cola is downplaying soda's link to obesity. An expert explains.

See the sociopathy.

Cereal Zombies

Breakfast Cereal's Last Gasp

Last year, General Mills launched a new product aimed at health-conscious customers: Cheerios Protein, a version of its popular cereal made with whole-grain oats and lentils. Early reviews were favorable. The cereal, Huffington Post reported, tasted mostly like regular Cheerios, although “it seemed like they were sweetened and flavored a little more aggressively.” Meanwhile, ads boasted that the cereal would offer “long-lasting energy” as opposed to a sugar crash.
But earlier this month, the Center for Science in the Public Interest sued General Mills, saying that there’s very little extra protein in Cheerios Protein compared to the original brand and an awful lot more sugar—17 times as much, in fact. So why would General Mills try to market a product as containing protein when it’s really a box fill of carbs and refined sugar?

Ummm, because sugar makes you hungrier and protein doesn't?
It's like pretzels in bars making you thirsty.   They just want to sell you more product.

Happy Narcolepsy Day!

Argue.  Eat inappropriate things.  Nap.

I am giving thanks for better librarians than me.

The Known Unknowns

Trump spent this week defending his dubious claims, insisting that — although he could not remember where he had seen "thousands and thousands” of Muslims cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center — he was certain he had witnessed it because he has, in his own words, “the world’s greatest memory.”

But of Course

High bicarbonate levels in narcoleptic children

High bicarbonate levels are a sign of hypoventilation-   impaired breathing .    Uh huh.

More Fruits And Vegetables!!

Blood sugar levels in response to foods are highly individual 

Scientists have released new results underscoring the importance of a personalized diet, prepared based on complex factors such as your gut microbes and lifestyle. Surprisingly, the foods that raise blood sugar levels differ dramatically from person to person. 

Now will someone please tell Cigna?     I am sick and tired of being threatened with cancellation and  financially punished for refusing to eat a low fat diet.     And refusing to lie about it like everyone else...

Modern dietary protocols are complete bullshit, and forcing people to comply with them is flat-out malpractice.
  
This study is "revolutionary" only because a century of doctors did not listen to their patients.

Palate Cleanser

Totally Off Topic:

But it is something useful and practically miraculous. 
I used this technique on a water stain on my antique card catalog and it worked perfectly.

Made me so happy.   Little victories make life worth living.

How to Remove Dark Stains from Wood Furniture

Wish I would have known this decades ago.   Thanks Internet.

See the Vortex

My doctor told me it was all in my head; I might have died if I’d believed him 


Yeah, Hashimoto's is commonly comorbid with Narcolepsy....and can be caused by endotoxin.

Further Adventures in Auditory Phenomena

Further ruminations on the loss of sensation.

Results of my latest tinnitus experiment:

My head has been ringing for a couple years now.  Although some of it comes from my teeth, since moving to this dry climate I clearly have been having middle ear problems.   I have tried a number of drugs and things, but it has persisted.

Even though I do not have pain, I decided to try the advice I gave someone else and gargle with baking soda and water.   See if that could clear my eustachian tubes.

I hate to gargle and have had impaired facial movement on the right side since the shrieking started.  I suspected I wasn't swallowing properly.
So I got back there with a toothbrush and cleaned my throat.   My eustacian tubes are situated up high behind my upper molars, and apparently they collect debris and mucous there.

So- after clearing them out, not only did the screeching lessen dramatically, I regained feeling in the whole right side of my face and neck.  It was like a warm light warming up the side of my head.   And I am regaining small muscle movement over there too.     After about a week, I am amazed.

I found the toothbrush too scratchy, I didn't like long cotton swabs, but long foam ones seem to be good.   I think I might use them to clean out all the duct openings-  nasal openings on the roof of the mouth and salivary glands under the tongue.   Don't forget to rinse well and lubricate with some kind of edible oil.

A long time ago I noticed that we don't know how bad we feel until we get better.
About a year ago I noticed that we seem to lose epithelial sensitivity where we are infected.
Now I finally realize we just can't feel the source of our misery until after we get better.

Update: 

I felt really stupid for not thinking of this much earlier, even though I couldn't think...

But I have searched and there are NO protocols or advice to swab out your throat to clean it.   None.
That's  astonishing

Update 2: These are the swabs you want.   They work great.   And like sinus cleaning, this process seems to work much better in the shower. 

Update 3:  Dammit, People....

While We're Getting Medieval

I am beginning to believe the solution to the world's problems is to "migrate" ridiculous old men into "safe zones" called "assisted living facilities".

Have some nice orderlies feed them correctly and vigorously clean out their ears, sinuses and colons so they can think more clearly.

Everything Old is New Again

The tiny amphetamine pill fueling the Syrian civil war and turning fighters into superhuman soldiers

When Meth Was an Antidepressant
 
Tic tic tic tic tic.

Been a While

Old Song of the Day 

Just Following Protocol Sir

Most Vets Don't Qualify For VA Dental Care. So These Dentists Are Giving It For Free

After years of neglect, William Bell’s teeth had deteriorated to the point that he looked liked he had been “smoking meth every day for years.” And though the U.S. veteran had kidney cancer, diabetes, PTSD and depression, he wasn’t “disabled enough” to qualify for dental care through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“I was trying to get my teeth worked on for three years. They wouldn’t do it,” Bell, who served three tours in Iraq and two in Afghanistan before retiring in 2013, told The Huffington Post. “I can get major surgery done, but I can’t get my teeth done.”

That is as backwards as it gets.    
See the Matrix.

Insert long string of curse words here

Adenoid hypertrophy (or enlarged adenoids) is the unusual growth of the adenoid tonsil first described by the Danish physician Wilhelm Meyer  in Copenhagen in 1868. He described that a long term adenoid hypertrophy will cause an obstruction of the nasal airways. These will lead to a dentofacial growth anomaly that was defined as "adenoid facies".

Adenoid inflammation results in mouth breathing, which CHANGES THE SHAPE OF THE FACE.   It causes nostril constriction, smaller upper jaws, protruding upper teeth, and long slack cheeks. 

This is an obvious external symptom, and this has been known for 150 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I keep having visions of all the droopy faced children at the conferences I have attended...
 
Seriously-   every single doctor or dentist I have ever seen should have mentioned this.
Not one ever did.
And that includes numerous sleep specialists and ENT's.
They did give me orthodontia for 9 years though.    Yeah, that did not solve the problem.

Bonus Study:   New research shows that obstructed breathing is enough to harm orexin cells.
 
Here, imagine my distorted head exploding.















Update:   Yeah, I was about twelve when that picture was taken  (circa 1972).   And I was already haunting libraries studying medical science and history-  Pasteur, Koch- I was familiar with infection and microbes.   I would have researched this at the time.
Kaboom.

Correlation Games

Modulating brain's stress circuity might prevent Alzheimer's disease

In a novel animal study design that mimicked human clinical trials, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that long-term treatment using a small molecule drug that reduces activity of the brain's stress circuitry significantly reduces Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology and prevents onset of cognitive impairment in a mouse model of the neurodegenerative condition.
Previous research has shown a link between the brain's stress signaling pathways and AD. Specifically, the release of a stress-coping hormone called corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), which is widely found in the brain and acts as a neurotransmitter/neuromodulator, is dysregulated in AD and is associated with impaired cognition and with detrimental changes in tau protein and increased production of amyloid-beta - protein fragments that clump together and trigger the neurodegeneration characteristic of AD.

My turn:

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) increases plasma levels of CRF  in rats.

 Chronic LPS administration increases Beta amyloid levels in the brains of mice. 

HeadDeskHeadDeskHeadDesk

New research raises questions about using certain antibiotics to treat 'superbug' MRSA

The scientists explained that beta-lactam antibiotics kill normal staph bacteria by inactivating their cell-wall-making enzymes. But one of these enzymes, PBP2A, which is induced when MRSA is exposed to beta-lactam antibiotics, is not rendered inactive by the antibiotics. In fact, PBP2A allows the superbug to continue making its cell wall. Further, the cell wall's structure differs from that of normal staph, and not in a good way. "This altered cell wall induces a powerful inflammatory response," said the study's co-senior author, David Underhill, PhD, associate director of the Division of Immunology Research in the Cedars-Sinai Department of Biomedical Sciences and the Janet and William Wetsman Family Chair in Inflammatory Bowel Disease. "In mice infected with MRSA, induction of PBP2A with methicillin led to more inflammation and pathology."
In other words, the mice became sicker.

Yeah, beta-lactam antibiotics are flat out evil.   They seem to make everything worse.

And not to put too fine a point on this.... but my doctor gave me Keflex to prevent MRSA.
Prophylactic use is against protocol, and this shows clearly that it could not have helped.

And people tell me I have a bad attitude about doctors...

Vertical Sociopathy

How pharma keeps a trove of drug trials out of public view

A third of the clinical trial results that federal regulators reviewed to approve drugs made by large pharmaceutical companies in 2012 were never publicly reported, according to a new study that grades companies on their transparency.

That's upstream.  I think we had downstream last week...

As many as a third of drug meta-analyses are written by pharma industry employees.

They bias the data pool, the experimental protocols, they restrict patient pools, skew the conclusions and then the secondary analysis, too.  


Yeah this is a big problem for us. 
Drug companies are just about the only people interested in our illness.

Same as it ever was

A lot of old men with head infections deciding what to do about a few young men with head infections.

This should work out well.

A Floor Wax and a Dessert Topping

Okay people, it is apparently winter in northerly latitudes and I am starting to get reports of throat infections and depression.  You must start taking care of your noses and throats immediately.

So the topic for today is Baking Soda-
I am beginning to believe it is the best thing on the planet.
It neutralizes acid, and Strep bacteria need acid to digest glucose.   It starves them.  And the water rehydrates your tissues.

Baking soda is the most effective tooth cleaner.
Saline with baking soda is the best nose wash.   (Simply Saline is one)
Warm water with baking soda is good to gargle with for middle ear infections.
It also dissolves wax in the outer ear.
If you drink it, it relieves urinary tract infections.
And it makes a nice bath salt too.

Not to mention it cleans pots and pans and bong residue.  Ha.

Don't forget to rinse well and lubricate with some kind of oil afterwards.   Olive, coconut, butter, etc.

The Circle of Insanity

 A New Look at the Sleepless Brain

In 2014, Rachel Salas, director of ambulatory sleep services at Johns Hopkins Center for Sleep, tested how quickly insomniac patients could learn a simple motor task. Given that their brains were depleted of fuel, she reasoned, they’d probably do worse. Instead, they did far better. “Their brains were more plastic, more adaptive,” Salas says. It wasn’t the sleep deprivation: It was that their brains simply processed information faster, whether or not they had gotten enough sleep. In fact, other studies have found that insomniacs have heightened levels of the stress hormone cortisol and higher overall brain metabolism, whether they were sleeping or awake.

“It’s like a light switch that’s always on, a car that’s always running” is how Salas describes the insomniac brain. Her findings add to the mounting evidence that insomnia is not just something that happens at night—the insomniac brain exists in a constant state of hyperarousal.

Here's why this is relevant for Narcolepsy-
It is possible to have low orexin levels and still have high cortisol levels.    And most of us do.
One of the most fundamental things about narcolepsy that nobody seems to understand is how debilitated we really are.  We are twice as sick as anyone realizes.   Because underneath those slack faces and paralyzed bodies-   we are completely wired,  our brains don't ever shut down.   And yet we still can't move.
Not only is our sleep not relaxing or refreshing,  we get to experience every moment of the nightmare.

It's not real mysterious that giving orexin blockers to insomniacs has been found to have  alarming adverse consequences....
Lowing orexin levels does not address the cortisol overproduction problem.
It's merely narcolepsy in a pill.

The Gateway Drug

One course of antibiotics can affect diversity of microorganisms in the gut

A single course of antibiotics has enough strength to disrupt the normal makeup of microorganisms in the gut for as long as a year, potentially leading to antibiotic resistance, European researchers reported this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

In a study of 66 healthy adults prescribed different antibiotics, the drugs were found to enrich genes associated with antibiotic resistance and to severely affect microbial diversity in the gut for months after exposure. By contrast, microorganisms in the saliva showed signs of recovery in as little as few weeks.
The microorganisms in study participants' feces were severely affected by most antibiotics for months, said lead study author Egija Zaura, PhD, an associate professor in oral microbial ecology at the Academic Centre for Dentistry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In particular, researchers saw a decline in the abundance of health-associated species that produce butyrate, a substance that inhibits inflammation, cancer formation and stress in the gut.

Yeah that round of Keflex made me sick for a year.
And I lost big chunks of my memory.
Good times.

Things that Make me Laugh

Dark sense of humour could be early sign of dementia

Geez Louise

Alzheimer’s drug found to cause harm to mouse brain cells

Alzheimer’s plaques form when protein pieces called beta amyloid clump together. Busche and his colleagues previously discovered that beta amyloid proteins can cause neurons to become hyperactive. They suggest that when the antibodies break up the plaques, it somehow aggravates this effect, making it worse than if the plaques remained intact.
In the wake of multiple failures trying to treat people with advanced Alzheimer’s disease, drug developers have switched to trying to detect and treat disease earlier.
So Busche and his team also studied the effect of the drug in mice with early-stage Alzheimer’s. Even in these mice, which had no plaques in their brains, neurons became hyperactive and symptoms of the disease worsened.

Mercy, mercy, mercy.   

It's a Thing Now

'Post-hospital syndrome' found to be a risk factor for elective surgery

During hospitalization, patients often are sleep deprived and in pain or discomfort. They receive medications that can alter their mental and physical abilities. They become deconditioned (loss of muscle mass, reduced cardiac output, etc.). And patients may not get sufficient nutrition if, for example, they are on a ventilator or have to fast before surgery or tests. These problems can impair their recovery and make them more prone to disease and mental errors, Dr. Krumholz wrote.

Seriously?   It's as if thousands of years of civilization and medicine never existed...

Pretty sure Hippocrates came to this same conclusion.

But hey, excellent documentation of the obvious.

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

Mark Joseph Stern

My 9-Year Love Affair With Melatonin

Falling asleep is hard work. After spending a day solving the complex puzzles of daily life, you are expected to lie down, turn off the lights, and quiet your whirring whirlwind of thoughts within a few minutes. In my early years, this process was fraught with frustration and despair: I would lie awake for hours, bored and desperate, staring at the ceiling, wondering why I couldn’t shut off my brain. I tried all the hippie methods—meditation, breathing exercises, even goddamn Sleepytime tea—but none of it eased me into slumber.
Then, around age 15, I discovered melatonin. I first spotted the drug on the shelf of a health food store—the kind that sells vegan dog food and horny goat weed. Melatonin struck me as marginally less scammy than most supplements, so I bought a bottle and took my first dose that night. Thirty minutes later, I was overcome with the drowsy feeling kids get after a day at the beach. Five minutes after that, I eased into sleep.
And that’s when the real fun began.
 There is a fair amount of research documenting the effectiveness of melatonin supplements as a sleep aid. But there is relatively little research to explain why it gives you trippy, totally bonkers dreams. This phenomenon is well-documented on the Internet but largely ignored by scientists, presumably because crazy dreams are not (yet) therapeutically relevant. Still, almost everybody I know who takes melatonin confirmed what I discovered on that first night: You will never dream as vividly as you do on melatonin.

Ummmmm, this man has acute trigeminal neuralgia. He's wired and can't sleep because he can't feel his own headache. Looks like he's got a sinus infection...
Melatonin reduces the pain in his face so he passes out even though his stress hormones are racing and his cortex is still functioning.
Sound familiar?

Insomnia and Vivid Dreaming are symptoms of active head infection.
I say that's clinically relevant.
(Talkin to you, Dr. Dreamy)

Go Effin Figure

Deadly microbe dodges human immune system

Group A Streptococcus is one of the world's most fatal infectious diseases, with 600,000 cases annually.
...
"We studied M1T1, one of the most prevalent strains affecting the developed world," Dr Barnett said.  "It had previously been thought that autophagy, which is part of the immune response, efficiently defended the interior of cells against Group A Streptococcus." He said the research showed that in fact M1T1 produced an enzyme that breaks down the patient's immune proteins that fight bacterial infection.

"Our findings were vastly different to previous studies that used strains not commonly associated with human disease," Dr Barnett said. "We now know that Streptococcus can hide, survive and grow in cells."

Ruminations on the Loss of Sensation

I find it very fascinating that even an eminent neurosurgeon doesn't seem to notice that his own trigeminal nerve has stopped functioning and his whole face is drooping.

I would bet he's pre-Parkinsons. Lots of volatile aromatics in surgery suites.

Update:  here's a simpler mechanism- enlarged adenoids.

Correlation Games

New genetic risk marker for late-life depression

Individuals who carry this ε4 variant of APOE are at increased risk for developing Alzheimer's disease, early age of Alzheimer's disease onset, and more rapid progression of Alzheimer's disease symptoms. APOE ε4 has also been associated with atherosclerosis as well as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease.
A new study published in the current issue of Biological Psychiatry suggests that even when controlling for the risk for Alzheimer's disease, the APOE ε4 allele also conveys an increased risk for late-life depression.

APOE genotype alters glial activation and loss of synaptic markers in mice.

APOE4 mice display increased glial activation in response to cranial  lipopolysaccharide (LPS) compared to APOE2 and APOE3 mice by several measures.

They are talking about US

Quiet 'epidemic' has killed half a million middle-aged white Americans

 With data from a variety of surveys and reports, the paper reports a sharp increase in the death rate for middle-aged whites after 1998, which the researchers tie to drugs and alcohol, suicide, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis. This turnaround in mortality reverses decades of progress, the researchers write, and the same pattern is not seen in other rich countries, nor is it seen among African Americans or Hispanics in the United States.

This is what happens when you tell alcoholics to stay out of the sun and eat low fat- high carb food, and to drink fructose instead.
They get sicker.   Until they don't want to live anymore.

I should be one of the dead.

As I was saying

Male and female mice respond differently to inflammation

New research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology shows that male and female mice respond differently to inflammation at the cellular level. Specifically, in male mice the spleen acts as a source of white blood cells, while in females this is not the case. This discovery suggests that human studies are necessary to determine if current medical practices, which treat men and women generally the same, should be altered to reflect sex-specific differences.

For the Record

This is the one thing I have found that works when I can't sleep:
A teaspoon of olive oil taken orally.

It seems to lubricate my mouth and throat and help me breathe and swallow and relaxes my head, and before I know it, it's morning.

I keep a small squirt bottle on my nightstand-  I find that I will not get out of bed when my head is clenched, even if I cannot sleep.   But I can reach out one arm...

Update: This works because we can't sleep when our mucous tissues are inflamed.
If it doesn't work, you can try Chloroseptic spray.

For The Geeks

Intestinal permeability – a new target for disease prevention and therapy

Long review article about guts.   Very good.