Further Adventures in the Loss of Sensory Perception

My kingdom for some reliable pain sensation...

Ordinarily, my mouth doesn't hurt.   My cheeks or eyes or neck or shoulders hurt when my teeth are bad- but not my mouth.

Last Friday I finally had a gum abscess between my crowns that was painful enough to need emergency treatment.  But I couldn't get to the dentist until Monday. So I went and bought Benzocaine liquid (Anbesol).   Put it on there for three days and (insert many florid curse words here) the septic pocket healed.

So I skipped the dentist and I put it on my slow healing tooth socket.  The one I have been nursing for two years.  And it healed in two days.   Because Irony.

So then I swabbed it on the gumline of my upper teeth.   And all my eye and cheek wrinkles relaxed. Ten dollar botox.  No shit.
So that gave me the idea of mapping every tooth, which I still need to diagram.

Lidocaine has many of the same properties as Benzocaine, so I decided to put some cream on a sore on my arm that wouldn't heal.  You know, one of those painless sores that ends up cancerous....  I have tried everything I could think of in the last year- antibacterials, antivirals, aloe, hemp oil, vitamin d, vitamin e, steroids, coal tar oil...

I applied it at midnight.  It was half the size and disappearing rapidly at 7am.
I put benzocaine on it the next night and it's shrunk by half again.  (forgot to take pictures, sorry!)
I have also put Anbesol on my psoriatic toenails.   Nothing has helped those either.    Until now.
Fingernail experiments are next.  

The research says these two are only mildly effective for bacterial control.   In petri dishes.
But it seems to keep those infected nerves from firing- and triggering the inflammation sequence- whether you can feel it or not- and allows the long term healing process to function.

Seriously.....  I am never-ever-ever going to get over this experiment.   This could change everything.

My mind is racing-
I think swabbing Benzocaine in old folks mouths might be an effective treatment against Alzheimer's.
It also helps break up throat biofilms, dearest strep zombies...
Pretty sure Chloraseptic spray would work to rapidly subdue most psychotic episodes.
But I will be writing more about that and more later.

In the meantime, do know that some people (especially children) have dangerous reactions to Benzocaine, and that you should test yourself with one drop at first.   And don't ever overdo it.
I also recommend taking out the stick and using a swab instead.  Much more precise.
Start with squishy molars or canine teeth.
I am working on mapping my face pain, so you can know which teeth to try next. (here you go)

Keep calm and restore your epithelial integrity.
Best wishes for a rapid and dramatic recovery.   

CHA-CHING CHA-CHING CHA-CHING!!!!

(While you are considering the efficacy of this treatment, please notice that I strung a whole sequence of descriptions and interactions together in this post.  I haven't been able to do that in months... I feel SO much better it's astonishing.)

As I was Saying

The shocking pain of American men

In a recently released draft of his paper, which he will present at a Federal Reserve conference in Boston on Friday, Krueger finds that 44 percent of male, prime-age labor force dropouts say they took pain medication the day prior — which is more than twice the rate reported by employed men.

Go figure.
Opioid Pain pills cause spinal nerve damage.

Stop blaming these guys problems on economic displacement- they are are being permanently disabled by their doctors!

Breakfast of Champions

Caffeine-based compounds show promise against Parkinson's disease

Caffeine consumption in older women seems to reduce risk of dementia

The surprising beauty benefits of caffeine

“Researchers have found that the topical use caffeine has numerous benefits to skin including helping to increase circulation and stimulate hair growth. Additionally, caffeine appears to protect skin damage from exposure to sun,” says Shabir Daya, the health expert at Victoriahealth.com.

Time for a refill...

Yes. This.

'It was a conspiracy': recovering addicts wage legal battle over prescription use
Groundbreaking lawsuit unfolds in West Virginia as ‘pill-pushing’ doctors and pharmacists are being accused of colluding with medical industry to get rich.

This is Why

Good Lord. Even the Price of Insulin Is Skyrocketing.

Yeah, my husband noticed this a while ago.
It's not just the "orphan" drugs anymore.

It's a truly awesome thing, this drug dependence spiral.
These companies are the same ones who sell the antibiotics that cause diabetes...and allergies...

Good News

FDA Fast-Tracks Ketamine for Depression Treatment


Hey Bruce-
Tick Tock.
Say Buh-Bye to your Zombie patient pool...

Party Time

Not blowing smoke: Research finds medical marijuana lowers prescription drug use

Researchers pinpoint neurons that tell the brain when to stop drinking

Research demonstrates link between gut bacteria and brain inflammation in chronic liver disease

Treating alcoholics - with wine

Vampires feeding on Zombies

There’s Absolutely No Reason Why an EpiPen Should Cost $300

 So why is the EpiPen so expensive? In September, reporting by Bloomberg Businessweek blew open the story about Mylan’s quest to make the EpiPen a cash cow; the device alone now makes up a full 40 percent of Mylan’s profits, thanks to a series of strategic marketing campaigns, public policy changes, and price hikes.

Because you know, what's an allergic person to do?

Correlation Games

Midlife Health Effects of Cannabis Use Limited to Gum Disease?

Long-term use of cannabis is associated with a significant increase in the risk of developing gum disease but does not appear to be linked to adverse outcomes on other measures of heath, new data suggest.
Madeline H. Meier, PhD, Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, and colleagues found that regular use of cannabis during adulthood was associated with periodontal disease at age 38 years.
However, unlike long-term tobacco use, cannabis was not linked to significant or relevant changes in measures of lung function, systemic inflammation, cardiovascular function, and metabolic health.

Although they don't come out and say it causes periodontitis... they do say it is a long term complication.

It seems more logical to me that people with chronic periodontitis are just more likely to put PAIN REDUCING substances in their mouths.   Like cannabis.

Or Cigarettes .  or Alcohol.   or Hot Sauce.  or Mint.  or Chocolate.   or Gluten.  or SUGAR.

Cannabis is the only one that actually makes the mouth tissues heal better though.

Collateral Damage

Narcotic painkillers prolong pain in rats, says CU-Boulder study

The dark side of painkillers - their dramatic increase in use and ability to trigger abuse, addiction and thousands of fatal overdoses annually in the United States is in the news virtually every day.
Brace for another shot across the bow: Opioids like morphine have now been shown to paradoxically cause an increase in chronic pain in lab rats, findings that could have far-reaching implications for humans, says a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
Led by CU-Boulder Assistant Research Professor Peter Grace and Distinguished Professor Linda Watkins, the study showed that just a few days of morphine treatment caused chronic pain that went on for several months by exacerbating the release of pain signals from specific immune cells in the spinal cord. The results suggest that the recent escalation of opioid prescriptions in humans may be a contributor to chronic pain, said Grace.

Pain medication that creates more pain. 
I'm shocked, just shocked...

Article Roundup

Diabetes drug shown to help body rebuild after heart attack

Heart disease is the leading cause of illness in diabetic patients. It accounts for more than half of all fatalities and the search for enhanced treatments is of high importance.
For the first time, researchers have explored the mechanism behind metformin, a key treatment used by diabetic patients to prevent heart disease. The findings are published today in the journal, Cardiovascular Diabetology.
They found new blood vessel formation that is essential for heart attack recovery, and they established metformin enhances the physiological process through which new blood vessels form.

Investigation casts doubt over trial used to support top-selling anti-clotting drug

The trial, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2011, compared rivaroxaban with the older anti-clotting drug warfarin for preventing strokes in patients with irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation).
But there are now concerns about the trial results after The BMJ discovered that the blood clotting test device used during the trial had been recalled in December 2014 after giving falsely low test results.
In a special report, The BMJ's Associate Editor, Dr Deborah Cohen, says: "In terms of the trial results, it could make rivaroxaban seem safer than it was with respect to the risk of bleeding"

A new reason to give up soda: Your sugar habit may cause breast cancer

A new study finds that high-fructose corn syrup and even sugars found in fruit can fuel the growth of cancer cells.

Opioids tied to higher risk of infections in rheumatoid arthritis

The researchers found that among 1,790 patients with RA who had one or more hospitalizations for serious infection, the adjusted incidence rate of serious infection was higher for periods of current opioid use versus non-use.

Popular heartburn drugs linked to risk of dementia

A popular class of heartburn medications might raise a senior's risk of dementia, a new study suggests.
Called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), this group of drugs includes Prilosec, Nexium and Prevacid. They work by lowering the amount of acid produced by the stomach.
But German researchers found that people 75 or older who regularly take the medications had a 44 percent increased risk of dementia, compared with seniors not using the drugs. The study only found an association, however, and not a cause-and-effect link.

 Yes, well heartburn and dementia are both caused by eating too much carbs.  So just taking drugs to ease the pain isn't really alleviating that problem.

Ooops

Type 2 diabetes drug can exhaust insulin-producing cells

To study the long-term effects of incretin therapy, which has never previously been assayed, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and the University of Miami worked with humanised mice, generated by transplanting human insulin-producing cells into the anterior chamber of the eye. The mice were given daily doses of liraglutide for more than 250 days, during which time the researchers were able to monitor how the pancreatic beta cells were affected. The results showed an initial improvement in the insulin-producing cells, followed by a gradual exhaustion, with reduced secretion of insulin as a response to glucose. This, they say, was unexpected.

Oh fck all y'all.

More Depressing News

Reality check: Taking antidepressants while pregnant unlikely to double autism risk in kids

Now, a new study is raising eyebrows in the psychiatry and neuroscience communities. It suggests that women who use antidepressants while pregnant are nearly twice as likely to bear children with ASD. Many epidemiologists and psychiatrists say the study, published today in JAMA Pediatrics, is flawed and will cause unnecessary panic.
...
The “critical flaw” in the new research is that it doesn’t fully account for the fact that women suffering from psychiatric illnesses already have a greater risk of having children with ASD, says Roy Perlis, a psychiatric geneticist at Harvard University who consults for several biotechnology startups. Although the authors controlled for maternal depression, “they don’t really have reliable measures of severity,” he says. As a result, there’s no way to tell whether the children were at higher risk because their mothers were taking more drugs or because the women had more severe depression. Several papers, including two from Perlis’s group, have looked at large numbers of women and children and found no increased risk for ASD after adjusting for the severity of maternal depression, he says. “The risk travels with the disease, not the treatment,” he says. 

Well that's really not at all reassuring.
And the treatment clearly isn't solving the problem...

Reality Based Intoxication

Want to reduce obesity? Legalize medical marijuana, researchers say

....But for younger adults, age 18 to 24, the study found a different dynamic at play. "Our findings show that the enactment of Medical Marijuana Law is associated with a 3.1 percent reduction in the probability of alcohol consumption and a 4.8 percent reduction in the probability of binge drinking" among this younger group, the researchers found. They posit that medical marijuana availability may lead some younger adults to "substitute away from highly caloric alcoholic beverages toward a lower-calorie marijuana 'high,' resulting in lower body weight and likelihood of obesity."
This so-called substitution effect is often cited in arguments for legalizing marijuana: If you legalize weed, some people will opt for pot over alcohol. Alcohol consumption will fall as a result. And since researchers agree that marijuana is far less harmful than alcohol, the net effect of such a change for individuals and society would be positive.

They don't even mention the fact that it heals intestinal epithelium and reduces insulin resistance.   That seems relevant somehow.

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.

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.

Oh Really

Old rat brains rejuvenated and new neurons grown by asthma drug

The rats took part in a range of learning and memory tests. One of these, for example, involved the rats being placed in a pool of water with a hidden escape platform. At the start of the study, untreated young rats learned to recognise landmarks and quickly find their way to the platform, while the untreated older animals struggled at the task.
By the end of their six-week drug regime, though, old animals performed as well as their younger companions. “We’ve restored learning and memory 100 per cent, to a level comparable with youth,” says Aigner. He presented his findings last week at the Society for Neuroscience meetingin Chicago.
When the team studied the brains of the animals, they found that old rats that had been given Montelukast had 80 per cent less inflammation. They also had an enhanced level of new neuron growth compared with untreated old rats – about 50 per cent of that seen in young rats, says Aigner.
The team also found that the blood-brain barrier – which stops infectious agents reaching the brain and which weakens in old age – was stronger in treated old rats. “Structurally, the brain had rejuvenated,” says Aigner.

Yes, it seems Montelukast alleviates the inflammatory effects of Endotoxin.

I think we need to start a campaign to research this.    I want some, dammit.

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

Martin Shkreli
And I meant that literally.
Not to mention, Worst Person in the World.

A $750 Pill And A Founder Who Doesn’t Know When To Stop Tweeting

The New York Times ran a piece Sunday looking into why a 62-year-old pill saw its price skyrocket from $13.50 to nearly $750 after it was acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals last month.
The increase in the price of Daraprim, a drug that the Times reported “is the standard of care for treating a life-threatening parasitic infection,” will undoubtedly have a major impact on those struggling to keep up with high prescription drug costs.

This is unconscionable
Toxoplasmosis is a frakking brain infection.   It makes you insane.  
This is flat out extortion.

Why do they do this?   Because they can.   What's an infected person to do? 
And the asshole in charge is the most callous sonofabitch I've ever witnessed.   At least Bruce Cozadd knows he's got to protect his racket.
Martin Shkreli's brain is clearly infected with something.
Read the article.  Read his tweets.  It's nauseating.