Microbial Metabolic Modification

Two articles. 

Gut Microbes at Root of Severe Malnutrition in Kids

"The gut microbes of malnourished children and malnourished mice do not appear to mature along a normal, healthy trajectory," says senior author Jeffrey Gordon, MD, director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology. "Feeding the children and the mice a high-calorie, nutrient-rich food had a temporary, beneficial effect on their gut microbes, but not enough to repair the dysfunction. Our results suggest we need to devise new strategies to repair gut microbial communities so these children can experience healthy growth and reach their full potential."

and here's their first strategy-
Antibiotics Cut Death Rate for Malnourished Children

Severely malnourished children are far more likely to recover and survive when given antibiotics along with a therapeutic peanut-based food than children who are simply treated with the therapeutic food alone, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

Malnutrition, much like morbid obesity, seems to be a metabolic illness.   I'm shocked, I tell you.

The Guinea Pig Generation

Genetics may explain severe flu in Chinese people

Some experts said it was an intriguing finding that shows a patient's response to a virus may determine how sick they will become.
 "The bug in someone who gets severely ill is not any different than the one that infects someone who has mild illness," said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, who did not participate in the study. "It's the host that does all the damage to themselves."
If people carried the genetic variant, Osterholm said, their immune systems were more likely to kick into overdrive if they caught the flu, causing problems like organ damage or blocking their airways. Scientists have long recognized that diseases don't strike all populations equally. Caucasian people are more likely to get the crippling Guillain-Barre syndrome after vaccinations and flu epidemics are often more fatal in indigenous populations in Australia and Canada.

So people are differentially susceptible and caucasians are at a higher risk for autoimmune complications, and yet we ALL are told to get a flu shot.    I wonder whose idea that was...

The Center of the Vortex

"The English Malady" was usually called "hysteria" in women or "hypochondria" in men. 

George Cheyne and his Work

His next book The English Malady 1733, included case histories of some of his patients and a lengthy account of his own battle with obesity and depression. To Cheyne the English Malady was melancholy, not obesity itself, but obesity was one symptom of that melancholy a lowness of spirits, anxiety, insomnia and nervous agitation which was the result of modern, urban life and immoderate and luxurious lifestyle. As Roy Porter points out, when diseases were labelled by nationality it usually signified contempt and dread; syphilis, for example, was known to the British as the French disease and to the French as the Spanish disease. By calling his syndrome 'the English malady', Cheyne was in fact flattering his readers. He saw the syndrome as arising from English wealth, civilization and refinement. Just as today's celebrities talk of food intolerances, burn-out and exhaustion and check into health spas, clinics and retreats, so the eighteenth century elite also believed themselves particularly susceptible to nervous disorders and dietary complaints.

280 years ago.   And all "experts" have done in the intervening centuries is change the name.

How do you spell relief?

Medical Cannabis Provides Dramatic Relief for Sufferers of Chronic Ailments

In the Hadarim nursing home, 19 patients between the ages of 69 and 101 were treated with medical cannabis in the form of powder, oil, vapor, or smoke three times daily over the course of a year for conditions such as pain, lack of appetite, and muscle spasms and tremors. Researchers and nursing home staff monitored participants for signs of improvement, as well as improvement in overall life quality, such as mood and ease in completing daily living activities.
During the study, 17 patients achieved a healthy weight, gaining or losing pounds as needed. Muscle spasms, stiffness, tremors and pain reduced significantly. Almost all patients reported an increase in sleeping hours and a decrease in nightmares and PTSD-related flashbacks.
There was a notable decline in the amount of prescribed medications taken by patients, such as antipsychotics, Parkinson's treatment, mood stabilizers, and pain relievers, Klein found, noting that these drugs have severe side effects. By the end of the study, 72 percent of participants were able to reduce their drug intake by an average of 1.7 medications a day.

My research indicates it improves mood yet doesn't mess up your blood sugar levels like alcohol.
Have a pleasant weekend.

Inflammation is Everywhere

Prenatal Inflammation Linked to Autism Risk

The risk of autism among children in the study was increased by 43 percent among mothers with CRP levels in the top 20th percentile, and by 80 percent for maternal CRP in the top 10th percentile. The findings appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry and add to mounting evidence that an overactive immune response can alter the development of the central nervous system in the fetus.
"Elevated CRP is a signal that the body is undergoing a response to inflammation from, for example, a viral or bacterial infection," said lead scientist on the study, Alan Brown, M.D.... "The higher the level of CRP in the mother, the greater the risk of autism in the child."

Read this book

It's going to be released in a couple weeks.

Bad Pharma is the story of the ways in which the pharmaceutical industry, with the help of regulators, doctors and academics, seeks to pervert and obfuscate the research done to test new medicines.

  "Drugs are tested by the people who manufacture them, in poorly designed trials, on hopelessly small numbers of weird, unrepresentative patients, and analysed using techniques which are flawed by design, in such a way that they exaggerate the benefits of treatments. Unsurprisingly, these trials tend to produce results that favour the manufacturer. When trials produce results that companies don't like, they are perfectly entitled to hide them from doctors and patients, so we only ever see a distorted picture of any drug's true effects."

Why you should buy it-
Because I overheard a "very prominent" researcher at the Narcolepsy conference say this to another:

"But those are the studies we don't publish, right?"

For Real.  Not Kidding.  Good thing I don't have cataplexy.
But I really wish I had heard what came before that...

Definition of the Day

Disingenuous-

Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating.

Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated.

The Worst Book in the World

They've now done tests to determine if the new diagnoses in the DSM actually correlate to reality.

DSM-5: A Ruse By Any Other Name 

The fact is that the DSM-5 field trial results are worse than the results from DSM-III, the 1980 version that's served mostly unchanged for 30 years (DSM-IV made fairly modest changes.) The reliabilities have got worse - despite the editorial's claims of 'continued progress'. It's true that the DSM-5 field trials were a lot bigger and conducted rather differently, but still, it's a serious warning sign.
Finally, there was great variability in the results between different hospitals - in other words the reliability scores were not, themselves, reliable. Some institutions achieved much higher kappa values than others, but it's anyone's guess how they managed to do so.

Kind of technical, but a good article.

That's insane

Invention Would Track Meds in Mentally Ill Patients, But Is It Ethical?

Imagine if doctors could add something to their mentally ill patients’ pills so that they could tell on their smartphones whether the patients were taking the pills as prescribed.
Inventor Don Spector has actually filed a patent that would do just that, and he did it after the Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut, which sparked a national debate about mental illness and privacy.
“This isn’t house arrest, but it is an invasion of privacy to some extent,”  Spector, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at New York College of Health Professions, said of his invention. “But on the other hand, these are really people who shouldn’t be released without medication.”

That's closing the loop.  The drug and insurance companies would have the entire vertical market locked up.  Guaranteed supply of mentally incapacitated patients.

Now let's imagine that a whole bunch of crazy people actually get better using items they find at the grocery store and it becomes obvious those doctors and drugs weren't really helping them at all...

Quote of the Day

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of my favorite things

This photo.

Hippie Flashbacks

Old Song of the Day
That's the guy who wrote "Hair" at the end.

Also good.   with a psychedelically freaky ending.

The Circle of Insanity

Please Take Away My Right to a Gun

People like me who suffer from depression need to be kept safe from ourselves. I don’t want a gun in my house.

This is the logic of suffering.
These are the kind of excrutiating choices we make.

Fun Fact for the Day

This is Dr. Jean-Martin Chacot demonstrating "Hysteria" to his students in the 1870's.

He would bring a young "indolent" woman in from the wards and frighten her until she passed out.

Science!

Simple Answers to Simple Questions

Is PTSD Contagious?

YES.

It's a strep infection.   But that family looks gluten intolerant too.

Correlation Games

Migraine With Aura May Lead to Heart Attack

"After high blood pressure, migraine with aura was the second strongest single contributor to risk of heart attacks and strokes," said study author Tobias Kurth... "It came ahead of diabetes, current smoking, obesity, and family history of early heart disease."

This is evidence of the trigeminal nerve being infected with the same microbes which cause atherosclerosis and kidney nephritis.   I'll just wildly guess it's those pesky periodontal pathogens that happen to spend all their time in direct contact with it...

Blatant Malpractice

Arizona mother gets shock after daughter’s trip to dentist

Savannah's mom, Alecia White, took her daughter to have some routine dental work. The dentist informed White that her daughter had four cavities. White consented to have them filled. The dentist sedated 4-year-old Savannah, while White sat in the waiting room. When the procedure was done, the Whites went home, Savannah still feeling groggy.

A short time later, White looked into her daughter's mouth. She was, to put it mildly, shocked. Her daughter's teeth (every single one of them) were capped with silver crowns.
...
Investigative reporter Gary Harper contacted Dr. Richard Chaet, president of the Arizona Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. Chaet explained that while Savannah's dental work is shocking to look at, it was probably necessary. "This is a child who is obviously very high risk for decay," he said, noting that crowns will save other teeth from deteriorating.

Excuse me?
He didn't think they would notice?
And please explain to me what part of BABY TEETH a dentist doesn't understand???

This dentist did this because it was a pre-approved procedure for insurance reimubursement, not because it was medically prudent.  If it was, he would have gotten informed consent.   Now that little girl is going to need more invasive surgery, and may endure a lifetime of complications.

SUE THE ARROGANT BASTARD INTO OBLIVION.

The Power of Dopamine

When it is good it is very, very good.
Parkinson's Patients Treated With Dopamine-Enhancing Drugs Are Developing Artistic Talents

And when it is bad it is horrid.
Parkinson's Disease Medication Can Trigger Destructive Behaviors

Back in the day

Way back when the depression was at it's worst-   this is the one thing I thought was funny.  

Yes They Can

Some Children Lose Autism Diagnosis

Some children who are accurately diagnosed in early childhood with autism lose the symptoms and the diagnosis as they grow older, a study supported by the National Institutes of Health has confirmed. The research team made the finding by carefully documenting a prior diagnosis of autism in a small group of school-age children and young adults with no current symptoms of the disorder.

I am very close with a person who fits this desciption.   It's a very real phenomenon.

This indicates that in addition to any developmental problems-  Those Kids Are Sick And Can Get Better.   A spectrum of symptoms indicates a combination of causes.
This result is evidence of an infection or other immune response that wanes over time.

Fascinating

Medicinal Toothbrush Tree' Yields Antibiotic to Treat TB

In traditional medicine the antibacterial properties of the tree are used for oral health and to treat medical complaints such bronchitis, pleurisy and venereal disease. Twigs from the tree are traditionally used as toothbrushes. ...
The compound under research, diospyrin, binds to a novel site on a well-known enzyme, called DNA gyrase, and inactivates the enzyme. DNA gyrase is essential for bacteria and plants but is not present in animals or humans.

Toothbrushing sticks are common in developing countries and have been used since prehistory.  They seem to be every bit as effective as modern devices.   The antimicrobial properties of certain species of wood may evern make them a superior solution.  
Don't expect the ADA to tell you that though. They get cash for putting their stamp of approval on all those plastic picks and flossers they recommend. I don't know about you, but I now get a whole bag of "free samples" every time I go to the dentist.

Brain Eating Zombies of the Day

Coca-Cola to Tackle Obesity for 1st Time in TV Ads

The ad lays out Coca-Cola's record of providing drinks with fewer calories and notes that weight gain is the result of consuming too many calories of any kind — not just soda.

Another attempt to confuse the facts and blame the patient.  

That is not true.   Protein and fat do not cause obesity.
Weight gain is caused by carbohydrates, especially sugar, and even more by fructose.  

Tic Tic Tic Tic Tic

2012 military suicides hit a record high of 349

The world we live in

These two guys are running for President in the Czech Republic.

That's tattoos on the right.

Scary choice.   Pick your pathology.

Your Tax Dollars

Viagra for vets costs surge on war disorders

The Department of Veterans Affairs has almost tripled spending on erectile-dysfunction drugs in the past six years as war-related psychological disorders contribute to sexual difficulties .

Yoo-hoo, I think this might be more effective.   In oh so many ways.
Put your money where your mouth is.