A Sad Joke

The conventional wisdom in evidence based medicine seems to be: "The Earth is flat."

And the reaction by the complementary/alternative/naturopath/whatever crowd is: "No, no, no, you got it all wrong, the Earth is hollow."

And the sad joke is: The "flat earthers" have the evidence on their side.

I said it before and I say it again: There was no real progress in medical science in the last five decades, except in a few pockets. Sure, surgery got better. And with CT and MRI we have now wonderful tools. But were is the tangible result of decades of cancer research, decades of molecular-biological research? Why haven't they figured out MS yet? The record for cardiovascular disease is horrible. As well as that for obesity and diabetes. And don't get me started on the lack of knowledge in medical science about evolutionary aspects of nutrition.

A sad joke indeed.

Doctors Who Mislead – Are There Any Other?

"I have apologized for some of the earlier reporting because I think, you know, we've been terribly and systematically misled in this country for some time," Gupta told Piers Morgan on CNN. "And I did part of that misleading."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/11/sanjay-gupta-marijuana-debate/2636043/

No sweat, Gupta, I expect nothing but false and misleading words from an medical doctor – so do carry on spreading your misleading words.

It's not that I hate science – as a matter of fact, science is the only way to discover the true nature of our reality, and I dearly love science. It is just the scientists…

Most scientists seem to have forgotten that the matter of the game is to find out how reality works, and not to advocate their ill-thought-out biases, and go claiming everywhere that this is "science". (And in the case of marijuana that is true for both sides of the debate – plenty of wishful thinking going around.)

Especially the field of medicine and medical research is a cesspool in my not so humble opinion. You could go an shoot every second medical doctor and shoot every second medical researcher (plus all journalists reporting on medicine), and no ill effect would be noticeable in the general population.

Are Aphthous Ulcers caused by Cereal Grains?

This I have ventured into the unexplored lands of nutrition and disease, I have had almost no more aphthous ulcers. I the last year I had maybe three times:

• In December 2012, when I ate cookies containing grains and egg
• In April 2013, after eating dairy and bread
• Now (August 2013) after eating bread

So the common theme seems to be cereal grains causing my mouth ulcers – not eggs, and not dairy. Finding out what causes my ulcers is more difficult than the cause of my acne: In the case of acne, I get an reaction within 6 to 12 hours, and this happened almost every time. But with ulcers, it is a bit different: when I ate bread and dairy daily, I would go one month, two month, maybe three month between an ulcer outbreak. I have seen a clear reduction after going to eat "low carb" Atkins, but nutrition is so much than just "carbs", so much more I did not know to look out.

Are Migraines Caused By The Liver?

I just had an epiphany:
What if the headache from an migraine is the same thing as the headache from an post-alocohol hangover? What if actually it is a problem in the liver that is causing headaches in both cases?

Liver and Ammonia?

[Update 2013-10-14] I traced the ammonia smell to my use of artificial sweetener – talk about "first do no harm"…

Confusion and lethargy may occur if ammonia levels rise in the blood stream (ammonia is a waste product formed from protein metabolism and requires normal liver cells to remove it)
www.medicinenet.com/liver_disease/page4.htm

Is this the "weird" feeling I have? Increased ammonia in the blood stream? Because the metabolism of fructose (or other things like Ibuprofen) tax the liver too much, so it can no longer properly clear ammonia from the blood stream?

[Update] Now in the summer months I wake up in the morning a bit sweaty. And smelling slightly of ammonia – doh. So it is the liver that is part of the problem.

It seems like my liver has a problem metabolising protein, so I shall reduce the consumption of meat as well. Let's see what a potato, coconut-fat and coffee diet does for me…

The One Where I Find Out That Sugar Is Bad For Me

Well, this episode had to come…  I previously poo-pooed the idea that sugar might be contributing to disease – well, I was wrong.

I radically removed sugar (aka "sucrose", which is half glucose and half fructose) and removed fructose from my diet for a couple of weeks now, but continued to consume dextrose (aka "glucose"). And what do you know, the some problems I had with muscle pain went away (mainly the pain during the day and evening went away – my sleep is still not refreshing, and my muscles are awful in the morning).

Now I reintroduced sugar for a short time (ate some fruits yesterday), and today my muscle problems returned. And with it came the indescribable "weird" feeling.

Huh.

As fructose (and fructose in sucrose!) is metabolised in the liver – and unlike glucose, only in the liver – this would indicate a problem with my liver. Which would tie in with the increased GPT value (aka ALT) I had after eating dairy for 10 days in March 2013.

So liver sub-clinical liver problems can manifest with muscle pain. What do you know.

(How I wish I could go back to 2010 and correct some bad decisions I made made back then in order to battle my ME/CFS. I had to find out all by myself and followed the low-carb idiots, and the Paleo beef idiots, and the ME/CFS pathogen idiots – and got seriously hurt as a reward.)

[Addendum] If I take Ibuprofen (commonly known as "Advil") for migraine/headache, then my migraine goes away, but I get both muscle pain (albeit muted) and similar "weird" feeling (even at "only" 300mg Ibuprofen) – more indication that actually I have a liver problem.

Scheibenbogen, WTF?

Knops (from the Scheibenbogen/Charité group) wrote an promotion – thanks Dr. Speedy for pointing us to it. However, I am underwhelmed:

1. Any explanation involving "oxidative stress" or "nitrosative stress"("oxidativer und/oder nitrosativer Stress") makes me wary. This type of explanation is fashionable here in Germany for some people, but I would not bet my life on it.

2. While they are citing these cellular "stresses" very prominently, the Knops/Scheibenbogen group did *not* themselves test anything in that area. They have no own data whatsoever for this nitro/ROS stress. They cite works of other people – people that I find dubious (to put it mildly).

3. They did not use any healthy controls!!!! They compared the results of their patients against the lab reference ranges!!! Seriously, WTF???? And of course they did not compare it with other diseases. How do these results compare to those from MS patients? Or arthritis? A small group of controls from other diseases would have been interesting. What a wasted chance.

4. Personally (mildly) interesting is the MCHC value (page 31) on the high side of the reference value that they did find (which coincides with my MCHC values that are consistent somewhere around 35.5 to 36). But this is not a result that is in anyway a slam dunk for "us".

5. The values that they report are difficult to reconstruct. They should have used plots comparing results for CFS patients with results from healthy controls. By how much are the MCHC values increased in CFS patients? I don't know, as they don't report it. I would not have accepted a study that makes such important things not clear (but then again nobody cares about what I have to say).

6. The immunology results (CD8, IL2, CD57-/CD8-, CD4, IL5) seem interesting. Whether these results can be reproduced in another group of CFS patients, nobody knows.

7. The same goes for the IG subgroup deficits.

8. The correllation between MCHC and the CD*/IL* results seems *very* interesting. But then again, how does this look for healthy controls? Or other diseases?

Furthermore, I would have added "healthy sedentary controls" (if there is actually such a thing – if someone is sedentary, that person is not healthy IMHO) .