Political Proposals #1: Healthcare

This is the first of a series of posts on what I believe the US (heck, make it all developed countries) should do for their population.

First up - Healthcare.

I believe that the US should:

1. Provide Universal Healthcare

Like Canada, and the UK, this healthcare should be the basic, guaranteed right of every citizen. It should be universal, and provide a solid level of care. Those who want something a little better should be able to pay for private insurance.

In the case of the US, paying for private insurance should give you a tax credit for the lesser burden you're putting on the base system.

If you smoke (hey, I do), then you pay for private insurance, or you get a government sponsored smoking cessation program.

2. Provide a Universal Health Records Database

This database will be provided by the government. Everyone's health records is put up there. There's a website you can go to to see your innoculations, your health records, the works.

No more lost records. Everyone has their data up in the cloud. To access your records, you use a number (looks like a credit card) which is assigned to you, plus a private key. VIsiting a health provider gives them access to your data. The website would allow you to revoke access at will. The card would contain all the information necessary to generate a certificate for each provider (preferably optically encoded, although magnetic's ok, with a backup of a PIN + number system on the website if necessary - say, in case you lose your card, or wipe the strip).

3. Datamine the Database

The database should be accessible by medical researchers. The data they can access will be sanitized, so it is not possible to recover a specific person's identity (although it would be possible to post data to the file, so that if they visit the doctor or check their account, information which is uncovered through the analysis can be passed on).

Ideally, travel records would be tied to this, but I can see people getting skittish already, so it's not a requirement.

This data will allow researchers to uncover patterns in disease which are not currently visible - such as, say, if your spouse has Crohn's diseases, and you have Cholangio Carcinoma, and your son got Gastroenteritis 3 months before... is there a connection here? (My personal belief is yes). Do you have brain cancer while your wife has multiple sclerosis? How many times does this pattern occur?

No one knows right now, because except in very specific cases, doctor's records don't care about familial disease unless there's a hereditary link. This is a HUGE hole in the data. Even if we don't do the database, doctors should start looking into this; two people may have very different diseases with the same underlying cause.

4. Biopsies, Swabs, etc for all

Currently, not everyone is tested for every complaint. Every new cough, new cold, new rash, new lump - when it can be easily swabbed, or when a biopsy is taken, it should be tested for every bacteria, fungus and virus known to man. And this data goes into your medical records. Which are then datamined. This will show patterns where subclinical or atypical infections (the kind currently regarded as only relevant to the immunocompromised) are actually causing other issues. No-one taking suppressive medicine for genital herpes gets arthritis? That's useful data. And it's currently being lost.

Currently, only military bases perform comprehensive testing of all personnel. It's how we track new cold viruses (eg. Adenovirus 14) when they emerge. We should be tracking all of this - it'll unlock all kinds of new cures and information.

We've had the tech to do this with viruses for about 5 years now. We can tell you which virus is in any piece of tissue - which is a much better approach than checking your blood for antibodies to the virus. This will allow us to localize the test, and tell you exactly what's where, and what might be causing a whole bunch of issues.

In fact, it'll be the most comprehensive application of scientific method to the medical practice in a very long time.

Oh yes, and who pays for this? The government. This is a public health issue, and if we start looking into this, I'm willing to bet that a whole bunch of conditions which are mysteries to us right now will suddenly become clear. Think of it as a program in the same way we managed to eradicate smallpox.

5. If you're sick, you don't come into work

The government will pick up the tab. If you're ill, you don't show up. You go to a walk-in clinic set up specifically for checking all the coughs, colds and minor malaises (you still go see your specialist or GP if it's more serious), and they perform any necessary tests. Then you go home until you're better.

If you're ill for more than 3 days, you go to your GP, and get a note. If you're ill for more than a week after that, you go back to the GP. If you're ill for more than a month, well... that's a different program.

We'd still need a way for people to deal with mental health days, and hangovers and so on. (Come on, we're all human, and people occasionally slack off and need a day to change things up).

Why do we do this?

Because when someone comes into work because they have no choice - no time off left, no money, they're a contractor or paid hourly - they get everyone else sick. And that hurts the economy massively.

This scheme would pay for itself in terms of lost productivity and the respective boost to the economy very quickly. The only thing to figure out is how much to pay into the system, and who pays for it - and that's not something I feel qualified to address.

New Vitamin Regimen - And A Less Fuzzy Brain

So one of the upshots of the medical research that I've been doing recently is that I'm slowly figuring out how a lot of things work - especially for myself.

Normally, I'll wake up feeling like I have a hangover. Dry eyes, slight headache, very groggy. This tiredness doesn't stop during the day - and it doesn't go away no matter how much I sleep.

I think I've figured out how to fix that though. And the results are surprising. I've been borderline for type II diabetes for a while, with high cholesterol. And I do get coldsores. Those symptoms (high blood sugar, high cholesterol) are something that can be caused by a subclinical herpesviridae infection (if the papers I'm reading are correct). Add in the fact that I get some scintillating scotoma, and it looks like I've had a subclinical migraine for quite a while that was getting ready to rear its ugly head.

So a little research online, and I arrived at this solution (I take this morning and night):

• Curcumin (Turmeric extract)
• Resveratrol (Red Wine phenols)
• A good MultiVitamin
• Omega 3 fatty acids
• Lecithin
• L-Lysine
• Vitamin C

... and hey presto, I wake up feeling absolutely fantastic. Which is a nice change for me.

Still in the "is this a placebo or is it real?" phase, but the results are promising.

How does it work?

Well, assuming that herpesviridae are the cause of my symptoms (by the way, we can add migraines and cluster headaches to the list of potential herpesviridae-caused symptoms now after spying a few papers on this), it works something like this:

Curcumin - interferes with herpesviridae reproduction, also tones down TNF inflammatory response (kind of like a natural Enbrel/Etanercept).

Resveratrol - interferes with herpesviridae reproduction, turns down TNF inflammatory response, and inhibits reactivation (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10551373)

Multivitamin - to replenish Vitamin B stores (I use one high in the cyanocobalamin form of B12). Mainly to help repair nerves, but also to act synergistically with interferon in the body to increase its efficacy (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6908611.html); adding high doses of B12 massively reduces the amount of interferon-beta necessary to hold an infection in check by about half.

Omega 3 fatty acids - modulates the structure of cell lipid rafts, making it harder for the herpesviridae (and rhinoviruses, adenoviruses) to enter or exit the cell membranes.

L-Lysine - interferes with herpesviridae replication by masquerading as L-Arginine (the virus can't tell the difference, and L-Lysine substitution produces faulty viruses).

Vitamin C - for healing (used by the body with Lysine to create collagen). This is really a buffer for the high levels of Lysine, allowing it to be effectively used, and to ensure that Vitamin C stores don't run low as a result.

Theoretically, this mix could also act as a good weight-loss treatment too; if you think about it, if this can shift the balance away from type-II diabetes and high cholesterol (which Omega 3, resveratrol and curcumin are shown to help with in some studies), weight loss should come as a natural consequence.

Anyway, it's all theory at this point. But the papers I'm using to do this research are pretty promising.

Viruses as a cause for Cancer - and other diseases (part 3)

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This article is not about the clinical side of this theory of mine - it's about the path that led me to believe in it.

For a long time now, I've been utterly convinced that most kinds of cancer (except those caused by really faulty genetics which cause childhood mortality) would eventually be discovered to be caused by either a bacterium, a fungus, or a virus.

This is a pretty bold statement, but it's one that I can trace back a long way. It's also proving fruitful - especially with the recent discovery that certain strains of HPV (human papilloma virus) can cause cervical cancer and oral cancers.

The Discovery of H. Pylori and its role in Ulcers

Back in 1982, a link was discovered between Heliobacter Pylori and ulcers - namely, that most ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection of the stomach lining. This theory took 10 years of research to confirm, and is now widely tested for - and treatable with a combination of proton pump inhibitors (to allow the stomach lining to heal) and antibiotics.

I first heard of this in 1994 when a friend of mine who had suffered from ulcers for some time finally went and got treated. (I can't remember if I came across a reference to the treatment in New Scientist and I told her, or if she already knew of it and told me). Either way, a light went off in my head. Some things - some things previously considered untreatable, or a part of the human condition, are caused by things that we just hadn't had the tools to look for, or that we just plain didn't put two and two together for.

Cholangio Carcinoma - and my mom

My mother died in September 1996 of Cholangio carcinoma - a particularly nasty kind of gallbladder cancer which wrapped itself around the hepatic portal artery, making it (at the time) inoperable. It was a drawn out affair; from original diagnosis as stomach pains, to a stay in hospital due to hemorrhaging, to her final death at home while being treated with radiation therapy and chemotherapy, and on a nearly constant morphine drip for the pain.

At the time, I spent a long time searching for all of the information I could, trying to find a cure. It wasn't easy - the internet was in larval form back then, pretty much the domain of university students and academia.

I always wanted to know why this happened. I finally think I've figured it out - but unfortunately too late for her. Sorry mom.

Crohn's Disease and my dad

Around the time that my mom died of cancer, my Dad came down with Crohn's disease. He had a section of his bowel removed, and he's mostly fine today. I'm hazy on the timeline, but I'm pretty sure that he was suffering from it during my mom's illness, and put off seeing a doctor about it until after she died and he had some room to start thinking about himself again, instead of the woman he loved more than anything (I really should share the story of how they met some time).

Is this just another case of broken heart syndrome, where the surviving spouse - through extreme stress - ends up contracting some kind of illness? I don't think so. I believe the two are intimately connected.

Warts and P52

I was reading a paper in 2001 on Human Papilloma Virus and P52. HPV causes warts in some forms, cancer in others, and in some forms, it's just a dormant thing that causes a lesion - or nothing at all. By the time you're in your 50s, you will have some form of exposure to HPV.

Apparently HPV does its magic by interfering with the expression of gene P52, a factor in cell death (apoptosis). By doing so, it's able to cause the cells to grow rapidly without being killed by the immune system - or themselves.

This got me thinking. If a virus can cause warts, and cause skin cells to grow out of control within a limited area... what's to stop it from causing other problems elsewhere? Such as cancer.

It would only be much later - in 2005 - that HPV would be making the news because of vaccines designed specifically to target it. Unfortunately, although cervical cancer had already been identified as a potentially sexually-transmitted disease, the discovery of a link between it and HPV was made in the 1970s. Why unfortunate? Because it took 35 years for a potential cure to be discovered, and for the role of the virus in the disease to become common knowledge. For some reason, that information remained locked up in medical research for way too long.

When news of the vaccine came out, it was something that I took as a personal vindication - my theory could be true!

Alzheimer's and Herpes

The connection between Alzheimer's and Herpes made the news in 2006, but I didn't catch wind of it until December 2007, at which point I was doing research on the subject because I'd heard that one of my favorite authors (Terry Pratchett) had recently been diagnosed with an early-onset form of the disease. Research in January points to a new treatment for Alzheimer's in the form of an anti-inflammatory drug known as Etanercept or Enbrel. I believe I've identified a missing link between the virus and the treatment, which you can find in my post.

Why was I researching this in December 2007? The father of someone I know well is currently dying of Glioblastoma Multiforme - a particularly nasty kind of brain cancer. I'd already seen a connection here between the alphaherpesvirinae (HSV1, HSV2, Varicella Zoster Virus) and this particular disease. I now feel that this connection is pretty solid, based on the symptoms of his wife (Multiple Sclerosis), and the fact that he had a virulent outbreak of shingles during the first round of chemotherapy. Coincidental? I hope not. I believe that all three of these conditions can be explained as varying immunity and genetic predisposition in the face of a particularly nasty Varicella Zoster Virus infection.

Further research has lead to a number of other similar connections. I'm posting this information in the hope that it spreads and people start using it.

What Changes Can We Make Today?

I would like to see, at a bare minimum, doctors start to take the history of patients as well as their spouses and children, including anyone they have been living with for a long time who has any kind of disease or condition. I'll explain this further in a later post. Let's just put it like this for now - this is essential data that we're missing, especially if it's possible that multiple conditions are caused by the same basic cause. In the case of my parents, I believe that a variant of Cytomegalovirus was the cause for both my mother's cancer, and my father's crohn's disease. This is something that could have been picked up on if medical records included this information.

My Cancer/Late Stage Of Life Disease Theory

Here's how the theory l have put together over the years lies right now:

1. There is no such thing as a "human condition" disease

Okay, so basic aging aside (that is, architectural problems that only show up in old age because the system itself is clogged), I don't believe that any disease just happens by itself. Particularly cancer. Why?

2. With the sheer number of cells in the human body, late-stage diseases such as cancer should always occur in childhood

Your body contains billions upon billions of cells, all replicating, all exposed to free radicals. Except during breastfeeding, your food supply doesn't change much through adulthood. Antioxidants, vitamins, etc, which protect cells should always affect you the same way - you shouldn't need more protection as you get older. It's a limited supply, that needs to be replenished regularly.

If you're going to see problems with replication, or other random malfunctions, then they should be as likely when you're young as when you get older. If you're going to get them when you're older, you should get them at the end of puberty if there's any magic involved in still being a child.

3. Chronic conditions build up over time, except in the case of active infection

Unless you are actively infected by something, a chronic condition will be caused by a subclinical condition occurring for a very long time. At some point, there's a tipping point, and your body is no longer able to handle the subclinical condition, or the condition is exacerbated, and it becomes full blown and noticeable as something we can point to as a disease.

4. Cancer is caused by a variety of agents, such as bacteria, funguses or viruses, meddling with the body's own machinery

Wart viruses are the best example of this. Alzheimer's is rapidly becoming a solidly defined disease that is caused - in part - by HSV1 infection of the brain.

5. Subclinical viral infection - particularly by viruses which can go "latent" or "dormant" - causes late stage diseases

We only see the active part of the infection - not the subclinical, latent phase. A latent infection can still cause symptoms and problems - look at the literature on genital herpes, where viral particles are still shed even though the virus may not be in its "active" phase.

I think that this is a reasonably solid theory, and gives us something to work with. Unless you're unlucky enough to have a genetic malfunction, we should look at other causative agents as well in most diseases - not just at the body itself.

In the next article, I'll cover the connection between Glioblastoma Multiforme, and Multiple Sclerosis, as well as other diseases which appear to be caused by Varicella Zoster Virus.

The Herpes Virus - what is it? (part 2)

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This is a picture of a herpes virus. It's a virus that most people come into contact with at one stage or other during their lives - usually when they're children. Different forms of this virus cause:

Virus Subtype	Classification	Disease
Herpes Simplex Type 1 (HSV1)	HHV1	Coldsores
Herpes Simplex Type 2 (HSV2)	HHV2	Genital Herpes
Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV)	HHV3	Chickenpox, shingles
Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)	HHV4	Mono (infectious mononucleosis), Burkitt's Lyphoma, CNS symptoms in AIDS patients, post-transplant lymphoproliferative syndrome (PTLD), nasopharyngeal carcinoma
Cytomegalovirus (CMV)	HHV5	Mono-like symptoms (infectious mononucleosis-like syndrome), retinitis, cytomegalovirus colitis, cytomegalovirus hepatitis
Roseolavirus	HHV6, 7	"Rose rash" (roseola infantum), "sixth disease", "three day fever", "baby measles"
Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV)	HHV8	Kaposi's sarcoma, primary effusion lymphoman, some types of Castleman's disease

Table taken from Wikipedia.

There may be other forms of this virus associated with other diseases in humans; there are over 100 known herpes viruses - there may well be many more.

The viruses are classified into three groups based on the types of tissue they exhibit affinity for in the body.

Viruses	Tissue type	Classification
HSV1, HSV2, VZV	Nervous system tissue	Alphaherpesvirinae
CMV, Roseolavirus	Lymph tissue and lymphatic system	Betaherpesvirinae
EBV, KSHV	T or B lymphocytes; also lymphotropic	Gammaherpesvirinae

As many as 90% of the population carry one or all of these viruses in their systems. After infection, the virus hides in a latent form, where it can stay dormant for years - possibly forever - until the conditions are ripe for it to come out and replicate again.

In the alpha viruses, it hides inside the cytosome of the nervous tissue awaiting reactivation, often caused by stress or inflammation. I mentioned this previously in an earlier post on Alzheimers, Herpes and Etanercept; the key trigger for alpha virus reactivation appears to be the presence of TNEF-alpha in large quantities, telling the virus that it's safe to come out because the immune system is currently busy.

In the beta viruses, they hide inside the nucleii of the lympahtic cells themselves, causing what are known as "Owl's Eye" inclusion bodies - so called from their appearance:

The gamma viruses behave similarly to the beta viruses, but target specific lymphocytes.

When the virus replicates, it often destroys the host cell in the process, or severely distorts it.

The Herpes Virus - A cause for more diseases than we give it credit for?

Most of the literature on the web tends to only consider the problems with chronic and acute infections by herpes viruses. These typically form in children (upon first exposure), in the form of sexually transmitted disease (HSV2), or in immunocompromised patients (for example, people with AIDS, organ transplant patients, cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy).

They don't tend to consider the long-term effects of a sub-clinical infection; after all, if there are no symptoms, then the body is looking after itself - it's why we have an immune system.

However, I believe that it is important to consider sub-clinical infection and asymptomatic infection as potential causes or cofactors in a wide number of diseases - ranging from heart disease to most cancers.

This is becoming more possible now, partly because of the creation of gene-chip technology - especially viral chip assays, which allow any tissue sample to be tested for the presence of a virus quickly and efficiently. This is something that was not easily possible before, and has lead to the discovery of the presence of herpesviridae in many cancers. However, the researchers are not yet willing to draw a conclusive line between these results and the cause of the diseases themselves. In the case of Alzheimer's disease, however, we can definitively say at this point that there is a direct connection. And much of the research is showing other connections too.

The next article in this series will cover the path that led me to this conclusion. After that, I'll start tackling each disease, with references to the research. And finally, some proposed treatments that can if not cure the diseases, at least slow them down as long as doctors are willing to prescribe common medications off-label.

CMV Owl's Eye Inclusion picture source: Dan Wiedbrauk, Ph.D., Warde Medical Laboratory, Ann Arbor, MI. Used for educational purposes.
Herpes Virus picture source: taken from http://www.health-news-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2007/suppressing-infectiousness-of-hiv.html; original source unknown

Public Enemy Number 1 - The Herpes Viruses as Causative Agents For Most Later-Life Diseases (part 1)

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This is the story of a life-form. A very small, tiny encapsulated bundle of DNA that can replicate by itself, with the help of a host - specifically, in this case, human beings. It is also the story of its siblings - a set of viruses called 'herpesviradae' - which together form a large family of viruses which infect humans and other animals.

This is also a personal story, which touches on the death of my mother in 1996, and on the lives of other friends and family, all of whom are in some way or another inextricably tied to this virus.

And this is a story of hope. The hope that as soon as this is published, people can start taking preventative measures, and active measures against a great many diseases.

If I am correct in my hypothesis - which I hope to shore up with as much direct data as possible, along with references to many medical research papers - then I hope to prove that all of the following diseases are in some way caused by the family of herpes viruses.

If this is the case - and I believe this to be true - then there are direct nutritional and pharmaceutical measures that can be taken to stave off the progress of these diseases. Hopefully this series of blog posts will help to focus the medical community, and lead to the creation of cures, treatments and preventative measures against all of these diseases.

The diseases and symptoms I will cover in this series of posts include:

• Alzheimer's Disease
• Type-II Diabetes
• High Cholesterol, including high HDL and high triglyceride levels
• Heart disease, including atherosclerosis (aka arteriosclerosis)
• Cancer of the gallbladder (cholangiocarcinoma)
• Colon cancer
• Crohn's disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Arthritis
• Osteoporosis
• Multiple myeloma
• Glioblastoma multiforme
• Bipolar disorder
• Schizophrenia
• Hodkin's Disease
• Lymphoma
• Breast Cancer
• Kaposi's Sarcoma

There may also be other diseases for which I have not made this association yet.

I will also touch on:

• Parkinson's disease
• Prostate cancer

- both of which may be caused by other viruses, and as such are not as eminently treatable, but are similarly caused.

While I cannot prove a direct link between the virus and the symptomatic disease in all of these cases, I will be collecting enough papers together and also mechanisms of action that will provide enough evidence to show that we should be looking at the herpes viruses as the major causative agent (in combination with specific genetic variations) for these diseases.

When I have completed this series, I will collect the information together, remove most of the personal anecdotes, and attempt to publish in a medical journal. However, I believe that this information is important enough to publish in pieces while I put together the final paper.

The next post in this series will detail the changes in medical approaches to disease agents over the last 20 years or so, and my original hypothesis as to fungal, bacterial and viral agents being the underlying cause of non-juvenile cancers.

(If you are new to this series, you may want to read this post regarding the treatment of Alzheimer's with Etanercept, and how the mechanism of action may involve the herpes virus, and not simply be due to the action of TNF-alpha on synaptic function)

For some reason, Technorati isn't resyndicating this post. I'm trying to post it again to see what I can do on my end to fix it before I talk to their support people.

Amazing Alzheimer's Treatment - And Why It Works

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News today hit the interwebs of a fantastic new potential alzheimer's treatment that works on a timescale of hours. Yes, you read that right, hours.

The drug involved is Etanercept, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and has been used off-label for Alzheimer's.

Of course, this kind of scoops the posts I was planning on making here - but in a really good way :) I'll explain how all this ties into my hypotheses when I make my big posts.

(Which I'm still working on - but it's a big topic so I'm still trying to figure out how to approach it).

But as a sneaky teaser:

Etanercept is a TNF-α antagonist; TNF-α being a cytokine created by white blood cells which is used to signal an inflammation response in the host.

So why does that help? Is Alzheimer's merely an inflammatory disease? And Etanercept turns that inflammation off, letting your body get back to business as usual?

Nope, that's not what's going on here... not entirely... Here's my hypothesis - you'll see my theme starting here:

The trick here is another part of the equation. Recent research has shown that Herpes Simplex Virus I is found in huge quantities in plaque riddled brain tissue in Alzheimer's patients.

Other recent research in mice shows that when the body has an inflammation response, it creates cytokines such as TNF-α - which cause the latent herpes viruses to re-activate.

So if HSV-1 is a primary cause of Alzheimer's, TNF-α increases its activity, and Etanercept decreases the amount of TNF-α in the bloodstream (decreasing its activity), then the case for HSV-1 being a cause of Alzheimer's is strengthened. And what's more, you can help it along with other drugs and nutritional supplements that are antagonistic towards herpes viruses.

So why is Etanercept prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis? The answer lies with another herpes-class of virus - Varicella Zoster. And that part I'll save for the series...

Meanwhile, my suggestion and recommendation to anyone dealing with this, and doctors treating it:

Supplement any treatment with Etanercept with Interferon-α/β, acyclovir (or valcylovir, or any of the other related antivirals), L-lysine supplements matched with an equal ratio of Vitamin C supplementation, and a low sugar (fructose, glucose, mannose) diet.

I'll explain more about why in coming posts. You can get L-lysine and Vitamin C over the counter. Most doctors would probably be willing to try acyclovir (Zovirax) or valcyclovir (Valtrex). Interferon may take a bigger push - in which case, give him the links in this article. They're listed at the bottom.

NOTE: I am NOT a doctor. Do not take any advice from this page without consulting with a certified physician. I'm just someone who's really good at Googling and building models.

Supporting Documentation:
ScienceDaily report on the use of Etanercept as a miracle Alzheimer's cure
Herpes Simplex 1 and Alzheimer's link
Latent HSV-1 infection reactivation due to TNF-α
Journal of NeuroInflammation paper on the use of Etanercept (the ScienceDaily report is based on this)

The Teaser: Medical Science and the Quest for the Cures...

You know, I'm not sure where to start with this post... but I think it's going to be a big one. I'm about to embark on a series where I explain how medical science is currently progressing, and how within the next 20 years we will have cures for most kinds of heart disease, type II diabetes, arteriosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, arthritis, osteoporosis, multiple myeloma, high cholesterol, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, glioblastoma multiforme, prostate cancer and a whole host of other cancers and diseases, particularly those that strike in later life.

Yes, I know, this is a bit of a departure for me, but this is the culmination of several months worth of research (a basic pubmed search that anyone with a willingness to wade through the vocabulary can do) into the subject. And while we don't have those cures today (possibly...), I can point you in the direction that medical science is going. And possibly give you a nudge in the direction that will help you stave off any of these effects in the near future. Bear with me, I'm not crazy, I promise. I'll be backing up these statements with links to papers on pubmed, and the latest medical research from as many sources as I can. The only thing I'll be doing that is a little out there is giving you a hypothesis and a connection which ties all of these together. There's a pattern here, folks.

Thus begins a whirlwind tour of the current medical research, and a story that will sound like something out of the recent movie I Am Legend. I'll be covering human endogenous retroviruses, xenotropic mouse retroviruses, herpes viruses (of which there are several, 8 of which are well known at this point), influenza type-A, adenoviruses and more. We'll see how herpes is connected to Alzheimer's disease, how chickenpox is connected to arthritis, and how to stave it off. We'll see how coldsores can increase your cholesterol level, how having the flu can give you (in exceptionally rare cases) Parkinson's disease, and how a virus originally found in mice could give you prostate cancer. And I'll also, while I'm at it, I'll explain why high fructose corn syrup could cause high cholesterol and diabetes - and in some people, why they have those problems anyway, no matter how they shift their diet. We'll cover why statins work, and what you may need to take in conjunction with them to get things going.

Now the disclaimer:

I am not a doctor. I have no medical training. I have a degree in Pure & Applied Physics with a minor in Electronic Engineering. I work as a programmer, and I'm damn good at spotting patterns and debugging.

I MAY BE TOTALLY WRONG ABOUT ALL OF THIS.

DO NOT USE ANY OF THIS ADVICE BY YOURSELF - WORK IN CONJUNCTION WITH A DOCTOR OR SPECIALIST IN THE FIELD.

I have to put that there, because my advice may be flawed, and I don't want to hurt anyone. All I'm aiming to do here is to push people in the direction of recognizing a pattern here, and hopefully saving a few lives along the way.

Hold on folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Hangover Cures.. the sequel...

Just found an improvement on my original hangover cure list... especially if you're so far gone that the idea of food of any kind is... well... not on the menu.

One glass of water.
Two tablespoons of honey.
A little lemon juice.

The fructose in the honey apparently helps your liver process the alcohol (and its byproducts). Time to work? Surprisingly, for me, it worked within 5 minutes of drinking some. (I'll never drink at a wedding anniversary party again... ouch...)

Source Naturals Hangover Formula also seems to work in almost magical ways, provided you can actually get something down.

Funniest drug warning ever

From the myalli.com website..

You may feel an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Until you have a sense of any treatment effects, it's probably a smart idea to wear dark pants, and bring a change of clothes with you to work

(MyAlli is a drug designed to help you lose weight by blocking enzymes that digest fat...)

Eat High Fructose Corn Syrup? Don't forget to take your fish oil...

A bit of a dry article this one (it's from the journal of the American Diabetes association), so let's sum it up...

If you're eating a diet high in fructose - particularly high fructose corn syrup - which means pretty much everyone in the United States...

... take your fish oil.

It'll reduce your triglyceride levels. It's about the best you can do unless you entirely want to avoid processed foods, until the food companies stop using High Fructose Corn Syrup in their products.

I can highly recommend reading the article if you can skim through the scientific jargon. Or understand it ;-)

(from wikipedia: in the human body, high levels of triglycerides in the bloodstream have been linked to atherosclerosis, and, by extension, the risk of heart disease and stroke)

Sleep and Relaxation make you work better...

Who'da thunk it?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1297824,00.html

Apparently, getting enough rest, and not spending all your time working actually makes you more productive at work.

I sometimes wonder if the US isn't just working itself into an early grave. There are times when I miss England - mainly, whenever I think about vacations. Two weeks a year is kind of pathetic. Especially if the place you work for doesn't let you roll over vacation time, so the fact that you took only half of your vacation time over the first two years you worked somewhere doesn't automatically mean that they'll let you use that time later.

Still, at least I have two "floating holiday" days left this year. And if I need to, I'll just take some time off without pay to visit my folks back home while they're still around.

It's sad really... I never realized how much I'd miss my Dad if he was gone until I ended up living somewhere where the most often I can get home is every 4 years or so, just because of the travel time and jet lag.