Formatting problem

Sorry about the dark color format that makes reading difficult. Something got messed up when I posted an article last week. Will try to rectify. For now, when on the home page, the topics and search bars are down at the bottom of the page.

-bob

Can Your Mattress Kill You? - Softpedia

Here's another bed article you might want to read as part of my "Search for the Perfect Bed" series. Lots of scary info about what foam beds are made of.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Can-Your-Mattress-Kill-You-76887.shtml

Bob

Some more thoughts about Parkinson's and alternatives

My Parkinson's doctor says all of the shenanigans I have doing to stop my PD is a waste of my money, time and energy. He told me of a patient of his who went broke and ended up homeless, spending all this money trying to find a cure. The poor guy did stem cells treatments which were very expensive, hyperbaric oxygen treatments and other heroic efforts. That PD doc says I should be living my life and forget all about the IV and the Lyme disease and the glutathione and everything that is so expensive. And when I told him about the woman I know who was, by her PD doc declared symptom free after using Chi Gong, and didn't need her PD drugs anymore, he just sayed, "She didn't have Parkinson's, because there is no cure for Parkinson's yet." So I guess that's an admission that sometimes people are misdiagnosed with Parkinson's. So, why doesn't he just say "Try everything you can afford. Why not?"

I have a hard time understanding why a compassionate doctor after hearing that somebody cured themselves with an approach that is essentially free, wouldn't look into it, be interested or encourage the patient to at least try it. It's pretty cynical to assume that he doesn't want to admit that possibility simply because it could eat into his business, or into the business of big Pharma. I don't really think that doc. works this way. Maybe I am naïve.

In the allopathic, straight medical world, researchers and practitioners believe that the gold standard for Parkinson's diagnosis is response to Sinemet. If you take Sinemet and you feel and function better, then this is conclusive that you have Parkinson's disease, a.k.a. shortage of dopamine. Ergo, the quickie diagnostic test is to take Sinemet and see what happens. Sinemet increases dopamine availability in the brain. Your brain is McMessed-up, you have movement problems, depression, constipation, so take this pill and tell me how you feel in the morning. The theory is you've run out of dopamine because the substantia nigra has deteriorated for unknown reasons. So, we can help you but we don't know the cause, and we can't stop the progression of the disease. Maybe we can slow it down some.

However, other influences can cause tremor and parkinson-ism. Other things can cause the brain to produce less dopamine.The list is pretty long, if you search the Web a bit. Manganese poisoning, for example. Wilson's disease. Pesticide poisoning. Late stage Neuological Lyme disease. There are lots of physical, organic potential causes to rule out. I hope to rule them all out some day. Process of elimination is one way to discover a cure. At least for single individual. I'm working on it slowly. Since I test high for a number of microbes such as Borrelia, Protomyxzoa, and Bartonella, I should think that would be enough to imply that perhaps my situation is the result of infection.

Of course, one explanation is that the drugs I have taken, the antibiotics, Chinese herbs, or other pharmaceuticals such as those for sleep that I used for a while, way back when, may have caused it due to some oxidative stress or other side effect that was brought on by taking those drugs. I was always careful to read the warnings and potential side effects of drugs before I would consider taking them. So, if one of the side effects of an antipsychotic medication (these are sometimes used in very low doses for sleeping problems) such as Zyprexa, is tardive dyskinesia, then I was very cautious, looking for any signs of movement weirdness. And, as I recall, I quickly stopped taking any drugs that might cause future movement problems out of my regimen. However, I did take some herbal remedies, and who knows what those have done. They can easily be misunderstood, considered benign, misused and are not measured for accuracy of doses, and you really don't know what you're getting in some of them. For example, I tried Kava Kava, GABA, Piracetam, and many vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. I'm still taking a bunch of CoQ10, some heavy metal detoxers such as IMD, chlorella, cilantro, and so on. We always seem to think of those things as being innocuous, but who knows what they do in certain combinations or concentrations.

Might an antidepressant drug that messes with the balance between dopamine, serotonin, and norepinefrine help? The SSRI medications actually kind of trick dopamine producing cells into producing serotonin, so it looks as though SSRIs are not a good choice here. But there are known foods that will increase dopamine, including meat, almonds, bananas, apples and berries.

But this is all causation that only takes into consideration the physical body. But there is much more to a person than a physical body. Being a psychotherapist intern, I have a lot of respect for the power of the mind and the state of one's emotions and life circumstances to affect the body. Certainly not a new concept, but one that keeps needing to be revisited ever since Descartes separated the mind and the body. According to his philosophy, widely known as Cartesian dualism, the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think. But we all know that the mind and body are intimately linked. I wouldn't be surprised if Dopamine reduction occurs when people are depressed. Dopamine is the "self congratulations, you've done a good job" kind of neurotransmitter that helps us know what's good and what's bad. For example, if somebody is feeling bad about themselves (e.g. guilty, perfectionistic, depressed, humiliated) they would produce less dopamine. So, maybe psychological work, trauma release, EFT, EMDR, working down at the soup kitchen, etc. could help produce dopamine.

There was a psychologist at the Recovery from Parkinson's Summit said that she had noticed (and was doing a study of) people who have had some kind of trauma a couple of years before they got Parkinson's. Maybe there's something to that. I have called her, because she asked me to be in touch with her after the conference. I haven't heard back yet.

That's all for now, more to come. Please comment if you have points of view. You have to open this post by double clicking its title. It will open in a new window and have a comments box at the bottom.

Personal check-in / Torso shakes are back...

I have a feeling like electricity running all through my body when I wake up in the morning. Even if I take slow-release Sinemet CR at bed time, it just feels like I am vibrating internally, through my trunk, legs, arms, everywhere. Some people with Lyme disease report this, and it can be the result of infection, but I'm wondering if people with Parkinson's do, too. It's a very high speed feeling. Not like an 8 cps tremor – it's faster – but a tremor sensation, nonetheless. I felt it most strongly in the heart area when it first began a few years ago, but now it is spreading through the whole body. It usually decreases when the Sinemet, etc kicks in. (I'm taking (1) 25-100 Sinemet, 2 mg Artane, and 100 mg of gabapentin, every four hours that I am awake.)

For a couple of years, I could make this feeling go away if I sat quietly and closed my eyes to meditate. It would just vanish, so long as I stayed meditating. Meaning, within the meditation session. So, that was a lovely way to still be awake and experience non-tremor in any part of the body. My whole body would just relax and feel very calm and centered. But I guess things have progressed. Or regressed. Now the sensation is much stronger and I require some pharmaceutical help for that to work.

Of course I have the usual worries that I've created a monster. By taking Sinemet, have I reduced my brain's ability to produce dopamine? And then the downward spiral of having to take ever-larger doses, eventually accompanied by dyskinesias.

I had a long talk with my Lyme doctor yesterday about all kinds of things, including heavy metal detox strategies. I'm going to begin on those hopefully next week. We'll do a challenge test using a heavy metals chelator such as DMPS or DMSA, and a six-hour urine collection. Then look for the metals. Then, based on that, we'll figure out a detox protocol which will probably entail - among other things - using intravenous glutathione and phosphatidylcholine (PC, for short).

I'm starting to see faint tremoring in my left fingers. This is a drag. My left hand was the steady one, and seemed invulnerable, or at least I hoped it was. But, as people with PD know, unilateral appearance of PD is typical, slowly spreading to bilateral. In my case, the strange thing is that I have had kind of a cross wiring, with my right arm and my left leg first affected. Then the right foot, and now beginnings of the left hand. If anybody knows if the cross-wiring thing is indicative of anything in particular, please comment. [To comment you have to open an article by double-clicking on it in this list. The post opens then, with a comment window below it.]

I made a video of close-ups of my hands so you can see the tremoring. I'll see if I can post it to YouTube and add it here, later.

Downgrade your Windows 8 to Window 7?

I heard on BBC news today that Microsoft stock (MSFT) dropped today, as a result of slow WIndows 8 sales. The story also reported that desktop and laptop sales are flagging.

Well, even though I didn't get to write a book about Windows 8 as I had expected to (long story), at least I get to gloat a little bit. It was way back in Sept, 2011 that I wrote this blog entry. Check it out :

http://bobcowart.blogspot.com/2011/09/my-latest-commentary-about-computers.html

After checking on that, hit the Back button or come back to this tab, and check out this interesting solution for those who decide they do not appreciate all the not-so-well-integrated features of Windows 8.

http://techbeat.com/2013/04/downgrade-windows-8-to-windows-7-for-free/

BBC E-mail: High LEAD levels in US rice imports

I saw this story on the BBC News iPad App and thought you should see it.


** High lead levels in US rice imports **
Researchers reporting at the American Chemical Society meeting say they have found high levels of lead in samples of rice imported to the US.
< http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22099990 >


** Disclaimer **
The BBC is not responsible for the content of this e-mail, and anything written in this e-mail does not necessarily reflect the BBC's views or opinions. Please note that neither the e-mail address nor name of the sender have been verified.

Bob

Scientists reveal quirky feature of Lyme disease bacteria

Unlike most organisms, they don't need iron, but they crave  manganese

		IMAGE: Saito collaborated with biomedical researchers at Johns Hopkins University, applying his proteomic techniques to explore proteins in a terrestrial organism, the bacteria that cause Lyme Disease. Unlike all other known... Click here for more information.

Scientists have confirmed that the pathogen that causes Lyme Disease—unlike any other known organism—can exist without iron, a metal that all other life needs to make proteins and enzymes. Instead of iron, the bacteria substitute manganese to make an essential enzyme, thus eluding immune system defenses that protect the body by starving pathogens of iron.
To cause disease, Borrelia burgdorferi requires unusually high levels of manganese, scientists at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Texas reported. Their study, published March 22, 2013, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, may explain some mysteries about why Lyme Disease is slow-growing and hard to detect and treat. The findings also open the door to search for new therapies to thwart the bacterium by targeting manganese.
"When we become infected with pathogens, from tuberculosis to yeast infections, the body has natural immunological responses," said Valeria Culotta, a molecular biologist at the JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health. The liver produces hepcidin, a hormone that inhibits iron from being absorbed in the gut and also prevents it from getting into the bloodstream. "We become anemic, which is one reason we feel terrible, but it effectively starves pathogens of iron they need to grow and survive," she said.
Borrelia, with no need for iron,has evolved to evade that defense mechanism. In 2000, groundbreaking research on Borrelia's genome by James Posey and Frank Gherardini at the University of Georgia showed that the bacterium has no genes that code to make iron-containing proteins and typically do not accumulate any detectable iron.
Culotta's lab at JHU investigates what she called "metal-trafficking" in organisms­—the biochemical mechanisms that cells and pathogens such as Borrelia use to acquire and manipulate metal ions for their biological purposes.
"If Borrelia doesn't use iron, what does it use?" Culotta asked.
To find out, Culotta's lab joined forces with Mak Saito, a marine chemist at WHOI, who had developed techniques to explore how marine life uses metals. Saito was particularly intrigued because of the high incidence of Lyme Disease on Cape Cod, where WHOI is located, and because he specializes in metalloproteins, which contain iron, zinc, cobalt, and other elements often seen in vitamin supplements. The metals serve as linchpins, binding to enzymes. They help determine the enzymes' distinctive three-dimensional shapes and the specific chemical reactions they catalyze.
It's difficult to identify what metals are within proteins because typical analyses break apart proteins, often separating metal from protein. Saito used a liquid chromatography mass spectrometer to distinguish and measure separate individual Borrelia proteins according to their chemical properties and infinitesimal differences in their masses. Then he used an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer to detect and measure metals down to parts per trillion. Together, the combined analyses not only measured the amounts of metals and proteins, they showed that the metals are components of the proteins.
"The tools he has are fantastic," Culotta said. "Not too many people have this set of tools to detect metalloproteins."
The experiments revealed that instead of iron, Borrelia uses that element's next-door neighbor on the periodic chart, manganese, in certain Borrelia enzymes. These include an amino peptidase and an important antioxidant enzyme called superoxide dismutase.
Superoxide dismutase protects the pathogens against a second defense mechanism that the body throws against them. The body bombards pathogens with superoxide radicals, highly reactive molecules that cause damage within the pathogens. Superoxide dismutase is like an antioxidant that neutralizes the superoxides so that the pathogens can continue to grow.
The discoveries open new possibilities for therapies, Culotta said. "The only therapy for Lyme Disease right now are antibiotics like penicillin, which are effective if the disease is detected early enough. It works by attacking the bacteria's cell walls. But certain forms of Borrelia, such as the L-form, can be resistant because they are deficient in cell walls."
"So we'd like to find targets inside pathogenic cell that could thwart their growth," she continued. "The best targets are enzymes that the pathogens have, but people do not, so they would kill the pathogens but not harm people." Borrelia's distinctive manganese-containing enzymes such as superoxide dismutase may have such attributes.
In search of new avenues of attack, the groups are planning to expand their collaborative efforts by mapping out all the metal-binding proteins that Borellia uses and investigating biochemical mechanisms that the bacteria use to acquire manganese and directs it into essential enzymes. Knowing details of how that happens offers ways to disrupt the process and deter Lyme Disease.

###

The authors of the new study are J. Daphne Aguirre, Hillary Clark, Christine Vazquez, Shaina Palmere, and Culotta (JHU Bloomberg School of Public Health); Saito and Matthew McIlvin (WHOI); Denise Grab (JHS School of Medicine); Janakiram Seshu (University of Texas); and P. John Hart (University of Texas Health Science Center).
This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Contact: Media Relations Office
media@whoi.edu
508-289-3340
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 

Garlic is as good as ten mothers

Actually, there is a movie by that name. It's all about the medicinal effects and qualities of garlic. A documentary on the history of garlic. Blank interviews chefs, garlic lovers, and historians about the their love of the 'stinking rose.'

My Lyme doctor has told me to eat as much raw garlic as I can muster. A great way to win friends and influence people! Garlic is metabolized through the lungs, so I have read, which explains a lot, such as why it so effectively thwarts vampire attacks. 

Seriously, now, I read this helpful entry on the California Lyme listserv yesterday and asked the author for permission to reprint it. For any of you who are interested in consuming nature's little miracle for its curative powers, you'll find some good tips within. Below that, you'll find a link to a bit of the film, on YouTube. 

Mar 22, 2013 1:00 pm (PDT) . 

Posted by: "Anne Mears" mcfighter 

I have been using garlic now for about 2 months. It is inexpensive and

effective, at least for me and the way that I use it. Energetically, I

tested high for parasites in the abdomen and chest cavities. Since starting the garlic, these tests have shown greatly reduced levels of parasites.

Parasites don't like garlic. Other levels of infections with Lyme and

agrobacteria have also reduced, though I have been taking prescriptions to help reduce those levels. I have taken the same prescriptions in the past and not noticed significant improvements. I have eliminated energetic evidence of bart, babs, and mycoplasma since I last took these antibiotics, so that may also play a role in getting the numbers down. Parasites and other infections can help prescription-targeted organisms survive antibiotic use.

This is how I have been taking garlic. It is strong and unpleasant, but for

me, the results are worth a bit of discomfort and distaste. I crush fresh

garlic cloves, enough to make about 2 tsp of crushed garlic. Then I mix it

with about 2 tsp of hot coconut oil. Allin and Allicin are both components

of garlic, but are apparently stored in different cells. Crushing the garlic combines these two components, which results in a potent, anti-infective compound which is stable for about an hour or so. After that, it starts to lose effectiveness and potency. So it is best prepared just before eating it. The hot coconut oil helps with the garlic taste and also has anti-infective properties. I have found it best to eat a little food before taking the garlic, washing it down quickly with water or other preferred beverage, and then eating some more food. If food is not already in the stomach, some burning stomach pain may occur for a little while. 

My tongue is also a little sore for about 30 min after taking the garlic, but I am willing to put up with that discomfort because I know I am gaining energy and kicking infections out by taking the garlic. I take this twice a day and love the results.

Anne Mears, RN, MSN/IH

mcfighter@adelphia.net

1. Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers - YouTube

   ► 2:47► 2:47

   www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDHbDqBcNak

   May 17, 2007 - Uploaded by Xavi Menós

   Excerpt of the documentary "Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers" directed by Les Blank.

Link between lead and criminal behavior

If you haven't seen it already, may I recommend a fascinating -- and disturbing -- article from Mother Jones:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

It's a rather convincing exposition of the thesis that the lead in gasoline was a large factor in the rise in crime in the past decades (and its removal the cause of the subsequent fall).  Of course, the connection isn't simply that anyone who ingests lead becomes a criminal -- more that there's a natural variation in intelligence and impulse control, and the lead in gas was enough to shift that curve sufficiently in the unfortunate direction to results in thousands of extra deaths and billions of dollars in costs.

Personal Video Check-in 3-14-13

Here's some of the latest scoop on how I'm doing with my neurological symptoms such as shaking and whatnot. I will do a longer, more involved video when I get a chance. There is lots to talk about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp92ERCMZ7A

I got a little crazy with the orientation of the iPhone at the end. I wasn't sure whether I was videoing in portrait or landscape more. My back yard is not completely vertical, although it does sometimes feel as though I live on a cliff. There are 82 steps to the front door. But, the lot is closer to 45 degrees than it is to 90 degrees.

Yes, it's a drag sometimes, but thanks to modern chemistry, I do get a break from what feels like non-stop break dancing at least 6 hours per day. That's better than zero hours, which is what I was getting before starting the Sinemet.

Bob