17 Day Diet, Really the 68 Day Diet

Well, like anyone I was intrigued by the idea of a 17 day diet.  Really?  That's all it takes to conquer obesity in America?  How could we have been so foolish? 

But then I found out it was really four cycles of 17 days, and I thought:  this guy's been watching too many late night infomercials:  "Just four cycles of 17 days each..."  but the 68 day diet just doesn't sound as sexy.

You can do the 17 minute workout, get the 17 day meal packages, spend a great deal of time thinking about why it isn't the 15.7 day diet or the 18.33 day diet.  When you watch Dr. Moreno defend the 17 there really isn't any reason why the other two numbers wouldn't work.  Wouldn't part of a day be better at confusing the body? 

In the end, it's one more young, healthy male doctor explaining to middle aged women that they just need more discipline when really it's a matter of hormones.

Guillain-Barre: An Unknown Taking Down the Healthy Or A Worsening Chronic Infection?

A recent story on ex-quarterback Danny Wuerffel getting Guillain-Barre Sydrome has been in the news recently.

In looking at his symptoms, he came down with a stomach virus, and now is at 50% muscle strength.  Not only is this terrifying, it leads to the thought that none of us is safe. 

For anyone living in a box, Guillain-Barre has historically been associated with vaccinations.  More recent re-analysis of previous studies poo-poo any possible association, but have a look at the 1978 original study:  "that the risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome among individuals receiving immunization against influenza A/New Jersey is 7.3 times the risk among the nonvaccinated."  (Adv Neurol. 1978;19:249-60.)


It is a miniscule risk, and shouldn't deter anyone from vaccination for that reason alone, but the association makes sense if one thinks about the fact that the virus is often simply weakened, not entirely dead.  In a very few susceptible individuals it may spark an autoimmune cascade. 


The truth is that we've got a pretty good idea of what is causing this cascade.  It may vary from individual to individual, but the majority have antibodies that correspond to both an infectious agent and their own neural tissue.  A recent study (J Neurol. 2011 Apr 24. ) found that a quarter of all patients had been infected by Campylobacter jejuni.  Another recent study in China concludes:  "Our results suggest that the antecedent C. jejuni infection triggered this GBS outbreak in China." (Foodborne Pathog Dis. 2010 Aug;7(8):913-9.)  So at least 25% of patients might benefit from antibiotic treatment.  Minocycline has been used to successfully treat an animal model of Guillain-Barre.  (J Cell Mol Med. 2009 Feb;13(2):341-51. )


Currently the standard of care for Guillain-Barre involves intense rehabilitation, IV antibodies, and exchanging plasma for patients.  All of these may be effective only if the body does not continue to generate antibodies from an ongoing infection.


For individuals without medical resources (and that is more and more people here in the U.S.) there are preliminary studies on the effect of ginger, licorice, calendula, and fenugreek.  (Phytother Res. 2010 May;24(5):649-56.)


It shouldn't take a celebrity case to bring the standard of care of this illness in line with the most recent research. 


 

What I Eat: How to Blow Your Mind and Reframe How You Think About Diet.

I love this book!  It's a coffee table picture book, full of exotic meals and strange locales.  But it's arranged by daily calorie intake from 800 to 12000 calories a day.  If you ever wanted visual proof that caloric intake does not correlate to weight, here's your evidence.  We've got people starving themselves and staying fat, while thin people eat twice the calories (and no, they aren't all bike messengers). 

It was $40 at Barnes and Noble, but I paid full price because I wanted it to look over and because I couldn't remember the title before.  It's a fairly stunning rejection of the west's sacred cow of calorie counting. 

The Looking Glass Wars: Alice's "Real" Life.

I have two Boston friends for whom Alice was not only an inspiration, but I think a big part of their marriage.  So I plodded through the Looking Glass Wars, book 1, and skipped the second one to move onto book 3.  Evidently nothing happens in book 2, because I pretty much feel like I missed a chapter starting book 3. 

The initial book was fascinating because it worked on how to combine Alice's real life with her Wonderland life.  I learned a few things about her life that I didn't know, but I'm sure Aliceophiliacs would understand.  But by the end of the first book Wonderland Alice has created a double of herself in the real world, creating no need to continue her double life.  I would have found it much more interesting to have her forced to go back and forth. 

But I plan to finish the series out of honor to my friends and because I did indeed become interested in Alice as a person.  So for those of you looking for a remix and remaster of Alice in Wonderland, this is a great read.

Multiply Can Use Blogger, But Not Cleanly

When I imported all my Blogger Natural Treatment Therapies information to Multiply, another social networking site, the end result is an unsatisfactory set of text blocks without any of the advantages of the original site.

So Natural Treatment Therapies will be staying exactly where it is. I suspect that in the end what I've just experienced is exactly the reason that we'll eventually see a decline in online networking. Problems with communicating what we really mean.

In the old days we talked about the game of telephone, where one person whispers in another person's ear. As you went around the room, the message got less and less coherent.

How often today I deal with issues generated by texting miscommunications. Where is the class for the average person in concise, appropriate texting? I know I need one. How do you deal with multiple messages when you're busy? Is 'k an appropiate response or are you being rude? If 90% of communication is non-verbal, where does that leave any of us online?

I wonder what we've become when online communication is how we find each other and how we judge each other.

Does Alternative Medicine Cost More Money Or Less For Fibromyalgia?

There are two schools of thought on this issue.  One says that adding insurance coverage for alternative medicine will cost more money because people will use both.  The other says that using alternative medicine saves money because people get less sick and take care of themselves more.  Can we have the drumroll please?  The cost less people win!  Washington state did an analysis of people who had coverage and the people who use alternative medicine cost the insurance companies about $400 dollars less.  Most interesting is that the really sick people cost insurers almost $1500 less per year.  Some of these people had  back pain, fibromyalgia or menopausal symptoms. 

In terms of Fibromyalgia, I went looking for the alternatives for Fibromyalgia on WebMD.  The person writing about Fibromyalgia is an M.D. who happens to have Fibromyalgia.  He's written thirteen books on Fibromyalgia.  He also happens to be "a physician speaker for pharmaceutical companies that make medications used to treat fibromyalgia."  I sense a vague conflict of interest when discussing alternative treatments as primary. Not surprisingly, he doesn't mention dietary change, GABA, DHEA, probiotics, or a range of other likely treatments.  Instead he focuses on a number of antidepressant herbs that are basically milder versions of the antidepressant pharmaceuticals being used.   

In focusing on the antidepressant aspect of treatment, our expert is playing to the "all in your head" phenomenon I see more and more often in chronic diseases.  But the reality is that a range of other factors affect Fibromyalgia patients, including a blunted adrenal response.  A number of different studies support this connection (one is below).  So rather than saying it's all in your head, we should be looking at the rest of the body.  Maybe this is why alternative medicine saves people money.  We look toward the big picture rather than just managing the symptoms. 

J Rehabil Med. 2010 Sep;42(8):765-72.


Evidence of reduced sympatho-adrenal and hypothalamic-pituitary activity during static muscular work in patients with fibromyalgia.

Kadetoff D, Kosek E.

SourceOsher Center For Integrative Medicine, Stockholm Brain Institute, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess activation of the sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis during static exercise in patients with fibromyalgia.
PATIENTS AND METHODS: Sixteen patients with fibromyalgia and 16 healthy controls performed a static knee extension until exhaustion. Plasma catecholamines, adrenocorticotropic hormone and cortisol, as well as blood pressure and heart rate, were assessed before, during and following contraction. Plasma C reactive protein was analysed at baseline.
RESULTS: Blood pressure and heart rate increased during contraction (p < 0.001) and decreased following contraction (p < 0.001) in both groups alike. Compared with baseline, plasma catecholamines increased during contraction in both groups (p < 0.001), but patients with fibromyalgia had lower levels of plasma adrenaline (p < 0.04) and noradrenaline (p < 0.08) at all times. Adrenocorticotropic hormone increased at exhaustion in controls (p < 0.001), but not in patients with fibromyalgia, who also had lower adrenocorticotropic hormone at exhaustion (p < 0.02) compared with controls. There were no group differences, or changes over time in plasma cortisol. High sensitivity C reactive protein was higher in patients with fibromyalgia compared with controls (p < 0.02).

Dude, Where's My Electric Car?

Warning:  The following is a thinly veiled rant by a gasoline addict feeling the pain of the pump. 

Ooh, big oil crunched it before they decided to maim our economic recovery at the pump.  You can read the spoiler for this movie at Wikipedia. 

In crazy news, the same guys who killed the electric car are bringing it back.  Funny thing, though, it has the same problems (short range/high price) that it did before even though we've evidently invested heavily in new technology.  Since these are the same people who got rid of the other electric cars years ago, as well as dismantling our public transportation systems decades ago, I'm vaguely suspicious.   

Don't we own most of the car companies now?  Shouldn't we be selling ourselves a decent car at a decent price?  Maybe even putting batteries at every gas station or grocery store (we do for propane tanks, so what's the problem?)

How is it that it's pretty darn impossible to make tiny functional electric cars for a decent price, but Tesla Motors is making roadsters for 100k?  I'm sorry, but it occurs to me that some enterprising soul with cheap labor and a liberal view on copyright infringement might buy one and take a look under the hood.  I certainly wouldn't want to condone such behavior, but it seems to happen with every other consumer good.  How is it possible that cars have tighter security than any other electronic device?

Oh, we can buy cheaper cars, but they have a forty mile radius and a 25 mph top speed.  Doesn't my kid's electric hotwheel getting faster than that?   

So, we'll have to build our own.  Here's the starter kit blog.  I'll get right to it as soon as I finish my fully enclosed greenhouse backyard.  Now, if only my neighbors didn't have so many trees...