More on “integrating” pseudoscience with science

Maybe Orac needs to add a new Friday column “weird stuff Google adds served us this week”.
As for ND licensing, I’m still hoping the trial lawyers will put an end to it. Just too much potential for serious conditions not recognized or treated with magic water to not be seen as an income source.

The total number of prescription refills also increased in the ANC cohort on average during the observation period from 4.7 ± 2.2 per year during the year prior to baseline compared to 5.9 ± 2.7 per year during the ANC observation period

The change is about half the quoted error bar. Either their error calculation is off, or this change is not statistically significant. And given the study design issues mentioned in the post, these options are not mutually exclusive.

Stranger @0709: The pre-NG incarnation of ScienceBlogs had a similar issue; I recall one post in which Orac complained about a Suzanne Somers ad appearing together with a previous post applying his Respectful Insolence to whatever woo Ms. Somers was pushing that year. Or search the archives for mentions of Asian mail-order brides, which were advertised along with posts opposing the practice. It’s a known long-standing issue with Google Ads.

Are there any naturopaths whose practices are not riddled with pseudoscience and quackery?

For a case in point, I give you John Ruhland N.D., whose website notes that he has taught at Bastyr University (an ND school which prides itself on research). This guy promotes homeopathy, “toxin” removal, treating “yeast overgrowth”, “alternative perspectives on causes and treatments of viral infections such as Hepatitis and AIDS”, and “a comprehensive look at alternatives to vaccination.”

Quite the collection of woo, plus evident denialist nonsense about AIDS and antivax foolishness.

Oh, and he’s into coffee enemas (at least for his patients). His rationale is brilliant:

“Coffee enemas are a good treatment for elimination of toxins. During WWII, the German army had run out of pain killers and used coffee enemas to successfully reduce pain. These two facts provide the rationale for their use in advanced chronic diseases.”

Remember, you must use only organically-grown ground coffee, NO INSTANT!”

ht_p://drruhland.com/

I’ve seen the bit about the Nazis using coffee enemas for pain. Aside from the aptness of this “treatment” (“You vill talk, or it’s more Folgers up the butt for you“), is there any evidence to back up the fantasy that German medics, once they ran out of morphine, carried coffee enema kits to successfully treat pain from battlefield injuries?

It’s hard for those who actually read the research that’s published on medicinal plants to dismiss all of TCM as “hokum” when one traditional recipe after another after another shows efficacy in double-blind placebo-controlled trials.

[citations needed] that it’s “one traditional recipe after another.” Anyway, what you describe is a completely standard part of scientific medicine (albeit with a vastly lower success rate than you imply), called pharmacognosy. It doesn’t validate TCM in the slightest that on occasion it gets lucky; without doing the science there’s no way to tell which times were lucky and which weren’t!

It must pain you to see so many scientists ignoring the dictates of the great god Science by testing such quackery, far less having the temerity to publish their unacceptable results.

As mentioned, completely standard scientific medicine. Nobody here has the least problem with it so long as it’s done competently and honestly.

One nitpicky point: I wouldn’t shriek too much about the fact that a web article cites a poster abstract of research too newly completed to have been published yet.

Poster abstracts are grossly insufficient to hold the weight placed on it by the article Orac is discussing. At best your argument amounts to “but, but, but, it MIGHT turn out to be accurate!”

Even in scientific writing in many fields, it is considered acceptable to cite an abstract under such circumstances, rather than fail to mention someone else’s relevant work. Of course, you point out that it is “work in progress” or a “preliminary report.”

Precisely. You DON’T use it as the foundation to supposedly justify an entire profession.

Hey brothers and sisters, what do the NDs need all that research for anyway- they have the gift of spirit, life energy, vision, emotionalism and – above all- ESSENCE, to guide them

I hereby postulate Walter’s Law- which states-

The woo-ier the woo, the more it shall be reliant upon spiritual, religious or ultra-mundane explication.

Denice @11:24 — Again, with the essence.

Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake.

Orac: “All of this is why one of the more disturbing developments in quackery lately is the move for naturopaths to market themselves as primary care practitioners. It is a role for whyc they are woefully untrained., their delusions otherwise notwithstanding.”

For a moment there I thought I was reading about the push, several years ago, when the “doctors” of chiropractic were beginning to push their putative bona fides as primary care physicians. Which ones are more unqualified – the DCs or the NDs?

I’ve challenged a few chiros about their belief that they’re really as qualified as medical doctors to serve as entry level physicians. The typical response is indignation! I’m sure it’ll be the same with the naturopaths.

(supplements never have side effects! They’re natural!)

You can tell because they look indistinguishible from the unnatural concoctions of Big Pharma.

I think I shall start bigstickopathy. The sticks will be unarguably natural, and have a 100% success rate at keeping the doctor away (no guarantees about undertakers).

It’s hard for those who actually read the research that’s published on medicinal plants to dismiss all of TCM as “hokum” when one traditional recipe after another after another shows efficacy in double-blind placebo-controlled trials.

At which point the active ingredient or ingredients will be isolated, their molecular structure elucidated, analogs synthesized to investigate structure and function, lead compounds nominated, etc., all the way through Phase I, II and III clinical trials and FDA/EMEA approval for marketing.

None of this represents science embracing ‘woo’: just business as usual.

How else did you think we came up with aspirin, Taxol, digitalis, etc.?

It’s not enough to do research, it helps to do research right.

Sorry, messed up the formatting there (please can we have the preview function back?). There should have been a link to the story:

Vaccination rule a sore point for some

Parents who choose not to vaccinate their children using conventional immunisation techniques should not be penalised according to an Orange naturopath. Yvette McRae said homeopathic immunisation is more effective then modern medicine and is harmless.

Jane who is new to our ways . . .

First, let me say that is one fine immitation of Cartman’s mom.

Flattery aside, do try actually reading the opinion of our host (as well as many of his minions) as pertains to pharmacognosy. We all know that plants contain chemical compounds. We know that they can be beneficial. That our host prescribes Taxol for some of his patients and that it was isolated from the Pacific Yew tree is not a shocking revelation to any of us. Purity and dosage as relates to herbs as medicine is a whole ‘nother smoke, however.

Our distilled and concentrated disdain for TCM is derived from the fact that, as a system, TCM is based on superstition and bullshit. That doesn’t make all of the observations of generations of herbalists totally wrong, but it puts everything under suspicion. Let’s not forget the ancient wisdom of the widespread use of aristolochia for stomach ailments, or wiping entire species off the globe in a pathetic attempt to help their marks achieve better boners.

So here’s some respectfully insolent advice. When visiting a new website, try to get the general lay of the land before clutching those lovely Mikimotos, embarrassingly spewing forth the tired, old “god of science” trope, compounding that with a false equivalency or two, and finally igniting a small army of strawmen. It will save Eric so much humiliation. And speaking of Eric, see if you can get him to lay off the Cheezy-Poofs™, talk about childhood obesity . . .

Pariedolius

Our distilled and concentrated disdain for TCM is derived from the fact that, as a system, TCM is based on superstition and bullshit.

And this superstition and bullshit has brought some animal species to the brink of extinction and resulted in great cruelty to other animals such as bears being used for bile extraction. By championing TCM, Jane is encouraging this barbarism.

I believe Jane misspelled pharmacognosy…

And it’s still based on bullshit “elements” like fire, earth, wood, metal and water. What? No humours and miasmas? Let’s not forget unintentionally hilarious concepts like flavors, zang, fu, senses and tissue. Oh, and let’s see some citations and links to those studies.

Narad

Dagnabit, I thought I came up with ‘zang’ all on my own.

There seems to be some sort corollary to Poe’s Law with CAM. It is nearly impossible for a skeptic to come up with a silly concept or phrase that has not been previously used by an altie.

Dangerous Bacon : Re German coffee enemas.
It was during ww1. The German supplies of pain killers was low, but they could still get coffee. In desperation, one German field hospital doctor tried a coffee enema, and the patient responded favorably. (no doubt due to placebo effect)
This started up a whole chain of such things, leading Gerson to later (and erroneously) claim that the coffee enema washed toxins out of the liver. Thus the Gerson protocol.

Mr. Weeks did not post the following comment that I left after his Huff article. Wonder why? I tried reposting again without the links, but that didn’t get through either.

Naturopaths terrify me. They routinely use products that have never been evaluated for safety or efficacy. One or more of these products could be totally useless and as lethal as cigarettes but by the time that is known, it will be too late to prevent many premature deaths.
http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/04/naturopaths-terrify-me-nds-do-not.html
http://rosemary-jacobs.blogspot.com/2012/05/deadly-folk-medicine.html

Worse still, they use dangerous snake oil like silver which disfigured me over 50 years ago.
http://rosemaryjacobs.com/naturopaths.html

Naturopaths practice a belief-based system of medicine, not an evidence-based one with the result that when there is overwhelming evidence that something like silver is useless and dangerous they are emotionally unable to believe that because the idea that something natural can be harmful and useless is contrary to their religious or philosophical belief that Nature heals.

Rosemary Jacobs

Yet another story from the dinosaur.

I used silver nitrate to treat small granulomae in wounds. It was quite effective but had the unfortunate side effect of oxidising and turning the the whole wound black.

Flamazine, a burn treatment which i used to great effect, especially in the Falklands War, also contained silver salts and, not surprisingly, also made the wound and skin black.

On the subject of coffee enemas, i have a 1930 edition of The Naval Sick Berth Ratings Handbook. It states,

“Hot Coffee, administered rectally, is a useful stimulant in the treatment of an unconscious drunk.”

My Airedale would make a fine acupuncture/trampletherapist, by all the beliefs of woo-opathy. She’s overly enthusiastic, knows nothing of science, and would continue treatment long after it’s useful.

@ peebs:
I trust that that unfortunate side-effect did not tarnish your sterling reputation.

peebs

Silver nitrate was (maybe still is) the light sensitive chemical in black and white photographic negatives.

I should have known that. I just wasn’t thinking laterally enough, embarrassingly I used to be quite an accomplished photographer, though in my defence, I used mainly transparencies.

Silver nitrate was also of course, used on X Ray films.

Rian Shah,

What you say you do for diabetes treatment sounds perfectly sound, based on my understanding of the risk factors for diabetes. Cutting down on sugar and starch, reducing weight, and increasing exercise should improve diabetes particularly in borderline cases. On your web site you list the following services, and I’d be interested in how you justify them:
– reiki
– detoxification
– Craniosacral

There are a couple of others (like heavy metal toxicity) that could be pretty reasonable, though they often are used in invalid ways. If you have any information about why you call those out in particular, I’d also be interested.

Diabetes 2 Winter Hibernation Gone Astray and Diabetes 1 Summer Drought gone astray.. A SEASONAL EXPLANATION FOR DIABETES.

HIBERNATION DIABETES 2
With weight gain the body interprets this as the person heading for deep freezing winter where food will become scarce or unavailable (as with hibernation). Fat stores have to increase to carry him or her through the deep freeze, and what is happening in the plant world exactly matches that of the animal world. The plants provide precisely the right nutrients for the animals for that time of year and vice versa, the bowel flora of the animal’s feces, the composition of it’s urine is precisely right for the plants. More nitrogen is locked up in the animals and more carbon is locked up in the plants and I’d reckon that the carbon:nitrogen ratio shifts between the seasons. More muscle mass in in the animal relative to fat in summer means more nitrogen to carbon in summer. Have to think about the plants, eg lignin.

Coming on a winter freeze he or she has to conserve energy by being less active, as is taking place throughout the entire forest, hence the shift in the number of insulin receptors from muscle cells to fat cells. (peripheral resistance to insulin in diabetes 2) The simple sugar sucrose in the berries and other fruits, necessary for fast ‘fight or flight’ reactions in summer has been replaced by an increase in the more slowly ingested starch. The glucose from the breakdown of starch is being increasingly converted to fat in fat cells and of course liver (fatty liver) rather than glycogen in muscle cells as they atrophy. Soon glucose, even from starch, won’t be available or needed as the animal ceases eating and goes into ketosis and ketones will replace glucose as a fuel in so much of the animals tissue.

What glucose the animal must have will come from gluconeogenesis, a part of going into ketosis in this context. Gluconeogenesis is the process whereby the liver MAKES glucose from the bodies own tissues, from 3 sources, lactic acid from the muscle glycogen (although that disappears once starch stops being eaten), amino acids from from the breakdown of muscle protein, glycerol (glycerine) and fatty acids. Fatty acids from fat cells are broken down to ketones, some of which drive what is called the TCA cycle to provide the energy to drive gluconeogenesis and the rest are exported from the liver as fuel for most of the body as cells adapt to ketones. There are 3 different ketones, acetone, betahydroxybutyic acid and acetoacetic acid. When muscle glycogen runs out and to conserve muscle protein for essentials, fatty acids and glycerol from fat cells become the sole source of raw material for gluconeogenesis. Cortisol is the hormone responsible for mobilising the muscle protein as well as fatty acids and glycerol from fat cells.

Thus the big muscles developed by the spring and summer activity are now atrophying as big muscles are no longer needed. As the large fat deposits are needed for fuel during the long fast so the muscles act as a reservoir of amino acids for cell repair, peptide hormone synthesis etc., although this will be minimal as the animal lies asleep, only rousing every now and then. Bone breaks down to provide not just calcium and phosphate, but all of the minerals the body needs, copper, zinc, selenium etc The hibernating animal stops urinating to conserve water. I think hibernating animals can store urea, the nitrogen of protein breakdown, in a crystal form, so a range of other things, eg uric acid, can probably be stored in a crystaline form for recycling as the animal COMES OUT of hibernation.

NOW TO THE POINT.
There is NO FUEL STORAGE going on at all in the hibernating animal. Thus there is no point in hanging onto a lot of cells in organs involved in stimulating any sort of storage, e.g. beta cells of the pancreas and cells of the thyroid. So why not get rid of them as they are just wasting fuel AND CAN BE RECYCLED. Apoptosis or cell suicide is the shot as everything in the cell is broken down to bite sized chunks for other cells to use. Their is no energy wasting inflammatory reaction with apoptosis. Enter auto-immune ‘disease’, only a disease in the concrete jungle which bears absolutely no resemblance to pristine wilderness. (DIABETES IN THE CONCRETE JUNGLE)

I first focussed on this idea when I read about gene clusters DR3 and DR4? associated with auto immune disease. I had already built a model of an animal in the wild of a temperate zone or a human in a temperate zone and these gene clusters were found in people from Central Europe who had diabetes 1 They were active in the pancreas and thyroid, both endocrine organs. Temperate zone equals big swings in temperature, snow in the winter and hot in the summer.

SUMMER DROUGHT DIABETES 1
Then I began to focus on the advantages of trimming these organs with the sudden onset of a life threatening drought in summer when the animal did NOT have big deposits of fat on it’s body, but did have big muscles. THE REVERSE OF WINTER. If the mechanism of storage didn’t fight with those of release from storage, then the transition to ketosis would be much quicker, easier and smoother. Very little or no adrenalin needed to initiate gluconeogenesis, just cortisol, so no water wasting sweat and energy wasting anxiety from hunger. The animal would quickly become soporific, go lay in the shade under a tree and sleep a lot of the time. Sort of summer hibernation.

So Diabetes 1 could be this summer model gone awry in the concrete jungle. I believe that beta cells of the pancreas are vulnerable to big swings in osmotic pressure caused by big swings in blood sugar, for the same reason that neurons of the brain are vulnerable i.e. they don’t have insulin receptors on them and thus don’t store glycogen. I have never been able to confirm this idea, but I can’t see how they can and regulate blood sugar if they store it as glycogen. They wouldn’t produce insulin yet have insulin receptors on them Doesn’t add up. Loss of weight in pre-diabetic 1 equals drought adaption but with lots of sugar thrown in to initiate reactive hypoglycaemia plus expression of gene clusters DR3 and DR4. Thus auto immune ‘attack’, is perhaps apoptosis PLUS necrotic cell death and inflammatory immune reaction. Dunno. All impure speculation of course.

THE CURE
Ok, if the hibernating animal provides a model for Diabetes 2 then it MUST BE REVERSIBLE, ie CURABLE, following the path of the animal coming OUT of hibernation. The right ketone diet modeled on what this animal eats once it resumes eating. That’s next, as soon as I clean it up. Paul Hill

Paul Hill’s knowledge is staggering! Not only is he an expert (self-taught) on cancer, he is also an expert (self-taught) on diabetes and diets. Truly, we are humbled by his mere presence on this blog.
:/

Agasham.
Yeah, I agree. I’m staggered myself. You obviously know all about this stuff, hence the adulation. Behave yourself and you may touch the hem of my garment.

CHRIS

‘Mr. Hill, why should we care about what you say?’
Chris you are getting a bit repetitious. Must be stuck speechless at my extraordinary brilliance. Oh by the way, how come you know all about moderation, web links etc. on this blog?

Mr. Hill, I will repeat a question until I get a satisfactory answer. You do not exhibit any brilliance, but someone in dire need of real psychiatric help.

I first became acquainted with Orac on UseNet, and started following his blog from the very first day with Oracknows. After over seven years on Scienceblogs one gets to learn about the various and sundry moderation quirks. Especially when they are not a secret and have been mentioned many times.

So, Mr. Hill, justify yourself with some actual honesty.

Ignore drug-addled troll.

….or Proscientifica.

Some more extraordinary brilliance for the masses to salivate over.

SEASONAL CONTROL of BASAL METABOLIC RATE in the WILD vs the CONCRETE JUNGLE. A Model for Understanding a range of Diseases, including Schizophrenia.

After the rebirth I went through in 1972 I began a fitness program and to get rid of about four stone of excess weight. I waked several miles each day to a Turkish bath and heated seawater swimming pool. Then I started to do long distance swims in Port Phillip bay. To my amazement I lost the weight in about 3 months. I’d tried many weight loss programs in the past and had failed. Now I was just eating good food and doing a lot of exercise. I figured that it had something to do with my completely changed attitude, some relationship between my mind and my metabolism. I’d been a guilt ridden introverted alcoholic manic depressive (my diagnosis) back-slidden Christian fundamentalist. Now I was full of self confidence, happy and completely cured from the grog. I could have one or two glasses of beer then go home.

Okay, standard medical dogma had told me that if you were an alcoholic, and I was a shocking alcoholic, you could never have another drink, join AA and ask God to help you. Once an alcoholic always an alcoholic. It was in your genes. But I did the exact OPPOSITE, not intentionally, it just happened. Freed of the guilt and despair of believing that I was going to Hell one day, I just didn’t feel like the booze any more. AA does the opposite, adds more mumbo jumbo, self flagellation, self loathing etc. It was believing that I was genetically predisposed to the grog that only ADDED to this despair. NOW I WOULD QUESTION ALL DOGMA. I knew that Freud was insane for a start, Eros, Logos, Thanatos, Id, Ego, Superego etc. etc. Bloody absurd. I was now ONE not a pantheon of lunatics all at each others throats. So I had already demolished one ‘science’.

So, to find out how I’d been able to lose all the lard I trotted off to Ramsey’s surgical and bought a swag of medical books. I got into neurology for a while, then lost interest when I began to read an incredible textbook,’Metabolic and Endocrine Physiology’ by Tepperman. This book was different in that it speculated about all sorts of things, discussed different experiments etc.

ENTER YIN AND YANG.
There were two prefixes that struck me over and over again, Hypo and Hyper and the ones that stuck me the most were Hypothyroidism and Hyperthyroidism. They were opposites in so many ways. The hypothyroid, was overweight, slow, lethargic, constipated, unresponsive, had high blood pressure to which I added introverted, self critical etc. There was something manic depressive about this person. I’d been one myself.

Then there was the hyperthyroid, underweight, very reactive, suffered diarrhoea, anxious, high blood pressure but for a different reason, to which I added extroverted, perhaps narcissistic (depending on the degree), socially critical. There was some thing schizophrenic about this person as I’d done a mild version as a sort of reflex reaction to the manic depression on coming out the other side. It was beginning to dawn on me that these two opposite individuals were an exaggeration of the extremes of physiology of an animal in the wild of a temperate forest, and was thus ENTRAINED into the extremes of climate. There was no option other than to be entrained,

What stuck out from my dabble in neurology was the amount of THOUGHT between the summer and winter, In summer there was a lot of ‘fight or flight’ and of course with the much longer days more time to do that fast reactive thinking of chasing lunch or or avoiding becoming lunch. Without going into unnecessary detail winter was the opposite.

Now looking at the regulatory path for the THYROID gland it was STRESS?-thyrotropin releasing factor-thyrotropin-THYROXIN. The stress was speculative. I’ve been around all sorts of mechanical devices all my life and I started to think ‘What if there is some sort of flow meter that measures the amount of blood going to the brain and it’s that rate which regulates the amount of thyrotropin releasing factor’. More thought, more neural activity, more metabolic activity, more glucose needed for that activity, more oxygen, more blood flow.

So the animal in the wild was entrained, had no control over its degree of thought and so no control over thyroid activity. In the winter it became (sub-clinically) hypothyroid and in the summer it became (sub clinically) hyperthyroid. Later I would learn about light shining through the eyes and its regulation of serotonin and melatonin, but I was on the right track. It seemed that the thyroid grew more cells (hyperplasia) in the summer and lost cells (hypoplasia not goitre)in the winter.

Later I began to study calcium metabolism. This was a terrific model as sunlight regulated the amount of vitamin D in both plant and animal. Two opposite words stuck out osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts laid down bone and osteoclasts removed it. So there was more osteoblast activity compared to osteoclast coming on summer and the bones got thicker and more osteoclast activity compared to osteoblast coming on winter and the bones got thinner. No problems, thicker bones for more activity in summer, thinner bones for less in winter, perfect. This seasonal remodelling also speeds up fracture repair.

Muscles got bigger in the summer and adipose fat deposits got smaller, the reverse in the winter. Later it struck me that if the thyroid enlarged in the summer and shrunk in the winter then the same must apply to other organs of the endocrine system, pancreas, adrenals etc. Following that reason it therefore meant that cell surface receptors that bound these endocrine hormones increased in density in summer or the other way round depending on whether they were associated with sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous activity. For example one would expect receptors associated with the catecholamine hormones, adrenalin, noradrenalin and dopamine to increase in summer and decrease in winter. Insulin is a bit more complicated as it is associated with all forms of storage, fat, glucose, protein and bone.

But what about HUMAN animal? They are not entrained into any seasonal rhythm at all. Artificial lighting and heating, wearing glasses, driving cars, eating foods out of season. Worrying like hell in the winter cause she has lost her job and relaxing in the summer because she found one. What about pathological extremes, One one side slow anxiety, guilt depression, (no religion in the wild) self loathing fluctuating between unreal optimism and unreal pessimism. Goes out and buys everyone a present on the manic high believing doors will open to al sorts of thing including lots of sexual partners, then plunges into a depressive low when all the presents have been rejected and the huge bill comes in. Prospects worse than before. On the flip side gets aggressive and threatening, then realising the possible backlash becomes conciliatory. Whilst conciliatory is deemed to be open to criticism for the prior aggression, suddenly snaps at this self righteousness and returns to the insults. Schizophrenia. Later I add blood sugar instability and lots of endocrine deregulation insomnia etc. But it was with the THYROID that this all began.

Schizophrenia. Following the dopamine receptor over abundance theory, this model tells me that it is not a genetic predisposition, but that the actual reason is more likely to be PERSISTANT ANXIETY, probably from early childhood. This fits in with RD Laing’s research that it is extreme conflict in the family with totally opposing beliefs and philosophies imposed on the child i.e. double binds, by each parent, along with violence and sexual abuse. Daddy says to little daughter after sexually abusing her for the first (and subsequent) times, ‘This is a really, really good thing between us, BUT DON”T TELL ANYONE!!!!!! This deranged double bind become the foundation stone of the child’s ‘development’ .

Uncle Sam comes into the village, puts a gun to the villager’s head and says menacingly, ‘You even THINK about collaborating with Charlie (VC) and BOOM!!! A couple of hours later, after Uncle Sam has gone, Charlie comes into the village, puts a gun the the villager’s head and says equally menacingly, ‘You even think about collaborating with Uncle Sam and BOOM!!! VERY, VERY, BIG double bind.
Noddy the hyper hypo sheep.

lilady,
Of course I’m enjoying all the attention I’m getting. whaddiya want me to do, hate it. You’re dishing it out after all. Pity none of you lot understand any of this stuff, calling it troll because you can’t understand a word of it. Just putting shit on everything. Pity!! It might do you a helluva lot of good if you did understand it. You don’t HAVE to wrestle with pigs, you know.

Just when I thought I was gonna get away from here I discover that I haven’t been locked out of this thread.

You haven’t been “locked out” of any threads. Is this just some cut-and-paste of something from elsewhere?

No Narad

So what’s with the horseshit about being locked out of threads?

MIGRAINE Part 2. Digestion and assimilation of sugars.
The term sugars covers a wide range of compounds, however, I just want to cover the hexoses (6 sided) normally found in food. All dietary sugars are either dimers (2 joined together) or the polymer starch, the exception being honey in which the double sugar sucrose has been hydrolysed by the bees digestive system into single sugars. Fruit sugar sucrose is fructose glucose, milk sugar lactose is galactose, glucose and starch is a long chain of glucose molecules with side branches sticking out from the main trunk. Glycogen, the form of glucose polymer which acts as a storage medium in animal cells is much the same as plant starch except the side branches are located in a different place and cannot be digested in a human’s gastro-intestinal tract. Starch digestion begins in the mouth by the enzyme ptyalin and it is broken down to the double glucose molecule maltose by the time it enters the duodenum.
Okay, now to a VERY IMPORTANT POINT. In the natural world all sugars (except in honey) arrive in the duodenum for digestion as DOUBLE sugars, sucrose, lactose and maltose and cannot be absorbed into the body until cleaved into single sugars by the enzymes sucrase, lactase and maltase which are secreted into the duodenum by the EXocrine pancreas. This is where regulation comes in and is so important in stabilising the blood sugar level, The ENdocrine pancreas, located inside the body and which produces insulin in it’s beta cells and glucagon in it’s alpha cells, monitors blood sugar and it communicates with the exocrine pancreas via the GIP (gastro inhibitory peptide) axis. The idea is that the exocrine pancreas does not secrete the digestive enzymes into the duodenum until it the endocrine pancreas is ready and the exocrine pancreas monitors the presence and level of sugars in the duodenum telling the endocrine pancreas when to begin making insulin. THUS THERE IS VERY TIGHT CONTROL
Insulin takes about twenty minutes to synthesise. However, in the healthy individual there is a residue of insulin remaining in the cells from the previous release, so that there is a so called biphasic release. This residue is to nip in the bud any premature release of sugar into the bloodstream until de nova synthesis has finished and it is lost with reactive hypoglycaemia, as with migraine, because the pancreas is forced to overreact all the time. This loss of biphasic release is destabilising as I will cover in the next chapter.
Now we come to fibre. Plant fibre is composed of lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin. Fibre exerts strong osmotic pressure in solution and when present in the digestive tract pulls against the absorption of the monosaccharides resulting from the cleavage of the disaccharrides by the digestive enzymes. The monosaccharrides, glucose and galactose are actively transported in to the bloodstream, whereas, from memory, fructose enters by passive diffusion, So active transport also acts as a regulator.

REFINED SUGARS.
Now I want to leave the subject of digestion and assimilation and talk about the sugars of the concrete jungle. It is harmful to eat monosaccharides as they disturb blood sugar regulation. Processed foods contain the monosaccharides fructose, glucose, dextrose (another name for glucose) and food manufacturers are desperate to shove as much of this stuff into their ‘foods’ as possible. Sucrose or refined sugar put into a boiling cup of tea or coffee is hydrolysed into the monosaccharides by the heat whilst the caffeine accelerates the rise in blood sugar.
Caffeine poisons the enzyme phosphodiesterase located on the G stimulatory protein of the RAS (rat sarcoma) signalling pathway thereby preventing the pathway from turning off. Let’s say that adrenalin binds to the RAS beta receptor outside the cell and activates it. Inside the cell the (C terminus) part of the receptor, now activated, draws the G protein to it and the G protein is diphosphorylated and thus activated. Activated G protein then migrates to adenylate cyclase and activates it and adenylate cyclase then begins to make cyclic AMP or cAMP which in turn activates the rest of the signal transduction pathway.. Within milliseconds or seconds phosphodiesterase on the G protein dephosphorylates the G protein and it migrates back to a position midway between the adenylate cyclase and the RAS beta receptor. Thus by caffeine poisoning phosphodiesterase an adrenalin response remains switched on for some time after adrenalin is withdrawn from the bloodstream. As adrenalin raises blood sugar in a number of ways it is obvious that caffeine is destabilising to blood sugar regulation. RAS pathways are ubiquitous in the body and stimulators include embryonic hormones, hence the suggestion that caffeine can be a promoter of cancer once started and it’s cells dedifferientated.
Threobromine is the other blood sugar raiser in Coca Cola and chocolate. It’s a xanthine like uric acid, and is essentially caffeine with one less methyl group on it (caffeine has 4). So, boiling coffee, sugar, a lump of chocolate, a swig of Coke and an hour or so the mouth is spewing and the head is thumping, tremors, sweats, no bloody good at all and very destructive.
In part 4 I want to get into the subject of blood sugar regulation INSIDE the body (the GI tract is officially outside the body). This will begin to touch on panic attacks, epilepsy, asthma and schizophrenia.. I might also start on the subject of how to break the addictions.

Narad, apparently the thread that Mr. Hill was using as his personal blog has now been closed. Orac is using this software’s feature to close threads automatically after 90 days.

paul hill:

Blogspot and WordPress offer free blogging space which you could surely use instead of spamming Orac’s comments with off-topic nonsense.

I’ve been doing some great stuff on HIV for your enlightenment. Here are the links so you and your disciples can slag them with inane, vacuous drivel

http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2012/06/14/bone-marrow-transplants-as-a-cure-for-aids-iv/comment-page-1/#comment-49803
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2012/05/31/epic-disaster-in-hiv-vaccine-world/comment-page-1/#comment-49762
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2012/07/03/hervs-vs-hiv-1-and-cancer-another-step-forward/comment-page-1/#comment-49813

Narad, apparently the thread that Mr. Hill was using as his personal blog has now been closed. Orac is using this software’s feature to close threads automatically after 90 days.

I see, thank you. I’m sure ERV is going to lurve him a bunch.

Which is why I am now just ignoring Mr. Hill. He is not worth it.

Though I do wish he would get some real help.

Orac,
If i am as psychotic as the great stream of of people on ‘medicine and evolution’ are telling me then I must be seen as dangerous by THEIR definition. The label of schizophrenia implies potentially extremely dangerous and acting without any provocation whatsoever.

This is why RD Laing said that the label was an extreme form of abuse in itself and was so alienating that it could be self fulfilling.

Every comment on Cancer or whatever I posted was followed by a stream of ridicule. If there was a comment made to me about some science, eg ketosis, it was ALWAYS abusive.

Is a constant steam of vacuous drivel SCIENCE. It was YOU who set me up mate, eh? Oh by the way, thanks for the new post about me. That really inflates my already overheated ego. My stuff must be REALLY good, incredible as a matter of fact. I say that with the utmost humility, about which I am intensely proud.

Politicalguineapig,
1 Hormones in women merely exacerbate the effects of refined sugar and caffeine. I’ve PROVEN this with a booklet I wrote many years ago that had a lot of success. I’m not quoting what the medical profession says, this is EVIDENCE based science, MY science. You didn’t say the kid wasn’t using sugar.

2 That is pathetic. Go and wash your mouth out. I would help anybody in trouble, even ADOLPH HITLER. We are all a precise product of our social environment. Most pedophiles have themselves been abused as children and the reason they become pedophiles themselves is because they get no help whatsoever when it comes out that they have been abused, just mealy mouthed platitudes.

3 You mean that ‘science’ says that schizophrenia is genetic. The main reason for this is because that is what people WANT to believe, especially parents that have abused their children then VEHEMENTLY deny it till the day they die. I have personal experience in this having been bashed mercilessly by my father, who even took to me with a stock whip on one occasion till I bled. Constant ridicule and criticism. Yet my mother denied it utterly till the day she died.
I’ll leave a post about a society which proves nurture, one you can see for yourself if you can get a copy.

Then this to support the above.

RODENTS
Many years ago now I saw a documentary on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) about huge rodents that are bred for food in Central America These rodents are extremely aggressive and as the people who breed them are too poor to fence them in they just roam around the village. The females are most aggressive when they’ve got pups and will attack other females who get too close.

Thus the villagers wanted to find some way of taming them, and researchers were becoming interested as well. The animals had big litters and as their teats didn’t provide an equal amount of milk, there was a lot of pushing and shoving among the pups to get the best or just any. Then there was the pups being exposed to their mother’s aggression toward other females that got too close.
So the researchers thought that removing the pups from the teat and putting them onto an artificial surrogate mother at an early age might work. The mothers were milked to provide the surrogate milk. At first the researchers tried removing the pups from their mothers several weeks after birth. No go, a week, no go, a few hours, no go. In desperation they tried removing them immediately they were born. IT WORKED. When they were threatened they just cowered. How about that?

This begs the question how did they behave when in natural wilderness before being ‘domesticated’ and how much was their behaviour determined by the treatment they received from their human captors. Were they belted to separated them when they fought or just being herded around. Were they slaughtered where other rodents could witness this, their captors being totally oblivious to the effect this might have on them. I saw a dead cow once being towed out of the paddock it was in and the effect this had on the other cows was amazing. They were extremely agitated, rushing up to it, staring at it for a few seconds then rushing away.

With the rodents there could be a vicious cycle at work here. The more they fought the more they got knocked around by their captors and vice versa. What about being removed from their mum at birth removing the bonding of breast feeding. But then quintuplet humans couldn’t possibly be breast fed at the same time. Most important of all what about big litters of black sheep.

Oh yeah, Politicalguineapig, it’s time you started reading RD Laing, ‘Sanity, Madness and the Family’ to start off with, about eleven schizophrenic girls and who he tried to reconcile their families, to CURE the schizophrenia What if Hans had admitted the abuse to his daughter and apologized to her profusely? No admission of abuse by parents no cure. The reverse in this case. He wasn’t domineering just old, pathetic and schizophrenic. His dead wife had been schizophrenic. His mother hanged herself in the kitchen when he was a little kid. Germany during the war. The point I’m also trying to make is that public shrinks do nothing whatsoever to reconcile families, just drugs and ECT . Go check Clozapine, diabetes 2, chronic constipation, burst bowel. Dead. Great.

Noddy the Black Sheep.

I really have to wonder exactly how far round the bend poor Mr Hill is. Also kind of confused how someone living in the middle of a national wildlife area of some sort has the ability to get on the internet. He would need a satellite uplink system and some solar power minimum. After having everything he owned smashed to bits and what sounds like no income whatsoever that is quite a feat…

Hey, look a free medical dictionary. Let’s see what it says.

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/schizophrenia

“Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder (or a group of disorders) marked by severely impaired thinking, emotions, and behaviors. Schizophrenic patients are typically unable to filter sensory stimuli and may have enhanced perceptions of sounds, colors, and other features of their environment.”

Note that there’s nothing in there about being violent. The vast majority of schizophrenics are more likely to be victims of violence then to cause the violence themselves.

“Theories of causality: One of the reasons for the ongoing difficulty in classifying schizophrenic disorders is incomplete understanding of their causes. It is thought that these disorders are the end result of a combination of genetic, neurobiological, and environmental causes. A leading neurobiological hypothesis looks at the connection between the disease and excessive levels of dopamine, a chemical that transmits signals in the brain (neurotransmitter). The genetic factor in schizophrenia has been underscored by recent findings that first-degree biological relatives of schizophrenics are ten times as likely to develop the disorder as are members of the general population.
Prior to recent findings of abnormalities in the brain structure of schizophrenic patients, several generations of psychotherapists advanced a number of psychoanalytic and sociological theories about the origins of schizophrenia. These theories ranged from hypotheses about the patient’s problems with anxiety or aggression to theories about stress reactions or interactions with disturbed parents. Psychosocial factors are now thought to influence the expression or severity of schizophrenia rather than cause it directly.”

I have to go now, but I’ll tackleLaing’s abusive practices when I get back.

There’s a good discussion of causation of schizophreia @ schizophrenia.com: I especially like the odds ratio graph.

Laing was debunked years ago. Did my psych degree in the 90s, and he was considered to be the bete noire of schizophrenogenic theory even then.

The only bits of Laing that seem to have lasting value to me are Conversations with Adam and Natasha and the movie Asylum. He’s also a dreadfully dull writer*; Watzlawick et al.’s Pragmatics of Human Communication is a much more readable overview of what was going on.

* Who died playing tennis. Let’s be careful out there, people.

EXTREME INTRACTABLE DEPRESSION.
I intrigues me, all the talk about genes and drugs in the treatment of depression as if there just HAS to be some inheritance factor involved. There are no shortage of things to get depressed about in this world today without bringing belief systems into the equation. This a story about horrific depression from which very few escape. It involves both a shrink and a patient, in both cases me. It’s a story that has to be told to reach out and offer escape to anyone else caught in the same trap.

I find the use of surgical intervention for something like depression as appalling. Up until 1972 I suffered the most dreadful depression from early childhood with alcoholism commencing at 14. I contracted meningitis at just 9 months old, then at 28 suffered very severe bends with cerebral complications (as indicated by tunnel vision) as an abalone diver.
However, there were plenty of environmental factors to depress me. I was brutalised by my father who came back from WW2 deranged. As well as bashing me he ridiculed and criticised everything I did.

At 19, filled with self loathing, I went forward at a Billy Graham meeting and then committed the worst sin possible for a Baptist, I backslid, finally believing that I had been cut off with no possible hope of redemption. I was going to burn in Hell forever and this tormented me day and night. The only way I could cope was to drink myself into oblivion. I couldn’t commit suicide and I couldn’t be awake and I couldn’t talk to ANYBODY about it. Being unconscious was the only way out.

Then in 1970 I lost TWO abalone boats with the death of my deckhand on each occasion, punishment by God I believed for my backsliding, and punishment by man by enormous stigma. The local Baptist minister visited me in hospital after I lost the first boat and was being treated for suicidal ideation. He said with great compassion, “The reason you lost that boat and the young man died was because you turned your back on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus wept!!!

What wonderful therapy. No good confiding in him, and this outburst only confirmed what I already believed. My drinking escalated accordingly. I was now COMPLETELY psychotic, with no help coming from ANYWHERE, just prejudice.
Then in 1972 with the assistance of a lot of LSD I cured myself utterly and simultaneously stopped drinking. How? I STOPPED believing in God and sin and Hell as by now they all seemed so utterly absurd. The depression just vanished.

I now believe that the above is a common syndrome in depression. However the individual cannot talk about it to ANYONE as he or she is desperately trying to drive it from their minds and with only venom coming from the clergy. He or she would probably accept implantation surgery as the only way of coping. I didn’t. I used an illegal substance that is supposed to drive one insane, no ECT, no lithium, no SRI’s, just a substance that strips away the illusions.

I’d like to make the point that I DO NOT recommend the use of LSD for anyone in a clinical environment, i.e. labelled and drugged as this is a very paranoid environment already and could turn a lot more paranoid. I know of people who developed LSD induced schizophrenia. However, as RD Laing said they were pre-psychotic and all the drug did was accelerate the process. They are stuck half way. Once labelled and drugged they remain stuck, but can come out the other side as can anyone else as I’ve already hypothesised.

As to anyone using LSD as a recreational drug, that’s their business. So it’s illegal, there are thousands of legal drugs which are deadly poisons. I don’t use any drugs now, legal or illegal, although I don’t hold that up as a badge of virtue as virtue is a word for the pious. Been there, done that.

LSD is NOT a therapy. It is a TRUTH drug. It cuts through absurd contradictions like a God of limitless love would burn someone in HELL forever (even Adolph Hitler], or knowing the beginning to the end would create the Devil knowing that Nick would try to organise a coup d’etat against him, or burning the heathen in Hell simply because some slack arsed missionary didn’t go ram gobbledygook down their throats, or Paul saying one minute ‘If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, behold old things pass away, all things are become as new’ then next minute saying ‘Oh wretched man that I am, who can rescue me from this body of death. All my righteousness are but as filthy rags.’ The book of contradictions. Yet fundamentalist Christians say that there is NOT ONE SINGE CONTRADICTION in the Bible. Talk about double BLINDS.

Narad: Tennis claims a lot of lives, apparently.So does figure skating.

REACTIVE HYPOGLYCAEMIA. Low Blood Sugar in Reaction to High Blood Sugar.

If you suggested to a biochemist that refined sugar was a poison he would probably retort indignantly that it has exactly the same molecular structure as the sugar in an apple, and of course he’d be right. However, this misses the point, as refining the sugar removes it from it’s natural context of fibre, as well as minerals essential to it’s storage and metabolism e.g. zinc. It’s all about the way that refined sugar is regulated in the body vs. sugar in it’s natural context.

The subject of blood sugar regulation is probably one of the least understood in all of medicine. It is a black hole. The reason for this is that it was suppressed most forcefully in 1972 (no great conspiracy theories). Let me explain. In 1924 a US physician Seale Harris, read a paper put out by the Canadian discoverers of insulin, Banting and Best, in which they described the symptoms of a diabetic injecting too much insulin and the extreme hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) that ensued (there were no glucose monitors then.) These were tremors, sweats, migraines, convulsions, tachycardia, panic attacks, coma and death in the most extreme case (figures). He knew that many of his patients experienced many of these symptoms, sometimes right out of the blue, like panic attacks. Harris concluded that the culprit was refined sugar in that being stripped of the natural fibre of the cane it was absorbed much too fast into the bloodstream so that the pancreas overreacted, producing far too much insulin which caused the severe hypoglycaemia.

He coined the term for the syndrome ‘Reactive Hypoglycaemia’, that is, low blood sugar in reaction to high blood sugar or hyperglycaemia. He wrote a paper on migraine which received good acceptance at the time, and this term and the syndrome became orthodoxy for many years. However it eventually began to get up the nose of processed food manufacturers who used refined sugar in their products. By this time the US govt., like so many others, was cutting back on funding of research into health and universities had to rely more and more on said food manufacturers for grants, with large strings attached of course. Principal among these manufacturers were the giant chocolate and soft drink manufacturer and cola manufacturer (you’ve go no idea of who I mean of course). In 1972 these companies demanded that the US AMA drop the term ‘reactive hypoglycaemia’ or they would take their money elsewhere. The AMA caved in and the term fell into ridicule even by GP’s, as it is today.

The 5 hour GTT or glucose tolerance test, a test necessary to clearly demonstrate the abnormal BG swing ceased to exist and of course today no doctor or path lab would do it because of the time involved i.e. the cost. (Actually since I wrote this a number of clinics now do it but it useless as they only test every hour.) I’ve done quiet a few myself, including a couple on myself. I’ve added a range of monitors to the test, blood pressure and heart rate monitor, finger temperature monitor, skin conductance monitor, as well as using Ames Multistix to test urine, 8 tests instead of the normal 1 with Glucostix or 2 with Diastix.

Medicare Australia will not fund this test, only the 2 or 3 hr diabetes test which is totally useless because of the short time involved and the infrequency of the tests (one each hour). It is ironic that it was these two companies who were the prime movers in this repression of truth, because BOTH use cocoa and a lot of sugar. Cocoa contains caffeine and a caffeine like substance called threobromine. These three combined cause by far the most unstable blood sugar of all. That giant cola manufacturer buys caffeine from coffee decaffeinators to add to their product to make it even more addictive. Now I’ve studied this subject extensively for forty years and it is very clear that the main problem is not the pancreas but the inability for the liver to store glucose as glycogen and the extremely convoluted and damaging path that the body has to take to restore the blood sugar level to normal following the fall.
The complete understanding of blood sugar regulation can now only get worse as universities are dumbed down worldwide to attract foreign students and their fees or go bust. I have been told at both the Lorne Vic Aust Cancer and Genome conferences I attended for many years that biochemists no longer study metabolism, which is absolutely absurd. The internet seems to have had a negative effect in this regard as researchers just go online to see just the part of a metabolic pathway they need to conduct an experiment instead of seeing the whole picture. Anyway to work out blood sugar regulation requires a lot more than biochemistry as it also involves at least endocrinology, haematology and general physiology.

paul hill:

Please get your own goddamn blog and stop spaming this one.

Thank you.

Paul Hill,

The subject of blood sugar regulation is probably one of the least understood in all of medicine. It is a black hole.

No it isn’t! It’s once of the best understood areas in medicine and has had an enormous amount of research done on it. Just because you have a distorted idea of how it all works doesn’t mean that you are right and the rest of the scientific world is wrong.

I have spent most of my life working in clinical biochemistry and it distresses me to see you mangling it like this. Please stop, or go and learn some real science, at least spend some time on PubMed and get up to date. You are apparently mixing up a bunch of stuff you read once and misunderstood with complete nonsense you have come across on quack alternative medicine sites and leaping to completely unwarranted conclusions which are contradicted by decades of real research done by thousands of real scientists over several decades. You are a fine example of the arrogance of ignorance in action.

By the way, a medium sized baked potato contains more calories than a cup of coffee with six heaped teaspoons of sugar (which does not spontaneously hydrolyse to glucose and fructose as you claim), and since potato has a higher glycemic index than sucrose, the potato will lead to a larger and more rapid spike in blood glucose than the coffee.

Take a lot more and you’ll end up with LSD induced schizophrenia and more than likely end up institutionalized.

Unfortunately, your assertion has been tested and found lacking. I played host to a fellow who took the stuff twice a week for months–stiff doses during the week and whoppers on the weekend. No “schizophrenia,” no institutionalization, not really much of anything except developing a taste for very obscure recordings. He found it “refreshing.” You’re trying to extend your own experience into a universal.

LSD is NOT a therapy. It is a TRUTH drug.

Again, no. If you’re having trouble on a “big one” and latch on to intellectualizations, there’s no more guarantee that you’ll “cut through absurd contradictions,” rather than having them firmly cemented in your cranium, than there is of “getting elves” from DMT (McKenna) or being contacted by the Earth Coincidence Control Office from ketamine (Lilly). The history of LSD is littered with screwball occultists.

All the same, it sounds like a good thing that youi’re eschewing intoxicants.

JGC,

“In being stripped of the natural fibre of the cane”? Anyone have any suggestions what that might possibly mean?

Chewing? In Egypt, India (and Green Street in east London where I took a stroll today), you can buy a glass of pure natural sugar cane juice, freshly crushed out of the raw cane by a scary Victorian-looking contraption while you wait. That saves you the effort of chewing the cane, swallowing the juice and spitting out the fiber in the traditional manner. It still won’t spike your blood glucose as much as a baked potato though…

Politicalguineapig
Why doesn’t anybody read my stuff before making comment which are way off beam. This is happening time and time again. I DON’T advocate sugar substitutes as I say they are horrible myself. I just advocate them as a stopgap when breaking the addiction, maybe just for a few days and suggest trying glycerine. instead, then having tea or coffee without ANY sweetener.

Same with the sugar being a natural product, just read my stuff properly as I am wasting my time going over the same thing over and over again.

Again I don’t say that everybody that everyone that enjoys coffee, tea and sweets suffers migraine. It depend on the degree of liver pathology, pancreatic insulin response etc. But I will say that eating a lot of refined sugar is VERY harmful, migraines or NO migraine.

Meat is not the only source of protein. It is in everything, fruit veges, nuts and so on. Meat is a HIGH protein source. Anyway many of the amino acids of protein convert to glucose in the liver via gluconeogenesis so it is still a source of carb. Just takes longer as protein metabolism takes place after carb. I don’t advocate a meat diet as I am an almost vegetarian my self’.

It is a pain in the arse Science Blogs not having EDIT buttons (and Reply and Report buttons). The end of the last line should read ‘withOUT needing LSD, just these blogs.

Politicalguineapig,
That is what so called ‘science’ WANTS you to believe because there is no money for drug companies, doctors, researchers etc. in DIY cures. I’ve been on blog after blogs forums etc. in the last 6 months, kicked off all of them, usually when I question papers on the metabolism of drugs. ie the way they are broken down. I went onto academia.edu set up my blog then went in search of someone on the forum to talk to. Found eight psychologist/ psychiatrists. Started messaging them on the subject of schizophrenia, Got very cautious replies. Then I read a paper on the metabolism of the antipsychotic Clozapine, how it causes agrunularcytosis, destruction of a class of white blood cells. A lot of things didn’t make sense and I got to wondering who funded this research. (Read Harriet Washington’s stuff on this subject). Anyway I messaged the shrinks on this. Two hours later my account was locked and I was out with NO explanation and couldn’t get one. This is a drug that has killed a lot of people.

Okay, the strongest suspect was one Joel Lamoure, London Ontario. Now just GET THIS. A Fundamentalist Christian minister on Sunday, a practicing psychiatrist through the week as well as a lecturer in psychiatry at two Canadian universities.

Now he claimed to be anti-drug in messages he had sent me. But after getting booted out of academia.edu I go online and find out that he is also a PHARMACIST and a lecturer in pharmacy at both these universities.

So I send him an email, not letting on that I suspected him of getting me locked out of academia.edu. I got pretty heavy suggesting that anyone prescribing Clozapine and a with a patient dying as a consequence should be charged with MURDER. I also said that I was going to send all of the details of this to the Canadian National Broadcaster.
Now you should have seen the email that came back from him. It was almost indecipherable, as if he was having a panic attack whilst writing it.

Ethically, drug companies are on a par with the tobacco companies and there probably are cross shareholdings between them. This is what I am uncovering. Getting irrefutable evidence, not just yelling and screaming about BIG PHARMA.

At the 19th International Genetics Conference I attended in Melbourne 2003, a lecturer from Tel Aviv Uni did a talk on bipolar. A slide came on the screen which said ‘Bipolar is an inherited disorder.’ Then straight below it said, ‘No genes have been discovered for bipolar.’ So what is it which is inherited. I talked to the lecturer after the talk and it was obvious that he had no comprehension of the behavior of someone with bipolar, eg buying a heap of friends a present on the high then sinking into a suicidal depressive state when the presents had been rejected and the bill came in. That is a direct connection between high and low. Yin and Yang.

It’s the oldest cliche of all 50% genes and 50% environment. Playing it safe by having a bet both ways. Research into people curing their own disorders would have no source of funding, especially as governments have pulled out of funding universities and teaching hospitals. Funding primarily has to come from drug and food giants like bloody Coca Cola.

I’ve no doubt that a small minority of cases of depression are hereditary, but would probably almost all involve mutations in genes associated with blood sugar regulation, ie glycogen storage diseases.

I have no axe to grind, no commercial interest whatsoever, no allegiance to any form of treatment. I’m after two things, seeing people cured and getting credibility from these cures, not by publicity, just from messaging me on a blog, forum etc.. If you suffer depression or whatever it is, I’m on your side and will send you any information that I have. If that’s what you want I will put my email address in my next post. Veritas.

The thing is people don’t sit down to a great big plate full of potatoes, whereas they pour Coca Cola, other soft drinks, fruit juices down their throats like there was no tomorrow. Just about every processed food has got sugar added to it for no apparent reason. Are you saying that there is no connection between this huge consumption of refined sugars and any pathology whatsoever. No connection with migraine, diabetes, schizophrenia, bipolar, panic attacks, epilepsy etc. Are you saying there is no such thing as reactive hypoglycaemia, or if there is it has no association with any pathology.

The Mayo clinic talks about reactive hypoglycaemia, then says it’s causes are poorly understood, possibly a poor glucagon response, seeming to indicate that the pancreas is not making enough glucagon, but doesn’t postulate that glucagon is not working because of liver pathology, ie, impaired glycogen storage.

It is this liver pathology, combined with even mild reactive hypoglycaemia that I focus on. Then there is the extremely convoluted path that the body has to take to raise BG when liver glycogen is exhausted, ie tap the skeletal muscle store and the SYMPTOMS of that difficulty. I put all this together in my post on PANIC ATTACKS in ‘Medicine and Evolution’. I’ll have to post the link in another comment.

The thing is with migraine I have PROVEN that refined sugar is the major cause of migraine with a little booklet I wrote about 18 years ago. On woman had been having migraines for 28 years, had been to GP’s, neurologists, even a shrink when a doctor suggested it was psychosomatic. Read my booklet, got off the sugar completely and the migraines vanished, along with the mood-swing. This was just one person.

How I cottoned on to the connection was when I did my very first 5 hr GTT, on myself. My BG didn’t go up very high but when it started to fall I became VERY confused. You see I, being an electronic technician, had added skin conductance monitor, finger temperature monitor as well as a blood pressure-heart rate monitor. Thus it was trying to do all of these things ON MYSELF and record them that REVEALED the confusion. Whereas someone having just the standard 5 hr GTT DONE ON THEM wouldn’t notice it..

I was really excited. Here was the confusion before a migraine. When my BG bottomed out the confusion disappeared to be replaced by mild depression. Quite euphoric on the high, depressed on the low. Now the depression was obviously mild for two obvious reasons, I could see it’s cause and the excitement of my discovery. And of course because I would never scoff 2 ounces of glucose, ANY refined sugar as I had given it up (along with religion and booze).

Later on I did a 5 hr GTT having just a slice of toast with Vegemite, avocado and cheese on it. Now I couldn’t quantify the amount of starch in this but the curve was much flatter and NO noticeable mood swing.

Then I started to do 5 hr GTT’s on friends and I inadvertently induced panic attacks in two of them. Now they weren’t letting on why but wanted out. Their finger temperature in both cases had dropped 3 DEGREES C. I asked them were they having panic attacks and both reluctantly admitted it. Noradrenalin, i figured.

Later I did a 5 hr GTT on a woman using the standard 1.75 grammes per kg body weight amount of glucose used for the 3 hr diabetes test. By this time I’d learned to test every 15 minutes at the start to catch the peak. Her BG started at 6, shot up to 16 in about a half hour from memory, then fell to 4 with the hour from start, a 400 % drop, a HUGE swing. She was a fairly heavy drinker and had had hepatitis many years before. No migraine, just very tired and depressed on the fall and some glucose in her urine. It was with this test that I began to think of liver pathology.

This is where my stuff is unique, being an electronic tech and adding all the electronic stuff to the 5 hr GTT which NEVER seems to be by any lab online. I had been building biofeedback equipment for a few years and intended to add a GSR, EEG and EMG which I built. Then I was forcibly bankrupted in 1988 and had the lot stolen and have been on a downhill slope ever since.

I’ll address other issues in a separate post.

SQUIRREL!!!!!!

First off I appreciate your comment as it is the very first one that has intelligent content. Before you were just one of the mob slagging me. Go back and take a look at what I have copped from the very beginning and it goes on and on and on.

Darwy
Røde grøde med fløde
June 27, 8:03 am

That’s a whole ‘lotta canned spam there, Paul. Too bad it doesn’t really say much of anything, because 2/3rds of it is bunk.

That is moronic. If I was a teenager subject the amount of cyber bullying I’d have hung myself about ten times over. Now as to research. I have PROVEN that refined sugar causes migraine. Yet when I put a post onto migrainecental or whatever it’s called, the moderator, Ultimate Guru she calls herself, closed my account and locked me out because I didn’t agree with her. No abuse, no criticism of her. This is the way it has been on forum after forum for the last 6 months, very drug oriented forums. I can only go on what I have read that Coca Cola, Cadburies Schweppes and other food giants, AND pharmaceutical companies pour a huge amount of money into medical and food research. If so this must corrupt research ENORMOUSLY and going by the problems I have had in getting anywhere just on migraine alone this is so.

As to multidisciplinary research or the lack thereof I can only go on what I have experienced in the Lorne Cancer and Genome conferences up until about 5 years ago and it was bloody appalling. As I have previously stated several delegates told me that biochemists no longer study metabolism. Now I don’t really know exactly what they meant by that. Did it mean that they just went online to look at a specific metabolic pathway when conducting an experiment or what.

When I taught myself biochemistry starting in 1972, all of the major metabolic pathways, Embden-Meyerhoff, citric acid, penthose phosphate shunt etc. had ALL been elucidated and as there was no web then I just crammed them into my head, side branches, intermediates, feedback loops etc. Missing just ONE critical one, eg muscles not expressing Glucose-6-phosphatase, could mean I’d miss the key to a whole GROUP of pathologies.

I just cannot see how not learning these pathways, by what is essentially rote, can be replaced by just having them online when needed. Another one was acetate before combining with enzyme CoA piling up due to TCA cycle being overloaded, binding to a site on pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase, activating it, it then turning OFF pyruvate dehydrogenase. Pyruvate got no other option than be hydrogenated to lactic acid by lactate hydrogenase which is then expelled from the cell.. The confusion online seemed to be that the role of DCA (dichloracetate) was wrong, that it activated or agonised instead of ANTAGONISED acetate. Then there is another feedback loop from citrate back to the TOP of the glycolitic pathway, fructose-6-phosphatase ? turning off glycolysis if citric acid piles up, (over loaded electron transport system perhaps?). Thus I reckon that it’s seeing all of these feedback loops, intermediate in-out pathways etc. SIMULTANEOUSLY in your HEAD that is MANDATORY, when trying to resolve a problem.

In alt med world, sugar is the cause of many physical and psychological ills: ADHD can be cured by diet they say. Many woo-meisters promote a low GI diet in order to prevent cancer as well as obesity. An interesting thing I’ve noticed: like the vaccines/ autism meme, sugar causes ADD/ADHD or as above, SMI, as if these conditions originated from the external world rather than developing from within via genes or genes mediated by enviromental condiitons.,

Sounds a bit like Object Relations Psychoanalytic theory *a la* Klein ( cast out bad/ retain good) or Genesis- the first people were good but evil and corruption came from the Other ( the Serpent).

DISORDERS RELATED TO BLOOD SUGAR DEREGULATION, ie SCHIZOPHRENIA, PANIC ATTACKS, EPILEPSY, ASTHMA. (All brand new stuff and all mine.)

There is a very common misconception that certain individuals have some sort of endemically low blood glucose, ie persistent hypoglycaemia. Normal regulation but set to a low average. There CAN be long periods of low blood glucose but primarily in response to a sharp peak, due to consumption of refined sugar, monosaccharides etc., followed by a deep low. This low is because the pancreas overreacts, thereby pushing BG (blood glucose) way down below the fasting level followed by a VERY SLOW RECOVERY. When a BG reading is taken during that period the assumption is that it is like that all the time.

Hence the doctor prescribing a migraineur I met TWELVE CUPS OF COFFEE A DAY WITH SIX HEAPED TEASPOONS OF SUGAR IN EACH CUP. Get it up and keep it up. Now I know that’s very difficult to believe, but he got shitty when I said ‘you’re kidding’. When his BG slipped through the sugar net he copped migraines so excruciating he would have to inject morphine and they would last up to 4 days. Being so nauseas during the attack he couldn’t just scoff more sugar. So that’s the prolonged period of hypoglycaemia that creates the confusion and it’s a product of both impaired liver storage AND the livers inability to MAKE glucose via gluconeogenesis, ie OVERALL liver pathology. In his case he was prescribed beta blockers to limit the blood pressure rise associated with the migraine. However these are a major factor in prolonging the migraine as they don’t just block the effect of adrenalin on myocardium but also on fat and skeletal muscle cells, thereby blocking gluconeogenesis because glycerol from fat cells and lactic acid from skeletal muscle cells is needed .

THE PHYSIOLOGY of BLOOD SUGAR DEREGULATION ASSOCIATED WITH PANIC ATTACK, SCHIZOPHRENIA ETC.
This is the theory of what is taking place in the body and brain leading up to and during a panic attack.. Assume that the dietary sugar has gone into the bloodstream too quickly and glucose shoots up to be followed by a big fall to a very low level because too much insulin has been released. Insulin release is BIPHASIC, two peaks, one immediately and one around 20 minutes later. Beta cells of the pancreas normally retain some insulin from their previous release, whereas de novo synthesis takes around 20 minutes, ie transcription, splicing, translation, folding, adding di-sulphide links and zinc binding.

The first immediate insulin peak nips in the bud any BG rise from the quick entry of glucose into the bloodstream AND IS LOST with reactive hypoglycaemia due to the pancreas releasing ALL stored insulin each time. So without the first immediate release there is the 20 minute delay combined with the premature flood of glucose into the bloodstream. So the entry of glucose and the release of insulin are hopelessly OUT OF PHASE with each other. Thus the pancreas produces TOO MUCH insulin, probably because of impaired GIP axis detection and BG is driven down to an abnormal low as it is taken up and stored. The bigger the peak the lower the low.

Because the liver is not storing much glucose as glycogen, most of it has gone into the skeletal muscles instead, so muscles have to take over the role of the disordered liver. But muscles were not ‘designed’ for this role. Hence the very convoluted reaction that follows. Normally GLUCAGON is released by the pancreas in response to a fall in BG to bring it back up by acting on liver glycogen, so that the glycogen is hydrolysed to glucose and this is released into the bloodstream. But because of impaired liver storage glucagon release is ineffectual. Glucagon also has a mild effect on the heart to slightly raise blood pressure.

With a sudden ‘fight or flight’ adrenalin is released by the adrenals and it too acts on the liver to raise BG, as well as acting on the heart to increase it’s output, constricting blood vessels supplying the GI tract and associated organs and kidneys, whilst dilating those to liver, skeletal muscles, heart, lungs and brain. In other words reducing blood flow from organs not essential to ‘fight or flight’ whilst increasing it to those that are

THE CENTRAL MECHANISM.
The following, as far as I know, is is exclusive to me and the result of 42 years of research. It is hypothetical based on an arrangement of the known bits and pieces. If there is ONE mechanism central to understanding schizophrenia, migraine, epilepsy etc. it is THIS. Muscle cells cannot release glucose back into the bloodstream as they do not express the enzyme Glucose-6-phosphatase, whereas the liver does. With impaired liver storage of glycogen, the muscles have to take over the role of glucose storage but because they cannot release it as glucose have to ferment it to lactic acid instead for conversion in the liver to glucose. Adrenalin is required to increase the metabolic rate of the muscles and dilate the blood vessels to wash the lactic acid out, however, the dilated blood vessels supply oxygen which stops fermentation. Alternatively noradrenalin does constrict the blood vessel, but has no metabolic effect on muscle cells and of course restricts blood flow. Enter muscle spasm, hot and cold flushes as the two hormones alternate. It seems to be hot first followed by cold.

NORADRENALIN is associated with extreme fear, but here it’s not fear in response to an external perceived threat. The threat is internal and NOT understood by the person experiencing it thus aggravating the attack. The crisis is life threatening cerebral hypoglycaemia (low blood glucose in the brain) which can only be alleviated by increased lactic acid synthesis by the muscles. Liver pathology means not just impaired liver glycogen storage but also impaired gluconeogenesis (the liver making glucose from lactic acid) thereby necessitating even more secretion (release) of adrenalin and noradrenalin by the adrenal glands and in the brain ‘Panic attack’ exacerbated (made worse) by the individual not understanding what on Earth is going on. “I must be going mad”. (and all that entails).

THE RUNAWAY CASCADE OF FEAR.
The brain metabolises 25-40% of the body’s glucose. The more neural activity (thought), the more glucose consumption. The more glucose consumption, the worse the cerebral hypoglycaemia and with it the greater the secretion of adrenalin and noradrenalin. ‘Jesus, I’m going to die, right now when I am least prepared for it’

Enter HYPERSUGGESTABILITY plus religion, almost universal in schizophrenia. The more frightened you become the greater the imagination for possibilities. ‘I’m going to burn in Hell. I might lose my mind and go berserk!!! People are coming to get me, try me, and burn me at the stake. They can read my mind. God can read my mind and I can’t stop blasphemies pouring into my mind. Every atom in the Universe is conspiring to get me. Everything looks, sounds, smells and feels sinister and threatening. (Visual contrast is altered making shadows much deeper and sinister, eg in Cyprus pines.) Hell. I AM IN HELL. (More glucose more noradrenalin) TERROR and it is forever and ever. Thousands of volts of electricity are pouring through me (hypersensitivity to greatly elevated sympathetic nervous transmission).

Now frozen stiff in a catatonic trance. Noradrenalin now predominates to constrict the blood supply to skeletal muscles persistently, along with immobility of the body to conserve energy. Catatonia is the worst case scenario and can go for DAYS ON END in a psyche hospital. However it doesn’t happen these days with the advent of the antipsychotics in 1950. This state is the most enigmatic of all as the schizophrenic catatonic appears to be totally non compost (joke), not even blinking, whereas the precise opposite is the reality, he or she is HYPER aware.

Thus when one intern jokes to another after waving his hand over the patients eyes and seeing no response whatsoever, ‘Vegetable, maybe a lobotomy might be in order’, he does not show a great deal of sensitivity. This is the very thing the patient is terrified of, ie LOSING HIS MIND. Mind you, how CAN the intern know without having been through it himself. He could by taking a big dose of LSD in paranoid circumstances as I did, many times, although each time I tried to avoid it. However, each time it happened I experienced the most indescribable nirvana as I came out of the catatonia and it seemed that I had to go down into hell to ascend into heaven.

It was trying to have nirvana without hell that I began to design and build a range of biofeedback equipment. But I had to study neurology to know how the ‘trip’ worked. That was futile without endocrinology and biochemistry and haematology and general physiology and on and on. In the back of my mind over all of these years was to try to understand the catatonic coma. Having been a Christian it became obvious that Lazarus was not dead but catatonic. Indeed Jesus said, ‘He is not dead but sleepeth.’ Then a few months ago the last pieces fell into place.

COMING OUT THE OTHER SIDE.
So how does the the individual pull out of the attack? Going into ketosis? Part of the process of gluconeogenesis is ketosis where fatty acids from fat cells are broken down in the liver to ketones, three different kinds. Two of these, betahydroxybutyric acid and diacetate, when in excess, come out in the urine and can be tested for using Ames Ketostix, a good idea straight after a panic attack. One, acetone, comes out in the breath as the “smell of rotting apples”. Most body cells adapt to using ketones but like ketosis itself this takes time especially with liver pathology.

Gluconeogenesis is also impaired thus delaying restoration of BG to normal. It is a complex process, requiring 3 substrates, lactic acid and amino acids from the muscles and glycerol from fat cells. Fatty acids are also released from the adipose fat cells, not as substrate for gluconeogenesis, but to provide the energy to drive the process, as gluconeogenesis is an energy negative process unlike glycolysis in the opposite direction which has a net production of 2 ATP’s. Fatty acids are first beta oxidised to ketones in liver cells, then to acetylCoA which enters the TCA (tricarboxalic acid, Kreb, citric acid) cycle to produce the ATP needed to drive gluconeogenesis. Carbon skeletons from some skeletal muscle derived amino acids, after deammination, also enter the TCA cycle as intermediates and are also metabolised to produce ATP..

Glycerol from adipose fat cell triglycerides and other skeletal muscle derived amino acid carbon skeletons, enter the gluconeogenesis pathway as substrate for the synthesis of glucose. Ketone production by the liver by far exceeds that needed to drive gluconeogenesis and excess ketones poor into the bloodstream for use by most body cells ONCE THEY ADAPT by up regulating the associated genes. However that adaption is also delayed so body cells continue to require glucose for days. Obviously transcription, splicing, translation ect. of the associated genes requires energy but as the BG is so low there is not enough fuel for these processes.

The two main endocrine hormones required for the process of ketosis and gluconeogenesis are cortisol and adrenalin. Cotisol acts on the skeletal muscles to get them to release amino acids whilst adrenalin acts on adipose fat cell to get them to break down triglycerides to fatty acids and glycerol for release into the bloodstream. Whilst not necessary for fat catabolism, cortisol also acts in synergism with adrenalin in this task and greatly increases the supply of fatty acids and glycerol to the liver.

EPILEPSY.
I always ask myself what do symptoms do. Now add a black out and convulsions, ie a grand mal epileptic fit, as an alternative to the above runaway cascade. The unconsciousness of blackout shuts off the panic cascade thereby conserving glucose and the CONVULSIONS PUMP LACTIC ACID OUT OF THE SKELETAL MUSCLES. Veins have non return valves along them so that by the convulsions stretching and contracting them they act as a series of pumps to speed up the delivery of lactic acid back to the liver. I’ve had a few fits myself years ago and with one massive fit I was fully conscious during the entire fit. That was very enlightening. I was extremely paranoid, with the very obvious visual distortions mentioned above which got increasing more obvious. Then projectile vomiting followed by the very violent convulsions, which changed in pattern from the last. Now a period of calm in which the visuals distortions were minimal but gradually built up to another round of vomiting and convulsions. This confirmed what was known that when schizophrenics who also suffer epilepsy have a fit it dramatically reduces the symptoms. It was this that inspired ECT to induce convulsions.

Brain tumours don’t directly trigger seizures. They use a lot of glucose the more malignant they become (what’s called the Warburg effect)and so exacerbate (make worse) the cerebral hypoglycaemia. I believe that the majority of these tumours are caused by the severe hypoxia in the brain associated with the vasoconstriction phase of migraine or simply severe reactive hypoglycaemia

NON ALLERGIC ASTHMA.
Most people know that if an asthmatic tries to hyperventilate to overcome the breathlessness it just makes the attack worse. So they have to slow their breathing right down and relax as much as possible. (Alexander technique) Strange. What’s going on? How can an increase in oxygen going into the body be detrimental. Speaking to one asthmatic I knew she said that a cup of tea made it easier to breath. She thought it was because it was a hot drink, but I fixed on the sugar replacing sugar produced by gluconeogenesis. With gluconeogenesis turned down there wouldn’t need to be a noradrenalin adrenalin reaction on muscle cell to produce lactic acid. But what if there was a very weak adrenergic response, especially noradrenalin and it’s vasocontricting effect to the skeletal muscles cutting back on their oxygen supply. So too much oxygen is reaching the skeletal muscles for fermentation of muscle glucose to lactic acid to take place for the liver to make glucose from. So instead HISTAMINE is released in the lungs to reduce oxygen transport into the bloodstream instead. Just a hunch, but a big on

Denice Walter: I’ve heard that. It makes me roll my eyes so hard I’m afraid they’ll fall out. And honestly, I really don’t care whether it affects my ADD or not at this point. Although I’ve never heard it linked to epilepsy or schizophrenia before.

The thing is people don’t sit down to a great big plate full of potatoes

I do. No “migraine, diabetes, schizophrenia, bipolar, panic attacks, epilepsy etc.”

WITH THE EXCEPTION OF LILADY IN THIS CASE.
If this was a decent blog there would be a report button which I would press and the administrator would have a look at your posts and have no problem in pissing them off. The reason that you can’t see the point is because you have no comprehension of what I’m talking about and exhibit by your shear NASTINESS that you are suffering some sort of psychiatric disorders which is probably refined sugar related. You are not discrediting me, you are discrediting yourselves whilst gutlessly hiding behind pseudonyms. Why not your real names, ages, addresses and qualifications You obviously haven’t learned to read yet either. Go wreck something else.

Mrs. Woo: Good eye! I like cavies/guinea pigs a lot, but I don’t currently own any. The whole thing about white foods is really odd to me, though I do avoid commercial white bread because it’s got 0 nutrients, doesn’t hold up well, and, honestly isn’t very tasty. I’ll eat either white or brown rice, though I think brown rice has better taste and texture.
I do have one question, though- how do alties deal with tofu or white tea?

Lilady: who doesn’t like a good baked potato, or any other source of potatoy goodness? I love ice cream and cake too, though not white cake.

Krebiozen rightly identifies the illness *de jour* syndrome woo-dom suffers. Sugar is especially *verboten* amongst those I survey as the cause of many ills. Null relates that his ‘investigative journalism” about the evil, white, Caribbean substance has earned him the eternal emnity of the ‘sugar lobby’ and a Ms Rockefellar who seek to label him a quack in order to protect their own financial interests. She got him banned at NYC’s PBS fund drives ( his nonsense survives in smaller markets).

What’s hilarious to me is that both he and Adams compare sugar to a drug yet instruct followers in creating various juices/ smoothies that may incorporate multiple fruits in volume, e.g. (verbatim) ” Juice 5 apples”. Even a tyro like me can spot the obvious problem. Similarly, the baked potato’s GI example cited above. A baked potato is fine but sugar isn’t.

Concerning white foods: the woo-meisters all hate white flour and sugar but vary on the dairy question- some like Adams and Mercola believe in raw, un-pasteurised, organic, non-bovine and/ or ‘natural” milk ( or some combination thereof) whilst the vegan mafia dismiss all dairy as inappropriate for adults and/ or creatures of ‘another species’. They require soy milk, rice milk or almond milk … Women can get adequate calcium by eating brocoli. Most of the planet’s population is lactose intolerant, they tell us. NO other species relishes another’s milk or enjoys it beyond infancy. However, these are primarily a bunch of white folks with agendas talking.

While many western and northern Europeans may have no probems with milk- I’ve seen data that attributes their consumption of these products with healthy outcomes and I do not see Dutch nationals or Scandinavians keeling over in mass numbers yet.

I don’t like milk or butter but I do consume yoghurt, low fat frozen products and cheese. I even like clotted cream, cheese cake,*creme de coeur* and yes….. ras malai!

Kevin: Sorry! I have a few friends with really odd allergies to common foods/additives, so, my sympathies. (One of my friends is allergic to chicken, and you would not believe how many resturants use chicken broth or chicken grease.)

Paul Hill: Same with all the crap on genes, genes, genes.When are you gonna stop sniping for snipings sake. If you really WANT to go on enjoying your own disorder, whatever that is, then that’s fine by me.

Look, we are only trying to correct you because your advice could possibly kill or harm someone some day. Secondly, it’s common knowledge that schizophrenia and other assorted diseases have some basis in genetics. Hell, behaviors like nail-biting have genetic bases. Don’t just ask me, ask anyone else on this board.

Finally, there’s no call to be rude. I’m surprised no one’s dropped the f-bomb on you yet. But, ya know, personally I’m fine. Yeah, life could be a lot better, and I’m working on that, but at least I don’t inflict medical knowledge I pulled out of my ass on strangers.

I hope the two failed blockquotes in the foregoing don’t impede readability too much. Of course, I also used to hope that preview wasn’t too much to expect.

Narad,
Just because I agree with ONE thing someone said doesn’t mean I agree with everything they said. Of course Leary went off the rails, especially when he said that LSD was an essential vitamin and should be put in all cities water supplies, then got locked up for saying so.

Same with the Book of Grass on adrenochrome. Doesn’t matter where I read it. It’s the formation of adrenochrome in the bloodstream relative to schizophrenia, that was important to me, the precise biochemistry involved.

I wasn’t talking about physical tolerance to the drug negating the progression to LSD induced schizophrenia. I was talking about the effect of having a freak out and one thinking that one is going mad, people in the same house getting concerned of what might happen, ie one going berserk with an axe. Them HIDING the axe and the knives. One noticing they have gone and one getting concerned about what people in the house are starting to believe, getting concerned that he or she MIGHT go berserk. Basal metabolic rate going up as anxiety increases. A gradual process of alienation and paranoia on both sides. Much more likely to have a WORSE panic attack next time. Time for the bin for one forr the safety of those in the house. There was nobody in my house.

So called flashbacks erroneously thought to result from LSD stored in fat cells. Not so, is water soluble. Some say gone from body in as short as 20 minutes. The flashback is auto suggestion, fear feeding on fear. I had a mate reckoned he was having a flashback and was really frightened yet hadn’t taken LSD for years. He had had a freak out so severe years before he was driven to the local hospital, and was given a big INJECTION of Largactil. Just a normal panic attack exacerbated by belief in flashbacks.

What I was saying about the mumbo-jumbo was referring to someone taking LSD over a period of time, starting to believe all sorts frightening stuff, aliens living next door, phone being tapped, committing sin by taking the drug, then stopping taking the drug out of fear of going completely insane. Left hanging in limbo. Can’t go forward or backward. Typical LSD induced schizophrenia.

This didn’t happen with me as I had nowhere to go and it was realising that the acid freakout was in fact catatonia, along with Laing talking about coming through to the other side that kept me going. Actually my roadmap right through, even though it’s based largely on Hinduism was Richard Alpert’s book ‘Be Here Now’.

Narad and Politicalgueneapig, you are right. I should not have blown my cool and become abusive. So I apologize.

Paul Hill,

Hypoglycaemia because they haven’t eaten for several hours. Doesn’t that suggest impaired liver storage of glycogen? What else can it possibly be? Not skeletal muscle storage as they can’t release glycogen as glucose.

That article on reactive hypoglycemia I liinked to (this link might work for a PDF) puts the probable causes of post-prandial reactive hypoglycemia (PRH) succinctly, and some of these are very probably responsible for fasting hypoglycemia too:
blockquote>PRH could result from (a) an exaggerated insulin respobse, either related to insulin resistance or to increased glucagon-like-peptide 1; (b) renal glycosuria; (c) defects in glucagon response; (d) high insulin sensitivity, probably the most frequent cause (50%-70%), which is not adequately compensated by hypoinsulinemia and thus cannot be measured by indices of insulin sensitivity such as the homeostatic model assessment.

Taking dextrose , a monosacharride is a quick fix sure, but too quick as it just creates another spike and maybe an even worse low after the spike, or more likely cup after cup of sugar laden coffee which is what I’ve seen with schizophrenics.

I’ve seen similar with people in psychosis and drug users, and undoubtedly this behavior does not help the situation, but that’s not the same as causing it. Alcoholics frequently end up with vitamin deficiencies, but vitamin deficiencies do not cause alcoholism.
I’ll just pick up on a couple of bits of your anecdote about the schizophrenic girl:

She’s obviously in ketosis, despite still drinking her sugar laden coffee, as her metabolic rate is so high with the paranoia and of course vice versa.

Obviously? According to my education and experience, people consuming regular carbs don’t generally go into ketosis.

A week passed. A knock on the back door and there she is beaming. ‘Noddy” she says, ‘You wouldn’t believe it, I feel fantastic and have been sleeping properly’. Then she told me that she’d had a bad reaction one day when she’d put peanut butter on her toast not realizing that it had sugar in it. That’s how exquisitely sensitive she was.

First schizophrenia often has a variable course, secondly some would claim that mycotoxins in the peanut butter were responsible for her reaction (I don’t seriously suggest this, but it’s as plausible as a tiny bit of sugar), thirdly encouraging people with serious mental health problems to ignore proper medical advice is foolish and potentially dangerous. I don’t think anyone would deny the therapeutic effects of a little human kindness and a decent meal, but to leap from this to arguing that serious mental health problems are rooted in dysfunction of blood glucose regulation? I don’t think you have even the basis of an argument.

So taking the dextrose tablets doesn’t address the underlying problem, the liver pathology.

The liver pathology you appear to have made up out of whole cloth and have no evidence for at all?

Now I don’t know just how good a general liver function test is,

I do, having done thousands of them over the years. In the UK we measure albumin to check the liver is synthesizing it OK, bilirubin to see if the liver is excreting it OK (if bilirubin is elevated you can check if it is conjugated, obstructive post-hepatic, or unconjugated, pre-hepatic), also transaminases that pick up inflammation and alkaline phosphatase which is elevated in obstruction. They are pretty comprehensive.

but surely a 5hr GTT plus maybe blood insulin at the same time to see is the first peak has been lost.

You seriously think no one has measured insulin during a GTT? This has been done, many, many times, and your hypothesis is not supported by the results.

Another problem here is that adrenalin as with anxiety, perhaps in response to just doing the test, activates INSULINASE in the liver so that all insulin in the bloodstream is broken down in one pass through the liver. Thus blood adrenalin would also have to be tested for as well and it gets too complicated and invasive, thereby adding to the anxiety.

Adrenaline (that’s epinephrine to some of us) stimulates glucagonolysis in the liver and increases blood glucose. You can’t simply reverse one of the major effects of adrenaline to suit your hypotheses! Do you have actual evidence of impaired hepatic glucagonolysis in any of these disorders?

This is where all my electronic paraphernalia gave a MUCH better picture with all data eventually to be recorded so that everything could be looked at simultaneously later at leisure.

This made me curious before, and it’s a rainy Saturday afternoon where I am so… What exactly did you think that hooking someone up to these gadgets while giving them a GTT would uncover? We know that a lot of people will have some kind of adrenergic reaction to a GTT. So what?

I reckon that the two of my test subjects who had panic attacks, knowing that I had taken a lot of LSD in the past, thought that I had put it into their glucose solution, hence their evasiveness as to why they wanted out, thereby distorting their test and perhaps pushing them over the line.

Panic attacks and LSD trips appear to be two very different entities to me. I have observed people experiencing both, (I have also experienced both myself) and they are not remotely similar.

Ok. Maybe reactive hypoglycaemia is over diagnosed, perhaps by naturopaths. But shouldn’t BG regulation be EXTREMELY precise to meet precise neuronal demands.

You seem to be pursuing a big non sequitur here. Yes reactive hypoglycemia exists, yes hypoglycemia can make people feel very weird and trigger anxiety, migraine and seizures. Is dysfunction of glucose regulation a major factor in the etiology of psychosis, epilepsy and migraine? I don’t think so.

I’ve checked online and confirmed that neurons do NOT have insulin receptors,

Citation needed – I was taught that all human cells have insulin receptors, please feel free to educate me otherwise. Some brain cells don’t require insulin to uptake glucose, but synapses have lots of insulin receptors.

nor can they store glucose as glycogen.

So?

Astrocytes can and seem to be a backup fuel supply to the neuron, providing lactic and pyruvic acid and thus able to keep the TCA cycle in the neuron functioning. But what happens when astrocyte glycogen runs our simultaneous to liver glycogen running out ALONG WITH IMPAIRED GLUCONEOGENESIS. due to the liver pathology. Enter the flood of adrenalin and noradrenalin to tap muscle glycogen supply, FEAR compounded DRAMATICALLY by wondering what the hell is going on.

This is simply speculation without any evidence at all to support it.

We evolved eating food provided by the forest, a supply which changes according to the seasons, and which precisely matches our metabolic and nutritional demands for that time of year. As soon as we interfere with that IN ANY WAY we begin to run into trouble and we have been doing that for many thousands of years.

That’s the naturalistic fallacy. Humans are designed to survive in a specific environment with a specific diet, so if we can duplicate that we will be healthy and live forever? Look at animals in the wild. They get the same degenerative diseases that humans get, and that you blame on the “concrete jungle”.

Next I want to talk about assimilation and digestion of sugars concentrating on the GIP (gastro inhibitory peptide) axis and it’s importance in achieving that PRECISE regulation.

[sarcasm]I can barely control my excitement [/sarcasm].

Anti-psychiatry advocates will go to any lengths- even bending over backwards- to avoid the obvious, established by SBM research- that schizophrenia reflects structural and chemical anomalies in the brain that derive from genetics influenced by early ( i.e. pre- and peri-natal) environmental influences ( see schizophrenia.com/ causation). There are some great imaging studies at LONI’s website.

It is not caused by diet, vitamin deficiency, stress, poor parental managment or untoward alien manoeuvres, despite what followers of Orthomolecularism, Szasz, Breggin or Hubbard might tell you. Those I survey especially oppose pharmaceutical products- exaggerating side effects while failing to mention the benefits people may experience. This is truly a dis-service to those who suffer. ( Lately, I’ve been hearing that Valenstein dis-proved the ‘chemical imbalance theory” LONG ago. Right.)

An odd thing I find: people with SMI often fear meds and don’t want to take them- some of this is due to anosognosia- a lack of awareness of illness attributed to the illness’ effects ( see Xavier Amador). The alt med providers seem to share this idea**- however, this is a case where patient- provider *simpatico* in not in the patients’ interests.

** make your own inferences

@ Narad:

I personally didn’t like the hallucinogens although I enjoyed the enhanced visual contours and perceptual effects intriguing so I stopped after 2 or 3 experiments. Unfortunately, I discovered that I did relish smoking opium which I brilliantly restricted to very widely spaced intervals. In the late 1970s I was a student in a few farflung locations which didn’t hurt.

Paul Hill,

You would rather put her on an antipsychotic would you so that she becomes obese, developes Diabetes 2, and the great plethora of horrendous side effects from these poisons.

Antipsychotics have been a literal life-saver for many people, and you exaggerate the side effects. My friend I mentioned above now has regular depot injections of antipsychotics and last time I saw him he was doing very well.

Well, I don’t agree with you and if I want to play God then that is precisely what I’ll do without requiring your sanction.

Evidently, I hope your hubris doesn’t come back and bite you.

Public psychiatry is a vicious monster out of control and I will do whatever I can to protect anyone from it.. That is my prerogative.

Are you seriously suggesting that all mental health problems are caused by eating too much refined sugar? That a sensible diet can cure major psychoses? Sorry, but I think that’s dangerous nonsense. Modern psychiatry is by no means perfect, but if you think that nutrition can replace pharmaceuticals, you are sadly mistaken.

Panic attacks and CATATONIA on LSD which I have experienced on a number of times. Go take some acid and see for yourself.

I took acid and other psychedelic drugs many times in my misspent youth, and never experienced anything remotely similar to the effects of hypoglycemia or a panic attack.

So I’m lying about the people who got off the sugar and their migraines ceased, or did I just imagined this because I’m deranged.

I’m not accusing you of lying, and diet does seem to help some people control their migraines. It’s your leap of faith from that to claiming that refined sugar causes migraines (psychoses and epilepsy) that I don’t think is supported by the evidence.

Animals in the wild. What wild? Where is it? Australian aboriginals began wiping out the center of Australia about 40,000 years ago with fire. What was lush rainforest right across central Australia is now desert. That is supposed to be a racist statement.

Dinosaur skeletons show signs of cancer and arthritis long before humans existed.

Who said anything about living forever, suggestion that I am some sort of religious cuckoo. As to you sarcastically awaiting my response this is it. I suggest you do a course in being courteous and civil. Good bye.

There was me thinking I had been treating you with grandmotherly kindness, yet a little humorous sarcasm scares you away? No offence was intended, and I apologize for any taken. I think you are wrong, and have done my best to explain why.

First off I don’t know why you included Hubbard in the above mix.

You yourself bring up Laing and praise the “anti-psychiatry movement” and you don’t know why Hubbard would come up?

I personally didn’t like the hallucinogens although I enjoyed the enhanced visual contours and perceptual effects intriguing so I stopped after 2 or 3 experiments.

I haven’t touched a one of them in well over a decade, but I was always curious about the seeming separation reported between 2C-B (strongly visual) and 2C-E (more of an all-out assault on the ego). As for LSD, at this point I’d be of a mind with Loudon Wainwright’s conclusion to “The Acid Song”: “Hold out for mushrooms instead.”

Narad: Alcoholics frequently end up with vitamin deficiencies, but vitamin deficiencies do not cause alcoholism.

Any idea why? I didn’t know that and it’s really interesting.

Paul Hill: Australian aboriginals began wiping out the center of Australia about 40,000 years ago with fire. What was lush rainforest right across central Australia is now desert. That is supposed to be a racist statement.

That is straight-up racist bullshit. Nothing supposed about it.

PH: When you say schizophrenia is not caused by diet, vitamin deficiency, stress etc. now come on. That IS Coca Cola and the drug companies talking.

Another heap of b.s. Among the US, only 1.1 % of the population has schizophrenia. If your hypothesis was true, that percentage would be a lot higher.

Krebozien: I know it’s an English habit, and I can only excuse it in commericial Indian teas or the various breakfast blends. Putting sugar in Chinese black tea- or green tea in any variety-ought to be a crime.

DW: people with SMI often fear meds and don’t want to take them- some of this is due to anosognosia- a lack of awareness of illness attributed to the illness’ effects ( see Xavier Amador). The alt med providers seem to share this idea**- however, this is a case where patient- provider *simpatico* in not in the patients’ interests.

I think this might be true of most people with mental illnesses or conditions like depression. I hated every anti-depressant I was on, because I was convinced I’d be normal if I went off them. I also really hated the many meds I took for ADD. I think most of it’s due to the stigma mental illness carries.

@ paul hill:

I’m a shill for Coca-Cola?
… why not Tanqueray? I actually *like* that,

Here’s a clue for you about RI and other sceptical sites:
I am not saying anything beyond what SBM/ psychology does: I have no pet theories or research projects. The data are out there. Some might call it the Orthodoxy and me, its High Priestess… I stand by that.
However if someone else – like you- has an alternate set of beliefs, YOU’RE the one required to show the data, refer to studies et al. Speculation is fine but don’t expect it to tear down the research that has accumulated over decades about the brain, SMI, meds, therapy, recovery..

I survey a few alt med folk who attempt to overthrow valid, meaningful research about SMI- they seem to rely upon anecdotes and poorly done research. Thinking it so doesn’t make it as such.

Just kidding

Politicalguineapig,

Living in Australia as I do, a country which is a victim of constant US warmongering by having to suck up it’s arse constantly, now faced with a big US military presence in Australia, all the guns and religion in the US I’d put that figure at closer to 100%.

Narad: Alcoholics frequently end up with vitamin deficiencies, but vitamin deficiencies do not cause alcoholism.

Any idea why? I didn’t know that and it’s really interesting.

I’m not sure why this was addressed to me, but the reason why alcoholics suffer from vitamin deficiencies is pretty clear: wrong primary source of calories, including using food money for EtOH and being too out of it to prepare food in the first place.

Krebozien:

Got any real evidence to the contrary? Evidence that schizophrenia, epilepsy or bipolar disorder are linked in any way at all to refined sugar consumption, impaired glucose regulation or liver dysfunction for example?

Not linked as such, but Paul’s ravings aside, certain forms of epilepsy can actually be controlled using a ketogenic diet (which basically involved getting almost all your calories from fat – the staple is 36% fat heavy cream). Why it works isn’t known, and it only works for certain types of juvenile epilepsy which tend to be uncontrollable with medication. It’s not an alt-med thing; it’s a case of “if it really works, it’s not ‘alternative'”. Although I think it has been co-opted by anti-sugar wooists like Paul for things that it doesn’t work on. And you really don’t want to live on that diet if you don’t have to – besides the food being horribly bland (you have to stick strictly to it, so there’s a limited number of ingredients you can use), consuming that much fat can cause various health problems down the line. The kinds of epilepsy that it works on are usually those you grow out of, though.

FTR, I have epilepsy (though not that type), and have interacted with a number of people whose kids are on the diet.

THE ‘LOVE’ OF GOD.
When God created the Devil he had to give him free will so that he could think for himself and thus be entertaining company for God right, but not too much free will because after all God was God. Some free will otherwise the Devil would be a boring dodo. But then the Devil got pissed off with getting pushed around by God and tried to foment a coup d’etat among the cherubims, seruphims, angels and archangels etc. But God, being omniescent and omnipitent, just like the Pope, knew that this was going to happen before he even created the poor bastard.

Then God throws a mainspring and creates Hell and banishes the Devil into Hell as punishment for behaving precisely as he was predetermined to do whilst knowing it was gonna happen. God’s looking a tad irrational even at this early stage.

Then he creates man and does precisely the same thing as with the Devil, gives man free will to choose, good or evil. the difference being very poorly defined. What FREE BLOODY WILL. He gives a bloke a pecker, pours gallons of pecker juice into him then says DON”T TOUCH IT, DON”T THINK ABOUT, LEAVE IT ALONE. But the only way one can do that is to be unconscious from the piss, too drunk to even have a nocturnal emission, which is also a no no. But by wiping himself out on the piss he is defiling the frigging temple of God and will burn in Hell for that as well.

Now let’s take a gander at Hell. I read a book once written by a Catholic Priest. He says, “Remember what it was like when you burned yourself on the stove as a kid. Ah, eee, ahhh, AAAAHHHGH AAAAAAAHHHHHGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!
Right now imagine that all over your entire body. Then multiply it a thousand times and it’s FOREEEEVER and EVER AND EVER AND EVER. Not good. By the usual standard this was a SANE priest.

After 4,000 years, using bishop Usher’s highly scientific calculations, God get’s around to thinking he might have overdone it a tad. So he sends the Spook down to Earth (don’t know when he arrived) to impregnate a girl, a virgin just to keep things nice and clean and holy like. Enter Jesus to save man, from what? The wrath of God stupid. Eh? What? You see God cannot look upon sin but apparently Jesus has been configured by God to be able to. All the kid has to do is allow himself to be bashed and butchered and everything will be honkey dory and man has an escape route. God’s own kid!!! WHAAAAAT? Give it a break. Is God rational and reasonable. Of course not. You are using man’s concepts. It’s all about FAITH and faith is incompatible with reason. God is PROUD to be counter-intuitive. For by Faith are ye saved through grace. Ohhhh!

God, it’s time for your ECT and medication. Come on don’t obfuscate.

Shit, I’m gonna be in strife if there IS something up there.

Paul the totally reformed ex Blasphemer.

Post a comment

Every fundamentalist Christian and Catholic Church are hard core mental asylums, Baptist being the most hard core. The rest are less hard core but asylums nevertheless. The parishioners have the same ideation of the clinical schizophrenic but don’t exhibit the more overt symptoms of extreme anxiety, auditory hallucinations etc. because there is a lot of them to reinforce each others psychosis and provide mutual support. There is no shrink ready to pounce on them because he too is probably is a member of one of these asylums.

They don’t face ECT, lobotomies, rejection and loneliness, homelessness, medication, the community being frightened of them, hiding the axes and knives etc. The Church asylums are SANCTIONED by the state as sane, hence the moodswing derived from eating refined sugar by these parishioners does not manifest itself in the more extreme overt form as in those designated as mental asylums by the state, because it’s parishioners are not LABELED as schizophrenic, ie MAD and thus BAD.

These Church psychotics are SANE and GOOD and look down their noses at the ones labelled as BAD and MAD. You actually can’t have one without the other. It is the label schizophrenic which increases the anxiety level many fold, thus MAGNIFYING their moodswing to clinical proportions.

When the brothers Wesley used to preach fire and brimstone in Scotland, people in the audience used to fall to the ground and convulse violently. These fits would spread all over the place, into homes, factories etc. as the wrath of the Lord was passed around. Mass hysteria on a massive scale. I wonder how much sugar THEY ate, or was it the sweetness of Jesus.

I’m uncomfortable writing anything in a public forum that could be construed as encouraging drug use, quite apart from derailing this thread even further. I know that many people can run into serious problems with drugs, but I also know that many people use recreational drugs with no apparent ill effects. I have known many highly successful people over the years who have regularly used recreational drugs of various sorts. One problem is that if you deny the existence of the second group, young people may come across them and assume you are also lying about the existence of the first group. Another problem is that you may not find out which group you belong to until your life is thoroughly screwed up. A good rule of thumb might be that if you enjoy taking drugs, you probably shouldn’t, and if you don’t enjoy taking them there is little point. It’s a difficult and thorny issue, but I am inclined to think that legalizing all drugs, buying them direct from the source, cutting out the huge criminal black market, taxing them and putting tax revenues into massive education and rehabilitation programs would very likely be a better way of approaching it than prohibition.

Narad,

I haven’t touched a one of them in well over a decade, but I was always curious about the seeming separation reported between 2C-B (strongly visual) and 2C-E (more of an all-out assault on the ego). As for LSD, at this point I’d be of a mind with Loudon Wainwright’s conclusion to “The Acid Song”: “Hold out for mushrooms instead.”

You brought back vivid memories of a small festival in the UK a few decades ago where a Shulginesque alchemist friend of mine dosed me with a combination of mushroons and 2-CB. The visual hallucinations were so overwhelming in the dark I had to be led back to our campfire to reanchor my visual cortex. A bit scary.

The hashish generally sold to tourists in Morocco used to be the same horrible soap-bar that was ubiquitous in Europe some years ago. If you got off the beaten track a little, there was good quality stuff to be found. I shudder to think what could have happened to me if I had been caught by the police out there. I was once arrested in Cairo with a small piece of hashish in my pocket that I managed to jettison before getting to the police station. The foolishness of youth…

Denice,

since at least one of you has been to Morocco I imagine you are familar with kif: I found it somewhat hallucinogenic, producing interesting visual phenomena.

Somewhat familiar. I do have a fond memory of hammering through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in the Anti-Atlas mountains after consuming a little too much kif from the Rif, in a shared taxi full of veiled women with kohled eyes with extraordinary Moroccan music pounding out of the car’s sound system. Morocco is gloriously exotic.

Paul Hill,

Just about ever schizophrenic im my town has put on a huge amount of weight. Many may have type 2 diabetes. (a post on diabetes later.)

I agree that psychiatry and the pharmaceuticals used are by no means perfect. However, I don’t think your alternative approach would be either effective or practical. The world would undoubtedly be a better place if everyone had a decent upbringing, was well fed with emotional support and intellectual encouragement etc. but I don’t believe that all mental illness is due to environment. The world’s not perfect and we are where we are.

Depends on what you call lifesavers especially if there are lifestyle change alternatives which shrinks don’t even consider. If you are talking injections I assume you are talking Modecate used for COMPULSORY medication, an abuse if ever there was one.

My friend had killed his own mother in a frenzied attack. The depot injections were a condition of his release back into society. I don’t really know what other reasonable approach could be taken. You have to balance people’s human rights against pubic safety. I know that my tale is unusual, and that the vast majority of people with mental health problems pose no kind of threat to others, but when you have that sort of experience, it’s hard not to let it affect the way you think about these problems.

That is my PERSONAL experience having been binned twice myself and been part of a drug culture for many years, known HEAPS of people with schizophrenia. No I’m not saying sugar alone, nothing like it, stress, booze, shit food, toxins in environment and on and on. I’m saying the PRIMARY ones are refined sugar and liver pathology.

I get that, but I still disagree. If your hypothesis was correct, you would expect that to show up in epidemiological studies of the prevalence of schizophrenia. It doesn’t. Prevalence of schizophrenia is remarkably constant across countries and cultures, though developing countries have lower rates, despite the poorer diets people have (I still remember seeing an advert for Fruit Beer in India with the tagline “All artificial ingredients”, and pesticides, drugs etc banned in the developed world are regularly dumped on developing countries), and migrants have higher rates for reasons that are still unclear.

Why was your youth misspent by taking drugs? They were an essential part of my education.

I would say that psychedelics were a part of my education, but the most important thing they taught me is that what appears to me to be external reality is in fact generated by my brain and projected “out there”. Some beautiful, awe-inspiring, blissful and terrifying experiences, for sure, but any profound lessons apart from the one I just outlined? Not really (though that’s about as profound as it gets if you really grok it in its fullness, man).

Now, depends on how old you are as to the strength of the acid you go as it seems to have fallen dramatically. Now while it isn’t possible for the user to know, the Clear Light drops on blotting paper I used to use were alleged to be around 200 micrograms.

True, the average dose these days is said to be around 60 micrograms, and LSD seems to be used more as a recreational drug than as an entheogen these days. Most of my experiences were with mushrooms (psilocybin).and on several occasions I took what proved to be a substantial overdose which was, er, interesting (if finding yourself fragmented out of your body flying like a howling banshee round and round the ceiling can be called interesting). This is a side-issue though. Few people would argue that large doses of psychedelics have a profound effect on a person’s state of conscioiusness. I’m glad to see that psychedelics are finally being studied again, as there may be therapeutic potential that has been neglected.Are you aware that a single low dose of LSD or some other psychedelics is reputed to prevent migraines and cluster (suicide) headaches for up to a year?

People who came to me and told me that they no longer suffer migraines AT ALL, FINITO, GONE, VAMOOSED.

I believe you, but anecdotal experiences are notoriously misleading, and just because changing a migraineur’s diet helped them does not vindicate your explanations. I used to get migraines but they stopped a few years ago for no apparent reason. If anything I consume more refined carbohydrates now than I did when I used to get the migraines.

Vasospasm, my explanation up above, osmotic pressure changes.

We do have a pretty good idea of what happens in the brains of people suffering miigraines, thanks to neuroimaging and other techniques. I suggest you look into this. I don’t think osmotic pressure changes come into it.

You may be the first thin-skiinned Aussie I have ever encountered 😉

@ politicalguineapig:

Many people with mental illness- serious or not- do have issues because of side effects which can be formidable. When woo-meisters say that SSRIs or atypical anti-psychotics have side-effects- they aren’t lying: they do however exaggerate their frequency, the balance of therapeutic effects and the fact that often switching meds helps. They tend to talk about suicides and diabetes, respectively. End of story.

I’ve done some work with families of people with SMI in the past; I also have a family with -usually- mild depression, dysthymia – including myself with the latter-and know quite a few people with related issues. It’s no walk in the park. Anosognosia does however refer to more serious cases when the person’s link with reality is questionable, much like a stroke patient who doesn’t recognise perhaps inability to move an arm because the area of the brain that evaluates this is also affected by the stroke. A similar situation may arise in schizophrenia.

And stigma is a real problem: it can affect how people relate to you, your employment et al. It’s no help that alt med people are out there ( in both senses of the term) making up folk tales about mental illness being non-existent or easily fixable. It’s another place where pseudo-science harms people.

I know people with life long struggles with depression- one probably complicated by post-traumatic issues involving terrorism long ago. Sometimes they evolve strategies to counter the symptoms – one person makes sure he has important work to do and the other has religious faith to encourage her to ‘hold on’. I think that many in my own family have a sort of resilience and I don’t know whether that is learned or biological ( perhaps we don’t have very severe physiological issues). Sometimes meds help enough to enable people to be able to live a more typical life without the bleakness and paralysis they might feel.

Women have to be careful with these things so I also never *bought* anything myself.

Oh, certainly. Friendly strangers sometimess are just friendly, but sometimes they’ll invite you over to their jazz club, take your bags including your passport hostage, only return them when your other friend, who happens to be a seven-foot-tall Mauritanian, is summoned, lifts one of them in the air, sets him down, and suggests that they rethink this, and then appear to return everything only to have it later turn out that the weirdos kept your diaphragm. (Rabat, I believe.)

And you really don’t want to live on that diet if you don’t have to – besides the food being horribly bland (you have to stick strictly to it, so there’s a limited number of ingredients you can use)

I certainly wouldn’t want to eat a 4:1 diet, but I don’t see why it would have to be bland as opposed to simply monotonous.

DW:When woo-meisters say that SSRIs or atypical anti-psychotics have side-effects- they aren’t lying: they do however exaggerate their frequency, the balance of therapeutic effects and the fact that often switching meds helps. They tend to talk about suicides and diabetes, respectively. End of story.

Side effects were always a problem for me, ranging from a few addictive symptoms to weight gain, insomnia and anemia.

@ Narad:
@ Krebiozen:

Fortunately, I have never been robbed, raped, threatened, held captive, abandonned in the desert et al.
However, I have been FOLLOWED while travelling in exotic locales… by exotic fellows. One or two were a bit scary while another was merely odd- a very young Algerian ( I suppose) in Paris : I keep noticing him over the duration of a long day. Never went any further and I wasn’t really worried because he was only about my size and it didn’t happen in an isolated area. Maybe he liked my clothes and wanted them? ( I’m not calling him a tranny because most of my clothes might work rather well on a 15 year old boy- I would have given him my jacket) I have no idea.

And we all live to tell the tale! On second thought- especially when thinking of days gone by- and hearing of some of the exploits of my friends ( much worse than any related here) I wonder what the locals thought of people like *us*: hippies, artsy girls and gay boys- done up in trendily louche threads, getting high, drinking, *consorting* … oh, crazy white people.
They’d have been right mostly.

@Politicalguineapig – currently my son has a cavie named “Fezzik.” It’s terrible – it hears me talk and it starts “wheeking” like all get out. That makes me feel special (and a little guilty if I don’t do what’s expected next) and he gets some fresh veggies. I think he has trained me instead of vice versa!

the Narcissist: “I might as well bash me head into a bloody tree.”

So, why don’t you? You’d make life a lot more pleasant for the rest of the world.

the Narcissistic arsehole: “I hope nobody is offended by my ‘ravings’.”

Good. We’re not. What we are is fucking bored with them. Not that you give a shit, because your head’s too far up inside your arsehole to give a shit. Sadly. For you, that is; because people with their heads rammed that far up their arses look stupid.

Composer99: “At least Th1Th2′s posts were short & pithy.”

Shit situation when someone can actually make you ‘miss’ an idiot like Twat1Twat2, no?

Moronic narcissist: “Go back and take a look at what I have copped from the very beginning and it goes on and on and on.”

Ever thought about why you cop that lot? Just about everybody here can see why.

Krebiozen: “I’m not pleading with you to vamoose. I’m pleading with you to go back to basics and check some of your facts before posting any more vast tracts of nonsense.”

That’ll do no good. Paul HIll is one of those people you cannot expect to get to think: head too far up own arsehole to be bothered with knowing that other people could be (and in his case, are) correct in their knowledge where he isn’t.

Arrogant shit-wit: “Why on earth would I want to start my own blog when I’m having so much fun drawing the fire of meat heads who know bugger all of anything.”

Project much, arsehole?

Chris: “Which is why I am now just ignoring Mr. Hill. He is not worth it.”

That doesn’t help with narcissists… they end up going around provoking responses just to get their supply of attention.

Chris. “Though I do wish he would get some real help.”

No chance of that. Narcissists manage to rationalise themselves into believing that the problem is everyone else, and that they are in fact the one who is right (even when it is plainly obvious that they are not right). Even if a court mandated it, the ‘help’ wouldn’t work… they’d fake it (in much the same way that psychopaths do). Best treatment for a narcissist: a dustbin.

David N. Andrews M. Ed., C. P. S. E.

You sound VERY desperate to shut me up. I wonder why?

You sound VERY desperate to shut me up. I wonder why?

Paul, I don’t think anybody much gives a damn.

Paul Hill,
In my opinion you are suffering from premature certainty, a common human condition characterized by ignoring, distorting or rejecting (as fabricated by Big Sugar in your case) any evidence that doesn’t fit with your prejudices. Real scientists look for evidence that falsifies their hypotheses. What evidence would you accept that would falsify yours? The answer is none, I suspect, because you already know the truth so anything that contradicts that must be a lie. That is the definition of closed-mindedness and makes further meaningful discussion impossible.

Krebiozen,
With all due consideration, aren’t you describing yourself perfectly. Just because you have so little self esteem and self confidence you label me as a megalomaniac essentially.

‘Real scientists look for evidence that falsifies their hypotheses’. Hoh, really, now come on Bloody hell. You trying to be a stand up comic or sit down one. That’s what they tell themselves, whilst the very opposite is true in my experience. Just the standard hypocrisy of society, it’s self delusions, it’s schizophrenia.

‘What evidence would you accept that would falsify yours?’ Anything if it makes sense. You have given me plenty and I have answered them to any reasonable person’s satisfaction. Eg the convulsions in epilepsy. You keep saying you don’t believe this or that, doesn’t accord with what you have learned, but don’t provide an alternative, hiding behind decades of so called research.

My models come straight out of the text books of a range of disciplines including each of the organs of the body, and the structures of the surrounding Universe. All of the bits of the jigsaw have to fit into ONE COHESIVE WHOLE PERFECTLY. Something doesn’t fit, change the paradigm until it does. The ultimate test is how it fits together without forcing something to fit. A cybernetic Universe, cybernetic animal. Yin and Yang. A scientific paper contradicts the model, it more than likely wrong. Ultimately there can be only ONE truth. Anything else is trying to juggle irreconcilable opposites and saying that’s good enough. Well it AIN’T good enough for me. New motto.

‘Perfection is not good enough’.

Paul Hill: Nope. It does start a little earlier than I thought, but not anywhere around the premenstrual years. Excuse the error; I was working off the first result I found, which seems to be inaccurate and out of date.
From Schizophrenia.com:

Schizophrenia is a disease that typically begins in early adulthood; between the ages of 15 and 25. Men tend to develop schizophrenia slightly earlier than women; whereas most males become ill between 16 and 25 years old, most females develop symptoms several years later, and the incidence in women is noticably higher in women after age 30. The average age of onset is 18 in men and 25 in women. Schizophrenia onset is quite rare for people under 10 years of age, or over 40 years of age.

Still, 25 is hardly premenstrual; unless you happen to believe women don’t enter puberty till their twenties. And again, your attempted defense of Laing only adds to the impression that he was rather voyueristic and domineering. Not to mention, a mother-blaming asshole like most psychiatrists of his time.
And ya know, I knew a fair number of kids who came from split households. (Sounds better and more accurate then ‘broken homes.’) None of them are schizophrenic, and again, there’d be a heck of a lot more schizophrenics if divorce happened to be the villain.

As to why we respond to you, well, that’s really rather simple, Mr. Hill. You’re a bit of entertainment.

Take a gander at the three comment prior to mine, all by David N. Andrews M. Ed., C. P. S. E. showing his mug shot

I block Gravatar, Paul, so I see no such thing, and really, I don’t know what you’re on about in this regard.

Krebiozen,
What’s wrong with megalomania and narcissism. I am EXTREMELY proud of my megalomania. I have no time for false humility and self effacement. It is a waste of my time. Everybody should be a megalomaniac ’cause then there would be no more megalomaniacs, well…relatively speaking. Adolph Hitler could never have gotten out of control if all Germans had been megalomaniacs. They either licked his anal sphincter or put shit on him in which case he had them shot. If everyone in the world were megalomaniacs, no more wars no more nothin’.

What I’m getting at is WHOLISM. There can be only one model in which everything fits perfectly. If a paper throws a spanner in the FIT then accept it and change the model. If not reject the paper but don’t delete it just in case.

Narad,
It has only just occurred to me that this bloke is actually throwing a massive temper tantrum because inadvertently, WITHOUT REALIZING IT, without ANY malice aforethought I’ve been doing a hatchet job on him. So why not a few posters check him out and see what turns up. He could be a danger to himself and others with a temper like that.

Krebiozen,
Okay. Lets go back to the beginning where you claim that an average sized potato would produce a bigger blood glucose spike than a cuppa coffee with 6 heaped teaspoons of sugar in it. I don’t believe it but I would accept watertight evidence to the contrary. One reason I don’t agree with it is because when I did the second BG on myself I used a decent sized piece of toast with avocado on it and got a much smaller spike than 2 oz of glucose. Now obviously 2 oz is a lot more than 6 heaped teaspoons, and as glucose is a monosaccharide whereas sucrose is a disaccharide I’d expect a much bigger peak with the glucose. However you made the statement that the spud would produce a bigger peak than the coffee with 6 heaped teaspoons.
Therefore would you be prepared to do two 5 hr GTT’s on yourself or a test subject, one with the cuppa and one with the spud. You would have to test every 15 minutes for the first 2 hours to satisfy me that you’d caught the spike. There is no way I could do these tests on myself as I’m snowed under just staying alive and don’t have a monitor. I assume that you are in a lab.

This is your post back then.
First Me.
‘Now in the interests of scientific objectivity I must assume that you have conducted PROPERLY DONE 5 hr GTT’s using a spud vs a cuppa coffee with x amounts of refined sucrose in it and are thus able to qualify your assertions with proof.

You.
I haven’t personally, but many people have and there is no question in my mind that the information above about the relative glycemic indices of potatoes and sucrose is accurate. I have measured the breakdown of potato starch to glucose over time by adding amylase in an alkaline environment and then measuring reducing sugar concentration with Benedict’s solution and compared it to the breakdown of sucrose to glucose and fructose by sucrase.

Me..
Can a lab experiment possibly duplicate what is taking place in the gastrointestinal tract. For a start there is the first stage of protein digestion, pepsin, in the stomach, followed by 3 stages in the duodenum, each at a different pH, trypsin, chymotrypsin, carboxypepsidase. Large peptides entering the duodenum from the stomach with progressively smaller ones in the duodenum then individual amino acids, all exerting at least some osmotic pressure.

Fibre: pectin, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin. Which are soluble?

From the starch we end up with the disaccharide maltose, glucose:glucose. Now we come to the GIP axis. Maltase will not be released into the duodenum from the exocrine pancreas until x amounts of insulin has been synthesised, the amount depending on how much maltose is detected in the duodenum. Glucose molecules actively transported into microvilli cells lining duodenum, then into the bloodstream, (portal vein?). However the glucose molecules have to make PHYSICAL contact with these transport pumps, held away in the duodenum by the osmotic pressure of soluble fibre and peptide fragment as well as amino acids.

To cuppa coffee with six heaped teaspoons of sucrose. All enzymes do is dramatically speed up chemical reactions that would take place anyway, even in cold water, over time. In boiling water, assuming that the hydrolysis of sucrose is an endothermic reaction, I’d expect it to be hydrolyzed to glucose: fructose fairly quickly. So two MONOSACCHARIDES enter the duodenum. Therefore GIP AXIS TOTALLY BYPASSED. And nothing or very little in the coffee to pull against absorption, so, much FASTER BABSORPTION than with the starch Glucose actively absorbed, fructose by passive diffusion, enters portal vein to liver. But isn’t fructose converted in the liver to glucose. Don’t remember a side entry, ie fructose-6-phosphatase, then UP to glucose (gluconeogenesis only.) Conflicting evidence.

You.
That was one of the practical examinations in my early biomedical sciences education. I have also carried out several studies monitoring people’s blood glucose at very short time intervals (as little as 10 minutes) over long periods of time, and have never seen any evidence of the post-prandial spikes in blood glucose you describe, except in diabetics. That’s why blood is taken at the intervals it is in GTTs, because we know from practical experiments that it is not necessary to take blood more frequently. MMMM.

Me.
Won’t satisfy me as it does NOT accord with my 5 hr GTT’s, testing every 15 minutes. BIG spikes. This might be where the major problem lies because major clinics that do 5 hr GTT’s only do one every hour. Why? Save money?

Thank you very much for the compliments. I welcome them but don’t really need them because my skull is beginning to crack open with my expanding brain. As to the self-masturbation I’m getting a bit long in the tooth now and as my brain expands my pecker shrinks. But with a good stick book I manage now and then.

@Politicalguineapig – I am not about to let you make the perfectly good word “fondle” dirty. It means “to touch or stroke lovingly”. You can fondle someone’s arm; you can fondle an iPAD. You can fondle a baby and it can be perfectly OK.

If you mean “touched a kid sexually and inappropriately” then say so.

Mephistopheles: I always thought that fondling was the same as foreplay. Then again, I’m American so it might be a language difference.

PH: I just noticed the thing about Hitler. Are you ever not wrong? Hitler was elected because a lot of ordinary Germans agreed with him, and they happened to be desperate. Ever heard of the Treaty of Versailles? The Great Depression? Don’t go spouting off about history when you know nothing of it, little man.

Politicalguineapig,
About Hitler Can’t you tell when someone is taking the piss out. Must be all that hatred you’ve got bottled up inside of you. Like ‘little man’. I happen to know all helluva lot of history, Germany, Versailles, ESPECIALLY the great Depression. Since July 1 1975, when New York city almost went bankrupt, I’ve been predicting a collapse in the world economy. My next date is August 2 when Obama is gonna have a punch up with the Republicans to try to raise the debt ceiling. Given the situation in Europe coming on top of this, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

TWO DEADLINES JULY 3rd and AUGUST 2nd.
I wrote this in response to an interview on Saturday Extra between Geraldine Doogue and the ex head of the World Bank. I was horrified at his suggestion of a Marshall Plan as such talk just delays facing the truth as soon as possible as to the ONLY way out, a MASSIVE global redistribution of wealth DOWNWARD in order to reverse the absurd UPWARD redistribution from around 1973. This redistribution would achieve 3 main necessary objectives. Allow lower income people to pay off their debt, create purchasing power in their hands in order to stimulate demand for goods and services and remove the extremely dangerous political polarisation which must eventually spill over into violence and with it hyperinflation and economic collapse. This is the ONLY way to get growth whilst establishing equality and ALL that goes with it, low unemployment, low crime, low hospital admissions, low debt, high productivity etc. This is NOT a left wing perspective, as most people would like to be megarich with least amount of effort involved. Like Chomsky I am a non-violent anarchist.

Marshall Plan? Where is the money gonna come from? The US? It’s bankrupt and needs a Marshall plan for itself. From the printing presses? It’s already coming from the printing presses and that is inflationary as well as creating more debt. Austerity means worse inequality which is the fundamental problem. Say’s law is immutable. MASSIVE redistribution is the ONLY thing that can possibly work. Time is running out. Research by ABC into possible bankrupt US city debenture interest payments default on July 1 is mandatory and VERY urgent. I can’t do it. In 1975 it was New York city that was going to declare bankruptcy and default on $2 billion debenture interest payments due July 1st. Years of feather bedding by city public servant awarding themselves higher and higher pensions, falling city tax revenue due to small businesses leaving the city in response to higher rates, even more leaving etc. drove up city debt to the point where it became a grave crisis.

The State wouldn’t bail it out as it’s credit rating would have been downgraded, meaning higher interest rates. The Ford admin. refused also because it would have set a precedent for other US cities to follow cap in hand. Debt would have spiralled upward. Then as the deadline got closer the NYSE began to jump around and finally the Ford admin. caved in. Now look at the result today a world DROWNING in debt.

As I understand it with quarterly taxes having been introduced since, debenture interest payments may fall due quarterly. New York is apparently flush but many other US cities are in financial ruin. If a number defaulted simultaneously July 1st, unable to borrow from banks due to credit being squeezed, combined with ZZZ credit rating of these cities, the plug might come out, air holes everywhere in NYSE, one BIG air hole. As July 1st is a Saturday and July 4th is a public holiday, Monday the 3rd is the most probable candidate.

STOP PRESS 25/6/2012
President Obama tried to turn the heat up on Republicans over the national debt ceiling in his White House press conference this morning. His message was clear: He has been willing to make the politically tough decisions needed to rein in the deficit. Republicans haven’t.
Just as important, Obama raised the stakes by saying he would not sign any stop-gap measures to allow negotiations to continue beyond AUGUST 2. That leaves negotiators just three weeks to strike a deal and secure congressional approval. Those weeks are going to test not just the wills of Democratic and Republican leaders but also the patience of the financial markets. Debt rating agencies have warned of a possible downgrade of the U.S. credit rating, and the new chief of the International Monetary Fund says failure to raise the debt ceiling poses a threat to global financial stability.
Obama was gracious to John Boehner, noting that the House Speaker faced difficult challenges within the House GOP caucus. That olive branch reflected Obama’s hope that Boehner might decide to re-engage in talks on a $4-trillion debt ceiling deal that would trade entitlement reform for tax hikes.  
OVERVIEW OF WORLD ECONOMY FROM 1973
This is brief overview of the events leading up to the current financial crisis. In 1973 the Yom Kippur war took place in which Soviet backed Egypt and Syria attacked Israel which very narrowly defeated both, in part due to US assistance in supplying weapons to Israel. In retaliation Arab OPEC states slapped an oil embargo on the US and the Netherlands, the result of which sent world oil prices soaring, thus beginning the end of the post WW2 boom. The outcome of this oil price hike was a massive redistribution of wealth from the non-oil producing world to the oil producers, primarily the Persian Gulf states. This huge surplus for the Gulf states went into European banks and became known as petrodollars or Eurodollars. The Gulf states went on a huge spending spree, snapping up prestigious investments like Harrods in London. Looking for somewhere to invest this money stimulated a drastic lowering of house mortgage borrower requirements in the US which resulted in the sub-prime bubble.

Unfortunately one man’s meat is another’s poison and a surplus for the oil producers meant debt for the non-oil producers having to pay 500% more for their oil than before Yom Kippur. In 1975 the debt crisis, in part resulting from the oil price hike, begins, probably as a result of the New York bailout setting an example to the rest of the world that debt is acceptable and bailouts are now all the go. The gurus decided that the prudence shown in 1929 in raising interest rates straight after the Crash was dreadfully unsophisticated and actually created the Great Depression. Galbraith argued quite correctly that the Great depression was necessary to squeeze the speculative pus out of the system and establish a more equitable basis for recovery

The Gulf states were very keen to lend their huge surplus of petrodollars and the non oil producers were very keen to borrow it and emulate the success of the Gulf states by just getting stuff out of the ground to make a big quid just as the Arabs have done. Thus from ’75 the ‘resources boom’ begins and soon fails primarily because speculative investment capital going primarily into resource development starved the very users of said resources, the manufacturing sector, whilst unleashing mergers, greenmailing, stagflation, accountancy distortions, a huge range of tax evasion schemes based on no or low capital gains tax. Almost all of this crap takes place in the resource and mining industries because they are more speculative by nature than manufacturing, eg blasting gold flecks into the wall of a gold mine with a shotgun or Psioden issued at 50 cents and rocketing to $198 then collapsing when speculators finally realised that if there was all that nickel in the ground it would glut the market and crash the world nickel price.

By now the casino had replaced any post WW2 rationale. The Crash of ’87 is the obvious result of all of the speculation unleashed after 1975 and marks the beginning of the housing bubble for a number of reasons, one major reason in Australia being the Hawke govt introducing a capital gains tax in ‘87 which went nowhere near far enough and which exempted the first home. Before the Crash of ’87 analysts were warning of an impending ‘correction’ and advising little investors to get into unlisted property trusts. So, burned by the share market, a capital gains tax now on shares plus double dipping on dividends, drove investors from the share market into housing. However, the later elimination of double dipping, along with a lowering of the capital gains tax by Howard and boosted by the rise of compulsory superannuation reinvigorated the CAPITAL GAINS or speculative emphasis of Australian stock exchanges. I assume it has been much the same scenario for much of the rest of the world.
Now we see the end result, 90% of which is caused by increasingly regressive taxation policies, primarily a lowering of capital gains taxation over time, thus promoting counterproductive speculation, whilst making up the shortfall in tax revenue by increasing taxation on the means of production, primarily on the little business. As the rich get richer the poor get poorer as a consequence of the rich getting richer and with ever greater concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. Consumer spending drops as a consequence of falling income at the ever more relatively populous lower end of the income spectrum. So credit is liberalised to compensate and debt rises in all sectors of the global economy.

PH: So a kid can get bashed, thrown up against the wall, have cigarettes butted out on it’s arse, vilified, ridiculed, spat on etc. and grow up normal.

No one said that. If the parents or family line carries schizophrenia, then the child will probably develop schizophrenia. If not, the child might develop post-traumatic stress disorder, which is something else entirely. The problem with psychologists in most of the 20th century (aside from Freud) is that they tended to resort to a few catch-all diagnoses rather than finding out what was actually wrong.

PH: Since you’re operating in a different universe entirely, I can’t tell when you’re joking and when you’re serious. And I am not ‘putting shit on you’- I’m just playing around- mostly. Men who pretend to be feminists tend to get on my last nerve, especially when they end up revealing that like most men, they’ll always stick up for a fellow man over a woman, no matter what the man did. Regardless, I haven’t been nearly as harsh on you as I am on other commenters on other blogs.

One extremely important case was the famous quintuplets from Dennmark, all diagnosed schizophrenic.

Do you mean the Genain quadruplets, who are from America, not Denmark, and are quadruplets, not quintuplets, all four of them? As for “ONCE AGAIN,THE PRECISE GENES PLEASE IF YOU DON’T MIND. ” you might read this or numerous other articles that describe the genetic basis of schizophrenia.

I seem to be incapable of getting a link right first time without preview.

I’m just as baffled as you Mrs. Woo. PH seems to be a gishgallop in human form.

I’m always interested in the possibility that mainstream knowledge is wrong, but you need good evidence to get my attention. PH’s ramblings are vaguely plausible-sounding, but don’t stand up under close scrutiny. If there was evidence that people with glycogen storage disorders are more prone to epilepsy or schizophrenia, or evidence of lactic acidosis in epileptics, or of mental heath disorders being caused by dysfunction of glucose regulation or any of the other claims PH makes, I would be more inclined to look into it further. But there really isn’t, and the evidence that does exist about those disorders is not consistent with PH’s models. That suggests to me that PH’s models are worng, not that thousands of scientists are incompetent or dishonest.

Sorry folks but I have to move page as I’m using a Sea Monkey browser and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to save the page without broken links and the scroll bar is getting almost too thin to use. I can’t use Internet Explorer browser as some damn Google upgrade thing keeps popping up and won’t go away and I don’t trust things that won’t go away.

Mrs. Woo: I’m baffled, though, as to why he has chosen to believe people confronting his misunderstanding of everything are his “disciples?”

My best guess is that he thinks he can convert us. I wish him good luck. I can only keep up with half his comments, but I try. And like I said, I’ve been nice. Although I am kinda snickering at the idea that this comment thread is full: I guess he doesn’t realize some threads get to 600+ easily. LOL.

@Denice – I think for now it is what he prefers, or he wouldn’t go back to it. Some people in this world prefer to live outside of the norm either because they feel it makes them look heroic or because they find something comforting and appealing in the self-sufficiency of it all. Kind of a “take that, civilized society!” attitude.

The condescension in some of his posts makes me uncomfortable. His attitude that shows in that style of writing is why he also assumes we must be his “disciples” – if we weren’t willing to be addressed in such a manner we wouldn’t be his students?

@Denice Walter, I completely agree with your assessment that PH has suffered and is hurting. However, I personally can’t abide someone who uses their own tragedy as justification for hurting others. I too hope that he gets the help he needs, but he’s showing zero effort in that direction.

To go out of his way to seek out a forum full of scared and desperate cancer patients (i.e. BCO) to peddle his dangerous, unproven, and potentially deadly advice to bypass their medical oncologists in lieu of self-treating with his black magic woo regimen is just unconscionable. It’s a sick and dangerous game he’s playing.

@Denice,
Oh yeah. He went there, and anywhere else on the net he could think of to find a target audience of ill patients with cancer, diabetes, weight loss, et. all!

Just do a search on BCO or Google for “Nodules” or “Noddy” or “Paul Hill ketone.”

Here’s a sample of his advice for a real stage IV breast cancer patients on BCO:

…If you went off refined sugar you might even put on some weight and be ready for the ketone diet but gently does it using Ketostix to monitor your urine. You could go in and out of ketosis just as an animal in the wild does. It has to work if there is next to zero glucose in your bloodstream because even moderately malignant cancer cells must die if they can’t get glucose.

Yeah. There’s no excuse. If he stuck to RI, I might find him entertaining, but instead he’s just one sick F**K.

DW: I’m kinda torn, so it’s hard to say. He reminds me of a cross between a schizophrenic I met at college (she’d wandered in, asking if she could meet with a priest so they could foil a CIA plot to make black people behave badly.) and my old-hippy sociology teacher who took quite a lot of hard drugs in her youth and consequently believed in conspiracy theories. Her greatest hit was the time she solemnly informed the class that the real reason a nearby highway bridge collapsed was because the college across the river was creating acoustic weapons with the backing of the US army. Otherwise she was a lot saner then Mr. Hill. Then again men are a lot more vulnerable to mental illness then women are. Testosterone is a highly volatile substance.

When you mob are done with all of the psychoanalysis of your’s truly (behind my back) could you please move to this page as I cannot conduct science on a blog which has got 250 bloody comments on it. This the third time I have made this appeal. It has links back to this page for quick reference. I want to get right down to the nitty gritty of blood sugar regulation.

https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/07/10/an-inflated-view-of-ones-importance/#comment-192242

I’m not sure why I bother, but anyway…

To cuppa coffee with six heaped teaspoons of sucrose. All enzymes do is dramatically speed up chemical reactions that would take place anyway, even in cold water, over time. In boiling water, assuming that the hydrolysis of sucrose is an endothermic reaction, I’d expect it to be hydrolyzed to glucose: fructose fairly quickly.

This is just one example of something you “reckon” or “assume” that is incorrect. Instead of checking your facts you charge off into a wild fantasy based on something that is demonstrably untrue. You can boil sucrose for hours and it will remian sucrose, unless you add an acid to it. The half life of sucrose in aqueous solution at 25C is 440 years. It took me all of 30 seconds to find that information.

You appear to have missed the part of the experiment where hydrochloric acid was added, and then the mixture was placed in a boiling water bath. Acid hydrolysis at high temperatures, as I wrote above.

Politicalguineapig
‘Psuedonyms ensure that no one can.. say, track down one’s physical location and injure or kill that someone’.

Well I don’t use a pseudonym and I’m totally up front about everything, put myself under a global spotlight by emailing so much media, can have my medical, any criminal, etc. record scrutinized, security concerns and my address.

Now I’ll go one step further and give you my email address so that anyone who is a bit timid to comment here can email me, or who knows Krebiozen and thinks that he is over the top can send me info on him so I can check him out online. He is the sort of person who just couldn’t help himself by telling acquaintances to watch this post whilst he demolishes this dickhead no nothing amateur ‘scientist’ not realizing that it is HE they think is the dickhead, whilst I, the underdog, is putting up a great performance. That way there will be a level playing field because I think a pseudonym is a coward’s castle from which to rubbish someone and claim qualifications which could be completely bogus.

[email protected]

Now I’ll go one step further still and give you the web links to a doco. maker, and the doco. he made on me so you can watch a short or download the DVD called ‘Road to Apollo’.

Won’t post links.

Now I can get death threats.

PH: That way there will be a level playing field because I think a pseudonym is a coward’s castle from which to rubbish someone and claim qualifications which could be completely bogus.

Dude, most people use psuedonyms on the web. I guess you don’t have to worry about identity theft (who’d want yours?) or losing your job because of an internet post, but some of us do. Nyms are perfectly legit, and I have no doubt that most of the posters are actually qualified to talk about the subjects they studied or work in. Yes, I don’t have a way to check Kreb’s credentials, but the language xi uses shows that xi is qualified in their field. They also provide good explanations to laymen like you and me, which is a real test, since they have to break it down and keep the explanation clear and concise. An unqualified person has to dress up their explanations in all kinds of gobbledygook; the scientist has to keep it simple.
I also try to avoid gendered language, unless the commenter uses an identifying tag- lilady and Mrs. Woo, for instance. Avoids embarrassment all around.

@ politicalguineapig:

Several people I know who blog/ comment- amongst them regulars here- who have been harassed in RL by those they criticise. A certain anti-vaxxer goes after two guys at work ,separately; another gets calls at home and work, bothering family members and employers; another gets SUED. There are other tales @ RI similar to Krebiozen’s.

I use a semi-pseudo ‘nym ( two fo my four names) thus ‘Walter’ is more penultimate than pen-name. I thought about using my two surnames – guys’ names, i.e. Walter “Howard”** or “Howard” Walter, as a ‘nym but my feminism wouldn’t let me. If I had to do it over, I’d probably use my 4 real initials and say I’m female. I currently leave my location out.

** doesn’t “he” sound white bread?

Now I’ll go one step further and give you my email address so that anyone who is a bit timid to comment here can email me, or who knows Krebiozen and thinks that he is over the top can send me info on him so I can check him out online. He is the sort of person who just couldn’t help himself by telling acquaintances to watch this post whilst he demolishes this dickhead no nothing amateur ‘scientist’ not realizing that it is HE they think is the dickhead, whilst I, the underdog, is putting up a great performance.

How is pointing you to evidence that contradicts your wild speculations “over the top”? I haven’t told anyone to watch this post, and I have never described you as a dickhead. Does annyone here think that I’m the dickhead in this exchange? Apart from bothering to respond to PH at all that is. I will not be giving out my identity. The incident I mentioned before went further than threats, the guy actually turned up at a friend’s house waving a baseball bat around and I got a panicked phone call from him telling me this nutcase was on his way to my house and was threatening to burn it to the ground. He never turned up, but it was a frightening experience.

@ Krebiozen:

you are about as UN-dickhead as is humanly possible.
-btw- about 2O years ago, while reading readers’ letters in *The Economist* I came across the expression *Lombard* by which the respondent was not referring to an inhabitant of Lombardy, Italia but was instead using an acronym for “lots of money but a real dickhead”. Thus I read the Economist and laughed. Who would have thought.

@ lilady:

Although I am a feminist I do believe that women should be especially careful: not because of anything about us but because of others’ attitudes labelling us ‘easy prey”, incapable of defending ourselves, weak and other unfounded notions. Those cases of harassment I described above were all men, -btw-

I read what @ugust!ne wrote. Typical. Interesting that he doesn’t show here often these days. I wonder why?

@ sheepmilker:

I know, I’ve seen. Perhaps Abbie is getting a laugh over him.

Thanks for the reassurance Denice. Here’s an amusing blast from the past on acronyms as descriptors.

If I may refine my previous question to Paul: (1) Is Placebo Park meant to emulate Archway? (2) Have you seen Asylum?

@THS – was attempting to argue with Mr Woo that the reason there are no “side effects” or bad outcomes in alternative medicine is not because they don’t exist, but rather because no one has ever specifically, scientifically studied various herbal preparations, etc., to determine efficacy, side effects, percentage who had side effects, etc.

He, of course, assured me I was wrong and that natural cures are better because everything could be considered a food that was used as a natural cure and that the complete herb, etc., had special compounds in it that would prevent anyone from having any issues with them.

Arsenic is natural, I believe…

~sigh~

Mrs. Woo,
I find those kinds of naturalistic ideas quite interesting. When you dig a little it becomes obvious that they derive from ideas about God putting everything on this earth for mankind’s benefit, the Great Chain of Being view of the universe. According to these ideas, not only do medicinal plants contain just the right combination of chemicals to cure any disease man might suffer from, but God obligingly makes the plant look like the organ it is intended to treat, the Doctrine of Signatures, so the leaf of lungwort looks a bit like a lung so lungwort is used for respiratory diseases. Also, but you find plants that treat the diseases you find in specific places, with willow growing in marshy areas where fevers are common, and willow bark,as we know, is an effective treatment for fevers. Dock leaves are a remedy for stinging nettle stings, and grow in the same place and so on. It’s pure medieval superstition, at its roots, but it lives on in the 21st century as herbalism, just as humors and bloodletting live on in acupuncture and TCM.

I’ve done forty years theoretical research
“Theoretical research”? See under “oxymoron”.

@Krebiozen – I swear I responded to this – it must have been one of the times when SB told me I was posting too quickly and asked me to slow down and then my grandson needed a wooden train track assembled or something. I have seen pieces of what were in the link you posted, but never all in one place like that before. Kind of neat to see it all work together. In the end, it’s another kind of superstition – people guessing how the world works with limited data.

Mr Woo’s church has a teaching that includes suggesting herbs (and other things) for sick people. I sometimes think it is part of why so many of them end up following woo rather than medicine (or mixing medicine with woo).

I was so frustrated today – one of the girls in the praise team I’m leading was telling a boy that I brought a can of ravioli for that her “doctor” told her she is allergic to carbohydrates (he is 18, living on his own and between 18 and living on his own I’m pretty sure he’s usually hungry and we stay after church to do music practice). She was actually told by a chiropractor that her depression was caused by this “allergy” (he has actually put that down on her paperwork as a diagnosis) and told her she will never be allowed to eat “carbohydrates” again.

That is quite a sticky dilemma. She is not my child. I’m sure her parents are paying a lot of money to that chiropractor to diagnose and treat her depression with handfuls of supplements (five at every meal because her body is deficient of digestive enzymes at 16?) and supervision of the special prescribed “no carbohydrate” (didn’t want to assure her that vegetables, fruit, etc., still have carbohydrate in them) diet.

So hard not to sit her down and explain to her how her body works and that a broad statement like “allergic to carbohydrate” would be incredibly rare and unlikely if at all possible in the first place.

Told Mr Woo about it afterwards and he went off into a wooish “well, carbohydrate allergy is very common and if you have any disease you should immediately get rid of all wheat and refined sugar because all diseases are rooted in inflammation and everyone knows inflammation is caused by these things, and an allergy to carbohydrates is often a cause of many diseases….”

Not going to get any help there, obviously. Worse, I don’t want to create waves in this case. I’m sure between teenage rebellion and general physical cravings she probably breaks the “no carbohydrate” rule either knowingly and sometimes unknowingly and is not in any real danger. Just so frustrated that someone who has no real knowledge of what they are doing is making a teenaged girl miserable.

Mrs. Woo,

told her she will never be allowed to eat “carbohydrates” again

Good grief. It’s amazing how these kinds of bizarre idea becomes solidified as unquestionable facts in woo world. Low carb ketogenic diets are undoubtedly useful in some circumstances, and celiac disease is a real thing, but there’s always someone who picks up on ideas like that up and charges off over the horizon with them, applying them in completely inappropriate ways. It reminds me of Robert O. Young who claims that having any sugars of any kind in your body is bad, and that your brain runs on electrons, not glucose. I’d love to see him try to explain that with a blood glucose of zero.

@ politicalguineapig:

All men! The guys harassed at work by an anti-vaxxer you have “met” here @ RI. You might have read the anti-vaxxer as well, seems he also bothers other people he disagrees with when they are speaking publicly ( men and a woman). Plus he doesn’t exactly relish my literary stylings.

Two other commenters here describe their experiences above.

The two bloggers were also men as were their harassers: one criticised a radio woo artist, debated him and wrote it up on a blog and then got sued by the woo and his legal henchman: the judge threw both suits out of court. The other was a blogger who fought HIV/AIDS denialism and received calls to his workplace and at home, including to a family member. It caused so much trouble at work he decided to give up his blog BUT he has returned with another anonymous one.

-btw- thanks for your kind words. I aims to please.

@Krebiozen – I really like this kid. What upsets me most is she is being told this is a “lifelong” issue (she will never be allowed to eat carbohydrates again, and must take the handfuls of enzymes he sells to digest food properly) and I know it isn’t even real.

This isn’t as “dangerous” as some of the woo that parents fall for (i.e., bogus cancer treatments, risks from not vaccinating), but a life of misery because someone who went to chiropractic school and learned about all of the ways to “upsell” and “grow” their business and income through “improving health” with supplements and woo diagnoses is still misery and could result, long-term in issues, depending on what the supplements actually are and how honestly the kid sticks to the diet. If I do anything to educate the kid then I’m encouraging her to be disrespectful and rebellious towards her parents, something that will not sit well with most of the church (and most of the church is fairly woo-enamored anyhow).

I really am struggling with exactly how I should deal with this. My first instinct is to educate the older boy in our group – he is very smitten with the girl and knows her better than I. He also is a bit of a rebel when it comes to a lot of things, so hearing about how to rationally measure claims by people like chiropractors and naturopaths will actually interest him.

Had to giggle at your other comment @9:56.

@Mr Hill – your long dissertations are equally unbelievable – they do, however, help people understand what you’ve misunderstood or not known in biology to come up with your pronounced theory. Adding length doesn’t make a wrong theory anymore credible, it just lets people understand why you ended up with the wrong answer.

Mrs Woo:

I second your notion of discussing the matter with the young man who fancies the young woman you are concerned about.

If some toes are stepped on and feathers ruffled, you can at least console yourself with the knowledge that the young woman’s interests are being defended by someone, if not her parents or would-be “medical care provider”.

DW: Thanks for clearing that up. I sorta remembered those cases, though only as a bystander. And you’re welcome.

Kreb: Yeah. I keep trying to remember that not all men are dangerous, but it’s easier to constantly profile then it is to trust people.

I don’t know how much he trusts chiropractors, etc. He is a bit of a rebel, etc., and very intelligent. I’ve ‘adopted’ him (he’s younger than my oldest child) and really reminds me of me at his age. He might be easy to convince in the silliness of the diagnosis and what a responsible diet is for a teenaged girl.

@ Mrs. Woo: Natural plant products: we can start listing a lot of very very poisonous ones, as I’m sure you know. Wouldn’t know where to start – in alphabetical order with alpha amanitin, perhaps? We could go for pages, compete with manic posters for space.

On a related topic – someone I know is considering raw fruits & vegetables diet to, um, improve cancer prognosis. I have some expertise related to this matter – Ph.D. program some years ago in an Oncology Dept. – still, I’m looking for specific analyses/take-downs of this particular approach. There are various fads around nutrition & cancer & this and i think one has to do with “starving” tumors. Any pointers, folks? -Thanks!

(Did Steve Jobs do some quack cancer diet before he got real medical treatment?)

Militant Agnostic,

Perhaps, but 250ml of coke is not very much – that is the problem with a lot of these tables – the portion sizes or often much less than a normal serving or are not even given.

That’s true, a standard can iof Coke is 330 ml I believe, and many people drink a lot more at a time. That table compares 250 ml of Coke to a 160 gram baked potato, and I bet most people would assume the Coke has the highest glycemic load. I’m not really trying to defend sucrose, as it is an easy way of consuming empty calories, it can rot your teeth and we are hard-wired to find eaing it pleasurable, a dangerous combination.

I wonder if this comparison is only going to serve to scare her away from eating “real food” (fruits and vegetables of any kind).

Robert O. Young claims that all fruit is bad, except for avocados, which I’m sure has nothing to do with him owning an avocado farm. I agree, putting a depressed teenage girl on a restrictive diet is a recipe for disaster.

THS,
I find Dr. Moran’s website a good place to start in debunking alternative cancer treatment as many of the ones he addresses are basically about a raw food diet. Also check out ‘Alternative cancer cures: “unproven” or “disproven”?’ (PMID 15061600) and there is plenty of material on this blog and on sciencebasedmedicine about the clinical trial of Gonzalez’s cancer treatment which is about raw juices, enzyme supplements and coffee enemas, and proved to be 3 times worse than conventional therapy for pancreatic cancer.

Humans have been eating cooked food for at least 250,000 years and we have undoubtedly adapted to it. Cooking makes the nutrients in food more easily accessible to our digestive system. A raw diet means spending your life either chewing or juicing and cleaning your juicer, neither of which seems very alluring to me, especially as there seems to be little evidence that it does any good. Even if I knew I was dying of cancer I would find more interesting ways to spend the last days of my life.

@THS – it could be a lot of fun!

Well, my mini-me isn’t exactly thrilled with chiropractors, so this could be helpful, depending on how it is approached. I just feel so frustrated. As a teenager a good cognitive behavioral therapist would be a wonderful asset – they could teach her how her emotions affect her thinking, what bad thinking is so she can recognize it, etc. (I often believe everyone should either read a book about it or be taught about it so they can recognize distorted thinking when they are thinking it). Instead her well-meaning parents, probably in part because of warnings about teenagers and anti-depressants, went looking for “alternative” at their mother’s favorite chiropractor.

@Krebiozen – there was a patient with my illness advocating a raw foods juicing diet as a “cure” for this. She has abandoned it finally, about two years later. There are actually some anti-vegan/anti-raw foods juicing sites out there run by vegans who have ruined their health. They say that most raw foodies are cultists and follow it with a religious zeal, with any deviation from the diet equal to “sin” and those who are not following the lifestyle equal the “heathens” or similar status.

It’s fascinating that “Essa” on the Protocel thread lived a lifestyle often marketed as being “anti-cancer” and developed cancer. You would think with that kind of reality setting in she would be a bit more skeptical of her woo instead of holding onto it all the more.

Well, lucky for me Mr Woo does not have cancer, but he knows about the Budwig diet, Gerson therapy, and actually has a “Hulda Clark”-type zapper that he assures me kills viruses, bacteria, etc., as well as being able to cure cancer. ~shakes head~

I looked at the thing (it requires one single nine-volt battery) and asked him how in the world such a small current could affect much of anything, at which point he attempted to assure me it was the fluctuating frequencies, etc. I think “The Cure for All Diseases” has been thrown in my direction at least once (along with a book or two by the illustrious DVM Joel Wallach) with the encouragement to “educate myself.”

Right now I’m scanning bits of “Petrus Romanus: The Final Pope and the Antichrist Is Here” in my spare time – hubby wanted it because it was written by one of his favorite end times prophecy people. That is a heapin’ helping of conjecture, anti-Catholicism and general overactive and very creative imagination, but at least isn’t assuring me it can cure diabetes, cancer, Parkinson’s, MS, ALS, etc., etc., etc.

Kind of fascinating watching people create “theories of everything” (not unlike PH).

Most white men these days are unemployed and get murderous and rapey.It kinda figures though: men only socialize with other men, and it poisons their ability to connect emotionally with anyone who’s not just like them.

I really, seriously hope that no one without serious mental illness actually thinks this describes reality.

Anteaus: 1. I meant white guys under 30. Older men tend to be able to manage their hatred a bit more, unless they work in male-dominated areas like sports, construction or the Catholic Church. Then they start thinking everyone who’s not a full-grown male is basically just an object to be used or disposed of at will. And have you ever seen men willingly socializing with women? If they are, it’s only to attempt to get something out of the female friend.
2. Well, considering how much male violence has been in the news lately- Aurora and River Falls being just two of many, many examples- I’m not keen on testing whether this is reality or not. Right now, it’s a fairly valid assumption.
3. For the record, mild mental illness, and manageable social anxiety. Now could we avoid speculating on the state of my brain for the next 72 hours?

@Antaeus
Wow. I’m flabbergasted too! I saw the first post and wondered if I had missed some sort of punch line or something, but now that I see the attempt at clarification, I’m left shaking my head!

@PoliticalGuineaPig, I don’t even know what to say other than, as a woman myself, you’re so very wrong on so many levels.

Narcissist: “3. For the record, mild mental illness, and manageable social anxiety. Now could we avoid speculating on the state of my brain for the next 72 hours?”

What f*cking brain?!

oh – hang on … did i quote PGP thinking it was PH? (note the notion that it was a post by the narcissist).

if so, i DO so profusely apologise …. i know there is a world of difference between PGP and PH.

however, i think lilady is right.

comment in moderation, deals with PGP’s comment about ‘most white men’.

PGP,
You are, of course, right to assert that most monsters are men, but to conclude that most men are monsters is an overgeneralization. You have my sincere sympathy for whatever experiences you had in the past that led you to that conclusion.

OK, people form stereotypes that usually have at least *a bit* of foundation in experience- seems that women have widely divergent views about men *in general* and vice versa. Can we explain these differences?

We also know that girls’ path in life- success and self-confidence- can be greatly influenced by her early relationship with her father and other males in the family ( as well as later experiences in adolescence). We can’t change these early events in our lives.

I happen to come from a family** whose men encouraged and supported me while they praised me to the skies. My father once told me-” You’re just like me!” and he was rather fond of himself. When I was quite young, I heard that a woman who lived nearby was worried that her next baby- soon to arrive- might be a girl because she already had two and her husband would be very angry ( I overheard adults discuss her dilemma). Later, I asked my father if he was disappointed that I wasn’t a boy and- without missing a beat, he replied that I was EXACTLY what he wanted.( You can’t buy press like that!) And if I were a boy I might be like George- my cousin who my father particularly disliked.

Obviously, I have very different views about *men in general*: later experience tempered my views when I learned that all guys weren’t as terrific as my many male cousins. I mostly get along with men. They even like to play tennis with me. Shocking, isn’t it?

So early experiences might be strengthened by later ones in school etc- a person who had been treated badly might see a trend that men are indeed miserable creatures. Selective attention can occur, even WITHOUT our intent ( re cognitive factors in stereotyping). If this general idea is not corrected and made more moderate by intervening events, attitudes may persist. Especially if men are avoided.

Right now, in general, men may have more social power and confidence than women, so perhaps they might be more likely to exercise their true nastiness while women might be more cautious and timid. That’s slowly changing. Eventually all the horrible people will feel absolutely free to express their inner b#tch, although men might always have the edge in physical aggression. And I do believe that *some* men may resent women’s advances. We even see that here @ RI (trolls).

**. nearly as white as is humanly possible alto’ many of the cousins married diversely.

People DO over-generalise- cognitive factors involved may account for *some* prejudice- and this isn’t the end of the world. Attitudes can be changed.

I knew a psychologist who treated one highly specific unrealistic belief: people who believe that flying in a plane will result in a crash and their death, despite evidence to the contrary: it is highly unlikely that a commercial flight will crash- cars are much more dangerous. He was very successful and made a great deal of money because business people, whose careers depended upon flying, consulted with him.

The important issue, in my view, is that when people have an extreme attitude there is *some* basis in reality: early experience compounded by later events- sometimes the *experience* might even indirect via tutelage ( e.g. a racist had no real experiences but is taught hate). Children don’t integrate positive and negative attributes well or weigh risk/ benefits : that’s a skill that usually develops in adolescence.

Attitudes might be based a string of unfortunate instances. Our beliefs aren’t entirely our choice but are constructed through our social milieu including later avoidance. Unless a person is truly psychotic, I wouldn’t guess that their beliefs are created out of whole cloth- even those delusions would be based in physical and social reality but to a much more limited extent: e.g. a guy believing that the goverment is spying on him might be based on seeing a real person who hangs around outside his door for entirely different reasons.

Well, once more this is anecdote but I have 2 white sons under thirty who are not unemployed. Neither are they murderous and rapey. I believe that last statement to be true but I am not sure what rapey is.

@MrsWoo
Re: “We’re individuals, and I would suspect all of us have our little “quirks” where our opinions don’t reflect reality perfectly.”

I completely agree with that! I have to say, though, that PGP’s violently offensive and hate-filled accusations seems to me more than a mere quirk. It’s truly disturbing, and took me by complete surprise since I’ve appreciated so many of her posts and agreed with a lot of them. That level of extremism is truly concerning.

@PoliticalGuineaPig – please do get some real help.

Lilady is as wise as ever.

And have you ever seen men willingly socializing with women? If they are, it’s only to attempt to get something out of the female friend.

I plead guilty, if the “something” I am trying to get includes “intelligent conversation”.

Off topic but…….Orac supports fluoridation -well FYI
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/idUS127920+24-Jul-2012+PRN20120724

Wow, a press release from the NYS Council Opposed to Fluoridation has bad things to say about fluoridation! Who’da thunk it?? Gee, maybe next they’ll issue a press release based on the MSDS of fluoride!

You’re right, Ken. It is off-topic. Also you forgot to mention stupid. Are you going to expect us to believe that you have never once in the whole of your life been introduced to the concept which demolishes this press release, namely “the dose makes the poison”? Ah, so you have encountered it before? Good, then add “dishonest” to “off-topic and stupid”.