Exciting New Research

Cutting edge research (my own) in the field of medical science has shown that multiple sclerosis, a disease long thought to be caused by a malfunction in the autoimmune system, actually has more in common with sinusitis. In short, it drains.

I know this because my case of MS, having formerly been most evident in my brain, has now drained into my left leg, such that my familiar cognitive difficulties (one might say congestion) have wholly cleared, while at the same time my left leg has become stuffy, sluggish, and painful.

My research will now enter the hands-on phase of experimentation, which, as always, will be less than thorough or logical. I think of the nose, the classic target of sinus problems. I think of Neo-Synephrine. I think of the nature and course of the common sinus infection, and then expand the general mechanics to the body as a whole. I think of injected Neo-Synephrine. I wonder if the ingredients of Copaxone are actually the same as those in Neo-Synephrine.

As is readily evident, the matter is a complex one and will require much time and energy on the part of the research team. Since I am so far the only one on the team, and since much of my time and energy is devoted to being generally exhausted, any forecast of applicable conclusions, along with potential treatment modalities, is bound to be years away. That's the bad news. The good news is that we finally have this tiger by the proverbial tail.

And so I shall proceed--patiently, tirelessly whenever I'm fully awake--and in the meantime spraying and blowing, spraying and blowing--all for the good of mankind, and women too, and children, and especially for those of us who suffer from this sinus-like syndrome.

(anyone desiring to join my team may do so simply with a reply and the purchase of any sort of decongestant)

Another Fatal MS Cure

Yet another miracle MS drug is upon us. Don't blink now.

This one is called FTY720 (although they will surely come up with something more catchy before the drug hits the market). It is said that this drug in the experimental stages is reducing MS relapses with an efficacy significantly far beyond the present showings of the old favorites--the interferons and Copaxone.

It is also said, and in the usual spirit of passing mention, that FTY720 has been associated with potentially fatal infections, skin cancer, and (yes, last but not least) a case of haemorrhaging focal encephalitis, which I guess is something like a sudden explosion of the brain and head.

Novartis, the company responsible for the drug (and yes that may be a double entendre), hopes to press for the drug's availability within the shortest time possible.

Well, a few will have to fall for the benefit the many, right? Just so I'm not one of the few.

It's sort of like the My Lai massacre. Anyone remember that? We had to destroy the village to save it. Something along those lines.

Look at it this way--It probably won't happen to you; and even if it does, you probably won't have time to appreciate it.

Is It Vascular?

Most of you out there who are really interested in multiple sclerosis (i.e. those who have it) will have heard by now about the new theory that MS is not an autoimmune disease at all, but a vascular problem.

In short, it is found in research data that 70 percent of people with MS will display spontaneous reflux constantly present in the internal jugular veins and/or vertebral veins, and 50 percent will demonstrate reflux propagated upward to the deep cerebral veins.

Put simply, this means that your blood is flowing in the wrong direction, Dude.

In the control group for this experiment (those not having MS), the percentage in both cases regarding the above parameters was zero.

This misguided flow of blood causes a number of problems; and specifically, in the case of MS, the wrong-way blood flow causes an insult to the blood-brain barrier, sending hungry little cells across into the gray matter and spinal cord, which soon proceed to eat myelin.

It's kind of like that zombie movie where the zombies were stuck on one side of a wide river, unable to reach the surviving normal people on the other--until, that is, they discovered they could simply walk across the river on the bottom (since they were dead anyway, right, and therefore could not drown and die again).

Did they hate the people on the far shore? No, they were just hungry--and so is the process that fuels multiple sclerosis.

The good news here is that this vascular defect actually appears amenable to effective treatment (unlike the various injected poisons now used for the autoimmune model). So start dialing up your doctors, folks, and make sure your insurance is in good shape. The business is about to boom.

Or . . .

Or is this just another wacky idea, the medical science version of snake oil and miracle herbs? They come and they go, don't they. And the longer you've been around, the better you know that.

Still and all, I'm game. I can't say that the surgery for this sounds pleasant, but I figure it can't be as bad as kidney stones.

And on a final note, I feel suddenly gladdened about my recent decision to stop the injected drugs, because for all I know at this point, I've been injecting this stuff all along for no damn good reason at all! I wonder how much damage this particular cure has caused already.

Well, I suppose I'll find out somewhere down the road--hopefully later rather than sooner.

Playing the Odds

We find, in the latest issue of MS Focus, that the upcoming oral drug, Cladrabine, has proven very effective in treating MS. However, it is also found that some people using the drug have developed significantly increased risk of serious infection and cancer.

All righty then. Lemme see now . . . uh yeah, I hereby withdraw my enthusiasm.

The funny thing is that this little caveat should be conveyed in such neutral seeming tone (like Oh by the way, perhaps we should mention). Research, as it seems to me, becomes enamored at itself, overly impressed with its achievements, under appreciative of the odds that the same could kill.

If you have MS, and if you go to a neurologist, chances are pretty much 100 percent that you will be put on the latest regimen of injections--despite the fact that the same will make you sick, or cause otherwise unnatural sorts of reactions--and if you are obstinate enough to refuse, you will be made to feel stupid, and careless, and maybe even fired from the particular clinic. Why? Because you have insulted the latest wisdom of medicine, and you have failed to appreciate the cutting edge reputation of your clinic.

Doctors are convincing as hell, and a person who is fearful, who is suffering, seeks to place his faith in the nearest hope.

We see the same thing with chemotherapy every day. That is the treatment. You got cancer, now you got to have the treatment. Period. That's how it is done.

Yes.

As far as I know, it killed by brother, my father, and my mother, and more quickly so than the cancer itself would have done.

I started out on Avonex. It was the best, I was told. At first you might suffer some side effects--flu-like symptoms, aches, chills, fevers--but these would likely fade and then for the most part disappear within a month or two.

For more than a year I patiently endured being sick as a dog every Thursday and Friday. I alternately shivered and burned, I endured aches in my legs that felt like broken bones, I walked around in a fog thicker than any that MS on its own had previously caused.

For you see, I wanted to do the right thing. I had a responsibility to myself and to my family. To shun the benefit of being 30 percent less likely to have a new attack of MS would be tantamount to sheer carelessness. Would it not?

And so that's how it works, folks. Now I am on Copaxone, which does not cause flu-like illness. It only causes burning or itching of the skin, bruises and weird raised welts, and sometimes, if you hit a bad spot with the needle, a feeling like you have shot yourself there with a small caliber pistol. So much better.

Or is it?

One often reads, in researching Copaxone, that exactly why it works is not exactly known. Interesting. Exactly what else, I wonder, is not exactly known about it?

And what are these persistent, itchy lumps that sometimes develop beneath injection sites? I put the question once to a Copaxone Rep over the phone. Well . . . you guessed it. It is not exactly known.

It is said that prayer has been shown in blind trials to produce curative results in test group being prayed for. It is not exactly known why.

What I'm wondering now is whether the percentage here is comparable to that gained in the medicinal results. Thirty percent, after all, is not all that much to shout about.

Blind Love Is The Cure

Last night I went almost blind in my left eye. I was kissing my wife at the time. I observed my growing blindness as we kissed and said nothing about it. I wondered how life would fit me half blind, and sensed that at the very least it would be somewhat irritating.

Then we made love and by the time we had finished, I could see again.

Hallelujah!

My latest theory, therefore--completely subjective, wholly without supporting data, and dependent upon this one incident alone--is that sexual intercourse repairs damaged myelin at something like the speed of light.

It is a happy finding, for obvious reasons. The only problem that I can presently foresee is the danger of this leading to over population. In the case of over population, birth control is, of course, a ready remedy, although this in itself might well result in an over balance of Catholics.

It is a slim price to pay, in my estimation, and so the risk seems quite acceptable.

In any case, babies aren't really as bad as they seem to be on the surface.

Now, this hypothesis, this theory of mine clearly needs further investigation, further research, a respectable period of time and a respectable number of individual sessions. I'll be the first to admit it. In addition, the finer points will need to be explored. What is the effect of position upon myelin? What is the effect of foreplay? Does it matter who is on top? What about same sex myelin repair? And so on.

As can be readily appreciated, I will need to solicit a certain amount help in order that no one person should become over-taxed, or even die, from the expenditure of too much energy on too prolific a basis. I will offer no reward, but rather participation will be purely voluntary, and should be, for obvious enough reasons, its own compensation.

Applicants will remain as anonymous as possible.

As the Worm Turneth

Some of the latest MS news, as some of you may have seen, concerns an experimental treatment called Helminth therapy. Helminths, as we have learned, are a class of small parasitic worms. What class they are in, or whether it is grammar school, middle school, or high school, I do not know. In any case, these worms, which are thankfully microscopic, are dropped into a sort of Sports drink, mixed well, and imbibed by the willing, or the remunerated, MS sufferer.

As an interesting side note, I would mention here the anecdote shared with me by my neurologist regarding the class, as it were, of experimental subjects, who, according to the doctor, reside in large part in Russia and Eastern Europe where the standard available treatments for MS cannot be afforded. These have then something in common with the experimental worm himself, in that their choice in the matter is pretty much nonexistent.

In any case, the Helminth (not to be confused with Absinthe) is invisible, and is invisibly admixed with an otherwise harmless beverage, which is then consumed by the experimental subject.

The theory itself is based upon an hypothesis, which is called the "hygiene hypothesis." Studies unanimously find that autoimmune diseases (such as MS, Crohn's, etc.), as well as allergies, are significantly less common in the developing world. This in turn is supposed to be due to the greater opportunity afforded Third World peoples of being exposed early on to infectious agents which thrive on poor sanitation, thereby stimulating immune response and ultimately effecting good health.

So next time your mother tells you to wash before meals or to stop playing in the mud puddles, simply refer her to the wisdom of the Helminth worm.

Let me be clear at this point that it is not the actual Helminth that will be wiggling about in your beverage, but the egg of the Helminth. It would be akin to the difference between eating cavier on a cracker as opposed to the whole slimy fish.

On the contrary, the Helminths themselves hatch and mature inside the body, which will surely seem much more palatable. After hatching, they swim by and by to the large intestine, like salmon toward the sea, where the larvae interact at last with the immune system and are killed. A sad sort of life for the Helminth, to be sure, but all in the name of medical science.

The cure therefore, as far as I can understand it, is found in allowing the autoimmune system to function as it was created to do according to the introduction and eradication of common infections.

Hmm. Does this mean that we have all these years been trying to fix something that warnt broke in the furst place?

The Chevy Chase Face

An old facet of the disease process active in patients with multiple sclerosis has been given a new face, thanks to the recent groundbreaking efforts of sub molecular researchers (MRs).

They call it the Chevy Chase Face, and it is bound to propel MS research to new heights of less value than ever before.

Patients who suffer from MS have long been painfully aware of the proclivity of the disease toward activating a sort of total body dyscoordination—a blatantly ridiculous inability to function as a normal person. This clumsiness can be manifested at any time and in any way, without warning or remedy. It may be manifested in suddenly falling down a stairway, tripping over a curb, or indeed tripping over nothing. It is apparent in the difficulty experienced with challenges such as holding two objects at once, talking while driving, chewing gum and walking at the same time.

But the most classic example of this curious deficit in coordination, affecting more than 500,000 people nationwide, is found in the consistently high rate of failure (70-90 percent) when patients were asked to look at their wristwatches while simultaneously holding a cup of coffee (or, indeed, any sort of liquid in a cup or a glass—for it was found in research that the type, flavor, and temperature properties of the cup’s contents had no statistically relevant effect on the outcome of experimentation).

Given these results, it seemed “the most natural thing,” in the words of one chuckling biologist, to immediately envision the slapstick comedy of Chevy Chase, particularly in his years on Saturday Night Live.

But there is more—and this is where the research becomes truly thrilling. In examining the brain activity of study subjects through microscopic subatomic microscopes planted in the frontal lobe of the brain of each study subject, a clear visual process was discovered to be taking place in the interaction of molecules and electrons at the very moment when each subject went to look at his watch while holding his cup, and thus causing the non-particular liquid to spill on his shirt front.

“It was like seeing a poodle crash into an elephant, and then get their leashes all tangled together,” one researcher quipped rather stupidly.

Moreover, when biologists zoomed in and focused on the exact area of molecular interaction, they found to their utter amazement that the offending molecule, when so isolated, actually looked like Chevy Chase!

“It was the most ridiculous thing I had ever seen,” said the leading biologist in the study. “It was completely unexpected. And boy was it funny!”

He went on to say, more soberly, that though these results had been exciting, much more research would be needed in the future.

“We know what,” he said. “Now the question is why?”

Chevy Chase himself could not be reached for comment.

News, So-Called

Logging in this morning through the MSN home screen, on my way to better things, my eye happened to catch a "news" story about Barrach Obama's smoking, and having to field tough questions regarding the same in an interview with Tom Brokaw.

Scandalous! First we have a President with sexual urges, and now we have one who smokes! What next? A President who imbibes strong spirits? Lordy, lordy.

Tobacco products in one form or another, the cigarette, the cigar, continue to insert themselves into the affairs of the White House, in some cases literally so.

Oh the shame.

In other breaking news, researchers have found that people with MS are more likely to have headaches. Yes, it's true. No kidding. Specifically why this might be so is a question yet to be fully answered. Could it be because our central nervous systems are fucked up in general? Could it be the propensity of the person with MS to fall over his own feet and land on his head? Could it be because we are always struggling to stay awake and functional despite relentless fatigue?

Or maybe it is our brainstem lesions, as researchers have suggested. That's got to hurt on some level, right? This last, however, is not a finding based on stringent scientific data. It is only common sense.