Fri, 25 Jan 2008
Fighting Colds
It's been very cold here the past couple of weeks and I am hearing reports
of people getting colds and flu. So what do you do to fight these?
I've talked about this in the past but I will repeat my method
again in hopes that more of my readers will try this.
I woke up Tuesday morning with a dry and slightly sore throat. I immediately gargled with warm saline water. When I start to get a cold, this is one thing that I do a couple times a day. One of my wife's Filipino friends who is a doctor told me about this. It does seem to help with upper respiratory viruses. As the day wen on Tuesday, I could sense that something was coming on. So I started taking more vitamin C. I mean like 2 to 4 grams an hour. I might take a gram or two every 20 minutes. I noticed Tuesday afternoon as I started taking more that I was tolerating well. That is to say, I was not passing gas or feeling any rumbling in my stomach. This means something is going on. The vit C is fighting free radicals caused by a virus.
When I got home, I took some niacin. 300 mg in a no-flush time release capsule. Gargle again with warm saline before bed and try to go to sleep early. I woke up around 4 am feeling a bit sick. Don't let up at this point. Since I was up, I hit it with more vit C and warm saline water. I was able to get back to sleep after a while and when I woke up, I felt a little better. The cold was mostly in my head. I had a little congestion but the vit C has an antihistamine effect and I could still breath through my nose through all this time.
I went to work but made sure I had enough vit C to take throughout the day. I also took another niacin tablet to take in the afternoon. I was feeling a bit tired but I still had enough energy to work through the day. In fact, I first thought I might go home early but there was plenty of work to do and I felt well enough to make through to 5.
It was now Wednesday evening and I felt things were on the up. I suspected the cold would begin to migrate to my chest as these things typically do. But I was optimistic that I had it under control and would be well by the weekend. I still kept up the same routine. Letting up slightly on the amount of vit C as Thursday afternoon came around.
It's now Friday morning and I am almost recovered. There is slight congestion in my nasal cavity and very slight coughing left over but I should be in near perfect shape by tomorrow.
Yes, this approach takes a bit of work. Compared to taking a 24 hour cold pill, you have to take vitamin C frequently throughout the day. But the energy level is quite different. There is no antihistamine haze. That dull, loss of energy, sleepy feel that you get from cold medication is completely absent. In fact, I have lots of energy with just some congestion to contend with. Also notice that this particular virus is shortened quite a bit (maybe a subjective observation but I've seen this frequently enough to say it's true for me).
How about you? If you would like to try this method, the first thing to do is start taking more vit C, even when you are well. I would start with a gram with breakfast and dinner. Start adding more if you wish. At the first appearance of cold symptoms, try a gram an hour and see how it goes from there.
One more thing is to take vitamin D in the winter. I ran out of my vitamin D supplements last week. Normally I take 2000 IU per day. I had not ordered more to arrive in time so this could have contributed to my catching a virus. I would also take more vit D if I catch something.
[/health/disease] 4 comments permalink
Wed, 16 Jan 2008
Calcium Supplements Questioned.
This study suggests problems with
calcium supplements in that they could be a factor in heart disease. The question
raised by Cordain regarding acid/base balance is that even
with supplements, the problems with bone health are not solved.
This study is perhaps another confirmation that there is more to maintaining bone health than just
calcium intake (since the calcium doesn't seem to be going to the bones but in the arteries).
And notice the irony of the natural food store banner in the photo accompanying the Yahoo News article. Calcium is one of the few supplements that doctors frequently suggest that older people should take! So it's not really in the realm of an alternative therapy.
[/health/disease] 0 comments permalink
Thu, 13 Dec 2007
Alternative Explanation to Flu Season?
Blogging friend Michael pointed out this study which was in
the news recently. The point of the study is what appears to be solid
evidence pointing to flu viruses being able to thrive and propagate
more easily in low humidity conditions. Now this would appear to perhaps
counter the theory put forward by vitamin D advocate Dr. John Cannell who
proposed that the seasonal variations of flu outbreaks
coincides with times of the year when people can be experiencing decreased
vitamin D conditions. Is
the yearly flu season a result of conditions which cause the virus to thrive
and spread easily or is it a result of greatly decreased innate immunity caused
by vitamin D deficiency? Or is flu season caused by a combination of both
factors?
In the article, the author of the study recommends (only) getting a flu shot as the best defense against flu. So at least this author is ignoring (or does not know about) factors which could strengthen innate immunity. It's also interesting to note that they used guinea pigs in their study. Now these animals, like humans, do not create vitamin C and must rely on it from their diet. Also, does vitamin D effect these animals in the same way as humans? If so, were they deficient? If a similar study could be set up and levels of vitamin C and D optimized, perhaps it would give more insight into how these nutrients might help fight flu viruses and prevent infection.
Reviewing one of Dr. Cannell's newsletters from earlier this year, he points out a study done by Rosenau in 1919 right after the pandemic flu outbreak the year before. This study suggests that viruses do not transmit from sick to well. Is there something different about guinea pig physiology or can different flu viruses behave differently?
[/health/disease] 0 comments permalink
Tue, 27 Nov 2007
Placebo Effect and Meta Studies: What to make of them?
Some time ago, Bill sardi had pointed out this paper which questioned the whole
idea of the Placebo Effect. Now I just ran across
this slightly more recent
article in the NYT about another study which seems to be saying something
very similar. That is (if I understand it) that the so called Placebo Effect
is questionable and might be due to many other factors. And these factors
are frequently not taken into account but simply passed off as a placebo
effect. The research referenced in the articles is a meta study. That dreaded
kind of manipulative statistical based tool which seems so often to bring
forward heated debates and disagreements on a particular topic. Nutritionist
Niel Levin recently had this interesting blog entry referencing a Red Cross
paper warning of the high susceptibility to bias in these types of studies.
So what to make of the Placebo meta study? I'm not sure. The NYT article has an interesting ending. The author of the study says that he is not giving up on the placebo effect entirely but hopes that more research will bring forth the truth. That sounds like a guy without an agenda to me but I could be wrong.
I do think that many real effects which go against established thinking are discarded and explained away based on the idea that someone may only be experiencing a placebo effect. This is certainly true of vitamin C and the common cold. There is a large body of research suggesting no effect. But those of us who have used it can attest otherwise. And a close look at the bulk of the research reveals that most of it uses very small amounts and not in the protocol suggested by Pauling and others.
But my questions still remain. Is the placebo effect real? Are meta studies ever useful? Of course, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. So I'm really not qualified to say am I?
[/health/disease] 0 comments permalink
Tue, 03 Jul 2007
Niacin for Colds
This cold is a pretty good one. Maybe not the 100 gram type that Cathcart refers to
but it came on fast and strong. I probably took close to 50 grams of
vitamin C both Sunday and yesterday and I am continuing today.
Over at the C For Yourself Blog, the author in the past
suggested using
Niacin in combination with
vitamin C. Yesterday on the way home, I picked up some no flush Niacin
at the store and took some. No flush refers to the flushing side effect
which tends to turn your face red. These are probably time release
capsules. At any rate, I woke up about midnight and I felt quite a bit
better. And today I am doing ok although I still have lingering congestion in
both head and chest. The Niacin capsules were 300 mg. Perhaps
they have worked and I have turned a corner. But doing the biathlon tomorrow
is looking very unlikely. I just don't have the energy or the
motivation right now and I am not fully recovered. So probably
no biathlon this year unless there is another one later that's not
on Sunday morning.
[/health/disease] 0 comments permalink
Wed, 28 Mar 2007
Bad News for Tony Snow
I have been a Tony Snow fan for a while. I used to read his
columns fairly often before he was White House Press Secretary.
It is unfortunate to hear that his cancer has returned. I have been looking for
a way to write him a message but can't find it. I keep hoping that a
high profile figure like him would resort to IV vitamin C and other
modes (high amounts of vit D could help for example). If someone like
Tony would try these and have some good results, it might bring
some positive focus to these alternatives. It's doubtful that a mainstream
oncologist would say anything more than something along the lines of, "These
things are completely unproven" from what I can tell.
Update
I don't mean to ignore Elizabeth Edwards (wife of Presidential candidate, John Edwards). Both of these high profile cases of cancer bring into focus, at least to me, that there is a long way to go in conquering or at least improving mortality of this terrible disease. And both of these cases have slim to no chance of recovery. They would both be good candidates to consider alternative therapy. Therapy that would not be used in place of mainstream methods but could be used in coordination with standard practice.[/health/disease] 2 comments permalink
Tue, 26 Sep 2006
US News Issue on Heart Disease
The current issue has a lot of good info on Heart Disease.
A lot of changes are going on in the technology. Angio is not nearly as
common as it was 10 years ago. I remember servicing laser cameras
hooked up to video cameras that the surgeons used for performing
these. This was back in the 80's when I worked for Kodak's Med
Technology group. Now stints are the way to go for a quick fix.
[/health/disease] 0 comments permalink
Wed, 19 Apr 2006
Disease Mongering
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) can be thought of as a kind
of open source science journal. There is no commercial sponsorship
and all authors must declare their interests in a particular subject
when presenting an article on a subject.
Just last week, a
conference on Disease Mongering was given and
PLoS was one of the sponsors. This is incredible stuff. PLoS has
a
whole page making all of the papers from the conference available.
This article (referenced at the conference site) gives a very good
overview of the problems. Here's a quote:
A decade ago, the late journalist Lynn Payer wrote a book titled Disease Mongering, in which she described the confluence of interests of doctors, drug companies and media in exaggerating the severity of illness and the ability of drugs to "cure" them. "Since disease is such a fluid and political concept, the providers can essentially create their own demand by broadening the definitions of diseases in such a way as to include the greatest number of people, and by spinning out new diseases," she wrote. Pharma PR practitioners are sometimes quite candid as they discuss the art of creating a need for a new product. "Once the need has been established and created, then the product can be introduced to satisfy that need/desire," states Harry Cook in the "Practical Guide to Medical Education," published by the UK-based Pharmaceutical Marketing magazine. Sometimes patient groups are created out of whole cloth to boost a new drug that is about to emerge from a drug company's "pipeline." Most of the time, however, drug companies woo existing non-profit patient groups. "Partnering with advocacy groups and thought leaders at major research institutions helps to defuse industry critics by delivering positive messages about the healthcare contributions of pharma companies,"explains Teri Cox from Cox Communication Partners, New Jersey, in a September 2002 commentary in Pharma Executive.Corporate-sponsored "disease awareness campaigns" typically urge potential consumers to consult their doctor for advice on specific medications. This advice works in tandem with corporate efforts to influence doctors, the final gatekeepers for prescription drugs.
This article also mentions that in the year 2001, the total profits of the drug industry were in the range of 364 billion dollars. Also that in the year 2000, 13.2 billion dollars was spent on marketing by that same industry. Now let's put this in a little perspective. The estimates of profit in the nutritional supplement industry is around 15 to 18 billion dollars. The point here is not to say that this industry has any more moral integrity than any other. But just in terms of capabilities, there is not much comparison. Read through some of the case studies (which are really the most obvious and recent ones) and consider the amount and scope of influence that is involved here.
More links:
- Top ten medical articles from PLoS.
- Columbia Journalism Review looks at the problem.
- Bill Sardi's article on Disease Mongering and it's implications to the American Health Movement.
[/health/disease] 30 comments permalink
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