There's no shortage of negative news these days, but the future isn't all gloomy.
There's a lot of research and breakthroughs every day, and anybody with a connection and a brain can benefit. Here's one example: my father.
He's developed Parkinson's and is at 86. After a number of years on standard-of-care treatment, his outlook is not good. The disease is progressive, and will eventually put him in a wheelchair, as the drugs stop being effective. He called me up one day, wanted to talk about his future. He was depressed about it.
"Is there anything else we could do?" he wanted to know. That was in August.
I'm not supposed to treat family. That's a rule. Yeah. Rules.
I figured out some stuff based on reading new research, especially a breakthrough paper by a guy named Vivek Umma. That paper came out, end of July 2019.
The medical literature research I'm doing is maybe a year or so, 8-16 hours a day, but the Parkinson's stuff just took me 2 weeks to work out, given the existing knowledge base already built up. It's not a brain disease. It's not caused by the Lewy Bodies as the old books say. It's a DNA double-strand break disease, where the repair mechanic makes a repeating mistake..
I went to see him at home, with a set of markers and a ream of blank paper, and we stayed at the kitchen table doing the chemistry.
He's 86, and can still do his Organic Chemistry. He cleaned up a few errors in my molecular diagrams. Eventually we got it right, with the putative pathway all clean. This isn't published stuff copied from other papers- we worked out the polymeric structures by hand.
After I outlined the sequence of the pathophysiology, and made a proposal for fixing it, he was cheered up and wanted to try. So we went ahead. Tossed the old meds into a baggie. Got some new ones, simplified the regime to "take one of everything here" got him some new dietary things, and saved us some cash.
He started to improve in 24 hours.
Being a bit busy at work, I asked him to come down to the center to run some tests the next week.
He was strolling down the corridor, looking a bit stooped and slow, but doing it just fine. No L-Dopa anymore. Showed him off to the nurses.
"How'd he get here?" one asked.
"He drove." I said.
She scoffed: "I can't see any Parkinson's."
All the bloods were good. His pressure was higher that I liked. So we added one extra medication that will also activate the PPAR-delta coactivator, and improve his physical endurance as a bonus.
I showed the work to some of the other doctors, but they had trouble following the biochem. One of them made the mental connection just before I spelled it out, her eyes lit up as the pieces fell together.
It's extremely frustrating to get dismissed by people that can't even understand the basics of the fundamental science, and want to adhere to existing protocols for treatment. That would be OK if the protocols were working. One of them actually asked me why I'm doing over Biochemistry. After all I passed that subject 30 years ago, right?
That's OK though, I need to replicate it with other patients before making any claims. Maybe it's a one-off. Maybe it only works in Dad.
I'll take it, thanks very much, all the same. So will he.
I have 2 people lined up to try the new protocol so far.
There's a lot of research and breakthroughs every day, and anybody with a connection and a brain can benefit. Here's one example: my father.
He's developed Parkinson's and is at 86. After a number of years on standard-of-care treatment, his outlook is not good. The disease is progressive, and will eventually put him in a wheelchair, as the drugs stop being effective. He called me up one day, wanted to talk about his future. He was depressed about it.
"Is there anything else we could do?" he wanted to know. That was in August.
I'm not supposed to treat family. That's a rule. Yeah. Rules.
I figured out some stuff based on reading new research, especially a breakthrough paper by a guy named Vivek Umma. That paper came out, end of July 2019.
The medical literature research I'm doing is maybe a year or so, 8-16 hours a day, but the Parkinson's stuff just took me 2 weeks to work out, given the existing knowledge base already built up. It's not a brain disease. It's not caused by the Lewy Bodies as the old books say. It's a DNA double-strand break disease, where the repair mechanic makes a repeating mistake..
I went to see him at home, with a set of markers and a ream of blank paper, and we stayed at the kitchen table doing the chemistry.
He's 86, and can still do his Organic Chemistry. He cleaned up a few errors in my molecular diagrams. Eventually we got it right, with the putative pathway all clean. This isn't published stuff copied from other papers- we worked out the polymeric structures by hand.
After I outlined the sequence of the pathophysiology, and made a proposal for fixing it, he was cheered up and wanted to try. So we went ahead. Tossed the old meds into a baggie. Got some new ones, simplified the regime to "take one of everything here" got him some new dietary things, and saved us some cash.
He started to improve in 24 hours.
Being a bit busy at work, I asked him to come down to the center to run some tests the next week.
He was strolling down the corridor, looking a bit stooped and slow, but doing it just fine. No L-Dopa anymore. Showed him off to the nurses.
"How'd he get here?" one asked.
"He drove." I said.
She scoffed: "I can't see any Parkinson's."
All the bloods were good. His pressure was higher that I liked. So we added one extra medication that will also activate the PPAR-delta coactivator, and improve his physical endurance as a bonus.
I showed the work to some of the other doctors, but they had trouble following the biochem. One of them made the mental connection just before I spelled it out, her eyes lit up as the pieces fell together.
It's extremely frustrating to get dismissed by people that can't even understand the basics of the fundamental science, and want to adhere to existing protocols for treatment. That would be OK if the protocols were working. One of them actually asked me why I'm doing over Biochemistry. After all I passed that subject 30 years ago, right?
That's OK though, I need to replicate it with other patients before making any claims. Maybe it's a one-off. Maybe it only works in Dad.
I'll take it, thanks very much, all the same. So will he.
I have 2 people lined up to try the new protocol so far.
