I wonder if intermittent fasting would be an effective deterrent of ALS through autophagy, though I highly doubt this would be of much good after the disease takes hold.
20 karma · joined February 22, 2007
A leaky gut combined with cross-reactivity or molecular mimicry is sufficient to cause autoimmune diseases in some people.
No doubt this is true, especially in the case of meat and saturated fat. Usually this is the result of bad science, typically drawing cause and effect conclusions from epidemiological evidence (See Denise Minger's critique of The China Study here: http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fal...).
The problem with "interrupting the process" is that we still don't know much about the functioning of many (perhaps most) physiological processes. Disrupting the body's natural processes in one area can cause problems of equal or greater significance in other areas.
Also, studies proving the safety and effectiveness of drugs are, more often than not, highly flawed. Studies frequently exaggerate the improvements seen, fail to show that improvements are due to drugs, or are repeated until the results they are looking for are achieved.
For an excellent review of the flaws of medical research see Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science here: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-dam...) Here are but a few highlights:
"...much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed."
"researchers were frequently manipulating data analyses, chasing career-advancing findings rather than good science, and even using the peer-review process—in which journals ask researchers to help decide which studies to publish—to suppress opposing views."
"even if a study managed to highlight a genuine health connection to some nutrient, you’re unlikely to benefit much from taking more of it, because we consume thousands of nutrients that act together as a sort of network, and changing intake of just one of them is bound to cause ripples throughout the network that are far too complex for these studies to detect, and that may be as likely to harm you as help you."
"Even if changing that one factor does bring on the claimed improvement, there’s still a good chance that it won’t do you much good in the long run, because these studies rarely go on long enough to track the decades-long course of disease and ultimately death. Instead, they track easily measurable health “markers” such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and blood-sugar levels, and meta-experts have shown that changes in these markers often don’t correlate as well with long-term health as we have been led to believe."
"The tests could turn up something, but they’re probably irrelevant. Just having a good talk with the patient and getting a close history is much more likely to tell me what’s wrong.” Of course, the doctors have all been trained to order these tests, she notes, and doing so is a lot quicker than a long bedside chat. They’re also trained to ply the patient with whatever drugs might help whack any errant test numbers back into line. What they’re not trained to do is to go back and look at the research papers that helped make these drugs the standard of care. “When you look the papers up, you often find the drugs didn’t even work better than a placebo."
I suppose I've strayed too far from the original topic, but I think I've made my point.
To the extent that we encourage people to believe that their actions are meaningless we actually increase the problem by enabling a feeling of helplessness and despair that causes people to put all their faith into a "cure", whether that be some kind of drug to manage the symptoms or gene therapy. Why bother eating healthy when I can simply take this pill?
We also have a mistaken assumption that drugs are somehow perfect solutions when in many cases the cure is worse than the disease (statins come to mind). Combine known side effects with the fact that the research behind the safety and effectiveness of drugs is distorted by the media, manipulated by the drug companies, and ignored by the doctors and what we have is far from a solution to our problems.
You are right that we don't have a long track record of fixing genes (or curing chronic illness) and this should cause us to be humble about what science and technology can achieve. We must acknowledge the potential of science and technology, and thus push the limits of what we are capable of, while being aware of it's limitations, and behaving accordingly.
Skepticism should not become nihilism, nor should science become a religion.
Noticeably absent from the tribune article (have not yet read the Nature article) is any discussion of environmental triggers such as diet or lifestyle.
We often jump from disease to drug without considering the causal factors.
Identifying the cellular mechanisms underlying ALS is crucial. At the same time I'm disheartened by the conclusion of the researchers that this will pave the way to the development of drugs. Why is that always the first solution we turn to?
So ubiquilin2 is unable to repair damaged proteins in people with ALS. The question is, why?
I can't help but believe ALS is an autoimmune disease that is caused by the combination of genes and an environmental trigger. The fact that this possibility isn't even mentioned in the article suggests that we have a long way to go. Drugs, though helpful in some situations, are often merely band-aids. Let's find the trigger!
Still, this is progress. My dad donated his body to Northwestern for research so I can't help but be proud today.
I'm fond of the "keyword trap" approach as described here http://www.clickequations.com/blog/2008/12/the-match-type-se..., but the same thing can be accomplished in one ad group with multiple match types if bid correctly.
Is this helpful matthewcford?
You can find more info here: http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2010/09/28/negative-keywo...
Do you maintain "scent" from keyword to ad copy for this keyword? http://www.grokdotcom.com/topics/senseofscent.htm
If scent is not maintained you are hurting your clickthrough rate which accounts for a majority of the weighting behind quality score.