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Treon, I'm not sure whether to advise
you to stop taking the medication, or to
start. |
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Disregarding the verbal flotsam and
pruning things back to intelligibility,
this is still a lousy idea in several quite
distinct ways. |
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One. Raising the temperature of the
thyroid significantly is not going to be
achieved by an electrified collar.
You're just going to annoy the outer
couple of millimetres of skin, and give
yourself a rash. |
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Two. Enzymes generally work best at
about the temperature they evolved to
work at. If you could warm up your
thyroid, the net effect would be
detrimental. |
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Three. Using non-audible frequency
sound pulses (so, not sound, then?) is
unlikely to significantly alter blood flow. |
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Four. Altering blood flow in the thyroid
is unlikely to increase the production of
thyroid hormone, unless a pre-existing
deficiency had been caused by some
hitherto unknown thyroid blood flow
problem. |
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Five. I can see no significant value in
the gratuitous use of the word
"Mangrove". |
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Six. Just because everyone thinks
you're nuts, it doesn't mean you aren't. |
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Having actually had hyperthyroidism, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for anything, certainly not weight loss (though it did make me pretty skinny, as well as foul tempered and partially bald; now I'm completely bald, of course, and still pretty bad tempered, but it's quite a different thing when you're 16). |
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I also don't think that massaging your thyroid will make it overactive, or they'd do that for the thyroidically underactive. |
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P.S. A quick Google search does turn up this bewildering piece of "alternative medicine" as a treatment for hypothyroidism: |
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"Massage the entire neck area (in all toes) to warm up the area. Then massage each toe in the front neck area more deeply, using your thumb." |
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Even if you do find the toes in your neck area, the site goes on to insist that you see a doctor. |
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The problem is usually autoimmune. If anything is done to stimulate local circulation, it will increase the quantity of autoantibodies attacking the thyroid. If it isn't autoimmune, the cause is likely to be iodine deficiency, resistance to thyroxine in peripheral tissues or a pituitary problem. Local circulatory stimulation won't make a difference to any of these either, except maybe temporarily and briefly to the pituitary problem (more TSH for a short period) or absorption of iodine. |
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You might be able to do something for a minority of cases by influencing the hypothalamus in some way. |
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Iodine deficiency is not necessarily the cause. That comes down to whether the area has been under the sea in the relatively recent geological past, in which case there will still be significant quantities of iodine in the soil. Also, if the diet is high in seafood there will be sufficient iodine. There was also a land plant which was high in iodine but it became extinct thirty-odd years ago so it can't be used now. |
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For people whose diet is high in iodine there can still be a problem, sometimes due to prior treatment of hyperthyroidism and sometimes due to autoimmune processes. In that case, iodine supplementation wouldn't make much difference. Mustard oil depresses the thyroid, so avoiding Cruciferae, such as Muli, Brassica, shepherd's purse, horse radish and mustard, can help. |
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This may be a sexist thought, but i wonder if it's to do with an immune reaction to foetal cells entering the mother's internal environment. |
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//a land plant which was high in iodine
but it became extinct thirty-odd years
ago// I'm intrigued - what was it? |
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// Even if you do find the toes in your neck area // |
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This either refers to Reflexology or Contortionism. If the former, advise psychological counselling. If the latter, and the patient is female, do you have her phone number ? |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], i seriously wish i knew. I'm personally not convinced it doesn't still exist somewhere else in Europe. There are quite a few things like that, unfortunately, folk knowledge handed down through generations and not recorded, but presumably this is more than that because it was known to contain iodine. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some kind of halophyte, although some plants are dynamic accumulators, which are able to concentrate particular elements in themselves well above the concentration in the soil. Comfrey and dandelion both do this with potassium, for example. |
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It'd be really disappointing if it turned out to be a halophyte, actually. |
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However, God i wish i knew what it was. Then there's laser as well. That's well extinct. |
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Concerning walnuts, they stain the skin, but they would do anyway because they're high in tannins. I don't know if they're high in iodine, but i do know they grow here, where there's hardly any iodine in the soil, so if they are it means either that they're dynamic accumulators of iodine or that they don't always contain it (or that they can transmute!) |
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//Then there's laser as well. That's well
extinct.// This gets stranger and
curiouser. I'm assuming this isn't an
optical device you're referring to. |
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Laser is another word for silphium, a plant in the celery family which grew in the Mediterranean until Roman times and then died out. There is a plant now called laser which is related, but it isn't the original one. It's related to asafoetida and was used as a female contraceptive. There are some male ones too, incidentally, but a male contraceptive is a bit pointless really, i think. I've got a patient who wants some though. |
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Intriguing. Incidentally, I've noticed that
some packaged foods include, in their
"allergy warning list", the phrase "contains
celery". I'd always wondered how the hell
someone could have a problem with celery
- is it related to this silphium/laser/
asafoetida business? |
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Very weird. Presumably, amongst a 6-
billion population, it's possible to find
someone with a dangerous allergy to
almost anything. Once these people have
been found, we can remove all the allergy
warnings from packets, and simply add the
words "WARNING: contains.." to the
beginning of the ingredients list. |
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Nut allergy always seems completely bizarre to me because it includes almost completely unrelated plants such as peanuts and pine nuts. I think it's to do with fungal infestation and i think there's a hapten connection. It occurred to me this morning that cola might be a problem because of Cola nuts, but it seems not to be. Maybe they're like nutmeg in that way. |
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Incidentally, i'm aware not everyone is allergic to peanuts as well as tree nuts but it still doesn't explain pine nuts and, say, hazelnuts. |
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The one that intrigues me is allergy to teflon - that's essentially an inert compound! (Reads a little - ah, the allergy is to the stuff it's made from, which presumably contaminates the finished product.) |
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This idea sounds like a lot of bullshit. |
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//a reaction to specific protein// I
think
(though I'm not sure how I know this)
that
the main suspects are lectins (a class of
proteins). There are many different
types,
so I'm not sure why peanut lectins (or
those in true nuts, or in legumes -
which
can also cause allergies) are so
problematic. |
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It's odd that the topic has returned to
nuts, after my initial annotation of //
Just because everyone thinks you're
nuts, it doesn't mean you aren't//. |
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So, what's happening genetically? The thing that gets me is that it happens with pine nuts, which aren't even flowering plants, and various dicots. It can't be a substance found in other seeds because it sets people off in tiny quantities and they'd then be allergic to a whole load of other stuff. They do tend to be allergic to sesame seeds, but not, for example, coconut. Therefore, if it is a particular set of proteins, i can't see how they wouldn't have evolved twice separately. Are they maybe a throwback to something? Also, what about apple pips? Almonds are nuts and apple pips are like tiny almonds, but i haven't heard anything about people being allergic to apple pips. |
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[DrCurry], have you come across the phenomenon of allergy to tap water? It's something to do with the way it's treated. |
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There do tend to be a lot of compounds found throughout plants which are more concentrated in the seeds. Also, seeds tend to be more poisonous, presumably for reasons of natural selection. This is also useful because of the principle of smaller doses of poisons having pharmacological actions. |
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//This is also useful because of the
principle of smaller doses of poisons
having pharmacological actions.// < Looks
intently at [nineteenthly] for signs of latent
homeopathic tendencies> |
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[UB] I see you're using the approved
incantation to ward off superstitious belief
systems. |
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You know, lost in all of this interesting tangent is the rolling-on-floor hilarity of the opening clause of the idea: |
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//while rummaging to find a heart disease cure // |
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No, nothing to do with homoeopathy. Generally, drugs with a physiological action are toxic in larger doses, for instance digoxin, warfarin, paracetamol/acetaminophen. All i'm saying is that it's possible to overdose on drugs, and poison is poison because it changes physiology in fatal ways. A smaller dose of the same substance changes physiology non-fatally. This may or may not be a useful change. I'm not suggesting the complete absence of a compound has an action, as claimed in homoeopathy. Small dose of vitamin A - see in the dark; large dose of vitamin A - death from liver damage. Small dose of warfarin - lower risk of DVTs; high dose - rat poison. |
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//nothing to do with homoeopathy.// In
that case, [nineteenthly], let me offer you
this martini with an olive branch in it, and
welcome you back to the fold of rational
beings with my apologies. |
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Thanks. There is a reason i'm not a homoeopath, but i can understand the confusion. |
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To be honest, i want out of this line of work because it's impossible to make a living. Roll on philosophical counselling practice. |
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You know what you need,
[nineteenthly]? You need a good ome.
It's worked wonders for others. People
who did genetics used to struggle until
they called it genomics - now the
money is rolling in. Likewise, protein
chemists were struggling until they
called it proteomics. Biochemists have
rebranded their discipline
'metabolomics', and are swimming in
cash. Omeless biologists are really
struggling, and are campaigning for the
introduction of "ecologomics" and, as a
safety net for the remainder,
"biologomics". |
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So, how about becoming the world's
first phytopharmaconomics expert? |
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You could study garden ornaments -
gnomics. |
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There's pharmacognosy, which has got the -gno-, so that's part way to being a gnome at least. |
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A bit of economics wouldn't go amiss either. I was quite impressed by the Pareto Principle the other week, so maybe there's more. |
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// I was quite impressed by the Pareto
Principle// Is that like Pilates? |
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It's the rule that a minority of the inputs provide a majority of the outputs, so for example in a business, 20% of the customers provide 80% of the profits. |
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Pilates also begins with a P. Maybe i should get a pgnomic. |
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Indeed, and i can see how to apply it in lots of areas, for example it means i only need to keep twenty percent of my remedies in stock to treat eighty percent of the problems i can treat and that if i give, say, five pieces of advice to a client and they follow all of them, one measure will make most of the difference. |
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I want to know about other principles which are like that. I'd also like to see a mathematical proof of the Pareto Principle. |
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My wife is allergic to tree nuts but not peanuts. Conversely, my nephew was - puberty fixed this - allergic to peanuts but not to tree nuts. |
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Hormonal changes affected both of them. Up until a few years ago, my wife could have tree nuts if she wanted them. Not in any great quantity, but she could have ~3-4oz per week with no ill effects. Now she becomes quite ill with just one cashew. |
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Which means there are more cashews for me. BWAhahaha. |
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Thanks, [UnaBubba], it's really been bugging me. |
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I have heard that nut allergies change with age, but it'd be difficult to trust that, even if it'd been corroborated in vitro, and you knew you'd probably die if it was wrong. |
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I'm hypo. As a result I avoid products containing soy, as its a known suppressent. I've discovered that it is a reasonably hard thing to do, however. |
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//I'm hypo// I'm Pareto! 20% of my ideas account for 80% of my buns. 80% of my ideas account for 100% of my bones. Go Figure? |
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[If you want a tagline, "Unhampered by intelligence", more like.] |
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20% of my food accounts for 80% of my fat? |
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Yes, it really does, chances are. A good example, and useful to me. |
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//cola might be a problem because of Cola nuts// |
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I'm fairly sure modern cola formulations don't have cola nuts in them. |
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Thanks, [UnaBubba], interesting. I had a plan to use home made cola to deliver herbs to children as a way of disguising the taste, but the problem is the pH. I might still do this. There are other colas in this country which do contain Cola nuts. If Coca Cola does, and if they are a problem in nut allergy, that would presumably mean Coca Cola would be marked. |
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Why is corn syrup not kosher? |
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This isn't about kosher in general, it's about kosher for Passover - corn is in a food group called "kitniot" with various domestic grains and legumes, which large Jewish populations (specifically, Ashkenazim; majority in US/Europe, minority in Israel) don't allow during Passover. Hence the seasonal appearance of non-corn-syrup coke, beloved by New York's Jewish and Goyim coke snobs alike. More on passover coke -> link. |
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Corn syrup is evil incarnate. Almost as evil as soy. |
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// Coca-Cola may or may not contain Kola extract // |
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Contains Koala nuts ? EEEEEEeeeeeeeeewwwwww |
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