Posted onJune 4, 2022|Comments Off on QOTD: John Wilder on Medical Care
“Stay away from doctors as much as you can.”
You’re not familiar with John Wilder but you should be. Take the following with a grain of salt; Wilder is a jokester:
Medical care. In general, the very best medical advice I’ve seen says to stay away from doctors as much as you can. Eat healthy food. Get exercise. Stay hydrated. Wash your hands. Try not to get crushed under heavy things. Avoid Chicago.
The problem is that none of this is very profitable for the medical industry. Healthy people are lousy customers. Goldman Sachs® asked it themselves, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Yes, this is a real quote.
Well, no, curing patients doesn’t work for big financial companies – they hate that idea. No one makes money off of diet foods if you maintain a healthy weight. No one makes money off of insulin if you can avoid diabetes. And they actually want you to get cancer. This is again a comment from the same Goldman Sachs® report: “Where an incident pool remains stable (e.g., in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise.”
Posted onMay 30, 2022|Comments Off on Loss of Trust in Physicians
From WebMD: “Comorbidity is a medical term that you may have heard your doctor use. It describes the existence of more than one disease or condition within your body at the same time. Comorbidities are usually long-term, or chronic. They may or may not interact with each other.”
Although we are all dealing with COmorVIDities, anyone who has COmorVIDities from the vaccine can place them purely at the feet of the medical community. You might say, “But JC, the government and companies required it of Employees.”. Although this appears true on it’s face, if the medical community had stood up and acted on the, “First do no harm.” oath they took as medical providers, the government and businesses wouldn’t have had anywhere to go but “STOP”.
One of the COmorVIDities I now have, is a fear that anything I am told by any medical provider, whether for my kids or myself, is BS and aimed at padding their pocket. The majority of them have proven they will take kickbacks from the GOV or Big Pharma, over providing quality medical care.
I actually questioned my Child’s Pediatrician, when she was getting a normal childhood vaccine, because it didn’t sound like the ones my other three kids had received over the last 24 years. Why? Because I no longer trust them to do the right thing for their Patients.
Although I know some good Doctors and Nurses, I believe most of them were forced out of what is considered, “The Medical Community”, because they weren’t foolish enough to get the vaccine, or wanted to be able to prescribe “Non-Approved by Big Pharma” treatments. Most of those left are getting their “30 Pieces of Silver” from Big Pharma and the GOV, and couldn’t be happier.
I am a hospitalist. Most of the physicians I know are frontline in-the-trenches doctors taking care of patients and in no position of authority over hospital administrators, business administrators, and public health authorities.
I remember only two things from the first day of medical school, spoken by an Asian professor:
“If you’re sitting here today, you probably have an IQ of at least 120.” (So don’t worry, you can handle the workload.)
Most of medical school, which typically lasts four years, involves memorization of massive amounts of information, which you regurgitate and on a test and have forgotten a month later. It is not fun, to say the least. Medical students have actually done more analytic thinking while acquiring their undergraduate degrees and in high school. After med school, physicians spend at least three to five years in a residency that also requires incredible memorization, but you tend to retain more since it is clinically relevant. Much of the actual thinking of a practicing physician revolves around establishing a diagnosis and formulating a rational treatment plan. Even then, much of the diagnosis is made by high-tech imaging and blood tests, so the doctor has to do less thinking than our predecessors of 40 years ago. Similarly, we have “clinical practice guidelines” that are composed by “authoritative” committees, telling us how to treat specific conditions. If we follow those guidelines, we may be more likely to retain our jobs, earn a salary bonus, and prevail in malpractice lawsuits. Physicians who think and question the guidelines are too often seen as trouble-makers. Unlike 40 years ago, a majority of physicians are not independent, but are employed by large organizations that tend to control them via a paycheck.
My point is: Many practicing physicians don’t have to do much thinking, so they don’t. Sad, but true.
So JC Dodqe is right to question his child’s pediatrician.
Steve Parker, M.D.
PS: One of the reasons for specialization is that there is so much to learn in any given field, there’s just no time or mental capacity to keep up with less pertinent aspects of medicine. An orthopedic surgeon doesn’t need to know much at all about heart failure, diabetes, and anemia. That’s my job.
One of the nation’s leading public health experts has slammed the CDC’s top advisory panel over its approval of Covid booster shots for children as young as five years old – just as leading jab manufacturer Pfizer reveals plans to submit an application to give the shots to babies as young as six-months this week.
Dr Marty Makary, a public health expert from Johns Hopkins University, told DailyMaill.com that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is a ‘kangaroo court’ full of nothing but like-minded individuals pushing what he describes as ‘low value care’.
He also said that they never have seen a vaccine they would not approve, and that others who had previously gone against the pro-jab dogma had been forced off of the panel.
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) has signed a bill that makes ivermectin, an antiviral drug that has been found to be an effective early treatment for COVID-19, available in the state without a prescription.
Lee signed SB 2188, approved by the State Senate, 66-20, and the State House, 22-6, which authorizes a pharmacist to provide ivermectin to patients 18 years of age or older, “pursuant to a valid collaborative pharmacy practice agreement containing a non-patient-specific prescriptive order and standardized procedures developed and executed by one or more authorized prescribers.”
Liberty Counsel, a Christian ministry and litigation firm, noted about the legislation:
“That means that adults can explain their symptoms to the pharmacist, fill out a sheet listing any preexisting conditions and other medications they are taking, and the pharmacist can determine the right dosage.”
Joe Biden’s plans for a Ministry of Truth are tabled for now. This video may have contributed to its (hopefully permanent) demise. Or his lawyers finally convinced him the Ministry of Truth was unconstitutional. Ever heard of the 1st Amendment, Joe?
The agency is now only authorizing the pharmaceutical giant’s Janssen COVID vaccine to people 18 or older for whom other authorized or approved vaccines are not accessible or clinically appropriate, and to those 18 years or older who otherwise would not get a COVID vaccine.
The decision comes following an investigation into reports of thrombosis and thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) – a rare and potentially life-threatening disease that creates blood clots and creates low levels of blood platelets – from those who have received the vaccine.
There have been 60 confirmed cases, including nine fatalities, through March 18, 2022 from the nearly 19 million doses administered nationwide. The FDA determined that the reporting rate of TTS is 3.23 per million doses of the vaccine administered, and the reporting rate of TTS deaths is 0.48 per million doss of vaccines administered.
Symptoms began in the confirmed cases about one to two weeks after the individual received the vaccine.
We haven’t seen much of the J&J vax in south central Arizona. Mostly Pfizer and Moderna.
Is it too soon for a COVID 45 retrospective? Perhaps. [I don’t know why he calls it COVID 45] I suspect COVID is going nowhere in my lifetime, as the current, likely undercounted, surge indicates. But there are two endpoints that could mark the end of the COVID pandemic. One is that the infection goes away. Never gonna happen. The other is when as a society we transition back to normal and at some level decide to live with COVID. I marked that point when the US resumed mass killings. Sadly, back to business as usual.
….It is impressive how the R0, the number of people that a single infected person can be expected to infect, goes up with each variant. I suspect the increasing infectivity, but not virulence, is a result of our half-assed approach to COVID infection control. With semi-masking, semi-social distancing, and semi-vaccination, we have probably been selecting for more infectious strains of COVID.
….The other reason COVID is going nowhere is the relative lack of immunity after vaccination and disease. The vaccine is still great for preventing severe illness and death, both good endpoints, but with emerging variants partially evading prior immunity and large, in both numbers and BMI, populations of unvaccinated people, this virus will continue to circulate forever. Omicron seems particularly good at causing reinfection.
….COVID looks to be a perfect storm for perpetual disease: genetic variation, marginal immunity, half-assed infection control, and a susceptible population. Like what we have seen for the at least 500 years with influenza.
….Like all ID docs, I prefer prevention over treatment, and preventing, or at least decreasing, the spread of COVID is simple. Mask and vaccine.
….The six-foot rule? I never bought into that one. In the hospital, where the infected patient is spewing infected droplets while lying in bed not moving in a room with hospital air handling, six feet of distance to prevent droplet spread is reasonable. The patient isn’t going anywhere and the air is being turned over rapidly.
….The slow course of the disease [in its early progression to death] is also why interventions directed at the virus seem to do so little. As a clinician, I can’t tell that remdesiver, or any treatment, is doing all that much.
….But steroids and other immunomodulators are effective in treating the late inflammatory phase of COVID and that surprised me. Immumomodulation has a dismal treatment record for most infectious disease, it was nice to see it work.
Study participants were enrolled from Nov 2020 to Feb 2021. So probably before the delta and omicron variants. Outpatients were assigned either to a “standard program” of home monitoring or the standard program + pulse oximetry. There was no difference between groups in terms of “number of days alive and out of the hospital.” For the 30-day trial, that number was 29.4-29.5. In other words, very few of the ~1000 enrolees got very sick.
Pulse oximeters are readily available in the U.S. for ~$40.
The standard program was “COVID Watch, a 2-week program involving twice-daily automated text messages inquiring about dyspnea and offering rapid callbacks from nurses when appropriate. This program has been associated with improved survival as compared with no remote monitoring.5“
I spent about 10 mins trying to find the age of these patients. No luck. I don’t even now if they were adult. Thanks, NEJM. I’m not totally convinced that outpatient oximetry has no role in home treatment of COVID-19. But clearly not every patient needs it. Perhaps just those at high risk of hospitalization and death.
Americans are now entering uncharted, revolutionary territory. They may witness things over the next five months that once would have seemed unimaginable.
Until the Ukrainian conflict, we had never witnessed a major land war inside Europe directly involving a nuclear power.
In desperation, Russia’s impaired and unhinged leader Vladimir Putin now talks trash about the likelihood of nuclear war.
A 79-year-old Joe Biden bellows back that his war-losing nuclear adversary is a murderer, a war criminal, and a butcher who should be removed from power.
After a year of politicizing the U.S. military and its self-induced catastrophe in Afghanistan, America has lost deterrence abroad. China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia are conniving how best to exploit this rare window of global military opportunity.
The traditional bedrocks of the American system—a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system—are dissolving.
Gas and diesel prices are hitting historic levels. Inflation is at a 40-year high. New cars and homes are unaffordable. The necessary remedy of high interest and tight money will be almost as bad as the disease of hyperinflation.
There is no southern border.
Expect over 1 million foreign nationals to swarm this summer into the United States without audit, COVID testing, or vaccination. None will have any worry of consequences for breaking U.S. immigration law.
Police are underfunded and increasingly defunded. District attorneys deliberately release violent criminals without charges. (Literally 10,000 people witnessed a deranged man with a knife attack comedian Dave Chappelle on stage at the Hollywood Bowl last week, and the Los Angeles County D.A. refused to press felony charges.) Murder and assault are spiraling. Carjacking and smash-and-grab thefts are now normal big-city events.
Crime is now mostly a political matter. Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.
Supermarket shelves are thinning, and meats are now beyond the budgets of millions of Americans. An American president—in a first—casually warns of food shortages. Baby formula has disappeared from many shelves.
Politics resembles the violent last days of the Roman Republic. An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria.
Never has a White House tacitly approved mobs of protesters showing up at Supreme Court justices’ homes to rant and bully them into altering their votes.
There is no free speech anymore on campuses.
Life may well get very tough, very soon. VDH didn’t dwell on the risk of upcoming famine. Are you ready? You need to be lean and physically tough. Let me help.
Posted onMay 17, 2022|Comments Off on Recipe: Japanese-Style Avocado and Salmon Salad
If image owner (who?) objects to me posting the image, let me know and I’ll delete it.
This looks and sounds intriguing but I haven’t tried it yet. I’ve never combined avocado and salmon in an entree. I never imagined I’d like avocado in chicken soup, but it’s become a Parker Compound favorite.
Posted onMay 1, 2022|Comments Off on #COVID-19 Link Dump: Dr Bhattacharya Overview of U.S. Pandemic Response, Political Influence Over CDC and FDA, the New “Ministry of Truth”
Are you tired of this pic yet?
Nick Gillespie interview of Dr Jay Bhattacharya in April. 2022 regarding the U.S. response to CO VID-19:
Who’s Bhattaharya? A Stanford professor of medicine (so an M.D.) who also has a PhD in economics. Notes I took during the video:
Lockdowns increased worldwide poverty, leading to deaths and other adverse effects that were not accounted for prior to lockdown implementation. (I’m on record as being against lockdowns and school-closings as of April 2, 2020.)
CDC and FDA officials ‘altered’ Covid guidance and even ‘suppressed’ findings related to the virus due to political pressure, a bombshell report suggests.
Investigators from the watchdog Government Accountability Office (GAO) spoke to more than a dozen directors and managers who worked at the agencies behind the country’s pandemic guidance.
They unearthed allegations of ‘political interference’ in scientific reports, raising fears that research was tampered with.
You didn’t see this on Fox, CNN, MSNBC, our your local news station, did you?
Comments Off on #COVID-19 Link Dump: Dr Bhattacharya Overview of U.S. Pandemic Response, Political Influence Over CDC and FDA, the New “Ministry of Truth”
Posted onApril 30, 2022|Comments Off on Does MCT Oil Help in Alzeimer Disease?
One in four adults over 80 has Alzheimer Disease Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com
The study at hand was very small, only 20 participants. So results may not be reproducible. The Canadian researchers’ main conclusion: “This is the longest duration MCT Alzheimer Disease study to date. Eighty percent had stabilization or improvement in cognition, and better response with 9‐month continual MCT oil.”
MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides, which apparently are derived from coconut and palm oil. The MCTs provide a source of energy for the brain – ketones – as a partial substitute for the brain’s usual energy source, glucose.
Study participants as expected were elderly and had mild to moderate Alzheimer Disease. Folks with diabetes were excluded from participation.
The article introduction has some interesting facts:
The brain is an obligate glucose metabolizer using 120 to 130 g/day of glucose. It uses 16% of the body’s total O2 consumption, despite representing only 2.0% to 2.3% of adult body weight. In conditions of low carbohydrate intake or fasting, the body uses ketones (acetoacetate and beta hydroxybutyrate [BHB]) as an alternative energy source to glucose. Ketones are normally generated in fasting states from beta‐oxidation of adipose stores to maintain cerebral function. In long‐term fasting, ketones can supply > 60% of the brain’s energy requirements, and are preferentially taken up by the brain over glucose. This occurs in cognitively normal younger and older adults, as well as in those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD.
Ketones can also be induced with a very low carbohydrate high fat (VLCHF) diet. Medium chain triglyceride (MCT) oil has the potential to produce a nutritional source of ketones for an alternative brain fuel to glucose, or by the consumption of MCT oil or esterases in freeze‐dried form. This is independent of the fasting state or carbohydrate intake. Long‐term compliance with fasting or VLCHF and LCHF diet regimes is challenging and requires strict medical supervision. Hence, the potential advantage of nutritional ketone sources (MCT) over these restrictive diets. Our recent study showed a clear dose‐dependent effect on ketone (BHB) generation with varying doses of MCT supplementation, and was found to be equivalent in young, elderly, and AD subjects.
In Alzheimer Disease (AD), the brain is unable to use glucose normally, causing hypofunction of 20% to 40% in key areas of the brain responsible for the symptoms in AD.
The MCT oil used was Bulletproof Brain Octane ® (NPN 80057199). Are other MCT oils just as good? Hell if I know. The goal dose was three tablespoons (15 ml) daily. My sense is that it was recommended as one tablespoon (15 ml) three times daily. The average consumption ended up as two tablespoons daily. Caregivers were in charge of dosing and they tended to forget or omit the lunchtime dose. Some study participants had limited dosing due to MCT side effects: abdominal pain, diarrhea, or vomiting.
Conclusion:
This study shows that participants taking MCT supplementation for 11 months continuously did better cognitively than their peers who had their 11 months of MCT interrupted by 4 months of placebo (olive) oil. Given that most patients should experience a drop in their cognitive scores over the 15 months, the fact that those on longer continuous MCT did not, could be a sample size error for the outcomes other than Montreal Cognitive Assessment, but it could also be that the difference in scores (showing stability) is valid.
In other words, MCT oil didn’t improve cognition, but stabilized it. I.e., it prevented the usual expected decline over time.
Posted onApril 30, 2022|Comments Off on CT Versus Invasive Angiography in Stable Chest Pain
Heart attacks and chest pains are linked to blocked arteries in the heart
We’re all gonna die of something, right?
The #1 cause of death in the U.S. is coronary artery disease (CAD), which causes heart attacks and sudden cardiac death. Blockage in the heart arteries typically develops over years and many people are walking around not knowing it’s there. The lucky ones develop warning signs like chest pain or shortness of breath on exertion. After consulting a physician, the next step may be a “stress test” or some sort imaging of the arteries of the heart.
Angiography refers to imaging of arteries or veins. Angiography of the heart arteries is helpful in diagnosing blockage of arteries that may cause heart attacks or sudden cardiac death in the future.
CT stands for computerized tomography: x-rays obtain images that are then manipulated by computer technology to provide more information than plain x-ray technology alone. CT angiography of the heart arteries is done with iodinated contrast injected into the low-pressure venous system of circulation. In contrast, standard arterial angiography involves introduction of a needle (and catheter) into the high-pressure arterial system, usually the femoral artery in the groin or the smaller radial artery in the wrist. Standard arterial angiography is associated with a higher risk of complications such as leakage of blood from the artery. Another potential complication is embolization of arterial plaque or clots downstream from the arterial puncture. Because of the higher complication rate in the arterial system, standard angiography is considered “invasive.”
Among patients referred for invasive coronary angiography (ICA) because of stable chest pain and intermediate pretest probability of coronary artery disease, the risk of major adverse cardiovascular events was similar in the CT group and the ICA group. The frequency of major procedure-related complications was lower with an initial CT strategy.
I bet the non-invasive CT is also less expensive that standard arterial angiography.
Advanced Mediterranean Diet 