Nov 12 2021 - Diseases and Not Diseases

 

When is something a disease vs a medical condition?  I find out in about 30 seconds that don't know anything about medical concepts.  Disease is a general term, and that would make COVID-19 a disease.  Here's a definition: human disease, an impairment of the normal state of a human being that interrupts or modifies its vital functions. Maybe I am looking for distinctions such as the types of disease. I find an article that outlines four main types: infectious diseases, deficiency diseases, hereditary diseases (including both genetic diseases and non-genetic hereditary diseases), and physiological diseases. So that is pretty extensive.  Maybe the question might be this:  what is a non-disease? I always find that someone has asked this before me.  The British Medical Journal asked this question.   "On 13 April we published a theme issue on the medicalisation of human experience ("Too much medicine?"), which included an article on non-diseases. By "non-disease" we mean "a human process or problem that some have defined as a medical condition but where people may have better outcomes if the problem or process was not defined in that way." We are not suggesting that the suffering of people with these "non-diseases" is not genuine. The suffering of many with "non-diseases" may be much greater than those with widely recognised diseases. Disease is a very slippery concept. After asking readers to suggest non-diseases, we invited them to vote for the 10 conditions that best fitted our definition." Here are the results of that ballot, in which 570 people voted. Condition: ageing Work Boredom Bags under eyes Ignorance balkness Freckles Big ears... and so on as the list is long They acknowledge that some critics thought it an absurd exercise, but our primary aim was to illustrate the slipperiness of the notion of disease. We wanted to prompt a debate on what is and what is not a disease and draw attention to the increasing tendency to classify people's problems as diseases. This works for me.  Medical people voting on what is a non-disease.  Let's conclude with this joke, or sort of joke: A woman walks into a doctor’s office and sits down in the waiting room. Whem it’s her turn to talk to the doctor, she describes all of her symptoms, and they’re unlike anything he’s heard before. The doctor runs a number of tests. When she returns for the results, he says, ‘Well I have good news and bad news.’ The woman replies, ‘I’ll hear the good news first please.’ The doctor replies ‘The good news is we’re naming a disease after you. On to the absurd:  I found this happy birthday greeting I made - this is the St. Augustine alligator pond at the zoological park. An alligator can jump six feet into the air.  That looks close to six feet to me.

Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 18 2021 - The Disease of Aging

 

Surprise!  Aging is not classified as a disease by the US Food and Drug Administration.  As a result, it does not have a regulatory process to approve a drug for it.  Is that good or bad? What's really interesting is the RAAD Festival - (Revolution Against Aging and Death).  It has the latest longevity strategies and findings from the brightest innovators in the industry.  It is about "curing" death, which is considered an unnecessary evil and it is about reversing human aging.  All the details are in this article HERE.  In the conference, futurist Ray Kurzweil speaks of the escape velocity philosophy, which claims that, with scientific advancement, your body rejuvenates faster than its disintegrates. That way, you will always just be escaping death’s claws. To get to that point though, he says, stick around to 2050, when he believes science will take a quantum leap. Basically, live long enough to live forever. Leaving RAAD to the extreme enthusiasts, there is work underway to help you just live "better" during your final chapter.  Along the continuum "of hope", there is the study that says to increase the chances of a long life, take up at least 7,000 steps a day or play sports for more than 2.5 hours per week. These studies are about reducing the risk of premature death.  There's a lot more to come on the anti-aging revolution - there's so many of us who are aging. With this huge market,  research is increasing.  Take the Google-backed research company Calico.  It is looking into the anti-aging coenzyme Nicotinaide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+). There's $1.5 billion invested in this study.  You can already buy this in supplement form. Take a look HERE.  Coming up by the end of this year will be young blood transfusions clinics opening in New York City.   On my first read on this subject, these seem to be people who are slightly "whacko", but who am I to judge?  Even McMaster University has extensive evidence-based information on aging resources.  So this is quite the topic to research - look at all the titles:  there's the official anti-aging revolution, there's anticipating the anti-aging revolution, are you ready for the real anti-aging revolution and powerful anti-aging properties. These two images are in the working title series "Plaid City".

Those Rose Thorns

I am always victim to rose thorns in the garden. Enter garden, do a little work, get a rose thorn in the finger.  And the result?  Pain and swelling from the tiniest rose thorn.  Who do these tiny rose thorns hurt so much? Ask an expert: "DEAR DR. GOTT: Last spring, I contracted rose-thorn disease. Very painful and extreme swelling occurred in just one finger. I was in the hospital for days under sedation and on antifungal meds. I’m still having stiffness and swelling in that finger now and then. When will this go away? I must say, everything is not coming up roses here." DEAR READER: Rose-thorn (or rose gardener’s) disease has the technical name of sporothrix schenckii. It is a fungus that resides on hay, sphagnum mosses and the tips of rose thorns. It can cause infection, redness, swelling and open ulcers at the puncture site. The fungus can spread to the lymphatic system and move on to the joints and bones, where it ends up attacking the central nervous system and lungs when the thorn or thorns are deeply embedded.  Diagnosis can be complicated because the condition is relatively uncommon. When an ulcer does present, it is often mistaken by a physician as a staph or strep infection and gets treated accordingly.  It is only when the antibiotics prescribed fail to eradicate the ulcer that physicians look outside the box." Read the rest HERE. Doesn't it give this field of roses new meaning! Here's the upcoming meet and greet this Sunday in Hamilton on Dundurn St. S.