I've been using zinc suckies as a form of prophylaxis against respiratory viruses for a while now. There's actually some research that suggests it's effective at preventing cold virus particles from attaching to and invading the throat, so it doesn't surprise me that it would also be effective against COVID-19 (which is kind of a super-Saiyan cold virus).
How often do you take them? I have some that advise to stop using after seven days, which leaves me wondering whether I should take them as a precaution or take them if I feel any early indicators of a virus. Also, I notice that they dry out my tongue.
Do you mind sharing how many mg (milligrams) of zinc are in the one you have which advises to limit use to 7 days? I noticed that the Mayo clinic site says the maximum dose per day for an adult is 40 mg. I'm curious whether this 40 mg is safe for indefinite use, or such a 40 mg limit would also be for a maximum of 7 days.
The Quinism Foundation Warns of Dangers from Use of Antimalarial Quinolines Against COVID‑19.
"Use of Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine, Mefloquine, Quinine, and Related Quinoline Drugs Risks Sudden and Lasting Neuropsychiatric Effects from Idiosyncratic Neurotoxicity."
The Anit-Malaria drugs They are pushing have a common ancestor to Fluoroquinolone antibiotics have MANY FDA warnings. The FDA says they should not be used unless all other options have been exhausted.
Those that have already been devastated by Fluoroquinolones are extremely upset to hear that a related quinolines drug is being proposed. While these two drugs are technically in a different class, they share some common ancestors. They both share many of the devastating side effects.
I have put all the FDA warnings for Fluoroquinolone antibiotics on my late wife's website. Levaquin was a significant contributor to Karen's suicide. :-(
Respectfully, though I understand your effort to warn others, I think it is dangerous at this time to conflate chloroquine derivatives with Chloroquine. Single substitutions in biologically active compounds can cause drastically different effects including substantially different therapeutic ratios. Compare for example the various drugs in the amphetamine family (methamphetamine, amphetamine, MDMA, etc). They are not equally dangerous.
Similarly, the terrible results you report are AFAIK rare with Chloroquine. It is a well tolerated drug and if you're an older or immunocompromised patient playing Russian roulette with a late stage COVID19 infection, the minimal risk is highly preferable to no treatment.
> Those that have already been devastated by Fluoroquinolones are extremely upset to hear that a related quinolines drug is being proposed.
Raising awareness of the risks based on your personal experiences is reasonable. But the above statement seems to cross the line into irrationality by pre-deciding that quinolines aren't worth trying here. That casts doubt on whatever scientific arguments you put forth, because it doesn't seem like you're capable of being fair about this.
The problem is things have gone to far the other way now.
Those with Chronic Pain are now committing suicide (as did my wife) when they are let to suffer.
The CDC itself stated in April of 2019:
"CDC Advises Against Misapplication of the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain
Some policies, practices attributed to the Guideline are inconsistent with its recommendations"
Sadly the medical community is not getting that message due to this mater now becoming political.
We posted at the same time, see my comment above yours about the documentary Pain Warriors.
Dr Mark Ibsen is one of the five stories. He lost everything for helping those with Chronic Pain. Five of his patients killed themselves when he was no longer able to prescribe. The medical board said he was over prescribing, that blood is on the boards hands. The arbitrator/judge in the case said that Mark did not do anything wrong, yet The System destroyed him.
Yes it is a rough field. I see it every single day in advocating for those that the Medical Establishment has forsaken.
There are bad doctors, there are bad people writing medical software as this thread explains. They need dealt with.
Pain Warriors documentary about Chronic Pain and medical establishment teaser is on my YouTube channel.
Read the reviews of those that have seen the full movie previews.
Fluoroquinolone antibiotics such as Levaquin (no longer manufactured, only generics now [you can not sue the makers of generics in most states]), Cipro etc. should be removed from the market due to their devastating side effects.
My late wife's Journal was part of the 2015 FDA hearing about getting these restricted from doctors giving them out like candy. Alas all we got was yet more "Black Box" warnings that you and the doctors never see.
Karen ultimately killed herself from the Chronic Pain cause by the Levaquin and Cerebrospinal Leaks (CSF Leaks). Her saga is one of the five stories in the upcoming documentary Pain Warriors being released to distribution this spring.
I'm now up to 44 people that have told me that their own CSF Leak started after taking Levaquin, Cipro etc. Something that there is ZERO medical research on. The Leak doctors are aware of this as I spoke about it at their first ever CSF Leak conference.
Someone here will inevitably say "I took Cipro et.al just fine". Many people do take it may times until they have a reaction or they don't associate their new health problems with the delayed reaction months later.
Antibiotics in general are a good thing, however we must never assume they are safe in and of themselves without consequences.
Someone here will inevitably say "I took Cipro et.al just fine".
A lot of my childhood was spent in hospitals, and I've had a variety of antibiotics over the years. And anesthetics, I've become quite the connoisseur. I'm not allergic to anything, I've never had a reaction of any kind to any drug. Not even allergic to any foods. Bring on the shrimp and peanuts!
I was recently given Cipro. My entire back broke out in a rash. Not a devastating side effect, but after a lifetime of a variety of drugs of all sorts without any but the desired effect, it sure made me go "WTF? You sure this shit's safe?"
I thank you for sharing your story and I can't even imagine the pain your wife and you went through.
I do think that even though there are dangerous drugs, there are costs to making the use more expensive or harder to get. All drugs have side effects and some are truly devastating and the best way to handle that risk/reward tolerance is talking to a provider and managing it. The same way some drugs create dependence, the lack of them also cause enormous pain, and their increased price also create inaccessibility.
There is definitely a rampant culture of consuming pharmacological products in the US: maybe there are things that are causing the US society to be so dependent on drugs that can be addressed.
I've gathered all of the FDA warnings and some of the EU warnings (they say don't use them) at the link below.
The FDA itself says these should not be used until all other possibilities have been exhausted. Sadly the doctors are not getting the message and are giving them out like candy.
Cipro was a weird one; it was "omg last resort top of the line" there for a bit; then Amerithrax happened and the shit was being handed out like candy; and a few years later my dog gets it post-op "for the rest of her life".
I doubt the story of how that happened, the corruption and stupidity that enabled it, will ever make it out of the land of "conspiracy theorist ravings" ... but it should.
Good. They almost killed my late wife and I.
While we were on board I watched the Shuttle driver force a car up onto the side walk to avoid a collision. If anyone had been standing at that corner they would have been killed. That was only one incident in a half hour ride!
In LA I found it was cheaper to have a Limo on call than use a taxi and more reliable than the ride sharing services. The Limo driver made it seem more like a tour explaining the things we drove by, unlike they others that had no interest in anything other than our $.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been archiving the FDA.gov site at archive-it.org .
Leaving a lot of dead links on the FDA site.
Sometimes they tell you to look in the archives for the old information, without giving you a link to it, and sometimes they don't, they just expect you to know.
Now why can't the FDA afford the space to keep their pages forever on their own site? Fill in your favorite conspiracy theory...
Some of the information that has been removed, such as the 2015 hearings on Fluoroquinolone antibiotics, are important health research as just one example.
> Now why can't the FDA afford the space to keep their pages forever on their own site? Fill in your favorite conspiracy theory...
This seems like a prime example of Hanlon's razor. Tight government budgets and lowest-bidder contractors not bothering with page permanence strike me as the most likely explanation.
It may also be worth observing that it's how pretty much any private company website operates. Arguably the FDA should be different and archive old, even outdated, content. But, while private companies may explicitly archive some materials like press releases and earnings reports, 99.9% of their focus is on the current content and they'll mostly just delete anything that's not in service of today.
It's not limited to the FDA, in the last 3-4 years many US agencies have purged data from their websites, and in some cases the employees themselves have protested this in public and begged people to make archives. It's great to have multiple archive sources for that stuff because you never know when it's going to disappear if politics are involved.
I was there this summer.
Well over a 100 years old and some of the original equipment is still running. Sad that our modern equipment has little hope of that.
There are lot of examples, studies and experiment on retro causality in the field of Parapsychology. So this is not at all 'the first'.
"Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications" by Dean Radin is one that happens to be laying on my desk right now.
A new book by by Theresa Cheung and Julia Mossbridge, "The Premonition Code" gets into some of the science.
Ms. Mossbridge has published several papers and a few YouTube Videos about 'Time'.
The field of Parapsychology generally gets dismissed to easily. The top people know they will get criticized, so they tend to design their experiments and statistics to standards higher than most if not all fields of study.
If Parapsychologist presented the data that was given as 'Proof' of the Higgs boson, as shown by a small statistical bump in the data, they would have gotten their ass handed to them had they presented the same data has proof of any of their experiments.
Optical Phase Conjugation is also interesting in that it involves apparent negative time. Let you do things like a see through frosted glass. True Hacker material...
"The field of Parapsychology generally gets dismissed to easily. The top people know they will get criticized, so they tend to design their experiments and statistics to standards higher than most if not all fields of study."
"That is, in let’s say a drug testing experiment, you give some people the drug and they recover. That doesn’t tell you much until you give some other people a placebo drug you know doesn’t work – but which they themselves believe in – and see how many of them recover."
There is actually a science of studying Placebos. It is not as simple as most think. For example the strong the drug in many trials, the stronger the Placebo effect is.
Things like the total number of trials of the drug become relative. Spatial Separation does not necessary imply Independence.
Ummm... sure? I mean, cool, sounds like an interesting subject.
But... that is not at all what the linked essay is about? There's one paragraph in a 4.5k word essay explaining what a control group is that mentions the concept of a placebo because that's a concept related to control groups that the reader might be familiar with.
Unfortunately not, ended a few years ago and the money was repurposed I assume for other ventures.
I guess its hard to keep that price going, you need skilled people (like Randi) that knows the usual tricks.
You also need to have objective people, unlike Randi.
One lady did keep passing all of his tests, all day long, so they keep fiddling with the test to "improve it".
Until the lady was completely exhausted and failed the test.
Guess which test result they used?
After this no one took Randi seriously, so no one with skill bothered.
Do you have a link for that? That's very much different from how I understand the tests were undertaken, so I'd be very interested in reading about it.
Randi's the worst kind of enemy science can have, someone who violates every principle of scientific inquiry for the sake of his own dogma, while claiming to care about the integrity of science.
You're claiming that a professional magician is a bad scientist? He's an entertainer and not a trained scientist.
Here's a statement from Randi about the dog ESP:
“I over-stated my case for doubting the reality of dog ESP based on the small amount of data I obtained,” he wrote. “It was rash and improper of me to do so. I apologise sincerely.”[1]
Sounds like he's willing to revisit his initial claims. Has there been further evidence of dog esp that you're aware of?
As sincerely as when he said he'd replicated the experiment no doubt. And if he isn't capable of reproducing an experiment, what the frack was the prize supposedly for? I don't think he'd be capable of sincerity if he tried.
As for your other question, I saw a response Sheldrake posted about someone else's rebuttal stating that if the rebuttal's raw data were analysed the way his data was, it would have led to the same conclusion. That the attempt at replication looked at the first time the dog went to the window, rather than the average time it spent at the window. Don't have a link right now though.
Dog ESP is a pretty niche experiment though, I just brought it up because it's one of the more egregious lies Randi was caught in. If you're interested in psi data, there are much larger datasets with experiments into ganzfeld and skin conductivity precognition.
This came up in a group discussion of parapsychologists that I hang out with form time to time. Some of the top people in the world. I expect you could find it covered in the Journal of Parapsychology as a place to start looking.
There are many people doing experiments with independent replication. Both experiments that succeed and fail. We learn from both. Sadly people would rather dismiss such things as impossible dogma rather than learn new things on the leading edge of science.
Sadly, with that we can't know if it's actually something that occurred, an anecdote, or something conceived of to explain a failure or bias.
What does one do to qualify as one of the "top parapsychologists"? And how do you determine which bits are "the leading edge of science" and which are just bunk?
Before dismissing something, might want to check the physics:
[Concetto R. Giuliano, 1981]
Concetto R. Giuliano, "Applications of optical phase conjugation," Physics Today, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 27-35, Apr. 1981.
Abstract: Light waves that are, in effect, time-reversed images of their original can serve to restore severely aberrated waves to their original state.
I expect you might find these obscure papers of interest:
*
Yoseph Imry and Richard A. Webb, "Quantum Interference and the Aharonov-Bohm Effect," Scientific American, vol. 260, no. 4, Apr. 1989.
Abstract: Can electrons be influenced by a nearby magnet so well shielded that its force field cannot be detected? The counter intuitive answer is yes:an energy emanation from the magnet known as the potential does indeed affect the electrons' wave function. This quantum-mechanical effect is being brought to bear on the development of new microelectronic devices.
*
Capt. Robert M. Collins (TQTR), "Soviet Research On The A-Vector Potential and Scalar Waves (U)," Unknown.
Abstract: Active in the areas of the Aharonov-Bohm effect as applied to the A-vector potential and scalar fields as applied to solving force related problems.
*
Capt. Robert M. Collins (TQTR), "Soviet Research On Unified Field Theories, False Vacuum States, and Antigravity (U)," Unknown.
Abstract: Theoretical progress in dealing with unified field theories...new concepts in weapons, transportation, propulsion.
*
Dr. Jack Dea, "Fundamental Fields and Phase Information," vol. 4, no. 3 Unknown.
Add to those the list of patents by Raymond C. Gelinas assigned to Honeywell from the 1980's and what today is being called Extended Electrodynamics as well:
L.M. Hively & G.C Giakos, “Toward a more complete electromagnetic theory”, Int. J. Signals & Imaging Syst. Engr., 5, 3-10(2012).
L.M.Hively, “Methods and Apparatus for Generating and/or Utilizing Scalar-Longitudinal Waves”, US Patent #9,306,527, (Apr. 6,2016).
L.M.Hively & O.Keller, “Electrodynamics in curved space-time: Free space longitudinal wave propagation”, Phys. Essays, 32 (3), Sept 2019.
Can't really get more up to date than a paper published this month. Sad that people will still be quick to down vote things without knowing what is going on in the world today. :-(
The original subject here was a about reversal of time.
I mixed the two subjects of Parapsychology and Optical Phase Conjugation under that heading. They have nothing to do with each other (as far as we know at the moment).
In the case of Optical Phase Conjugation that is correct. Which is why I said "apparent" in my original post.
Physics allow for -t in many places.
However in the case of psi it is about time, that is effect happens before the cause.
"... PAA [predictive anticipatory activity, an other term for Presentiment], the predictive physiological anticipation of a truly randomly selected and thus unpredictable future event, has been under investigation for more than three decades, and a recent conservative meta-analysis suggests that the phenomenon is real. ..."
My wife killed herself because of Chronic Pain.
Her saga is required reading at Duke Medical School and has become part of the documentary Pain Warriors, to be released soon. The documentary covers the lives of those miss treated by the Medial Establishment, including doctors that treat Chronic Pain.
Those with Chronic Pain are being left to suffer because of abusers. In April of 2019 the CDC stated that their "guidelines" are being miss applied. Sadly the damage is already done.
"CDC Advises Against Misapplication of the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain
Some policies, practices attributed to the Guideline are inconsistent with its recommendations.
In a new commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), authors of the 2016 CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (Guideline) advise against misapplication of the Guideline that can risk patient health and safety.
CDC commends efforts by healthcare providers and systems, quality improvement organizations, payers, and states to improve opioid prescribing and reduce opioid misuse and overdose. However, some policies and practices that cite the Guideline are inconsistent with, and go beyond, its recommendations. In the NEJM commentary, the authors outline examples of misapplication of the Guideline, and highlight advice from the Guideline that is sometimes overlooked but is critical for safe and effective implementation of the recommendations.
CDC is raising awareness about the following issues that could put patients at risk:..."
Someone I love has chronic pain managed with (legally prescribed) opioids, and they have constant low-level anxiety that a bureaucratic mixup will result in their medication being denied (or heaven forbid they lose a prescription, or that they'll need a refill when their doctor is on vacation and the locum will be 'suspicious of drug seeking behavior'.
They had to sign a document that if they lost a prescription, they understood that they would be denied a refill, even though (a) there isn't actually any reason to physically hand them the piece of paper, it could all be done between the doctor and pharmacy, and (b) people with chronic pain typically also exhibit various degrees of 'being distracted' due to that same pain.
I could go on, and TBH, my friend hasn't had any gaps in getting their medication, but the current wave of anti-opioid hysteria is concerning.
"current wave of anti-opioid hysteria is concerning"
This is not the media's fault, nor is this is not chronic pain patients' faults. This is the result of criminal corruption and abuse in the pharmaceutical industry and distribution system. There is a real and enormous problem https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/o... (opioid overdose death rates have more than quadrupled in 20 years, are at a high level already versus other causes of death at 50k annually, and are accelerating). Opioids are some of the most dangerously addictive medicines that exist, and habituation and pill selling is a huge problem that is also ruining and ultimately costing lives.
The death rate from prescription opiates has not budged since 2006[1]. The vast majority of opiate overdoses in America are not prescription opiates, but illicit fentanyl, and to a lesser extent heroin and methadone. Nor do chronic pain patients face any major risk of overdose. The fatal overdose mortality rate for long-term opiate-prescribed patients is 17 per 100,000[2]. And that number doesn't exclude the subset of the population engaged in abusive behavior like mixing with alcohol, snorting pills, or hoarding medication.
Finally the sizable majority of prescription drug abusers in this country do not source from a doctor or the healthcare system at all. The vast majority get their drugs either from the black market or a friend or relative. On the National Drug Use Survey only 18% of prescription drug abusers report doctors as their primary source. And among street prostitutes (a high at-risk group) only 5%[3].
All of this goes to show that there is very little evidence of any sort of over-prescription of opiates in America. To begin with the vast majority of the opiate crisis has to do with fentanyl, not prescription drugs. But even when it comes to prescription drug abuse, the intersection with medical users is vanishingly small.
You are correct that chronic pain patients are not a high overdose risk and that there is little to no benefit to treating their prescriptions with suspicion. (People who don't have to operate in a black market are MUCH safer.)
Here is here you go wrong:
> All of this goes to show that there is very little evidence of any sort of over-prescription of opiates in America.
There is very clear evidence for over-prescription of opioids. There is very clear evidence that the risks of addiction were deliberately minimized by drug companies and doctors were incentivized to over-prescribe for as many off-label uses as possible.
The issue is: Anyone who does develop a problematic addiction to pill they are prescribed tends to have their access cut off and are thus forced into the black market where their chances of overdose increase dramatically.
Thus while users with drug prescriptions may not be overdosing at high rates, that does NOT mean that the black market overdoses are not directly causally related to the over-prescription of opioids.
> Finally the sizable majority of prescription drug abusers in this country do not source from a doctor or the healthcare system at all. The vast majority get their drugs either from the black market or a friend or relative.
They may not source directly from the healthcare system, but prescription diversion and fraud do indirectly source a lot of product from the the healthcare system. I suspect that crackdowns on this diversion helped spike the blackmarket opiod overdoses as it decreased the quality of the blackmarket supply (and thus increased the prevalence of Fentanyl.)
>All of this goes to show that there is very little evidence of any sort of over-prescription of opiates in America.
Ridiculous. It certainly does not, in any way, shape or form. Your "analysis" also excludes the very clear evidence that people get hooked on opioids from prescription pills and transition to black market products like fentanyl.
"The volumes of the pills handled by the companies climbed as the epidemic surged, increasing 51 percent from 8.4 billion in 2006 to 12.6 billion in 2012. By contrast, doses of morphine, a well-known treatment for severe pain, averaged slightly more than 500 million a year during the same period." https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/six-takeaways-...
Only 0.19% of opiate-treated chronic pain patients without a prior history develop any form of abuse or addiction[1]. And remember these are chronic-pain patients who take tolerance-escalating doses over years or even decades. Virtually no one develops an opiate addiction from following their medically prescribed treatment regiment.
>Virtually no one develops an opiate addiction from following their medically prescribed treatment regiment.
Completely false. You refer to data about a subsection of opioid prescriptions (chronic pain patients), and asserting broad claims that are not accurate.
"In just 10 months, the sixth-largest company in America shipped more than 3 million prescription opioids — nearly 10,000 pills a day on average — to a single pharmacy in a Southern West Virginia town with only 400 residents, according to a congressional report released Wednesday."
Illegal diversion in the supply chain does not tell us anything about whether the healthcare system is over-prescribing pain medication.
Let's just take your example. What do you believe is more plausible? That a town of 400 people are collectively prescribed 10,000 pills a day by well-meaning doctors? Or that the pharmacy from your example is a front for organized crime to funnel prescription opiates into the black market?
There are no statistics that show properly prescribed and taken opioids have anything to do with the crisis.
The crisis comes from illegal usage and tainted substances.
Sadly this is not clear from the statistics without digging into them, and few do.
That prescription opioids are significantly reduced, yet the death rate continues to climb indicates the focus on the current solution is in the wrong place.
No one, including me, denies "pill selling" is a problem.
However that has zero to do with the people with Chronic Pain that are doing everything within the law.
There are bad doctors, and other bad actors, they need dealt with of course. Not at the expense that need such medication.
>That prescription opioids are significantly reduced, yet the death rate continues to climb indicates the focus on the current solution is in the wrong place.
Also, it just means those easy pain pill scripts are drying up, and people are turning to black market alternatives. It's cheaper and easier to import fentanyl from PRC and press it. Also leads to dosing errors (overwhelming cause of deaths).
> The crisis comes from illegal usage and tainted substances. Sadly this is not clear from the statistics without digging into them, and few do.
The crisis was directly contributed by over-prescription ande the deliberate minimization of addiction risks. The crisis was exacerbated by then pushing these people off their legal prescription once they become addicted, forcing them into the black market.
> That prescription opioids are significantly reduced, yet the death rate continues to climb indicates the focus on the current solution is in the wrong place.
When you push more people into the black market, it is reasonable to expect that over-doses will rise.
> There are bad doctors, and other bad actors, they need dealt with of course. Not at the expense that need such medication
Yes, I agree. We are much better served by educating about and being aware of addiction risks than we are by limiting access to prescription medication because we are concerned a person is already addicted.
'hysteria' is the key word here. A blanket ban on more than 7 days of opioid medication is a hysterical reaction to the current problem. Sure, root out the corruption. Blame people and companies and even put people in jail if you think it will help. But in the meantime, it saves lives.
Also, as long as we're here, the reason pill-selling and whatnot exists is because of the war on drugs. But that's a larger discussion than what I/we can do here.
The fault belongs to the enforcement and the enforcement alone. No matter how extreme the criminals they still control their own actions. They cannot be allowed to pass the buck of their collateral damage for that lets them ignore their contribution entirely.
I fight this urge every day because of pain and have great empathy for both you and your wife. I was left in constant pain by badly done and, ultimately unneeded surgery. I have been off and on medication for many years now and have fought the system the entire time. I was recently cut off again after a long term doctor retired and the new options are all fairly hostile to pain patients.
The thing that is the hardest is that ultimately the best pain control for me is a safe and calm lifestyle and decent healthcare in the right conditions I can survive without medication, but with the loss of health and money goes your access to that lifestyle and healthcare, increasing the need for meds, at a time and situation in which you can least get them. I've tried nearly everything, at least that I can access, and that access, mainstream and alternative just gets worse here in the USA. I just need a small flat and a simple life in a city with connections and resources. I am stuck in the opposite.
I had a great, once in a lifetime, accomodative job opportunity abroad from a member here that I couldn't get to because of worsening pain and life stability and I sunk further as a result. Should have just gone and failed and gotten it over with rather than suffering more in worse conditions. It's a pit of quicksand once you get in it. It's hard enough in countries with good systems, but in the USA it's hopeless. I am now stuck in rural nowhere in so much pain with no good healthcare and transport and a horrid quality of life. I am over the debate and the "opiod crisis" and people's judgement here...I just want out and stable if thats even possible anymore, or it over. Tired of suffering every day.
Many underserved chronic pain patients are turning to growing their own, seed tea, and kratom. Might still be able to find decorative dried pods as well.
Dextromethorphan and grapefruit juice can potentiate to stretch out doses in times of drought.
Sorry to hear that our medical system is failing you. Truly immoral.
Yes, as can all opioids (or drugs in general). Biologicals are particularly challenging in this regard as potency can vary wildly. From what I've read, the people who use this regularly try to make very large batches to standardize and then titrate up slowly with every batch. It seems the son in that link was used to taking huge amount of washed seeds and then got an unwashed batch - so in a sad ironic way, the company's attempts to keep people from getting high led to his death.
Definitely risky, and not something I'd ever suggest for recreational purposes. Also important to know that many opiate tests look for non-intoxicating metabolites that are directly available in the poppy, so doctors may overestimate the amount of morphine the individual consumed: leading to overprescription in replacement therapies or overdose treatments, both of which can be dangerous.
I didn't downvote you. I tried to sue after hearing from multiple doctors abroad how badly it was done and how I never needed it, but it's not like people think from TV and "common knowledge". It's hard to win malpractice. Most cases are not frivolous but people think they are all money grabs. The doctors and their insurance companies do things like insulate surgery centers in friendly counties and under special business arrangements etc. There are small caps and extremely short statutes of limitations on many things. Even if I had won 100%, which rarely happens according to the lawyers, after all was said and done I might have gotten 10,000usd max...and that's nothing for taking away a future. People don't understand the reality of medical errors and malpractice. Patients always lose.
Doctors aren't allowed to help people to recover from drug dependencies. If a doctor opens a clinic that gives people access to non contaminated drugs with a dosage that is controlled by a trained professional then it will be shut down because people get jealous that their tax money is spent on keeping junkies "high" when in reality the dosage gets lowered successively until no adverse health effects remain and the "high" almost completely disappears but still satisfies the dependency enough to prevent them from seeking out black market drugs. What most of the population also fails to realize is that the health effects of black market drugs are almost trivial compared to the financial damage they cause which has a far greater impact on the lifestyle of that person. You don't become a criminal or a prostitute when you spend $50 on "medication", but it's pretty much guaranteed when your "medication" costs you $1000 per month. For most people that's the difference between being homeless or not.
I've been through that over and over with doctors turning hostile and outright lying and am going through it again now after the worst year I have ever had pain wise. I never took a LOT by any measure, in fact very small doses just to get by, and only about half of the days in any given year as I cycled off and when situations were calmer. I have avoided seeking stronger things offline and will off myself before going there as its costly in every way and has no good outcome. I have a sensitive corpus it seems and can't take a lot of any medication, a built defense against massive addiction I am thankful for in a way, or else I probably would have ended up like some of the worst victims in a gutter using heroin. But I guess in the end what does it matter if you cannot get better anyway. Ultimately people just want to stop hurting and don't care about people's politics...and when it gets like this, and doctors and society and families are so hostile and blaming, the only plausible thing becomes stopping the existence that hurts.
The whole situation is already the product of too much left-brain imperative thinking, but I have to wonder if a basic suit for medical malpractice would have legs. The doctor in question essentially got her physically addicted, and then when told of the symptoms, unilaterally chose a wildly inappropriate "treatment" which exacerbated that addiction.
This is my reply to Dr Gart's editorial, edited to fit the format here the best I can.
“… First and foremost, we must bury the claim of pain being the fifth vital sign and replace it with a 21st Century pain assessment tool that incorporates objective evidence and measures of pain. …”
Dr Gart, at this moment are you hungry? In your lifetime have you ever been hungry? Hunger is a type of pain. Did you treat that pain by consuming a substance?
Please correct me if I am wrong. To my knowledge there is no objective test, no simple Pain Meter, that will show me that you are hungry. Yes we could look at enzymes and such. Will that truly tell me just how hungry you are objectively?
If there is no objective test for a pain as simple as hunger, that each of us experience most every day, what hope does a person in Chronic Pain have?
In Ohio the Governor is now practicing medicine by decreeing that there can be no more than seven days of opiate pain medication. Perhaps he should discuss that with the person that was hit by a train and survived with most every bone broken.
My wife Karen died of suicide to stop the pain she experienced for over over 20 years, due to the failure of the Medical Establishment as a whole. THIS IS THE REALITY OF Chronic Pain.
"Karen's Journal of CSF Leak Headaches and Chronic Pain: How Intracranial Hypotension and Levaquin (Levofloxacin) Killed Me"
is now required reading at Duke School of Medicine to educate future Neurologists about the realities of Chronic Pain.
A local reporter wrote in a Cover Story:
"Karen's first-hand account of her illness gave an honest, heart-wrenching depiction of what it is like to live with debilitating pain day-to-day." – http://www.kpaddock.org
In book form it has been edited by a medical doctor that has the same condition has Karen had. When bought through the Spinal CSF Leak Foundation 100% of the royalties go to them, to support them, just in case anyone thinks I'm posting this to promote the book for profit myself. The book can be read for free at http://mystory.kpaddock.com for free.
I do not know what motivated you to write your article. I do know from it that far more time needs to be spent with people in Chronic Pain, to understand the realities of their life.
When a person in Chronic Pain that has been taking opiate pain medication under a competent doctors supervision for ten years, is able to function, take care of their family, hold a job, is without warning told then can not have it any more, “tough luck”. What are they to do? They resort to street drugs and become the very victims this currently policy is trying to prevent.
People in Chronic Pain have typically already tried multiple rounds of physical therapy, bio-feedback, meditation, exercise and the list goes on, with no relief from the pain. What are they to do?
Not having Chronic Pain myself, I will never claim to understand it. I did watch my wife suffer with it for 20+ years. What exactly is the agenda here? None of us such as Advocates like myself nor the sufferers have figured this out yet. Can anyone please explain? To us it appears as an attack on the most vulnerable.
This is one of the many comments I received about your article: “…Chronic problems frustrate doctors and they blame the patient rather than look at themselves. …” or support research to find real solutions to Chronic Pain. No one chooses to live with Chronic Pain each and every moment of their lives.
> Dr Gart, at this moment are you hungry? In your lifetime have you ever been hungry? Hunger is a type of pain. Did you treat that pain by consuming a substance?
If you don't eat you die. Do you die if you don't consumer pain killers? No you don't.
This is similar to the nonsense peddled by people who claim anti-depressants are the same as insulin and various other snake-oil salespeople.
Have you ever suffered constant pain, of the sort where you really can't think of anything else? I have been fortunate to have such events rarely, and then in spans measured in hours. But the intensity is enough to give me a notion of what others have gone through. The people I know who have used heavy-duty pain killers have not wanted to get stoned--one in particular despised the fuzzy feeling--they have wanted to function.
It's a losing game putting out reasonable arguments as to why this hysteria is bad.
Some people want to control others and just don't care what the reality is.
They would never ban alcohol, they consume it.
They would never ban cars; they drive them.
They would never ban fast food; they eat it.
They will never ban sugar; they love it.
All of these things have cause a million times more misery than opioids ever have, by all measurable statistics (deaths, injury, domestic violence, etc)
But if there is something someone is doing that they aren't, their measurement of pros and cons will change. Statistics and comparable things of pleasure/damage will never be considered.
> But if there is something someone is doing that they aren't, their measurement of pros and cons will change. Statistics and comparable things of pleasure/damage will never be considered.
I think we are all guilty of this to a degree. We all measure risk/reward differently when the risk is perceived to be on our side and the reward on the other side.
The issue with perception is universal. We all feel these things.
How we act though? That's a choice. We can choose to read statistics and let our 'slow thinking' brain take over. But it has to be a choice and that lies with each of us.
The solution for chronic pain is to prescribe opiates on an ongoing basis. The solution for addiction is to prescribe opiates on an ongoing basis. That might be methadone or suboxone or something more common like oxycodone or morphine. What happened to your wife should never have happened. It's tragic that incompetent organizations like the CDC and others still haven't realized this and are driven by unscientific drug war hysteria rather than scientific approaches to recovery. Not only do addicts suffer, but chronic pain sufferers also suffer. Often there is no difference between the two groups.
One of the many places linking Zinc and sense of smell:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-zinc/art-203661...
There have been reports of Zinc being used in conjunction with other medications to address C19.