Who Knows Where The Time Goes?
https://youtu.be/OkOB57UcYk8
Tuesday, October 25, 2022
Monday, October 24, 2022
Howlin´Wolf (Goin´Down Slow Live Audio & Pictures)
Howlin´Wolf (Goin´Down Slow Live Audio & Pictures)
https://youtu.be/dno8BDVMF6c
#MS is serious stuff. We need to treat it seriously.
#MS is serious stuff. We need to treat it seriously.
https://youtu.be/5VEpKdyjc_k
Thursday, September 22, 2022
Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World (Official Video)
Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
https://youtu.be/rBrd_3VMC3c
Where are we going?
Where have we come from?
Who are we?
Where are we going?
- Gauguin
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility.
It includes questions about the nature of consciousness and the relationship between mind and matter, between substance and attribute, and between potentiality and actuality.
It has been suggested that the term might have been coined by a first century CE editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works into the treatise we now know by the name Metaphysics (μετὰ τὰ φυσικά, meta ta physika, lit. 'after the Physics ', another of Aristotle's works).
Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are.
Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions of:
What there is
What it is like
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility.
Metaphysics is considered one of the four main branches of philosophy, along with epistemology, logic, and ethics.
Metaphysical study is conducted using deduction from that which is known a priori.
Like foundational mathematics (which is sometimes considered a special case of metaphysics applied to the existence of number), it tries to give a coherent account of the structure of the world, capable of explaining our everyday and scientific perception of the world, and being free from contradictions.
In mathematics, there are many different ways to define numbers; similarly, in metaphysics, there are many different ways to define objects, properties, concepts, and other entities that are claimed to make up the world.
While metaphysics may, as a special case, study the entities postulated by fundamental science such as atoms and superstrings, its core topic is the set of categories such as object, property and causality which those scientific theories assume.
For example: claiming that "electrons have charge" is a scientific theory; while exploring what it means for electrons to be (or at least, to be perceived as) "objects", charge to be a "property", and for both to exist in a topological entity called "space" is the task of metaphysics.
There are two broad stances about what is "the world" studied by metaphysics.
According to metaphysical realism, the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer so that the subject is the most fundamental of all sciences.
Metaphysical anti-realism, on the other hand, assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of introspection and conceptual analysis.
This position is of more recent origin. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss both of these "worlds" and what can be inferred about each one. Some, such as the logical positivists, and many scientists, reject the metaphysical realism as meaningless and unverifiable.
Others reply that this criticism also applies to any type of knowledge, including hard science, which claims to describe anything other than the contents of human perception, and thus that the world of perception is the objective world in some sense.
Metaphysics itself usually assumes that some stance has been taken on these questions and that it may proceed independently of the choice—the question of which stance to take belongs instead to another branch of philosophy, epistemology.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics
Wednesday, September 21, 2022
Breakthrough with Healing Chronic Pain | Howard Schubiner | Talks at Google
Breakthrough with Healing Chronic Pain | Howard Schubiner
https://youtu.be/0VyH1laOd2M
Howard Schubiner, MD, is a clinician, author and researcher who has conducted ground-breaking research on a treatment plan that can resolve, rather than manage, chronic pain.
Pain isn’t what you think. Neuroscientists are now explaining pain in a way that is counterintuitive to both lay people and physicians.
A significant proportion of individuals with chronic pain do not have structural abnormalities, but have pain due to learned neural pathways in the brain.
Dr. Schubiner, author of Unlearn Your Pain and co-author of upcoming book, Hidden from View, reviews the current state of brain research and a new form of psychological treatment for fibromyalgia that is superior to the standard treatments.
More info here: http://unlearnyourpain.com/
Louis Armstrong - On the Sunny Side of the Street
Louis Armstrong - On the Sunny Side of the Street
https://youtu.be/bQz3ixEQWz8
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Sing-Along - Monty Python
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life Sing-Along - Monty Python
https://youtu.be/JrdEMERq8MA
Monday, September 19, 2022
Be Calm and Live Simply and Be in the Present Moment.
The first step to being at peace in the present moment is simply being in the present moment.
Sunday, September 18, 2022
Millions Take Gabapentin for Pain. But There’s Scant Evidence It Works.
PERSONAL HEALTH
Millions Take Gabapentin for Pain. But There’s Scant Evidence It Works.
“There is very little data to justify how these drugs are being used and why they should be in the top 10 in sales,” a researcher said.
Give this article
By Jane E. Brody
May 20, 2019
One of the most widely prescribed prescription drugs, gabapentin, is being taken by millions of patients despite little or no evidence that it can relieve their pain.
In 2006, I wrote about gabapentin after discovering accidentally that it could counter hot flashes.
The drug was initially approved 25 years ago to treat seizure disorders, but it is now commonly prescribed off-label to treat all kinds of pain, acute and chronic, in addition to hot flashes, chronic cough and a host of other medical problems.
The F.D.A. approves a drug for specific uses and doses if the company demonstrates it is safe and effective for its intended uses, and its benefits outweigh any potential risks. Off-label means that a medical provider can legally prescribe any drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for any condition, not just the ones for which it was approved. This can leave patients at the mercy of what their doctors think is helpful.
Thus, it can become a patient’s job to try to determine whether a medication prescribed off-label is both safe and effective for their particular condition. This is no easy task even for well-educated doctors, let alone for desperate patients in pain.
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Two doctors recently reviewed published evidence for the benefits and risks of off-label use of gabapentin (originally sold under the trade name Neurontin) and its brand-name cousin Lyrica (pregabalin) for treating all kinds of pain.
(There is now also a third drug, gabapentin encarbil, sold as Horizant, approved only for restless leg syndrome and postherpetic neuralgia, which can follow a shingles outbreak.)
The reviewers, Dr. Christopher W. Goodman and Allan S. Brett of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, found the drugs, called gabapentinoids, wanting in most cases for which they are currently being prescribed.
As Dr. Goodman said in an interview, “There is very little data to justify how these drugs are being used and why they should be in the top 10 in sales. Patients and physicians should understand that the drugs have limited evidence to support their use for many conditions, and there can be some harmful side effects, like somnolence, dizziness and difficulty walking.” Furthermore, for patients prone to substance use disorders, like an opioid addiction, the gabapentinoids, although they are not opioids, are potentially addictive, he said.
The gabapentinoids are symbolic of three currently challenging problems in the practice of medicine: a deadly national epidemic of opioid addiction prompting doctors to seek alternative drugs for pain; the limited training in pain management received by most doctors; and the influence of aggressive and sometimes illegal promotion of prescription drugs, including through direct-to-consumer advertising.
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Gabapentin and Lyrica, both sold by Pfizer, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat only four debilitating pain problems: postherpetic neuralgia, diabetic neuropathy, fibromyalgia and spinal cord injury. Even for these approved uses, the evidence for relief offered by the drugs is hardly dramatic, Drs. Goodman and Brett reported in JAMA Internal Medicine online.
In many well-controlled studies they found there was less than a one-point difference on the 10-point pain scale between patients taking the drug versus a placebo, a difference often clinically meaningless. For example, among 209 patients with sciatica, Lyrica did not significantly reduce the intensity of leg pain when compared with a placebo, and dizziness was more commonly reported by the 108 patients who took the drug.
But when patients complain of pain related to conditions ranging from sciatica and osteoarthritis to foot pain and migraine, clinicians often reach for the prescription pad and order either gabapentin or the more costly Lyrica.
Following the approval of Neurontin, its producer at the time, Warner-Lambert, engaged in what the government determined was an illegal marketing campaign that resulted in sales exceeding $2 billion a year before its patent expired in 2004. Still, the campaign succeeded in bringing gabapentin to the attention of many doctors who treat patients with persistent life-disrupting pain.
It’s not that there are no other alternatives to opioids to treat chronic pain, among them physical therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis and mindfulness training. But practicing clinicians may be unaware of the options, most of which require more effort for the doctor than writing a drug prescription and are not as easy or accessible for patients as swallowing a pill.
As Dr. Michael E. Johansen, a family doctor in Columbus, Ohio, put it, “I use gabapentin clinically and try to stay close to the approved indications, but occasionally we run out of options when faced with patients who hurt. It’s rare that these drugs eliminate pain, and I don’t tell patients their pain will go away. If there’s any benefit, it’s probably marginal.”
Despite the limited evidence of benefit, in a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine in February, Dr. Johansen found that the number of people taking gabapentinoids more than tripled from 2002 to 2015, with more than four in five taking the inexpensive generic, gabapentin.
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In 2016, 64 million prescriptions for gabapentin were dispensed, up from 39 million in 2012, Drs. Goodman and Brett reported in The New England Journal of Medicine. They believe that the opioid epidemic partly fueled this increase. “While working in inpatient and outpatient settings,” they wrote, “we have observed that clinicians are increasingly prescribing gabapentin and pregabalin for almost any type of pain.”
Dr. Johansen cited several serious concerns about overuse of gabapentinoids, including “a dearth of long-term safety data, small effect sizes, concern for increased risk of overdose in combination with opioid use, and high rates of off-label prescribing, which are associated with high rates of adverse effects.”
Contributing to the frequent misuse of gabapentinoids is how doctors interpret the term “neuropathic pain” for which the drugs are commonly prescribed. It is defined as pain caused by a lesion or disease of the nervous system, leading clinicians to assume that if a drug is effective for one type of neuropathic pain, it is effective for all types, regardless of the underlying cause, Drs. Goodman and Brett suggested.
Dr. Johansen pointed out that “there is no recipe book” for treating pain with gabapentinoids. “Doctors need to work with one patient at a time and figure out what works and what doesn’t work,” he said. He noted that many times pain resolves with “the tincture of time” but patients and doctors may attribute improvement to the prescribed drug. For those taking a gabapentinoid, he suggested that patients’ doctors readdress its use after two or three months.
But Dr. Goodman cautioned against going off the drug cold turkey because there can be unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
Jane Brody is the Personal Health columnist, a position she has held since 1976. She has written more than a dozen books including the best sellers “Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book” and “Jane Brody’s Good Food Book.”
A version of this article appears in print on May 21, 2019, Section D, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Doubt Grows on the Use of a Popular Drug. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Jane Brody’s Personal Health Advice
After joining The Times in 1965, she was its Personal Health columnist from 1976 to 2022. Revisit some of Jane Brody’s most memorable writing:
Ms. Brody’s first column, on jogging, ran on Nov. 10, 1976. Her last, on Feb. 21. In it, she highlighted the evolution of health advice throughout her career.
Personal Health has often offered useful advice and a refreshing perspective. Declutter? This is why you must. Cup of coffee? Yes, please.
As a columnist, she has never been afraid to try out, and write about, new things — from intermittent fasting to knitting groups.
How do you put into words the pain of losing a spouse of 43 years? It is “nothing like losing a parent,” she wrote of her own experience with grieving.
Need advice on aging? She has explored how to do it gracefully, building muscle strength and knee replacements.
Personal Health
CAR T-cell treatment autoimmune disease therapy breakthrough
Scientists hail autoimmune disease therapy breakthrough
Study finds CAR T-cell treatment sends lupus into remission, raising hopes it could be used to treat diseases such as multiple sclerosis
Five people with severe autoimmune disease have become the first in the world to receive a groundbreaking therapy that uses genetically altered cells to drive the illness into remission.
The four women and one man, aged 18 to 24, received transfusions of modified immune cells to treat severe lupus, an autoimmune disease that can cause life-threatening damage to the heart, lungs, brain and kidneys.
The treatment drove the disease into remission in all five patients, who have now been off lupus medication for between three and 17 months. Doctors say the apparent success raises hopes for tackling other autoimmune conditions such a rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis.
Lupus, or systemic lupus erythematosus, develops when the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues and organs. The causes are not well understood, but researchers believe it may be triggered by viral infections, particular medicines, and changes in the body around puberty and the menopause.
The condition affects about one in 1,000 people, and far more women than men. It is hard to diagnose because the symptoms often flare up and settle down, and overlap with those of several other diseases. While mild in many people, lupus can cause extreme tiredness, organ damage and pain in the joints and muscles. One of the most common signs is a distinctive skin rash over the nose and cheeks.
Doctors in Germany treated five severely ill patients with CAR T-cell therapy after other treatments failed to improve their symptoms. The approach has proved successful at combating certain cancers since it was first used in a leukaemia patient in 2015. CAR T-cell therapy involves collecting the patient’s T-cells – a key component of the immune system – and modifying them so that they attack new targets, such as cancer cells, when infused back into the body.
In the latest work, doctors took T-cells from the lupus patients and modified them so that, on re-infusion, they attacked the patients’ B cells. In lupus, B cells churn out autoantibodies, which instead of defending the body against invading pathogens, attack healthy tissues instead.
According to the study in Nature Medicine, the therapy in effect wiped out the patients’ aberrant B cells and dramatically improved their condition. The disease affected multiple organs in all five patients, but after the therapy severe symptoms including arthritis, fatigue, fibrosis of the heart valves, and lung inflammation all cleared up.
Blood tests on the patients showed that their B cells recovered about four months after the treatment, but they no longer produced aberrant antibodies and the patients remained disease-free. Writing in the journal, the authors speculate that the therapy led to a “rebooting of the immune system”.
“We are very excited about these results,” said Prof Georg Schett, a rheumatologist who led the work at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. “Several other autoimmune diseases which are dependent on B cells and show autoantibodies may respond to this treatment. These include rheumatoid arthritis, myositis and systemic sclerosis. But also diseases like multiple sclerosis may be very responsive to CAR T-cell treatment.”
Schett’s team was keen to ensure the therapy did not impair the patients’ immune systems and leave them at greater risk of infection. To test this, they assessed the patients’ responses to multiple vaccines, including measles, rubella, mumps, hepatitis B, tetanus and diphtheria, before and after the therapy. The patients’ immune responses were not substantially different after the treatment, suggesting that it primarily targeted the wayward autoantibody-making cells.
“This is an excellent study which promises to extend the scope of CAR T-cell therapy, which has thus far seen its major impact in the treatment of blood cancers, to autoimmune diseases like lupus which are in some patients poorly controlled with other medicines,” said Dr Rahul Roychoudhuri, who studies immune system regulation in inflammation and cancer at the University of Cambridge. “I am very excited at the prospects for this form of living therapy in indications beyond cancer.”
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Always Do Your Best
"I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says:
'Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest.'
I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have - When he gives everything that is in him to do the job he has before him. That is all you can ask of him and that is what I have tried to do."
- Harry S. Truman
Saturday, September 10, 2022
Accepting Change with a Progressive Disease - One Man and His Catheters
Accepting Change with a Progressive Disease - One Man and His Catheters
Multiple Sclerosis in a downward, unpredictable spiral isn’t pretty.
Thursday, September 8, 2022
MS is a complex condition
MS is a complex condition, and everyone’s experience of MS is unique. However, there are a number of symptoms that are often experienced by those with MS.
https://mymstoolkit.com/
Retraining connections lost to M.S.
Neuroplasticity offers hope of brain changes to benefit M.S. and ameliorate cognitive decline which are conditions that are hard to endure.
Thursday, August 18, 2022
Emerging Therapies in MS
https://youtu.be/o9_pxFVEni4
While there is still no cure for MS, there has been exciting progress in developing new treatments. In this special webinar, we will discuss the research taking place and new treatment options available. Learn about: BKTIs (Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitors), stem cell treatments, remyelination, progressive MS treatments, repurposed medication, and DMT decision-making for older individuals. Learn more at www.cando-ms.org Subscribe to Can Do MS! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4d0...
New MS Therapy - PoNS Clinical Trial Review
New MS Therapy - PoNS Clinical Trial Review
https://youtu.be/G6nmXQNkLMg
A PoNS clinical trial review from someone who knows! Arda had the opportunity to participate in the PoNS clinical trial in Canada. PoNS = Portable Neuromodulation Stimulator. She shares what the trial was like, what benefits she’s observed (and continued to see) & also a downside to the PoNS. ►Clinical Trial Website: https://clinicaltrials.gov
▶ Free 5 Day MS Strength Challenge: https://www.doctorgretchenhawley.com/...
▶ For a behind the scenes look into my Online MS Wellness Program, The MSing Link, click: https://www.DoctorGretchenHawley.com/...
★ Schedule a Zoom call with me for a sneak peek into The MSing Link: https://TheMSingLink.as.me/BehindTheS...
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For additional information, write to: Gretchen@DoctorGretchenHawley.com These videos do not provide medical advice and are for informational/educational purposes only. The videos are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen in any of our videos.
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