Who Needs A Spoonful Of Sugar?
This article on The Times is entitled Lie Right To Help The Medicine Go Down.
These are the first two paragraphs of the article.
Next time you take an aspirin, try speeding up its effect by lying on your right. But don’t turn over, or you could be waiting a long time for pain relief.
Scientists have modelled the dynamics of the stomach in an attempt to understand how posture can affect drug absorption.
Strangely, I generally lie on my right.
In my life, I have done a lot of mathematically modelling of all sorts of systems.
It has surprised me several times how unexpected the results have been.
Vitamin B12 For Stroke Recovery: Understanding The Benefits & Safety Tips
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the FlintRehab web site.
I have posted the link, as I was talking to a doctor earlier and they might like to look at it.
Consider.
- I am coeliac on a strict gluten-free diet.
- Since the coeliac diagnosis in 1997, I have had a B12 injection every three months.
- I had a serious stroke ten year ago.
- Some doctors feel, I have made an excellent recovery from my stroke.
Could my regular B12 injections have aided my recovery?
Note, that I have cleaned up the Vitamin B12 tag in this blog.
I Was Struggling In The Heat
Early last week, I was struggling in the heat.
On Wednesday, I had my three-monthly B12 injection injection and since then I’ve been feeling a lot better.
Yesterday, when I went to see the Oxted Viaduct, I climbed a couple of short hills in the heat and had no problem.
I have my B12 injections because I’m coeliac and I was at one time low on B12.
Given too, that some web sites report than B12 helps stroke recovery, does that explain, why I made a better than some recovery from my stroke?
At least three doctors, I’ve met, have used the word remarkable when talking about my stroke recovery.
I certainly would create a fuss, if the GP, thought I should stop taking B12. But then I’ve been taking it for at least thirty years.
Do I Need To Have A Booster Polio Vaccination?
Polio seems to have returned and cases are rising in North-East London, where I live.
I was vaccinated using an injecton in the 1950s, so it must have been the Salk vaccine.
In today’s Sunday Times, there is an article, which is entitled A Little More Vaccination: Elvis Presley And The Race To Beat Polio, where this is said.
Sabin’s live vaccine could be swallowed as a drop on a sugar cube. This mimics the route that the virus takes naturally, entering the body’s gut. Salk’s dead virus had to be injected. Most importantly, it turned out that Sabin’s vaccine could give lifelong immunity, while Salk’s only protected for a few years.
As it is more than a few years, since I was vaccinated, do I need a booster?
Canary Wharf Boosts Its Science Ambitions
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This are the introductory paragraphs.
Genomics England is to move its headquarters to Canary Wharf in east London this year as the financial quarter aims to become a life sciences hub.
The government-run DNA sequencing group will move in the autumn into One Canada Place, where its neighbours will include Brookfield, a Canadian property fund, and Reach, publisher of the Daily Express and OK! magazine.
Owned by the Department of Health and Social Care, Genomics England sequences the genomes of people with rare diseases and cancers to help doctors to treat them more effectively. With consent, some of that data is passed to researchers trying to develop new drugs and treatments.
If you type “Canary Wharf Science Hub into Google”, you find some serious articles.
This article in the FT is entitled Canary Wharf Proposes £500mn Lab Project To Reinvent Financial Hub.
This is a good idea, as scientist friends are always complaining about a lack of lab space in Cambridge and Oxford. Because of the Elizabeth Line, both these cities are not much more than an hour from Canary Wharf.
It should also fill the cafes and shops with scientists and engineers, who would replace some of those working from home because of the pandemic.
I wonder whether this model will work elsewhere?
Feeling Unwell On The Elizabeth Line
I have made several trips on the Elizabeth Line and sometimes, I feel slightly unwell, when I get off.
Nothing serious, but I do wonder if it could be due to the depth of the tunnels.
- The tunnels are up to 42 metres below ground.
- I felt similar when I visited the hundred metre-deep tunnels at CERN, that I wrote about in A Visit To CERN.
- To my knowledge, I never knew my father to take a deep level Underground train. So perhaps, we shared a genetic problem?
I also used to love flying in my aircraft at high altitudes.
Could it be the air pressure or is it psychological?
Hydrogen Water
This article on Hydrogen Fuel News is entitled Some Surprising Uses For Hydrogen.
This is said about hydrogen water.
Hydrogen water is a new health product that is proving exceptionally popular. But wait, doesn’t water already contain hydrogen? It certainly does but it is bonded with oxygen to make the water molecule H2O. Hydrogen water, on the other hand, contains pure hydrogen (the H2 molecule) suspended in “normal” water as gas. This has been said to have many health benefits, all revolving around the much smaller size of this molecule (hydrogen is one of the smallest molecules) and how this makes it easier to be absorbed into the bloodstream. Among the most useful benefits are more effective hydration, improved concentration, and a reduction in bodily inflammation.
Certainly, if you type “hydrogen water” into Google, you get a lot of hits.
Are There Any Medical Application For Large Amounts Of Electricity?
I ask this question, as an eminent medical researcher has just thanked me by text for my energy posts.
It could be that he sees some benefit in having lots of energy available from wind.
I have a few thoughts.
Are Electricity Bills Getting To Be A Larger Proportion Of The Running Costs Of Hospitals Or Medical Research Establishments?
We are all suffering to some extent from higher electricity prices, but some of the latest medical equipment with large electromagnets and powerful X-rays must be expensive on electricity.
Proton Therapy
Does proton therapy use very large amounts of electricity and is this one of the reasons, that these seemingly-powerful machines are thin on the ground?
So if electricity is much more plentiful and hopefully more affordable, is this going to mean that proton therapy is used more often?
Synchrotrons
The Diamond Light Source is described like this in Wikipedia.
Diamond Light Source (or Diamond) is the UK’s national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Its purpose is to produce intense beams of light whose special characteristics are useful in many areas of scientific research. In particular it can be used to investigate the structure and properties of a wide range of materials from proteins (to provide information for designing new and better drugs), and engineering components (such as a fan blade from an aero-engine) to conservation of archeological artifacts (for example Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose).
There are more than 50 light sources across the world. With an energy of 3 GeV, Diamond is a medium energy synchrotron currently operating with 32 beamlines.
When the history of the pandemic is written, Diamond may well turn out to be one of the heroes.
This page on the Diamond web site, lists some of the applications of a particular analysis, that Diamond can perform.
Under Life Sciences and Bio-Medicine, this is said.
One of the remarkable exploits of SRIR microspectroscopy is probing single isolated cells and tissues at sub-cellular resolution, collecting broadband molecular information with excellent spectral quality via the diffraction limited microbeam. Studying individual cells is important because it reveals the cell-cell differences (e.g. due to cell cycle or biological variability) which are averaged together in conventional IR imaging or spectroscopy. This is important for identifying the subtle underlying spectral differences of interest in the research.
Applications include developing spectral biomarkers for disease diagnosis – particularly cancer research, location of stem cells within tissues, following effects of natural and synthetic chemicals on stem-cell differentiation and quantifying drug sensitivity.
A key development recently achieved is moving from fixed and dried samples to ex vivo, living conditions in the natural aqueous environment and time-dependent studies of biological processes. The combined requirements of high spatial resolution, rapid data acquisition and high photon flux (due to strong IR absorption by water) make synchrotron radiation an invaluable microanalysis tool.
In the THz part of the spectrum, very bright (coherent) synchrotron radiation (CSR) is useful in the study of low energy modes, especially in highly absorbing samples. The THz properties of biological materials is a rapidly growing field, from the organism level (imaging) down to fundamental spectroscopy at the biochemical level, where, for example, the solvation shell around proteins can be studied via changes in low energy hydrogen bonds.
That all sounds impressive.
As with NMR, which I used in the 1960s and as since been developed into MRi, I wonder if important hospitals and universities will have their own mini-Diamonds to do the analyses described above.
Again what will be the electricity bill?
Conclusion
I suspect that electricity may be a significant cost of the running some of these new machines and an abundance of wind power, which reduces the cost of electricity, may improve medical research and treatment.
Why Do More Elderly Men Die Of The Covids Than Women?
I asked this question of the Internet and found this article from The Times, which is entitled Why Are Men More Likely To Die From Covid Than Women?.
These are the first two paragraphs.
On Valentine’s Day last year, researchers at China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention submitted one of the first studies into who was dying of the new coronavirus that was spreading through Wuhan.
Two clear findings jumped out. Firstly, the virus appeared to hit the elderly hardest. Secondly, if you were a man, you were much more likely to die.
The article goes on to say, that men are 24 percent more likely to die.
I am coeliac and here are some facts about coeliac disease.
This page on the NHS web site is an overview of coeliac disease.
There is a sub-section called Who’s Affected?, where this is said.
Coeliac disease is a condition that affects at least 1 in every 100 people in the UK.
But some experts think this may be underestimated because milder cases may go undiagnosed or be misdiagnosed as other digestive conditions, such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
Reported cases of coeliac disease are around 3 times higher in women than men.
It can develop at any age, although symptoms are most likely to develop:
during early childhood – between 8 and 12 months old, although it may take several years before a correct diagnosis is made
in later adulthood – between 40 and 60 years of age
People with certain conditions, including type 1 diabetes, autoimmune thyroid disease, Down’s syndrome and Turner syndrome, have an increased risk of getting coeliac disease.First-degree relatives (parents, brothers, sisters and children) of people with coeliac disease are also at increased risk of developing the condition.
The three most important facts in this are.
- The condition affects 1 in every 100 people in the UK.
- Reported cases are three times higher in women than men.
- First degree relatives of coeliacs are at increased risk of developing the condition.
I am sure my father was an undiagnosed coeliac.
When I was born in 1947, there was no test for coeliac disease in children, as one wasn’t developed until 1960.
Testing for many years was by the Gold Standard of endoscopy, which for a child is not an easy procedure.
I’m certain, that in 1997, I was one of the first to be diagnosed in a General Hospital by genetic testing.
At fifty, a locum had given me a blood test and I had been found to be very low on B12. Despite a course of injections, it refused to rise so I was sent to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, where I saw a consultant, who gave me a short chat and then got a nurse to take some blood samples.
Two days later, I received a letter, saying I was probably coeliac and it would be confirmed by endoscopy.
I can’t think how else it was done so quickly, unless they were using a genetic test.
I went gluten-free and the rest as they say is history.
In some ways there’s been two of me.
- BC – Before Coeliac – Frequently unwell, lots of aches and pains and weak mentally.
- AD – After Diagnosis – Healthier, few aches and pains and much stronger mentally.
My immune system appears to be much stronger now!
I believe my son was also coeliac.
Undiagnosed coeliacs tend to have poor immune systems and he died of pancreatic cancer at just 37, because he refused to get himself tested.
As there was no test for coeliac disease in children until 1960, anybody over sixty has a higher chance of being coeliac with a poor immune system and be at higher risks from both the covids and cancer.
It should be noted that according to the NHS, there are three times more female coeliacs than male.
Could this be explained by the fact that undiagnosed coeliac disease can be a cause of female infertility? So when a lady has difficulty conceiving, doctors test for it. So perhaps, by the time they get to 70 a higher proportion of female coeliacs have been diagnosed, compared to male ones, which may explain why more elderly men than women die of the covids.
More research needs to be done.
The Anonymous Widower 