![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 19 of 19. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 3:38:19
Research Identifies How Inflammatory Disease Causes Fatigue
"New animal research in the Feb. 18 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience may indicate how certain diseases make people feel so tired and listless. Although the brain is usually isolated from the immune system, the study suggests that certain behavioral changes suffered by those with chronic inflammatory diseases are caused by the infiltration of immune cells into the brain. The findings suggest possible new treatment avenues to improve patients quality of life."
Posted by diego on March 3, 2009, at 11:41:18
In reply to How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 3:38:19
Kind of old news, but thanks for bringing to attention. I don't think the role of inflammation and infection in depression and/or other "mental illness" has been properly addressed.
By way of anecdote, I know for a fact that when I have a sub-acute infection -- even one which doesn't register on a WBC -- I get pain in my hands which mimics arthritis to a tee. I'm prone to boils and have tested this over and over again. Once the boil is lanced and a course of ABX is complete, the "arthritis" clears up. Same thing will happen if I get an attack of diverticulitis.
Haven't correlated it with fatigue, but will keep it mind next time. Thanks!
Posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 16:11:19
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by diego on March 3, 2009, at 11:41:18
Is it possible that some people could have inflammation and not know it? And isn't there a test form inflammation now? Just wondering.
Posted by desolationrower on March 3, 2009, at 22:55:48
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by diego on March 3, 2009, at 11:41:18
yeah, this study mentions tnf-alpha, which is inhibited by bupropion
-d/r
Posted by garnet71 on March 3, 2009, at 23:11:11
In reply to How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 3:38:19
I've read so many articles in health magazines and health books over the past two years that claim inflammation is causing a lot of issues in people. Not too long ago, I struck up a conversation with a R.N. student--I asked her what's up with the inflammation issues? She told me the majority of her schooling revolves around inflammation diseases--the rates have climbed significantly.
I am wondering about chemicals and processed foods. Although we've been exposed to lots of chemicals since the industrial revolution--we're passing altered genes down with the new generations and I wonder about that. Are we becoming allergic to ourselves?
I think all the chemicals are going to kills of the human race eventually-we are destroying ourselves. Something does though-there is a world population carrying capacity projected to be met in 2030, if I remember correctly.
Posted by garnet71 on March 3, 2009, at 23:17:30
In reply to How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 3:38:19
Have you ever heard of endocrine disrupters?
Frogs are eco-sensitive, and have been showing up deformed for years. Chemicals are thought by scientists to disrupt endorcrine systems--traces of chemicals that affect your glands.
Flame resistant chemical that is in our beds, furniture-all through our homes is thought to be dangerous by some.
Then there are all the medications that are in all of our drinking water. How could they not affect us?
Epidemology is a fascinating subject. I don't see how it is possible to study the effects of thousands of chemicals mixed together in our evironment, on the human species.
Posted by garnet71 on March 3, 2009, at 23:27:10
In reply to How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue, posted by Neal on March 3, 2009, at 3:38:19
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/endocrine/definitions/endodis_en.htm
Posted by desolationrower on March 4, 2009, at 12:11:57
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Neal, posted by garnet71 on March 3, 2009, at 23:27:10
i think its mostly working in cubicles/car culture/no physical recreation like sports, dancing/cheap easy 'food' in excess proportions. culture/policy encourages worst instincts and tendencies of modern society
excess weight, lack of activity are strongly pro-inflammatory
although theres still nasty chemicals out there, it isn'tn as bad as in past century, before creation of EPA and other regulations, but immune-related diseases seem to be worse now
-d/r
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 7:00:38
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Neal, posted by garnet71 on March 3, 2009, at 23:17:30
> Have you ever heard of endocrine disrupters?
I have. That's my specialty. I'm an environmental toxicologist, and I did a lot of work for the World Wildlife Fund on this subject. I focussed on nonylphenol ethoxylates, which used to be found in detergents, and bisphenol A, which is recently in the news. We were able to show that very low concentrations of NPE induced male fish to grow eggs in their testes. Your detergent is different today than it was fifteen years ago, in part because of work we did at the WWF. If you do a search on my name you'll find a lot of stuff I did on endocrine disruption.
> Then there are all the medications that are in all of our drinking water. How could they not affect us?
Again, part of my focus as a scientist. What is important to understand is that our ability to detect trace contaminants has increased dramatically over the last couple of decades. One of the first reports in the lay press, "Prozac in drinking water" in the U.K. rag the Guardian was totally fabricated. I checked the original data, and contacted the research team. There was no Prozac detected.
The biggest risk of drinking water contamination arise on rivers. One man's sewage becomes the next man's drinking water. The most commonly found drug-like contaminants are caffeine and acetominophen, but you'd have to drink hundreds of thousands of litres to obtain a dose that would affect you, if your body could even absorb any of it, at that dilution. That holds true for the pharmaceuticals that are sometimes found, also. The only real drug class of concern are female hormones, especially from birth control pills. The synthetic estrogens they contain are engineered to have a much longer biological half-life so women can take a pill once a day (the normal half-life of estrogen in the body is measured in seconds). Because of the molecular modifications, they also do not degrade in the body, and cannot be degraded by bacteria in sewage treatment plants. The estrogens enter the environment in the STP outflow. Hormones are powerful substances, and this estrogen does enter the environment at concentrations that can affect organisms. Dilution takes care of that pretty quickly, though, but there is a zone of environmental impact nonetheless.
I've got to get on my commitment to write a long reply on vitamin D RDA, so I don't want to go on too long here.
Lar
Posted by SLS on March 8, 2009, at 7:36:07
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » garnet71, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 7:00:38
> I've got to get on my commitment to write a long reply on vitamin D RDA, so I don't want to go on too long here.
Real quick, Larry, if you will, how many IU is equivalent to 2.5mg vitamin D?. I just read a paper reporting that when this amount of vitamin D is taken every day, the frequency of respiratory infections was sharply reduced.
- Scott
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 7:59:34
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by SLS on March 8, 2009, at 7:36:07
> > I've got to get on my commitment to write a long reply on vitamin D RDA, so I don't want to go on too long here.
>
>
> Real quick, Larry, if you will, how many IU is equivalent to 2.5mg vitamin D?. I just read a paper reporting that when this amount of vitamin D is taken every day, the frequency of respiratory infections was sharply reduced.
>
>
> - ScottThe mg to IU conversion for vitamin D3 is 1:40. So, 2.5 mg is 100 IU.
Lar
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 10:53:41
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » SLS, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 7:59:34
> > > I've got to get on my commitment to write a long reply on vitamin D RDA, so I don't want to go on too long here.
> >
> >
> > Real quick, Larry, if you will, how many IU is equivalent to 2.5mg vitamin D?. I just read a paper reporting that when this amount of vitamin D is taken every day, the frequency of respiratory infections was sharply reduced.
> >
> >
> > - Scott
>
> The mg to IU conversion for vitamin D3 is 1:40. So, 2.5 mg is 100 IU.
>
> LarI'm sorry, but I misread what you said. I'm only off by a factor of 1,000. One mcg is 40 IU. One mg is 40,000 IU. 2.5 mg is 100,000 IU.
Lar
Posted by garnet71 on March 8, 2009, at 13:15:49
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » garnet71, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 7:00:38
That's really interesting you do that type of work Larry!
I've had this knawing question forever, so maybe you could explain it. How on earth could scientists possibly know or predict the effects on the human race of a combination of over 10,000 chemicals in our environment? Since evolution is continuous, how could such chemicals not alter our physiology, when say pharmaceuticals or toxic substances, alter our bodily functions?
What is up with the bees?
Has the endocrine disruption process been known to have gone beyond frogs?
I better let you get back to your vitamin D post..lol.
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 15:42:35
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by garnet71 on March 8, 2009, at 13:15:49
> That's really interesting you do that type of work Larry!
Did might be more accurate just now. I had post-surgical complications a few years ago that have kept me from working.
> I've had this knawing question forever, so maybe you could explain it. How on earth could scientists possibly know or predict the effects on the human race of a combination of over 10,000 chemicals in our environment?
We can't. It's hard enough to predict the effect or even just the exposure from one of them on its own. The combination is totally beyond prediction. Last I checked there were over 180,000 man-made chemicals being released. I expect that number is continuing to increase.
> Since evolution is continuous, how could such chemicals not alter our physiology, when say pharmaceuticals or toxic substances, alter our bodily functions?
They must alter it. The question is, I suppose, how much is that alteration? Each chemical poses a non-zero risk, although that sometimes is best approximated by a zero. It's like the mathematical concept of a limit. The limit as x goes to infinity of 1/x is zero, but it never really gets there. In practical terms, in colloquial speech, I might say zero. But as a scientist, I know it never ever is.
> What is up with the bees?
I wish I knew, so I could tell the experts. I suspect a virus might be most likely. Or perhaps a phage, which could alter the health of symbiotic bacteria in their guts.
> Has the endocrine disruption process been known to have gone beyond frogs?For sure. Name the animal, and we've seen it. Perhaps the beginning of our recognition of endocrine disruption arose from the effect of DDT on large birds of prey. The dechlorinated metabolite of DDT is called DDE, and it strongly binds to the estrogen receptor of the calcium pumps which deposit the shell around the embryo after it is fertilized. DDE blocks the receptor without activating it, so there was a dose-dependent thinning of the shells. The eggs simply collapsed under the weight of the parent during incubation, if their DDE burden was high enough. Luckily, we noticed the correlation, banned DDT use, and some adult birds survived long enough to excrete the toxins sufficiently to allow reproduction before they went extinct. We figured out why the ban was necessary long after the ban took effect.
Fifty years ago, they used to spray DDT right on people, including babies. I only say that to suggest that different animals have different responses to different chemicals. I do not recall any endocrine disruption in humans attributed to DDT. Now I'm curious, and I shall have to look.
> I better let you get back to your vitamin D post..lol.I'm done with that now, thanks. I think my post was so large it caused the board to archive.
Lar
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 17:26:54
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » garnet71, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 15:42:35
Just following up on my own question if DDT is endocrine disrupting in humans....I can't find any evidence that it is. I already knew this, but the endocrine disrupters I mentioned already, bisphenol A and nonylphenol, do affect humans.
Lar
Posted by Garnet71 on March 9, 2009, at 23:36:47
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 17:26:54
What could be interesting though Lar is that DDT is still used in other parts of the world. Couldn't the wind carry the particles here anyway--especially if its sprayed through aerial means-crop dusters?
Posted by Garnet71 on March 9, 2009, at 23:38:57
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » garnet71, posted by Larry Hoover on March 8, 2009, at 15:42:35
Thanks for answering all my questions. And I'm very sorry about your complications and inability to go back to work. It looks like you did a day's work there with your vitamin D research project; you really need to repost it below so people don't miss it. Great work!
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 10, 2009, at 7:14:26
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by Garnet71 on March 9, 2009, at 23:36:47
> What could be interesting though Lar is that DDT is still used in other parts of the world. Couldn't the wind carry the particles here anyway--especially if its sprayed through aerial means-crop dusters?
It was used in California up until something like ten years ago. They were exploiting a loophole in pesticide legislation that permitted some percentage of unidentified compounds in the pesticide spray, so they put DDT in it. DDT does spread through the air and water. It has non-zero vapour pressure. It does get in the air from spraying, but it would get there anyway by evaporation. We computer model that transfer in the environment. The name for that is fugacity modelling. The bottom line from that modelling is that we know that the very same process that leads to DDT being bioaccumulated in organisms also leads to it partitioning (preferentially absorbing) into soil and sediments. If we just stopped using it altogether, most of it would disappear from the biosphere in just a few years. PCBs, and the brominated fire retardants you mentioned, and similar compounds are also like that, more or less. That partitioning into soil and sediment is the main mechanism that cleans up after us.
Lar
Posted by Larry Hoover on March 10, 2009, at 7:19:45
In reply to Re: How Inflammatory Disease Can Cause Fatigue » Larry Hoover, posted by Garnet71 on March 9, 2009, at 23:38:57
> Thanks for answering all my questions.
You're welcome. It was my pleasure.
> And I'm very sorry about your complications and inability to go back to work.
Thanks. I haven't been able to return to work, yet. The operative word is yet.
>It looks like you did a day's work there with your vitamin D research project; you really need to repost it below so people don't miss it. Great work!
Thank you, very much. Sometimes I get enough stuff swirling around in my head that an essay-type response seems inevitable. I feared I went over the top with that one. Are you suggesting I post it as a stand-alone thread?
Lar
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Medication | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.