Exploring the Gut-Brain Connection and Photosensitivity

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What if the true mechanism of success for cannabis in epilepsy isn't about the brain, but about the gut? Who's talking about endocannabinoid receptors of the intestines?

Neurology continues to treat the disorder from the neck up amid studies such as these:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2516444/
http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v13/n1/abs/nm1521.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16083701
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/con.../68/15/6468.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2219529/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3681373/
 
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Regarding ammonia as seizure trigger:

Ammonia build-up from a cellular view related to glutamate toxicity: what happens when the body has excess glutamate due to intracellular organism interference with the Krebs cycle where microbial transaminases, enzymes such as ALT, cause cells to kick out more endogenous glutamate? That's called immunoexcitotoxicity. Or, what if you're enzyme deficient (microbial glutamate dehydrogenase) such that glutamate cannot be deaminated to remove excess nitrogen, so ammonia builds and mitochondria are damaged by intracellular calcium? Neurodegeneration. The same dynamic may take place in vaccine injury:

Lactobacillus paracasei is a common lactobacillus probiotic used in yogurt and cheese manufacturing and found in breast milk, prized for glutamate dehydrogenase activity, reduces ammonia overload in above scenario: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12275-013-3279-2
http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/C5F9Y0
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03017.x/abstract
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8824434
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12602-013-9148-9
Full paper here: http://www.organobalance.de/Berichte/Lactobacillus_paracasei_reduces_mutans_streptococci.pdf
http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ejcn201413a.html
www.obesityresearchclinicalpractice.com/article/S1871-403X(08)00030-6/abstract
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814672?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=4301547

Lactobacillus paracasei protective when other lactobacilli weren't and even made matters worse: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007056
 
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I've always been struck by people putting two and two together, realizing they have both ulcerative colitis AND epilepsy. Here's a study showing reduced commensal microbes of the crucial clostridium cluster XIVa responsible for the bulk of butyrate production:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6941.2011.01252.x/abstract

This makes the case for both prebiotics and probiotics. There's only one (1) probiotic on the shelf currently containing clostridium.
http://www.aor.ca/products-page/baccilus-mesentericus/probiotic-3/
But there are several good prebiotic foods including resistant starches and almonds. How interesting almonds raise bifidobacteria and important clostridium clusters responsible for butyrate production:
http://aem.asm.org/content/74/14/4264

How do almonds remove impurities from the bowels? "Significant increases in the populations of Bifidobacterium spp. and Lactobacillus spp. were observed in fecal samples as a consequence of almond or almond skin supplementation. However, the populations of Escherichia coli did not change significantly, while the growth of the pathogen Clostridum perfringens was significantly repressed."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24315808

Studies about novel use of clostridium probiotics:
http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/59/2/141.full
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.femsim.2004.03.010/full
http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=XB8435337
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/...sCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2008.03885.x/full
http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/11/7520.asp
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1348-0421.2003.tb03469.x/full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670408/
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0063388
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Regulation/Japanese-firm-seeks-EU-probiotic-approval
http://www.pubfacts.com/detail/2442...um-butyricum-Against-Fish-Pathogen-Infections.

Clostridium may be the mechanism of success in fecal transplant. I wonder if their reduction is also caused by vaccination as mechanism of vaccine injury. But there are no studies about collateral damage to flora by any of the childhood vaccines.
 
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This is about how success in the "ketogenic" diet may be more about sugar and starch reduction than addition of fat and protein:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-05/cp-wcs051812.php

Article and link to study: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120523133238.htm

Interesting 1951 chapter about how reactive hypoglycemia (paradoxical low blood sugar after eating sugar and starch due to insulin spiking) allows viral infection: http://www.mercola.com/article/sugar/polio_sugar.htm
 
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Now it's time to combine two important mechanisms behind gut origin of seizure:
1) low CO2
2) hypoglycemia

How can gases like CO2 and oxygen relate to blood sugar levels? And how might microbial imbalances contribute?

I'm part of the Diets for Epilepsy group on Facebook where a few people are using a "kiss of life" technique to halt seizure activity in their loved ones. They are basically breathing (exhaling) CO2 into the people they care for while some epileptics are breathing into paper bags to recycle their own CO2. It works because we know the brain halts seizure by raising acid, but it's not necessarily as simple as shifting brain pH. Paul Hill of the group suggests the addition of CO2 lowers oxygen, thereby raising lactic acid used by the liver and astrocytes of the brain (?), to make sugar, addressing the root cause of seizure: hypoglycemia. This strong theory relates to the Lactic Acid Cycle (Cori Cycle) and the Alanine Cycle.

1932 paper states "blood levels at which hypoglycaemic symptoms occur, the "resting" brain lactic acid level is decreased." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1260916/

This 2014 article about how lactic acid fuels the brain: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140211084053.htm

Another article about the 2014 finding: http://www.outsideonline.com/news-from-the-field/Your-Brain-Feeds-on-Lactic-Acid.html

In my experience with a seizing dog, gelatin halted clusters to one seizure, but fasting was crucial. I thought the mechanism was gelatin acting as bandage, trapping toxins and free fatty acids and soothing the gut lining. It could also have been glycine which is high in gelatin and calms the brain. But recently I learned the high alanine content may have been more than its conversion to carnitine which slows kindling in amygdalas. The alanine may have been converting to pyruvate which is also used in gluconeogenesis to make sugar. Free fatty acids are also used by the liver in gluconeogenesis where the byproduct is ketones, good brain food. Where do these free fatty acids come from? They're microbial, such as butyrate, product of clostridium bacteria and other microbes. Note: once I tried giving her a pyruvate supplement and it caused seizure.

Another technique I used to halt seizure while in progress was an ice pack on the correct part of the spine (I think between 3rd and 4th vertebrae). I surmise this works because cold temperature raises blood acidity. This acidity in the form of raised CO2 translates to balanced sugar levels via lactic acid production.

From a microbial standpoint as cause of blood sugar imbalance, I've noted before how many fix CO2 to make other products, i.e., methanogens using CO2 to make methane (which, incidentally, causes constipation which predicts seizure activity).

Regarding ketone use by the brain, I've heard it said erythrocytes cannot use ketones, only sugar. Erythrocytes are red blood cells that cannot utilize ketones. This is another reason I don't believe success in the ketogenic diet is about raising ketones, but about flora shift which also shifts amino acids. The erythrocytes are responsible for producing lactic acid from glucose, but they can become infected, unable to do their job: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7186756

This study is about erythrocytes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) exposed to air, including CO2, leading to lactic acidosis. It may be important to note the air we exhale is only partially CO2, there's also oxygen content. http://cicm.org.au/journal/2003/september/Bala1.pdf

The Alanine Cycle is similar to and overlapping the Lactic Acid cycle to make sugar while detoxing ammonia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alanine_cycle

How much do lactic acid bacteria (LAB) contribute to blood sugar stability? Apparently a lot. One food very high in LAB is sauerkraut. You can even bake bread with lactic acid to improve glucose metabolism, see here: http://www.lub.lu.se/luft/diss/tec_628/tec_628_paper_IV.pdf

L. acidophilus in epilepsy
http://ebm.sagepub.com/content/23/1/25.extract

There are also bacteria which may be utilizing too much lactic acid, i.e., clostridium overgrowth known in autism: http://aem.asm.org/content/70/10/5810.full
 
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With regard to low CO2 levels (acidosis) -- it's well known in the medical field that metabolic acidosis can trigger seizures. Children on the ketogenic diet do not normally go into acidosis (bicarb levels lower than 20), but this can be a potential side effect, and most neurologists have electrolytes checked once every 3 months to keep on top of this (more often if the child tends to have issues with low C02 levels).

Two seizure medications -- Topomax and Zonegran -- often cause metabolic acidosis in and of themselves, and, when combined with the ketogenic diet, almost always cause low C02 levels -- requiring strenuous efforts to keep electrolytes in balance. Most neurologists/dieticians have their patients in these circumstances drink large amounts of water mixed with some or all of these: lemon or lime juice, Stevia, baking soda, and Morton salt substitute (which is potassium chloride). Cytra-K crystals (Potassium Citrate, Bicarbonate, and Citric Acid) is another option, but currently unavailable due to some snafu with Cypress Pharm and the FDA). If that doesn't work, then the medication and/or the diet need to be tapered down.

The interesting thing is that a slight state of acidity (low normal, or slightly below normal -- C02 levels around 20 to 23) seems to help seizure control, which may be why Topomax and Zonegran are effective meds for many (although they have other dastardly side effects), as well as the Ketogenic diet. But when the C02 levels tend to get down into the range of 16 or lower, then we start seeing an increase in seizures (this is through personal experience, and anecdotal experience from other parents whose children are on the diet).

So...it seems a matter of a delicate balance of maintaining the optimal amount of acidity.

And yes, I do concur that sugar and starch reduction is one factor in the ketogenic success -- we can see that with less strenuous diets, such as the LGIT or Selected Carb diets, which have some success in reducing or eliminating seizures.

I believe that the ketogenic diet has a multi-faceted approach to seizure control: gut health, blood sugar control (see post below), converting from glucose to ketones as brain fuel (which can starve tumors), neuroregeneration, an increase in the ratio of branched-chain amino acids and aromatic amino acids (per research in Thailand), and perhaps a number of other factors.
 
With regard to hypoglycemia and the ketogenic diet and seizures:

Most children on the ketogenic diet have blood glucose in the 60 to 80 range. So, lower than the average child/adult, but not in a dangerous range (lower than 70 may cause symptoms of hypoglycemia for many individuals, but kids on the diet adjust to these lower levels and it's not problematic). It's actually uncommon for blood sugar to drop into dangerous levels (below 50) except during the initiation phase (which is one important reason for children to be in hospital during initiation) and sometimes during an illness if the child isn't eating. However, to be on the safe side, parents are instructed to check their child's glucose levels daily (or several times a day) especially in the first few months, and again if the child is ill or having frequent seizures. If blood sugar dips down too low, the child is given apple juice. (We've never had to do this in the 3 years Jon's been on the diet).

We do usually see higher glucose readings when a child is ill or having frequent seizures (any stress to the body raises blood sugar). However, it's interesting to note that most kids on the Keto diet have extremely regulated blood sugar -- whether first thing in morning or anytime through the day -- the readings are consistently between 60 to 80 (unless child is ill or just had a seizure). We don't see the spikes that the rest of us (on regular diets) have -- either too high or too low. And these spikes are known to trigger seizures in many people with epilepsy (even people without epilepsy, if too severe a spike).
 
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thank you Keith. this is amazing information. I am always so curious about how this may relate to me, personally. And how to alter my seizures with this information.
 
Regarding ammonia as seizure trigger:

Ammonia build-up from a cellular view related to glutamate toxicity: what happens when the body has excess glutamate due to intracellular organism interference with the Krebs cycle where microbial transaminases, enzymes such as ALT, cause cells to kick out more endogenous glutamate?

(Yet another) potential mechanism of the Ketogenic Diet is that it enhances the conversion of glutamate to glutamine.

Glutamate is a major excitatory neurotransmitter (and thus too much can trigger seizures).

The brain in ketosis efficiently converts glutamate to glutamine -- thus reducing glutamate levels in brain.

Ketosis also enhances the conversion of glutamine to GABA, which is a major inhibitory neurotransmitter.

This mimics two important actions of a number of AEDs, without the horrific side effects.

Not so sure how this relates to the gut-brain connection, other than what one eats has a significant impact on the brain.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722878/
 
I've always been struck by people putting two and two together, realizing they have both ulcerative colitis AND epilepsy. :clap:

How interesting almonds raise bifidobacteria and important clostridium clusters responsible for butyrate production:
http://aem.asm.org/content/74/14/4264

How do almonds remove impurities from the bowels? "Significant increases in the populations of Bifidobacterium spp. and Lactobacillus spp. were observed in fecal samples as a consequence of almond or almond skin supplementation. However, the populations of Escherichia coli did not change significantly, while the growth of the pathogen Clostridum perfringens was significantly repressed."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24315808

But there are no studies about collateral damage to flora by any of the childhood vaccines. [/I]

How interesting about almonds! Almonds and especially almond flour are an important feature in the ketogenic diet for many kids -- mainly because almond flour can be used in place of wheat flour for baked goods, and also is a good protein source with low carbs and healthy fat. I will have to share this little nugget about its bowel cleansing effects with my fellow Keto Moms!

And....I wouldn't hold my breath about any studies done on damage to gut flora by childhood vaccines. Merck is not about to lose that profitable market, and will do everything in its power to ruin the reputation of any doc who dares to conduct any such study.
 
This is amazing! thank you for the great info! i have loved almonds and used 'almond butter' as a staple food source for years. I know it is also a great source of zinc and healthy oils. I will invest more in organic, almond butter.
 
Karen, great to read you here sharing precious insights.

Speaking of almonds as prebiotic, I've been learning about lactobacillus where lactic acid bacteria (LAB) increase lactate which raises BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). BDNF is studied in epilepsy connected to synaptic transmission, but one can have too much of a good thing as high levels of BDNF and lactobacillus are found in autism. This 1925 paper is interesting:
http://ebm.sagepub.com/content/23/1/25.extract

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1198633/
http://www.neurology.org/content/75/14/1285
http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(11)00607-X/abstract
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304394010014898
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0197018613002623

Lactobacillus plantarum is studied in relation to memory loss (a problem linked with epilepsy); here it's shown to stabilize BDNF:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1075996414000225
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2012.05437.x/abstract

One food very high in lactobacillus is real sauerkraut.

Lactate is also fuel in gluconeogenesis where the liver converts it to pyruvate to make sugar, ameliorating hypoglycemia. Lactate is known to be brain fuel. Incidentally, alanine in gelatin converts to pyruvate, beginning of gluconeogenesis to balance blood sugar.
 
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http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/06/23/confirmation-bias/
http://vaccineconspiracytheorist.blogspot.com/2011/06/quack-of-day-dr-russell-blaylock.html
Loads of medical advice - and haven't spent one day studying medicine formally. But that is the wonder of the Internet - it creates thousand of instant medical professionals and doctors (no, - better than doctors - as they are experts not being ashamed of criticizing those people who has studied medicine formally for 11 year and more)!! These Internet qualified experts are all quoting each other - or other real medical professionals mostly out of context - or a previously respected medical professional gone astray... like Dr. Blaylock
“Thanks to Google, we can instantly seek out support for the most bizarre idea imaginable. If our initial search fails to turn up the results we want, we don’t give it a second thought, rather we just try out a different query and search again.” - Justin Owings
The exercise is intended to show how you tend to come up with a hypothesis and then work to prove it right instead of working to prove it wrong. Once satisfied, you stop searching.

You seek out safe havens for your ideology, friends and coworkers of like mind and attitude, media outlets guaranteed to play nice. Whenever your opinions or beliefs are so intertwined with your self-image you couldn’t pull them away without damaging your core concepts of self, you avoid situations which may cause harm to those beliefs.

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.”

- Francis Bacon

Over time, by never seeking the antithetical, through accumulating subscriptions to magazines, stacks of books and hours of television, you can become so confident in your world-view no one could dissuade you.
 
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I'm familiar with Russell Blaylock, he's a notorious quack & believes in all sorts of conspiracy theories like chemtrails. Despite being a trained surgeon, he also tends to speak on things that are outside his realm of expertise.

The thing that is important here is not that he is apparently putting forth this nutrition cancer treatment theory, but that apparently Dr. Blaylock, a neurosurgeon, feels he has enough expertise to dish out advice about cancer and vaccines, two areas outside of his actual field of expertise, neurology , besides the expertise that all doctors have due to their medical training.
http://www.vaccinetimes.com/russell-blaylock-md-the-new-wakefield/
 
I'd like to say more about confirmation bias. Google puts us in touch with millions of studies , done over many, many decades and, in some cases, even all the way back to a century ago, without requiring us to understand what those studies mean and why they haven't been repeated.

I'll demonstrate the results of confirmation bias, which is defined as
a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.
.

Scientists approach research by trying to disprove their hypothesis. This is, I suspect, to avoid confirmation bias, which everyone is prone to. While I was in the shower, I sucked something out of my thumb that I want to use to demonstrate it. I decided on 'chocolate causes cancer.' When I Google chocolate and cancer I get a string of results that tell me that chocolate prevents cancer. I find legitimate studies that confirm this, but they don't serve my hypothesis.

To reach my goal of proving that chocolate causes cancer, I try Googling 'carcinogens in chocolate.' That should be precise enough to give me the evidence I need to support what I want to prove. Sure enough, I get information about the benzoarenes, acrylamide and PAH in chocolate--all of these are said to be carcinogens. However, the articles I find are not from reputable sources and they don't contain convincing studies. So I refine my search to one carcinogen: acrylamide. I find some very convincing sources. In fact, the FDA is there, as is Forbes. I need to really prove my point, so I search for 'acrylamide cancer studies.' I find NCLB studies and trials published on Cancer.org. The Cancer.org one here
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/acrylamide
says that there are two studies proving that acrylamide indeed causes cancer. However, the NCLB study, consisting of 12 trialss, says that there is no convincing evidence that acrylamide causes cancer.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22495255

I'll stick to those two, although I could dig up more conflicting studies, as can you. If this was not an experiment, confirmation bias might have me ignoring the NCBI study and going on to search for further studies that say acrylamide does cause cancer. I would then move on to the other chemicals and do the same thing.

But I am sitting with two conflicting studies in my experiment, so how do I process it without confirmation bias? First and most obviously, I weigh up the scope of the studies. 12 trials vs 2 trials. It is definitely moving in favour of chocolate not causing cancer. But if I have confirmation bias, I will not have read the NCBI study telling me that 12 trials show that chocolate does not cause cancer, and I would thus not tell you about them.

Now I must look more deeply at my subject: chocolate. How much acrylamide is actually in chocolate and how many other foods contain acrylamide. Turns out that all cooked foods and some refrigerated ones contain acrylamide, with potato chips containing the most and chocolate containing so little that it isn't mentioned on the lists.

Secondly, I need to look at how well those acrylamide studies have been designed. The studies that say acrylamide causes cancer were trials done on animals. The studies that say acrylamide does not cause cancer were done on people. That adds another point to the 'chocolate doesn't cause cancer' side, given that we don't share the same physiology with animals.

The next part is the most difficult. I can't really understand the topic of my research until I understand cancer and its etiology. Since I can't get a medical degree today, I will look at a little of what doctors have said about the differences between cancers and their responses to acrylamide: I find that those with endometrial, kidney, and ovarian cancer are the only subjects that show MIXED results from acrylamide intake. All other kinds of cancer seem not to respond to it as a carcinogen.

Next, I must understand the chemical nature of my subject: acrylamide. I find that it is generated through the application of heats of up to a specific temperature, and it also forms when potatoes are kept in the fridge. With confirmation bias, I would tell you that potato chips, toast, chocolate, coffee, bread, and meat all contain cancer-causing acrylamide. Without confirmation bias, I would tell you that only foods that are excessively browned, chilled, or heated to too high a temperature contain acrylamide, which hasn't been proven to cause cancer.

I can generate an enormous number of studies over time proving something that I wish to prove. I can also generate an enormous number of studies over time proving the opposite. Without a medical degree, all my Googling is dangerous. With confirmation bias, all my googling is useless.

I was writing regularly for a client who has trademarked a particular surgery. Recently, they asked me to leave out the subject of pregnancy from all of my work for them. I dropped them as a client as a result. It wasn't because their surgery caused fertility problems--it actually resulted in improved preservation of fertility against other surgical options. But without all of the facts, even the tiniest and the most seemingly inconsequential ones, patients are being manipulated.

Why do I take things like this so seriously?

Take the suggestion above (from a 1925 study) that a litre of L.acidophilus milk daily may reduce seizures.

In 1982, pediatricians at the University of California School of Medicine in Los Angeles reported a case of near-fatal overdose in a 3-week-old boy who had been given potassium for colic. In this case, the potassium was contained in a salt-substitute added to an acidophilus solution as recommended in another paragraph of the colic discussion. After four days, the infant became lethargic and irritable and had an episode of gagging after which he became limp and stopped breathing. The parents began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and immediately took him to an emergency room, where he was able to breath spontaneously. His potassium levels were extremely high but responded promptly to treatment
(http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/69/1/117.abstract)

These seemingly innocuous suggestions made by those who aren't medically trained and don't understand the effects and causes of something like hyperkalemia, which is easily fatal, can kill people who take them at face value.
 
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To the point about "seeking out support of the most bizarre ideas imaginable," I'll point to a post I made yesterday--I was looking for something that I could use for allergies that wouldn't conflict with epilepsy, and actually found a study that showed that Mucinex helps reduce seizures in rats. I posted it as a joke--it was a very limited study using rats, not humans, done because Mucinex is in a class similar to an AED. That study appears not to have been repeated (not surprisingly so). I'm not going to drop Keppra and take Mucinex, but will say it seems someone took my post as a serious suggestion that we consider Mucinex as seizure med (not her fault I have a strange sense of humor and wasn't particularly clear), and I could go online to loads of other forums and start posting my pubmed link and sound convincing that I have had success myself, and before long, anyone googling "Mucinex + epilepsy" would find several forum threads discussing it, and considering the internet, it wouldn't surprise me if it gained a foothold from there (nothing surprises me on the internet). We may not see people with reduced seizures, but we may have a lot of people with clearer sinuses.
 
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Yes, Lindsay, I saw that happen, and I think with the scarcity of information about epilepsy and Mucinex, it wouldn't be too long before you could generate a following of believers. It's a long shot but maybe that's why alternative health marketers choose such odd concepts much of the time--easier to gain online visibility, easier to make an impression, easier to preach about all medical scientists being evil.
 
To become a great baseball player, it takes thousands of hours of practice and study. The best athletes, I believe, are also the most intelligent ones. They watch film or observe their competitors for weaknesses and strengths. And you can’t Google “how to pitch a curve ball,” and then suddenly presume you will throw the best curve ball in the world. (As I know I have international readers. Just replace baseball with soccer. And replace curveball with bend it like Beckham.) And those are merely games! Yes, they are intense, high level games, but they are just games with little effect on life and death.

Similarly, you cannot expect to Google “how to induce an immune response” and then become an immunologist. I took several graduate and medical school level immunology courses, and I don’t claim to be an immunologist, and I have a broad background in biochemistry that allows me to understand it. But there are just so many points, so complex, and so detailed, to become an “expert” takes 10-20 years of study and research. Not 10-20 minutes. Or even 10-20 hours.

I would then stay in the lab with cardiologists, techs, nurses, and whomever walked in until late in the evening. I’d do this for months on end, just to figure out a tiny problem with a stent or angioplasty or whatever. A cardiologist and I would pore over medical records trying to figure out why one patient did better than another. And we gave each other high fives when a patient would say “I feel so much better.” That simple device saved a few hundred lives a year, it was developed because a team of individuals in my company combined knowledge of cells, vascular physiology, fluid mechanics, plastics engineering, and torque (yeah, torque) to invent a new catheter. You could Google all day long and you wouldn’t be able to discover how to save a life of an individual with the coronary lesion that we attacked. And we didn’t do this by pretending to be knowledgeable about these areas–we were extremely knowledgeable.

The vast majority of antivaccinationists, along with most pseudoscience-pushing types, don’t have the knowledge that results from hard work. They don’t understand what it is to put in 20 hours a day in study and research. They have no clue what it is to directly save lives.
They believe it takes 20 hours total to be an expert, and so they loudly proclaim, “I LEARNED THIS ON GOOGLE, SO NOW I’M A BRILLIANT AS PAUL OFFIT.” That’s their definition of hard work. And it’s not even close. It’s not even on the same planet as close. It is a perfect example of the Dunning Kruger Effect, a cognitive bias, but I don’t want this article to be a psychological analysis of the arrogance and ignorance of those pushing pseudoscience.

All that you have to understand is that they believe that becoming knowledgeable is easy. They think that sitting on their couch with their iPad will pass on great wisdom to them. But what they don’t understand, what flies over their head is that scientific knowledge is gained through blood, sweat, and tears

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/false-ideology-science-deniers-research-easy/
 
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