msb-0303 Its Wednesday, Its Shauna's Show

msb-0303 Its Wednesday, Its Shauna's Show

intro

Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

MSBPodcast is "not" any kind of a medical podcast.

It is by and for MSers.

Its purpose is to keep us entertained, to explain our symptoms, to remark on our discoveries, and to raise the general consciousness about our disease.

The path to illness is shadowy, murky and rough strewn.

The path to wellness is lit by the lamp of knowledge.

----

Feedback comes first, so...

Good grief, things take a long time to coordinate.

I'm as frustrated as ever.

So the theme this time is a little Latin music. "Andele andele, arriba!"

---- "Me Llaman Calle" by: "Manu Chao" http://www.myspace.com/manuchao

Feed Forward comes next, so...

This is "your" segment.

Say "your" piece on this segment.

Share with other MSers whatever "you" want to share.

Drop me an email: "charles at MSBPodcast.com"

I am inviting you to log into the "wiki" [at http://wage.packet.org/ ] and help flesh it out, rather much like I am, and to add things as you discover them.

---- "Chica In A Hurry" by: "ATL Producers" http://www.atlproducers.com/

Feed Me comes third, so...

Do you have a therapy, product, good or service that is of interest to MSers?

Consider advertising on this podcast.

Reminders on this segment only cost $0.03 per reminder per download of an episode. (A $30CPM targeted at MSers.)

It can/should lead to a full ad, in text, audio or video, which costs $3.00 per download.

That sounds expensive until you do the math and realize that if nobody downloads it it costs you nothing, unlike print, where you often can't even get an ad in to the specialized journals, or radio or TV where you'd just be wasting your money with the 0.0833% MSers rate of return. (That's about six times "below" the level of "statistical noise".)

But MSBPodcast is 100% in your market, and you only pay per download of your material.

No play, no pay.

Reach the MSers who would buy your therapy, product, good or service, with-out having to waste your advertising money on anyone who is "not" interested...

Send me an email at: "charles (at) MSBPodcast.com"

---- "Begin The Baiao" by: "Kerry Politzer" http://www.kerrypolitzer.com/

"Thesis:"

May the saints that look out for fools and little children give me the patience, the strength and wisdom that I need to sit on my hand as I wait and wait for things.

Here is Shauna to regale us with yet another tale of how the extremely uncapitalistic, undemocratic and authoritarian meritocracy (mostly ... I "do" listen to Tom Wisker on "Weaponry" [ http://wbai.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=336&Itemid=142 ] at WBAI so that colors my views,) ahem, that is the U.S. military is coping with, returning as they are, people severely injured fighting in the two wars on the far side of the world.

I'm convinced that we should stay in touch with Twitter. It would save me so much heartburn and worry. [Its like my friend the SysAdmin with his ailing mother who would have made life, both his and mine, so much easier with a few Tweets.])

Now I only have the Amazon Ads thingy to get up and running on the "wiki". [ http://wage.packet.org ]

Everything else, Google Maps, YouTube videos and the Calendar extensions are running. (And if you find some more [at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:AllPages/Extension: ] that you think would be a benefit to us all, fell free to drop me an "email" at charles at MSBPodcast.com.

Now enough yakking from me and lets get back to some music and to Shauna.

---- "Maria Marisol" by: "Los Gallos" http://www.losgallos.com/

"Synthesis:"

When I was diagnosed with MS I asked my docs about supplements or a specific diet that might help. I was told that the typical low fat high, fiber route was the way to go, that there was little in the scientific literature to support one diet or another. My family doc recommended that I use sunflower seed oil when cooking, as that oil might aid with the regrowth of myelin that had been destroyed. As far as other supplements and vitamins go, I sometimes take vitamin D, calcium and magnesium, as I know for a fact I don't get enough of those in my regular diet and living in the Northern hemisphere I am robbed of any helpful sunlight for several months of the year. I also take fish oil and Vitamin C, only during the winter.

I used to go for massage therapy on a fairly regular basis, as we have two schools in my city that offer "neuro clinics" conducted by students, so they're inexpensive. And the students are supervised. I stopped going when I felt the benefit for me was no longer what it used to be. I will go from time to time as the need arises. I am also embarking on a regime of yoga to supplement my biking as exercise.

I am not a proponent of CAM, complimentary and alternative medicine, as there has not been enough scientific study of these methods of treatment. (Please don't send me links to "studies" by people or companies that have investigated their own product. They are not unbiased.) But, if you have a large study conducted by a reputable organization or institution, with a large sample size, large control group, and reproducable results, then let's talk. It's not that I don't believe that some of these treatments have merit. It just hasn't been demonstrated yet. I would be the first one to jump on the bandwagon if something worked. If you use CAMs and they work for you, then good. For you.

Today, I read an "article" [ http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/army-bioenergy.html ] from "Wired" [ http://www.wired.com/ ] magazine. In it, the "author" details plans the U.S. Army has of offering money to researchers who study alternative therapies and treatments for trauma spectrum disorders including Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I am excited about this. Why? Well, first of all, the Defense Department "is dedicated to supporting evidence-based approaches to medical treatment and wants to support the use of alternative therapies if they are proven efficacious," notes a recently-issued request for proposals. One way or another the U. S. Army may be able to put to rest claims of CAM success or they may disprove those claims. What is the Army's bias? They want their personnel to be treated with something that works and possibly to be put back in an active role. They are willing to spend the money to find out if something works, whether it's transcendental meditation or art therapy or nutritional supplements to improve cognitive functioning.

Secondly, medical science progresses in spurts, and we are at the beginning of another spurt with the war in Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan, and the numerous other fights going on these days. Every time there is a major conflict on this planet we find new ways of injuring each other. As a result, military docs are on the forefront of treating the "new" casualties. The treatments they devise get passed along to the general public. After World War 1, the field of plastic surgery progressed very quickly. Men were returning from war, missing huge parts of their faces or bodies. As a result of the wounds that surgeons were facing, they developed new techniques of repair for the soldiers that were then applied to civilians. The docs fixed 'em, or tried to, then we civilians reaped the benefits.

What benefits could there be for people like me, with MS? In the past, the study of the effects of injury has greatly increased our knowledge of how a body part is supposed to work. Traumatic brain injuries of soldiers may give us more insight into how our brain recovers and rewires, which is directly related to MS, stroke, and other neurological conditions. Unknowingly, soldiers will be contributing to our wealth of knowledge about function. And they will also contribute to our knowledge of treatment of dysfunction.

The Army will be allocating $4 million for these studies. In the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot. But let's say 20 studies are approved and out of those 20, 3 are found to be quite promising. Those 3 would then be investigated further and so on. Perhaps the Army will discover a type of effective treatment previously dismissed because of inadequate research. I look forward to their findings, because we civilians will be the lucky recipients of the results. After the soldiers, of course.

S.

---- "Ala sola" by: "Daiki and Little Wings" http://daiki-soulcafe.blogspot.com/

"Conclusion:"

Thanks Shauna. I needed the distraction as I go back to waiting and waiting for those who decide to finally, uh, decide.

This is as bad as waiting for my diagnosis.

Actually, when I was diagnosed I was already bound for neuro-ICU, so the diagnosis was a kind of anticlimactic non-issue.

So now, I'm a podcaster (though the the 85% of my audience who pick up my shows directly off of the web, I'm a webcaster.)

---- "Chile Relleno" by: "Ritchie Hernandez" http://www.myspace.com/ritchiehernandez

Outro