Tag Archives: muscle

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Reaction

On Monday I walked with a group of friends. First I walked down from my house to the coffee shop, walked with them, walked back. It was cold but I was well layered. I want to see if I can up my exercise in spite of Long Covid and muscle weirdness. The initial reaction was fatigue. I took a nap on the couch from 2 to 6 pm and then went to bed at 7. I woke at 5. Fourteen hours of sleep.

That is not totally reassuring. Tuesday I did not feel particularly sore or tired. Wednesday, though, was bad. I started have muscle aches all over and I could not get my hands or feet warm. I lay down under an enormous pile of blankets and eventually went to sleep, starting at about 2 pm. I woke at 9 pm and then went back to sleep, warmer but aching, until 4 am. So that is another 14 hours.

This morning nausea and headache, but less soreness.

So, here is an article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-44432-3 about the post-exertional malaise in people with Long Covid. They took people with Long Covid, matched them with people who have recovered from Covid-19, and then did muscle biopsies in both groups before and after maximal exercise. Results? “We show that skeletal muscle structure is associated with a lower exercise capacity in patients and that local and systemic metabolic disturbances, severe exercise-induced myopathy and tissue infiltration of amyloid-containing deposits in skeletal muscles of patients with long COVID worsen after induction of post-exertional malaise.”

Both groups were healthy before Covid-19 and physically active. The study uses many different techniques to measure muscle oxygen use and look at the muscles themselves at the microscopic level. As previous studies have shown, none of our current imaging, like x-rays and CT scan and MRI, can see the problems. This is at a microscopic and cell level in the muscles.

So I am having a post-infection or Long Covid flare the last couple of days, because I pushed too far against my limits. They have not done brain studies but the suspicion is that something similar has been going on. I have been spending a lot of time contacting temp companies and doing job searches, so I am going to take a few days off from that as well. Let the brain and muscles heal.

I still think of Long Covid as immune system PTSD, where the immune system is trying to protect me from further infection, though not necessarily in a way that I like. If the immune system makes me stay home and rest, well, I shouldn’t catch anything, right? Our immune systems are as diverse and complicated as we are, so the patterns are highly variable.

My immune system can’t bamboozle me. It wants me to stay home and take it easy. I get the message. Have a wonderful day.

Cats respond to drugs differently too. Sol Duc is quiet and contemplative on catnip. Elwha, well, guess.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bamboozle.

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Home Hurrah!

New Year’s Eve was a travel day for me, flying from Dulles to SeaTac. This time my checked bag came along and did not divert to party in Chicago, as it did on the trip out. I had a wonderful two weeks in Arlington, Virginia and Rockville, MD with old friends and my son and daughter-in-law and daughter. Very kind friends picked me up at SeaTac and drove me the two hours home. I slept for three hours on the plane and another hour in the car. The pair of socks on yesterday’s Ragtag is for one of the two people who picked me up.

The plane was about 40 minutes early and the airport was impressively empty. There was some traffic on I5, but it was not crazy. There was quite a bit of fog all the way home.

Yesterday morning we went to the climbing gym for the second time in the two weeks. I had not climbed in maybe three years? And I have never done a lot.

The rest of my family climbs like squirrels and spiders. I currently climb more like a panicked sloth, but I did a 5, a 5.6 and a 5.7 the first day. Yesterday I planned to take it easy, but I roped up for one and it was the wrong one, so I tried a 5.8. My family was clambering up 5.11s. Whew. It was really fun and loads of fun to watch them. And hurrah that I can climb some after Long Covid and two years with unhappy muscles!

Peace and joy to you and yours.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: Hurrah!

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Mortal

I am feeling mortal.

I am in my post-pneumonia phase where people say, “Well, you LOOK great.” This is round four, so it’s not a surprise. It just took two years this time, instead of two months. In 2003 it took two months.

There are various things feeding in to this. A friend my age has had a stroke. “NO!” I think, “TOO YOUNG!” The death of the actor from friends bothers me mostly because he’s nearly a decade younger. Drugs and alcohol shorten the lifespan by quite a bit. A study checking for five things: inactivity, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and very heavy weight showed that the people with all five tended to die 20 years sooner than the people with none. That study was at least a decade ago if not two. So cross off about 4 years for any of those, sigh. A cardiologist recently said tobacco is worse than alcohol and now I am wondering how much worse? And how do they measure that? Tobacco kills more but serious alcohol use is a lot faster at killing people. Both of them affect all body systems: GI, heart, lungs, brain, bone marrow, liver, kidneys, and so forth. Even skin.

Also, the last lung test was still abnormal even though I am off oxygen and feeling mostly good. I am having muscle trouble though. Every morning I wake with really bad pain in both thighs and whatever muscles I’ve been trying to build. This has been going on since at least August. Since I think that this is an antibody disorder, it implies that the antibody baseline has risen to the point where my muscles are grumpy and hurt. Alternatively it could be a Long Covid issue: microclots could be clogging the capillaries in the muscles when I exercise and causing hypoxia in muscles, which means they can’t build. Muscle cells are fascinating. When you exercise the cells need more food and build new insulin receptors in the cell wall. So exercise changes the individual muscle cells! How very amazing. My muscles are resisting the build and it is very annoying. There is research going on re the microclots, but there is bleeding risk from the anticoagulants including strokes. So, um, well, I seem to be stuck. It is not stopping me from hiking and dancing and being active but boy does it hurt in the mornings.

This is not very bucolic, is it? I am still attending the Long Covid talks and it is really fascinating and quite scary. It’s just a very very nasty virus. I wish it would calm down. The 1918-1921 influenza really calmed down after three years, but there are no guarantees. Anyhow, at least I can dance!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: bucolic.

The photograph is taken in Michigan in 2014.

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Telegraph

Sol Duc’s posture telegraphs her thoughts. “Where have you been? This is past your bedtime/curfew. I don’t like that and I disapprove.”

“But Sol Duc, I was listening to a band, and it’s only 9 pm. My muscles are feeling better! I am not sleeping twelve hours a night.”

Elwha: “Mom, I was asleep. Why are you out? Sleeping twelve hours is nothing! I can sleep for twenty!”

Me: “Ok, ok, I am home. I am going to bed!”

Body language can say so much! For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: muscle.

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Nerve ablation

Would I do this? A nerve ablation for chronic pain?

https://healthy.kaiserpermanente.org/health-wellness/health-encyclopedia/he.nerve-ablation-for-chronic-pain.zx3505

Two people mentioned nerve ablation to me this week: one in the back and one in the knee. Would I do this?

Holy denervation, Batman. I’d like to think that I wouldn’t, but pain does suck.

The problem is that pain is information, even chronic pain. The current thinking in medicine is that chronic pain is some sort of glitch in the wiring or the brain where something keeps hurting even if we can’t see much of an injury.

Like grief or a broken heart or the death of a loved one.

Those pains can soften, but do they entirely go away? The death of loved ones doesn’t. It’s been a decade since my sister died of cancer and I still think of things that would make her howl with laughter. She understood me in a way that no one in the world does: ok, except for my children. My children are adults now and out in the world and observing other parenting and non-parenting and disastrous young adult choices. My son now has a high school classmate dead of opioid overdose. A topic for another essay.

Back to chronic pain. Medicine in the United States does patients a terrible disservice by talking about the spinal discs all the time. 99 times out of 100, the pain is NOT a disc. The back is very complicated, with 6 layers of muscles, and some of those muscles are only an inch long. They all have to work together in a fluid way. Often, we forget this. Our muscles try to obey us and we lock them into a terrible position and they try and try and try: and then tear and hurt.

Lock them? Yes. We have three main types of muscle: fast twitch fatigable, fast twitch non-fatigable and slow twitch. Slow twitch don’t get much attention in the United States MORE AND FASTER dysfunctional ADHD culture. Slow twitch muscles are the posture muscles. If you lock them in one position, they will stay there. Even when you get up from the computer or desk or bent over picking strawberries.

When the muscles lock, remember that they are all attached to bones. Every muscle attaches to at least two sites. Picture a muscle that crosses the knee joint locking into a shortened position. Now, do you think the knee moves normally? NO, it doesn’t. And if the muscle is tight and locked, the knee joint can be damaged by not being able to move freely.

Now, think about your back. You have seven cervical vertebrae, 12 thoracic and five lumbar. So 24 separate bones, and then other bones, like ribs, attached by tendons and ligaments and muscles. You pull a muscle in your lower back playing pickleball. It hurts. When the muscle is injured, it tightens up to protect itself. The surrounding muscles can tighten as well, and then that area doesn’t move right. The other muscles and joints have to attempt to take up the slack! They can’t move normally either! All too often I ask what people did when their back started hurting and all they did was take something to mask the pain and keep going.

Pretty dysfunctional.

So what do I want you to do with a new injury? RICE. Rest, ice, compression, elevation. Rest the muscle. It’s hurt. Ice for ten minute intervals in the first 48 hours, not heat. Heat increases bleeding and swelling. Muscles can bleed if they are torn. You have had a bruise sometime in your life, right? You won’t see a deep muscle bruise, and personally I have trouble looking at my own back. You may add heat after the first 48 hours. Usually the peak of swelling and bleeding is by 48 hours. Compression: if it is an ankle or an elbow, an ace wrap holds the joint still and reduces swelling. You can press ice on your back, or lie on an ice pack. Go ahead and shower but not super hot at first. Elevation for arms and legs: gravity helps reduce swelling and pain.

What if it’s been hurting for a year? Your blog was too late!

Check your posture first. If you have been avoiding moving a part of your body, you need help. If your posture is terrible, you really need help. Take breaks at the computer! Get up and walk! And see your primary care person. Physical therapy, occupational therapy, massage therapy. Pay attention to what makes the pain worse and what makes it better. Alcohol or pot might make if hurt less, but that’s not fixing the problem and could make it worse. Muscle relaxants are not great either. The muscle tightened up to keep from tearing, remember? And scar tissue can form in muscle. You need to work with someone to gently break down that scar tissue without tearing the muscle again. So muscle memory is for injuries too. If a muscle has been traumatized, it has scarring and it remembers. It may tear more easily and will tighten up more easily. Listen to your muscles. They do not just tighten with trauma, they also tighten with stress and are more at risk for injury. Learn how to reduce your stress, go into a parasympathetic relaxed mode, and help your muscles.

For long term chronic pain, I think of present injury, old injury and then brain and emotional injury. We are often afraid of injury, that we will be hurt, that it will hurt forever, that we will be disabled and be alone and starve. Our culture for the most part celebrates the young and strong and the survivors. I don’t think we have a “chronic pain day” where the whole country thanks the people who have chronic pain and work anyhow, to take care of each other and their families. Maybe we should have that. The emotional part of chronic pain must be addressed too.

I would be very cautious about having a nerve cut, or ablated. The exception for me is the abnormal heart pathways that cause arrythmias. Yes, I think ablating them is a good treatment, but we still try other things first. There can be complications of any surgery.

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The photograph is me and my ex dancing at our wedding in 1989. Swing dancing is a delight and you have to not injure your partner or yourself! We noticed that even one drink would affect our dancing and our favorite place to dance was at Cabin John Park, which had no alcohol at all. Posture is important. I think the photographer on this one was my ex’s uncle but we also had a dance friend who took wonderful photographs.

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pulmonary rehabilitation

I am fractious and grumpy when I first go to pulmonary rehabilitation at my local hospital.

This is because I have local hospital PTSD because of past treatment. However, there is only one hospital in my county.

I am anxious and tachycardic when I first arrive. I have sent patients to cardiac rehabilitation and to pulmonary rehabilitation, but it’s the first time I’ve gone. My doctor did not refer me until I ask her. I thought it up while I was talking to my insurance company’s chronic care person. You know you are desperate when you call your insurance company for ideas. The insurance company is motivated to pay for pulmonary rehabilitation because I am expensive. I have had loads of tests this year and cost a bunch of money. They would like me well. Me too. So yes, I qualify for pulmonary rehab by virtue of four pneumonias in nineteen years and this time a year on oxygen continuously and still part time now.

I have two people to help me. One is a respiratory therapist and the other a physical therapist. I am an unusual referral. Many of their patients have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and/or emphysema, usually from cigaretes, but also from things like asbestos or alpha-1-antitrypsin disorder or progressive muscular disorders.

They explain. There are 24 visits, over 12 weeks. I come in twice a week. I am weighed, they ask about symptoms, and we go to the small gym. It has three treadmills, three stationary bikes and three of those semi-horizontal not really a bike things. I pick the treadmill. After I describe my lung weirdness, that a fast heart rate preceeds hypoxia, they put a wrist pulse oximeter on me. Unlike the little finger ones, it can pick up heart rate and oxygen rate even when I am walking on the treadmill. My blood pressure and pulse is checked and I start the treadmill. I go slowly the first time. My heartrate is over 100 to start with, but that’s partly the PTSD reaction. I can slow my heart rate just by slowing my breathing and not talking, into the 80s.

Here is how I looked the first time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/FunnyAnimals/comments/zadptv/this_is_whats_happened_in_gym/

Ok, not really. I start walking on the treadmill and go for 30 minutes. Blood pressure and heart rate are checked mid way through. The only time I drop my oxygen level is when I walk AND talk and then I drop it to 87. I stop talking.

After the treadmill, there is another 15-20 minutes of “patient education” about the lungs. This is usually a video, discussion and handouts. They can have up to 3 people simultaneously. At first there is another woman, but she finishes her 12 weeks. She is still on oxygen. I am doing the treadmill without oxygen. “What is your goal?” asks the respiratory therapist. “I want to ski this winter.” I say. She blinks.

The patient education alternates with lifting hand weights. The physical therapist does that with me. There is a stretching session each time too. The weights are slow twitch muscles so that is easier for me to push.

On the third day on the treadmill, I start pushing myself. My heart rate before starting was 81. I get to 120. “Um, don’t push it further than that.” says the therapist.

“Why not?” I say.

“Well, the guidelines are that we’re supposed to not have the person exercising at a heart rate of more than 30 over their baseline.”

“Oh,” I say. I am at 40 over. I slow down a little, aiming for a heart rate of 115. My blood pressure is between 90 and 115 systolic to start with, even anxious, and goes up to the 140s or 150s in the middle of exercising. If I talk too much while I am on the treadmill, my oxygen level starts to drop. It drops the third time down below 88 and the therapist says, “Shall I get oxygen?” “No,” I say. “I just need to shut up.” I do and my oxygen level recovers.

I steadily improve on the treadmill. I can enter my weight and it will measure “METS”. I start out at only a few mets. My goal is as high as I can go. By week 8 I am pleased to be alternating walking and running and I am averaging over 8 mets. Bicycling takes 7-9 mets, and more if you race. I want to return to bicycling.

Then I get my flu vaccine. I feel terrible the next day and cancel my rehab. I see my doctor for a routine visit the next Tuesday and she gives me the covid booster. That hammers me. I go back to being tachycardic much more easily and my fast twitch muscles are not working again. I contact my cardiologist and primary, do I put pulmonary rehabilitation on hold?

I decide to go and I do not drop my oxygen. However, I get tachycardic much more quickly, I can’t get up to over 8 mets, and it feels truly terrible. And my muscles give me hell and hurt horribly for the next two days. I put pulmonary rehab on hold and wait and do slow twitch exercises. The working theory is that there are antibodies to my fast twitch muscles, so the vaccines have activated my immune system. Not just antibodies to influenza and covid, but also the ones that make my muscles not work and hurt. A fibromyalgia/chronic fatigue flare. I start sleeping 12 hours a day again, as I did when I got sick over a year ago. I am really anxious at first but there are no signs of pneumonia, I am not hypoxic, and it’s mostly muscles and fatigue.

After three weeks I return and do my last four pulmonary rehab visits. It hurts way more than the first 8 weeks and it is way more exhausting. I don’t like sleeping 12 hours a night. It could be worse, though. Some people have chronic fatigue where they have to lie in bed most of the time. I don’t have that, so I consider myself lucky. Mine is fast twitch muscles only. Presumably theirs is fast and slow twitch muscles. I have an annoying but relatively mild version of chronic fatigue.

I graduate from pulmonary rehabilitation. Many thanks for the help with my muscles! I want a wrist pulse oximeter, but they cost $700 and I dont’ really need it. By now I can tell when I have a fast heart rate and I can tell when I am getting hypoxic. It makes me goofy and silly, though I normally have that anyhow.

Many thanks to Jefferson Healthcare’s Pulmonary Rehabilitation Department. And if you have had pneumonia more than once or long Covid, consider asking your doctor to refer you. It makes me much more confident about exercising and pushing myself and what is safe. And eventually these stupid antibodies will fall off the receptors again. I hope.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: fractious.

PS: The Rehabilitation Department was closed then open then closed then open during the last two years. They did not have many people when I was there. Get in soon, because there are limited spaces!

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drkottaway’s werewolf theory

Papers about antibodies and immune system responses are proliferating. About Chronic Lyme disease, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, long haul Covid-19. We are near the tipping point of understanding vastly much more about the immune system, though understanding what is happening and being able to “fix” it are poles apart. You have to invent the germ theory before you can invent an antibiotic.

Allopathic medicine currently says that behavioral health disorders are caused by “neurotransmitter imbalances” in the brain. That’s a bunch of vague hooey, isn’t it? There is one mouse neuron that has been studied and has 300 different kinds of receptors for serotonin. Scientists blocked one and the mice acted obsessive compulsive. That was one kind of receptor. They are trying to figure out the other 299 and what they do in combination. Does this sound like we understand the brain? No, it doesn’t.

BUT there are papers about antibodies. Antibodies can mimic neurotransmitters, like dopamine, like serotonin, like adrenaline, like norepinephrine. Hmmmm. With multiple different types of receptors for each neurotransmitter, the antibodies could be specific for some receptors and not others. The antibodies could block the receptor, like the wrong key in a lock. Or the antibody could act like a key and turn the receptor on.

One barrier to understanding Long Haul Covid-19 and chronic fatigue as autoimmune diseases is that they do not cause a rise in the usual inflammatory markers. Those are the ESR (erythrocyte sedimentation rate) and CRP (um, I forget — oh, C-reactive protein). This does not mean that there is no inflammation or that these are not autoimmune disorders. This means we have not found a diagnostic marker. Rheumatoid arthritis can be “sero-positive”, with a positive rheumatoid factor marker. Or it can be “sero-negative”, with a negative rheumatoid factor lab, but it’s still rheumatoid arthritis.

What does this have to do with werewolves? Great question! I am thinking about the adaptive advantage of making antibodies to our own neurotransmitter receptors. How could that POSSIBLY be an advantage? What it means is that when someone is very very ill, or very very stressed, or both, at a certain point the immune system starts making crisis antibodies. These cause neurotransmitter and other symptoms. Brain fog, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety, muscle pain, fatigue and on down some very long lists. A recent study of fibromyalgia patients looked at 8 antibodies. One was an antibody to the GABA receptor. All of the patients had some of the antibodies, none of them had all of them, and they all had different patterns. So there is no marker and the neurotransmitter antibody could explain brain function changes.

Why werewolves? I am thinking of the old legends that are embedded in multiple countries and languages. Werewolves, demons, vampires, angels. My fourth pneumonia has left a problem: I can’t tolerate gluten any more. We did the antibody tests last week. I think they will be negative, because my gluten intolerance is relatively mild. I can have a tiny bit. People with bad celiac really can’t have any. I may have an antibody that is either a low level or one that has not been described yet. So with repeated infections, four pneumonias plus the exposure to my mother’s antibodies to tuberculosis in the womb, I now have what is looking like a permanent change in diet. This pneumonia started in March 2021, so it’s over a year. I had diverticulitis after that in August. I ate a piece of tempura two months later and thought, ooops, that has gluten! The next day I hurt in the same place as the diverticulitis and decided that I would stay well away from gluten for a while.

The adaptive advantage of having antibodies that change our diet or character or make us stronger or weaker would be to force us to change. To leave a community. To ask for help. To hide during a pandemic. To fight or be suspicious of everyone. Being a grumpy werewolf might save your life in a pandemic, as long as you don’t break any laws and eat someone. A friend likes the dark and hibernates and likes protein best: vampire or bear? I am not sure, maybe a vampire bear. Chronic fatigue seems to “save” or at least stop people from working 20 hours a day and driving themselves to illness. I am not saying that chronic fatigue is good or fun: but it might be adaptive. Brain fog and stiff muscles: zombies, anyone?

Can we do anything to prevent ourselves from getting these mysterious but probably autoimmune disorders? Yes. Lower stress. BUT WE ARE IN A PANDEMIC. Yes, but we can still lower stress. Here are three things to do:

  1. Do not work yourself into the ground, into illness, into the grave. Take breaks.
  2. BREATHE. A simple exercise to quiet the nervous system is to breathe in four seconds and out for seconds. You have to pay attention or count, unless you do it as part of facing a wall meditating, but it works. The veterans I worked with agreed that this works and they are not an easy crowd to please.
  3. LOLCATS or whatever makes you laugh. Sit under a tree. Throw rocks in the water at the beach. Play with a child’s toy with or without the child. (Remember to share.) Sit in a rocking chair and rock gently. Go for a walk, slowly, no ear buds. Listen to the birds. Watch the tops of trees move in the wind. This quiets the sympathetic fight or flight response and switches us to the relaxed parasympathetic. Do this every day at least once.

These all quiet the nervous system which in turn quiets the immune system.

But wait, some people are in a war zone or a disaster zone or an earthquake! Yes. Help them. Get them out. Send something locally or internationally. Give something to your local “buy nothing” group or Heifer or one of the groups in your town: Rotary, Soroptmists, Elks, your local Area Aging help group.

And that is Drkottaway’s Werewolf Theory, a work in progress, under study. I need NIH West. Contact me to start the fund drive.

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References:

Overview of fibromyalgia: https://www.verywellhealth.com/autoimmunity-neuroinflammation-in-fibromyalgia-5197944

Fibromyalgia as an autoimmune disorder: https://spondylitis.org/research-new/fibromyalgia-might-be-an-autoimmune-disorder-a-new-study-says/

They have given human antibodies from fibromyalgia patients to mice. The mice get fibromyalgia. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41584-021-00679-y

I took the photograph of Sol Duc today.

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Antibodies to tubulin

All right.

I am thinking about tubulin blocker antibodies. How would they work?

About 2 weeks ago, I had trouble walking down the stairs because my quadriceps just did not want to bend. In fact, all of my muscles felt awake and grumpy. As if I were Sleeping Beauty, now awake. Of course, if I was Sleeping Beauty and some jerk kissed me awake, I’d punch his lights out. Hands off!

Anyhow, I concluded that my tubulin antibodies had released. Was I better?

Well, no. It’s been weird. In me it’s the voluntary fast twitch muscles that don’t work when I have a PANS/PANDAS reaction, so they are back on line. The grumpy muscles are the slow twitch ones who essentially are screaming “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, I’VE BEEN DOING ALL YOUR WORK SINCE MARCH!” Nine months. The fast twitch muscles are weak, the slow twitch muscles don’t trust them and I am having trouble getting it all to work together.

My balance is fine. It just all hurts and is a bit unreliable.

I was in Michigan for Thanksgiving, staying with old friends. My oldest friend there is 80 and does not have wi-fi or any internet. That made doing any blogging quite a challenge and many thanks to everyone who pointed creative spelling. I would go to her son’s house daily and try to put up the work I’d done at her house. Not the way I usually do it and three kids distracting me, which I enjoyed.

It is bowling that makes me realize how weird my muscles are right now. I went bowling with the middle (15) and younger (11) child. Mom watching all of us. My role is Weird Aunt, more or less. I have bowled maybe 12 times in my life. I guttered the first three balls, a 9 pound orange beauty. My muscles all started screaming at me at once in my upper and middle back. Oh, I thought. So I slowed way down and tried to slow bowl. Next was a strike. I ended up bowling 100, which I guess is not so bad for someone who really has no idea what they are doing. My muscles were grumpy but slow was ok and I didn’t pull anything badly. Next morning I am quite stiff.

I am trying to figure out how to rehabilitate the muscles. Do I exercise? Slowly? It’s as if half a team has been missing for 9 months and is now back. The remaining team members are tired, pissed off, and have figured out how to work without them. They aren’t very pleased about relinquishing control and they don’t trust the part of the team that’s been missing. I would go to my doctor and ask to see a neurologist or ask for physical therapy, except that since PANS/PANDAS is barely believed in in children, there are only a few doctors that work with adults and other doctors seem to think they are quacks. One writes articles for Psychology Today. I’ve thought about contacting him, but he’s a psychiatrist. How much do psychiatrists know about muscles?

Let’s extrapolate this too, to the people with really bad chronic fatigue. Presumably they have antibodies to tubulin that affects more muscles, fast and slow twitch. No wonder they lie in bed. I would presume that they are hypoxic too, if they could walk, but they barely can. The Functional Medicine doctors are treating folks with hyperbaric oxygen and I think it might help with these muscles that don’t work and can’t move. It is sneaky. It’s not that the muscle can’t move at all, it isn’t paralyzed, it’s just that the exhaustion and fatigue that comes after moving it is terrible. The body says very very clearly : “DON’T DO THAT.” And we are still in the infancy of looking at antibodies, so we aren’t measuring them. I was going to say we can’t type them, but that’s not true. We are using monoclonal antibodies to treat cancer, so there are ways to isolate and type them. Medical science may explode with this and can’t you see the potential for misuse? Imagine an army affected by a tubulin blocker antibody, against an army with a tubulin augmenting antibody. Holy moly. It has the potential to be really really horrific, which is why I am putting all this up on everything2. Keep it in mind, ok? Nothing like making information public to prevent secrets from screwing us over.

And that’s the news from me. “Har det godt!” which is Danish for “Have it good!” or have a really good day.