wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0013

wspc_TheDisabilityShow 0013

YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by: "Placebo"

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Disclaimer! Disclaimer! Disclaimer!

This show is "not" any kind of a medical show /podcast.

It is by and for the disabled, and if we can help reach across the chasm of questions and indifference to the other side of the rainbow of ability ... well and good.

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

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

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

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Intro

I discovered I could write/assemble a book in a week, spend a month revising it and it could be out for sale before school started.

If you'd like to help me out and get a nice book to read for your trouble, you'll head to Lulu.com and purchase a copy of "Episodes: The story of an MSer and of MSB's Podcast".

The link is "live" on the podcast. [ https://www.lulu.com/commerce/index.php?fBuyContent=7503026 ]

There is a phenomenon that I have always been fascinated by.

Its called "The Placebo Effect." [ http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect ]

Our minds are incredible things which have effects far beyond those we would expect.

Now, that does not extend to the mechanics of antibiotics and antivirals drugs discovered and refined since the middle of the last century, originally developed during another enterprise in killing, but placebos have effects which extend far beyond those of their components: "sugar, water, starch, and hope."

---- "Inertia" by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)" http://www.catjahnke.com/

Because my father worked for Merck, Sharpe and Dohme, which became Merck/Frosst during his decades there, as a salesman, director of marketing and later as manager of their print shop, on and off of the Island of Montréal, I got exposed to all kinds of things that went on inside of that company.

Being a curious and interested kid, I listened intently, (and being a smart one, I shut up about it, so as not to remind the adults that I was indeed there. [You can learn the most amazing things that way. {Far more than people think they've revealed.}])

One of the most interesting was the measurement of the efficacy of drugs by the use of blind and double blind trials.

The technique was already old, having been conceived by "Claude Bernard" [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Bernard ] back in the middle and latter parts of the 19th century (He was a fascinating man from whom we have derived a lot of the scientific method, scepticism. I could do a show just about him.)

This was just after the second world war, when the power of the scientific method came to medicine, and there were any number of discoveries being made every day.

Journals were exploding in readership, and in content for all those new readers and writers. (Actually I would argue that those peer-reviewed scientific journals were the earliest manifestations of moderated blogging, being read by a motivated and specialized audience, any one of which could write in and contribute.)

Like all human endeavors, there were all kind of claims made and these were rife with B.S. from people selling "snake oil", which the scientific technique originated by Claude Bernard was quick to put to the test.

Any claim found wanting was usually found to be actionable instead and the Snake Oil salesman was, at best, "run out of town on a rail" [ http://www.takeourword.com/TOW204/page2.html ] (I'm quoting from a Take Our Word webpage here because it says it best: "The phrase in question here, of course, is riding the rail or to be run out of town on a rail.  You may be surprised to learn that it has nothing to do with the railroad and everything to do with with a fence rail.  How does one ride a rail?  This is a form of punishment in which a person is tied or held to a rail that is then paraded through town, and often out of town, on the shoulders of two or more men, presumably strong men.  The object is for all to see the transgressor and immediately recognize that he has done something wrong by virtue of the fact that he is tied to and riding on a rail, and thus to humiliate him. " )

At worst, these individuals were jailed for murder. (Making claims on medicines is serious business, because either people paid with their lives, leaving the inheritors to bury your mistakes, or people paid for the rest of their lives.)

---- "Inertia" by: "Josh Woodward" http://www.joshwoodward.com/

Placebos are bits inert "stuff" which should be having no effect, but "are," through the mechanisms of the mind and its ability to control the body.

Incidentally, I would recommend all interested people to download "All in the Mind" from the ABC Radio National [ http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=73330911 ] as  Natasha Mitchell [ http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/about/default.htm#presenter ] is a great host for an also great show.

---- "Inner Focus" by: "absentmachine" http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417

Controls occur at arbitrarily determined levels, but in general the mechanisms are perceptive and reactive.

The first occurs on the perceptions of how well we perceive ourselves to be.

This is just operating at the level of our own abilities to put differing values on the same sensory inputs.

Thus, what is an incredibly painful experience in one series of circumstances involving the literal death of tissue or the tearing of lignin which hold our muscles in fibre bundles, under other circumstances becomes "one Hell of a great hot-barbecue sauce," or "a workout that'll put some inches on your biceps and some hair on your chest."

It depends on what your expectations are (like the anticipation of pain is often worse than the pain itself.)

The ability of fakirs or sufis [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fakir ] or if you'd rather use the Indian words sadhu, guru swami or yogi, to put themselves in trance like states is one very easily explained, explored and useful way beyond the ability to lie on a bed of nails, to slap one's forehead bloody, to walk barefoot on a bed of coals, to achieve an altered state of consciousness.

This is the goal of users of recreational drugs and other substances. (I'll stick to beer, thank you,)

---- "INNER QUEST" by: "v.f.d. " http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords

The second occurs at a more mysterious, nah strike that word, at a "less well understood," level of effecting remissions and outright cures when there are no commonly accepted causal relationships.

This is something I am familiar with at a superficial level because MS exhibits this, depending on what part of the brain is being used to carry the signals from the volition to the outcome. ("I have to move this leg" usually gets me a "Yeah, yeah, yeah … hold your water…" and a slow response from my body, while "Youch, that's HOT!" usually gets me a spastic hyper-reflexive jerk which certainly gets my hand off the handle of the pot and makes it become airborne, spilling its contents all over the damn stove.)

The mechanisms involved with semi-volitional healing, what used to be called "hysteria" by Freud or "faith healing" by revival tent preachers, neither term explaining a damn thing, involve the marshaling of the body's own forces, somehow.

We don't understand exactly what is involved at what level and in what order, we know that something is happening, caused by our own minds acting upon our own bodies to initiate a chain of events which leads us along a path from illness to wellness, but beyond the facts, we know very little and understand even less.

Well, two hundred years ago, we were burning people at the stake, one hundred years ago we were locking them up in asylums, fifty years ago we'd just discovered penicillin and that a lot of people still aren't too clear on the difference between causality and coincidence (and we won't mention the idiots who believe in demonic possession, vampires or space aliens,) so, no nothing surprises me anymore.

---- "The Awful Green Things From Outer Space" by: "Clouseaux" http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux

Outro

The show notes, including the complete text of this episode, and any and all links to the artists featured, are on a server ... somewhere.

This show is also being podcast in m4a format, which means that it you use a compatible player, like iTunes, you get the content divided up into chapters with images and "hot links" to the the web, on the topic of the chapter, or to accompany the music.

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YouTube video(s):

"Meds" by "Placebo"
The music this time was:

"Inertia"
 by: "Cat Jahnke (yong-kee)"
 http://www.catjahnke.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inertia"
 by: "Josh Woodward"
 http://www.joshwoodward.com/
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"Inner Focus"
 by: "absentmachine"
 http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=44463417
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"INNER QUEST"
 by: "v.f.d. "
 http://www.myspace.com/in4rmrecords
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/

"The Awful Green Things From Outer Space"
 by: "Clouseaux"
 http://www.myspace.com/clouseaux
 album: "none"
 via: http://music.podshow.com/