This is just insane to me. I would have done a lot for that shot when kitty was a baby. Or the one they have now for pregnant people to take before the birth. I would have done that! Lot less painful than the steroid shot I needed when we were afraid kitty might be born as a super-premie.
We ended up in the hospital twice before kitty was 2 years old once for RSV and once for the flu. Besides the terror of it, the discomfort and pain for our child, and inconvenience for us, it was expensive. Even with good insurance it cost a lot. A shot that could have made that RSV infection less severe? Yes please. Kitty has gotten all the shots the CDC recommends.
I’m convinced the hospital stay for the flu would have been longer and the disease worse if we hadn’t gotten her the flu shot the fall before. Unfortunately, it was one of those spring outbreaks, when her immunity had probably waned.
All these kids put at risk. And for what?! Conflating vaccines with understandable concerns over ultra-processsed food and a red dye the rest of the developed world has banned is just ridiculous. There are going to be a lot of dead children and children with preventable life-long health conditions if RFK Jr gets appointed
I hope this is unnecessary in this space, but just so everyone knows:
In 2018, doctors in Canada reported a case of argyria in a gray 84-year-old woman who had taken a 1 mg/ml silver solution every two or three months for 15 years. The woman reported purchasing it from a naturopathic practitioner as a remedy for “various ailments.” Likewise, in 2009, doctors in the UK reported the case of a 64-year-old man who turned silvery after drinking a liter of water containing colloidal silver every week for a year. “He had taken the silver solution as an alternative medical treatment ‘to ward off infections’ as he had read that colloidal silver ‘cures everything,’” his doctors reported.
I agree with everything he said, but wish he’d also have mentioned in the cost to society that overall health is declining as patients avoid using health care due to cost, frustration, denial of coverage, and mistrust of the system.
In human terms, this results in a lot of unnecessary suffering and lost personal potential. In economic terms, this means lost productivity. In political terms, this means increased instability.
Whether or not you believe healthcare is a human right, a functioning, effective healthcare system is essential for a stable, functioning modern society.
I know this was not said seriously, but it brings up one of my “yes, I will die on this hill” topics. Anything, bar none, that has an effect of human physiology also comes with side effects. Herbal meds are no exception. Echinacea is one such. It actually is a pretty effective immune stimulant, but like most stimulants, it can lead to tachyphylaxis. Basically, your body hates having your foot on the gas constantly and starts to ignore it after a while. You see this with caffeine, where it takes more and more to get the same effect. Echinacea as treatment is not a bad idea. As prevention, it can actually begin to suppress your immune system (actually, to make it less responsive to stimulation, but the effect is the same.) The human body is complex and hard to understand, and even those of us who have spent a lifetime studying it really don’t fully understand it. Self-styled “naturopaths” don’t even try to understand what they are doing. But it sounds good, I guess. They are very definitive, where we are always qualifying our statements with “most” and “may”. They sound much more certain. It’s easy to be certain when you know nothing. Consider our current incoming executive branch…
Next the study authors decided to look at how the popular sleep aid Ambien, or zolpidem, affects the brain’s cleaning process. After administering it to the mice, they found that it blocked the waves of norepinephrine that are normally released, which disrupted the glymphatic system and kept it from carrying out its waste-removal task. This could mean that the drug could prevent toxic waste proteins like tau and amyloid from being cleared away, which could cause them to build up – a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“The research provides a mechanistic link between norepinephrine dynamics, vascular activity, and glymphatic clearance, advancing understanding of sleep’s restorative functions,” said Nedergaard. “It also calls attention to the potentially detrimental effects of certain pharmacological sleep aids on brain health, highlighting the necessity of preserving natural sleep architecture for optimal brain function.”
Scary. I’ve known quite a few people who take “sleep aids” every night, some of them Ambien. I wonder if that’s also true of one that I hear about more often now, THC.
To quote me, “There is nothing that has an effect that does not also have a side-effect.” Imagine the entirety of the human physiology as a spiderweb. If you tweak one thread, you inevitably set others vibrating as well. At least some of those vibrations may be helpful, but some will work against your interest. The reason my job exists (largely) is due to having to balance those factors to maximize the benefit and minimize the risks. Again, nothing is without adverse side-effects unless it also has no effect (e, homeopathy. The only good thing about this is that it is harmless, unless it keeps someone from getting actual, needed medical care.) Natural products are not immune to this law. Natural does not mean “good.” Arsenic is natural, strychnine is natural, I would advise against these, though. Nothing is free. Sorry, man, that’s just how life works.
Thanks, that certainly makes sense, but surely not all side effects are bad, let alone as bad as blocking the brain’s nightly routine that clears away harmful protein waste linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Oh, not at all. Sometimes, the “side-effects” are the benefit I am looking for! For instance, I sometimes recommend Benedryl for symptomatic relief of colds, even though histamine blockade does nothing for viral symptoms. However, the anticholinergic side-effects like drying of secretions and mild sedation can be quite helpful, at least at bedtime. It’s in knowing that you are inducing effects that are different from the labeled indication that can be difficult.
In addition to the examples from @Docosc, there’s the blood pressure medications Minoxidil and Viagra. Both now marketed or prescribed solely on the side effects.
On that topic, minoxidil also tends to, um, emasculate male patients.
Minoxidil may suppress the function of androgen receptors, which means that any androgens (such as testosterone or DHT) won’t trigger the same intensity of cellular response when they are bound to these receptors.Aug 28, 2024
There was a joke back when minoxidil was first marketed that a bald head might become a sign of virility if it became widely used. Never happened, but yeah, there is a reason it’s only used topically.
Benadryl can also suppress nausea and vomiting in adults.
No idea about kids. Kids bodies are alien. The kid goes to the doc for Ondansetron because dehydration can be such a fast thing for a small child.
Yeah, it (Benedryl) can be used for motion sickness, but if I want to suppress nausea, I go with ondansetron. The other SE of Benedryl are enough to make the antinausea effect not so great.
Once upon a time I was very poor and had no insurance and a wicked stomach bug. Benadryl stopped me from vomiting every 15 minutes. It was bad enough my husband wanted to take me into the hospital but we called his dad (retired ER doc) first
I’ll usually try Benadryl first if I have a stomach bug. But if it doesn’t work, it is off to the doc for the good stuff. t seems to work well for me and let me stay hydrated on Pedialyte. It’s never enough to stop vomiting if I try to eat.
but we called his dad (retired ER doc) first