Re: Cell phone use causes tongue cancer

Well, since you admitted to be an idiot, I'll give you a clue. It's being sold at Best Buy.

Don't know anything about that one but neither my cardiologist or EP want me to own any of that stuff (I asked specifically about Kardia Mobile).

Self test is probably not a good thing for most.

If my cardiologist tells me to buy a device, I will. Anything less is a toy. Period.

It didn't tell me about the arrhythmia directly but I could see the step function in the heart rate.

If the device is prescribed by my medical team, it's good. Otherwise it's a parlor toy and likely to be worse than nothing for a good fraction of the population. As I said, my cardiologist and EP are down on such toys. It really didn't matter much to me because I had

*NO* problem telling when I was in arrhythmia - even before they could see it on a 12-wire EKG.

I think we're talking about something *way* different than a FitBit.

So you just admit you're full of shit. OK, I can deal with that.

Sometimes it takes a few tries to get through. You're a perfect example.

Testing for some of them is at least possible now. I've vaguely heard of technologies that detect food spoilage too. The barrier is cost - if the cost of sensors & electronics continues to drop precipitously it will end up being too cheap to worry about the price.

that's due to limited resources which is down to cost. NFB in electronics was possible in the 1920s & 30s but little used due to cost: today no-one would hesitate to use nfb on cost grounds.

NT

Krw is prefectly immune to repetition, probably because he hasn't got a mind to change.

John Larkin is equally immune, but that seems to be because e is too vain to ever admit making as mistake.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

Way back in about 1969(?), I had a summer job at a company that was working on olfactometry or the art of smelling molecules. My job function was mostly moving test equipment, tabulating figures, and cleaning glassware, but I did manage to learn a few things. The process was based on gas chromatography. It did fairly well determining what I had eaten in the previous 12 hrs, but was easily fooled or desensitized by many volatile chemicals. It showed promise in the medical area by detecting a few diseases, some respiratory ailments, and various metabolic products released through the skin.

The prototypes were expensive, big, heavy, inaccurate, and slow. So were the computers of the 1960's. There's been some progress with the technology over the years: and possibly some steps backwards: Sensors are the key, but there are problems with some sensors. For example, the now common CO (carbon monoxide) detector comes in several technologies which vary in sensitivity and sensor life. Until recently, the typical lifetime of the mostly chemical sensors was 3-5 years, which is not very practical for such an important sensor. The latest semiconductor versions will work for 10 years. This is technical progress inspired by demand and volume sales with the added bonus of lowering the cost to the end user.

There is currently no demand for home diagnostic sensors and instruments. Even home drug testers, to see what junior has been sniffing, smoking, or ingesting have not gained much traction. Cheap home medical diagnostic equipment will only happen after there is a demand. I see two areas where that might happen. Every time there is a radiation leak anywhere in the world, the demand for Geiger counters and dosimeters dramatically increases. The other is if we manage to produce a super bug capable of starting a pandemic, then testing for the bug will likely produce a huge demand. Other than those, the home medical electronics sector will slowly and badly mimic the features and functions of the professional versions and remain moderately expensive.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

The modern version of this uses as gas chromatograph to spread out the vari ous more or less volatile chemicals in the orignal gas sample as they go th rough the chromatorgraphy column, then has a mass spectrometer as the detec tor at the end of the column. The cheap version has a quadrupole mass spect rometer.

which used not to have particuarly good mass resolution. Apparently there a re now more complicated versions which can do all kinds of tricks.

Magnet based mass spectrometers are bigger and more expensive - I once work ed on a double mass spectrometer which was room sized and sold for about a half a million dollars, but was precise enough that you could infere which atoms some molecules were built up from by totting up the mass defects per atom.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney

I doubt it. Electronics keeps getting cheaper, one day it'll be cheap to ha ve a wide ranging disease sniffer. Every doc & paramedic can have one to sa

on say 40% of disease conditions in seconds. It'll get there in time.

NT

You might be right. Straight line predictions for reduced costs, memory density, rotating memory density, solar panels, and such have generally been accurate. Unfortunately the cost of modern medicine in the US seems to have gone the other way. The medical industry has a vested interest in keeping costs high, and I really doubt they will voluntarily promote a program that reduces their profits. What might change the situation is competition in the form of medical tourism and offshore drug suppliers. When insurance companies finally wake up and decide to pay for medical tourism to reduce everyone's costs, methinks low cost instruments will soon follow (probably from China).

Yep, that would be wonderful. In another part of this thread, snipped-for-privacy@notreal.com announced that his doctor did not recommend that he purchase a cheap ECG/EKG devices (for unspecified reasons). If such a device existed, and Joe Sixpack has access to one, he could easily question a doctors diagnosis, which would certainly not be much fun for the doctors, who are used to being the sole source of medical wisdom. When such a device finally arrives, my guess(tm) is that it will have limited distribution to only those qualified to operate such a powerful device and be able to properly interpret the results.

If you invent such a device, here is $10 million for your efforts:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

I've just been reading a book that has collected a bunch of reactions to Pi ketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" and the point made by several authors is that the US gives a lot more politcial influence to rich people - rough ly the top 1% of the income distribution - than any other advanced industri al country.

Rich doctors use their political influence to make sure that the health car e system keeps them rich and getting richer.

Which willg et blocked by the usual non-tariff barriers to trade ...

Not while the US congress can invent bogus safety or unfair competition iss ues.

Interpretation is rarely all that simple. What doctors tell other doctors i s comprehensible to people who have had six years of medical education. Wha t they tell the patients is what can be fitted into a five minute conversat ion. We have the same kind of problem talking to customers who don't know m uch about electroncis.

But you will become a dangerous socialist, and get convicted of some newly invented crime.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Accurate or not it's down all the way.

FWIW I expect nano-scale devices to bring costs down hugely. A wafer (not n ecessarily of silicon) can suddenly produce a vast quantity of something.

yes, a lot of that down to corruption.

of course

another thing that may change it is the reality that ever more people are w aking up to the big medical scam. It's an area the internet is likely to tr ansform.

When did a doctor recommend something that results in lost billable hours? And since when was an md ever the sole source of medical wisdom? That's a m ost unrealistic assertion.

no sign of that so far. And it's hard to control international trade.

13 diseases isn't a lot, but it's a start.

NT

On Jul 24, 2018, Jeff Liebermann wrote (in article):

Yes. I just had a ten-lead EKG a few days ago. A cheap pocket EKG would not have helped me to interpret the resulting forest of squiggly lines. The Cardiologist noted that the impulses were upside down in one trace for a while. Turns out that this can mean any of a number of things (none terrible, by the way), so another test will be made.

So, I also don?t expect that a pocket EKG will be much help for Joe SixPack, for lack of years of medical training.

Joe Gwinn

Substitute my name for Joe Sixpack and let's continue from where I left off. I was trying to help a former ladyfriend with a problem. She seemed to be developing one or more types of arrhythmia. The events were sporadic and unpredictable. Her doctor wanted an EKG when it was happening. The choice was to either wire her for a portable EKG data logger, which was expensive, obtrusive, and had about a 10 day battery life, or a cheap user operated device. They decided to go with one of these: I think she paid about $100 at the time. Getting the data out of the machine was somewhat of a PITA, which is where I became involved. Once I had the data, I started to look at it and try to decipher what they meant. There are plenty of books, videos, and web sites on EKG interpretation: There is also software for EKG interpretation: A simple arm to arm EKG is not going to have all the detail of a 4 wire or 12 wire test, but it's better than guesswork. So, we dived into the problem of decoding the squiggly lines. It turned out to be no worse that looking at an oscilloscope or spectrum analyzer. When she went back to her doctor for yet another EKG, we both had a much better clue of what was happening.

Roll forward about 3 years and I start to develop PVC (premature ventricular contractions) that first appeared when I took a stress test on a treadmill. The doctor issued me a 4 wire data logged and ordered me to wear it for 2 weeks. At the same time, I had borrowed my friends EKG machine and was recording "events" whenever I felt that they were happening. That data from the data logger proved to be useless because the logic did not properly detect my style of PVC and therefore recorded random glitches and nothing else. The battery also died after about 8 days, but there was no indication on the unit that it was essentially useless. The handheld EKG was more useful.

Unfortunately, I opened my big mouth and offered my analysis of the EKG, which was the last thing that my cardiologist wanted to hear. We had to negotiate a truce. If I would agree to stop doing his job, he would show me how he reached his analysis. That was a poor trade as he never had time to show me anything. There were later confrontations which followed the same pattern.

The same cardiologist also did me a big favor and introduced me to running my own blood tests. Prices are about 1/4 to 1/2 of having PAMF do the tests. They were also more expensive. He wanted regular tests for cholesterol (lipids), but I expanded on the idea by getting a blood test I named "paranoid's paradise". The result looked good so I was happy, until the last blood test, where I was out of the acceptable range on some obscure item (eGFR). Furiously reading as much as I could on the web, I concluded that I must have some kind of horrible malady. When I mentioned it to the cardiologist, he indicated that I had not drunk sufficient water before the blood draw. Oops.

Ok, so why the long rant? Because this is a small example of how I think medicine should work. The patients do what they can to help and the doctors do the part they do best. In other words, the patient becomes part of the recovery process, not a concerned bystander. At this time, all testing, all analysis, all the drugs, and all of the money is concentrated in the hands of the doctor. I don't think that's right and do my part to change it. I can say that if I had not been involved, had not done my homework, and had not double checked everything, the medical establishment would have successfully killed me at least 3 times in the past 20 years through medical mistakes.

Then, there's the costs. Prior to 2014, I did not have Medicare coverage. I was paying cash, which oddly has its advantages if you have the cash. I was borderline but paid because I had no other option. So, I dabbled in ordering my own tests, pill splitting, and recommending drug substitutions. I arrived at the cardiologist with a spreadsheet showing my current drug prescriptions, and what I changes in type (switching to generic), and dosage suitable for pill splitting. Where a drug was a combination of two cheap ingredients combined to form one expensive pill, I recommended that two cheap pills instead. With only a few minor exceptions, my cardiologist accepted my recommendations. When it became apparent that I could not take statins, we lowered the dosage and monitored the lipids until a minimum acceptable dosage was found.

You're correct that Joe Sixpack will not benefit much from home medical instruments or tricorders. He won't bother to spend the time to understand the numbers and waveforms. One it goes awry, his health is 100% in the hands of the doctors, assuming he does what they recommend. He could ask for help from someone medically knowledgeable, but do not the have the extensive training and experience of a real doctor. Maybe Joe Sixpack will buy a computah and run a computah program that analyzes his EKG waveforms and produces an intelligible analysis. Anything is better than doing nothing, trusting the medical profession with your life, or waiting until they kill you with a medical error: Medical error - the third leading cause of death in the US

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

People are woefully incompetent at even the most mundane of medical issues. I am not. I research every drug they give me except for the eye drops I go t after my cataract surgery Monday. I have my entire 1,300+ page medical re cord. I know the condition of my liver better than they do, because they we re operating with an incorrect piece of information, namely the trauma of l ast August. If mt liver was as bad as they thought, IO would be dead now, a nd they did say i would be. But I like to cut loose now and then and if I c an't do that, well I will do that and take my chances. Still my condition c ontinues to improve.

I stopped smoking cigarettes/tobacco in 2011. Know why ? It wasn't health, my Mother smokes still at 77 after a heart attack and quad bypass. She is f ine. Has the circulation in her legs checked periodically, and it comes out fine and that is what they say smoking hurts, which I think it really does on the small capillaries. But I was a heavy smoker and I don't mean leave them 2 packs a day in the ashtray burning away, I SMOKED them. They discont inued my brand which was exceptionally high in tar and nicotine, so I went to the tax free kind. It wasn't the money or the health, it was the fact th at I was smoking more and enjoying it less.

Anyway, I haven't been to a dentist for at least 45 years and I got all my teeth including wisdom teeth. Before I got shot in 1985 I hadn't been to a doctor since over 10 years before. when I got sick in 2009 that was the nex t time and then in 2017 when I took a very bad fall. Oh wait, in about 1982 I had to get like 10 stitches from a mishap at my shop. I pulled them out myself.

From the late 1980s to the early 2000s I had bad knees, and I started resea rching. I changed my diet and you know that cartilage they say can never be replaced and you need a kagillion dollar surgery to replace them ? Nope, I am walking proof.

I think that if you are on 5 or more medications that is too much. The olma n ws pn a vasoldilator and zestril and one time the pills showed TRIPLE the dosage. Well he watched it and did not take triple. He was already slightl y impaired by it, like trying to use an on ramp on the highway to pass some one. Like "What the f*ck are you doing ? This is not a lane !". Now if he h ad been in a nursing hoe and forced to take whatever the bottle said he wou ld have been dead.

Trust them ? Well yeah but only to a certain point. Don't like guns ? Well medical mistakes kill over 5 times the people, and that includes the ones s hot by cops which most people do not realize are included in those statisti cs. They shoot more than anyone else except maybe in Chicago.

I say don't trust them, at least not implicitly but that is not necessarily an accusation of incompetence. They have a ton of cases every day. Who wou ld I blame ? Psychiatrists. What happened to psychologists, counselors, the rapists ? Al some of them know is the scrip pad, and that is causing proble ms. there is some data out there about these mass shooters being on psychot ropic drugs. And look at the sie effects of anti-depressants - depression ( really), suicidal thoughts (well smoking cessation aids have that), weight gain higher blood sugar, liver damage. It almost seems like "We'll GIVE you a reason to be depressed".

If you are on more than 5 medications, I bet you didn't eat Kosher. I know Kosher does not mean healthy but it is kinda a side effect. Most of the shi t they don't allow is shit, or can be questionable for some. Pork for examp le, some people can't eat it. My Maternal Grandmother, and later in life my Mother. So if that runs in the genes, it actually makes sense. And the hyd rogenated, no "K" for you. Then HFCS, obesity causing shit made from someth ing that should be running diesel trucks, maybe that's why Kosher Coke has real sugar in it instead, and is of course more expensive. Shellfish, some people, not just Jews really get sick on them. They like it but can't eat i t, just like Grandma with the pork. She said "I like pork but it doesn't li ke me".

As far as i can see it we need Kosher bacon and Kosher Jello/gelatin. the b acon well they got turkey bacon but I bet it sucks, the gelatin, well maybe I'll invent that and get rich. Fuck electronics. Think of all the "byprodu cts" I could boil in big vats from cows, sheep (if sheep are OK, not sure), turkeys, chickens, goats, elk, who knows. Gelatin is good for you, it has the correct mineral/nutrient "signature" for the joints on your body.

I got lucky with DNA, not everybody does. for them all this is much more im portant than who is your doctor. Get that right and you don't need a doctor .

Enough. If you want my research you got my email. If not I'll give it to yo u.

Often it's because the leads were reversed but that wouldn't bother any cardiologist worth going to.

And it may be detrimental. It's a great tool to breed hypochondriacs, though. I know people who will send EKGs from their Kardia Mobiles to their electrophysiologist to show when they're in arrhythmia, rather than having to make an appointment so they can show up when they're in sinus rhythm. However, there is only so much that can be learned from a 2-lead EKG, though there are tricks to see the other "leads" (like a finger and an opposite toe). Neither my cardiologist or EP had any interest in seeing it. They already knew what they needed to know and knew I already knew what I needed to know. Nothing left to learn from a toy that doesn't do what the "professional" tools do.

Piketty's "Capital in the 21st Century" and the point made by several autho rs is that the US gives a lot more politcial influence to rich people - rou ghly the top 1% of the income distribution - than any other advanced indust rial country.

My e-reader got screwed up. The book is

"After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality"

It was edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum , and it's a lot of chapters by a variety of different authors, including T homas Piketty.

The point mentioned by a couple of authors was that the top 1% of the US in come distribution was a lot more active than the rest of the population - 9

9% of them vote, and most of them have made political contributions within the last year, and contacted their congressman.47% of those contacts were t o influence stuff that was important to them (mostly financially).

America really does look at lot like a plutocracy, run by the well-off for the benefit of the well-off.

are system keeps them rich and getting richer.

ssues.

se

is comprehensible to people who have had six years of medical education. W hat they tell the patients is what can be fitted into a five minute convers ation. We have the same kind of problem talking to customers who don't know much about electronics.

y invented crime.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

On Jul 25, 2018, Jeff Liebermann wrote (in article):

Yes. And I do research medical issues a lot. I prefer to read the training material used by medical schools. But I haven't tried to make my own EKG, although I could.

I have been reading the New England Journal of Medicine for something like 20 years now. I started because I got tired of breathless media reports lacking the necessary qualifications and details. The big issue was the Body Mass Index, and its foibles. But the media reports always seemed to start with ?as reported in the NEJM?, so I decided to cut the middleman out. It took a year to get comfortable with the jargon.

As for drugs, search on the name of the drug plus the word ?pharmacology? to get by the marketing bafflegab.

And I?ve seen my share of medical errors. Most are more annoying than dangerous, but it helps to have some idea of possible errors, so as to know when to speak up. Hospitals are necessary, but can be dangerous.

Joe Gwinn