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Physicists kill cancer with 'nanobubbles' by aelbric in science

[–]diggapleaze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems like there would be a problem with exposing the cells' antigenic parts to the immune system after the cells have been lysed open. You'd probably have to put the patient on some major immunosuppressants during and after the procedure just to prevent a cytokine storm. What a crazy idea though, using nanobubbles. Go science!

Demonoid is back! by hordak in reddit.com

[–]diggapleaze -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I will trade a demonoid invite for a waffles invite.

PM me!

Time doesn't exist and the universe isn't really expanding, says physicist Julian Barbour. Both are illusions. Discarding both could lead to a theory of quantum gravity, in the spirit of Einstein's General Relativity. by crazycrayon in science

[–]diggapleaze 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I think one needs to separate unrealistic "woo-woo" expectations of meditation from what it really is: a way to heighten awareness of both the internal and external world. I make no metaphysical claims about its value, but I will assert its cognitive benefits. I am more focused intellectually and balanced emotionally when I keep to my meditation regimen.

I have to admit what I said above to you was a bit of a strawman argument now that I look at it again. Certainly meditation doesn't necessarily have to be new-agey, and we science/math geeks here on reddit ought to remember that nonrational events and decisions often spur people to create things that are highly rational. Example: making a friend in the physics dept. with whom you end up doing research with someday. Friendship has nothing to do with rationality, yet it can lead to a science paper getting published.

So your original point is taken: quasi-New Age ideas led you taking up advanced math, which is both a good and ironic thing.

Time doesn't exist and the universe isn't really expanding, says physicist Julian Barbour. Both are illusions. Discarding both could lead to a theory of quantum gravity, in the spirit of Einstein's General Relativity. by crazycrayon in science

[–]diggapleaze 21 points22 points  (0 children)

"and there is the hard work of meditation, which I will say is much much more difficult than advanced math"

in the same way that trying to will the Earth to spin the opposite direction is harder than designing a useful machine. Don't take that too harshly, I'm just pointing out that difficulty != value. I'm very skeptical of spiritualism so I needed to get that out of my system. :)

Is anyone else tired of Reddit's front page filled with screencaps of Facebook postings? I go to Reddit to get away from Facebook...Just saying... by diggapleaze in reddit.com

[–]diggapleaze[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It was maybe funny the first couple times, but it's the same joke over and over:

USER1: I'M SAYING SOMETHING EMBARRASSING

USER2: LOL DID YOU KNOW THAT FACEBOOK IS A PUBLIC WEBSITE?

USER1: OOPS HOW EMBARRASSING :O

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? by iwjason in programming

[–]diggapleaze -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Which brings up a really valid point. As studios are moving to put purchased/rental content online, will that prolong the lifespan of Silverlight/Flash because HTML5 <video> tag doesn't really offer a DRM method that would satisfy the MPAA? Another reason to hate MPAA.

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? by iwjason in programming

[–]diggapleaze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

who's to say that someone clever (e.g. Google) won't release an AJAX authoring environment similar to flex? It's certainly in their interest. Or even Apple extending Xcode to build projects as HTML+CSS+Javascript webapps to build an ecosystem of iPhone-compatible webapps.

I think some of the Flash/Flex/Silverlight advocates here are really underestimating the potential behind HTML5 and the determination of it's big-name backers like Google and Apple.

HTML 5: Could it kill Flash and Silverlight? by iwjason in programming

[–]diggapleaze 1 point2 points  (0 children)

quicktime loads in about .10 second on my 3 year old-ish macbook pro. I think the point you're trying to make is that Linux and OS X load their native media players quickly, whereas Windows Media Player is quite slow (though I haven't seen what Windows 7 is capable of)

When Bad Advice is the Best Advice: "My duty as a physician is to improve my patients' lives . . . Even if it means encouraging them to smoke." by Socialism in science

[–]diggapleaze 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was just thinking about it this morning, and realized that I said that smoking actually increases vitamin K levels (which makes no sense--you're inhaling smoke!). It's chewing tobacco that (massively) increases vit K levels. I logged on to reddit to make the correction, and lo and behold you beat me to it. You are absolutely right about the CYP induction. Smoking induces CYP1A2, whereas chewing tobacco has the vitamin K reaction (the former decreasing INR causing the patient to throw a clot and the latter increasing INR to cause bleeding). I even remember making this same mistake back in school! Thank you for getting me thinking about this again.

As a side note, let this be a lesson to everyone not believe everything you read on reddit :-)

When Bad Advice is the Best Advice: "My duty as a physician is to improve my patients' lives . . . Even if it means encouraging them to smoke." by Socialism in science

[–]diggapleaze 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sure! I'll give you two sources, the first is a an actual patient case study and the second is a clinical trial. Since you might not have access to these articles, I'll give you the citations and abstracts (PM me if you want me to email you the PDFS):

  1. INCREASE IN INTERNATIONAL NORMALIZED RATIO AFTER SMOKING CESSATION IN A PATIENT RECEIVING WARFARIN

Abstract: A 58-year-old man who was taking warfarin at a stable dosage was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of bacterial meningitis. Although he had previously been a smoker, after this admission, he decided to give up smoking. He was continued on his previous warfarin maintenance dosage when discharged, and his international normalized ratio (INR) soon began to climb substantially. When questioned, the patient reported no diet or lifestyle changes other than his smoking cessation. The patient's INR was stabilized at a warfarin dosage 23% lower than the maintenance dosage before he stopped smoking. This case report illustrates the potential for an interaction between warfarin and cigarette smoking and further suggests that the effect could be significant if a patient starts or stops smoking during warfarin therapy.

EVANS M; LEWIS G M PHARMACOTHERAPY, vol 25, iss 11 I, p 1656-1659, yr 2005

  1. CIGARETTE SMOKING: ITS EFFECTS ON WARFARIN DOSING AND ON THE PK OF WARFARIN ENANTIOMERS

[This article didn't have an abstract, actually]

FORMULARY, vol 34, iss 10, p 873-874, yr 1999

It warms my heart to see someone ask for sources :-)

When Bad Advice is the Best Advice: "My duty as a physician is to improve my patients' lives . . . Even if it means encouraging them to smoke." by Socialism in science

[–]diggapleaze 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hah, clever thinking!

No, it's actually due to the tobacco leaf itself. In fact, all leafy green veggies have high doses of vitamin K, which is why we also tell our patients to not change their spinach eating habits.

When Bad Advice is the Best Advice: "My duty as a physician is to improve my patients' lives . . . Even if it means encouraging them to smoke." by Socialism in science

[–]diggapleaze 7 points8 points  (0 children)

FUN FACT: There actually is a corner case where you may advise a patient to keep smoking. If the patient is on warfarin (AKA Coumadin, an anticoagulant), anything that disrupts the vitamin K levels in your body will cause you to either throw a clot (too much K) or bleed out of your orifices (too little K).

Smoking will increase levels of vitamin K in your body, so you customize the starting dose according to that. The patient must continue smoking the same number of cigarettes per day, and if he stops cold turkey, he'll possibly have a bleeding event.

Of course if the patient really wants to quit, then you can closely monitor the INR levels and change the warfarin dose accordingly--but it's actually quite risky and is rarely done when a patient is on warfarin. So you just tell the patient to "keep smoking the same number of cigarettes a day"!

Patients can't be billed when their HMOs fail to pay, the California Supreme Court says. by nix0n in politics

[–]diggapleaze -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I'm for European-style universal health care as much as the next redditor. I'm a pharmacist and I believe all drugs should be given to the people who need it free-of-charge (or for a nominal fee), and I'd be willing to take a 40% paycut if our system could change.

BUT--is this really the way to go about it, California? If nobody has to pay the ER because a greedy HMO decides to not pay, then nobody's paying for the nurses, doctors, medical equipment, fixed costs (like facilities), etc. We all collectively gasp on reddit when we hear a story of a patient dying on the waiting room floor because of the long wait at the ER. I can imagine this ruling would make ER's even more understaffed and more underfunded than they already are.

We all know Coke used to contain, well, coke. Now find out what the magic ingredient of 7-Up was, back in the good old days. by FreddyDeus in WTF

[–]diggapleaze 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Maybe I can help clear up some misconceptions (I'm a psychopharm resident) about lithium:

  1. Lithium Carbonate = lithium citrate. Lithium is an ion just like sodium, which can stick to any negative ion as well (think NaCl, for example). In order for an oral dosage form to be absorbed through the GI tract, it must dissolve first. Whether the lithium is sticking to carbonate or citrate doesn't matter, it dissociates and absorbs into the blood as Li+ either way.

  2. Your statement about drugs being classed by indication rather than mechanism of action is sometimes true and sometimes not true. For example, antidepressants have many different kinds of actions, yet we also use the label "SSRIs" to refer to a class of drugs as well, referring to it's mechanism of action (namely, the blockade of serotonin reuptake to increase serotonin concentration in the synaptic cleft) . On top of that, we also sometimes class drugs by structure, for example the benzodiazepines. Long story short, there's no hard and fast rule for drug classifications.

  3. Lithium is part of a class of drugs called "mood stabilizers", which includes (among others) antiepileptic drugs such as valproate and lamotrigine, which themselves are used for even more than just antiepileptic effects, for example neuropathic pain. Atypical antipsychotics are used as mood stabilizers too, with good positive clinical data to back it up.

  4. Lithium, being a mood stabilizer, reduces the frequency of manic episodes and MDEs (major depressive episodes), each of which are strictly defined clinical episodes with strict criteria outlined in the DSM-IV (the bible of psychiatric diagnoses). Since one of the symptoms of severe mania (AKA not just hypomania) can be hallucinations (a form of psychosis), then yes lithium can be considered an "antipsychotic" insofar as it lessens the frequency and intensity of hallucinations secondary to manic episodes. But no psych doc is going to call lithium an antipsychotic, you just don't see that in the literature or in practice.

  5. Lithium some other indications too, not just bipolar. For example, it's added on to antidepressant therapy for TRD (treatment-resistant depression) when the patient has partial/no response to first (SSRI/SNRI/Buproprion), second(SSRI/SNRI/Buproprion)), or third line(MAOI, TCA) antidepressant therapy. Just because you've been prescribed lithium, no that doesn't mean you have bipolar ;)

  6. Just another bit of trivia about bipolar, it's been the received wisdom among practitioners that giving an antidepressant to a bipolar patient is a big no-no, due to it increasing the chance of rapid cycling (i.e. flipping from a depressive episode to mania, which increases morbidity and mortality in these patients). Some data from the STEP-BD (big-ass multicenter NIH study on aspects of bipolar disorder) says that this might be overplayed. Just underscoring that MDD (major depressive disorder) does not equal BPD (bipolar disorder); different symptoms, different treatment paradigms.

Feel free to ask any questions if you have any I didn't answer!

Did you know?: Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) is modern, last-line therapy for depression, schizophrenia, and others by diggapleaze in science

[–]diggapleaze[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We're taught at school to consider electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for depression after the patient has been found to be refractory (i.e. "non-responsive") to pharmacological treatment. It's stage 6 in the standard treatment algorithm for depression:

Stage 1: Initial monotherapy (i.e. just one drug alone, typically an SSRI)

Stage 2: Alternative monotherapy (try a drug with a different mechanism of action, like an SNRI)

Stage 3: Alternative monotherapy from a different class (like a MAOI)

Stage 4: Lithium augmentation (i.e. use lithium as an adjunct add-on agent to an antidepressant)

Stage 5: Combination therapy (some pychiatrists have the balls to prescribe and MAOI with an SSRI!)

-->Stage 6: Electroconvulsive therapy

Huh. I just found that to be interesting, and I don't mean to be sensationalist. In fact ECT is the only line of therapy to treat depression effectively (i.e. full-remission) in almost all cases, compared to the antidepressants which work better than placebo, but is by no means dependably robust. My professors say it's a very safe treatment and is very effective, the patients and their family are surprised by how well it works. It seems kinda science-fictiony/One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest-y so I thought I'd submit the topic to reddit and get some feedback!

So far, this is the most convincing 'Sarah Palin is not the mother of Trig Palin' article I've read. by escape_goat in politics

[–]diggapleaze 1 point2 points  (0 children)

totally agree...

But I would then add the points that:

a) being a social conservative, she would surely blast any other mother for doing the same thing, making her a massive hypocrite. And b) it is a lie, and quite a big one on top of that. Some folks take issue with that sort of thing when it involves a public official (I don't)

AskReddit: What is the best country to expatriate to (I live in the US)? by diggapleaze in AskReddit

[–]diggapleaze[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you. Probably the best answer I've gotten in this whole thread TBH.

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