4 ms·

The hypoxia issue is more of a physical problem caused by inflammation. Think about trying to push a marble through plastic, that is what the vents are trying t

by podgaj 7y ago

The hypoxia issue is more of a physical problem caused by inflammation. Think about trying to push a marble through plastic, that is what the vents are trying to do with the oxygen that is trying to get from the aveoli to the capillary. Vents are not a treatment, they are support. Treatment would either slow replication or lower the inflammation. But I like your thinking.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
The thing is that if you also have an issue like pneumonia, intervention like ventilation would help with that element. But if that's just one problem and we are overlooking a biochemical pathway issue, it would serve as an invisible bottleneck in the system. So, say, twenty percent of the problem is pneumonia and you can see gains by addressing that, but it's just one piece. Lowering demand on the system would help accommodate the low oxygen. One way the body does this is by sleeping. People are reporting they are sleeping a lot. Anyway, zinc makes sense based on stuff I'm aware of. And it's cheap and the body apparently doesn't store it. You need a daily supply. So if zinc is a critical factor, dietary differences could be a significant detail. People sucking down sufficient zinc keep breathing. People not eating zinc-rich foods suffocate. Does anyone know what Coronavirus does with regards to zinc usage in the body?
- podgaj 7y ago
  Apparently this is not presenting in the lungs as either ARDS or pnemonia which has been the problem. There is a doctor in this thread who was saying vents were making O2 levels drop so they just provided low pressure oxygen. My focus more on nutritional genetics and biochemistry so I am trying to put something I know well with something I can maybe understand. This is why I reached out here.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    I have a relatively mild form of cystic fibrosis. I don't have any of the 100 most common alleles and was diagnosed late in life. Insurance denied my pulmonologist's request for a more comprehensive genetic paneling covering the 1400 or so known alleles. I was just happy to have a better label than "hypochondriac" and was responding well to treatment and was fighting for my life. I shrugged and thought nothing of it, but that detail undermines my credibility in the CF community. (I mean the fact that I don't know my alleles.) I was diagnosed nearly 19 years ago and I have been steadily getting better using dietary and lifestyle interventions. I know a lot about things like inflammation in the lungs and how to manage it. At this point, I most likely have the infection and have had it for a while, though that only recently became clear to me because I'm largely asymptomatic. The most prominent symptom I do have is that my energy levels are low in a way that suggests a bottleneck in the system on energy supply. Impaired oxygen availability would fit with what I'm experiencing. I have a history of anemia and it is somewhat similar to that. My lungs are clearer than they have been in weeks. I had a mold exposure earlier this year and spent weeks coughing up a lot of phlegm multiple times per day. At the moment and in the last couple of weeks, my lungs aren't all gunked up and my chronic inflammation is currently very well controlled. But we are all three (me and my sons, one of whom also has atypical CF) sucking down zinc-rich foods. And we feel notably better after eating. So your remarks hit a nerve for me. I'm not suggesting it's the entire answer. But CF is, itself, a bottleneck in the system at the cellular level. The mechanism causing the condition is a defective channel that handles traffic of certain molecules into and out of the cell. That's what is known by medical science and it has been enormously helpful information for me. Beyond that, my mental models for what is going on with my body depart from current medical dogma and I get attacked and dismissed a lot as a loon because I'm a former homemaker, not a doctor. But I'm extremely familiar with what it feels like to have a bottleneck in the system and this feels to me like a bottleneck in the system somewhere. And it's not lung function per se. I'm not having any breathing difficulties at all. This is why I think Coronavirus is impairing oxygen uptake somehow in terms of some biochemical pathway. I work from home, part time and when I feel like it. I'm poor, but I have a lot of control over my schedule. My sons and I are lazing about a lot and struggling to come up with the energy to take care of what few tasks must be done daily. But with pollution levels down and no pressure to perform, we are managing to not end up in serious crisis. We just aren't pushing ourselves. With a bottleneck in the system, you can't readily recover from stress events. You don't have the capacity. For normal people who are used to being able to push themselves to do something when they don't feel well, a bottleneck in the system would create a potentially deadly problem where pushing themselves could be a cataclysmic event from which they cannot recover. If there is a bottleneck, you have to slow down, take it easy, don't push. You have to take pressure off the system by lowering demand. You have to max out support of all other areas that might impinge on the system in a way that would further narrow the bottleneck. I'm still doing lung clearance multiple times per day. I'm not bringing up much, but I'm keeping my lungs clear of obstruction because any obstruction further narrows the bottleneck. So other things, like fluid in the lungs or inflammation, would further narrow the bottleneck. But clearing those additional burdens on the system doesn't, per se, fix the problem. It just lets the body get as much throughput through the bottleneck as possible. My impression currently is that zinc consumption is easing the bottleneck itself. It's opening up capacity modestly, though it's certainly not a cure. It's just a means to keep energy levels up enough to not be a dire problem. Please, if you can think of or learn of anything in terms of how Coronavirus impacts cell function that may cast light on interference with oxygen uptake at the biological pathway level (as opposed to mechanically in the lungs, which is what ventilators are trying to address and failing), shoot me an email. My email is in my profile.
    - podgaj 7y ago
      I lave Lupus which is what led me to research since my mother had it as well I saw it as genetic, and it is for us. There of many people with common disease living on on the nature----nurture spectrum. But the nurture part is largely overlooked in the PRACTICE of medicine. MD's have admitted to me that it is just easier to not focus on it. Back to Coronavirus, it might be that the zinc is not as available to replace the iron in the Porphyrin ring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_protoporphyrin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_protoporphyrin I am not yet ready to see the low blood oxygen as totally bad. We used to think fevers were totally bad. It might be a way the body fights coronavirus. See: https://aac.asm.org/content/61/6/e00053-17.short https://aac.asm.org/content/61/6/e00053-17.short I will send you an email as well.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        I'm not suggesting it's all bad. I'm just suggesting it's potentially an explanation for the high rate of death on ventilators. Ventilators may be the wrong treatment because the low oxygen levels may be largely due to a process more like anemia rather than primarily due to lung issues. You don't treat anemia by putting people on ventilators. We can't successfully treat people if our mental models of the problem are entirely wrong. Current thinking is that CF is relatively common in some populations because it is protective against certain conditions and those conditions swept through Europe a lot for a while. CF is predominantly Caucasian and it's homozygous recessive. So the current belief is that it's sort of like Sickle Cell Anemia. One copy of the gene improves survival against certain infections without being an egregious burden to live with. Two copies are a terrible problem that kill you at an early age. About 18 years ago, not long after me and my older son were diagnosed with CF, my younger son -- who is only a carrier -- had Winter Vomiting. It was a very deadly stomach flu. He spent eight days miserable and barely eating. I told him if he got dehydrated, I was taking him to the ER to get an IV. He had an IV once and didn't want it again. So once a day, he drank 32 ounces of water, had a few crackers or ramen and then immediately projectile vomited it all back up. But it kept him from ending up dehydrated. Me and my oldest son felt kind of meh for like maybe a day and a half. Our gut doesn't work right. This stomach flu didn't thrive in our system. So I am abundantly familiar with the concept you are talking. What you are saying is like that X Files scene where she says "The cold is the only thing keeping him alive." when they are trying to treat him for hypothermia. But ventilators are apparently killing people and apparently not primarily due to antibiotic resistant secondary infection. This is a clue. We need to follow the clues and see where they take us. The lung issues are the obvious explanation for low oxygen, but treating for lung issues isn't getting the expected result. Ergo the low oxygen most likely is due to a different mechanism. Logically, it's a mechanism more akin to anemia, which is basically a bottleneck on how much oxygen the body can absorb at one time. That's where we need to look, I think.

by podgaj 7y ago

DoreenMichele 7y ago

The thing is that if you also have an issue like pneumonia, intervention like ventilation would help with that element. But if that's just one problem and we are overlooking a biochemical pathway issue, it would serve as an invisible bottleneck in the system. So, say, twenty percent of the problem is pneumonia and you can see gains by addressing that, but it's just one piece. Lowering demand on the system would help accommodate the low oxygen. One way the body does this is by sleeping. People are reporting they are sleeping a lot. Anyway, zinc makes sense based on stuff I'm aware of. And it's cheap and the body apparently doesn't store it. You need a daily supply. So if zinc is a critical factor, dietary differences could be a significant detail. People sucking down sufficient zinc keep breathing. People not eating zinc-rich foods suffocate. Does anyone know what Coronavirus does with regards to zinc usage in the body?

podgaj 7y ago
Apparently this is not presenting in the lungs as either ARDS or pnemonia which has been the problem. There is a doctor in this thread who was saying vents were making O2 levels drop so they just provided low pressure oxygen. My focus more on nutritional genetics and biochemistry so I am trying to put something I know well with something I can maybe understand. This is why I reached out here.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  I have a relatively mild form of cystic fibrosis. I don't have any of the 100 most common alleles and was diagnosed late in life. Insurance denied my pulmonologist's request for a more comprehensive genetic paneling covering the 1400 or so known alleles. I was just happy to have a better label than "hypochondriac" and was responding well to treatment and was fighting for my life. I shrugged and thought nothing of it, but that detail undermines my credibility in the CF community. (I mean the fact that I don't know my alleles.) I was diagnosed nearly 19 years ago and I have been steadily getting better using dietary and lifestyle interventions. I know a lot about things like inflammation in the lungs and how to manage it. At this point, I most likely have the infection and have had it for a while, though that only recently became clear to me because I'm largely asymptomatic. The most prominent symptom I do have is that my energy levels are low in a way that suggests a bottleneck in the system on energy supply. Impaired oxygen availability would fit with what I'm experiencing. I have a history of anemia and it is somewhat similar to that. My lungs are clearer than they have been in weeks. I had a mold exposure earlier this year and spent weeks coughing up a lot of phlegm multiple times per day. At the moment and in the last couple of weeks, my lungs aren't all gunked up and my chronic inflammation is currently very well controlled. But we are all three (me and my sons, one of whom also has atypical CF) sucking down zinc-rich foods. And we feel notably better after eating. So your remarks hit a nerve for me. I'm not suggesting it's the entire answer. But CF is, itself, a bottleneck in the system at the cellular level. The mechanism causing the condition is a defective channel that handles traffic of certain molecules into and out of the cell. That's what is known by medical science and it has been enormously helpful information for me. Beyond that, my mental models for what is going on with my body depart from current medical dogma and I get attacked and dismissed a lot as a loon because I'm a former homemaker, not a doctor. But I'm extremely familiar with what it feels like to have a bottleneck in the system and this feels to me like a bottleneck in the system somewhere. And it's not lung function per se. I'm not having any breathing difficulties at all. This is why I think Coronavirus is impairing oxygen uptake somehow in terms of some biochemical pathway. I work from home, part time and when I feel like it. I'm poor, but I have a lot of control over my schedule. My sons and I are lazing about a lot and struggling to come up with the energy to take care of what few tasks must be done daily. But with pollution levels down and no pressure to perform, we are managing to not end up in serious crisis. We just aren't pushing ourselves. With a bottleneck in the system, you can't readily recover from stress events. You don't have the capacity. For normal people who are used to being able to push themselves to do something when they don't feel well, a bottleneck in the system would create a potentially deadly problem where pushing themselves could be a cataclysmic event from which they cannot recover. If there is a bottleneck, you have to slow down, take it easy, don't push. You have to take pressure off the system by lowering demand. You have to max out support of all other areas that might impinge on the system in a way that would further narrow the bottleneck. I'm still doing lung clearance multiple times per day. I'm not bringing up much, but I'm keeping my lungs clear of obstruction because any obstruction further narrows the bottleneck. So other things, like fluid in the lungs or inflammation, would further narrow the bottleneck. But clearing those additional burdens on the system doesn't, per se, fix the problem. It just lets the body get as much throughput through the bottleneck as possible. My impression currently is that zinc consumption is easing the bottleneck itself. It's opening up capacity modestly, though it's certainly not a cure. It's just a means to keep energy levels up enough to not be a dire problem. Please, if you can think of or learn of anything in terms of how Coronavirus impacts cell function that may cast light on interference with oxygen uptake at the biological pathway level (as opposed to mechanically in the lungs, which is what ventilators are trying to address and failing), shoot me an email. My email is in my profile.
  - podgaj 7y ago
    I lave Lupus which is what led me to research since my mother had it as well I saw it as genetic, and it is for us. There of many people with common disease living on on the nature----nurture spectrum. But the nurture part is largely overlooked in the PRACTICE of medicine. MD's have admitted to me that it is just easier to not focus on it. Back to Coronavirus, it might be that the zinc is not as available to replace the iron in the Porphyrin ring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_protoporphyrin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_protoporphyrin I am not yet ready to see the low blood oxygen as totally bad. We used to think fevers were totally bad. It might be a way the body fights coronavirus. See: https://aac.asm.org/content/61/6/e00053-17.short https://aac.asm.org/content/61/6/e00053-17.short I will send you an email as well.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      I'm not suggesting it's all bad. I'm just suggesting it's potentially an explanation for the high rate of death on ventilators. Ventilators may be the wrong treatment because the low oxygen levels may be largely due to a process more like anemia rather than primarily due to lung issues. You don't treat anemia by putting people on ventilators. We can't successfully treat people if our mental models of the problem are entirely wrong. Current thinking is that CF is relatively common in some populations because it is protective against certain conditions and those conditions swept through Europe a lot for a while. CF is predominantly Caucasian and it's homozygous recessive. So the current belief is that it's sort of like Sickle Cell Anemia. One copy of the gene improves survival against certain infections without being an egregious burden to live with. Two copies are a terrible problem that kill you at an early age. About 18 years ago, not long after me and my older son were diagnosed with CF, my younger son -- who is only a carrier -- had Winter Vomiting. It was a very deadly stomach flu. He spent eight days miserable and barely eating. I told him if he got dehydrated, I was taking him to the ER to get an IV. He had an IV once and didn't want it again. So once a day, he drank 32 ounces of water, had a few crackers or ramen and then immediately projectile vomited it all back up. But it kept him from ending up dehydrated. Me and my oldest son felt kind of meh for like maybe a day and a half. Our gut doesn't work right. This stomach flu didn't thrive in our system. So I am abundantly familiar with the concept you are talking. What you are saying is like that X Files scene where she says "The cold is the only thing keeping him alive." when they are trying to treat him for hypothermia. But ventilators are apparently killing people and apparently not primarily due to antibiotic resistant secondary infection. This is a clue. We need to follow the clues and see where they take us. The lung issues are the obvious explanation for low oxygen, but treating for lung issues isn't getting the expected result. Ergo the low oxygen most likely is due to a different mechanism. Logically, it's a mechanism more akin to anemia, which is basically a bottleneck on how much oxygen the body can absorb at one time. That's where we need to look, I think.