Oct 28, 2009
NAC and CB2 agonists could be used to treat swine flu
N-acetylcysteine (NAC) is a natural chemical which is the precursor of the most prevalent endogenous antioxidant in humans, glutathione. It has some extremely remarkable effects to various illnesses, check the previous link. In one study, 25% people using NAC got sick from swine flu, whereas in the control group the percent was 75%. The effect could be related to NAC's mucolytic effects and to the fact that it leads to histamine secretion. NAC can be bought from the local pharmacy etc. I guess that 2 grams per day divided to 2 doses would decrease the probability of getting sick and the time to recover from one. It would not prevent the cytokine storm, but would keep the immune system at a level that could prevent the infection to reach the agnitude that it could trigger it. I wouldn't use NAC if I would already be infected and with >38C fever, then it would have to rely on CB2 agonist alone.
Cytokine storm would be have to be dampened away. Doctors would use steroids and perhaps NSAIDS for this, but one other way would be to use type 2 cannabinoid receptor (CB2) agonists, which are found at lymphocytes which mediate the inflammatory response. Activating CB2 agonists would make the lymphocytes chill down and the cytokine strom would be impossible. CB2 agonists are found in cannabis which could be smoked so that the medicine would go directly to the site of preferred site action, but since it contains also CB2 antagonists, one could prefer some other natural substances. Extract of plants belonging to the genus Echinacea contain (among other active things) alkylamides which are CB2 agonists and thus prevent the rise of cytokines to dangerous levels. These extracts can be bought from every health food store.
Both of these substances are cheap, without severe side effects and readily available. They are also effective to various other illnesses associated with inflammation ranging from psychosis to rheumatism .
Dec 12, 2008
Oedipus complex could be maternally induced through release of oxytocin
Oxytocin AKA OT AKA love hormone, is a peptide hormone tightly linked to social bonding, love, reproduction and parental care: the whole set which we need to form life-long monogamous relationships and care for our descendents as long we are alive.
OT <--> positive feelings/emotions
OT is released by experiences of romantic and maternal love, and pleasure produced by stimulation of erogenic parts of the body. This causes some parts of the brain responding to it to light up, some - related to negative feelings, social judgement and mentalizing- get inhibited. It's safe to say that recurrent increases in ones OT levels leads to feelings of acceptance and warm, perhaps sexual feelings towards the one associated with them.
And what would be a better way to increase OT levels than sucking tits almost 24/7? Nipple stimulation made by the baby can even produce an orgasm, the biggest natural releaser of OT after the number one: labor, produced by OT induced uterine contractions. After being born, the tit-sucking infant gets its first motherload of OT, still extremely high some time after giving birth. Nursing hours after labor makes the infant-mother bond stronger (according to Desmond Morris). After that its pretty much either sucking tits or sleeping. If a woman finds pleasure from this method of feeding her baby, the OT produced by it is transmitted to the baby through the milk. The bigger the impact on the mother, the bigger the impact on the child.
Maybe this could be the endocrino-neuropsychological reason why some childs associate their mothers with sex? This hypothesis could be easily tested by advanced background checking: number of oedipal children per n randomly selected children should be higher for children whose mothers had frequent orgasms during feeding compared to mothers who didn't, and the incidence within both of these groups should be higher than with a group of childs who were bottle-fed from the start.
Just to clarify: Above does not agree with the ridiculous Freudian view that Oedipus complex is innate and universal, or disagree with the inbreeding-suppressing Westermark effect, a phenomena discovered by Finnish anthropologist Edvard Westermarck, which basically proves that humans living at close proximity during early childhood do not bond with each other at a sexual level at maturity.
Dec 10, 2008
Potheads should use melatonin supplements
- Cannabinoids attenuate norepinephrine-induced melatonin biosynthesis in the rat pineal gland by reducing arylalkylamine N-acetyltransferase activity without involvement of cannabinoid receptors
- Acetylcholine has been demonstrated to exert various effects in the mammalian pineal gland, including an inhibitory action on the norepinephrine-induced stimulation of melatonin production.
- Melatonin modulates cholinergic transmission by blocking nicotinic channels in the guinea-pig submucous plexus
- Results got from the study of effects of melatonin on behavioral dopaminergic supersensitivity support previous evidence of antidopaminergic effects of melatonin and demonstrate that repeated administration of this hormone modifies the plasticity of behaviors mediated by central dopaminergic systems.