Potassium

An article, in New Scientist, on how partly replacing Sodium Chloride by Potassium Chloride would help reduce High Blood Pressure, caught my attention.
I suffer from High Blood Pressure, whilst also needing Potassium supplements (adrenal adenomas). There is an upper limit to the recommended dosage of Potassium, because it can affect the heart etc. (the lethal injection, used in some US States, is mainly an overdose of Potassium; so not painless) but I could, maybe, benefit from exceeding that dosage.
Later in the article, it suggested that cooking salt could be legislated to contain a percentage of Potassium. this was cited as proving beneficial legislation requiring the addition of Iodine to Salt. This, again, caught my attention, because I require Laevothyroxine supplements (max dose), where the Iodine in my diet (I like eating sea fish) and in processed food may be at fault.
Maybe I could opt out of extra iodine in the table salt.

eggs good,bad,good,bad?

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24332380-000-why-everything-you-know-about-nutrition-is-wrong

This piece was a welcome read. Written by a nutrition journalist. It states the reasoning for my objections to advice from nutritionists, in a more articulate form than “bloody epidemiology!”.
We have a growing obesity problem in this country and I have to admit to being part of it, taking a daily dose of about a dozen different medications, which may be related to diet, or old age, or an interaction of conflicting effects of the various drugs.
For me, the problem lies in there being no causal links between diet and health, except at a level of lack of certain minerals and vitamins cause all humans to suffer similar health issues. Eating too much makes you fat and starving makes you dead.
I’d like to see more research on how molecules in our bodies interact to do what they do.

Imagine being inside your own body, floating along with your blood cells and the multitude of molecules that also drift in the currents. There are bits of food, waste, plastic (or so, we’re told), enzymes, hormones, drugs etc., etc. They’re not on a mission to get anywhere; they’re just bumping into one another and, usually, just bouncing off again. Think of them like odd bits of jigsaw pieces, some huge and some tiny. Sometimes they’ll latch onto each other and something will happen. E.g. an enzyme will meet a starch molecule and stick to it in a couple of places, causing it to change shape. The change in shape of the enzyme causes it to break a bit off the Starch molecule, before releasing it again. It’s not an intentional act, anymore than litmus turning red in an acid environment, or turning blue, when it finds itself in an alkaline one. It’s just a mindless chemical reaction. All throughout your body, other reactions happen. Think of your cells as like a Death Star, with molecules bumping into them. Some molecules may bump into an access point and gain entry into the cell, if they have the right shape, size and identifying bits of molecular groups. They’ll float around inside the cell, where they may interact with its internal structures and provide energy, or nutrients or stimulate other molecules to form. They may just float out again. The processes are not predictable and will vary in each person, because of our DNA and maybe, even, the DNA of the plant, or animal, we’ve eaten. Infections enter our bodies and float around, inside, in the same haphazard way, as these other bits and pieces. As a group, we have a similar reaction to these invaders, which, in the case of viruses, are also mindless in how they interact with our bodies. Most of us react in the same way, to varying extents. Some die, some just become carriers of the disease. I’ve not become aware of any research on why this is so. It might help to kick epidemiology into the long grass and see, which genes are involved in combatting disease, controlling immune reactions, allowing hyperplasia and metastasis. When these are known, maybe we can develope treatments specific to an individual’s response to the same foods and diseases.

drugs: secondary health issues.

Phew! lots of hits for posting on control of drugs. Most just spammers, seizing on the word “drugs”, but some from people concerned with the problem. One aspect that I hadn’t considered is how the suppression of needle users is leading to the spread of HIV and presumably other health problems such as Hepatitis.

I remember reading that TB (once known as consumption, people basically suffocate as their lungs turn cardboard like scar tissue example is possibly Doc Holliday) has come back in a more resistant form because drugees (reference was for those in New York) were entering hospital with pneumonia etc, getting antibiotics, then leaving before the antibiotics (to get a fix) had fully eradicated the TB. This is the sort of thing that leads to the build up of resistance to antibiotics and the stupid situation that we now have with MRSA.

There are possibly other ways that permitting drug control to be left in the hands of “entrepreneurs” is actually damaging/harming the people and Society in general.