On Tue, 12/17/2024 1:02 PM, vallor wrote:
On Fri, 13 Dec 2024 21:21:04 -0800, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
Hi denizens,
I was a constant user of aspirin including St.Joseph's aspirin for
children from an early age. I used to think it was harmless a minor
pain killer.
In the 1970s it destroyed my life. I didn't realize it at the
time as I had a viral infection according to PCP of the moment. I
was sent home with instructions to drink lots of water and to take
aspirin. I overdid the aspirin because the fever messed up my head.
I over did the aspirin but did not realize anything was
wrong until a bit later another month or so when my shins broke
out in red lumps which is english for Erythema Nodosum. I learned
about by visiting San Francisco General and had to go repeatedly
before they loosened their tight asses and prescribed a cortisone
by mouth for my red lumps and learned that I was sensitive to all
the drugs in the same chemical group as aspirin which is all the
Salicylate drugs. Salicylates also occur in fruits and vegetables.
Ok so then I got allergic to wheat, animal dairy products
but specifically those with animal casein. Originally this was
just cows milk but after a few years I became allergic to goat
milk and sheep milk cheese.
Then when I was 46 I got very ill maybe from exertion
but after that whenever I exerted myself I ran the risk of
being terribly ill. Worse exercise which had been my friend
since young adulthood became poisonous to my body.
Now this used to be called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
but I prefer Systemic Exertional Intolerance Disease. It happens
after an illness which seems to resolve but recurs when
exercise is attempted.
At times I thought it was over and would go out as
I was used to doing for the first part of my life and make
myself sick all over again. And it causes brain fog which
is why I did not figure out that exercise was making me
ill.
Legal over the counter drugs can destroy your life
so be careful. There is no cure for this post-viral problem.
I had to give up many things like motorcycling and driving.
I had to give up the motorbikes because I was getting cramps
in my throttle hand and a bit later gave up driving because
I could no longer stay awake enough to drive. I have lived
in the same studio apartment now for over 50 years and it is
crammed full with stuff of great interest to me at one time
which is now just somewhat valuable clutter.
I have told my tale, heed it and tell it to people
who think that OTC drugs are safe. Remember that alcohol
is legal and can be simply deadly or destroy your health
just like tobacco.
bliss-the hobbler
Hi Bobbie,
My heart goes out to you. Sorry you've been going through all that.
The story has, though, cast a pall over the newsgroup, at least
from my perspective. Human frailty being what it is, I can understand
the necessity of getting the story out there -- but I wondered if you have something to say about Ubuntu? :)
The "fever" might actually have been an aspirin overdose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salicylate_poisoning
And this is Bobbies condition, right here. Right at the
end of that article, it vectors off to this article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reye_syndrome
"The cause of Reye syndrome is unknown.[2] It usually begins shortly after
recovery from a viral infection, such as influenza or chickenpox.[1] About
90% of cases in children are associated with aspirin (salicylate) use.[2]
Inborn errors of metabolism are also a risk factor.[3] The syndrome is
associated with changes on blood tests such as a high blood ammonia level,
low blood sugar level, and prolonged prothrombin time.[2] Often, the liver
is enlarged in those who have the syndrome.[2]
Prevention is typically by avoiding the use of aspirin in children.[1] <===
When aspirin was withdrawn for use in children in the US and UK in the 1980s,
a decrease of more than 90% in rates of Reye syndrome was observed.
"
Acetyl salicylic acid is also an antiviral, and has some sort of RNA activity. It might have been used for that, if not for the contraindications of Aspirin. Aspirin kills viruses, but it also seems to have other effects. This means
it has too many non-specific effects perhaps, to be consumed like popcorn.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5155651/
*******
I think Bobbie is focusing on the wrong thing here. Organic chemistry
is of relatively recent origin. Chemists started extracting things from
coal tars and crude oil. The chemists were so stupid at the time, as to
sniff and (ugh) taste the purified materials extracted. Some of the
materials extracted were carcinogens. As a chemist, we give a tip of the
hat to those dead people, because they effectively taught us some
new behaviors in chem lab -- you don't "inhale" from the vat,
neither do you "taste" anything you make. We also learned from that
early chemistry, that "anything with a chlorine or a halogen bonded
to it, regard it as a carcinogen before determining otherwise".
"By 1899, Bayer had dubbed this drug Aspirin and was selling it globally."
Aspirin was likely invented before a lot of our other pharmaceuticals.
The testing process for proving a compound is "safe and effective",
was likely a lot more crude and not very good. This means we "accepted"
the material, without a thorough workup. Modern drugs go through a lot
more testing steps than the Aspirin described in Wikipedia.
There are currently around 20 million organic compounds. We've made so
many of them, that some, they have a name and a melting point, and no
other determination of properties has been done. We don't ingest these.
The number of materials commonly in circulation, is a lot less than that.
And orders of magnitude less, are used as therapeutic drugs.
When the radioactive material "radium" was in vogue, some genius added
it to a cough syrup. Some gentleman consumed a quantity of the material...
and his jaw fell off (lower jaw detached). This put a damper on the
consumption of the medication. Now, that's how we used to do things :-)
That, and having fluoroscopes in shoe stores, so you could look at
your toe bones inside a new pair of shoes (XRays). Humans really aren't all that bright, when you get right down to it.
Paul
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