I have had a lot of luck with Aryuvadic herbs, actually better luck than with Western medicine, so I've been trying to learn more about it.

Well, the other day, I stumbled upon this idea of pinhole glasess. Most of the sites I saw looked pretty questionable, and some even touted conspiracy theories of how the FDA tried to keep them out of the hands of consumers.

As I was looking for info, and saw they were a dollar on ebay, so I bought a pair. They came a couple of days ago, from Nepal.

I've had a problem for years with my eyes not focusing well to different distances. Like, for example, if I am outside, and I come in to the PC, there's a good 10 minutes I can't see the PC all that well. I take my glasses off and squint to see.

Well I opened my mail from Nepal at my pc, and put these glasses on. I noticed instantly I could read the pc very well, AND I could look across my house into the kitchen and STILL see well.

I took them outside - oh they are great in the pool. I can see everything and at 1.00 a pair and plastic, they block out the sun and I'm not worried about losing them or breaking them in the pool. I could see everything - better than with my glasses on.

Now, there's a weirdness to them. I wouldn't drive with them, that's for sure, because there is peripheal vision loss. There's also the black dots that you have to get used to. (Didn't take me long at all to not notice them, but my husband never could adjust.)

I kept thinking of poor ol' Piggy, in Lord of the Flies, and how if he just knew about these, he couldn't made him some from palm leaves.

My name should have been Velma, but my dog won't help me look even for Scooby snacks.

A cheap whim....My experience with pinhole glasses

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

That does sound too good to be true.

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers - health - 17 January 2007 - New Scientist

I so wish we had national healthcare. It is outrageous the profit that is made on the life and death of human beings. Regardless, the insurance agencies now approve or disprove your treatment - and even with GOOD insurance - there is NO CAP on out of pocket expenses anymore- at least on our expensive bc/bs policy. I have a chronic, disabling illness. My insurance company over requires so many different doctors visits that my copays can run over 200 a month easily - then they don't want to cover my medications - I can only get covered on OLD medicines - at 35 dollars a month per prescription.
You just don't KNOW how bad this insurance stuff has got until you really get sick.
It makes me so sad - recently I did my best to take care of a friend who got her finger tip cut off with a lawnmower- who DID NOT go to the hospital because of no insurance and no real money to speak of.

During this time I found out that very few of my friends HAD insurance - they either couldn't afford it or couldn't get it - Nice very educated folks with familes. SAD

Insurance Horror Stories - New York Times

This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull. I read that this increased one’s consciousness permanently. I read about the supposed de-conditioning properties. I read about more parts of the brain working simultaneously as there would be more blood up there to help this happen. The arguments for it all seemed to be quite lengthy, quite detailed, thought out and researched, and very intelligent. The arguments against it were based solely on the opinion that it is ‘crazy’ and talk like, "What’s more conscious than conscious?". I heard from an acquaintance on telephone that she was glad she had done it, felt more mental energy, and had days of brilliance. I came to believe that the key to a permanent consciousness increase was a hole in the skull, to restore the full brain pulsation of infancy. After several months of research, discussion, speculation, watching surgical videos and trepanation documentaries, and even an actual viewing of a trepanation, I decided I certainly did want to be trepanned, and sought a way to do it.

I am most positive that the person that did that should be arrested for practicing medicine without a license.

Trepanation

This is a great site for fibro sufferers, but it is kinda hidden. I've never ran accross it before, but it has a lot of good coping tips.

It includes a section on how to deal with 'fibrofog' which is something that I am seriously struggling with.

I constantly feel like I've smoked WAY too much pot, or maybe more like hashish - I'm way on out there all the time - but I'm straight & clean as can be. I thought it was maybe my medication, so I quit taking it for awhile - sent me into pure agony with pain - in bed incapable of doing ANYTHING - but the brainfog remained - even got worse!

Reading more - THANK GOD for the INTERNET - I see it is a common symptom, but one I was not ever told about or prepared to deal with.

Tips for living with Fibromyalgia

Benign sex headaches are severe headaches that occur during an orgasm. Despite the name of this condition, benign sex headaches are often quite painful. This condition has been known to exist since the time of Hippocrates (about 460 B.C), but only during the 1970's was it formally addressed by K. Kritz. Other names for this condition are coital cephalalgia, orgasmic cephalagia, and benign coital headache. There are two kinds of benign sex headaches, the first being described as a sudden explosive pain in the head during the point of orgasm. Patients have described the feeling to be like a sudden blow to the head, to a sudden throb like pulses similar to a migraine. The other type is described as a pain that intensifies as the onset of orgasm nears. In some instances both types of benign sex headache occur, the first type occurring immediately after the second type. There have also been documented cases where standing up after coitus has produced headaches. This type of coital headache is relatively rare. It can last for several weeks, and lying down relieves the pain.

May you never, ever have cause to read this article. Oh my god the pain. Some of the worst I've ever experienced.

I have to second that - it's happened to me too a few times. It is really, really awful.

Benign Sex Headaches - 'Coital Cephalalgia' - UCSB's SexInfo

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."

Smoking pot protects you from cancer. Who would have thought?

Fire it up. (Quick, before they close the border.)

Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection

Sad news, Overcode passed away on Saturday, September 17th.

More information and a guestbook is on his home page http://overcode.yak.net

Valhalla welcomes its latest hacker. John, may you Rest in Peace.

John's War with Melanoma is over

I always knew HMOs were evil.

HMO's settle after doctors accused them of reprogramming computers to skimp on payments

Excerpt: "Brain cells can recover from Alzheimer's disease after disease-associated brain plaques are removed with a treatment being evaluated for human trials."

Here is to hope. Cheers, -Pk

Brain Cells Can Recover from Alzheimer's