More Ramblings from Hardcore

The other thing I meant to add is that I've generally thought that it's probably for the best that not many people read the blog, to a large extent, and I make sort of a big effort to assume that people aren't reading it and to make my assessments as independently as possible. Even though I value tremendously my ability to speak independently, as far as the science goes, I'm always re-evaluating my thoughts on things and trying to think more carefully about the aspects of things that go beyond science. I can say I'm speaking objectively and independently about something and feel that I am, at any given time, but still end up being human and having my own silly sense of pride about things. The thought of being some kind of guru in any of these areas or having people trust my statements, without going to the science and looking it over themselves, is repugnant to me. It's like my thought is, "don't trust me a lot, or I might disappoint you the way I disappointed myself for the first ten or twelve years I read about physiological approaches, etc. And it's probably best that no one read the blog, given that the statements about the research will probably disappoint people, also." I feel like there's a strong, strong distinction between the science and the people who do the science. That's probably not realistic, but I'd be paralyzed and wouldn't be able to write on most topics if I didn't look at the science as being a separate thing, as much as possible. I have a tendency to take that too far, but I've just seen, in this disturbing way, how devastating the consequences of the dearth of critical expression and thought has been in just these few areas that I've written about on the blog. In a lot of cases, research can go on for thirty and forty years along these terrible avenues and can sort of just wither away, year after year. It's not exactly devastating in every area, but it can be kind of appalling to see. It may be the fact that I've been very near to death, for different reasons and in different "disease states," on a couple of occasions in my life that has shaped my view of things, too. It's like it changes you and makes you see the strings behind the puppet show or something. The human body just doesn't impress you, in a lot of ways, after seeing medicine fail you (me) in ways that were appalling to me, at the time, and it's like the models of diseases seem to cease to have any intrinsic validity. I'm not meaning to make any kind of big point in this posting or anything, but I thought I could sort of try to sum up my thought processes, in a not-too-effective way, on the anniversary, here. I just tend to think that it's possible to think and evaluate critically in a dynamic way, and I've re-evaluated my thoughts in a lot of different areas on the blog, as I've read more. For example, I used to think that vitamin B6 wouldn't cause peripheral neuropathy (or even autonomic neuropathy, given that it can cause that, too, at high dosages) at dosages below about 100 mg/day, but I now think it could, potentially, cause neuropathy in susceptible individuals at dosages as low as, say, 25-50 mg/day or less. Neuropathy can cause all sorts of different pathologies in just about any organ and can severely disturb bone remodeling, as in Charcot foot disease, or severely exacerbate liver disease, by shutting down the neurogenic regulation of gallbladder contractions, as in diabetic neuropathy, etc. It's not really possible to easily evaluate those potential manifestations of neuropathy in a person. Anyway, that's about all I can think of to talk about. I don't get very many page hits per day. I get an average of about 10 or so, I'd say, and I have no way of evaluating whatever numbers of people are using any of the hundreds of RSS readers to check or look over the blog. I doubt it's very many, though.