[HN Gopher] The DIY scientist, the Olympian, and the mutated gen...
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       The DIY scientist, the Olympian, and the mutated gene (2016)
        
       Author : barry-cotter
       Score  : 52 points
       Date   : 2023-01-08 08:38 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
        
       | nyanpasu64 wrote:
       | (2016) If I were in a similar situation, I'd rather self-medicate
       | than visit doctors who shut me down and refuse to listen or
       | entertain the possibility their preconceptions are wrong.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | whatshisface wrote:
         | There's no medications for that disorder, she was getting
         | people in touch with scientists.
        
       | tanbog5 wrote:
       | Whenever I hear stories like this that involve doctors and
       | specialists dismissing patient concerns and evidence I always
       | wonder if there is follow up with them later.
       | 
       | Not for punishment or anything but as a way to review and improve
       | their practice. If not, then just think how many other people
       | they have given poor treatment to who didn't have the personal
       | determination and education to persevere.
        
       | pfdietz wrote:
       | What a remarkable story.
        
       | DoreenMichele wrote:
       | I laughed out loud at this and I don't laugh much:
       | 
       |  _Discouraged by her encounter with the neurologist, Jill figured
       | it would be a dead end to show up at a hospital and ask that her
       | blood be drawn so she could ship it to Italy. So she convinced a
       | nurse friend to smuggle needles and test tubes to her house. They
       | filled them with her family's blood. At the post office, when
       | Jill declared that her packages contained blood, an employee had
       | to retrieve a big binder that listed what can be shipped to
       | various countries. Fortunately, Italy took blood in the mail._
       | 
       | This is a particularly good analogy:
       | 
       |  _To appreciate the scale of what happened to Jill, imagine
       | enough letters to fill 13 complete sets of Encyclopaedia
       | Britannica with a single-letter typo that changes the meaning of
       | a crucial entry._
       | 
       | Re the Olympic athlete getting her test results:
       | 
       |  _'You're only allowed to have salad. You're on track for a
       | [pancreatitis] attack.'_
       | 
       | And it goes on to say her blood lipid levels were way too high.
       | Makes perfect sense to me. If your body isn't putting the fat
       | where it normally goes, it's likely to be somewhere else if you
       | are eating "normally" and haven't specifically changed your diet
       | to accommodate your metabolic quirk.
       | 
       |  _Lastly, and not surprisingly, Jill is still scouring scientific
       | journals. "Just in the past couple weeks I 've stumbled onto a
       | report linking the drug rapamycin to reversal of cardiac and
       | skeletal muscle weakness in a mouse model of EDMD," she says. "I
       | have a 2-year-old nephew (though asymptomatic), who has
       | genetically tested positive for this condition, and I would do
       | absolutely anything to find a medication that could prevent
       | cardiac and/or skeletal muscle damage in the case of EDMD."_
       | 
       | She should be looking at magnesium deficiency or misprocessing.
       | It's linked to long QT syndrome, which is a heart rhythm issue,
       | and critical to the body's ability to properly incorporate
       | calcium.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10916639 - Jan 2016 (5
       | comments)
        
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       (page generated 2023-01-08 23:01 UTC)