Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the ISPA prove Placebos work without Deception

“It’s the benefit of being immersed in treatment: interacting with a physician or nurse, taking pills, all the rituals and symbols of our healthcare system. The body responds to that.”

Dr. Ted Kaptchuk, study co-author on the Placebo Effect with researchers from researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the ISPA in Lisbon, Portugal

Placebos aren’t cures and they require deception to work. Or so I thought!!

Research done by researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the ISPA (Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada) in Lisbon, Portugal suggests that they still work even when the patient knows they are placebos as reported in the article “The Placebo Effect Works Even When People Know the Pills Are Fake”, published 17 October 2016 by George Dvorsky, Gizmodo.

Their study, published in the science journal Pain, suggests that the placebo effect can still happen EVEN if the patient is aware they're taking a placebo.

But a step back here.

The placebo, which is latin for “I will please” is where you trick the mind into thinking that a pill or therapy will have an intended effect, despite lack of any scientific proof that it works. It’s even been theorized that there is a genetic link to how well the placebo effect works in some people.

So basically, these scientists, in their study, pleased their patients with a placebo. So how did they do the experiment?

Research into the Placebo Effect - Sugar pills actually work better than Painkillers

The researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the ISPA in Lisbon, Portugal, created two groups out of 100 patients

1.      50 in a control group given pain medicine

2.      50 in an experiment group given a placebo clearly labled “placebo pills”

To make sure the patients knew what was going on, they even went a far as to educate all of them thoroughly on what a placebo was with a 15-minute primer of the placebo effect.

They then took their pain regiments for the next three (3) weeks and reported back to the researchers.

Surprisingly, the placebo group returned some fascinating results:

1.      30% reduction in usual pain

2.      30% reduction in maximum pain

3.      29% reduction in pain-related disability

The non placebo group, who were given scientifically tested medication, surprisingly, fared worse off:

1.      9% reduction in usual pain

2.      16% reduction in maximum pain

3.      0% reduction in pain-related disability

So what cause this to happen?

Placebo effect debunked - Positive integration with health care system empowered patients

Many theories abound as to how the placebo effect works, but this experiment has shattered one idea; the fact that you have to deceive the persons into thinking the drug will work. Albeit this is a very small study and many demographic variables may be at play here, assuming all was equal, this is astounding and statistically significant.

lead author Claudia Carvalho suggests that the positive interaction with people in the health care system might have empowered them, triggering the body own natural healing, to quote noted lead author Claudia Carvalho: “It’s the benefit of being immersed in treatment: interacting with a physician or nurse, taking pills, all the rituals and symbols of our healthcare system. Our findings demonstrate the placebo effect can be elicited without deception. Patients were interested in what would happen and enjoyed this novel approach to their pain. They felt empowered.” 

This goes to show the power of positive thinking.......or the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is slowly poisoning our immune system’s ability to heal itself. More research is clearly needed, but it does shed new light on the idea of positive thinking and empowerment of athletes during the Rio 2016 Olympics loved wearing all that tape!

As for me, I'm saying positive things to my water, using eucalyptus sweets to stay awake and endure the bad carpet smell of Advantage Call Center. I’m also eating chocolate to empower myself with positive energy so that it will heal me while I work the night shifts at my Call Center.

How Michigan State University Study suggests rollercoaster help patients pass Kidney Stones

Kidney stones are mineral deposits found in urine. So is there an easy to get rid of them?

Turns out it may be as simple as riding a rollercoaster as reported in the article “Riding rollercoasters makes it easier to pass kidney stones” published Sep 26, 2016 by Angela Chen, The Verge.

A study published in the Journal of the American Osteopathic Association was conducted by urologist Dr. David Wartinger at Michigan State University and co-author Dr. Marc Mitchell tested the idea of using rollercoasters to allow patients to dislodge kidney stones. Most interestingly, this requires no doctor's visit; anyone with kidney stones can try this.

There has been no previous study on what causes humans to pass kidney stones. General, it's known that some types of physical labour will loosen kidney stones:

1.      Bungee jumping

2.      Bouncing on a trampoline

3.      Dirt bike riding

4.      Violent sneeze

Pregnant women often pass kidney stones after taking vitamin supplements. However, doctors had not yet isolated a single trigger that was reproducible....until now.

So what exactly are kidney stones?

What are kidney Stones - Drink more Water as Dehydration plays a role

A kidney stone, also called Nephrolithiasis, is a hard crystalline mineral material formed within the kidney or urinary tract. Humans have a risk of developing kidney stones based on the following factors:

1.      Decrease in urine volume

2.      Excess of stone-forming substances in the urine

3.      Dehydration i.e. not drinking enough water

1 in 20 or 5% of humans develope kidney stones and is mainly due to dehydration as I'd explained in my blog article entitled “How to find work in Jamaica at Call Centers - Drink Bottled Water as Dehydration and Salty Foods makes you lose concentration”. 

The symptoms are very severe:

1.      Sever pain in mid-region and groin area of the body

2.      Hematuria or blood in urine

The smaller stones, roughly 4mm in size, can often be harmlessly passed through the ureter to the bladder on their own. The larger stones require lithotripsy or surgical techniques, with ultrasound being used to confirm that they have indeed been passed. But passing kidney stones is a painful affair and is usually accompanies by some Hematuria.

Clearly though, drinking more water can help prevent the formation of kidney stones, preferably the usual 8 glasses a day. However, the two had been hearing anecdotal tales from their patients of riding rollercoasters and passing kidneys stones, particularly from one of their patients.

So they decided to try it out for themselves.

How Rollercoaster can help pass kidney stones - Gravity and sudden turns did the trick

They did a test using a 3D printed silicon kidney filled with urine and packed inside of a backpack the same height of a typical person as described in the article “How a Roller Coaster Can Help You Pass a Kidney Stone”, published 9/26/16 by George Dvorsky, Gizmodo.

More interestingly, the modelled the kidney after one of their patient that had claimed he consistently passed kidney stones while on Walt Disney World's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad to quote Dr. David Wartinger: “A kidney looks like a tree with branches. The forces move the stone from being positioned where a leaf is located, down through the branches and out through the trunk—and onward to the bladder. It’s not surprising that the model we used passed kidney stones on this coaster because it’s based on a gentleman that passed three stones on this exact roller coaster”.

Thus, based on this anecdotal information, they took their test subject (can I call it that?) to Walt Disney World where they rode the following rides as follows:

1.      20 rides on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad 

2.      20 rides on the Space Mountain

3.      20 rides on the Walt Disney World railroad

Here’s a video of each of these rides to get an idea of how they look.

Firs, try out Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Ok, now take a ride in Space Mountain.

Finally try out Walt Disney World railroad

Albeit the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad isn't a very hard ride to endure, the moderate left, right and drops cause the test subject to respond in an interesting way:

1.      64% chance of passing kidney stones if sitting in the back

2.      17% chance of passing kidney stones if sitting in the front

It makes sharp left and right turns, but doesn’t have huge drops or climbs and children often ride it. Still, even this moderate movement showed promising results: sitting in the back of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad caused stones to be passed by the silicon kidney 64 percent of the time. Sitting in the front caused the stones to be passed 17 percent of the time.

The Big Thunder Mountain Railroad also dislodged the smaller 4mm stones. So what does this all mean?

Removing Kidney Stones helps Three Groups - High G Forces needed in Jamaica

This finding, which is reproducible by other scientist in the world, means that gravity can be used to dislodge kidney stones.

It can help the following types of people with kidney stones:

1.      Patients with small 4mm kidney stones

2.      Patients with larger kidney stones

3.      Young pregnant women planning to become pregnant why have kidney stones

The larger stones can be vibrated into smaller fragments using very high frequency ultrasound. Clearly more research.....and rides on more terrifying roller coasters and other rides that have high G Forces...is needed.

But on a practical side, this is more of a reason why Jamaica needs to have a theme park with a rollercoaster, as it’s guaranteed that kidney stone suffers could take a ride and lose a stone.

China's FAST Radio Telescope announcing Humans on the Menu for Aliens

China is leading, this time in the hunt for alien life.

Their FAST (five-hundred-metre aperture spherical radio telescope) went operational on Sunday September 25^th 2016 as reported in “China’s alien-hunting telescope, the world’s largest, is now operational”, published September 25, 2016 By Trevor Mogg, DigitalTrends. 

Constructed at a cost of US$185 million, it's a part of China's grand Space ambitions which include:

1.      Getting an astronaut to the moon

2.      Construction of an orbiting space station by 2018

China already has a Quantum satellite called Micius that's testing out the idea of Quantum entanglement being used to make Satellite signals unhackable as noted in my blog article entitled “China Micius QESSS satellite heralds Quantum Communications, encrypted Fiber Waveguides and Li-Fi”.

So what can we learn from FAST?

China’s FAST Radio Telescope – Humans on the menu with a side dish of Greens

FAST is located in China’s south-western province of Guizhou, about 1,000 miles (1,610 km) south-west of Beijing. The telescope comprises 4,500 panels, each measuring about 11 meters (36 feet) in length.

At 500m, it’s the biggest single dish telescope in the world, dwarfing the Areceibo Radio Telescope located in the municipality of Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Construction on FAST began back in 2011 as noted in the article “China starts up world’s largest single-dish radio telescope”, published Sunday 25 September 2016, AFP, The UK Guardian.

FAST's construction displaced some 2,000 families or around 9,000 people within a three (3) mile radius of the Radio Telescope. The region was chosen as it has relatively low radio noise and this would not interfere with the operation of the sensitive radio telescope ability to hear very weak signals being transmitted by intelligent aliens.

Still, one has to wonder if we're going about this all wrong; advanced aliens may not use radio as pointed out in the argument related to the Fermi Paradox

If they do, they'd think us a bit archaic and strange to still use such a primitive communication tool to give away our location so easily announcing humans are on the menu. Especially give the fact that FAST looks like a really large dinner bowl, with a side of greens.

But we are humans; exploration is in our blood. I just hope they don't find humans tasty when mixed with Soy Sauce!

How NIDS coming in January 2018 means Electronic Transactions with GOJ to become standard

Say goodbye to carrying all those ID's around, be they Driver's License, Voter's ID or Jamaican Passport.

NIDS (National Identification System) is going live in January 2018 as reported in the article “AML-CFT Conference National ID System For January 2018”, Published Monday October 10, 2016 by Neville Graham, The Jamaica Gleaner.

The announcement was made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness at the opening session of the 5th annual Anti-Money Laundering /Counter-Financing of Terrorism conference on Monday October 10, 2016 in New Kingston. The NIDS would use advanced technology to eliminate the problems inherent in transacting legitimate business in Jamaica.

The NIDS is meant to replace all those cards that I have to essentially walk around with:

1.      NIS (National Insurance System)

2.      TRN (Tax Registration Number)

3.      National Voter’s ID

4.      Passport

5.      Driver’s License

6.      JADEP Health Cards

It also has the same benefits for both Public and Private Sectors:

1.      Registration of births and deaths

2.      Criminal records

3.      Traffic ticketing

4.      Tax compliance

5.      Records management

6.      Road and drivers licensing

7.      Travel within CARICOM

NIDS would be compliant with AML/CFT requirements, but within a shortened timeline, as NIDS was originally set for 2020 as noted in my blog article entitled “Why the NIDS coming in 2020 and How to replace your Stolen Driver's License and National”.

Combined with a move towards Electronic Transactions with the GOJ (Government of Jamaica) as pointed out in my blog article entitled “How Electronic Transactions in Jamaica can eliminate Hidden Economy via Universal Consumption Taxation”, it'll make money laundering very hard to commit in Jamaica indeed.

Why Banks Protect Yourself Online Initiative will not stop Jamaican ABM Scammers as Cards Unsecure

“The campaign seeks to raise awareness among Jamaicans about possible online threats to their accounts and finances and empowers customers, through education, to enable them to develop good online-safety habits”

Banking Sector commenting on the Protect Yourself Online! Initiative

Cybercrime is on the rise in Jamaica. With the holidays coming up, scammers have now turned to skimming and phishing.

Banks, naturally are uniting against this via their Protect Yourself Online! Initiative as detailed in the article “Jamaican Banks Unite Against Cybercrime”, published Sunday October 9, 2016, The Jamaica Gleaner.

This initiative, launched on Friday September 30th 2016, sees the following banks uniting to raise awareness about Credit/Debit Card skimming and steps to thwart would-be criminals:

1.      CIBC FirstCaribbean International Bank

2.      First Global Bank

3.      JMMB Merchant Bank

4.      National Commercial Bank Jamaica

5.      Sagicor Bank

6.      Scotiabank Jamaica

This is the banking industry's response to the rise in ABM Skimming which saw a rash of Debit Card account thefts on Wednesday August 14th 2016 as reported in my blog article entitled “How Jamaicans are ABM Skimming NCB and Scotia Debit and Credit Cards for Christmas 2016”. 

For more on the campaign and security tips, you can www.stopthinkconnect.org.jm. So how does this campaign work?

The Banking Sector's Protect Yourself Online! Initiative - More advertising for Banks as Take Style Out 2016 approaches

The banking sector is basically doing some well needed PR to make customers more aware that they can be robbed. Instead of just going Mobile Money, which is more secure, they've decided to just do more advertising.

After all, Take Style Out 2016, out version of Fashion Night Out, has been pushed back to Thursday October 27^th 2016 due to Hurricane Matthew as reported in the article “#TrackingMatthew: TSO postponed until October 27”, published Monday, October 03, 2016, The Jamaica Observer.

That puts it right before payday and gives skimmers more time to plan how they can steal Debit Card and Credit Cards from shoppers on that night as a test-run for Christmas 2016. Still, the tips given by the Protect Yourself Online! Initiative are somewhat helpful:

1.      Inspect the machine for items installed over PIN pad.

2.      Avoid ABMs that have attachments pointed in the direction of the PIN pad. This may be a hidden camera to record your PIN.

3.      Once inside an ABM, lightly pull the card slot to uncover signs of tampering, which include a loose or detached card slot, or the presence of double-sided tape that may be used by skimmers to ensure quick and easy removal. 

4.      Use the unoccupied hand to cover the hand entering the PIN on a keypad. This can prevent recording by pinhole cameras.

5.      Be aware of the ABM's surroundings and any possible loiterers.

6.      Do not accepting assistance from strangers when using ABMs 

So will all of these initiatives work?

Protect Yourself Online! Initiative will not Work - Mobile Money, secure POS terminals needed

All this will not stop phishing attacks as more Jamaican are shopping online than ever before and using Debit and Credit Cards as reported in my blog article entitled “How Electronic Transactions in Jamaica can eliminate Hidden Economy via Universal Consumption Taxation”.

The JIS (Jamaica Information Service) hack in June 2015 proves that we're susceptible to clicking on unknown links from an email as noted in my blog article entitled “Anatomy of ISIS hack of the JIS Website - How and Why Hactivists couldn't access sensitive GOJ Databases”. 

The following hack of the Ministry of Transport and Works website in February 2016 by Islamic hackers as reported in my blog article entitled “How Islamic Cybergroup Team Emirates hacked the Ministry of Transport and Works” clearly indicated that the weakest link is still people.

Jamaicans, it seems, like to click on things even if its from someone they don’t know!! They just can’t resist the temptation.

Then there is the fact that Jamaican staff working in stores that do Debit Card transactions can have friends secretly ship down skimmers and use them while on the job to copy Debit and Credit Cards. Though unlikely, it can happen, especially if the transaction results in your card being out of your sight for a few seconds.

This as its way too easy to copy that magnetic strip and the PIN number, as too many organizations make magnetic strip blanks in Jamaica. This makes it necessary to enable POS devices with the ability to check Card numbers against the magnetic strip in the banks database to see if the card is cloned, as biometric security can be thwarted.

Scammers are not more sophisticated as they now understand the banking system better and know how to launder money after stealing it as I'd predicted in my blog article entitled “How Scammers and Hackers are on the Rebound Laundering Money as Peter Bunting misguided on Scammers”. 

Most ABM scammers usually withdraw their cash within 24 hrs of stealing the card info or convert the money to other forms, such as bitcoins or deposit the money into a Paypal Account linked to a Payoneer Card as described in my MICO Wars blog article entitled “How Jamaicans can make money online – Setting up a Payoneer Prepaid Mastercard”.

So a word of warning; go Mobile Money as suggested in my blog article entitled “How NCB Quisk Compares to CONEC Mobile Wallet as Jamaica goes Cashless”, as the banks are just using light and magic while not addressing the security flaws in Debit and Credit Cards.

University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University Optogenetics Defibrillator and How to end World Hunger

Defibrillators may soon be a thing of the past thanks this time to coherent Red LED light.

University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University have developed an Optogenetics defibrillator that can reset a heart arrhythmia as reported in the article “Optical defibrillator shows promise as a less shocking way to reset your heart”, published September 26, 2016 By Kelly Hodgkins, DigitalTrends. 

Arrhythmia is the irregular heartbeat of a human heart caused by damage to the sinoatrial node causing heartbeat to deviate from the normal sequence of electrical impulses. The brain and heart muscles may also trigger off pulses that are too fast, too slow or irregular in nature, resulting in irregular heartbeat.

This causes the heart to not pump blood effectively and can cause lungs, brain and organ damages over time due to pressure differential that damages blood vessels. Typically the human heart in an adult beats between 60 to 100 beats per minutes. Anything above or below that for a prolonged period of time is called an arrhythmia, of which they are two (2) types:

1.      Tachycardia a fast heart beat in adults more than 100 beat per minute

2.      Bradycardia a slow heart beat in adults more than 100 beat per minute

Traditionally, the way to correct this has been to use a standard defibrillator to shock the heart back into the right rhythm. as anyone that plays with electrical equiptment can tell you, this can cause tissue scarring, burns and damage to the heart, due to the sudden boost in electrical activity in the heart and surrounding tissue.

So what did the researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University discover that was so special? And does it have other practical applications?

University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University Optogenetics defibrillator - Translucent humans are on the horizon

Led by Dr. Natalia A. Tayanova, the researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany and Johns Hopkins University tested their Optogenetics defibrillator on genetically engineered mice with light receptors sensitive to blue LED light. When exposed to a one-second pulse of light, the light-responsive proteins were able to gradually slow down the heart’s electrical activity restoring a healthy heartbeat.

The researchers then used MRI scans from a patient with arrhythmia to test out the idea on a human model. They soon discovered that when the used pulses of Red shifted light lasting less than a second to penetrate the heart muscle and stimulate light sensitive muscle tissues in the heart, they could achieve the same thing in the human heart with less energy.

This may come as a surprise, but most of the cell in the human body in most organs such as heart, brain and other organs are sensitive to energy transmitted in the optical spectrum and can absorb energy this way. Shorter wavelengths of light from ultraviolet and below and x-ray and gamma rays can pass through the body, but higher wavelengths in the visible light spectrum cannot pass through the body, as they are mostly absorbed by the skin.

However if humans could genetically re-engineer out Genome to remove congenital diseases as argued in my blog article entitled “Netherland's Plan to create Artificial Wombs, improve invitro-fertilization and eradicate Genetic Diseases”, we could potentially engineer humans  to be translucent.

Humans could theoretically absorb our energy from light. After all, we way we get energy from food actually involves food being converted into electrical pulses through the conversion of glucose to ATP (Adenosine TriPhosphate) to ADP (Adenosine DiiPhosphate), with the loss of an electron as a form of energy. Thus using an optical frequency to stimulate heart muscle using optical frequencies is basically the same process, just that it skipped the use of energy from glucose.

This model shows the potential utility of an optical defibrillator. It also builds on research for the use of LED Lights inside of the body for organ stimulation therapy and the development of optical pacemakers that last a lot long and use less energy.

And yes, it would be cool to genetically modify humans to be translucent or our skin to absorb light like a leaf, eliminating world hunger in a single go.

How Plastic Bottles and Styrofoam may soon be banned in Jamaica

Senator Matthew Samuda stirred up quite a storm in the Senate. The spirit of the motion continues.

Senator Matthew Samuda motion was finally passed in the Senate on Friday October 7^th 2016 as reported in the article “Jamaica Closer To Banning Plastic Bag, Styrofoam”, published Saturday October 8, 2016 by Jovan Johnson, The Jamaica Gleaner. 

G2K (Generation 2000) president Senator Matthew Samuda made his Private Member's Motion on Friday April 22^nd 2016, with a focus mainly on Styrofoam as reported in my blog article entitled “How JA$100 for recycling 500ml Plastic bottles and Styrofoam Ban will save Jamaica's Environment”. 

However, since pictures of garbage causing blockages in the drainage system in Kingston during the passage of Hurricane Matthew have gone viral and the damage to Marcus Garvey Drive, the need to do something about plastics has also become urgent.

In his debate, Senator Matthew Samuda pointed out that it was cheaper to ban non-biodegradable bags and Styrofoam than to continue using them. Already Guyana has banned importation of styrofoam as of Friday April 1^st 2016 as noted in my blog article entitled “Why Guyana banning Styrofoam and How Jamaican Bee farmers can benefit”.

The approved motion is to go to a multi-stakeholder committee. This will be under Minister Daryl Vaz environment portfolio in the economic and growth ministry in the Office of the Prime Minister. Hopefully, we'll soon join Guyana in banning styrofoam importation, preferably with legislation with Police enforcement and heavy fines.

JA$100,000 for people caught using or throwing away plastic and styrofoam is a good place to start. but improving the collection and sorting of garbage and increasing the return values of plastics to encourage their recycling as argued in my blog article entitled “How JA$100 for recycling 500ml Plastic bottles and Styrofoam Ban will save Jamaica's Environment”  is better for the environment in the next 500 years.