MiraFlow Review

An online acquaintance of mine wrote a description of his experiences with MiraFlow, a contact lens cleaning solution that he prefers over Clear Care. At Lens101 Forum he writes:

Back in the good old days - the late 80s, when I first started wearing soft contacts - the standard routine for soft contacts was a three step process. Clean the lens, rinse it off with saline, and then disinfect. There was even a time when heat disinfection was the preferred approach, with cases that fit into small electronic heaters, although in a pinch, you could toss the case into a pot of boiling water. Saline took up significant

How Mad Cow Disease Works

Once in a while, there will be reports of mad cow disease, scientifically known as Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans. But unlike most deadly diseases, this isn't caused by a virus, a bacteria, or chemicals leading to cancer. It's caused by prions.

How do prions work?

Well the first question we need to explore what proteins are, and how they work. Proteins are microscopic structures in your body's cells that do all kinds of things simply by their shape alone. Sometimes proteins can be structural proteins, which would be like the bricks holding up your house or the legs holding up your chair. Without it, your cells would collapse. Sometimes proteins can be enzymes, which automatically change different proteins without wearing itself out. It's like a hammer that no one needs to control, or one of those automatic vacuum cleaners. Other proteins are transport proteins, which are the doors to your cells. Unlike your house's doors, however, they don't let everything in. Most proteins only let certain molecules inside, and thank goodness they do, because otherwise your cell would be a mess. Finally, there are receptor proteins and signaling proteins, where the signaling protein touches the receptor protein and makes things happen in the cell, just like when your finger hits the button on the remote control, and the TV turns on. 

So let's review here:

Exploding Chromosomes and Cancer

A recent New York Times article reports that some researchers find that many cancers begin from a chromosome that "explodes."

New rapid methods of decoding DNA have brought to light a catastrophe that can strike human cells: a whole chromosome may suddenly shatter into pieces.

If the cell survives this disaster, something worse may ensue: the cell becomes cancerous.

Apparently "Dr. Campbell’s group reports that about 2 percent to 3 percent of all cancers, and 25 percent of bone cancers, originate in this kind of chromosome-shattering crisis," writes author Nicholas Wade.


Cancers, despite their superficial diversity (for example, lung cancer, brain cancer, stomach cancer, etc etc.) and their seemingly wide causes (environmental chemical pollutants, UV radiation from the sun, smoking, HIV), are fundamentally they same. They all involve cells that, instead of multiplying in a regular, orderly fashion, just can't stop multiplying. As one doctor once said to me, "it's like it turns into The Hulk."


Within every human cell is the ability to divide, and multiply. From one cell you get two. A somewhat complicated

Is Glucosamine Worthless?

Does glucosamine work? How does glucosamine work?
Glucosamine has been used recently to treat arthritis. The idea is that since glucosamine makes up a large part of your cartilage, you can restore the natural health of your cartilage, which protects your bones from grinding against each other. But if you knew basic biochemistry and digestion, you'd think twice.

Glucosamine is comprised of two things - a glucose, and an amino acid (hence glucos-amine). 

Really, it's not that hard for your body to make. The NH2 is the amine part. The rest is glucose.

Glucose is everywhere in your blood. It's what your body gets from food to give you energy. There's no shortage of that there, unless you're starving or a diabetic.

Amine is everywhere throughout your entire body. It is what makes up all your amino acids, which entirely comprise your cell proteins. Enzymes, neurotransmitters, receptors, pretty much anything that your cell makes that directly does something is made up of amino acids. 

So there's no shortage of glucose, and no shortage of amines. Your body can get these easily through food, and can break them down from larger molecules. In fact, that's the only way your body survives. If your body can't do that well, you're dying.

In addition, when you digest food or drugs, your body is pretty good at breaking down a lot of it into its

Is Glucosamine Worthless?

Glucosamine has been used recently to treat arthritis. The idea is that since glucosamine makes up a large part of your cartilage, you can restore the natural health of your cartilage, which protects your bones from grinding against each other. But if you knew basic biochemistry and digestion, you'd think twice.

Glucosamine doesn't work

Glucosamine is comprised of two things - a glucose, and an amine (hence glucos-amine). 

Really, it's not that hard for your body to make. The NH2 is the amine.

Glucose is everywhere in your blood. It's what your body gets from food to give you energy. There's no shortage of that there, unless you're starving or a diabetic.

Amine is everywhere throughout your entire body. It is what makes up all your amino acids, which entirely

Is Emergen-C just plain Stupidit-E?

Honestly, I don't get the hype over this product.
Emergen-C doesn't work
Yes, Vitamin C is great for the body. Yes, Vitamin C boosts the immune system. Yes, Vitamin C can even cure allergies.
Emergen-C sucks Emergen-C sucks Emergen-C doesn't work
But drinking one gram of Vitamin C is little more than taking a spoonful of sugar. First of all, one gram of Vitamin C is hardly enough to do anything. Most of us are malnourished when it comes to Vitamin C anyway, because we're chronically Vitamin-C deprived, such that we really need at least 2-3 grams per day...even when we're healthy. (See here as to why we need far beyond the National Academy of Science's recommended dosage of 60 mg)

Second, I'm sure it tastes great and all when you're sick - but there's hardly any health benefit! It's much more cost-effective AND health-effective to get a bottle of chewable Vitamin C 500 mg tablets and munch on those all day.

In fact, even the company has no faith in their product. Their website says:

Fevers are Good for You!

Or, Learn to Trust Your Body

Evolutionary Medicine

Fevers are misunderstood. They're the misunderstood good guys of our bodies. In fact, without fevers, none of us would be here today. All of our ancestors would have been wiped out, including our non-human ones. No animal, in fact, could survive. That's how important fevers are.

The fever is a way for your body to fight off infections. Its strategy is nothing less than brilliant, because it surprisingly involves a lot of trickery and guile. 

Infections are when something invades your body, sets up camp, and multiplies itself like crazy. Bacteria can enter your throat, find all sorts of food in their for its own growth, leaving children behind, and so forth. They begin to populate your body.

But like all populations, they need more and more food to sustain themselves with. Normally, that would be your own body. Whatever makes you sick is actually eating you alive.

What a fever does, however, is simultaneously encourage the growth of the bacteria, while taking away its food. Bacteria like to grow in warm places (which is why putting food in a refrigerator keeps bacteria and fungi from growing on your food), so when your body temperature rises, it's going to grow more. Bacteria cells don't make a conscious decision about this - they're more machines than man - so if you heat them up, they're going to multiply faster.

Bacteria also need iron to grow. As your body takes away the iron in your blood serum (so any iron that's not already inside your blood cells), bacteria is starved of one nutrient it desperately needs. In combination with your body heat encouraging growth, this imposes a situation of overpopulation on the bacteria in your body. It keeps producing more and more malnourished bacteria, which is easy for the body to take care of. Eventually, the whole population starves and dies.

Raising your body temperature also helps your white blood cells, the police and detectives of your immune

the Danger of Bottled Water

Bottled water comes with an implied guarantee - this water is clean. But is it really?

Yes, the water is probably going to be free of the usual environmental pollutants. Surprisingly, tap water has more pollutants than you might think. For example, a recent study showed that hexavalent chromium, the cancer-causing pollutant in the movie about Erin Brockovich, is actually in pretty high levels across the United States. Stories like these lend a hand to bottled water.

On the other hand, plastic has a polluting effect on its own in water. Plastic actually sheds at the biochemical level, releasing molecules that are similar in shape to estrogen into the water. These molecules are called Bisphenol-A, or BPA. Your body has hormone receptors, which basically touch hormones, and make some activations into the cell. If a hormone is a key to car, then the hormone receptor is the keyhole that can start up your car's engine.

Exercise can't overcome the health effects of laziness?

Roni Caryn Rabin of the New York Times writes about "The Hazard of the Couch"

Many of us sit in front of a computer for eight hours a day, and then go home and head for the couch to surf the Web or watch television, exchanging one seat and screen for another. Even if we try to squeeze in an hour at the gym, is it enough to counteract all that motionless sitting?

A mounting body of evidence suggests not.

The latest findings, published this week in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, indicate that the amount of leisure time spent sitting in front of a screen can have such an overwhelming, seemingly irreparable impact on one’s health that physical activity doesn’t produce much benefit.

Rabin cites two types of studies, one type showing that people who spend more time on the couch watching TV have a higher risk of health problems like heart disease and have a higher chance of dying, and another type that shows that in animal studies some biochemical changes can explain why:

Curing Allergies with Vitamin C

Note: By using the information presented in this blog, you agree to the terms described in the post entitled "Mission Statement and Disclaimer." Basically, you can't sue.

Or, how to cure your allergies

This product claims that it's "delicious" and "chewable," and has rose hips. Rose hips are primarily there for flavor; although it contains Vitamin C, it's not going to account for 500 mg in a small tablet. Vitamins C is fairly easy to absorb, so you don't have to worry about choosing a product with the right supplements (unlike Vitamin D or E). So pay big attention to price. Speaking of which, you can order this particular product online if you click the picture above.

My own Personal Experience

My college had an outdoor arboretum, with exotic trees from all over the world. Combined with the fact that my school was entirely composed of nerds (who already have a naturally tendency to have allergies), this meant that every single person on campus had allergies during the springtime, whether or not they had allergies before they went to college.

Sadly, having had severe allergies BEFORE I had ever stepped onto the campus, I was dying every spring.

Until one life-changing semester when one of my biology professors introduced me to the awesome power of Vitamin C. You see, she had actually attended the school when she was an undergrad, and had allergies worse than mine. Her throat could actually close up from all the pollen. But, she told me, when she had taken massive doses of vitamin C, she had actually cured herself of allergies!

Curing Allergies with Vitamin C, Part II

Note: By using the information presented in this blog, you agree to the terms described in the post entitled "Mission Statement and Disclaimer." Basically, you can't sue.

Or How to Cure Your Allergies, Part II

So this is the routine you should follow.

1. Every day, take at least 5 grams (5,000 milligrams or mg) of Vitamin C
2. Spread them out throughout the day. Don't take them all at once, otherwise your body won't be able to digest all of that Vitamin C at once (remember diffusion in high school chemistry and biology? Your intestines absorb vitamins and nutrients into the blood stream via diffusion. If you have too much Vitamin C running through your intestines, your blood