Compare to Havana syndrome - another disputed 'mystery brain disease'.
CHUPPL did a deep dive on this one I highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqE0ltifQ2M
A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
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Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also it's "glyphosate", right? Not "glyphosates". It's not like some weird class of industrial chemicals; it's a specific herbicide, used since 1975, more commonly known as Roundup, notable because Monsanto owns patents on genetically-modified crops that are resistant to it.
They're probably referring to the different salts (isopropylamine (IPA), potassium, or diammonium) which can greatly affect absorption and effectiveness
Roundup is IPA, Touchdown is DAM. Both extremely common.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#43I was diagnosed with a mysterious tachycardia last year, coincidental to this headline: while I was living in Canada. At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast. I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period e…
How many COVID shots did you get? I noticed my resting heart rate go up after the first one. So I never got another one.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#44The answer is "nothing" The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients. Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conve…
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Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#45I was diagnosed with a mysterious tachycardia last year, coincidental to this headline: while I was living in Canada. At one point I checked into the ER with a resting heart rate around 200 BPM, and on some days my smartwatch couldn’t even detect a pulse because it was racing so fast. I eventually recovered-though I still avoid wearing smart devices because seeing my heart rate triggers anxiety-but the whole period e…
Ha, same! The first time I noticed it, coupled with palpitations, I thought I was dying and went to the ER. I swear nobody teaches you how to get older, so everything feels like something is going way wrong. They treated me like a baby, said avoid caffeine, and maybe see a cardio.
And I did. He was an old guy, didn't seem at all worried. He said he worked in pro sports and a surprising number of people have it, including top athletes, try not to worry too much about it. It's been nearly 10 years and I'm still kicking so I guess they were right.
But to this day I avoid smart watches/rings, because I know it'll be nothing but anxiety inducing alarms.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#46I’m not qualified to comment intelligently on what might be going on here, but I’d like to add some background color that the article lacks.
Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease is a prion disease [0] for which there is no definitive diagnosis in vivo. A confident diagnosis can be made only after examining brain tissue under a microscope.
Prions are an unusual type of mis-folded protein that induce other proteins to take on a similar mis-folded shape when they come into contact with them. The mis-folded shape of the prion itself is what causes the mis-folding in adjacent proteins. It’s a chemical-bonding thing at the molecular level. It’s the shape of the prion that causes other proteins to take on a similar shape and become prions, etc.
Some prion diseases occur spontaneously (when a protein takes on a mis-folded configuration due to mis-transcription or random energetic impulses) and some are transmitted, typically by eating some part of an animal that contains prions, which then end up in your own body, inducing proteins in your body to take on prion configurations.
Prion diseases are the only known transmissible diseases that do not involve the replication of a pathogen’s genetic material in a host cell. The only known prion diseases affect nervous tissues, and in humans the only known prion diseases affect brain tissues.
I’m not an expert on prion diseases, but I’ve had a bit of a fascination with them since having to report on a bunch of USDA surveillance lectures on mad-cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, BSE) and to summarize a bunch of symposia on prion diseases in a previous life. The symptoms reported in the article sound very much like a prion disease, and the tests for CJD indicate that the doctors in the region suspect as much.
But we simply don’t have good tests for prion diseases in vivo. And prion diseases are not well understood in general, so it wouldn’t be surprising that a new one would present as something of a mystery.
It is also the case that I know very little about New Brunswick, but I will mention that prion diseases in humans are thought to be far more commonly acquired than spontaneous. The most common cause of acquisition is eating animals with endemic prion diseases; this is most often nervous tissue of venison, but rarely nervous tissue of cattle infected with BSE, which is present in Canada more than anywhere else (by a small margin).
It is also possible (but not likely) that a prion disease can arise de novo.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#47Deep dive into New Brunswick, JD Irving, and their ongoing issues with Glyphosate pollution. Canadian researchers specializing on CJD have been blocked from investigating this case [0]. Sadly, the Irvings have extremely close ties with both the Liberals [1] and Conservatives [2][3] and are essentially untouchable due to Canada's parliamentary nature. The NYT has been doing an on-the-ground report on this issue for a…
The doctor in question here explicitly pointed out increased levels of glyphosate in their blood:
> He also warned that some patients' blood work showed elevated levels for compounds found in herbicides such as glyphosate, and said more testing should be done to rule out environmental toxins, including the neurotoxin BMAA, which is produced by blue-green algae.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/new-brunswick-n...
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#48These sick people there need to move out permanently to go live far away from the province and see if they get better. If it's prion disease, they probably won't reliably get better by moving alone. They also should do private testing for heavy metals.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#49If this reporting is accurate then it certainly paints a picture of cult-like behavior. Personal charisma, empathetic and caring, "strangely conspiratorial" behavior during appointments cementing an us (one lone doctor and helpless patients) against them (wealthy and powerful people) narrative, etc. are very effective on distressed people. On top of that it seems that apart from being tested over and over again and being told they have a "mystery illness", the patients aren't really treated whatsoever? Whether there's a true cluster disease or not, evidence seems to suggest that he's just adding a lot of totally non-mysterious cases to his cluster. Evading pretty mundane questions like how many of his cluster cases actually show elevated levels of environmental toxins just adds to the suspicious signs. Plus
> The couple waited eight months to get important test results from Marrero, Strickland said, as April's condition worsened. Soon Strickland could no longer manage her care. But to get her a place in assisted living he needed a letter of support from Marrero. "I think I waited four months for that letter," Strickland recalled. "I kept phoning and asking."
just sounds like medical malpractice. You shouldn't keep five hundred patients hanging if you can't handle five hundred. Makes all the talk about being empathetic and caring sound like bullshit. I feel bad for those who are probably misdiagnosed but refuse to get a second opinion thanks to the successful mental subjugation.
Re: A battle over Canada’s mystery brain disease
#50The answer is "nothing" The only common factor between these patients is Dr. Marrero. It is notable that he is not the only physician who works in that clinic, but is the only one diagnosing this condition. The most likely cause is weak diagnostic skills for challenging patients. Unfortunately, a majority of these patients likely have Functional Neurologic Disorder https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/conve…
Right, but what is causing the functional neurological disorder? Speaking as someone who has had alot of of chronic pain [CPPS] there is some sort of neuro issue going on but we don't know what it is. But "dementia, weight loss, unsteadiness, jerking movements and facial twitches" does seem like more than just neuro?