Finally watched this. It was very good. I particularly enjoyed a few different aspects:
1. The sheer number of hypotheses. I'm wary of anyone who reckons they have figured out the one true answer, especially when that is based mostly on theory. Naviaux thinks he knows what it is, and so does Phair. But Davis is running both of them in parallel, and doing many many more things besides. The more avenues you explore the better your odds.
2. The trypanosome hypothesis. Why can't there be some weird parasite nobody is looking for!? It's not impossible. So many diseases *are* caused by infections, so an unexpected foreign agent is still worth checking out. I got sick in a first world city, but maybe I'd been infected with the parasite long before and the (viral/bacterial) infection I had allowed the parasite to take over?? Or maybe some sort of liver damage at about that time ( I was at an enthusiastic drinking age) meant
my liver couldn't handle the parasites any more.
@mariovitali
3. Collecting data to make more hypotheses. This crosses over with #1. They're not betting they already have the answer in the bag.
4. I'm elevated by Ron's enthusiasm for the metabolic trap hypothesis, and his confidence it will be easy to solve if it is true. (I think
refeeding syndrome is an example of a metabolic trap. Refeeding syndrome is solved by adding and subtracting certain nutrients in a certain order (low calorie, high electrolytes ,basically). From what Ron is saying, this won't be solved with a drug so I guess it will be solved by adding and subtracting nutrients in order.
If I had to guess what the intervention might be, based on a couple of things I've seen online, I'd guess it will involve Niacin.
You can see the Niacin clues here: 1,
2. Niacin is also known as Vitamin b3 and it is central to metabolism.
Phair's diagram shows dietary niacin leading to changes in nicotinamide. Nicotinamide is interesting because in Naviaux's findings it was the lowest metabolite compared with healthy controls (in female patients albeit with crazy high variance). In males it was one of the highest, again with silly amounts of variance, so the absolute differences might not mean much).
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Two tiny things that were less pleasing:
The ratio of nano-needle talk to nano-needle data still seems awfully high. Next time i see that impedance chart, I don't want it to be from one patient - I want it to be n=1000 !! I remain dubious about something which at last check had a small convenience sample of under 20 patients.
The final word on Phair's metabolic trap hypothesis seems to now be 'within a few months or a year' rather than 'by the end of summer'.
-- Anyway, big love for OMF. I believe in them, give to them regularly and will continue to do so!
