Phosphatidyl Serine and medical research

A commentator named Arun R who professes to be involved in the medical profession made a couple of comments on a blog I did about Phosphatidyl Serine (PS). They made some good points and gave some good advice, but, to me it was fairly obvious the perspective was fairly limited.

Let us look at this in a much larger perspective.

Medical research is typically driven by the perception of demand for products. Marketing professionals review the consumer demand. Pharmaceutical companies review the market potential and the potential for developing a product within a reasonable investment.

Sometimes the problem is very difficult and the potential for a product and/or profit on a product is very difficult to determine.

Suppose a Pharmaceutical company spent billions on a cure for cancer and suddenly developed one. What is the likelihood of the government of the United States demanding that product be made available at a “reasonable” cost which would destroy the profit potential?

In reality Pharmaceutical companies restrict their research to cures that they are sure they can profit from. Of course management will deny this. Believe me, primary executives at corporations consider everything when making a decision on where to invest money.

Where is the most profit? Not in cures, profit is in treatments. Take one pill and the disease ends and you sell one pill. If you treat someone for a disease the rest of their life you can sell a lot of pills.

This is why Governments spend money on medical research and development. You may remember George W. Bush refused to spend government money on fetal stem cell research. This was a big deal because the big Pharmaceutical companies are not going to invest huge amounts of money necessary to create a cure for anything, IF you can cure anything with stem cells and that is a pretty big IF.

But, the perception of demand is there so researchers compete for money in stem cell research.

There is a lot of competition for government medical research dollars and for consumer donated research dollars.

Almost everyone has had a relative or friend die of cancer. Pictures of childhood birth defects, people like Michael J. Fox, fat people.

You get the idea. Why spend money on something people can control with their decisions?

If you can control the problem with decisions.

I have not found a definitive definition of “metabolism”. Medical researchers know somethings about “metabolism”, but, they really don't know exactly what it is or how it is controlled.

There are medical papers at nih.gov that help us understand the relationships of the chemistry in the body. No one really understands it yet.

From a processing point of view nothing is ever exactly the same. Everything works within a range and the range is defined by a standard deviation. Typically 99.7% of everything will fall within plus or minus three standard deviations of the mean or average.

Since we can't define Metabolism we can't define the mean of metabolism or the range it operates in.

There are experiments that could be done. Here is a simple one.

Take three hundred random people. Measure their BMI. Feed them an exact number of calories based on their BMI. Have them do a precise amount of activity. Track the deviation in calories, activity, weight change and BMI. Keep this up for about a year.

You end up with a simple and reliable approximate baseline measurement of metabolism as well as a standard deviation of metabolism.

This experiment also costs a fortune and there isn't any profit derived from it. Why do this when people can just control their weight with decisions?

Check out any ten websites that calculate out how many calories you need to maintain a specific weight. You will get ten slightly different answers. I like cancer.gov.

Once I did a solid fast for five days. Only liquids. I drank 6 SlimFast shakes a day, about 1240 calories a day. During this time I exercised for between 30 and 45 minutes each day.

No change in weight. None.(okay, over the 5 days my weight varied with 1 pound)

I spent a year keeping my caloric intake below 2400 calories a day while working out 5 days a week for 30 to 45 minutes a day. I did not lose any weight. I stayed 300lbs.

I started taking PS and dropped 40 pounds in a few weeks.

I started taking PS because I actually researched the issue and discovered the lack of metabolism research and the fact that from my symptoms it appeared to me that I had a metabolism issue.

Nice twist of words there. It is not a fact that I have a metabolism issue, it is a fact that it appeared to me that I had a metabolism issue. Morons who don't really read will misunderstand that statement.

If everyone has a metabolism and the metabolism has a range some people will have a higher metabolism and some people a slower metabolism naturally. There will also be things you can do to change the chemistry of your metabolism to make it go faster or slower. This is all well known and these are actually facts. We even know some things that change metabolism.

But when you go to a website to calculate a calorie intake that number comes out as a number, not as a range. In reality normal people of a specific BMI trying to maintain weight will need a calorie range that depends on where their metabolism falls within the range.

Not only that, but, we also know that metabolism changes, it changes with age, it changes with age, it changes with activity level, we do not know everything that influences metabolism.

It kind of sucks, but, there is a bright spot.

It appears that specific brain chemistry has a huge influence on things like Alzheimers, weight, and many other physical issues. We know PS can influence brain chemistry. No one knows how much or exactly how. There is just anecdotal information like mine that is available and a few medical studies that have shown promising results.

These studies have been primarily directed at diseases like Alzheimers and diabetes because very few justify research dollars for fat people, of those dollars even less will be spent on brain chemistry related to weight gain.

After all, we made ourselves fat, right?