The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee

 Mukherjee's perspective is a bit too clinical for my explorations on cancer. The genetic theories about cancer development are chronicled in full detail here, but I don't think genes are the entire story behind this most elusive of diseases. The writer dedicates entire chapters to surgeries and medications that failed, or only work part of the time. Many of the statistics between treatment and type of cancer look like correlations and not facts. I'd been hoping for an in-depth chapter on the correlations between diet and cancer. All I got was a single sentence about diet: something like what you eat may create a cancerous environment, but further studies are needed to prove it. And does that not describe all the medical states of uncertainty in his book? 

Unfortunately, this tells me the writer has an industry bias more than anything. As a doctor, any nutritional advice would hinder the medical industry's services, so this vital component of cancer development was conveniently left out. The book is a 5-star history of medical/genetic cancer research, 1 star for those looking for a broader approach. 

How Cancer Suggests Cells Fight for Survival

Cells are the most basic thing humans generally agree on being alive- bacteria and single-celled organisms being a close second.  These primitive organisms are seldom aware of their existence.  They don't struggle for survival the same way other species do.  However, cancerous cells seem to be the rare exception.  The more I read about cancer, the more I realize there is a larger piece to the puzzle it's created; that either the cells are choosing to mutate, or the cancer is alive itself.  Up until about the 1970s, there was no indication that cells seek to live forever, much less that they were incapable of dying.  And never that a disease that wasn't a virus could be considered alive. 

Cancer prevents cells from entering apoptosis, the natural death cycle of the cell.  Instead, the cells live forever; that is, until the body infected by it dies, rendering its food supply non-existent.  It would seem that cancer is in control of the situation, that being the catalyst of immortality means that it's the one thriving off mutated cells.  A closer look reveals that this may not be the case.  It may be that the mutated cells, interested in their own longevity, are communicating with one another and metastasizing to other parts of the body, spreading news via cellular reproduction about the miraculous glitch in the genetic system that birthed them. 

Cancer's ability to adapt to treatment that threatens its existence tells me that the infected cells do not wish to die, that the cancer has "blessed" them with the fountain of youth, turning them into selfish gluttons after their former services as selfless conductors of organic processes.  Take Gleevec for example, a drug that cures one form of leukemia.  Most patients have a complete remission after taking the drug, but some experience immunity from it after their oncogenes were observed to change shape after prolonged use of the drug.  How could a drug that destroys a cell cause that same cell type to change the shape of its genes if it weren't fighting for survival?  Is it the cells that are fighting for survival, or the disease itself?  These are important questions to ask when dealing with this most mysterious of afflictions. 

The answer that makes the most sense to me is that cells, being organisms like us, are showing how capable they are of fighting for survival, that they are conscious of their existence in some primitive sense.  The genetic code that the cancer hijacks is being used by these cells to ensure their continued existence. When a cancer metastasizes, that means the secret's out and other cells want in on the action.   

I'm not a doctor and this insight shouldn't be considered academic.  The logicality of this explanation is appealing only to me, and it might make for an interesting discussion among the more open minded in the medical community. 

Post-REM Sleep Evolution: A Broad Outline

Today I discovered from Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep that at the earliest, R.E.M. sleep evolved from non-R.E.M. sleep during the Age of Reptiles.  We know this because some species of lizard are currently the most primitive species to engage in R.E.M. sleep.  Birds and mammals both evolved this most interesting sleep stage separately when they split apart from the reptiles after the extinction of the dinosaurs.  

R.E.M. sleep is so interesting because it's the only sleep state that allows us to dream.  All mammals do it, not just us.  One of our evolutionary advantages is the ability to sleep in an extended R.E.M. stage, which allows our brains to store information more efficiently.  Basically, this means humans are so intelligent because we enter the R.E.M. state far more often than any other species.

If we consider the astral plane in various esoteric philosophies to be the location in which dreams take place, we may conjecture that the higher planes of existence could be reached by evolving further sleep states past the R.E.M. stage.  By accessing ultra-R.E.M., as it might be called, we could theoretically "dream" on the mental plane, a place where emotions are restrained and thought-forms are visualized more clearly.  Telepathy is thought to happen frequently on this plane, so while we're dreaming on it, communicating with others without using words may be possible.  Indeed, some humans have already reported this, though many claims are dubious because we don't all have this blessed mutation.  

Even higher evolution would call for access to planes that are higher than the mental one- planes where we might dream on transcendental themes.  In these dreams we'd feel a godly connection to all that is around us.  Our spirits would strongly associate with a collective morphology that only the quantum states of matter could illustrate.  We'd see things in extra dimensions, the arrow of time would cease to exist.  We'd feel emotional states and mental ones simultaneously, as a balanced system, a totality of existence.

Orion Skyquest Dobsonian

    My first great memory of the year happened last night.  The sky was clear, so I was finally able to play with my new toy, the telescope mom got me for Christmas: an Orion Skyquest Dobsonian.  It took me some time to get a feel for the telescope, but when I got it working some amazing things happened. First, I saw stars, thousands of them. More than I’ve ever seen in one sitting.  Second was the bright, albino, half-crescent orb of the moon, which I saw with such fine precision that it entirely shocked me.  The contours of the craters were so distinguishable that it felt like there was no atmosphere; that I was literally out in space, looking at it.  Being able to see such an eery, remote thing up in the sky with my own two eyes- something so far away that one would think they'd never see up close- is a truly unique experience that I can’t compare to anything else.  Hopefully more of these sky quests will reveal the other planets and their moons in such dramatic fashion. 

Jazzman

Jump ball. 

Shot from a funnel the acrobat contorts, leaping for orange tokens the thief left behind.  He summersaults through the air, lands on a brass court, the notes pulsating out of the same hole that birthed him.  Music catapults him forward, with a ball in hand, his only weapon, lobbing, dishing, zig-zagging between defenders, jamming it on his enemies.  His uniform is the old purple New Orleans one worn by Stockton and Malone, not the newest Utah version with the out-of-place mountains.  That would be some kind of fantasy.  No, this is the real world, built of Arcadia without anything natural.  Just the hardwood, the lights, the hub-tone manholes, street-ball alleys with stray cats hiding in garbage cans, flying jumpmen defying gravity, Aberinkula volcanoes spewing discordia in the Voltaic basin. 

His hands are quick, he's got the handles to get past them all.  A crossover here, a behind-the-back there, a lob off the backboard rebounding straight for that guy's head.  Did you see that!?  Then a soaring tomahawk that takes down a whole line of blockers.  No fouls here, wax lickers.  The last thing they see before they hit the floor are his weightless legs blurring away the night, like he was some Overlord with superhuman abilities. 

    Everywhere there is jazz.  Free jazz, slow jazz, cool jazz, dixieland, be-bop, fusion, latin jazz, smooth jazz.  Every trashy street corner has some dude wearing shades playing the keys off a trumpet or saxophone.  The epic, otherworldly atmospheres of Kamasi Washington permeate the planet.  Planet of cities, piano-keyed streets with nets between the buildings, fields of hardwood, rivers of string, mountains of percussion, the great red rim of the sun circling the sky.  Abstract visions, the chaos of a shattered progression.  These deconstructed chordioid lands are the only thing left to defend of his space-warped home.  The buildings all have red lights, green lights, orange lights, yellow lights, most especially the deep purple bluesy lights.  And all around, baskets hang between the lights.  He must shoot through every single one to save the planet from that hungry thief of points.  He'll contort through the angular storm, eurostep around the horns, dance the dribble dub between dumb bells, tap through the key in half-time before going hang-time.  He'll palm that ball, wave it around, lift his feet off the ground like he doesn't even care. 

When he gets to the final boss, that buzzer will come ever closer to going off, releasing all the tension contained in this arena of geomancy.  Will he stuff the beast, or will the beast snuff his music?  Maybe he'll just pull up for a quick trey, smooth as ice, soothing the net with that sweetest of sounds, like the cool streaming of a sax.  Only the player can determine what follows.  And that's all life is for the acrobatic Jazzman, though he's unaware that it's just a silly string of events that are beyond his control.  His God is behind a screen, in some arcade off the main drag of a larger city, a city he doesn't have to save, yet does in a different way. 

When Dieting is More Important than Medicine

Most of the time when you notice a little problem developing in your body, it can be fixed by changing your diet.  Don't see a doctor every time a minor new symptom shows up, or they will likely put on their cynical capes and diagnose you with something that "only" some medication or surgical procedure can fix.  In my experience, 95% of the minor symptoms I've had were the result of a nutritional imbalance in my diet.  Medications and supplements hardly ever helped- they simply put a cloak over the problem and never seemed to fix it.  In some cases, they even made it worse. 

An easy example is a toothache; I have teeth that can be very sensitive to sugar.  Too much of it can make them hurt.  No fillings or crowns are necessary to fix that- I've found that abstaining from sugar for one or two days fixes the problem right away.  Another is high blood pressure.  While it is true that an underlying disease could be causing it, the reality is that it's highly unlikely for a man at my age and activity level to have one.  Lowering the amount of sodium in my diet has made all the difference.  It has also helped with flatulence and blood circulation, at least it feels that way. 

Only see a doctor if you have multiple symptoms or a single symptom that gets worse over time.  Remember that doctors are trained to assign medications to almost any type of illness.  Alarmingly, most of them aren't required to take any nutritional classes in college- baffling when you consider it to be the core of good health.  Medicine is an industry like any other.  It can drain away our life savings, like holes in our souls.  Most medical training gears doctors to interpret illness in a worst-case scenario, which coincidentally may be the one in which the most visits and the most amount of money can be leeched out of you.  Always try a natural remedy before subjecting yourself to a pill shark who is paid to expect the worst, or his license will be revoked.