prion

number one answers itself! It's not a trick question, it really is the obvious answer. (if you want to really be a swot you could put 'steatosis'...the medical term)

so that leaves number two as cirrhosis (or fibrosis...)

number three does seem to be just describing drunkeness, so yes I suppose the correct term would be alcohol intoxication.

Number four - no, alcohol is almost entirely processed by the liver

Alcohol is broken down by the liver, so the speed at which the alcohol is processed out of your body depends on what the liver is doing. I don't see how any other aspects of metabolism would affect alcohol concentration. It's absorbed through your stomach/gut and just goes straight to the liver. The alcohol that makes it untouched through the liver then goes around your body to make you feel drunk etc. The rate at which it then spreads around your body wouldn't have anything to do with metabolism.

I know that if you have more fat, you'll get higher BAC than person who is skinnier.

The reverse should be true - the bigger your body, the lower the blood alcohol concentration. If a thin person and a large person drink the same amount, then the thin person will have a higher blood alcohol concentration. Since concentration is amount divided by volume, and since the larger person has a larger volume (you have to consider total body water, of which the blood is only a small part).

now there's a thought - placebos having side-effects!

If they do it puts a new spin on all those 'harmless' placebo-type alternative remedies!

I don't know how different things are in different countries, but in the UK each pack of medicine has a big bit of paper (folded up loads) with tiny writing listing basically every side effect ever seen and saying whether it's common, occasional or rare. And prescription drugs cannot be advertised other than directly to medical doctors.

I only drink about 16 oz. a day and I'm no longer thirsty

That's how much you need then!

but I'm supposed to get 8 servings of 8 oz.

Noooo, it's a myth!!

maybe you are getting a bit confused by just focussing on the rates individually. You always have to think about the whole system otherwise it will make no sense. Firsty, equilibrium doesn't mean the forward and reverse rates are the same, or that the products and reactants are the same concentration. It just means that the whole thing has settled down so that you always have the same amount of everything. Even with a totally different forward and reverse rate, it will eventually settle down so you have more of one thing and less of the other thing (assuming the reaction is reversible). This can be hard to get your head round.

When you shift an equilibrium, e.g. by changing the temperature or pH, it is the molecules at each end that are affected, and that is why you see a change in rates. You need to think about what is happening to those molecules when there is a particular shift. For example, if you have A<->B and you change the temperature, maybe it destabilises A, so it is more likely to form B (i.e. forward reaction rate goes up). But maybe it destabilises B even more so it is much more likely to go back to A (reverse reaction goes up more). In this case, the equilibrium shifts to the left (towards A), but both rates have gone up.

So what matters is not what happens to each individual rate, but what happens to the ratio, i.e. which one is faster. If the forward rate is 10 and the reverse rate is 100, then if you divide the forward rate by the reverse rate (10/100) you get 0.1, this is the equilibrium constant. If the equilibrium constant is more than 1, then it tells you the forward rate is the fastest and you get more B. If it's less than 1 then the reverse rate is fastest and you get more A. If it's 1 then the rates are the same and there's the same amount of A and B. You could have the same equilibrium constant with totally different rates, e.g. 100/1000 or 1/10.

When the individual rates matter is if you want to know how fast the system will settle down to a new equilibrium. Fast rates means fast change in equilibrium, i.e. you will suddenly have a load more of A, rather than gradually getting more A.

sorry that turned into a bit of an essay!

And Fatal Familial Insomnia is a prion disease! You see prions are everywhere people. Their brain degenerates and they hallucinate, then go into stupor and then a coma and then die.

I'm such a biochemistry nerd I've done a batchelor's degree, a PhD and have now gone back to do a masters degree in a specialist area to have a career in the UK health service. (not such a big deal as it sounds as it was much quicker for me than it would be in the US plus I managed to get through my 1st degree just before they started charging tuition fees...) I think the area where biochemistry overlaps with medicine and physiology in general is especially fascinating, as medicine is getting so much more biochemical as time goes on, and a lot of doctors don't like biochemistry, so we need more specialists and more research! I'm training for a career where I work as a biochemist in a hospital and oversee all the blood tests etc and advise the doctors on biochemistry.

I also liked chemistry and biology in school and I only studied biochemistry at university because I did a little module of biochemistry as part of my chemistry studies when I was 17 (just before my final school year). It really is about studying how life 'works'. I can't imagine how I would understand the living world if I didn't understand the biochemistry behind it all. I liked it because there is still lots to find out and it's so varied, so as you learn more you can go off and specialise in all kinds of different areas.

I can never get a solid number for how much water the average person should be drinking...

However much quenches your thirst. Amazing thing evolution, we have the amazing ability to sense when we need to drink

drinking vast amounts of water is good for you

must be possible.

for example

edit - double post

just becaues ADD is massively and falsely overdiagnosed, doesn't mean the whole disorder is rubbish. I've quietly watched a small kid with ADD 'playing' happily by himself, and he could not complete anything. eg he would decide to make a sandcastle, so he put one little spade of sand in a bucket, then turned the bucket over to leave a pile of sand which he didn't look at. Then he decided to draw a picture so he ran indoors and drew two lines on a piece of paper. Then he ran outside and went on the slide. Then put another spade of sand in the bucket. etc etc, this could go on for hours.

No I'm afraid they lost me at "holographic memory of a chromosome continuum". And they go on to say that "information is ...transferred (plays out) throughout the entire space of a biosystem by the polarization code parameter." Lots of impressive long sciencey-sounding words, but not a clue what they're trying to say. There was some mention of "sign wave functions" - I presume they mean 'sine' wave...? And something about DNA having wave duality...

They did get one basic thing wrong early on though. They say that the subject of genetic coding is "an impregnable bastion for critics". They point out that the principle of DNA->RNA->protein is called the 'central dogma', and they think the name means that no-one is allowed to disagree with it, despite the existence of things like reverse transcriptase, which can make DNA from RNA. Well science doesn't allow dogma, the whole reason for naming it the 'central dogma' is for the opposite reason, it's kind of sarcastic, to remind ourselves not to take it 100% for granted all the time.

Edit: Ah I guessed they'd get round to prions eventually (everyone's favourite). Nonsense I'm sorry to say

so long as it's after the London Olympics! :D

do you know the mechanisms involved in how, this occurs?

Nope! The normal protein binds to the abnormal protein and then changes structure. That's it I'm afraid. No-one know why prions are infectious and other amyloid isn't. If you want to get technical then a lot depends on whether the rate-limiting step is formation of the abnormal 3D structure, or aggregation of abnormally-structured molecules. But no-one knows that anyway.

So we're talking about 14+ years after college.

In the USA...

It's much less in other countries.

is this mainly genetic?and as far as i know i don't think there is a cure for the amyloid diseases, is there ? so does this mean that a protein that folds wrongly cannot be corrected by the various mechanisms that the body has?i mean instead of breaking it down [as u have mentioned they cannot be'], why can't it.be corrected:-)

Some prion diseases are genetic, where the PrP that the body makes is mutated and so is more likely to get stuck in the abnormal structure. But in most cases there is nothing wrong with people's PrP gene. The PrP protein molecules are always folding and unfolding very very fast and one day one molecule just 'makes a mistake' and gets into the wrong structure - the prion structure. (This only happens to about one in every million people)

The body normally breaks down abnormal proteins with protease enzymes. But these don't work on prions - they are almost indestructible because the structure is so stable (all amyloid is very stable). And because it's so stable there's no other way to persuade it to unfold again. When I worked with PrP in a lab, to get rid of it we had to mix it with chemicals that would burn your skin, then put it in an autoclave and blast it with steam under pressure at 121C for 20 minutes, then incinerate it. There's no cure for amyloid diseases because no-one has figured a way of destroying the amyloid/prions inside someone.

sorry, we've kind of hijacked the cannibalism thread with prions, but it's my favourite subject!

lysozyme is in saliva, that helps to kill bacteria. I suppose it doesn't kill the ones in your mouth but then those aren't the ones you need to worry about in terms of a wound getting infected.

well prions aren't viruses. They are just protein molecules. There's a protein in your brain called PrP. I don't know how much you know about proteins, but normal PrP is made of mainly alpha helices. Sometimes a molecule of PrP folds wrongly and gets stuck in a different structure, made of beta-sheets. This is extremely stable and hard to break down. When this beta-sheet PrP comes into contact with normal alpha-helical PrP it can force the normal PrP to also change to the abnormal structure. The abnormal PrP molecules build up and cause damage to the brain. So far this is similar to Alzheimers, Huntington's and all amyloid diseases (each disease is caused by different protein that folds wrongly and builds up). However, if you put some of the brain with abnormal PrP into another animal, that animal would also get the same disease. That does not happen with any other amyloid disease.

So a prion is an abnormally-structured protein that can force normal molecules of the same protein to change into the abnormal structure, and that is infectious.

(the UK for all I know may be a powderkeg of religious animosity).

I think the UK is one of the most non-religious countries there is. The problem is that there is an instinctive hostility among most of the UK population to any religious group that takes itself too seriously, and there are growing minority groups of fundamentalists who have an instinctive hostility to pretty much everyone, and can't grasp the fact the religion doesn't play much of a role in the lives of most other Brits.

I think this law can be compared to other laws like the fact that if an adult has sex with someone under 16 it is statutory rape in the eyes of the law. But obviously the police don't go after every 17 year old who sleeps with a 15 year old, because the law exists primarily to be able to prosecute paedophiles without having to prove coercion. So although I don't like the law at all, I can see why the government wants the power to curb the most extreme and inflammatory aspects of both sides, without preventing calm and reasoned debate.

As an atheist I quite like the fact that the major religions will be effectively unable to read aloud whole tracts of their holy books.

As Zyncod has just clearly explained, if any benefits of amygdalin could be shown, the pharma companies would have no reason to hesistate - they would be jumping on the bandwagon immediately.

Also if you're going to selectively quote chunks of text it's only fair to reference the source so that we can see it comes from an alternative health website and not a scientific publication. On the same site it says: "In 1982, a phase II study with 175 patients looked at which types of cancer might respond to treatment with amygdalin...All of the patients showed cancer progression 7 months after completing treatment." By the way "Phase II study" refers to a stage in the study of a proposed medicine which is manufactured by a pharmaceutical company.

for no obvious reason meaning, they just caught from the air or something?

You don't have to 'catch' it from anywhere. It's quite rare to 'catch' prion disease. Most CJD for example is either sporadic ('just happens') or genetic. Remember that prion diseases like CJD are caused when the normal prion protein gets changed into an abnormal structure. It's thought that this can sometimes just happen all by itself - a molecule of the protein in someone's brain just spontaneously changes to the 'bad' prion structure for no particular reason. Proteins are always folding and unfolding constantly so the theory is that very rarely this goes wrong and it folds into the wrong structure. The genetic cases happen when the gene for prion protein has a mutation in it that makes it more likely for the protein to change structure by itself.

As for safety of milk, I presume someone must have tested it to see if it was infectious, but I'm not sure.

basically your insides turn to mush

There's an excellent rebuttal of all your points written by Cancer Research UK (the main UK cancer charity):

"Why don't you tell people about Laetrile?"

Two points I'd like to make: firstly no-one is under the illusion that conventional chemotherapy is in any way harmless. It is by definition toxic: it makes people very sick, it doesn't work as often as people would like and it often carries a risk of further malignancies. But for chemotherapy to be prescribed then it must have been proved that compared to placebo the patient has a better chance of survival by taking it. There are many types of cancer for which we have totally inadequate therapies and so any money-grabbing pharma company has a huge market if they can find something that works better.

The second point, I don't understand why people think it matters that amygdalin can't be patented. Most pharmaceuticals have their origin in toxins found in nature. For example a widely-used drug for people with heart problems is digoxin, based on the toxin found in foxgloves (digitalis). I understand some chemotherapies also come from plant toxins. All the drug companies have to do is to make an artificial compound that is slightly different but does the same thing chemically, which is very easy for them. In any case, patents only last a few years, after which time anyone can make and sell a particular drug. Plenty of drug companies make big money simply making and selling drugs for which they've never had a patent.

Oh and if you think the NEJM clinical trial is in any way flawed I'd be glad to hear your critique. How much professional experience do you have of reviewing papers?