Developing Countries and Communicable Disease
Established info I'm confident of:
When I recently looked at info on Malawi, I saw some charts about how developing countries get a lot of communicable diseases and developed countries tend to have non-communicable diseases. My impression is this means generally that developing countries need a lot more basic infrastructure -- education, adequate clean water, sanitation, etc. -- to get their health issues resolved and developed countries need to address other systemic issues, such as the tendency to pay the medical system for ongoing treatment instead of a real cure.
It wouldn't take much to establish some data proving (or disproving, as the case may be) my hypothesis that zinc supplementation post-covid helps strengthen the body so patients are more able to fight off these infections. For parasitic infections, such as malaria or trypanosomiasis (aka African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas Disease in the Americas), if this WORKED, you should soon see patients developing strong fevers.
Fever is how the body fights parasitic infection if it is adequately nourished or has in some fashion gotten some kind of support for the battle. I slept up to 18 hours a day and ran a terrible fever for several weeks after being up above 6000 feet above sea level three times while crossing the country.
So if you give zinc, fever follows and infection load comes down, then this WORKS and it's cheap and doesn't require a prescription. Once you had proof of concept, you would merely need some kind of EDUCATION program to begin making headway against these diseases and in Malawi, malaria accounts for 30 percent of outpatient visits, so this ends up being a means to NOT NEED nearly one third of the current medical resources or to be able to divert those resources to better uses.
For the best hope of success, once you had proof of concept, you would need someone -- dietician, nutritionist, local cook -- to put together a list of local foods high in zinc and some recipes that work for local cuisine and tastes. It would need to be handled in a way that worked for the local culture and education level of the people, etc.
And also let patients know that IF THIS WORKS, you may soon see a high fever. If it's not above, say, 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit, don't treat it with drugs and don't see a doctor. Just hydrate and/or take a tepid bath or cold shower.
Above 106, you can get brain damage. At 108, you can die because the body can no longer cool itself on its own at that point.
Instructions should take into account local conditions and provide a time buffer to help make sure people can SEE a doctor BEFORE it hits 106. Experience with such cases should inform policy once there is a program on the ground for best practices that work for these people in this place, etc.
But it would be a low cost NON-MEDICAL path to reducing the burden of disease on developing countries where some of these classes of infection are a big part of what is holding them back as a country. And it is a non-medical approach that directly reduces the need for actual medical care.
- Quinalone drugs interfere with zinc absorption. Zinc should be taken at a different time from such drugs.
- Covid-19 causes zinc deficiency. I spoke with a researcher and also lack of smell -- a symptom of covid -- is a known symptom of zinc deficiency.
When I recently looked at info on Malawi, I saw some charts about how developing countries get a lot of communicable diseases and developed countries tend to have non-communicable diseases. My impression is this means generally that developing countries need a lot more basic infrastructure -- education, adequate clean water, sanitation, etc. -- to get their health issues resolved and developed countries need to address other systemic issues, such as the tendency to pay the medical system for ongoing treatment instead of a real cure.
It wouldn't take much to establish some data proving (or disproving, as the case may be) my hypothesis that zinc supplementation post-covid helps strengthen the body so patients are more able to fight off these infections. For parasitic infections, such as malaria or trypanosomiasis (aka African Sleeping Sickness, Chagas Disease in the Americas), if this WORKED, you should soon see patients developing strong fevers.
Fever is how the body fights parasitic infection if it is adequately nourished or has in some fashion gotten some kind of support for the battle. I slept up to 18 hours a day and ran a terrible fever for several weeks after being up above 6000 feet above sea level three times while crossing the country.
So if you give zinc, fever follows and infection load comes down, then this WORKS and it's cheap and doesn't require a prescription. Once you had proof of concept, you would merely need some kind of EDUCATION program to begin making headway against these diseases and in Malawi, malaria accounts for 30 percent of outpatient visits, so this ends up being a means to NOT NEED nearly one third of the current medical resources or to be able to divert those resources to better uses.
For the best hope of success, once you had proof of concept, you would need someone -- dietician, nutritionist, local cook -- to put together a list of local foods high in zinc and some recipes that work for local cuisine and tastes. It would need to be handled in a way that worked for the local culture and education level of the people, etc.
And also let patients know that IF THIS WORKS, you may soon see a high fever. If it's not above, say, 104.5 degrees Fahrenheit, don't treat it with drugs and don't see a doctor. Just hydrate and/or take a tepid bath or cold shower.
Above 106, you can get brain damage. At 108, you can die because the body can no longer cool itself on its own at that point.
Instructions should take into account local conditions and provide a time buffer to help make sure people can SEE a doctor BEFORE it hits 106. Experience with such cases should inform policy once there is a program on the ground for best practices that work for these people in this place, etc.
But it would be a low cost NON-MEDICAL path to reducing the burden of disease on developing countries where some of these classes of infection are a big part of what is holding them back as a country. And it is a non-medical approach that directly reduces the need for actual medical care.
