Side effects arising from treatment for Parkinson's disease, meant to slow its progress (there is presently no cure) induce some interesting results in about one out of six patients:
At 48, Mark Stephens was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease.
If the news that he suffered an incurable disorder of his central nervous system was not bad enough, the treatment to ease symptoms made him develop addictions and paranoia.
Queensland researchers have now discovered why some people diagnosed with Parkinson's disease develop highly impulsive or addictive behaviours in response to the key medication used to treat it. Spending sprees and heightened sex drive are two of the potential side effects for the one in six people diagnosed with Parkinson's disease who are treated with drugs to boost dopamine levels.
There's no cure for that, either.
His body wants booze, but since he doesn't drink alcohol, it makes its own:
When a man in North Carolina was pulled over on suspicion of driving drunk, police didn’t believe him when he said he hadn’t had any alcohol.
The man, in his late 40’s at the time, refused to take a breathalyzer test and was taken to a hospital, where his initial blood alcohol level was found to be 0.2% — about 2.5 times the legal limit and the equivalent of consuming 10 drinks an hour. Despite the man swearing up and down that he hadn’t had anything to drink, doctors didn’t believe him either.
But researchers at the Richmond University Medical Center in New York eventually discovered that the man was telling the truth. He wasn’t downing beers or cocktails — instead, there was yeast in his gut that was likely converting carbohydrates in the food he ate to alcohol.
In other words, his body was brewing beer.
This rare condition is known as gut fermentation syndrome, and as in your run-of-the-mill brewing process, the end product is alcohol. On the positive side, he avoids the costs associated with visiting his local pub.
“These patients have the exact same implications of alcoholism: the smell, the breath, drowsiness, gait changes,” Fahad Malik, the study’s lead author and the chief internal medicine resident at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told CNN. “They will present as someone who’s intoxicated by alcohol, but the only difference here is that these patients can be treated by antifungal medications.”
His basic lab tests turned out normal. But doctors found two strains of yeast in his stool: Saccharomyces cerevisiae, a yeast commonly used in beer brewing, winemaking and baking, as well as another fungus. Finally, the man sought help from an online support group and got in touch with the researchers at the Richmond University Medical Center, who said in the study that they believed the antibiotics he took years ago altered his gut microbiome and allowed fungi to grow in his gastrointestinal tract.
The researchers then used antifungal therapies and probiotics to help normalize the bacteria in his gut, a treatment that he has continued. “Approximately 1.5 years later, he remains asymptomatic and has resumed his previous lifestyle, including eating a normal diet while still checking his breath alcohol levels sporadically,” the authors wrote in the study.
Now, he seems to be doing well. As for the California sexpot congresswoman, a similar outcome seems unlikely:
Democratic Congresswoman Katie Hill quit Sunday, days after DailyMail.com revealed she was part of a ‘throuple’ with her husband and a campaign worker and an ethics probe was launched into her alleged affair with another aide.
The 32 year-old was elected to office by Los Angeles-area voters less than a year ago, and was formerly seen as a rising star among Democratics. Unsurprisingly, she's blaming everyone except herself. Must be a Pantsuit protege.
'It is with a broken heart that today I announce my resignation from Congress." 'This is what needs to happen so that the good people who supported me will no longer be subjected to the pain inflicted by my abusive husband and the brutality of hateful political operatives who seem to happily provide a platform to a monster who is driving a smear campaign built around cyber exploitation.'
The married congresswoman is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for allegedly having an affair with her campaign finance director Graham Kelly, which she has vehemently denied.
She's also had a throuple affair with her husband Kenny Heslep and 24-year-old female campaign worker Morgan Desjardins, which fizzled out just last month. News of Hill's relationship with Desjardins, from Santa Clarita, California, and shocking photos including one of her posing naked while smoking a bong were exclusively revealed by DailyMail.com earlier this week.
Another photo shows her naked combing Desjardins' hair.
Hill said her estranged husband was slandering her by coming forward with the affair allegations saying: 'The fact is I am going through a divorce from an abusive husband who seems determined to try to humiliate me.'
Ah yes, the well-worn 'abusive husband' routine. There's really no help for her, and the husband should be counting his blessings to be rid of her. Se's a mental case, if ever there was.
