Idyllic said...
@ Quin - am I reading your comment accurately, you're basing this '''obvious'''? and '''only plausible explanation'''? about Valproate solely on smell? That's a bit of a stretch, no?
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i tend to agree - its a possibility - but not the only one
Quin said...
I have long suspected that the mechanism of action of valproate on borrelia is to block the lactate dehydrogenase (pyruvate reductase).
i am sorry Quin - i am not sure i am following your explanation fully - but I note that that article says that borrelia do not actually have a pyruvate reductase enzyme.
overall i don't think we can draw firm conclusions about
what is going on in the complex chemistry inside the body or the infections within it by smell alone.
what i would say is - this disease is super tricky - and because we don't have all the answers - we are kind of forced into a situation where we have to try to join the dots and make sense of our situation - even if we have more gaps than substance to work with - its a kind of survival urge - to make sense of confusing circumstances, so we can steer a course.
like ancient mariners - who looked to the stars to steer their ships - but were convinced that the stars revolved around the earth.
We are all in the same boat - no one is immune - but this is rich ground for confirmation bias.
take the garlic smell as an example - there are other substances besides allicin that have a garlic like odour - certain b vitamin derivatives for instance - so the smell a long time after taking garlic / allicin could have nothing to do with the garlic at all - and the borrelia may then not be "hanging on to it" till they die - it could just be some other natural product of disturbed metabolism, or something made in the gut when antimicrobials are taken.
anyway - i'm not having a pop - we all develop our own theories - sometimes we are right sometimes wrong.
the benefit of airing them on a discussion forum like this is that its helps sound them out with other people with their own independent thinking and their own competing theories. we should all be better off for the exchange of ideas.
i would also offer that we don't always have to be right to benefit from these theories
for instance the ancient mariners still steered their ships pretty well - even though they were way off base about
which thing was moving around another -
so sometimes is more important to have some kind of theory and move forward - than it is to stand still.
may we all steer our ships safely to the promised land - regardless of which chart we use!