So, a series of antibody tests is currently ongoing.
Anti-insulin
Anti-gastric lining
Anti-intrinsic factor
Anti-nuclear
Anti-Entero(somethingoranother)
Got to see if there may be an immunological reason for any of the things going on. At the moment, doubtful. However, there is no good way to test cellular response to insulin signal without generating a custom experiment with fluorescent tagged insulin from body-wide tissue cultures - something that's not going to happen.
Got a Shillings test to go to check the intrinsic factor and vitamin B link, but that may not be until next week.
Meanwhile, the fall I proudly announced yesterday that had not been dangerous turned out to be a little more pernicious than it was given credit. I managed to keep the 2-foot fall onto my backside/back from being too jarring by curling and rolling through it like Aikido taught me...and I thought I came out unscathed. But today the pain has started. My back was burning for a while, and now my legs are hurting if I sit up. I'm on some mondo anti-inflammatories and painkillers.
The car damage in Dallas has yet to be determined, but it's likely to not be fun.
So, that's it for now...same channel different day different time, folks!
Thursday, April 2, 2009
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Intrinsic factor is a factor in the small intestine used in the absorption/processing of various things, but importantly in the Vitamin B pathway, and can be one of the things damaged by the medication I took.
ReplyDeleteHard to determine the existence of a chemical signal IN the intestine, so they go about it various indirect ways. First, see if the body is having some autoimmune response against the factor, so use the anti-intrinsic factor antibody. Then, shillings test, which is a test where they supersaturate you with vitamin B and intrinsic factor, and see how much of it still gets absorbed into the bloodstream and out the urine after supersaturation.
The others are all various checks for autoimmune responses – celiac and celiac-like autoimmune would come from the Entero(somethingoranother) test, thin-walled or malabsorbing intestines from the gastric lining test, and an insulin response curve due to the free insulin being attacked by the immune system rather than being free to attach itself to the cells in the body and trigger the normal glucose response.
I mentioned how that is the viable test we can do, since testing the cellular response TO insulin would require a specialized experiment which is simply not going to happen. And the anti-nuclear test is a generalized autoimmune response to see if some of the various aches and pains are more rheumatoid-like than anything else. So, all in all, a very auto-immune intensive week.