SuperBetter

[lotuslion]

I don't know how many of you are familiar with Jane McGonigal or her SuperBetter game, but I was hospitalized last week with a pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis due to the PICC line in my arm, and when my friend sent me a video about Jane, it made me feel better

Comments

[lotuslion]

My psoriasis does flare in response to infection, but I don't think complex immune disorders can be explained by something as simple as an infection. I've read the literature on it, and I do think environmental factors of course play a part, but there's a genetic component too. I think it's the IL-23 cell that has been found to be malformed in all Crohn's patients studied; so that's not to say that if you have a malformed IL-23 you will automatically have Crohn's, but everyone who has Crohn's has a malformed IL-23. So there's clearing a biological predisposition for some of these things.

I feel what you're saying, because I do agree that the incentive structure is all wrong. There is no money in cures; there's money in developing expensive, life-long treatments that make patients able to "live with" their diseases. When it was discovered that the H. Pylori bacteria caused ulcers, and could be cured with a $30 round of antibiotics, the pharmaceutical industry lost $2bn a year. I just don't think that a single cause can be behind complex immune disorders, however much I wish it were otherwise. (That, and I've been on enough abx over the last year to kill a kindergarten, and I'm still having mild Crohn's symptoms, lol.) But immunology is an extremely new field in medicine, and we don't even really understand HOW it works, let alone why it malfunctions, so I could be wrong. :)

Thanks for the feedback and the sympathy, and you're welcome about the game info! :)