Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 5 Evidence Based Success The ketogenic diet has been used successfully—and safely—to treat medical conditions, particularly epilepsy, for more than a century. In the last decade, though, the therapeutic diet has found champions in the unlikely halls of Harvard’s medical school and beyond for its surprising effectiveness at treating mental disorders, from sc

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir : by Dave Bexfield This initial version of acknowledgements, a living document, features those who aided the writing, research, and production of the memoir. It will be expanded at a future date to better recognize aid received post publication and to properly and publicly thank those who made an outsized impact on the health of humanity. History will remember you. Craig, a longtime member of ActiveMSers.org, reached out to me as I was pennin

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield The concluding chapter of Sit Down Before Reading has been broken into five parts (1-5). Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 2 House of Horrors All of us have biases whether we admit them or not. I’m typically pretty openminded, but when people start crowing about things unsupported by the evidence, or worse, the science, eyebrows raise along with deep-seated biases. And nothing, nothing

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield The concluding chapter of Sit Down Before Reading has been broken into five parts (1-5). Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 3 Laying Siege Dating back to 3000 BC, one of the first recognized military tactics deployed by early civilizations was the now-classic siege. “A siege occurs when an attacker encounters a city or fortress that cannot be easily taken by a quick assault, and which re

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield The concluding chapter of Sit Down Before Reading has been broken into five parts (1-5). Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 4 Fearless Two years ago, sitting across the desk from Dr. Deadpan, the veteran Lyme specialist from New York issued a final set of instructions at the conclusion of our 2-hour appointment. I was to take antibiotics to treat my Lyme disease, other medication to tre

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield The concluding chapter of Sit Down Before Reading has been broken into five parts (1-5). Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Part 1 a print of one of the first X-rays by Wilhelm Röntgen, 1895; public domain Many of the world’s greatest medical discoveries were accidents, flukes, sheer luck. Penicillin, the pacemaker, the Pap smear, X-rays, insulin, the existence of allergies, Viagra, vaccinat

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield I can still recite the TJ Fannon Heating & Cooling-sponsored starting nine from memory. Eddie Bunn pitching, Luis Gonzales catching, his brother Riggo at third, John Schott at short, me at second, Andy (what’s his last name again?) at first. Patrolling the outfield: Jeff Persell, Buck Blackburn, and Joe Hamidi. The coach: Dad. He had the harebrained idea of assembling a ragtag baseball team of high schoolers in the twilight

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield Disbelief. Incredulity. Skepticism. Extreme dubiousness. C’mon, a lone, renegade parasite responsible for all this carnage? That’s such a massive stretch that one trusted member of ActiveMSers, Sarah, the astrophysicist quoted in Chapter 37: Telltale SHARDs , finally cracked. Love your stuff, though I am worried you are going a bit too far with saying everything is Lyme.... I feel confirmation bias is afoot! I know that’s wh

Sit Down Before Reading, A Memoir by Dave Bexfield As a cub reporter for a freshly launched business newspaper, I was responsible for digging up scoops— think Woodward, Bernstein, Watergate. Then stop thinking that because it was 1994, I was barely in my mid-20s, and living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where headlines like “Balloon Lands on Highway,” “Tumbleweeds Bury House,” and “Governor Signs Bill Recognizing Smell of Roasting Green Chiles as Official State Aroma” pull in