Posted by gary g (209.187.112.93) on August 29, 1999 at 12:22:16:
In Reply to: Colds and clusters posted by Jack Boyd on August 28, 1999 at 13:59:45:
PEOPLE - if you don't like detached, mechanical type discussions that look at this as a challenging scientific puzzle - don't waste your time reading this
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call me an asshole if you like, but recent activity on this board surely shows we need to grow up, get serious, and use a little discipline if we want to earn any credibility !
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you make really good points Jack, about possible viral involvement, and it may well be involved at some level -
that could explain the variance in individual cluster durations, chronic vs episodic etc - but I wish we could work on the idea that this is probably NOT a single answer quiz
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FOLLOWING is general discussion, not specific to Jack's post - he just made me think of it, and this is probably a good thread to put it in, because - for once - we are at least actually discussing cluster headache directly
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preface:
I have noticed that MOST everybody with a pet theory feels that the problem can only be that one dynamic -
in essence, very linear, body as constructed machine, type thinking
it would be really really nice if natural systems were this easy to decode, once you had the right info, but usually they are not
Please work thru the following & comment
examples:
some people like the virus theory
a few (but not very many)like a food/allergy type causation theory
some of us(me included)give a lot of credence to the light triggered biochemical activity of the hypothalamus being a MAJOR consideration
why can't it be something like this:
(just one possible model as a base for discussion)
A. as yet unspecified hereditary environmental factors, manifested in the structure and activity of the hypothalamus, create a permanent and probably congenital, PREDISPOSITION to cluster headache
B. in individuals WITH a predisposition, certain environmental and/or ingested, inhaled etc, agents trigger a VULNERABILITY sequence we call the cluster(could be viral, environmental, many things - I'm personally betting on light cycle changes)
(and I realize that offends many superstitious people because it implies some aspects of that horrible horrible heresy - evolution, and they will "have to" dismiss any such theory in whole because emotional dogma rules it out - their loss I guess)
C. predisposed individuals, who are in a vulnerability sequence, are susceptible to (possibly varying/many) TRIGGERING AGENTS which precipitate an attack - these agents can/may be both internal and external
if you are not used to playing with biology - let me assure you - this is NOT an overly complex model - in our family we deal constantly with working out natural history related behavior, survival & coping models FAR more complex which involve FAR more far-fetched relationships, but which often prove to be exactly how things work (once you get all the pieces in the right place)
and folks - like it or not - we are just one more animal (a complex one I'll grant) playing out our role in a baffingly complex scheme of life and the relationship of its components - all of which are changing all the time (even the friggin rocks change over time)
to me, we'd make immense strides in figuring this out if we could just get together on the idea that this probably isn't as much a search for a single needle in a haystack, as it is a friggin' jigsaw puzzle where we don't have the box picture to show us exactly where the parts go