Update from Walkie

[Walkie]

 Oh! and thanks and plusses to everybody else

Hi Walkie. I also have a very sensitive tummy, and travel often has uncomfortable consequences.

One of the problems is that you are dealing with food servers who often believe that food sensitivities are imaginary.
Eating, for example, half a large pizza that you paid extra for because it was supposed to be gluten free (but wasn’t) doesn’t end well for people who need to share a confined space with you over the next couple of days.

Oh yeah. I know, I think more and more people are waking up to rthe reality of food sensitivities now, though. And some  Takeaway owner in Britain was prosecuted a year-or-two back for falsely selling fod as "gluten-free". Can't recall all the details, but they came down really hard on him, and it made headline news. An unsuspecting  customer had actually died, if I recall correctly.

Food additives like MSG can be even worse than gluten or dairy.

Yep. I found that out the hard way. Also that every-increasing array of artificial sweeteners.  They are not food, and screw our biodies up one way or another. Ironically, some of them (maybe all of them) screw with your metabolism and make you fat! Real sugar is better for your health! 

MSG is well known as a neurotoxin. Also gluten, sweeteners et al can all function as neurotoxins in susceptible people. They certainly do in my case, and I find that effect to be a much bigger problem than the upset tummy.  The neurological effects can wipe me out for days, and impair my my mental functioning for weeks. Most people still have no idea how very serious and systemic the effects can be. Upset tummy is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Have you tried Colofac (prescription medication)? I know that it doesn’t work for everyone, but I find it essential when travelling.

I've pretty much given up on medication  (aside from nicotine, caffeibne and CBD) as most folk here already know. If I don't have an out-and-out allegic reaction to the drug, or a bunch of unusaual and serious side-effects,  rghen I have a reaction to the padding. (Most formulations of most drugs  contain cornstarch, for a start).  Scouring the net for acceptable formulations is not a fun hobby!  neither has it proved  very effective. 

Years ago,  I flat -out told my neurologist I won't try any more anti-seizure meds, cos I 'd far sooner suffer the seizures than suffer the effects of the meds. And indeed, I do feel considerably  better for not throwing drugs into system, on the random off-chance that they'll help.  Same goes for other meds, ofc.

I hope you feel better soon.

Thanks well, my luck is holding! Whatever the cause,of these reactions, I've avoided triggering another thus far *phew*  Shouldn't ccount my chickens, but  I'm almost feeling well, now

[Fun With Matches]

^ MSG always gives me visual migraines without the pain. A couple of sweeteners give me a headache. Acesulfame K and saccharine.

[Lestat]

I HATE whisky or however its spelled. Vile, vile, vile stuff. Brandy is revolting too. I hate any alcohol that has ever seen a grape. Wines are the worst though, just the smell of it makes me almost throw up. That and cointreau. I used to like cointreau; though, but when I was somewhere between 9-12 or thereabouts give or take a year either way I drank an entire large bottle of the stuff in one pull, and the abominable, thundercunt of a hangover is something my visceral, reptillian brain-bits are never going to let me forget, and now it tastes sickly and awful. Even hate the taste of synthetic orange flavor codeine cough syrup (which I prefer over alcohol any day, a bottle of cough syrup would always be preferable to getting drunk, or else I prefer tertiary alcohols since they don't get metabolized to nasty ass aldehydes as primary alcohols do, or ketones as sec' alcohols do. So they are a lot gentler on the body in the case of simple tert. alcohols. I particularly enjoy tertiary amyl alcohol (t-pentanol, 2-methyl-butan-2-ol), only takes a couple of milliliters of it, dissolved in a drink, or a shot of orange juice etc., doesn't taste foul like ethanol [regular drinking alcohol] does. And I've been meaning to try 1-ethynyl-cyclohexan-1-ol, which is a solid, so can be gelcapped, and according to all reports, is a really euphoric alcohol with real wall-banger effect more akin to the kind of oldschool sedative-hypnotics that for the most part got taken off the market because they had too much recreational potential (IMO a REALLY shit reason to withdraw a medication, just because those who use it recreationally particularly find it enjoyable, when an awful lot more people will be taking whatever it is for the reason they were prescribed it) 'you can't have that, nobody can have it anymore, because it is too pleasurable', when the alternatives are equally as physically addictive etc., that strikes me as basically being a killjoy for the sheer sake of denying people pleasure. Which in my book is a seriously shitty thing to do.


As far as rum goes...I'll join you in that one, as long as its dark rum, I've never liked bacardi etc. Stinks. But a good dark rum, like captain morgans, I'll raise a glass with you there walkie, any day.

Or perhaps make us one of my special cocktails, based on some high-end vodka, cheap ass tesco own brand lime pop, care+ brand codeine linctus, the one flavoured with chloroform, the syrup layered on the bottom of a tall glass, then the vodka and lime fizz, a couple of lemon and lime wedges used to make a lock-gate to hold a shotglass of ether in the top like a jagerbomb. Tastes good and packs a punch like a suitcase-nuke. Pretty sure its gluten free too, although since I've no issues with gluten I don't know 100%

[Lestat]

Heh, as it happens I just did raise a shit of rum, dark rum, too, to you

I just woke up from when my pain meds combined with muscle relaxer tablets (I take these to stop what otherwise, due to the nerve damage to one of my legs, and synergizing with the anticonvulsant I take (chlormethiazole. All sedative-hypnotic type drugs, anything which depresses activity of the central nervous system does, but with chlormethiazole it also blocks alcohol dehydrogenase, which results in far higher levels of alcohol in the blood, for far longer, can turn a couple of drinks into a trainwreck if you aren't both used to taking the med and really damn careful) and then found that a glass of rum was waiting for me on the table beside me, I'd got my old man a bottle of dark rum for his xmas gift, and he'd poured me a glass while I was asleep. Poured me another one a little later after I'd woken up from that knocking the stuffing out of me (because of the chlormethiazole, and probably my washing each glass down with a bottle of Becks)

Was good to see him enjoying his xmas gift (the rum was what I got him). Lol I can still feel that rum, the two shots and the bottle of beer each time drained in one swallow to the last speck of foam. Didn't half pack more of a punch than usual though, as I've needed more chlormethiazole than usual today, usually I can drink a half of vodka easily and stay...around mild  to mid intoxicated once it exerts an effect on me, although I rarely drink, but just the two glasses of rum (I reckon I  can ignore 2 beers, since I can't even GET drunk on beer if I try almost always, since its a large volume of fluid for a small amount of ethanol in it, its hard to fit that much liquid in my stomach, and given the short action of EtOH, a little bit of it gets me drunk if I drink a lot of beer and before I can host more within my insides and not have to half-reverse-inhale through my nose to wring out the last few ml of storage capacity, the rest  of the beer is busy waiting for its go at turning yellow and taking a one-way trip to china via a little hole leading to tubes infested with rats, (sort of like theresa may's face:autism:)

[Lestat]

Ahem....after re-reading those first few words of that post...it was meant to say a SHOT of rum. I noticed after walkie's karma change led me back to the thread to see which post and where she'd up-rated me on) and it was NOT meant to be read as a 'shit of' rum. They were both most definitely shots, and quite free of human effluent.

[Lestat]

Yeah, glutamate is a double-edged sword. It is the main neurotransmitter responsible for fast-type excitatory neurotransmission in the CNS (GABA is its inhibitory sine qua non counterpart), but too much is a very bad thing, not sure if actually eating MSG would make it past the blood-brain barrier, but overstimulation of ionotropic glutamate receptors (NMDA, AMPA and kainate receptors) causes a massive calcium influx to the cell, and the result is called excitotoxicity, where essentially the affected neurons burn out, permanently. Direct AMPA receptor agonists for example, occur naturally, such as domoic acid, produced by huge blooms of certain dinoflagellate planktonic organisms, and once released into the water, there have been mass deaths of seals etc., also it can bioaccumulate in shelfish, causing in humans who then eat the shellfish, something called amnesic shellfish poisoning, where the domoic acid binds to and massively overactivates AMPA receptors, critical in learning and memory. Some, affected with lowest doses suffer seizures and temporary memory loss, but in those severely poisoned, seizures aside, it can literally rip the hippocampus, one of the primary memory centers of the brain to shreds, along with causing devastating brain-wide damage, of a permanent nature, it never heals and the result is essentially a vegetable in bipedal mammalian form, with no capacity to learn or form memories, with the intellect of a banana. Forever.

Really, really nasty fucking shit. Ibotenic acid is another natural excitotoxic neurotoxin that goes selectively for NMDA receptors, and in animal studies is used via microinjection to lesion specific nerve pathways and study the effects (sick shit, and I would NEVER work in a lab that did such a monstrous thing even once), its found in fly agaric mushrooms, a traditional intoxicant, and a mushroom I use sort of like MSG to bring the flavour out of meat dishes, but for either use it MUST be subjected to a long,slow heat-cure process, which decarboxylates the unstable ibotenic acid to form the psychoactive GABAa orthosteric agonist (I.e it binds, unlike benzos, barbiturates etc. to the GABA binding site itself). And there is then acromelic acid, found in another pair of mushrooms, Clitocybe amnoelens and C.acromelalga which does in kainate receptor expressing neurons, and causes a very long lasting (years potentially) hyperalgesia, with swelling of the hands and feet, which oddly, is responsive to temperature, and I forget which way round, but during an attack dipping the affected parts into either really cold or really hot water causes it to temporarily subside.

Not sure that glutamate itself makes it into the brain when taken orally, I'd guess the blood brain barrier would stop it, to prevent just such catastrophic events happening from eating meat, etc. consisting of proteins based on aminoacids, such as glutamic acid (glutamate is just the form of glutamic acid bound to a cation,  such as sodium), if every time we ate something containing this aminoacid, it got into and ripped apart the brain, then in evolutionary terms we wouldn't have lasted very long at all.

As for anticonvulsants, why not try chlormethiazole? it comes either in a liquid form, as a syrup which afaik is free of gluten, and also in capsule form (the kind I take) which contains either the freebase or the edisylate salt), I could look up if the capsules themselves contain gluten, although the syrup will not. If you like. I find it excellent in that it is extremely rapid acting, within minutes at most of the capsules opening and releasing their contents, its very effective, and unlike benzos, which WOULD have caused me a physical dependency, using chlormethiazole as my antiseizure med, no such thing has happened, even though it is a barbiturate-binding-site agonist at GABAa receptors. You might do well with the syrup, since that will definitely be gluten free.

[Fun With Matches]

So natural glutamates say also found in yeast extract and meats generally are fine? But MSG is not because it is concentrated, or different altogether? From what I’m reading, glutamates are the same.

I would think if MSG gives someone a headache, which is common, then it’s not doing them any good. Not necessarily brain damage though, but surely it must be doing something wrong?

[Walkie]

Ahem....after re-reading those first few words of that post...it was meant to say a SHOT of rum. I noticed after walkie's karma change led me back to the thread to see which post and where she'd up-rated me on) and it was NOT meant to be read as a 'shit of' rum. They were both most definitely shots, and quite free of human effluent.

It's Ok, Lestat.  I'm dyslexic, and misread "shit" as "shot" :ROFL:

Wow! Sometimes two wrongs really do make a right!

[Icequeen]

Ahem....after re-reading those first few words of that post...it was meant to say a SHOT of rum. I noticed after walkie's karma change led me back to the thread to see which post and where she'd up-rated me on) and it was NOT meant to be read as a 'shit of' rum. They were both most definitely shots, and quite free of human effluent.

It's Ok, Lestat.  I'm dyslexic, and misread "shit" as "shot" :ROFL:

Wow! Sometimes two wrongs really do make a right!

I read shit, but just figured it was very good rum. 

[Lestat]

Well glutamate can exist in two forms, glutamic acid (an amino acid) and glutamate (a salt of glutamic acid) but essentially the two are the same compound, the difference being in glutamates, that there is an ionic bond between it, and a cationic counterion (like sodium), the bond is ionic in nature rather than covalent, and in solution, if say, poured in water, the result would be a mixture of glutamate ions and sodium ions.

Glutamate serves two vital roles, one being in the construction of many proteins which exist in our bodies, and the other being as the primary neurotransmitter responsible for fast excitatory neurotransmission and if someone were to utterly exclude glutamate from their diet, say, taking amino-acids other than glutamate, of the kind which are vital to bodily maintainance, bad things would happen.

There are areas of the brain, such as the chemoreceptor trigger zone (think of that as the puke-button, when something bad gets eaten, it can access that part without having to cross the BBB) which aren't blocked off by the BBB. So there is still somewhat of a debate. There are people who experience a 'chinese resteraunt syndrome', but double-blind tests including people believing themselves hypersensitive to glutamate where they were given either capsules of MSG or capsules containing an inert substance as a placebo did not then experience symptoms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamate_flavoring#Safety_as_a_flavor_enhancer

If anyone wants me to pull full text of the references, and translate, then I can do that.

[Walkie]

If anyone wants me to .....translate, then I can do that.

yep. I know i looked into all that before (content of your last post was very familiar) but still I've  gotta confess I was already getting a MEGO response to all that chemistry already, a few posts back.  I made a bit-of-a-half-assed resolution to read your posts on this matter more carefully, sometme when my brain is  less tired. But, realistically, am I gonna get around to that? probably not.  The list of stuff that i intend  to get back to just gets longer and longer,  ofc .
So, if you can simplify and summarise that would be very welcome

[Lestat]

MEGO?

I'll have a look at some of the references, pull the full-text versions from behind any paywalls etc. read 'em and translate from biochemist researcher to regular human. On the one hand, I'm usually not too bad at reading something technical and explaining it in an understandable manner to non-tech-savvy, non-expert explain-ees; on the other, my GENERAL speech often needs to BE translated before the listener or listeners understand what I am attempting to get across.

Picture somebody 1/3 Spock, 1/3 Lt.Cmdr.Data and the rest of me 7 of nine, only without the cybernetics and the rack that trekkies everywhere dribble over (and occasionally do other things over)...thats is pretty much what I am like. Although I haven't got the boobs of 7/9 of course and nor do I wish to have them, I still have the damn fine looks :LOL1:

Essentially, that is what I am like/who I am like. Both in the sense that my logical side is vastly dominant, whilst as with spock, an emotional capacity, does exist, but is not close to the surface of his psyche, and like Data, and Spock both both find humans most perplexing, yet curious to study.

Edit-and yes, I frequently do use terms such as 'that is the logical course of action' 'that is/logical' 'illogical', not 'illogical, captain' since I do not serve on a ship of any kind; but yes, I talk quite a bit like Spock in particular. Well a Spock/seven of nine hybrid at any rate.

[Yuri Bezmenov]

Check the brand of vodka.  Some are actually gluten free here (they use corn, potatoes, and grapes).

Smirnoff Sourced (gluten-free) comes in fruit flavors...Crystal Head is considered "grain based" but from corn and peaches.

Hope you feel better soon Walkie.

Roth Vodka is made from grapes and is very reasonably priced.

[Lestat]

What about just getting hold of some pure (as in undenatured, extremely pure) ethanol.?

There is some on ebay, where I get mine, comes in orange bottles from eastern europe, the bottles are marked with cyrillic, part of it reads 'spiritus ethyilicus' or 'spiritus etylicus' possiblly 'ethylicum/etylicum' and instructions that is is for topical use. It is 95% ethanol, of high purity, the 5% being composed of water. I do not know for certain it is gluten-free, but it is extremely potent and very, very, very little needs to be consumed. A teacup, filled with a couple of inches and THEN DILUTED WITH A NONALCOHOLIC PLEASANT DRINABLE FLUID to about 3/4 of the volume of the cup makes a shot. Pure, it would burn and cause severe stomach pain in anybody. That much, is a dose however, that won't get you drunk, but you better be lying down with the lights out first, because it will make you sloppy-drunk for a couple of minutes, maybe 4-5 minutes, and then you'll wake about 5 or 6 hours later, so you'd dose only maybe from a couple of ml diluted with a shot or so of say, orange juice or whatever you like as a diluent, to 10-15ml if you wanted to get totally, really fucking mangled. If you show me the picture on ebay before buying, I can confirm it is the same stuff. It is not toxic, I know so because aside from using it as a lab solvent, I spent an extra $20 or so to buy a liter so I'd never have to buy taxed alcohol again, and have a supply with which I could get drunk if I didn't use it in the lab before. It is also advertised on ebay as being non-denatured, and marked on the bottle as such (in cyrillic) Just do NOT drink more than a total of 2x1/4 of a teacup, each 1/4 being diluted to most of the teacup full, ideally consumed as a shot, because whilst surprisingly it does not burn like vodka and other similar bought spirit, it is powerful, powerful shit as an intoxicant. The bottles of this precise product are golden-yellow, and are flexible plastic. When diluted it is consumable (undiluted, it is not toxicity, but it is too strong to be consumed undiluted just for the reason that is nearly pure EtOH and will cause a physical burning effect for hours. On NO account consume the equivalent of going back for two half teacup fulls, no matter how diluted, even if you can hold your alcohol like I can, you'll regret it. Powerful, powerful stuff.)

I buy it because its really cheap for ethyl (drinking, at least the type of alcohol most commonly consumed, and that sold in all commercial alcoholic drinks) alcohol, there other, better ones like 2-methyl-butan-2-ol but they all have to be bought either on the grey market 'RC' sites, or as chemical supplies), at about $20 a liter, a tiny bit pricier than one liter of 35-36% vodka, infinitely stronger if someone wanted an intoxicant-grade, consumable alcohol, and with a mere 5% alcohol, being of azeotropic concentration (it cannot be further dehydrated by means of distillation and requires chemical means of removing the last traces of H2O, such as first addition of calcium carbide, vacuum distillation, all done in a drybox ideally, but at least in a flask, and the last traces removed with slowly added calcium hydride under a blanket of dry argon, ideally bubbled first through 100% sulfuric acid, then to remove acid-traces passed through solid calcium oxide [quicklime], then distillation into a flame-dried flask to give absolutely anhydrous alcohol)

But bought, and from the state bought in, diluted, then you could try that if you wished to drink, if you show me the bottle I can ID it as being the same product I myself buy and use for my lab alcohol of drinkable cleanliness. Comes from russia IIRC, possibly poland or perhaps latvia, but given the language, I think the cyrillic is a latinized version of russian.
Its meant for lab use, so it has to be free of other alcohols, like methanol, used to denature untaxed ethanol. As well as ketones like acetone and MEK (methylethyl ketone), pyridine as a stenching agent, none of anything like that in there, only a little water that for pretty much every use I have for pure ethanol and specifically ethanol rather than other alcohols like methanol or 2-propanol (iPA) must be removed, such as for Beaveault-Blanc reduction, which involves adding sodium metal. Where obviously having water present in mostly, highly flammable alcohol would be rather a bad thing to say the very least, adding pieces of metal which burst into flame and potentially explode on contact with air or water to something that contains water. Get THAT wrong, and BOOM.

Good thing about the stuff, is that at 20 a liter, that completely avoids both english tax on alcohol, and also being under the threshold, it is also exempt from customs&excise filth-imposed 'duty' (which is only a 'duty' if you fail in remaining undetected, of course, on items over the monetary threshold they set before they try to rape your wallet in the second asshole they try to carve into it) Dirty fucking bastards.

God...fucking....damn. If there is one thing I HATE, it is customs&excise. Expecting me to just GIVE them my hard-saved money which they have done precisely nothing whatsoever to have a right to possess or to take from me. Those bastards....they are lower than rotting dog shit so full of maggots it wriggles along the ground as if it were a politician.

[Walkie]

Check the brand of vodka.  Some are actually gluten free here (they use corn, potatoes, and grapes).

Smirnoff Sourced (gluten-free) comes in fruit flavors...Crystal Head is considered "grain based" but from corn and peaches.

Hope you feel better soon Walkie.

Roth Vodka is made from grapes and is very reasonably priced.

Welcome back, Scrap