Nikhil Autar

Category: Blog

  • Dear NBA. COVID-19 incapacitates, and causes permanent lung damage to even young and healthy players. Please take care!

    Nikhil Autar, Tumor Vaccine Immunology Researcher
    Bachelor of Medical Research (WSU).,
    Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (WSU 2023).

    Permanent Lung Damage is Almost Certain To Occur in Many COVID19 Patients.

    Even mild infection can incapacitate healthy people for MONTHS.

    It’s almost certain that COVID19 causes permanent lung damage in a large proportion of seriously ill patients. Young, fit and healthy people, including athletes, are not spared, and indeed, likely to suffer most (at the very least, they suffer for the longest). There’s a bit of evidence that those putting their body through extreme strain are more inclined to suffer worse outcomes when it comes to pneumonias. I felt my favourite stars, in my favourite sport, that I can no longer play due to severely damaged lungs, should know this information. Though important causes like the recent Black Lives Matter marches are indeed of concern, to both protect themselves, and the millions of young and old fans they have, it would be amazing if players could help spread this message – to distance, where possible, and do things like wear masks. Trust me – permanent lung damage sucks. I’m 26 and likely will never play basketball again.

    This medical journal of Australia review of radiological findings of COVID19, suggests up to 17% of severely ill or critical patients1 , not just those requiring ventilation, have evidence of fibrosis –  permanent lung scarring in the lungs. A more recent analysis of 38 patients’ autopsies showed all patients who did require critical care had signs of this2. Though younger people do survive COVID-19 more, the question is at what cost?

    A 15 year follow up of SARS coronavirus patients also confirmed that as many as 4.6% of a mostly healthy population had decreased lung function after any level of SARS infection2. Some are suggesting that this likely isn’t progressive fibrosis, which is good news in that it is not likely to cause long term inflammation in the lungs3, but a recent study in the Lancet suggests otherwise – and indeed, cites higher rates of developing fibrosis than earlier thought4. Also, permanent disability and lung function is demonstrated through previous coronavirus outbreaks’ data, and through studies on radiological findings of the current pandemic – which suggests as many as 17% of severely ill patients are demonstrating signs of fibrosis1 (this number are likely to rise on follow up.

    Elite athletes are at higher risk of contracting COVID-19. Not only can exercise direct this particularly pneumo-toxic virus deeper into lungs, which may lead to higher chances of developing cytokine storms, and a more severe version of COVID-195, extreme exertion may reduce innate immunity, making players more prone to developing disease6.  Not only is there this chance of permanent lung damage which could affect entire careers, It also appears that even mild infection commonly leads to a 20-30% decline in lung function that lasts for months12 – longer than the common flu – which could impact these very finals.

    PLEASE – keep yourselves safe! Not just for your own sake, but also for others.

    Children, though less likely to suffer from severe illness, are being admitted to ICUs in 0.58-2% of cases, according to CDC numbers in the US6, and the most comprehensive study on paediatric outcomes out of China7. It’s also evident that infants under 1 are at significantly higher risk of ICU admission (4x that of other children)7, and thus, exposure to this permanent damage. Not only is this linked to permanent lung damage, ICU admission causes severe trauma and PTSD too.

    Many children follow sports stars religiously. Hopefully getting messages out to them and their families will keep, and the world at large, will keep them more safe.

    It is concerning to see that sending children back to school is being encouraged by governments such as Australia8, against medical consensus. Opening up is occurring in the US too.  Young people are similarly being asked to sacrifice themselves to attain ‘herd immunity’ around the world, athletes are being sent back into action. Though many are wary, as evidenced by Novak Djokovic’s diagnosis and disregard for social distancing, many aren’t spreading the right message, and may well be putting their teammates’ careers at risk.

    Not are there much higher rates of ICU admission and deaths being seen in 20-44 year old age groups (up to 12% for the former)10, long term deleterious side effects of this through things like lung fibrosis is likely, and could have even worse economic outcomes in the long run too.

    It’s not to say we shouldn’t reopen. But we should definitely be encouraging safe habits like mask usage and social distancing – staying in unless necessary, or if public health bodies say it’s okay to – to minimize the damage. Not only to athletes’ careers, but to the world as a whole. This disease could be worse than we imagine. I just hope we can encourage eachother to stay safe.

    I am an ex cancer patient, and extensive treatment has caused significant, permanent lung damage to me. My lung function is similar to levels seen in early studies of patients who were followed up after SARS-CoV-2 infection (a 20-30% reduction). I likely will never get to play basketball, or run, again. And though data as to extent of pulmonary fibrosis isn’t available yet, this data makes it clear that fibrosis is occurring. This is not something we want to expose multiple young generations to.

    References;

    1. Peter G Gibson, Ling Qin and Ser Puah, COVID-19 ARDS: clinical features and differences to “usual” pre-COVID ARDS, Med J Aust, Published online: 24 April 2020, accessed May 2020, available at https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2020/covid-19-ards-clinical-features-and-differences-usual-pre-covid-ards
    2. Zhang, P., Li, J., Liu, H. et al.Long-term bone and lung consequences associated with hospital-acquired severe acute respiratory syndrome: a 15-year follow-up from a prospective cohort study. Bone Res 8, 8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41413-020-0084-5
    3. Pulmonary Fibrosis Statement on COVID-19, Pulmonary Foundation Press Release, accessed May 2020, Available at https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pulmonary-fibrosis-foundation-statement-on-covid-19-301035924.html
    4. P Spangnolo, E Balestro, S Aliberti, E Cocconcelli, D Biondini, GD Casa, N Sverzellati, TM Maher, Pulmonary fibrosis secondary to COVID-19: a call to arms?, Lancet Respir Med. 2020 May 15, doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30222-8 [Epub ahead of print]
    5. P Matricardi, RD Negro, R NIsini., The First, Comprehensive Immunological Model of COVID-19: Implications for Prevention, Diagnosis, and Public Health Measures, Version 1 : Received: 22 April 2020 / Approved: 24 April 2020 / Online: 24 April 2020 (10:25:27 CEST)
    6. S Estruel-Amades, M Camps-Bossacoma, M Massot-Cladera, FJ Perez-Cano, M Castell., Alterations in the innate immune system due to exhausting exercise in intensively trained rats, Sci Rep 10, 967 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-57783-4
    7. Bialek S, Gierke R, Hughes M, McNamara LA, Pilishvili T, Skoff T., Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Children — United States, February 12–April 2, 2020, MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2020 Apr 10; 69(14): 422–426.
    8. Dong Y, Hu Y, Qi X, J Fang, J Zhongyi, Tong S., Epidemiological Characteristics of 2143 Paediatric Patients With 2019 Coronavirus Disease in China, Paeiatrics, Pediatrics April 2020, e20200702; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2020-0702
    9. Birmingham K., South Australian parents encouraged by Education Department to return children to school amid coronavirus pandemic., ABC News, April 22, Accessed May 2020., Available at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-22/sa-parents-urged-to-send-children-to-school/12174872
    10. Severe Outcomes Among Patients with Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) — United States, February 12–March 16, 2020. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 2020;69:343-346. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6912e2
    11. Doherty B, Taylor J, Remeikis A., NRL Announces 20-Round Competition Restarting on 28 May – as it Happened, The Guardian, 28 April, Accessed May 2020., Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/apr/28/coronavirus-australia-update-latest-bondi-beach-reopens-to-swimmers-as-new-cases-drop-to-single-figures-live-news?page=with:block-5ea7da968f086f39b4ca135d
    12. Cheung E., Coronavirus: some recovered patients may have reduced lung function and are left gasping for air while walking briskly, Hong Kong doctors find., South China Morning Post. Accessed May 2020, Available at https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/3074988/coronavirus-some-recovered-patients-may-have

  • It’s 2020 and I’m Not Sure If I’ll Be Able to Tell If It’s April Fool’s Anymore…

    It’s been a wild year so far. So wild, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to tell the difference between an ordinary day and April Fool’s by what I’m gonna see on news and social media…

    So much for 2020 vision.Can someone call it off, just for one year maybe? Be careful, and don’t be had this April Fool’s!

    Be careful people. Don’t be tricked. If you’re keen for a laugh, check out this playlist I put together of the stupid stuff I’ve pulled on family/friends over the years!

     

     

     

  • Big Pharma Can’t Hide “The Cure/s.” If They Existed, Pharmaceuticals Would Already Have Made BILLIONS Off of It. Wake Up Sheeple. They’re Not Dumb!

    Big Pharma Can’t Hide “The Cure/s.” If They Existed, Pharmaceuticals Would Already Have Made BILLIONS Off of It. Wake Up Sheeple. They’re Not Dumb!

    So this all started from a Facebook discussion. Yet again, I found myself trying to reason with a brick wall of denial, conspiracy theories and anti-science, baseless rhetoric that is often espoused from the mouth of a “woke” hippy. Towards the end of it, as many who defend Alternative Medicine end up claiming, the lady I was talking to said, “The ONLY reason why there isn’t research for this is because BIG PHARMA can’t PROFIT from anything nAtUrAl.” And that from there, this lady went on to insinuate that 10million researchers and doctors, along with half or billion or so who work in health or health administration, were all in on a conspiracy to suppress the potential for elderberries to cure cancer.

    Of course, she’d later go on to PM me her discount code, and an amazing opportunity to become part of an organisation that brings alternative therapies like those berries to the public, out of the Goodness of their hearts (it WAS only $99.99 to SIGN UP to the first pack which I could onsell to others – in other words an MLM scam). But by this stage I’d had enough.

    For this and more amazing memes – check out my Facebook page – by clicking here or searching for @NikhilAutar on all social media profiles.

    Not only did it inspire this meme… It also got me to tear down her argument piece by piece.

    Because pharmaceuticals, though they are HIGHLY unethical in their practices, unscientific themselves, and RICH as HELL – are not stupid.

    And in the end, despite all their evils (and yes, I DO think many are just that), they, through the research and innovation they fund, ARE the reason we’ve got SUCH amazing healthcare, and why we’ve come SO far as a society, and species over the last century.

    The way the world works, to ensure we get safe, effective drugs – a process which relies on research that costs millions (sometimes tens to hundreds of millions) to execute, literally over a decade to conduct, for a marginal, 6% chance of success IF it reaches human trials – pharmaceuticals NEED to make BILLIONS to justify their existence. To get one successful drug out there to market, it costs pharmaceuticals $2.5billion in research and development, in fact.

    I mean think about it – if I came up to you, and asked you to give me $10,000 today… and that it’d take me at least 10, maybe 15 years to get it back to you… and that there’s a 94% chance you wouldn’t see that $10,000 ever again, you’d wanna get at least $1 million in return right?

    Well, so do investors. That’s why laws are developed to allow a company that patents a drug and invests those millions into it, can set whatever price they want to and ensure themselves a monopoly – to allow for such expensive, time consuming research to occur.

    That doesn’t justify them doing the abhorent, unethical things they do to sell these products though. Pharmaceuticals spent just 16% of their budgets on research and development these days compared to 30% a few years ago. They spend sometimes over HALF on SALES. And what does sales involve? Often, the most effective strategy to sell a drug, when it’s only able to be accessed by someone who’s trained to do  so is to “incentivise” or pretty much, Bribe, doctors who prescribe medicines. There is ONE SALES REPRESENTATIVE (who are generally very well paid) FOR EVERY 10 DOCTORS in the US. That’s how lucrative this industry is – doctors are RICH. If you can invest that much into sales reps and turn a profit, that says something about the influence these untrained, not-necessarily-science-literate people have on prescribing practices!

    It not only leads to people not getting the medicine they should be getting, it also corrupts science. Studies funded by big pharma are 85% likely to show positive results, as opposed to government funded ones (50%) and foundation/not for profit sponsored trials (72%).

    The opioid epidemic IS something that’s been made a problem by ONE big pharmaceutical. And it’s resulted in over half a million deaths and infinitely higher rates of addiction in the US – and the family that facilitated it earned MORE from its sales than it’s being forced to pay out in fines. Though they may not get away with it entirely, I’m sure they’re praising themselves for making the correct business decision in doing so, the pure evil family behind this (John Oliver breaks this down brilliantly, here).

     

     

    And because this industry is much more nuanced than anything I could go into in a singular blog post – not only because it’s healthcare, and everyone and every disease is different – but also for the rules and regulations that are involved in it… I’ve decided to just focus in on one issue that consistently gets brought up here.

     

    The conspiracy theory espoused by many that Big Pharma is hiding the cure for it all. That this logistically could be done.

    That companies or individuals would forgo opportunities to make billions of dollars to do so just to stick it to the common man (including their own family members)

    And that pharmaceuticals are not able to, or not currently profiting from, therapies that come from natural alternative sources.

    And in doing so, I’ll turn it back around. If it IS indeed possible to profit from supposed “miracle cures” that so many people swear by, is it more likely that there’s a huge conspiracy to suppress something that “freedom fighting,” “woke,” alternative practitioners and internet researchers are trying to dispel, or is it more likely that a $210billion, unregulated, complimentary/wellness/organic industry has a lot more to gain by spreading this kind of doubt, and profiting the easy way – by investing everything in fancy marketing and absolutely ZERO in actual research.

     

    This is the actual trailor of “formidable mind” (formidable only because it’s one that’s never been used before) Gwyneth Paltrow’s new educational documentaries (obviously ranked less the lowest rung on the ladder that is the heirachy of clinical evidence), “Goop Lab.” I swear to God, the last 40 seconds is not edited in any way. That’s literally what they shot as a trailer. WTF?

    So without further ado, here’s how I took on this hun trying to convince me, someone who’s written papers on the evils of the pharmaceutical industry (and who’s never been paid by them or given anything free by them) and how we can improve its efficiency, that there’s a HUGE conspiracy to HIDE THE CURE for EVERYTHING by, apparently, EVERYONE.

     

    (She’d just linked me a documentary of I-can’t-remember-exactly-what to back up her assertions to contextualise things. This is something you may reguarly see from an irate me in the comments section of my Faeebook page – check that out if you have the time).

    “Movies, memes and documentaries are not evidence. Hell, even what a doctor says is not evidence. It’s the lowest level of evidence and not recommended for use at all. Why? Because anyone can say anything. The benefit of science and evidence is that ANYONE can test and reproduce your findings to validate if what you’re doing is right. Individual practitioner experience is helpful in making decisions, yes, but we don’t use it for a reason. It’s what we did 1 – 2 centuries ago exclusively, back when our life expectancy was 40.

    Without evidence, and indeed, big pharma, we wouldn’t have the drugs, quality of life, and life expectancy we have today – nearly 80 in most developed countries.

    There are numerous, independent studies done on alternative medicines which show higher rates of death in patients who take them. These are patients who take them and avoid chemo and those who take them with chemo. It’s been shown that people who use alternative medicines are more likely to avoid sane, logical options for things that are shown to improve life expectancy, due to people like you, who spread misinformation. Some alternative medicines interact with and reduce efficacy of chemos (eg high antioxidant diets stop the effect of some chemotherapy regimes which use oxidation as a primary mechanism to kill cancer cells).

     

    Why do some survive on alternative medicines though? Well,

    a) There’s a chance it could be the alternative medicine. Indeed, we should study them too.

    b) In many solid tumors, though, there’s a small to sometimes decent (depending on cancer, grade, lymph node infiltration, surgical outcomes etc) chance that surgery alone can cure it. Adjuvant chemo increases the odds of that immensely. Radiation post or pre chemo can too (similarly, some chemotherapies are given prior to surgery to reduce tumor volume to make surgeries more successful). So in some cases, some people do survive without chemo because of that. Likely, the ‘alternative medicine’ didn’t do anything there.

    c) Some tumors also spontaneously remit – there’s a famous ‘wellness blogger’  who claimed her cancer was cured by wellness but who actually had a cancer which had a high chance of spontaneous remission is disgraced, and I believe, now sued because of this.

    I talk about this, and how alternative therapies kill not only many who use them, but how they nearly killed me here – nikhilautar.com/lockemup

    Is big pharma suppressing the cure? Well, you and many people don’t seem to know how the industry works, and how research works. Yes, there is investigation done into many drugs and natural remedies – a lot of blue sky research is done by universities, funded by government or by NFPs or collaborations between these bodies. But:

    1) Big pharma, if they saw something had a relationship or correlation to success in alternative medicines, routinely will go out there and find a way to patent it and make BILLIONS from it anyways – even if it is ‘natural’. Contrary to popular opinion they can, and will make money off even “natural therapies” because their research and formulation is what the evidence shows and is approved by bodies like the FDA (and thus, the only legally available option of that kind for doctors to use to treat people).

    Numerous drugs were traditional/natural/alternative medicines which have gone on to become multi billion dollar drugs. Paclitaxel (one of the most commonly used chemos), aspirin, various formulations of arsenic (used in some leukaemias) are famous examples of natural molecules they patented the manufacturing process of or slightly changed the molecule of, patented, and sold via sophisticated pharmaceuticals sales channels. Another example where they didn’t even change the original natural substance at all is marijuana. There’s a product which is called Sativex. It’s literally just marijuana’s main active ingredients in a specific formulation and given as a mouth spray that is now making tens of millions and will maybe make hundreds of millions/year but is no different to MJ. It’s just standardized and in a dosage and formulation they’ve studied and patented. Sativex is something my doctor wanted to use in me. So if it worked… big pharma could have and probably would have made money off it.

    Sativex isn’t even approved in the US, I don’t think. If it was, it could have made hundreds of millions more. It’s currently going through phase 3 trials for various indications like multiple sclerosis, which may gain it approval for the US market.Weed is HIGHLY lucrative and being investigated thoroughly, though legal issues make it hard to study.

     

    2) There are thousands – tens of thousands of companies at any one second developing drugs for various purposes as we speak. “Big pharma” isn’t just the big 5 – 10 companies which produce a fraction of the drugs that go through the pipeline. It’s a very competitive space. And though, yes, some of the big players are extremely huge, if there was something extremely promising out there, the tens – hundreds of thousands of small – large investors/venture capitalists/bankers out there who invest and often specialize in investments like this, would have jumped on it and made billions. Big pharma companies often just acquire these companies once they’ve done the hard yards, and use their extensive sales channels to distribute drugs that someone else has done the hard work/taken the huge risk in developing (only 6% of drugs that start phase 1 studies – the first stage of human trials – go on to be approved, in a 10 – 15 year process that costs millions to do, remember?). This isn’t always the case. Big pharma only invests 17% of their budgets into R&D. The rest goes into sales and M&As etc. Their tactics are highly unethical and I do hate big pharma with a passion for that reason too.

    But without these big companies, we don’t get nearly as much funding for drugs, and we go wouldn’t be where we are today in terms of health outcomes. As recently as the 1990s, childhood mortality due to cancer used to be 85%. We’ve now flipped that, and childhood survival now sits at 85% in just 2 decades because of funded research.

     

    5. Mortality rates from childhood cancer over time; averages of countries with longterm monitoring: (a) 4 countries, (b) 17 countries
     While we’re talking numbers and feasibility, let’s also consider this… If there was such a conspiracy in place, whether it be in relation to vaccines, or “the cure to cancer” or chronic illnesses (because it’s not like there’s a huge shortage of patients to treat right now), you’d have to keep 10-15million doctors in the world, similar numbers of medical researchers,  and between 5 – 7% of the world who are employed in healthcare, all of whom themselves have children/are likely to suffer from the diseases they’re supposedly trying to suppress, silent. No single company exists which could afford, and hide, $1000 in payments to each of these individuals. Though revenues (not profits – REVENUES) from the pharmaceutical industry top $1trillion, if you were to try and pay EVERYONE in this sector off, you’d spend at least half that in keeping people quiet IF $1000 would be enough to keep people quiet. With top doctors making millions per year… I don’t see how this could ever be possible.

    3) There is already a LOT of research being done on various traditional/natural compounds on their ability to affect cancer. It’s not too hard or too expensive to do laboratory studies, which will be published in a journal somewhere if successful, and I know many studies are being funded through these pathways. Indeed, I have a few friends who’ve spent a year or two studying one or two in particular. My company will soon be automating medical research on consumers, and hopefully powering evidence based practice (sign up to help make this happen and win free stuff here) These (a) often haven’t been successful, or showed no results. As I said before, if they were so remarkable, big pharma would’ve pounced on them already, and (b) there’s a big problem in and of itself in that negative results often aren’t published, leading to people still insisting that things work, despite them being studied and showing limited to no success outside of early human, or petri dish studies. Petri dish, AKA laboratory studies, often don’t translate to clinical success.

    Remember that 6% number? There’s many reasons for that – even a gun can kill cancer cells in a petri dish, you need to get the substance to the tumor cell, figure out how to administer it into a human body, make sure its safe and 1000 other little things to translate it into a successful drug.

     

    It’s not as simple as “Hurr, durr, big pharma wouldn’t allow it” and “Big pharma is corrupt.”

    The industry is VERY complex, but without it, we wouldn’t be where we are. Without medicines, we wouldn’t be here.

    I talk about this more here. This is an essay I wrote looking into how we can continue to fund medical research in Australia which was shortlisted in an international essay competition (I believe it came in the top 5).

    And yes – there is a chance a company will bury a drug that may hurt their sales overall etc. But remember also, there are thousands of companies around the world working on these problems, not just the top 10 which make up less than 1/3rd of revenues. That doesn’t mean they do 1/3rd of the research. The majority of early stage research is done by startups or small companies which will make loss for  (you can’t make a penny until you have your drug approved) a decade until they get bought out by the bigger players, or raise a large amount to complete clinical trialing/start marketing etc their business.

    So think more deeply before making rampant claims dudes. Because you don’t know who you’re hurting when you talk about something you know nothing about.

    What are my credentials in this space? Well, not only am I a medical researcher who’s worked on a few clinical trial projects, and who’s written papers like that essay above on this topic, but I’m also the founder of a social enterprise which powers and may well automate medical research into this space.

    Not only are we creating devices (something you may have heard me talk about on my various channels) that make life safer and easier for millions – something we’ve won innovation prizes and Australian Student Startup of the Year for in the past – we’re also connecting this to an AI powered app which I think has the most potential to create change.

    Centered Around You, our app, will not only provide you with the most evidence based advice out there in the currently crowded, understudied (clinically at least) wellness space – in things like diet, exercise and sleep to start – but will also, through its inherent randomisation processes – collect large amounts of anonymised data that can prove if various interventions do measure up, and do what people expect they will.

    Our devices, including our app, is something we’re developing to be medical devices that comply by various jurisdictions’ standards. They’re currently still under development, and in terms of the app and our first sensor devices, are currently being trialed in small user p9pulations – but we’ll need many more people to jump on board and make this a reality quicker for sure! Sign up to become a beta tester or to support at the bottom of the page on CAroundYou.com!

     

    And do sign up for my email list to be updated of new posts on my blog too!


    If you’re on YouTube – be sure to subscribe to me on that there. YouTube.com/NikhilAutar

     

    How to Ensure Cancer Treatments Keep Imrpoving and Make the Drug Development Cycle more Efficient.

  • Is the Flu Vaccine Killing Tumor Cells Real, or just Hype? How Excited Should We Be? Tumor Vaccine Researcher Weighs In.

    So you guys may have seen this in your news feed recently, and I thought I’d give my $0.02 on it as a tumor vaccine researcher.

    It’s pretty exciting stuff, always, to see innovations occurring but this kind of thing is something we’ve known and been doing or decades. There are several ways in which tumor vaccines work. The difference between them and traditional, preventative vaccines are that tumor vaccines are usually THERAPEUTIC. They basically try and create specifically targeted immune cells that target your cancers through using proteins, or bits of DNA or even just killing off whole tumor cells and hoping the immune cells that are generated from cleaning out this ‘tumor infection’ we created are primed to kill your tumor cells.

    But in this experiment, they basically skipped trying to prime the immune system to a particular cancer cell or cancer cell target, and injected flu vaccines straight into tumor microenvironments, in the hope that this would spark a general immune response that would also result in cancers being recognized (as they normally should be) by the immune system.

    Often what cancers do as they develop is create a microenvironment that’s immunosuppressive – which doesn’t allow immune cells, even if they do infiltrate the microenvironment, to create tumor-specific responses. They do this via creating areas which have immunosuppressive cytokines everywhere around a tumor, and also by producing proteins (called checkpoint proteins, eg PD-L1, which cancer cells start releasing after a while, binds to various T cells to stop them from activating and killing cancers) which inhibit immune cells from attacking cancer.

    A great video that summarises how Checkpoint Inhibitors, an exciting new development in immunotherapy, work.

     

    What the flu vaccine in this case does is create an environment that’s the opposite – that’s suddenly immunogenic, where inflammation is occurring, bystander tumor cell death may be occurring and at the very least, where we’ve got less immunosuppressive factors, and more activation of your immune system, occurring right next to cancer cells.

     

    This picture shows a few of the pathways that tumors use to dampen immune responses against them. The flu vaccine, it appears, can mitigate or reduce a chunk of these!

    This isn’t the first time that viruses have been used to increase the immunogenicity against tumors. Various viruses, from Herpes in brain cancer, to Newcastle disease, are used to boost the efficacy of a tumor vaccine, and some have, like Herpes in brain cancer, been used on their own to enhance tumor cell death.

    Indeed, I’ve written up the most recent review on how to use viruses, and numerous other strategies, to increase the immunogenicity of tumor vaccines. It’s yet to be published, but will be soon – look out for that (sign up to my email list and I’ll ensure you get a copy when I’m able to release it)! It’s fascinating stuff that I chose to work on because it requires you diving DEEP into the mechanisms underlying immune evasion by cancers and immunotherapy in general.



    But though it’s great we’re seeing results of the flu vaccine working on its own – its potential to be combined with tumor vaccines is amazing. Whole cell tumor vaccines, which is the type of tumor vaccine I studied (they essentially kill off a person’s tumor – with radiation, electricity or other means – and reinject it back into your body to awaken your immune system to targets that are now clearly visible to the immune system), could definitely benefit from this boost.

    And if you also combined this with other therapies, like checkpoint inhibitors, well, we’re already seeing remarkably good results coming from such combinations.

    The great thing about these therapies is the fact that similar to regular vaccines, tumor vaccines are often really well tolerated. Other than discomfort and swelling at the cancer site, and sometimes a few more systemic symptoms, most human trials show decent results with minimal side effects. But though this is true, the efficacy of tumor vaccines on their own is often not that great compared to other therapies.

    That’s why studies like this are exciting. I reviewed the major ways in which we increase the ‘immunogenicity’ or reactivity of tumor vaccines, in my paper. Finding another way to do this that’s innocuous, and perhaps may be occurring already (as the paper points out – there is an association of people who’ve had the flu and higher survival outcomes in lung cancers), is only going to improve patient outcomes, and that’s awesome.

     

    So though this isn’t a HUGE NEW DISCOVERY – it’s still an awesome one to have been made, and provides just another reason for people to get their flu shots, which, as I talk about in this video ARE SAFE AND EFFECTIVE!

     

     

  • Climate Change. Why Greta is Right. And HOW we can convey her message even better!

    So I’m in hospital, about to get open heart surgery. That sucks. It is scary, and it could potentially kill me – hopefully not because like… doctors are really good at this stuff. 

     

    I actually started getting short of breath for the first time right as the Sydney marches were occurring. I would have gone if I could have, but unfortunately, it probably wasn’t too safe. 


    But just in case something goes wrong, and just to get this out there… I thought I’d talk about climate change 1 time, and the huge climate marches that have gone one behind a young lady named Greta Thunberg. 

     

    So Greta Thunberg is… Ok scratch that. I mean who hasn’t heard of her. But yeah… her climate strikes have created a worldwide movement, and they’re still going. It’s bloody inspiring stuff. 

     

    But Greta, who has aspergers has been the target of most of the criticism for this. When you can’t attack the message, attack the messenger. 

    But though I do think those marches are great, people also attack the protests because it doesn’t do enough. And though I disagree, I think the message and the messaging could be improved upon to create the most change. 

     

    But the fact is climate change is real. It IS a huge threat. And today I’m gonna talk about 1) how the fears that addressing climate change has to come at the expense of growth are not necessarily true. I looked into the numbers, and being green is actually already chaeper than fossil fuels and we need to talk more about that. 

    (2) How we scientists and people who understand the danger can actually get our message across, according to science. 

    3) How climate change affects our health. It is real and it’s already killing people and ecosystems now 

    And a few other things. 

     

    Now the biggest thing to talk about, I feel, is this myth, that’s pervaded by protesters too, that green energy is cheaper. Right now, government subsidies for dying industries that pollute is propping up fossil fuels. Australia spends 29billion subsidizing coal every year – that’s nearly $1200 per person  . It will only $2.8billion in 2030 (significantly more than we spend today) subsidizing renewable energies despite renewables accounting for 23.5% of energy subsidies! Unfortunately, that number is going to lower as several programs subsidizing greener, cheaper tech ends in the coming years.

    But globally, we spent $5.2 TRILLION on subsidizing fossil fuels internationally, and $88bn in 2011 subsidizing greener, better, and now CHEAPER tech!

    The US spends 10x more on oil and coal subsidies than it does education. Without these, half the industry wouldn’t be sustainable. 

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesellsmoor/2019/06/15/united-states-spend-ten-times-more-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-than-education/?fbclid=IwAR1RvfndpIaUcLyyg6DNl4zLVJ_7U_Ob0rvqylRhkJCD9vpHESr_hfDEtcM#3e266ba44735

     

     Renewables generate more than 23% of Australia’s energy generation ), yet get 10% of the subsidies fossil fuels do. 

    Hell, 82% of Aussie subsidies for green energy is somehow given to coal companies somehow. 

     

     

    And we’re at a point now where coal and oil is actually more expensive than renewable technology 74% of the time when setting up a new plant. By 2030 that number will hit 96%.  

     

    Coal and oil doesn’t create and sustain more jobs than renewables. In the case of the Adani mine, for that much investment, renewables would have created 4.7x more jobs , The Adani mine not only will employ just 800 people, it threatens the jobs of people who rely on the $30billion a year great barrier reef tourism industry. 

     

     

    This isn’t just true in one case study. Industry wide, renewables create similar, or more jobs than fossil fuels. 

     

    And another place we’re seeing progress is in green cars. Battery prices are going down so much every big manufacturer is investing in electric cars. It’s isn’t us Greenies that are causing this by increasing demand. Soon, and we’re talking 5 year soon, green cars are gonna be cheaper than current cars, to make and run. 

     

    Green energy is cheaper. It’s better. And THIS is what we need to talk about to the public. 

     

    What we SHOULD be fighting against is fossil fuel subsidies. They don’t create more jobs, they don’t produce more energy, and they’re not cheaper. 

     

    But though I think adding this message to the science could help sway more people. I also think HOW we go about messaging climate change needs to change. 

     

    I agree, right now politicians aren’t stepping up and are backing wasteful, polluting tech, probably because these big industries have powerful lobbies. 

     

    These marches are definitely helping bring awareness for this issue. I mean, like I said, Greta is keeping this up globally. People are growing more passionate about this and getting avenues to take action. Some political parties are trying to capture the young vote through this and that’s great.

     

    But if we could marry that to showing people that green tech is cheaper AND better, and show them we’re paying to keep older, crappy tech and billionaires afloat, rather than saying we need to swallow some sort of bitter pill, we may get more change. That could be more effective than trying to get people to declare a climate emergency. 

     

    This is what we need to show people. This is how we need to market this issue. And there are several ways we could do that.

    This Ted talk based on research on climate change communication shows that doomsday prophecies aren’t the best way to appeal to people. How we talk about science, avoiding things like “error, theory, likely or consensus” just doesn’t stick with ordinary people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXOu-dezdKo

     

     Doesn’t mean they’re dumb… we’re dumb if we don’t talk about it.

     

    There was another TED talk I can’t find right now (I am going in for surgery soon haha) where a lady talks about how she convinced republicans about the reality of global warming through semantics. Talking about energy freedom, something Americans love, rather than carbon pricing – or taxes – which everyone hates… makes a HUGE impact. 

     

    Infographics and memes of this stuff could help too. If it could reach the top and trickle down through society, they can create change. 

     

    But we also shouldn’t be calling people on the other side idiots. Though green energy creates more jobs, coal miners are losing jobs and that sucks. They’re fighting to keep something. We’ve gotta understand that. A big reason why the left leaning political party lost the last Australian election was some thoughtless, tasteless protesting of coal mines by hippies who took a holiday up the coast. 

    I mean if you go to someone’s hometown and block roads, telling people they’re horrible people for killing the planet and supporting coal, who do you think is gonna convince who? You, rolling your eyes at people, or Adani who, cleverly, went to locals and convinced them they were here for them, even though they’re creating 1/6th of the jobs they claimed they would.   

     

    But yeah, though I think these marches are gonna have an impact, if we don’t get this message across and start calling for energy freedom in a smarter way, we could just keep getting ignored. 

    But yeah, another thing that concerned me about what’s happening is people, particularly mental health professionals, questioning Greta’s mental health. 

     

    Now first off, bagging someone out for having Aspergers, or any form of autism for that matter, when many of the world’s brightest minds likely had it, real classy move. 

     

    But as Greta explains herself in this post which I’ll link in the description and on my blog, she actually started her activism against her parents advice, on her own, and to this day, writes her own speeches and is compelled to do more. Some people disbelieve her or criticize her because she writes like an adult.

     She’s 16. Not 6. I was writing decently eloquent essays and speeches at her age, as do many… She’d won essay competitions. She’s passionate about a cause and wants to stand up for it. 

    But this is an emergency and this is real and happening now. 

    I mean I somehow won this international essay competition and went to an agriculture conference a few years ago, and met people already trying to combat the effects of climate change right now. Right now, today, SubSaharan African farmers are getting education from organisations as they suddenly find their farming methods which they’ve used for generations don’t work with altered climates. Bangladeshi floods are decimating crops and displacing even more people in conflicts… climate change is already here.  

     

    Overall, the health argument for climate change action is huge and very compelling too. The WHO is predicting even worsening outcomes that will result from climate change in the way of furthered spreading of diseases, more migrant crises, and even extreme heat.

    Not to mention that millions, and this isn’t an exaggeration, are already dying earlier directly because of air pollution [overlay image cc14]. I’ve seen the lungs of elderly people who’ve lived in cities and those who smoked a pack a day for decades in kedavas. Often, they show similar changes.

    The health argument is HUGE for climate change too. 

     

    Now some also criticize her and the strikes as ‘time wasting’ ‘symbolic gestures’ saying that instead kids should be picking up trash, or staying in school, or learning about this and doing something about it in universities. 

     

    I mean I’d agree, working in this space can create huge change – but fiirst off, why can’t you do both, and secondly, activism and showing political will and firepower against issues may be one of the best ways to affect change. As I explained earlier though, I do think it could be done better. 

     

    But yeah, direct action, things like funding small tree planting, and light bulb changing programs (these do help but often aren’t as effective as larger investments and policy change) is something our government spent $1.7billion in funding which is resulting in essentially projects that were gonna happen anyways getting subsidized. It created minimal environmental change, while having us pay billions to help businesses upgrade stuff. 

    Plus, getting people to change habits isn’t easy. I mean maybe getting people out onto streets, and standing up for a cause is one of the most effective ways of convincing them to be greener individuals, to be honest. 

    But the best example of why trying to convince people to start planting trees is less effective than people pressure is Australia’s largest supermarkets. After years of getting a few people to change to reusable green bags, they simply started charging users 15c per bag and made it so people had to pretty much stare checkout chicks in the eye and shamefully say “I wanna kill the planet” and that resulted in an 80% drop in plastic bag use. 

    Companies respond to public pressure even more than governments. Let’s make them also take meaningful action. There are superannuation, or retirement funds, around the world that don’t invest in environmentally unfriendly companies.  Lack of investment = lower value = less money they can raise for ventures in the future. 

     

    But yeah, finally, people claim that we aren’t the problem and that we should focus on investing in India and China, the biggest polluters. Well first off, America is actually the second biggest polluter in the world. We in Australia are second, per capita. But though I agree, investing in cleaner energies there are likely good ROI in terms of ways to promote change, the same people who say this wanna cut our aid budget, something which not only benefits nations we give to, but also our farmers, as I pointed out in that award winning essay. 

     

    By investing in green tech, we also create more jobs, and startups that can scale, and progress as humanity in general. 

     

    Anyways that was my take on climate change on this episode of MedicalFactz where we seem to be commenting on less medical things day by day. Haha there’s a long playlist of those you can watch too I guess. 

     

     

     

    I’m getting surgery, probably as you’re reading this… and there’s a chance I may not be here, and a definite chance I’ll be like… in a LOT of pain regardless. Don’t worry, I’m okay with it and I’ll be fine. If you wanna learn more about me… NikhilAutar.com/books – I did get to finish my book before I go into surgery. 

    But yeah.. I’m a tumor vaccine researcher, medical student, and I talk Factz. MedicalFactz. 

     

    But yeah. I’ll be talking about Vaping soon, Cannabis and the science behind that, and my thoughts on the Big Pharma conspiracy. They actually do suck… but they also save lives… It’s a tough one. My startup is also one that’s (a) creating cool products that may help you get better sleep, and, in the future, keep vulnerable people alive and (b) one that powers medical research through machine learning. Sign up for my email list if you wanna check that out too –> 


     

    And yeah guys. Cheers.   

     

    Climate change is caused by humans source ;

    https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/human-contribution-to-gw-faq.html

     

  • Facebook is PROFITING off of ILLEGAL Medical Ads.

    I am going in for open heart surgery in the next few days…

    Before I did, I figured, I better bring this to people’s attention. As a medical device founder, and ex cancer/chronic illness patient, I figured I was one of the best people to do so.

     

    As I explain in this video, right now, Facebook is MANUALLY APPROVING ADs that are illegal by several jurisdictions. One example, a page and facility named VeritaLife, sells cancer patients false, unproven remedies and markets them as cures, targeting cancer patients in the process. They not only make medical claims without medical device/drug approval (yet alone a shred of clinical evidence) – they also do other illegal things, like using testimonials to market medical interventions.

    As I explain here, in this article on how these people nearly convinced me to forgo therapy for alternatives – people who even try alternative treatments have a 2 – 5.7x higher chance of death. They’re more likely to avoid surgery, radiation or chemotherapy (7%, 54% and 34% more likely respectively), which leads to these higher rates of death. These people are even more likely, as they will almost ALWAYS avoid proper, proven therapies. There are NUMEROUS examples of GoFundMes sending people to Mexican/Thai/other clinics, that require tens to hundreds of thousands (which is direct profit to these clinics’ bottom lines) – as seen in the video and below.

    This could be occurring because they’re located in different jurisdictions. But when advertising to Australia or the United States, I know you need to abide by local ones.

    This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are several similar ads that also toe, or step over the line, when it comes to medical device and wellness marketing that Facebook is getting wrong too (I provide some examples below).

    If you see a dodgy ad, you can report it to your local medical regulator, or advertising commission. Here’s a link to the TGA’s one for Australians, the FDA has a complaint process too which can be found here. Feel free to send anything dodgy you see to my Facebook page, or directly to my email info at nikhilautar.com or at www.nikhilautar.com/contact . I’ll compile a list of this. Hopefully together, we can stop this crap.


     

    The fact that Facebook is profiting off this COULD make them liable. Their advertising policies do ban some things (though, as you’ll see below, things do fall through the cracks) such as MLMs, which often lead to dubious health claims, as well as financially drain vulnerable populations. But there are several . So be sure to sign this petition and share it too – hopefully we can make an impact. http://chng.it/n8qQjtVyZb

    Here are a few more examples of this nonsense with proof. In that video, I show you how to report and ad to Facebook – which is also a useful way of making change.

    Blacklisted sites can still advertise on Facebook.

     

    You can’t find The Truth About Cancer on Google, because it’s either blacklisted, or had traffic diverted due to its promotion of non proven therapies. Yet Facebook approves ads for them.

    Toeing the line. Dubious, perhaps illegal marketing making health claims at the very least scam, at the most, target vulnerable populations.

    This company sells weighted blankets. They usually comply by laws, but as seen in the final ad, their claim that weighted blankets “reduce stress, anxiety and improve sleep” could be in violation of laws. They don’t have proof to back this up, and aren’t a registered medical device, but give the impression that they are by doing so.

    Faceobok pages are VERY effective marketing tools. “Lookalike” audiences target people most likely to want your product. A weighted blanket company uses another page’s profile to sell their weighted blankets. This practice isn’t illegal. But this ad, like the last panel/ad highlighted in red above, did also make the claim, WITHOUT “MAY” or DISCLAIMERS that weighted blankets reduce stress and anxiety.

    This isn’t as severe as companies like The Truth About Cancer or Verita Life, as it isn’t targeting people at immediate risk of death. But making false claims can make people with depression and anxiety suffer more. Not to mention, ‘scamming’ these populations and putting them  under financial stress is NOT an ethical move.

    MLMs

    Forever Living is an MLM – a “multi level marketing” scheme, which are designed to emulate pyramid schemes, but technically they aren’t as they skirt the law (many are pyramid schemes, legally, but are simply not being prosecuted). Facebook’s advertising policy prohibits them for advertising them on the site. Yet here I show one that’s either slipped through their cracks, or going on WITH their knowledge.

    As seen here, they also often target stay at home mums, a HUGE demographic of people who are vulnerable to their sensationalist claims of being able to make money from home, and who fall for their cultlike practices.

    Send me any dodgy ads you see or join my email list and keep up to date with what I’m doing!


    And now… Verita Life

    They make false medical claims without any disclaimers, and without medical device approval.

    Seen a dubious page on Facebook making dodgy health claims?

    Here’s how you go about reporting them.

    You can find out more about a Facebook page’s ads by clicking this button.

    Click this next – and you’ll start seeing the next screens – the ads that a page is currently running. As seen – you can find out WHERE they’re targeting. The previous page shows where they’re located – as does them obviously mentioning it in the post, as seen below.

    . 

    An excerpt from their website. They regularly make unverified health claims, but look really professional. It’s understandable how anyone can fall into their trap. They immediately try and enter you into their sales funnel, which mainly comprises representatives contacting you. As I get out of surgery, I’ll investigate this further for sure.

    Examples of advertising that’s OK

    Top/left – Dubious ‘coaching’ clinics promoting alternative therapies, though it’s doubtful if they work, aren’t illega.

    Bottom/Right – Swisse, one of Australia’s largest vitamin manufacturers DOES comply by advertising and regulatory guidelines and almost always adds disclaimers to promoted content.

     

    Thanks. I should be alright during this surgery. But in case I’m not, keep up the good fight!

  • How Juul Made $38bn While Addicting 27% of HighSchoolers to Nicotine.

    You’d think marketing or promoting nicotine would be against the law. You’d think it’d be impossible to make claims against that. But Juul has created a vaping epidemic. It’s causing as many as 27% of high schoolers to be addicted to Nicotine. And it may lead to the next cigarette epidemic too – as 47% people who used Juul products would go on to start smoking within 18 month’s time.

     

     

    Sources (there will be more);

     

    Standford study concluding Juul marketed to teens.

    http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/publications/JUUL_Marketing_Stanford.pdf

     

    Teens 16x more likely to juul. 

    https://truthinitiative.org/press/press-release/new-study-reveals-teens-16-times-more-likely-use-juul-older-age-groups

     

    How Juul is being punished. 

    https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-09-09/juul-e-cigarette-smoking-fda

     

    Juul knew about and emulated school program that big tobacco used in internal emails; 

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrickcai/2019/07/25/juul-high-schools-influencers-reach-youth-house-investigation/#285c0d833e29

     

    How Juul targeted teens.

    https://nypost.com/2019/07/26/juul-targeted-teens-by-spending-over-200k-on-influencers/

     

    47% of young adults, 4x more than usual, end up smoking within 18 months of using Juul. 

    https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(17)31185-3/fulltext

  • Facebook is Fact Checking Posts… And Anti-Vaxers Are Mad! Is this a good thing though?

    Facebook Fact Checking is a thing now. It has been for a while. Indeed, I show you the process of reporting posts/articles as false news below.

     

    Subscribe to my YouTube channel while you’re here!

    Have a read of the full press release from Facebook here – but basically, you can report an article, or a picture, or an ad, for “false news”. From here, it is categorised into one of 9 categories –

    1. False
    2. Mixture
    3. True
    4. False Headline
    5. Not Eligible
    6. Satire
    7. Opinion
    8. Prank Generator
    9. Not Rated.

    If news is deemed to be fake, which is something Fact Checkers assess, it could be restricted in its viewership, and pushed further down newsfeeds. Pages or people who share this will be seen less. Facebook expects an 80% drop in viewership to occur from this.

    While it’s good that Facebook is going after anti-vaxers and other people spreading misinformation online, this could be bad for many reasons too, as I explain in the video above.  Plus, it could also be not too effective. Shareable content gets seen most and often, people steal memes and reupload it too – something that helps no-one.

    I wonder what your thoughts are.

  • Inner City Hipster Struggles to Find New Alternative Medicine Trend As All The Ludicrous Ones Are “Already Taken”.

    Inner City Hipster Struggles to Find New Alternative Medicine Trend As All The Ludicrous Ones Are “Already Taken”.

    Click to ReTweet this article – https://ctt.ac/TK5nQ

    True struggles were finally outed for embattled Inner-western suburbs university student and influencer, Ketchup Sharmautar, as he opened up to his month long struggle to find anything ridiculous, yet natural, to post about trying to his 13,222 followers.

    “It’s not easy being me.” confessed Ketchup, “And it’s not like you can just make these up. Getting the correct balance between something left-field enough to capture attention, while still being natural enough and marketable to make a decent margin through my online store.”

    “The gold rush is over. The Good Old days of Urine Smoothies and Coffee Enemas are gone. You just can’t be original without risking organ failure these days.” He sighs.

    When asked why he didn’t just promote good, healthy advice, Keshav had this to say. “You try selling people evidence-based advice. It’s boring. Like and follower suicide.”

    While it is true that the best weight loss solutions involve a bit of work and conscious control of some dietary habits, the explosion of Instagram Stars online has fueled more and more misinformation. Cancer Researcher Nikhil Autar points out that cancer patients who took alternative medicines have a 2 – 5.7x higher rate according to numerous studies, with various factors to blame. But you don’t care about those peer-reviewed sources! Read on!

     

    “This used to work wonders, until every single combination literally ran out. How am I supposed to get validation from my friends on Facebook now? To share the official Complimentary Medicine Organisation generator, or to comment your own natural therapy – click here.

    “I tried everything. From picking through compost mounds and pulling out random combinations of fruits and veg, to using Alternative Medicine Generators, nothing worked!” exclaims embattled 24 year old star, Ketchup. “Since my amazing vitamin company that I’m-not-allowed-to-say-the-name-of-in-public-but-am-allowed-to-if-you-DM-me went belly up, I’ve actually considered selling pharmaceutical products on Instagram.”

    “I don’t have an obvious disability or anything. Apparently pharmaceuticals have enough ethics to insist on that.” scoffed the little prick, while examining his hairline on his phone’s front-lens camera. “But I’m sure I could pull a Gibson on people and call it a prank.” he laughed.

     

    Instafamous Entrepreneur, Ketchup, Pictured here, understandably disappointed by an eggless sugarless cake he was forced to plug during birthday celebrations.
    “You know how hard it is to get alternative cake that’s Vegan, Gluten and GMO free AND Organic these days??? Of course it tasted shit.”

    Pharmaceuticals are actually selling real medicines via Instagram in a desperate bid to reduce sales budgets, which now are greater than 3x R&D spend. “We saw the amazing successes of completely made up things… We figured our actually proven stuff would sell like hotcakes.

    Influencers are conflicted, however. “I’m not sure if something shown to work can be alternative enough to match our audiences.” pouts 80% of all Instagram models selling you a juice cleanse. “I mean I LOVE the fact that they cost followers thousands, as that generates large profits from me. But the whole ‘proven to be safe and effective through numerous clinical trial things’ doesn’t really sell as much as you think it does.”

    This has not been Nikhil Autar (not the Nikhil Autar who was interviewed before, or who’s in the URL of this article), I swear, and you should definitely NOT subscribe to his infrequent email list if you approve of alternative medicines being able to make whatever claims they want. PS – next time, I talk to another legit Instagram Influencer who insists his pyramid scheme shaped business is actually just a triangle on this episode of #MedicalFactz

    [email-subscribers namefield=”YES” desc=”” group=”Public”]

    If you wanna learn about that time that I was almost killed by misinformation spread by a guy trying to sell me supervitamins from his “Not a pyramid scheme because pyramid schemes are illegal and we’re still being prosecuted right now” multi-level marketing company – click here.

    To lend your voice against social media stars/alternative medicine practitioners who DON’T MAKE DISCLAIMERS THAT WHAT THEY SAY OR DO IS NOT MEDICALLY PROVEN OR SHOWN – something they legally should be doing – click here. If you wanna tweet about the change.org campaign – click here. 

    Click here if you wanna tweet this article to your followers!

    I wanna make it sure this is absolutely clear, this is NOT Nikhil Autar who wrote this and you should NOT check out his Instagram or social media accounts – @nikhilautar .

    And you should DEFINITELY NOT listen to what he says just because he’s a researcher and is pictured in a lab coat in a certified lab. Because even he’d say to fact check EVERYTHING you see via credible sources!

  • 3 FEMALE Medical Students/Doctors Shave Heads for a Cure!

    Last post:                                    My Story:                                        Next One:

    Three good friends of mine are doing something most girls can’t even imagine. They’re shaving their hair for the leukemia foundation’s #shaveforacure movement.

    They’re all budding doctors like me. In fact, as this was written a few years ago, THEY’RE ALL DOCTORS NOW (I couldn’t be prouder)
    And
    yes, you read right.
    They ARE ALL GIRLS!
    These girls are sacrificing a lot. You may think that as a guy, I can’t relate. But I do know first hand how hard losing your looks can affect someone, especially their self confidence.
    After multiple rounds of chemotherapy, and 2 bone marrow transplants I started hating how I looked, how I felt and the fact I wasn’t normal anymore.
    But I managed to get past that. I saw another way of looking at things, and have become the happiest person I can because of it.
    I no longer have to rely on my looks, my clothes or my
    achievements to be happy in life.
    And I thought, what better way to help, and thank them than to make them become the most confident happy version of themselves. And I hope this message, that I sent to all three of them, helps you too.
    You can help them along in their cause by sending them messages of support and helping them reach their goals by clicking their links below. Their stories, and the reasons why they’re doing this are all very touching and makes me proud to call them my friends. 
    This post was written years ago, so I don’t have links to their fundraising pages anymore… but you can support a friend of mine who’s going through chemo at 15, who’s recently lost her hair, but still manages to smile in the face of all this here! Here’s a picture of 2 of the 3 post shave! 
    And below, is the message I gave to them to pump them up and show them how all of this is an opportunity to grow too.

    Losing your hair is an opportunity.

    My message to these girls:

    “When I found out I had cancer, I was down in the dumps. After a while of that though, I took a step back, looked at what I was doing and resolved to see everything that had happened and was going to happen in the most positive way possible – to make sure I’d stay as happy, and healthy, going forward with my treatment.
     
    When I got told I had chemotherapy in the next few days, it was hard for me to see anything but pain and angst in my future – not only for fear of physical pain, but in the damage to my emotions and looks too. But after a while, I again took a step back and decided to look at it another way. 
    Instead of seeing my chemo as something that’d bring pain, bad looks and possible death, I decided to look at it as what it was.
     
    THE MEDICINE THAT WOULD MAKE ME BETTER.

    There’s a huge difference between the two. The difference
    between resigning yourself to death and going in fighting, with a smile on your
    face.
     
    Well, you guys don’t have to face the whole death thing like I did haha.
     
    But you will lose your looks, and, though I was more beautiful than all of you put together and thus had more to lose (obvious exaggeration there), you guys may find it harder to deal with than me.
     
    I turned that self doubt into something that’s made me so supremely self confident. And I’m gonna show you how you can do that too.
     
    When I came out of hospital I was losing hair, on medications which made me look fat, changed my skin and deformed me to looking like someone else, I started doubting myself, more than any teenage shyness/social anxiety ever could.
     
    I now see, looking back, that I was stopping myself from doing what I wanted, from being happy. And I was even endangering my health because of that. I stopped going out, stopped exercising, went out of my way to stay inside all because of what people may have been thinking about my looks. I didn’t even do that consciously. I wasn’t always depressed about how I looked, I was using my health and bad looks as an excuse to not want to do anything.
     
    But after a while of this, again I took a step back and looked at what I was doing. And I resolved to look at life another, most constructive way. What I resolved to do was simple. I told myself not to worry about what people MAY have been thinking about me and instead worry about how I could make myself, and those I cared about happy.
     
    Me before and after chemo and treatment.
     
    Today when I walk down the street, even with my skin the way it is, hair all weird, fat deposited in weird places all around my body due to Cushing’s disease – Even though I don’t look even a tenth of how good I had before all of this all – I can smile and laugh at everyone and everything on the way. Here’s how I do this in full detail.
     
    Now for you guys, the shave coming may seem hard and scary. But I know you guys can do what I did.
     
    Instead of dreading the day you cut your hair, look at it as an opportunity.
    Not only will you gain first hand experience of what it’s like to be a patient, which will help you relate and help more people in your careers as awesome doctors, you will also become the most confident, happy version of yourself in the process.
     
    There’s a huge difference between going into it scared and coming out afraid to look in the mirror, and looking at it as something that will make you the strongest, most happy person you can be.
     
    And be sure that by the time you guys do the shave, making thousands in donations along the way, I’ll make sure each and every one of you will be sitting on that chair with a smile on your face.”
    I hope this message inspires everyone reading this to look at their challenges in life as an opportunity – because that’s how you can be the happiest, most successful version of yourselves. 
     
    For me – I looked at my chemotherapy as what it was, a medicine, rather than a death sentence.
    For these girls – I’ve inspired them to see the World’s Greatest Shave as something that will inspire and build their self-confidence, rather than something that’ll make them sweat at night.

    For others going through a similar experience –> I hope this helps you to be as happy and positive going forward in your journey. If you’re a cancer survivor who’s also about to lose your hair, or go through pain, really take this message to heart. Because going into it all, looking at it as an opportunity, rather than something you can’t lose will not only make it bearable – it’ll make you STRONGER!

    For everyone else reading this:
    –> Next time you have a job interview, look at it as a chance to showcase your prowess and skills, something to gain rather than something you can’t blow.
    –> Next time you’re taking that final shot in a game, look at it as a chance to help your team win, or a chance to show off your hard work rather than a way to fail yet again.
    –> Next time you’re sitting an exam you aren’t confident about, walk in with a smile on your face, looking to pick up every mark possible rather than panicking, fretting and forgetting half the things in the exam room.
     
    If you can take a step back, and see the positive way of looking at things, you’ll be the happiest person you can be.
     
    Because everything in life is an opportunity.
    And once you see that, only YOU can stop yourself from
    grabbing them.
     
    These girls doing the shave have all messaged me back, and I’ve been surprised by their bravery, their determination, and mostly, by the fact that they all are sincerely doing their best to raise money for a better tomorrow for millions suffering with blood cancers everyday.

    They’re still scared of what’s to come, but this message has seriously helped them to see another way of looking at things and hopefully, when it comes time to shave, they’ll be happy for what they’ve done.

     

    But they do need support. Please, do send them a message by clicking the links below. It only takes a second of your time, but it’ll help these girls on their quest to help others. 
    And if you can spare some change – you can donate to them too on that page.
    But here are pictures of these amazing young women, who are all AMAZING doctors now!
    Aimee and Nadeen

                                                                           Lana