AlphaMale

A day at the beach

Life getting too serious?

Maybe you should take a day off and just go to the beach. You'll have more fun if you take this book.

Thanks to the AlphaNetter for this, too.

What I learned in school today

An Alpha in Dalton, GA, was walking around the mall. Walking for exercise, hooked up to his oxygen, as he does three times a week.

He met a medical student who asked what medical condition he had. The student was intensely interested. He asked a lot of questions.

Later, he and two other student doctors visited the Alpha to see his copy of the Big Fat Reference Guide and ask questions.They'd studied Alpha-1 in medical school "and thought it was so rare that they would never meet an Alpha."

• How wonderful: an Alpha could enlighten these three young doctors.
  

• How discouraging: what's taught in medical school.

The story is from the AlphaNetter, a newsletter for AlphaNet clients.

Fried lungs for your asthma

Say you have asthma, like me.

You'd welcome some major improvement.

How'd you like the muscles in your airways cooked?

Canadian doctors used radiofrequency waves to heat smooth muscle inside the lungs, destroying about half the muscle mass. The 16 asthmatics in the study all showed improvement over two years, they say in a medical journal.

I wouldn't let these doctors within 10 feet of me. There are many safe, low-cost, non-invasive ways to improve asthma. I use several and my breathing is much better than it was 20 years ago.

Dr. Joseph Mercola has a hugely popular web site. He annoys me a lot (which means I often disagree with him). But on this issue, I couldn't agree more.

Yes, traction!

Do you have an impossible goal?

Extremely important, but so hard that just thinking about it wears you out?

Try this one:

Only five percent of people with the most severe form of Alpha-1 know they have it. It's vitally important to find the other 95 percent. The tiny Alpha-1 community has been working on it for 15 years.

It's tough. Often feels like nothing ever changes.

And yet...

The Florida Targeted Alpha-1 Detection Program is about five years old. It seems a lonely, feeble effort. Too big a job, too few resources.

Yet, four years in a row, I've talked to more Alphas and known more people on augmentation therapy in Florida. Each year the numbers go up.

We certainly aren't in high gear. But we DO have some traction.