More on viruses... resources

Something about viruses that makes them quite interesting is how they can only survive when there are cells they can infect. They cannot live on their own and so survive through using cells of living organisms. This makes them so powerful because they attack the fundamental structure of a human body: the cells.

Some great resources and articles on the topic:


Virus or Parasite

An article on how much humans are compared to viruses and the promise of it becoming instead a symbiotic parasite.

Even Viruses Catch Viruses

Aha! Fierce fight of the most apt.

Viruses, the Unknown Frontier

A high school student's still to come research on viruses. Useful on its simplicity to explain what a virus is and how it reproduces.

And of course... wikipedia on viruses, cytokine storm, influenza

What moves viruses?

How fascinating...

I was reading about the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and how 'experts' fear it becoming a pandemic. Will it?

I find the topic of viruses and bacteria (micro organisms in general) so interesting. How is it that they infect some while not others? What makes someone prone to infection? What is the interaction between these and the cells in the body?

Adenovirus, from wikimedia commons

Sure, these questions can be answered from the medical perspective, but I want to go beyond these answers. For example, I was reading about the etymology of the word Influenza. Wikipedia says:

"The word Influenza comes from the Italian language and refers to the cause of the disease; initially, this ascribed illness to unfavorable astrological influences. Changes in medical thought led to its modification to influenza del freddo, meaning "influence of the cold". The word influenza was first used in English in 1743 when it was adopted, with an anglicized pronunciation, during an outbreak of the disease in Europe...."

This is where things start to become interesting. It says that the original word captured the cause of the disease as the result of 'unfavorable astrological influences'. Did I just read 'astrological influences'? [Smile.]

In the past I used to think that getting sick as a result of a viral influence was like having something parasitic come into my system and lodge there. Like a piece of dirt that can be removed with proper disinfectants. However my views have changed over the years. Sure, a virus is something that infects the body and, when it overpowers the balance systems in the body a person becomes sick. However I couldn't say that a virus is just an 'organism' [1] that comes and stays. Most viruses are highly contagious. The survival fight they launch is fierce. Their power is not necessarily individual but as a group. When they start to infect and replicate they can decimate large populations of people. There are forces behind these little buggers. And these forces are usually quite sharp and intense. In fact, if you have a close look at them, they are only made of information [2]. Look at some of their shapes... they carry something. Some even are extremely beautiful: geometrical forms so tiny and 'perfect', ever ready to attack and infect.

It has been my perception that outbreaks like the one in Mexico are often a sign of something else. Some sort of force (and here, please avoid interpreting my words with some tint of paranoia). I think there is much more to see about viruses and their 'power' than what has been explored so far. What moves these forces behind virus outbreaks? What makes certain people more prone to be infected than other people? Not all viruses infect everyone and maybe these predispositions can hint some answers as much as the fact that there could be astrological forces linked to these outbreaks. After all, despite scientific skepticism, astrology was considered an important influence in many, many ancient traditions - that have shaped what we are today. [3]

Virus are moved by forces that interact with our physical bodies. They can change and modify them through their infection, to the point that malformations and growths can occur. Have a look - if you have the belly for it - at this man's hands and feet infected with the human papilloma virus. Who needs genetic engineers when there are viruses to do the job?

Perhaps that is what Sri Aurobindo meant in the quote I last posted and as long as every cell in the body stops responding to 'whatever forces' except the One Force, then we are all prone to becoming sick.

The question remains, what force is behind this outbreak in Mexico? (Or any other outbreak for that matter...)

[1] The idea of viruses being organisms is still debated as they don't have the ability to metabolize food and lack their own cellular structure.
[2] Comparing the action of computer viruses to 'biological' viruses can be quite interesting from this perspective.
[3] I tend to believe that in the not so distant future astrology will be re-considered as an important source of information for some of these so called skeptics.

Sri Aurobindo on illness

A quote:

"The human body has always been in the habit of answering to whatever forces chose to lay hands on it and illness is the price it pays for its inertia and ignorance. It has to learn to answer to the one Force alone."

Something to aspire too. Definitely.

The universe inside - thoughts and emotions aside

I've been a little sick. Nothing too important, but a hassle when you are traveling, which I have been. Suddenly there is no energy to do what you want and your body claims rest, rest, rest.

On the other hand this has become such an opportunity and a fascinating way of delving into the physical body. The sense that there is something in the body trying to work out itself, trying to come back to balance. A fight that goes on between the good little bits and the not so good ones.

There is so much to see in regards to the physical body. Most of it remains unseen, unnoticed.

Isn't it amazing that all the time there is something going on inside us - thoughts and emotions aside? There is something happening to every single person in this planet: all these interactions happening in our cells to hold some structure that allow us to think that we are individuals... And we are vaguely aware of it. We go on, doing our thing, living our lives and these systems working their magic in the background. Unless something goes wrong, we don't have to think about how to breathe, how to send the air to the lungs and then tell the blood how to extract the CO2; we don't have to think about extracting the nutrients from our food (if any) and send them around to be optimized; we don't have to tell our left leg 'move after the right', so we can walk....

It's just amazing. There is a universe happening inside every second. Movements in all sorts of ways doing all sorts of things with such precision (most of the time) and wisdom. How is this possible?

Wow.

Food, health and freedom

Food is one of those things that most people tend to underestimate. It is so much part of being human that we either give it too much importance or completely neglect it.

Throughout my life I have been changing my diet. As a teenager I would eat anything, (including lots of chocolates) and I would gain or loose weight accordingly. I think I ate a bit too much though.
Later in life I became vegetarian (only cheese and eggs included), then I changed to the blood type diet (according to which I was incidentally supposed to be vegetarian) and so on.

With all these said, there have been times when I am so immersed in whatever I am doing that I completely forget to eat. There have also been times when I have found eating such a weird experience. A particular time I remember, working in a company that had a dining room for their employees, I sat there with my selection of food and looked around the room. Everyone was munching away, sharing stories (or gossip) and I thought 'how strange this is that we humans have to put some foreign matter into this thing called mouth to be able to live'. Bizarre.

As time passed by. I lost quite some weight and muscle (probably as a result of lack of exercise). Weight that I have not been able to put on. I decided to go back to eating protein. I started with chicken and fish and every now and then sea food (it was too strong for my palate). Red meat has not been an option, unless I really, really crave it, which is almost never.

The thing is, food is a vital part of inhabiting a human body (unless you are an ultra advanced yogi). However as time has passed I realized that instead of following some external diet, I need to tune into my body and see what it needs. This way it is possible to eat whatever one wants instead of following a set of external rules. The problem with this approach for some people is that they are so out of tune with it, that it is almost impossible to know what is the best thing to eat.

A question I ask myself often is, what would it take to be free of the food slavery. My answer to this has been, let the body eat what it needs. Freedom... !

Lately I have been exploring the idea of trying the raw foods diet, despite the fact that Ayurvedic doctors have advised me to eat cooked food. So in the process of deciding if this is something my body needs/wants I have been exploring what is available on the net. My main intention is to do a thorough detox as I feel I have accumulated all sorts of things that are not supporting my body's well being.

A list of resources to come.