I use drugs

by Jay Cross on August 31, 2010

I admit it. I couldn’t live without my daily drugs. Every day I take 5 to 7.5 milligrams of rat poison. Yesterday I had a long talk with a fellow rat poison user. That’s 3-(alpha-acetonylbenzyl)-4-hydroxycoumarin for you chemists out there. (More info here, if you want to learn how it works.)

You don’t pop rat poison without a few side effects. I’ve experienced swelling, bleeding from a cut that does not stop in the usual amount of time, nosebleed, unusual bruising, headache, dizziness, purplish skin, chills, numbness, and weakness. I have not experienced “painful erection of the penis that lasts for hours” but maybe my dosage if off.

I told my pill-popping pal that big pharma was coming up with new and safer drugs for us. He wanted to know more.

Lo and behold, the business section of this morning’s New York Times had a big article on our drug. They must be jumping for joy at Bristol-Myers Squibb, for this may bring in $10 billion a year from users like me:

The company’s experimental anticoagulant drug apixaban worked better than aspirin in preventing stroke and systemic blood clots for patients who have a heart rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, according to new study data presented on Tuesday morning at a cardiology conference in Stockholm.

This site is morphing into my personal site. If you’re looking for my thoughts on working smarter, informal business, and accelerating time-to-performance, go to the Informal Learning blog.

Another article in today’s Times explains why cardiologists prescribe this awful drug.

The standard treatment for people with atrial fibrillation is warfarin, a powerful 60-year-old drug that originated as a rat poison. Warfarin, a generic drug also sold under the brand name Coumadin, is highly effective but it has drawbacks.

Because too high a dose of warfarin can lead to bleeding, patients taking the pills need regular blood tests to determine how fast their blood is clotting. Meanwhile, the potency of warfarin can fluctuate if a patient takes common prescription drugs like antibiotics or if patients start eating more spinach or other foods rich in vitamin K.

Or if you drink alcohol one day and not the next. Or eat too many Brussels sprouts.

The bottom line here is that imbibing rat poison reduces the odds of having a stroke. It’s the lesser of two evils. I have a heart condition called a-fib.

Here’s a great overview of A-fib, the heart disorder that makes my risk of stroke (if I don’t take my rat poison) five to six times higher than yours.

The biggest danger from A-Fib is stroke. Because your heart isn’t pumping out properly, blood can pool in your atria, particularly in the Left Atrial Appendage. Blood clots can form and travel to the brain causing stroke.
Researchers estimate that 35% of patients with A-Fib will suffer a stroke107 (unless treated).
The American Heart Association states that A-Fib is a major cause of stroke, especially if you’re older. It estimates that 15% of strokes come from untreated A-Fib. An A-Fib stroke is worse than other causes of stroke. Half of all strokes associated with atrial fibrillation are major and disabling.168 23% of A-Fib stroke patients die, and 44% suffer significant neurologic damage. This compares to only an 8% mortality rate from other causes of stroke.132166


There is also a danger of “silent” A-Fib strokes where stroke effects aren’t evident but may appear like attention deficit, forgetfulness, and senile dementia.72 Silent A-Fib is very common. Up to 30% of A-Fib patients are unaware they have A-Fib.140 25% of those who suffered an A-Fib stroke had no prior diagnosis of A-Fib.141,142

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Anticoagulant rodenticides were first discovered in the 1940 s and have since become the most widely used toxicants for commensal rodent control. Rodents poisoned with anticoagulants die from internal bleeding, the result of loss of the blood s clotting ability and damage to the capillaries. Prior to death, the animal exhibits increasing weakness due to blood loss, though appetite and body weight are not specifically affected. Because anticoagulant baits are slow in action (several days following the ingestion of a lethal dose), the target animal is unable to associate its illness with the bait eaten.

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The Daily Plague

by Jay Cross on August 30, 2010

Enough already! Following another wonderful, vacation day, I peak in my Tweetstream and find this:

    sparkandco The Holly MacDonald Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @GuyKawasaki @JaneBozarth @hjarche @jaycross @web20classroom
    1d ago via Paper.li

    mpetersell The Mike Petersell Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @jaycross @hjarche @SportsCenter @RapidBI @JaneBozarth
    1d ago via Paper.li

    mrch0mp3rs The @mrch0mp3rs/the-beard-trust Daily is out http://bit.ly/… – featuring @JaneBozarth @hjarche @jaycross @busynessgirl
    1d ago via Paper.li

    sumeet_moghe The @sumeet_moghe/Lnd-People Daily is out http://bit.ly/… – featuring @jaycross @C4LPT @hjarche @JaneBozarth
    1d ago via Paper.li

    larshyland The Lars Hyland Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @valdiskrebs @DavidLammy @jaycross @gsiemens
    1d ago via Paper.li

    charlesjennings The Charles Jennings Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @jaycross @fdomon @gsiemens @work_matters @metoffice
    1d ago via Paper.li

    Neillasher The Neil Lasher Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @jaycross @C4LPT
    1d ago via Paper.li

    chris_saeger The chris_saeger Daily is out http://paper.l… – featuring @jaycross @C4LPT @gsiemens @hjarche
    2d ago via Paper.li

    colmmu The @colmmu/education Daily is out http://bit.ly/… – featuring @jaycross @gsiemens @edballsmp @kriley19 @C4LPT
    2d ago via Paper.li

and so on.

Do yourself a favor. Don’t bother to read http://paper.li/jaycross/internettime  There’s a better use for bits.

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Walk, work, think

August 30, 2010

Steve Bordley emailed me this morning to point out that… A new study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience has shown that walking will in fact enhance connectivity within brain circuits. Additionally, the study found that walking also improves cognition and combats the decline in brain function normally associated with aging. Walking, in effect, keeps [...]

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Jay’s blogs fork

August 29, 2010

Ten years ago I was writing several daily blogs: In 2001, these joined together to become the Internet Time Blog, one of the earliest blogs about learning: Five years later, writing my book on Informal Learning, I added a blog of the same name. The Informal Learning blog started somewhat idealistically: “This goes back to [...]

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Google’s soft underbelly

August 29, 2010

I’ve been using Feedburner, an online service that’s now part of Google, to offer RSS subscriptions to my blogs. Four months ago, the RSS feed associated with the Informal Learning Blog started to go haywire. I went to Feedburner to investigate. I clicked Edit Feed Details and entered my RSS feed. This returns an error; [...]

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Jay’s stocks and flows

August 28, 2010

Increasingly, posts about learning will appear in the Informal Learning Blog. More tentative, experimental, and personal items will show up here on the Internet Time Blog. Insights and pointers on learning, corporate performance, research. Informal Learning Blog Left brain dominant A group of us contribute our best thinking on working smarter. Internet Time Alliance Lots of [...]

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Robinson Jeffers, no photographs allowed

August 28, 2010

This afternoon, I read the poetry of Robinson Jeffers while relaxing in the bath. An hour later, I arrived at Tor House, the stone home he built by hand here in Carmel. It’s the inspiration for some of his poems. I thought I’d sit in the garden and write a few. That wasn’t allowed, but [...]

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More Ivan lllich and me

August 28, 2010

I find silent PowerPoint presentations (except for those that only use words) about as useful as a Rorschach ink blot. Heaven only knows how many silent PowerPoints decks have screwed things up because people read their own meaning into them to fill the void. For example, that’s a real psych-test blog above. See any weird [...]

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Changing Cultures in Higher Education

August 27, 2010

Last week I received a nice surprise in the mail, Changing Cultures in Higher Education (Ulf Daniel Ehlers and Dirk Schneckberg eds.) Springer. Congratulations, guys. 610 pages for a mere $126. It’s good to see that Springer is maintaining its sense of humor. Don’t get me wrong. The message is cool: More and more educational [...]

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Ivan Illich and me

August 27, 2010

Ivan Illich Forty years ago, Illich wrote about the need for learning networks, peer-to-peer webs, and learning objects. We have yet to catch up with his vision. In preparing a presentation I’ll be delivering with Paul Pangaro in Brazil next month, I’ve just re-read Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society. Deschooling Society (1971) is a book that brought Ivan [...]

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