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        New Message Board Archives >> Medications, Treatments, Therapies 2003 >> The FLASH score for medicines
        
(Message started by: Flash on Mar 18^th, 2003, 6:10pm)

Title: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by Flash on Mar 18^th, 2003, 6:10pm

I have devised a new way to rate medicines. I don;t intend that it be used to a high degree of accuracy, but I do believe it to illustrate which substances are most effective.

The FLASH rating is thus:

(absence of symtoms achieved in hours - prevalence of symptoms experience in hours) divided by the quantity of medicine used in grams, multiplied by the total number of hours prior to resumption of normal symptoms.

So (as[h] - ps[h]) / md[g] x t[h].

For instance lets take me ingesting 60mcg of LSD back in 1993. I achived a remission of 11 months with no symptoms displayed. During that period I would have expected 2 month long episodes with about 6 hours of pain on average each day.

Therefore

as[h] = 360 hours
ps[h] = 0 hours
md[g] = 0.00006 grams
t[h] = 8030 hours

therefore

(360 - 0) / 0.00006 x 8030 = 48 180 000 000 (otherwise known as a very high score).

Lets take someone that has ingested 2 grams of dried mushrooms and achieved a 5 day remission with 1 hour of shadowing each day. Assume they would have expected 3 x 1 hour attackes each day during that period.

(15 - 5) / 2 x 120 = FLASH score of 600.

Now take the example of someone who has taken 200mg of Imitrex (haven't checked that this is corect dose but it's just an example...) and aborted all attacks for 4 hours before normal symptoms returned. Assume that they would have otherwise have suffered a 1 hour attack during this time.

(1 - 0) / 0.2 * 4 = FLASH score of 20.

In all anything with a positive score is good!!!

Thought please...

Would like to see people start using this as an objective rating of the effectiveness of their medicine. If that happens then we can collate results in a survey and provide FLASH scores averaged out over many medicines.

Flash

Title: Re: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by kissmyglass on Mar 19^th, 2003, 6:53pm

Ya lost me right after "the FLASH rating is thus..." ??? ??

Lotsa luck,

Kev C

Title: Re: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by eyes_afire on Mar 19^th, 2003, 9:42pm

I have taken verapamil in the past. It was effective. I have taken shrooms in the past. It was effective too. But, on a per dose basis, right now I would have to say the shrooms were more effective. Simple as that, that's what he means. Thanks Flash for introducing clusterheads to viable alternative treatment options.

Title: Re: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by firebrix on Mar 20^th, 2003, 1:52am

YES! Thank you Thank you Thank you Flash!
firebrix

Title: Re: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by tommyD on Mar 20^th, 2003, 10:53am

Flash -

Cool! Very cool. I like this idea. But...

I also see a flaw. There is a an "apples and oranges" problem. LSD is extraodinarily potent, producing signifivcant effects at very small quantites. Few medications are useful in does measured in micrograms, so it is hard to compare to medications used in dosages of hundreds of miligrams. Even shrooms. Psilocin will show effects in the tens-of-milligrams range if I recall. Don't remember off the top of my head, think it was 10 to 30 miligrams?

I think there needs to be a way to adjust for the broad range of dosage sizes...perhaps by somehow working the ED50/LD50 ratio into the equation. (ED50/LD50 is the amount of an average effective dose compared to the amount of the average lethal dose.)

Now just how that might work, I don't know. Have been thinking about it, but so far have only managed to confuse myself. But I think it might make for a more valid comparison.

Or perhaps it could be simplified by not considering dosage amounts at all, but simply the number of doses of effective size compared to hours of relief...

I'll keep thinking about it, but I make no promises...I may just manage to confuse myself further...

Very interesting concept...

-tommyD

Title: Re: The FLASH score for medicines
Post by Flash on Mar 21^st, 2003, 5:55am

Yes tommyD - I agree ED50/LD50 is a better way doing this.

(as[h] - ps[h]) / ED50[g]/LD50[g] x t[h]

As you stated the size of the dose isn't particularily important. What does count is how close the effective dose is to a dangerous dose. I guess paracetomal is fucked then :))

Flash