Celebrities with Hepatitis C
Natalie Cole was recently diagnosed with Hepatitis C.
According to her doctor:
“Natalie has had a terrific response to her medication and is now virus negative,” Woolf, the Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA/Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, said. “This gives her an increased chance of cure.”
More Celebrities with Hep C:
Katie Price aka Jordan gets cold sores too
According to NOW online - Peter Andre, Jordan’s husband doesn’t kiss her when she has cold sores and admits that she gets them when she is working hard and feeling run down.
I wonder what Jordan takes in order to get through her cold sore spell. That’s probably a good idea not to kiss her on the mouth directly but I have to wonder if Peter Andre already has type-1 Herpes in his system and doesn’t know it. After all, it’s not really included in proper STD testing now, is it..
Isn’t she a gorgeous woman? Her husband is handsome but not as good looking as she is. I was reading on that site that I found that she’s talking about getting boob job #5. I don’t think she needs to get any more boob jobs, do you? I think the twins look find just how they are and I’m sure Peter Andre would agree.
Filed under Yoshi2me's Buzz | Comment (0)New Stuff Added to the Site
I have a couple of announcements to make but before I do that I sure hope everybody is having a wonderful summer.
First on the list is a brand new story called “Break Free” posted on the Inspirational Stories pages..
Next we have a brand new H Pal representing the area around Albany, New York..
Since we added a brand new H Pal for new york that meant I got to put together a home page for H Pals representing New York..
What that means is that anybody can be an H Pal even if it looks like your state is already represented. We can always use more people as there is a lot of ground to cover.. ya know?
You can find the rest of our H Pals here..
We’ve got quite a few states represented as well as people from other countries. If this is something you think you would be interested in doing then send me a couple of paragraphs along with a photo of yourself in jpg format. The more the merrier!
Some of you might have attempted to reach me through my feedback page on the site. Well, I had that offline for awhile with a sign up letting folks know that I would be back soon. That is why some of you H Pals haven’t received anything lately from people trying to contact you. Thankfully we still have the Shut Up N Post! forum along with Picking Up the Pieces going where folks can ask questions. Now that I’m back from my little break we’ll probably all start to get e-mails again. Here’s where the feedback page is..
Well, that’s all I have for now.
Best Wishes,
Angela
aka: Yoshi
Break Free!
The information you have the internet is cool!
I have lived with herpes since I was 15 years old. I am 34 years old and I have allowed it to dictate my life and run me! You can just about imagine my life!
Well, I am in the process of getting healing for my soul through the work of the Holy Spirit and he led me to get on the website to look for support and through that I found your site.
I am currently married, but we are separated (a decision I allowed my low self-worth to make)— You can imagine what kind of marriage that was: HELL!!!
Anyway, I am in the process of not letting herpes nor the devil tell me HERPES is all that I am…Cause I am more and will be more than the thing that plagues my body….
Anyway, thank you so much for your courage….
I don’t have that kind of courage right now. Only a few people know in my life, of course my husband, who uses it against me whenever he can find a free moment…ha ha…Thanks again and I will get on the computer more often now….
I AMFREE
Filed under Yoshi2me's Buzz | Comment (0)Is this a chance to finally kill the herpes virus for good?
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday they may have found a way to flush out herpes viruses from hiding — offering a potential way to cure pesky and painful conditions from cold sores to shingles.
They discovered that a mysterious gene carried by the herpes simplex-1 virus — the one that causes cold sores — allows the virus to lay low in the nerves it infects.
It does so via microRNAs, little pieces of genetic material that regulate the activity of many viruses, the researchers report in the journal Nature.
It may be possible to "wake up" the virus and then kill it with standard antiviral drugs such as acyclovir, said Jennifer Lin Umbach of Duke University in North Carolina, who worked on the study.
"We are trying to go into animal trials," Umbach said in a telephone interview.
The Duke team is discussing a potential collaboration with Regulus Therapeutics LLC, a joint venture between Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc and Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc that specializes in microRNAs.
Herpes viruses cause permanent infections. They head straight to nerve cells, where they stay latent for the life of an animal or person, often causing periodic outbreaks.
Herpes simplex 1 or HSV-1 causes cold sores, HSV-2 causes genital herpes, while varicella causes chicken pox and returns in middle or old age as herpes zoster to cause shingles.
Acyclovir and related drugs can suppress symptoms but only when the virus is active.
IMPOSSIBLE TO KILL
"Inactive virus is completely untouchable by any treatment we have. Unless you activate the virus, you can’t kill it," said Bryan Cullen, who oversaw the research.
Umbach said that for still unknown reasons, viruses infecting different neurons in the same body activate at different times, making it impossible to eradicate an infection.
Her team found that a gene called LAT controls microRNAs that turn off other genes in the virus.
"The presence of these active microRNAs keep the virus dormant," Umbach said. "When the virus is activated by stress like UV (ultraviolet) light or a wound, production of (other) genes goes up."
Then LAT is overwhelmed and unable to keep the virus in check. It wakes up and causes an outbreak.
A drug that would turn off the microRNAs could drive the virus out of hiding and allow all copies of the virus to be killed with acyclovir, she said.
"You would have one cold sore but you would get rid of it," she said. Curing something more painful, such as shingles, might be a little trickier, she added.
One class of drug called an antagomir might work, Umbach said. These chemically engineered oligonucleotides are short segments of RNA that can be made into mirror images of a targeted bit of genetic material — such as the herpes microRNAs. They would attach and "silence" the microRNA.
The potential market is large. An estimated one in five Americans have genital herpes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, while 100 million have the HSV-1 virus that causes cold sores.
The CDC estimates there are a million cases of shingles every year in the United States alone.
Awareness & Advocacy Discussion
This article is used strictly for educational purposes. It’s not often that I repost them so when I do it just means that I think they are worth checking into.
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International Herpes Week on hold
According to the International Herpes Alliance (IHA) website, "Due to funding issues, there are currently no plans to run an International Herpes Week Campaign during 2008." Fingers crossed that the IHA secures funding to continue its campaign soon.
Filed under Yoshi2me's Buzz | Comment (0)Tea Tree Oil for Skin Problems
Although I have never suffered from herpes, I’ve been a sufferer of eczema for years. I’ve been to doctors that has used ultraviolet treatment, steroids, and topical creams.
My sister suggested that I use dead sea salts on the infected area. The salts have stopped the itching, but that’s it. I tried tea tree oil on the infected area, in within 1 week of applying in the morning, at lunch and after my night showers, the eczema is totally gone with little to no scarring!
I would recommend tea tree oil to anyone with any skin problems.
Filed under Yoshi2me's Buzz | Comment (0)HERPES TONIGHT begins June 5, 2008
Life Lessons, and Lesions, on Stage. See What Develops.
West Coast premiere following successful New York debut!
Preview June 5th
Opens June 6th, through June 24th, 2008
(Los Angeles, CA) (April, 2008)… The Immediate Theater Company is pleased to announce the West Coast debut of the uproarious solo comedy HERPES TONIGHT!, coming to the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood beginning June 5.
About The Show
HERPES TONIGHT! began with the experiences of writer/actor Corey Moosa - experiences he had not seen dramatized elsewhere.
Moosa, whose acting credits include several noted productions in New York, explains that “every day, thousands of people are diagnosed, and sometimes misdiagnosed, with sexually transmitted diseases. It’s really scary. Also really funny.”
Originally entitled Herpes: A Corey Story, the show had a successful premiere in 2007 at downtown Manhattan’s HERE Arts Center. Hailed as “a touching and hilarious one-man exploration of the diagnosis that changed everything” (nerofiddled.net), the show was embraced by audiences inside and outside the STD self-help community.
During the course of the eighty-minute performance, Moosa plays more than a dozen characters, including his Iraqi father, several members of a New York herpes support group, and Kurt Cobain. In addition to the wealth of medical information conveyed in the show, Moosa shares the advice of doctors good and bad (”He told me to Google it,” he says in astonishment, recalling the initial diagnosis), and the wisdom of personal experience (”I’m here to tell you it is possible to adjust your opinion of yourself and the world you live in to accommodate any number of viruses”). Arriving at the conclusion that “shame is not an STD,” he wrings pathos from comedy and comedy from pathos.
“Now, I’m not an expert in much,” Moosa tells his audience at the top of the show, “but I’m pretty smart when it comes to this stuff. I’m also really knowledgeable regarding popular television of the past forty years, which is totally unrelated to herpes, but crucial to my personal history.” Indeed, HERPES TONIGHT! is laced with references to the pop culture universe in which Moosa grew up. He explains the behaviors of viruses by comparing them to Star Trek characters, and identifies his ex-girlfriends as “Kathie Lee Gifford” and “Kelly Ripa,” to protect the innocent.
About the Writers
Moosa credits his collaborators with making the show work. Playwright Brian Shoaf, who co-wrote HERPES TONIGHT! with Moosa, helped him weave his experiences into drama. Shoaf’s previous plays, which have been seen at UCLA’s New Play Festival and the Seattle Fringe Festival, include Joist Wrote Ulysses and Girder Wrote Faust and This is Calm. Shoaf’s Conspirators was produced by the Immediate Theater Company, under the direction of José Zayas, who staged Herpes in its original incarnation.
Immediate Theater Company
The Immediate Theater Company (Best Theatre Company, 2005, New York Press) has won acclaim for such productions as The Germans in Paris and Strom Thurmond is Not a Racist, and Zayas was named one of nytheatre.com’s “People of the Year” in 2007. The sound effects and slide projections used in Herpes were designed by Noah Diamond, another frequent Moosa collaborator, who cast him in the political satires Burning Bush: A Faith-Based Musical and Moral Value Meal.
About the Team
Performed by Corey Moosa. Written by Corey Moosa and Brian Shoaf. Lighting design by Matt Richter. Sound, graphics, and direction by Noah Diamond. Original direction by José Zayas.
HERPES TONIGHT! runs June 5th through June 24th, 2008. Preview is June 5th, with opening night June 6th. Performances are at The Lounge Theatre at 6201 Santa Monica Blvd. in Hollywood, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM. Tickets are $20 (preview night $15). Running time is 70 minutes with intermission and concessions available. Allow time for street parking.
For reservations, call (323) 960-7776 or RESERVE ONLINE:
www.plays411.com/herpes
Other places you might like to check out are as follows:
1.) Herpes Help
2.) Social Support Networking Alliance
3.) Shut Up N Post! STD Message Board
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