måndag 21 maj 2012
I had a request for a description of the "dremel-like" machine I was using to file down my nails, well, here it is. There is nothing fancy about it, just an old high-speed drilling machine with different tools to insert into the chuck. The 2 upper tools are the ones I use, and the one on the top does 90 % of the work, the other one is just for the last piece of the nail close to the cuticle.
It has adjustable speed, normally I start out on slow speed and increase it slightly when I get into it (and bored). It is a tedious process but I recommend doing one foot and maybe the other one the next day, or your back may start to hurt and you will not be too thorough anymore....
I would say any similar machine will do, for example the cheap ones off ebay since it requires no engine power or super speed. Get for example the one on http://www.ebay.com/itm/DREMEL-400-XPR-Rotary-Tool-With-Accessories-And-Paperwork-New-Exec-Condition-/160802040751?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item25708c6baf or try maybe this one, even cheaper: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Cordless-Rotary-Tool-40pc-Kit-Dremel-Tool-Bits-Fit-Dog-Nail-Groomer-Grinder-/170843162711?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c70bc857
If you get just any tool and it does not carry the suitable sanding tips you see in the pic (the top one the most important one, it also works just fine without the pointy tip, you can use a cylinder-shaped one), just go to your local hardware store and ask for dremel acessories and they will most likely have a big shelf with them. They are expensive, but only one is not expensive...
There you go, good luck. =)
måndag 26 mars 2012
Spambots
(The website adresses have been distorted so their google results won't be helped. Thanks to Lee for the advice)
fredag 19 augusti 2011
Just dropping by: Scholl fungal nail treatment
onsdag 23 februari 2011
tisdag 22 februari 2011
Zetaclear scam. And other stuff. And an interesting tale...
As you understand, I am not associated with any drug manufacturer and I make zero money off of this (even if I did, the number of viewers could never make me a cent) so the only 2 reasons I write is: 1. I want others to be helped with a problem with which I am more than familiar. and 2. I am annoyed with people who does not want to help but only want to make money off of people remaining unhappy, such as the people behind the zetaclear scam. If you see any ads whatsoever they are Blogger's own ads and not mine.
When you read an internet tale about somebody who had tremendous success with a nail fungus treatment you should read it, but read it with an ounce or two of healthy, sensible scepticsism (sp?). It could be completely true. It could be completely true. The statement could be truthful, but we don't know the poster. We don't know his or hers life, we have not seen their nails, before or after. If they post pics, we don't know if it is their nails.
So should we just disregard everything we read? Absolutely not. But we should make asensible decision based on what we know, and if it something that should be checked out, give google a minute and check it out.
Could there be bias? Most of us have probably sometime taken a remedy, or a drug, or knocked on wood, or done something that we really wanted to work, and made ourselves believe it did. Only in some time did we realise it didn't, and we were only fooling ourselves. If you don't know the basic principles about the placebo effect I strongly recommend you to search and find out about it. When people really, really want to be helped they tend to convince themselves that they really are being helped, and only in retrospect do they find out that they only wanted to believe, but their nails or whatever still looked the same. A nail could be 100 % infected but start to lose a bit of the yellow, and you would think it is getting better, a small change becomes a big change in your mind when it may in fact be just the normal things that go on in a nail ravaged by fungus.
Could the poster be a scammer? It only takes minutes to write a post. Could there be a manufacturer of a drug posting as a pretend nail fungus sufferer? Or a person who sells said drug pretending to be a "patient", writing a fake review? Maybe even a spambot, automatically writing a nonsensical post? We don't know. But it is good to think about the possibilities, and know that we don't know......
You are unlikely to find deliberately falsified success stories about conventional treatments manufactured by large established companies, simply because they probably would not go through the hassle. Their drugs have passed all the scientific trials, went on market, are sold in state pharmacies (where I live) and their companies make profits in millions and millions of dollars. If even a thousand people buy their drug because of a fake post it is not enough to make an impact on their overall profit. They simply will not bother. If they wanted to go on forums and blogs marketing their drugs they could do it more easily and effectively and point to all the scientific trials that showed their drug had positive results, if it hadn't, they would be unable to market it. If it hadn't, their reputation would suffer, and money would be lost in the millions.
What about smaller maufacturers that make drugs that are outside of the established medicine(which is just an elaborate way of saying "NOT proven to work at all")? They have enormous reasons to create scams, their sales could increase tenfold if marketed correctly.
These companies may often, or seldom use these methods. But it is important to know that when reading a post, and you don't know the person writing it, the poster may have had something to gain from people believing it.
If he had nothing to gain, he is unlikely to have gone through the hassle of writing a false post.
If he had something to gain, maybe he did write a false post.
The reason I pick out Zetaclear in the jungle of nonsense mumbo-jumbo nail fungus remedies is, as said before, because they make a ridiculously huge effort to put these false claims on the web. Nonyx is another one that only contains water and vinegar under fancy names, but the Zetaclear scam simply takes the price.
This post is long now and must be posted, see you later for the mentioned tale.... =)
onsdag 13 oktober 2010
Toenails
Left big toe, Amorolfine nail lacquer. Note how still-infected thicker nail has grown out halfway.
Right foot, daily application of lamisil single-dose 1 % solution, same stuff that left my fingernails 99% cured in about 4 months.
Right toenail, lamisil. Thick nail has grown out halfway. The red dots are marks from going a bit hard with the grinding machine
Will file them down again (not excited about it, it is a boring and tiring process) and continue treatment. The treatment that is least successful I will discontinue and I will keep doing what works, be it amorolfine or terbinafine. On the foot that is not doing best I will try a new treatment, not sure what yet. We'll see.
EDIT: I checked out my first post from august 2009 with pictures from then. I had forgotten how bad it was, my toenails have actually come a looong way! Both feet, although still infected, have improved enormously. Fantastic. :D
Popular and heavily advertised fungus remedies
Nonyx nail gel is manufactured by the Xenna corporation and seems to sell quite well. Here are the ingredients according to their own website:
* Deionized Water,
* Ethanoic Acid,
* Xanthan Gum,
* Fragrance
Deionized sounds fancy, but the thing is it is basically just clean water. Water that has gone through filters to remove any minerals in it, it is about as clean as distilled water but cheaper to produce in large quantities.
In short: it’s just water.
Ethanoic acid also sound fancy. Thing is: it is just another name for acetic acid. And acetic acid happens to be:
Household vinegar. So they could have just written “vinegar”.
Xanthan gum sounds really interesting and I had to check it out. This happens to be a normal, common food additive that is used for raising the viscosity of a fluid, in simple words: It is used for making stuff thicker. Kinda like gelatine in jello.
So what we are supposed to pay for here is really: Water, vinegar, thickener, all of which you probably have in your kitchen. And some perfume for the scent… 30-40 dollars for this.
I would not call this a scam since vinegar actually does clear away keratin debris buildup and seems to be able to kill fungal spores in the nail. But it is ridiculously expensive for a water-vinegar mixture and it is obvious why they choose not to write "common vinegar" on the bottle.
Zetaclear:
Zetaclear is a huge presence in the googlesphere, but as any other of these "treatments" it is not proven to be efficient in any studies whatsoever, consumers have nothing to base their opinion upon except the company's own information, and that information is false.
And there is a problem: Zetaclear is being marketed extremely aggressively and in a dishonest way. Google "zetaclear" and you get dozens (!) of URLs such as www.zetaclearwarning.com and www.zetaclearreviewssite.com . All of these are scams and it is very obvious as the so-called "reviews" are extremely shameless in their praise of the product. you can also find tests that claim to be objective but they also are manufactured to make Zetaclear look good. The internet image of Zetaclear is carefully designed to make it seem like it gets everything from ecstatic tales of success from customers to sound and sensible positive feedback from serious sources. Look around, browse around, it is ridiculous, the energy and time the people behind zetaclear has put in to create all these websites.
AND it is a homeopathic remedy. As most people know by now, homeopathic treatments are water with no active substance in it, and it 100 % unsuccessful in treating anything apart from its placebo-effect. If you think it will cure your muscle tensions, you may relax, and praise the treatment. But it is still just water, and you are fooled. They are always diluted to the point that you would need to drink the atlantic ocean full of the liquid to get even one molecule of the claimed ingredients in your mouth.
It does actually contain something though, 10 % Undecylenic Acid, which is an older substance and not as effective as newer stuff like griseofulvin and terbinafine, but at least it is there, and can be effective. http://faculty.swosu.edu/scott.long/phcl/antifung.htm
Not much more to say about it, Zetaclear is the most obvious scam of them all. On http://lee.org/blog/2009/05/02/zetaclear/ there is a discussion between people who are frustrated by this shameless and elaborate scam, drop by and comment. The company behind zetaclear are making a profit off people's desperate wishes to get well.