Tuesday, June 30, 2009

More Speculation!
Bonnie Fuller (Huffington Post Blog)
The Real Reason for Michael Jackson's Death? His Secret Fatal Illness
Was the King of pop really felled by prescription drug use and abuse ? Those who speculate on this theory could be dead wrong! Instead, Michael could very well be the victim of the lupus he suffered from.
Did you know that Michael Jackson, was the victim of a rare auto-immune disease called lupus? Yes, he was according to his Wikipedia biography and as it turns out -- lupus sufferers frequently die in their 40s and 50's from sudden heart attacks, caused by atherosclerosis. Let me explain.
Lupus causes inflammation in many of the body's organs including the arteries of the heart. The inflamed arteries then cause cholesterol to deposit on their walls.These deposits cause scarring, and the whole process primes lupus victims to have massive heart attacks, which are often asymptomatic beforehand.
Mild lupus sufferers, like Jackson, are actually more at risk for having a fatal heart attack, according to Dr Michael Lockshin, a rheumatologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. The reason for this is because people who have a mild case of lupus are less likely to take any of the medications which would prevent inflammation of the organs.
Now if you don't believe that Jackson had lupus consider this: vitiligo, which Jackson also suffered from, resulting in the famous pigment loss in his skin, is also an auto-immune disease. Coincidentally, vitiligo and lupus are often diagnosed in the same person, explains Dr. Lockshin. In other words, it would not have been unusual for Michael Jackson to have suffered from both ailments.
Here's another key fact: African-Americans are four times more like to be lupus victims than Caucasians. However, lupus is far more common in women than men. Still men, do get it.
So would prescription drug abuse have exacerbated a case of lupus? Only if demerol was injected intravenously, would it also have damaged Jackson's heart, according to Dr. Lockshin. Demerol injected into his muscles would not have played a deadly role and neither would drugs like Xanax and Zoloft.
Lupus also frequently causes inflammation and pain in the joints, which could explain why Jackson was sometimes seen in a wheel chair. This might also explain why Jackson had not performed in years. Maybe it wasn't just the stress of the child molestation charges and trials that forced him to put his performance career on hold. Maybe, he was simply unwilling to share his medical problems with the public.
Until a possible lupus-induced heart attack felled him, the King of Pop may have preferred to preserve the illusion that he was still, at least in some ways, invincible!
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