After I decided to blog about my experience with cardiovascular disease and the Track Your Plaque program I thought for a couple weeks about what I might call the blog.
I came up with several names along the way that I was excited about for a day or two and then tossed out.
I finally got around to looking up the word “number” in an online thesaurus and came across the word “cipher“. I knew immediately that “Heart Cipher” was the name of a blog I wanted to write because the word cipher has several different meanings that are appropriate to my writing the blog.
(image courtesy of borderschess.org along with rules for use here).
At the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the following definition of cipher appears:
Etymology: Middle English, from Medieval Latin cifra, from Arabic s?ifr empty, cipher, zero
Date: 14th century
1 a: zero b: one that has no weight, worth, or influence : nonentity
2 a: a method of transforming a text in order to conceal its meaning — compare code b: a message in code
3: arabic numeral
4: a combination of symbolic letters; especially : the interwoven initials of a name
There are a few reasons why the word cipher struck a chord with me.
In recent times, “in cryptography, a cipher … is an algorithm for performing encryption and decryption — a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure.” (Wikipedia) Having a cipher (or an algorithm) for the treatment of cardiovascular disease is what all of us having the disease are looking for right? Well, over time, I’ll certainly be writing about the various ciphers for treating the disease that I know about and understand.
The 4th meaning of cipher in the dictionary definition shown above having to do with combinations of symbolic letters is certainly applicable to this field of cardiovascular disease. Is anyone else besides me confused by the list of measures and values supposedly critical to my very life?
HDL2b, Lp(a), APO A1, Apo(a), Apo B100, VLDL, IDL, CRP(hs)
NMR, LDL-S 3GGE, CoQ10, mg/dL, umol/dL
…
After some study, I’ve come to realize that the cipher ApoB4372-4392ARG could potentially be a very big deal for my cardiovascular and life future. I’ll explain what I’ve been able to decipher about the meaning of ApoB4372-4392ARG from the little I understand about the scientific literature in a few blog posts.
Evidently these ciphers are not just confusing at first. They’re also important.
Finally, and most importantly, a blog about cardiovascular disease by me IS really a blog by someone having “no weight, worth, or influence”. I’m not a doctor, nor am I scientist. Anything and everything I write must be understood to be just some thoughts about heart disease by someone with no professionally gained knowledge of the subject. Everything I write should be viewed with skepticism.
That’s right, for purposes of this blog, I’m “aCipher“.
November 20th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
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