A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. My dad used to say that to me all the time, long before Dunning-Kruger and the internet became things. You haven’t learned enough about a thing to realize that you know little when you’re just starting. ^[1]

We tend to think we know more than we do about things, and the more complicated the concept, the more people tend to assume that they have a reasonable grasp. Without doing much in the way of learning about it, of course.

I don’t know where the lines are. I don’t know how much knowledge about a subject it takes to move from ignoramus to neophyte to dilettante to informed to expert.

The first step is curiosity. This is what I love about the internet and the cell phone – the answers to any and all questions are readily available. And I have questions aplenty.

Why do mosquitos bite me?

Mosquitos are such annoying insects. That whine as they ‘no-see-um’ about your head in a threatening manner as dusk descends is just vicious.

One wonders, why mosquitoes? Do they exist only to torture and annoy us and the other mammals upon which they munch? Apparently not.

As it turns out, mosquitos are pollinators. I hate that I know that – I retain a soft spot for pollinators. It’s how I convinced myself to warm up to wasps after a rather vicious personal attack I endured as a child.

Sure, I stepped in their nest, but still. Rude.

Mosquitoes don’t chow down on us all that often, personal perceptions notwithstanding. They eat other things, like plant nectar. The need for blood happens when they’re getting ready to have babies. Thank goodness we don’t have the same issues.

They also act as lunch, fulfilling an important role in the food web.

And while I like to complain as conversation, in truth, I don’t get bitten that often. I’m just not that tasty. My son, on the other hand, has been a mosquito magnet since birth. It’s perhaps a family thing – one of my brothers shares the same fate.

They’re a treat for the palate, it seems. Unfortunately, they react significantly to the insult. My son’s welts used to swell up to the size of my thumb. Happiness is antihistamines.

My problem is that I don’t leave the bites alone. I blame the location. The mosquitos that get me seem to nibble almost exclusively on my ankles.

Though “nibble” is perhaps the wrong word to describe being stabbed by a girl mosquito with her proboscises. And it is only the women – quite a few mosquito species need a blood meal for procreation.

I liked Wendy’s Frosty’s, myself.

The reaction

The degree to which the bites itch, swell, and generally annoy us depends on our reaction to the mosquito saliva that gets injected as it’s drinking. The degree to which one reacts also depends on if the mosquito species is new to you.

Who knew there was more than one type? Mosquitoes all look the same to me, from a speciest point of view, but apparently, there are more than thirty-five hundred types. That’s a big family.  

Reunions would be crowded if they lived for more than a week.

The best way to stop the itch is to not get bitten – wear protective clothing or repellant spray if you’re out and about. It’s good advice – bites can come with more than just itch.

Mosquitoes are also vectors of disease. They pick up an illness from their blood meal and pass it on during the exchange of fluids at the next one.

Diseases like Zika, West Nile, and malaria are spread via mosquito bites, to name but a few. None of these is a good time.  

Prevention is best, but not touching the bite will help minimize itch. This is advice I never follow. A bit of hydrocortisone cream can also help. My mother swore by calamine lotion, but all it ever made me was pink.

Ice can reduce swelling and calm aggressive itching. Ditto for oatmeal baths.

And don’t forget bandages. Physical barriers are great preventative tools. It’s hard to scratch what you can’t get to.

How do radio tuners work?

My countertop stereo doesn’t get AM radio signals. It’s a pretty basic device – it only has space for one CD at a time. And while I can connect to it via Bluetooth, it’s older, and thus grumpy about it. But not getting AM signals on it was a surprise, and not a good one.

I didn’t check when I bought it, I just assumed it would have both. Why wouldn’t you have both?

I discovered the problem one morning when I thought to tune in to the traffic report. No dice. No AM 730.

I could install a radio app on my television or smartphone, but one, those are only as good as the stations that sign up to use the service, and two, the apps tend to crash.

I should’ve kept my old stereo from my university days. It was extra old-school: it had a dual cassette deck as well as a CD player, and a telescoping antenna attached at the back. Happiness is a decent antenna.

Radio waves

Antennae are the catcher mitts of the broadcasting world. They pick up the electromagnetic waves that broadcasts are made of. Spinning the dial provides the focus.

You can’t see them, but radio waves are everywhere. We’re swimming in high-frequency electromagnetism twenty-four-seven. We rely on radio waves for much of modern life, and certainly for modern communication.

Cell phones, police radios, satellite television, and garage door openers are just a few of the things we use radio waves for. That last one makes me very happy.

A great deal of information can be transmitted along radio waves. Having specified frequencies to broadcast on keeps the information distinct. Assigned frequencies are why I don’t get country music when I tune into my alt-rock station.

A radio is a relatively simple device made up of only two parts, a transmitter and a receiver (though each has an antenna, so technically it’s four parts). Both the transmitter and the receiver use antennas to radiate and capture radio signals.

The receiver is adjusted to the desired frequency by way of a tuner. Tuner modulation helps you pick the signal you want out of the soup. This specificity of selection is made possible by the resonance principle.

When you tune the radio, you make changes to a circuit in the receiver, so that it will only resonate with the frequency you select. You match the frequency of the specific broadcast so that the transmitter and receiver are connected in parallel.

Without tuning and resonance, all radio waves would be received at the same strength making it impossible to distinguish between any of them. It would make getting my daily dose of The Offspring a challenge.

The resonator provides focus. It makes the signals useful. It takes the modulations to the broadcasted wave amplitude and frequency and converts them back into sounds.

What is psoriasis?

When I was nineteen, a sore developed on the top of my head, right at the crown. It was a lumpy, itchy spot, and it peeled off in large, hard sheets. It kept growing back though, and I developed a few more on the rest of my scalp.

It lasted for several months; no doubt made worse by my inability to leave the rough patches alone.

I went through several cycles of this before it occurred to me to seek a diagnosis. I thought it was just aggressive, non-flaking dandruff. Psoriasis was not the droid I was looking for.

Dandruff is a skin condition that mostly affects the scalp. It causes skin flaking and itchiness, and it’s treated by regular washing and brushing. Antidandruff products also help.

Psoriasis, on the other hand, is an autoimmune condition that results in changes to the skin. It’s characterized by overgrowth and a lack of flaking. It’s also a chronic condition; that first attack is seldom ‘one and done.’

Sufferers will generally deal with multiple flares over their lifetime, and while one can treat the symptoms, there’s no cure as yet. It is not, however, contagious.

Autoimmune diseases

An autoimmune disease is a condition in which the body’s immune system attacks itself rather than foreign invaders. The immune system gets confused regarding threats. It thinks the call is coming from inside the house, and reacts accordingly.

But tossing around immune responses when you don’t need them leads to a very bad time.

Autoimmune diseases come in a variety of flavours – they number more than a hundred – and women are affected more than men, though the reason for that is unclear. Work is ongoing. It doesn’t help that studying women is relatively new.

Autoimmune diseases also tend to run in families.

Some autoimmune diseases are exotic, and only experienced by a tiny percentage of the population. Guillaume Barré, for instance, a rapid onset condition of muscle weakening and paralysis affects only about one in every one hundred thousand people.

Other autoimmune conditions such as diabetes, fibromyalgia, and psoriasis appear in the population with more frequency. Psoriasis affects about five percent of the population.

Psoriasis types

The immune overreaction in psoriasis triggers skin cells to reproduce too rapidly without any corresponding increase in sloughing. The skin cells build up into scaly patches called “plaques” that the body struggles to shed. The plaques itch and irritate.

Plaques are dry, raised skin patches covered in scales. They’re not attractive, though I find them vaguely interesting. When my psoriasis flares, I think about getting a microscope.

Plaque psoriasis is the most common type, making up about eighty percent of all cases, but it presents in other ways as well.

With pustular psoriasis, non-infectious, pus-filled bumps grow on the plaques. The pustules scab, seep, split, and bleed. It’s not a good time. There are various sub-versions of pustular psoriasis, but it’s broadly broken into generalized and localized subtypes.

A friend of my brother used to get psoriasis on the bottoms of his feet. Walking during flares is a problem for him. I’m grateful it hasn’t affected my hands and feet (knock on wood) (psoriasis and eczema are different skin conditions), but I get both plaques and pustules on my head.

Nail psoriasis causes pitting, splitting, and colour changes on the nails of the hands and feet. It can show up in people who haven’t experienced a psoriatic flare anywhere else. The nails start to crumble, and separate from the nail bed.

Nail changes can also be a sign of psoriatic arthritis.

For most people, the geographic spread of psoriasis is quite small, though in severe cases plaques can connect over larger areas. The plaques don’t shed, and excessive scratching will cause tears, bleeding, and lesions as the flare progresses.

A layer of petroleum jelly on my back plaques helps soften them for exfoliation. This is harder on the scalp – hair gets in the way.

Prevention and treatment

No one knows what causes someone to develop psoriasis, but there’s an awareness regarding triggers.

Stress can set off a flare. Smoking can as well, though I quit that behaviour a few years back. Wine makes it worse for most, and I’ve been (over)indulging there of late.

Treatment aims are two-fold: stop the skin from growing so quickly, and plaque removal and repair.

Treatments can be topical applications (such as the aforementioned Vaseline), oral and injected medications, and light (lasers). I’ve tried all save oral meds, and I’ve skipped those so far only because I take quite a few meds already. I worry a bit about my filtration systems.  

A combined approach is usually required. Making sure I’m hydrated and not making things worse with dehydrated skin is also something I attend to.

And then there’s mood. Calm helps. Anxiety does not. Getting back to a more regular mediation practice will help me with the latter – I’m tightly wound these days.

Stress is a significant trigger when it comes to autoimmune conditions.

I shampoo daily with medicated shampoos when psoriasis is attacking my scalp. I like Tea Tree or tar products for the shampoo, and an antidandruff conditioner also helps things along. Ditto frequent brushing and scalp massage.

I also increase my vitamin D consumption. Vitamin D does much good across various metrics, and people in my geographic location tend to be deficient. The west coast of British Columbia is often light-deprived.

None of the fixes are instant – psoriasis flares simply take time to subside. If I can get myself to stop picking at the plaques and turning them into sores, and if I follow all the good advice, it will still be four to six weeks before it cycles down.

But, no time to waste. Psoriasis flares also have comorbidities. They amp up depression, they aggravate arthritis, and they make my body remember its fibromyalgia. None of which sounds like a good time.

Autoimmune diseases – I’m not a fan.

Beware the self-styled expert.

Knowledge is well and good, but unfortunately, humans are susceptible to being sold. That’s how people with little knowledge about a subject come to be seen as experts. That’s how things like Fox News happen.

Presentation and salesmanship matters. For instance –

People assume I know what I’m talking about. It’s in the way I speak. And, I often do. As I’ve mentioned, I like learning things. But sometimes, when they ask, I’ll flat-out lie. Make up a set of facts that have nothing to do with reality.

I usually add a smidge of the ridiculous, leading to questions. I do love a good joke. But not everyone who presents themselves as an expert is trying for humour. Not every attempt to mislead is benign.

Question everything.  Especially that radio section – I’m definitely still a neophyte.

References

• About Mosquitoes.
• About Mosquito Bites.
• What Purpose Do Mosquitoes Serve?
• How Does a Radio Work on the Principle of Resonance in an LC Circuit?
• How Radio Works.
• Psoriasis.
• How the Dunning-Kruger effect works.

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[1] Dunning-Kruger refers to a type of cognitive bias in which people believe they are smarter and more capable than they are.

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