We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
This phenomenon seems to be not unusual in patients over age 55. It seems to be an unmentioned risk of surgery. I have seen several cases of long-lasting (? permanent) cognitive setbacks after surgeries, so I am glad that people are exploring the topic.
Is marriage about happiness? Peterson is a realist with the tragic view. "If you think marriage is all about your happiness, you are a princess living in a gingerbread house."
"Voluntary" death, and the grey zone around it, have always gone on. Generally, it has been between doctor, patient, and family. "Time to let him/her go."
The idea of dying "when God wills it" is mostly obsolete, because the patient often would already have died on God's time. The reason such topics have become an issue is because of the power of medicine to sustain life, however terminal, painful, humiliating, or degrading. Fortunately, today we have things like DNR and hospice, but the old-fashioned way of "Let's make him comfortable" with extra morphine might have been (or still is) more humane.
I found it interesting that almost half of patients who were prescribed physician-assisted death never used it. That means to me that many just want to have some control over their fate, over pain, etc. Makes good sense to me. Nobody wants a lengthy death consisting of weeks of gasping for air, writhing in pain, and pooping in bed.
Much or most of what you know about health, nutrition, and medical practice is already obsolete, but it can take years for new information to be accepted by doctors, hospitals and, God knows, the government.
It's a truism that all knowledge is transient. I sometimes catch myself thinking "I can't believe they used to believe...." before I call myself on it and realize that in fifty years people will be saying that about us.
Dr. Semmelweiss possibly did more for women than any other person in history, or at least in medical history. He is a stand-out in the medical pantheon, but acceptance of his ideas was extremely slow and he was thought a nut and a crank by the medical establishment.
His life was a sad one, and short. I suspect he died of neurosyphilis, known then as General Paresis of the Insane. He might have gotten syphilis from the many prostitutes he tended to, or from prostitutes who tended to him.
... what most “self-esteem” advocates fail to understand is that other-reliant “self-esteem” is a contradiction in terms. Far from building self-esteem, many of the counselors, teachers, and parents of yesteryear obstructed its growth by getting kids hooked on a spiritual I.V. drip of external validation. Instead of self-esteem, this created a dependence on “other-esteem.”
It is no wonder then that today we are faced with the (often exaggerated) phenomenon of young, entitled, high-maintenance validation-junkies in the classroom and the workplace. Their self-esteem has been crippled by being, on the one hand, atrophied by the psychic crutches of arbitrary authoritarian approval, and, on the other hand, repeatedly fractured by the psychic cudgels of arbitrary authoritarian disapproval.
These people are playing with fire. It is political, but probably enabled by ignorance. The countless crazy fantasies of youth can be sort-of interesting to some, but adults are supposed to be the ones with intact reality-testing. Grown-ups with decent reality-testing are the only buffers against the really hard and dangerous realities of life.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of kyphosis, aka "hunchback"). It is due to a lazy, slouched or slumped sitting posture with the head too far forward and upper back too rounded, but in time it continues as a lazy habit while standing and walking: slightly hunched and with shoulders forward.
In medicine, this posture has been nicknamed "Scholar's Hump" and "Dowager's Hump."
It is bad for your back and terrible for appearance - adds years to your appearance. You can try to strengthen postural muscles by sitting tall with your shoulders back. You have to sit on your "sitz bones," aka ischial tuberosities" and not on your behind. You also have to get rid of the habit of neck-leaning, peering forward or downwards.
Another help can be a straight-backed chair, if you use the back of the chair and resist peering forward.
Another corrective could be a lumbar support cushion or pillow. They keep your spine in a natural position and remind you to sit properly.
If your postural kyphosis is bad enough, add some exercises to attempt to strengthen your core to make it easier to correct it. The best are planks, deadlifts, and weighted squats.
Ideally, you should be focusing on engaging your postural muscles all the time, regardless of what activity you’re pursuing. Whether you’re working out at home or at the gym, standing in line at the grocery store, or sitting at your desk working, you should make it a point to keep your abs pulled in, your shoulder blades rolling down the back so that your chest is up and forward, and your spine in one line.
I doubt the answers to their curiosity will be found in a lab, but they persevere. That article takes almost all of the sexiness out of the topic: What do women want?
Humans are bio-psycho-social critters, too complicated for labs.
There are (at least) two kinds of tantrums: irrational volcanic explosions and manipulative tantrums. Spanking does not work for the former, but works for the latter. The problem is that the kids know to mainly have the latter in public places, like in supermarkets. They know what they are doing.
What works best for older kids, like college students with tantrums?
Lust, infatuation, True Love, erotic intoxication, romantic passion - call it what you will. We all know that new passion is exhilarating and agonizing too. Humans will do unwise things to taste that fruit. From a scientific standpoint, this is caused by a little devilish prankster named Cupid who gets a kick out of making people crazy.
It is obviously a normal and frequent occurrence, and it is powerful stuff. How is a bourgeois Christian person to handle it when Cupid's arrow strikes in a way which complicates life? How to break free when you have feelings for the wrong person.
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
Well, of course it does. In fact, everybody's take on everything and anything reveals things about who they are. All of life can be viewed as a projective experiment but Dr. Rorschach thought that perhaps a standardized ambiguous stimulus might be clinically useful.
I think his hypothesis was correct, but only in the right hands. The challenge is in the interpretation of the responses to projective tests.
Are projective "tests" useful? I think they can be interesting, but not necessary.
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.
I think it matters in life to stay trim and strong, whether pre- or post-menopausal. You can be more athletic, agile, energetic, sexy, cheerful, and able to avoid many of the physical consequences of being overweight from plantar fasciitis and arthritis to breast cancer.
Plus it makes life more fun and you can wear better clothes. Except for those blessed with the right genes (physical and psychological), most people have to take deliberate responsibility for their level of fitness and, in the modern world of sedentary ease and carb abundance, it can be a challenge if you have an impulsive rather than obsessive-compulsive personality.
Is getting fat partly a socio-cultural phenomenon? Of course, but that's a more complicated subject than I wish to take on on Mother's Day. What about the middle-aged men making themselves pudgy? That's another sad topic too, but I believe that it is part of the duty of a wife to keep her man fit for life even if she "lets herself go". An obvious risk in that, though...
Post-menopausal women do have a greater chance of gaining weight even if they have been fit and shapely beforehand. It should not be used as an excuse, but the changes in sex hormones do alter fat storage and, seemingly, metabolic rate. Why nature designed it that way is a mystery, but nature has little need for post-menopausal females. Society needs them, but Mother Nature does not.
Generally speaking, post-menopausal women need far fewer carbs and less food in general than in youth almost entirely regardless of activity level. Another change is that the physical distribution of fat (from excess carb intake) changes in unhealthy and unattractive ways (unattractive in our culture, anyway).
Around 25% of medicare and medicaid spending has to do with complications related to overweight-connected diabetes. That is huge but likely underestimates overweight costs because arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, and many other problems are also related to or caused by being overweight. For that, and related interesting medical cost info, A Provocative Health Care Proposal
Some of these operations lasted 18 hours or more, earning Hendren the nickname of Hardly Human -- a term used endearingly by friends, and fearfully by some of the house staff he trained. But his patients never called him that: with gratitude, they called him a healer.
It is no use letting kids do whatever they desire unless you have first educated their desire. The first job of the parent is to educate the child’s desire: to instill a longing for something higher and better than video games, TV, or pornography or social media, whether that something be found in science, in music, in the arts, in nature, or in religion.
Whether kids or adults, "natural desires" are usually fairly stupid and useless, but the "better" things are more challenging. If you ever saw an adult playing a video game, you know what I mean.
...and other topics, but I found the part about his course most interesting. It's easy to see why he is such a popular teacher, but the course does not seem particularly academic. It's more of an inspirational sort of program about how to grow up, face life with strength, and things like that.
Peterson has an interesting and unusual life history for an academic. Myths appeal to him. I think he is a capital C Christian.
It's easy for me to see how it could be helpful to young people. He is a natural teacher or preacher. He is smart as a whip and a fearsome debater.
Out of consideration for the delicate sensibilities of Maggie's readers, I have refrained from including a photo of advanced Toenail Fungus
These unpleasant, common, but generally not-dangerous fungal infections (except, for example, in diabetics or the immunosuppressed) are caused by several species of fungi which thrive in the moist, confined area of shoes. Those fungi are basically everywhere. You do not need to be a barefoot gym rat to pick them up, but most people probably pick them up around pools, gyms, locker rooms, and the like. If you never go anywhere, you probably won't pick these things up.
Put plainly, these are examples of your body trying to rot while still alive - but that applies to any bacterial infection too. Both are associated with the same several fungi, often with Athlete's Foot progressing to Toenail Fungus (aka Onchymycosis).
Athlete's Foot can be just a little itching, but it can get nasty sometimes. It is manageable or even curable with anti-fungal creams used diligently.
The Toenail Fungus infection is more of a problem, because topical treatments have trouble penetrating the nails to attack the infection in them and beneath them. They are not just cosmetically problematic but can be painful because of the distortion of the nails. Toenail infections are the bread and butter of Podiatric practices, partly because of their chronicity. People sometimes think they just have one or two toenails affected, but usually all of the nails have some of it.
Some people just decide to live with it and let a Podiatrist attack it when wanted, but what you want to do for treatment is to treat any Athlete's Foot and then decide to go for a topical nail treatment (sometimes effective, like Jublia Topical), Toenail removal (ouch but most effective) with oral treatment with Jublia, oral Jublia alone, or Laser treatment (of uncertain effectiveness, unfortunately). Jublia is very expensive.
I have always been interested in how psychological disorders/aberrations spread, too. Mass hysterias, fad diseases, and the like. In the 1990s it seemed as if half the hysteric women in New England believed they had chronic Lyme disease and there was no way to dissuade them. Before that, it was Chronic Fatigue. Both are now old hat and no longer in vogue.
I have been reading about the sudden upsurge of trans children. What is that about? It seems rather unusual, and disturbing.
There is no settled science on dietary fat and cardiovascular disease except in the case of the familial hyperlipidemias.However, in those cases, the hyperlipidemia is generated by the liver far more than by diet. The liver is the main controller of blood lipids.
A high-fat meal, or any meal, produces a temporary surge of blood lipids just as a high-sugar or high-carb meal produces a surge in blood sugar. That is normal.
While it is established that arterial disease is related to inflammation in arterial walls, the cause of that is elusive. The known risk factors for arterial disease seem to be smoking, overweight, diabetes, familial hyperlipidemia, and sedentary life style. Almost forgot the biggest one: age. Avoid ageing at all costs because it has a 100% mortality rate.
We are far from settled science with cardiovascular diseases. In recent years, we were advised to eat margarine not butter. Now advised to eat butter and avoid margarine. Now advised to eat olive oil. It's all a shot in the dark and it could be that diet has little or nothing at all do do with it.
The problem with government medicine is that medical care becomes a government job. How much time must modern physicians spend filling out forms? The administrative mantra today is "If it isn't documented, it didn't happen."
If my political history serves me, people in mental health found serious diagnoses for Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 2, but none for Johnson, Clinton, Obama, or Hillary. Is there a pattern here?
Instead of name-calling, I'd like to see some thoughtful policy critiques but I won't hold my breath. Trump Derangement Syndrome (DSM 5006.09) strikes again. We must be kind to the sufferers.
The most common postural problem with desk-sitting and desk-reading is Postural Kyphosis (one type of 
Hermann Rorschach worked on an interesting experiment: provide people with an ambiguous stimulus (an image) and find out whether their take on it reveals anything useful about them.
How often do you hear people say "I never lost 8 of the pounds I put on with my first kid" ? Clearly women do not need to be menopausal or post-menopausal to gain weight. Just look around at all the fat American women.