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.
When I discuss fitness and conditioning, I use the categories of Strength Training, Endurance Training, General Athleticism Training, and Nutritional "Training."
Naturally, different regimens address each fitness category with some specificity but with some overlap. To get stronger, you have to stress nerves and damage muscle fibers by moving weight. For endurance training, 20 mins of intense interval exercise seems to beat out longer low-intensity aerobic cardio. All categories feed into General Athleticism which is most peoples' real goal - Fitness for whatever life brings - but we address it specifically with calisthenics and by playing recreational sports and other outdoor vigorous activities.
These categories of activity use different combinations of energy systems. Animal bodies have three energy systems, each with different purposes.Just as nerve pathways can improve with stress and challenge, cellular energy systems can be bolstered with stress. When you think about it, a fair amount of stress is good for both body and soul.
Your energy systems are the Phosphagen System, the Gycolysis System, and the Aerobic Oxygen System. In a balanced Conditioning regimen of Strength, Endurance, and General, all three energy systems adapt to being stressed and, ideally, exhausted. Your body will build up those systems, over time, to meet the challenge. That is called "more energy."
For one example, the Phosphagen metabolic system can be stressed or depleted by ten heavy ball floor slams or by a 30-second full-out sprint. That system is for quick bursts of maximum power.
This site, The Three Metabolic Energy Systems, explains the basic physiology of the three energy systems with a discussion of how each is best stressed (but unfortunately that discussion only addresses things like running rather than the other exercise categories which also make specific demands on the 3 energy systems).
Exercise science is clear that the recovery phase from intense exercise is when the benefit is obtained.
Intense exercise (meaning resistance) is designed to damage and deplete nerve and muscle and to stress bones. This is why I only do each of the big exercises (deadlifts, barbell squats, pull-ups, bench press, rows, military press) once per week. (nb: Those exercises are for women too.) 5 sets of each after a light-weight warm-up, increasing weight, once a week. I do 3 of those exercises one day, 3 of them 3 days later. That is enough frequency for a strength-building or maintenance program. More is not always better.
Like most fitness-oriented people, I do auxiliary strength exercises too but those are not so essential, like arm exercises and core exercises for my tennis and my skiing. Those more focal exertions do not need much recovery.
It is generally accepted that most cardio and calisthenics do not need more than a 24-hr recovery. Hybrid programs like Crossfit deserve a couple of days of recovery unless you are age 18-25. My middle-age fitness regime is 2 days/wk of heavy weights plus a little calisthenics, 2 days of cardio intervals (25 mins only), and one or two days of calisthenics (maybe 45+ mins), depending on my sports schedule. I play lots of sports but recreational sports, and even things like mountain hiking, are not really exercise. They are for fun even if you play hard.
Recovery days for a strength-building program can and should include cardio and calisthenics, but no heavy weight on the movements which need repair.
Good recovery entails a decent amount of sleep and hydration, and an above-normal protein intake in a normal diet. Your muscles, nerves, ligaments, and bones will be grateful for that reward.
I am all in favor of tuning into the feelings of another person when it makes sense to do so. It is an act of intimacy, and builds connection with others. However, I believe that most expressions of empathy are phony. We all want to appear virtuous and caring.
It's a hot topic, mainly because it has been so politicized in recent years. As with the study of climate and weather, or research into some diseases and approaches to them, politicization is no friend to a pursuit of truth. When addressing data directly can be career-damaging or socially-damaging, scientists tend to be as human as everybody else.
During my career in mental health I have seen the societal normalization of things that I had been taught were perversions. Except for pedophilia and sexual sadism (so far), former perversions tend to be viewed as normal variations. It has been fascinating to watch these societal shifts. It has also been fascinating to watch the once-simple term "gender" shift into an almost hallucinatory array of meanings. It seems to me that cultual shifts, in this case, have led medical attitudinal shifts, rather than the reverse.
I could think that a third might be fat, though, aka "overweight." Being overweight is a bad idea because it slows you down, damages your joints, and plays a role in some diseases such as breast cancer and heart disease. Also, it is widely viewed as unattractive and as a sign of poor impulse control in Western cultures rather than a sign of prosperity as it is in some.
Donald Trump "fat-shamed" his employee "Miss Piggy" for being "an eating machine." Mr. Trump, who is fat, was attacked for that by Mrs. Clinton - who is fat and getting fatter. As for fat-shaming, even your doctor will do that to you when you visit.
I do not view being overweight or obese as a disease. They are physical "conditions." All behavior has physiological consequences and correlates, which does not make them diseases. We over-pathologize things these days in an effort to let people off the hook for their behavior or, sometimes, in search of an insurance code. In my view, if you do not mind being fat, that's fine. Your choice as long as you accept the consequences. Being underweight frightens me more, medically.
I'll briefly discuss two physiological correlates of overweight and obesity. First, satiety. A sense of satiety is managed by chemical signals from the gut to the brain. The signals are slow to inform you that "That's sufficient." Thus fast eaters do not get the memo in time to stop. Furthermore, some people have weak signaling, or just learn to ignore the signals. Heavy-duty eaters also have expanded stomachs which are less-readily satisfied and always seem to have room for more. Recreational eating is what I call that.
I think many people seem to ignore or misinterpret all sorts of physiologic signs and signals. Also, hedonism is, by definition, fun.
My second physiologic correlate for today concerns insulin. An excess of carbs (more than you need to stay alive that day) gradually causes "insulin resistance." That is not diabetes, but just an adaptation to the amount of carbs a person consumes. It is discussed here. It explains how carbs effect energy levels and fat accumulation.
I recently stopped by a "Different Sexualities" seminar to see what people were talking about. One of the provocative topics was whether pedophilia was a sexual orientation. Some said yes, and some said it was a latent tendency in all males. Another topic addressed rape and sexual violence. Some felt it was a sexual preference, and some claimed it was latent in all males. Sex addiction? There was no agreement about whether it even exists but it was a consensus that the Western bourgeois nuclear family was an unnatural and possibly "unhealthy" artifact of culture, economics, and male power. Also discussed were fetishes (cross-dressing, item fetishes, S&M, exhibitionism). It was made clear at the outset that anything LGBT was normal and would not be discussed to keep the meeting "safe." Whatever. How they could be sure that there were no uncomfortable pedophiles in the room, I do not know.
I can not claim to be able to measure how much "polymorphous perversity" or ordinary perversity might be latent or only partially expressed in a given human, male or female, so I just listened. What struck me most, and discouraged me most, was how politicized it all became, and how quickly complex psychological issues became subsumed under feminist rubrics of "patriarchal hegemony" and "oppression." These do not enlighten, they are just cant.
Contrary to some popular impressions, sexuality is not the central topic in modern Psychology, Psychiatry, or Psychoanalysis. It is just one aspect of who a person is and, generally, we are interested in all aspects of a person.
Neoteny refers to the persistence of juvenile traits, or the retardation of development. For example, it has been speculated that the domestic dog was bred (genetically engineered, as it were) as a neotenous wolf - one whose brain never matures and retains a puppy-like, submissive and thus a trainable, pliable, and friendly mentality. (All domesticated dogs were bred from the wolf, from the Chihuahua to the Huskie.)
Similarly, Stephen Jay Gould speculated that humans may be neotenous chimpanzees. On a bad day, I am quite certain that I am one. Desmond Morris wrote about it.
In fact, the human brain, face, and body demonstrate numerous neotenous traits, the lack of heavy body hair being the most obvious.
The grey matter of the human brain, in particular, shows retarded development even when compared with other apes and primates. Gene Expressions shows the data. (The transcriptome which is referred to is the messenger RNA (mRNA) which, in a timed manner, transcribes the messages from the DNA to make things happen. It's a miracle that it works.)
It is fun to speculate about what the neoteny of the human brain might imply for human development, socialization, learning, and psychology - but it's all speculation. As I have said, the human brain is an ongoing experiment.
There are many sorts of depression. Some are mostly situational (eg loss or failure), some are mostly chemical (eg Bipolar Depression), some are mostly psychological (eg a big blow to a fragile ego, or self-contempt either deserved or undeserved), etc, etc. Many or most, it seems to me, are mixtures.
In my view, most people with a depression need some sort of psychological intervention or help, and many benefit from medicine unless the medicine completely sweeps things under the rug that ought to be addressed. Depression is a non-specific phenomenon, like pain. It is, in fact, mental pain. Sometimes, mental agony.
Interesting article about Ketamine ("Special K" as it is sold in nightclubs). If it's one more tool in the toolkit, great.
The Prof is hopelessly naive about human nature. In looking at human behavior, one must always be alert to the aggression and power-seeking. There is no sensitivity or hypersensitivity in these kids. They are manipulative bullies, "crybullies" as they are called. It has been stunning for me to watch real educated adults take these infantile tactics seriously or to be intimidated by them
Or perhaps they don't take them seriously, but are happy to find an excuse to do what they themselves wanted to do anyway. In any event, there is no innocence in the PC circus.
My response to that is that, if infantile or regressive behavior is rewarded, you will get more of it. That is regardless of age. If adult behavior is rewarded, you will get more of that. And as the man said, higher ed is not day-care.
That is nonsense. There is nothing redeeming about acute and agitated psychosis. Indeed, we do not usually commit psychotic people to hospitals unless they present some sort of danger. The US is not the Soviet Union. In the US, there are many quietly psychotic people out there refusing treatment or help. That is a tragic thing, but it's a free country.
Another tragic fact is that our ability to treat schizophrenia is very limited. We can usually help with acute symptoms and provide various support systems if they are accepted, but we can not fix the disease, which is chronic. The good news is that we are now excellent at treating the psychoses of Bipolar Disorder. With cooperative patients, it's as close to a cure as is possible.
A thorough review of the history of medical care in America along with the legal rationales for government regulation of a variety of industries: Medicine as a Public Calling
Had medical care become an industry? A single industry? A monopoly? It's complicated, and like all areas in which government gets involved, it is more political than logical. As FDR said about Social Security, "This is not about economics, it's about politics."
At issue, in part, is whether medical care is a commodity. As my practice goes, it is far from a commodity. After studying the article, I began to wonder whether similar arguments might be equally-applicable to the legal and the accounting businesses. Even to the plumbing business.
- As we enter flu season, it's a good idea to take the flu vaccine around now. I can possibly save you from a few days of lost work, and if you get it at CVS they will give you a 20% discount card for all the Halloween junk and other junk you buy there that day. Flu shots do not always work, because the viruses mutate so quickly. Still, it is something to do to minimize the risk of the unpleasantness.
- Tetanus? (or Tetanus-Diptheria-Pertussis) vaccine? Adults who have had their booster shot long ago probably do not need to repeat, but people caring for infants usually get an adult booster dose. Most people who have had puncture injuries or sutures in the ER have gotten a tetanus shot on a precautionary basis.
The placebo idea has a long history, back to ancient Greek medicine. However, in my experience the placebo effect, such as it is, seems most powerful in the ignorant and the suggestible. Hence the enduring popularity of quackery like naturopaths and homeopaths.
While it remains true that modern physicians often recommend treatments with marginal effects, those marginal effects are likely not imaginary.
As a psychotherapist, I can tell you that it’s not unusual for the creator of the universe to come up in sessions around the High Holidays. This time of year, God puts a lot of pressure on Jews everywhere—even those who don’t believe in him. Few will ever come upon a burning bush, but whispers, hints, or even simple thoughts about God will often arise during the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
I believe that life is deepened by physical, spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual stress. Added as a bonus: discovering one's limitations. Doing what we "feel like doing" tends to be a dead end in life, paths of least resistance. Doing what we don't feel like doing can be amazing. A quote:
.. .the author Charles Duhigg, in his 2012 bestseller The Power of Habit, calls exercise a “keystone habit,” or a change in one area life that brings about positive effects in other areas. Duhigg says keystone habits are powerful because “they change our sense of self and our sense of what is possible.”
A healthy distrust of experts, especially government experts, is a good trend. Government "expertise" is always contaminated by politics (eg the Ethanol scam). Caveat emptor.
As the threat of communicable diseases receded, public medicine began to turn its attention to treating and preventing health problems that weren’t germ-caused, such as chronic heart disease and strokes, the death rates for which seemed to be soaring after World War II. Some observers cautioned that the apparent increase might be the result of diagnostic advances, which had improved doctors’ ability to detect heart ailments. This possibility, however, failed to deter the press and advocacy groups like the American Heart Association from declaring the arrival of a frightening epidemic.
That is a major but unknown scandal. Think of all of the gullible Americans who avoided "red meat" and "animal fat" over a generation, for no reason at all.
Please do not tell me that you can lose fat by exercise alone. It doesn't happen. Exercise is great, but not for fat loss although many people find that strenuous exercise reduces appetite.
Hillary's health has little to do with the election in my view, but I am curious about what this movement is which alarmed the press. Any ideas? A tic, a movement disorder, an odd startle reflex?
It has been known, probably since humans were human, that many personality traits are hard-wired in the genes and that much of development consists of a gradual revealing of those traits in the same way that physical characteristics are gradually revealed. Thanks to the miracle of the human cerebral cortex, some learning and adaptation occurs but the hard-wired things remain present even if hidden by adaptive maneuvers (eg covering up shyness or hypersensitivity).
Long before you could express yourself with words, you were giving away the signs of your adult temperament. Christian Jarrett explains how.
"A third of Americans are obese"
Hillary's health has little to do with the election in my view, but I am curious about what this movement is which alarmed the press. Any ideas? A tic, a movement disorder, an odd startle reflex?