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.
One minor problem with it: she omits the power of religious conversion and religious fervor.
Another "minor" problem with it: She mostly neglects the destructive aspects of people, as if "normal" people had no destructive, wicked, or evil impulses. They do. Unleashed, the dark side can be a terrible thing. That is not news, and Jihadism offers many rationales for behavior that Western Civ. finds abhorrent today. These people did not buy into the historical arc of Western Civ. and perhaps never will.
One major problem with it: Many behaviors and choices of youth can be explained in similar terms so I see nothing specific to joining Jihad here. Similar motives could turn a suburban kid into a stoner Grateful Dead groupie.
The problem is that you can psychologize anything - after the fact. That is not a weakness of Psychology, but, instead, a statement about the complexity of human nature and human cultures.
There's a belief gaining popularity that when patients seem to be nearing death's door, doctors should back off from aggressive medical care and let them die in peace. Providing "heroic" care has become a negative, and many doctors are stepping back from it. According to a 2011 study,[1] 42% of primary care physicians believed they were overtreating patients.
And yet some patients—even when debilitated by metastatic cancer, brain injury, or old age—still want to keep on fighting. They don't want the doctor to give up on them, and there are many documented cases when that extra boost has saved their lives.
But for how long, and with how much medical misery?
It's a complex dilemma, but the Brits figured it out. Offering opiates for patients with severe pain. it seems to me, is more worthwhile than worrying about the few who become serious addicts.
Studies frequently arrive at erroneous results. These are sometimes reported breathlessly by the press. When the results are contradicted, there is rarely a mention. Furthermore, negative studies often have difficulty getting published because they are unexciting.
How many people still think fatty meat causes heart disease? Many people never got the correction memo.
It is medically improper to try to diagnose anybody one has not evaluated in person, but have people wondered whether Donald Trump has a bipolar spectrum disorder, such as a chronic hypomanic?
No surprise there. When government pays for something, there are usually political angles to it. The only consolation is that nobody but a nitwit would follow government guidelines for anything more than income tax forms. If you can understand them.
AKAUnstable Personality Disorder. Many in the mental health field prefer to avoid those with overly-intense reactions, unpredictability and volatility of behavior and emotion, especially anger, and frequent depression and unhappiness.
However, oftentimes that doesn't matter because these patients commonly turn on doctors and therapists in transference-like rages, and are gone. Thus the instability of some of their relationships in general.
Some or many such people may have Bipolar spectrum problems - or both.
Over the past six months or so, in our posts about physical fitness, we have always made a distinction between strength training and the other useful activities which build strength minimally or not at all but are more maintenance-oriented and endurance-oriented such as cardio intervals, calisthenics, heavy calisthenics, high-rep weights, isometrics, pliometrics, recreational sports, or mucking out the barn. In other words, activities which use your muscles - or "tone" your muscles, but do not build them.
The latter activities so not require any more protein than one's usual diet.
Strength training is ideally part of any fitness program, but most people don't do much of it because it hurts. I am not talking about "body-building" in the extreme sense, just strength-building. Strength-building entails moving heavy things in order to break down, damage, muscle tissue. Generally-speaking, if you can do more than 12 reps you are doing a warm-up or working on endurance, not so much muscle-building so it's time to raise the weight. The strength-building part occurs during several days afterwards, the recovery phase. As with bone fractures, your body's repair leaves it stronger than it was before you broke it down.
Muscle repair and building requires more protein than the average diet, but probably not a whole lot more. There is a lot of wacky advice out there, but for those who move heavy weight two or three times/week, I think this article is reasonable: Are You Eating Enough Protein To Build Muscle?
The article claims that, for a male, a serious muscle-building program with heavy weight, 2-3 times/week, needs up to 1 gm protein/lb body weight daily. (On average, non-pregnant women have about half the dietary needs of men). It's all approximate, of course. And who knows how many grams of protein there are in my particular hamburger anyway? With a whey powder, you know what you're getting if you like that sort of thing.
(FYI, an average burger has around 20-30 gms, an egg 6 gms, a glass of whole milk about 8 gms. You can Google all food numbers. Whey powder is labeled by gms per scoop.)
Anatomy Tutorial. This is the same as a medical school gross anatomy course, minus the cadaver dissection.
You can see one of their Youtube courses on any part of the body you might be curious about. In the process, you will get the idea of why medical students need to be expert and efficient memorizers. For an example of a med school exam question, "What is the origin and insertion, function, and innervation of the Sartorius muscle?"
It is a sad story, but it is often true that "once the needle goes in, it never comes out." The facts that many succeed in "recovery" is remarkable. Mr. Williamson does not understand the whole of it, though.
For one thing, in every country there is a strong market for opiates. For another, in every country there are illicit entrepreneurs eager to supply it. Demand will never go away. For another, pain meds like Oxy are one of the blessings of modern medicine. Relief of intractable pain whether from metastatic cancer or otherwise, is a gift to patients so there is the good with the bad, as always with everything in life. People using Oxy can be fully functional in work and life.
I have come to believe that "the war on drugs" is pointless. All it does is to drive up prices, and thus drive up crime. That is what prohibition does, every time. Rehab and detox are available everywhere in the US for those who decide to give it a try. I am in favor of some form of medically-monitored drug legalization as exists in England. There will always be addicts in this world, people addicted to all sorts of things besides "substances." People often habitually do what they feel like, even if it is unwise immediate gratification. That is one reason many are disappointed in life. Human nature at its least admirable. There is no fix for that, so it has to be accepted. There are no psycho-utopias other than drugs, romantic/sexual passion, or through God. Just my professional opinion.
However, that is more of a medical view than a moral view.
Some of the article sounds loony (eg Paleo diet, and 1 gallon of milk/day), but much of his advice is good. If you are a scrawny person, or lack adequate muscle development, you might be interested in his advice.
I was a scrawny but able athlete when I began college. The college coaches gave us 60 minutes of weight training 2 days/wk for both of my sports, a half-hour of calisthenics on the off days - not to mention 2 hrs of team practice each weekday. That was usually an hour of drills and an hour of match play. Coach prescribed diets for us to go along with this, very caloric diets high in protein but also high in everything else including ice cream. The results in good weight gain, energy, wholesome appearance, and overall fitness were remarkable. We were young, of course, and adjusted quickly.
The most difficult issue for adults is scrawny, but with a gut. Rx for that is protein and fat, and just enough carbs to function. The human physiology was not developed for our luxurious world of protein and caloric abundance.
Most of the article is of general application for gals or guys, although there is no need for any guy to look as buff and tough as the author. That's more vanity-oriented than functionality, I think, but he says he grew up as a skinny wimp so it's understandable. The critique of cardio is well-taken, because the way most people do it is a waste of time. At the end there is a part specific to women. (Interesting to note that exercising women need half the amount of food that men do.)
Photo from the article of the author's friend Staci before and after putting on 25 good lbs. That is a fit young lady, but she could easily benefit from another 5 or 10 lbs, especially if she wants to bear kids sometime:
The advice obviously does not apply to those who are overweight. That's another matter.
Addictions and other habits were defined as official "disorders" or "diseases" for one main reason: insurance coverage. Today, we see an expansion of behavioral issues labeled as diseases for the same reason. Secondarily, having a disease eliminates moral responsibility, and nobody enjoys taking responsibility for bad behavior. It feels morally, if not heroically, better to be a "survivor" or a "victim."
Interestingly, I do not think I have ever met an addict or ex-addict who considered themselves to be a "victim" of a disease. Basically, the term "disease" is a flexible one to the point that almost everybody can be labeled with one or another, so I do not know whether it matters.
Children need good, strong, reliable, honest, dutiful, demanding parents. It's that simple, and everybody in the world knows that. After that, it's just luck.
How Oliver Sacks put a human face on the science of the mind - The world’s most famous neurologist believed that every patient had a story worth hearing.
Norman Doidge explores the legacy of Oliver Sacks, whose work and life remind us that humanity belongs at the heart of medicine.
A quote:
Oliver Sacks’s legacy was to restore a vision of a humane medicine that drew its power not from technological breakthroughs alone, but through the healing power of the doctor-patient relationship. It had roots in a more old-fashioned view that came in part from his general-practitioner father, who had close relationships with his patients and did frequent house calls. It was a form of care that required an almost unheard-of immersion in the lives of his patients by Dr. Sacks, which allowed him to draw portraits of human beings of an incomparable subtlety and sensitivity, while shedding new light on the mysteries of the brain. He also rejuvenated for us the rich tradition of the case history.
Yet Dr. Sacks’s triumph did not come immediately or without opposition.
“[W]ith little encouragement from my colleagues,” he wrote, “… I became a storyteller at a time when medical narrative was almost extinct. … It was a lonely but deeply satisfying, almost monkish existence that I was to lead for many years.”
It may sound a strange claim, but the detailed case history – which in the 19th century produced some of the finest descriptions of patients ever written – had all but disappeared from the neurology journals when Dr. Sacks started writing, and, even today, it is rare. The great 19th-century neurologists, lacking scans, EEGs, and statistics, perfected their observational skills and the art of talking to patients so as to help them describe how those patients’ mental experiences were altered by their brain problems.
With the advent of modern lab and scanning techniques, these observational and communicative skills atrophied. The journals changed, too. Detailed accounts of individual patients increasingly disappeared, replaced by group studies of “subjects,” described in more abstract, statistical terms, based on their scans and scores on tests. Instead of reporting what was unique about a patient, studies reported what was average about a population. And averages smear out what is unique about individuals.
Full-blown sociopaths are different from you and me, but there is a grey zone of grifters, con artists, manipulators, users, habitual liars, cheaters, hucksters, tricksters, and politicians who can seem to be people who aspire to live lives of integrity, but do not.
Yes, it is fine. Although it looks and can taste carby, it is not. It's a close relative of the tomato but more fibrous. Thus, like tomato and no many vegetables, basically carb-free and nutrition-free, but tasty and fun to eat.
It's a pretty good substitute for carbs, in fact. I like it grilled, sauteed in olive oil, or steamed or sauteed with tomato and summer squash. I can do without eggplant parmesan.
Doesn't it depend on what the meaning of love is? We all have standards and expectations for relationships. Somebody said that romance is chemistry but love is a decision.
Here are many of the reasons that counting calories for weight-maintenance and weight loss does not work: The Calorie Is Broken
Unfortunately, they omit one of the more important considerations, which is that our bodies handle the calories in carbs differently from the calories in a juicy steak. All calories are not equal.
Our general rules:
- If you work out hard over 3 days/wk and are happy with your physique, eat enough carbs for energy and eat enough protein for muscle repair. Not a ton, but some. An egg or two and 2 slices of meat daily is plenty of pure protein for the average-sized hard exerciser who works with weights. Not enough for Rocky Balboa. Adults who do not do much hard muscle work do not need much protein except for enjoyment. - If happy with your weight and condition, eat whatever you feel like. Pizza is good. So is ice cream. - To lose weight efficiently, quit all carbs except for a little yoghurt or a glass of milk or something like that. Focus on protein and veggies as fillers. - Don't bother counting calories. Dietary fats and oils have plenty of calories, but can not make you gain body fat. - Cardio exercise is good for conditioning, but you can't lose weight by doing it unless you do it 6 hrs/day. Only anorectics do that.
What is it good for, if anything? That's a big topic. Is it good for anything? I certainly think it is, but properly-done it requires so much time, commitment, and money that it could never be, or have been, available to large numbers.
Meaning does matter, in all areas of human life. Unfortunately, fake meanings, ie "false narratives," can matter a lot in life too. Analysis is a mental laboratory as much as anything else.
Can psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy (which I prefer to offer) be curative? Sometimes. Can it be helpful? Certainly. Can it be done right? Not really. It's called "the impossible profession" for good reason.
I can testify that it did a lot of good for me and made me a better Psychiatrist too. (We were required to be in a lengthy analysis in analytic training.) Interestingly, that analysis has continued to work, grinding away, in my head ever since in a never-ending and self-questioning process. Self-knowledge is never pleasant, however, and I would rather play tennis than dwell on it too much. I only dwell on it when I need to. It burns sometimes, but it cleans the instruments.
Columbia Psychiatry's Prof. Myron Hofer, MD has had a career-long research interest in developmental psychobiology and psychogenetics. His side interest in psychoanalytic theory has been contributory to that.
His most recent fascination is with epigenetics and how gene expression is affected by environment and spans generations. Gene expression - not genes - is transmissable. The egg from which we were hatched was formed in our Mom's ovary while she was still gestating inside Grandma's uterus. Thus many influences, all in nature's interest in providing variety for adaptation and natural selection.
It's an interesting topic. For example, there are still people who avoid fats for fear of their cholesterol or of getting fat. Even some doctors can't let that go although it's been debunked for years now. So often, people believe what they want to believe unless they are of a skeptical bent.
Many people believe that the moon landing was faked. People afraid of cell towers.
Yes, it is fine. Although it looks and can taste carby, it is not. It's a close relative of the tomato but more fibrous. Thus, like tomato and no many vegetables, basically carb-free and nutrition-free, but tasty and fun to eat.