Grape Nuts commercial - Euell Gibbons - “Did You Ever Eat A Pine Tree?”
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When Joti told his family that he was HIV positive, his mother banned him from the family home and severed contact. He now lives alone, about a half mile away from his childhood home, in a small one-room shack without a bathroom built for him by his uncle.
“After I left the home, my mom threw out the chair where I used to sit and burned the plate I used to eat from,” says Joti, who is a short and slim 25-year-old, with chiseled cheek bones. “I’m no longer welcome there.”
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And I was just reminded that it’s rare that I teach an online class where every Chinese household involved is healthy these days.
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What happens when Generation Tiktok is entering its childbearing, child-rearing phase?
Good gravy, and to think I had it bad when it was just the usual issues of kids bringing home colds and viruses from school. We used to call it the disease-of-the-month club instead of kindergarten.
This news makes it all several orders of magnitude more complicated.
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Y’all just have no idea… Something will get loose. I don’t know what. In my area, peetussis is already back as a frequent childhood illness. We finally have an effective RSV vaccine. I’ve had several kids hospitaluzed and a couple in ICU with it, but very few parents want the shot. Wsiting for something seriously bad, meadles or diphtheria or tetanus. It’s going to happen. And logic and facts just don’t work anymore. We are the enemy. And we know it. It was not always like this.
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This is just insane to me. I would have done a lot for that shot when kitty was a baby. Or the one they have now for pregnant people to take before the birth. I would have done that! Lot less painful than the steroid shot I needed when we were afraid kitty might be born as a super-premie.
We ended up in the hospital twice before kitty was 2 years old once for RSV and once for the flu. Besides the terror of it, the discomfort and pain for our child, and inconvenience for us, it was expensive. Even with good insurance it cost a lot. A shot that could have made that RSV infection less severe? Yes please. Kitty has gotten all the shots the CDC recommends.
I’m convinced the hospital stay for the flu would have been longer and the disease worse if we hadn’t gotten her the flu shot the fall before. Unfortunately, it was one of those spring outbreaks, when her immunity had probably waned.
All these kids put at risk. And for what?! Conflating vaccines with understandable concerns over ultra-processsed food and a red dye the rest of the developed world has banned is just ridiculous. There are going to be a lot of dead children and children with preventable life-long health conditions if RFK Jr gets appointed
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Preaching to the choir, here.
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I hope this is unnecessary in this space, but just so everyone knows:
In 2018, doctors in Canada reported a case of argyria in a gray 84-year-old woman who had taken a 1 mg/ml silver solution every two or three months for 15 years. The woman reported purchasing it from a naturopathic practitioner as a remedy for “various ailments.” Likewise, in 2009, doctors in the UK reported the case of a 64-year-old man who turned silvery after drinking a liter of water containing colloidal silver every week for a year. “He had taken the silver solution as an alternative medical treatment ‘to ward off infections’ as he had read that colloidal silver ‘cures everything,’” his doctors reported.
Just say “NO” to stupid “alternative” cures.
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I agree with everything he said, but wish he’d also have mentioned in the cost to society that overall health is declining as patients avoid using health care due to cost, frustration, denial of coverage, and mistrust of the system.
In human terms, this results in a lot of unnecessary suffering and lost personal potential. In economic terms, this means lost productivity. In political terms, this means increased instability.
Whether or not you believe healthcare is a human right, a functioning, effective healthcare system is essential for a stable, functioning modern society.
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But but, my auntie says her echinacea pills are the reason she hasn’t had a cold in 4 years!
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I know this was not said seriously, but it brings up one of my “yes, I will die on this hill” topics. Anything, bar none, that has an effect of human physiology also comes with side effects. Herbal meds are no exception. Echinacea is one such. It actually is a pretty effective immune stimulant, but like most stimulants, it can lead to tachyphylaxis. Basically, your body hates having your foot on the gas constantly and starts to ignore it after a while. You see this with caffeine, where it takes more and more to get the same effect. Echinacea as treatment is not a bad idea. As prevention, it can actually begin to suppress your immune system (actually, to make it less responsive to stimulation, but the effect is the same.) The human body is complex and hard to understand, and even those of us who have spent a lifetime studying it really don’t fully understand it. Self-styled “naturopaths” don’t even try to understand what they are doing. But it sounds good, I guess. They are very definitive, where we are always qualifying our statements with “most” and “may”. They sound much more certain. It’s easy to be certain when you know nothing. Consider our current incoming executive branch…
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Marketing: Permanent reef safe sunscreen!
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Next the study authors decided to look at how the popular sleep aid Ambien, or zolpidem, affects the brain’s cleaning process. After administering it to the mice, they found that it blocked the waves of norepinephrine that are normally released, which disrupted the glymphatic system and kept it from carrying out its waste-removal task. This could mean that the drug could prevent toxic waste proteins like tau and amyloid from being cleared away, which could cause them to build up – a hallmark of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
“The research provides a mechanistic link between norepinephrine dynamics, vascular activity, and glymphatic clearance, advancing understanding of sleep’s restorative functions,” said Nedergaard. “It also calls attention to the potentially detrimental effects of certain pharmacological sleep aids on brain health, highlighting the necessity of preserving natural sleep architecture for optimal brain function.”
The study has been published in the journal Cell.
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Scary. I’ve known quite a few people who take “sleep aids” every night, some of them Ambien. I wonder if that’s also true of one that I hear about more often now, THC.
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To quote me, “There is nothing that has an effect that does not also have a side-effect.” Imagine the entirety of the human physiology as a spiderweb. If you tweak one thread, you inevitably set others vibrating as well. At least some of those vibrations may be helpful, but some will work against your interest. The reason my job exists (largely) is due to having to balance those factors to maximize the benefit and minimize the risks. Again, nothing is without adverse side-effects unless it also has no effect (e, homeopathy. The only good thing about this is that it is harmless, unless it keeps someone from getting actual, needed medical care.) Natural products are not immune to this law. Natural does not mean “good.” Arsenic is natural, strychnine is natural, I would advise against these, though. Nothing is free. Sorry, man, that’s just how life works.
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Thanks, that certainly makes sense, but surely not all side effects are bad, let alone as bad as blocking the brain’s nightly routine that clears away harmful protein waste linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
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So does lack of sleep. So until my Star Trek sleep inducer comes along - I’ll take my Trazadone & I’ll like it.
Ambien & Sonata both caused memory problems for me - word finding. Got off those right fast.
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Oh, not at all. Sometimes, the “side-effects” are the benefit I am looking for! For instance, I sometimes recommend Benedryl for symptomatic relief of colds, even though histamine blockade does nothing for viral symptoms. However, the anticholinergic side-effects like drying of secretions and mild sedation can be quite helpful, at least at bedtime. It’s in knowing that you are inducing effects that are different from the labeled indication that can be difficult.
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In addition to the examples from @Docosc, there’s the blood pressure medications Minoxidil and Viagra. Both now marketed or prescribed solely on the side effects.
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I’m kinda wondering if you’re joking…
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