Saturday, June 30, 2012

Fun with History

Emotion-sensing psychogalvanoscope demonstrated in 1930
An electric galvanoscope played strange tricks yesterday at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios when Dr. Karl T. Waugh, dean of psychology at the University of Southern California, measured the emotions of stars and players with the psychogalvanoscope, new device of science. The emotional impulses were gauged in terms of vacillation of the needle of the intricate but simple-looking machine.
Same as it ever was.

HT pourmecoffee

Friday, June 29, 2012

I got nothin'

So here's a study I find amusing-

Is the Family Dinner Overrated?
Our research, published last month in the peer-reviewed Journal of Marriage and Family, shows that the benefits of family dinners aren’t as strong or as lasting as previous studies suggest.
That's because it was sheer nonsense from the beginning.  An artifact of socioeconomic status.
My mother believed it though.   She was convinced that if we all ate the four food groups together I would turn out to be a well balanced individual.    Ha.

(She also had to scream and wake me up to do the dishes after meals, but that's a totally different issue that has nothing to do with anything because I was just defiant and trying to make her angry...)

I suggest you sociologists do a study on the effect of false assumptions and unrealistic expectations on the family dynamic.

Crazy People

 A senator.  On videotape.
"Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional. While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right,"  Sen. (Rand) Paul said.
Wow.  That is clinically delusional.  If I argued self-contradictory statements like that in public-  I'd be committed.

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Yo Doctors

You've been punked.

A Dinner with Drug Reps
Aside from learning about their profession, we also realized how well these pharmaceutical reps understood classic psychological persuasion strategies, and how they employed them in a sophisticated and intuitive manner. One clever tactic they used was to hire physicians to give a brief lecture to other physicians about a drug. Now, they really didn’t care what the audience took from the lecture, but were actually interested in what the act of giving the lecture did to the speaker himself. They found that after giving a short lecture about the benefits of a drug, the speaker would begin to believe his own words and soon prescribe accordingly. Psychological studies show that people quickly start believing whatever comes out of their own mouths, even when they are paid to say it. This is a clear case of cognitive dissonance at play; doctors reason that if they are touting this drug, they must believe in it themselves — and so their beliefs alter to align with their speech.
And all it takes is flattery.
Take Heed:  Your self-confidence is your blind spot.

 HT Andrew Sullivan

Health Care Legislation

Apparently either we're all saved or doomed.

More health coverage is generally good.
More screeching is definitely bad.

I am tired of hearing about it.  The speculation is now over.
I'm gonna go dance with Matt or something.

State of the Art Advice

Treating Diabetes Early, Intensively Is Best Strategy
Intensive early treatment of type 2 diabetes slows down progression of the disease by preserving the body's insulin-producing capacity, a UT Southwestern study has shown...
While intensive treatment has been the standard at UT Southwestern for at least a decade, the industry norm has been to emphasize lifestyle changes first. The American College of Physicians, for example, suggests losing weight and dieting before drug treatment. The ADA recommends similar lifestyle changes, plus the use of metformin -- the standard drug used to treat type 2 diabetes -- for those newly diagnosed.
"We believe that the stepwise approach exposes patients to long periods of high blood sugar, which leads to complications," Dr. Lingvay said. "Unless dietary changes are significant and sustained long-term, diabetes is a progressive disease in which the body's ability to produce insulin declines."
Standard ADA protocol is to let your natural insulin levels to drop to nothing before they put you on injections.
The rationale for this was if you inject insulin you will stop producing your own.
That is true if you use it to cover all your glucose.   But if you use less than that, you can actually preserve your remaining function.
This is the method my husband uses.    It  is common practice in Europe and he learned about it on a forum.   Not from his doctors.    They ask him about it.   Seriously.

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Liking Life

I have been excused from Jury Duty tomorrow.   Yay.

This

Right kind of calories could help maintain weight loss
The study found that a low-fat diet, favored by many weight-conscious consumers, contributed to the greatest reduction in metabolic rate, meaning they were more at risk of putting pounds back on in the long term -- though the study didn’t track participants long enough to observe weight gain. This diet also was associated with the biggest drop in insulin sensitivity -- a risk factor for diabetes.
By comparison, participants burned about 300 more calories per day while on an ultra-low-carbohydrate diet similar to the Atkins diet. “That’s equivalent to about an hour of moderate physical activity without lifting a finger,” said Ludwig.
Gary Taubes wrote a whole book on this in 2007.  Good Calories Bad Calories

I also want to say that a low fat diet has been advocated by almost every dietary organization for decades.
It's not a matter of consumer preference at all.   It's compliance with advice from "professionals".

Doing the same thing and expecting different results

FDA approves Arena obesity drug
U.S. health regulators on Wednesday approved Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc's pill to treat obesity, making it the first new weight-loss drug in 13 years as public health advocates push for new solutions to the nation's growing obesity epidemic.
From the insert:   Belviq is a serotonin 2C receptor agonist.

It's another antidepressant.

The American Heart Association is a Racket

Moderate Coffee Consumption Offers Protection Against Heart Failure
While current American Heart Association heart failure prevention guidelines warn against habitual coffee consumption...
I am going to stop adding coffee studies, since the evidence is clear now.   Coffee is antibacterial and lowers blood sugar.
But I would really like to know who at the AHA decided they could pull health guidelines out of their ass...  Actual science has shown almost every one of them to be wrong.  Even backwards.

But hey- everyone still has heart disease- so clearly their services are needed.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Calling You Out

From Narcolepsy Network:
There is currently no cure for narcolepsy. If someone tells you that they have a cure, they are not telling the facts. Be suspicious of anyone who says that they have a treatment or cure that modern medicine just does not understand, fears, wants to suppress or is miraculous. These people are almost always delusional or charlatans or quacks.
This from an organization that takes gobs of money from Pharmas, actively promotes Xyrem for newly diagnosed patients and whose "educational information" does not have even one sentence regarding the well documented metabolic aspects of orexin.
I think the word for that is Misrepresentation.   Maybe even Malpractice.

Silliness

One of my friends just sent me this.   Not new, but amusing.

Zombie vs. Baby

(kinda reminds me of this)

And the circle is now complete

The Doctor Will Screen You for Obesity Now
Today, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an influential panel of medical experts, is emphasizing the need for doctors to screen all adults for obesity, whether through calculating height and weight to determine BMI or measuring their waist circumference—women with a waist size greater than 35 inches and men with a waist size greater than 40 inches are at a higher risk for obesity-related diseases. And those who are diagnosed as obese are now advised to undergo intensive behavioral interventions like weight-loss counseling—at least 12 to 26 sessions in the first several months. Upon review of many weight-loss studies, the Task Force found evidence of positive weight-loss results when patients engaged in at least a dozen sessions in the first year.
Holy Cash Machine, Batman.  You know the insurance companies are going to be all over this.
They will put you in a room, feed you carbs and statins, make you run, and take your money.
And you will still be fat.

Monday, June 25, 2012

Quote of the Day 2

It’s really awesome, when you think about — not just that we’re committing this massive act of folly, but that it’s all being done in the name of sound policy.
Paul Krugman

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

Yessica Ramos, MD
Type 2 Diabetes, Cured by Weight Loss Surgery, Returns in One-Fifth of Patients
"The recurrence rate was mainly influenced by a longstanding history of Type 2 diabetes before the surgery," said the study's lead author, Yessica Ramos, MD, an internal medicine resident at Mayo Clinic Arizona in Scottsdale. "This suggests that early surgical intervention in the obese, diabetic population will improve the durability of remission of Type 2 diabetes."
No, it indicates that a very high percentage of your patients are hyperinsulinemic.   And should have been put on a low carbohydrate diet in the first place.
20% of your patients are now mutilated for life.   
THIS ACCUMULATING DATA INDICATES YOUR DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA ARE WRONG.

Once again the obesity industry is using their own catastrophic results to argue for more drastic treatment.   SSDD.

Quote of the Day

From the comments on Matt's Video:
This settles everything. All the Central Bankers, all the Military Industrial Complex Gangsters, all of the Energy/Oil Mafia members and all of the Political bureaucrats milking the entire system for the self interest, they can all call it quits. The world has decided that we like dancing with each other rather than war and thieving on each other. Great job, Matt, we really appreciate the clarification.        -greenback001

Liars and Criminals

The New York Times has obtained and released a trove of documents from the Celebrex Conspiracy.

In Documents on Pain Drug, Signs of Doubt and Deception
A research director for Pfizer was positively buoyant after reading that an important medical conference had just featured a study claiming that the new arthritis drug Celebrex was safer on the stomach than more established drugs.
“They swallowed our story, hook, line and sinker,” he wrote in an e-mail to a colleague.
The truth was that Celebrex was no better at protecting the stomach from serious complications than other drugs. It appeared that way only because Pfizer and its partner, Pharmacia, presented the results from the first six months of a year long study rather than the whole thing.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Know Hope

We can build a better world.   One obsession at time.

Dance with Matt

Behold the power of dopamine.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

The Circle of Insanity

An American Gulag: Descending into Madness at Supermax
There is the legal requirement to provide medical treatment for mentally ill prisoners. And then there are the practical realities.
 Sometimes it's hard to figure out if anyone is sane anymore.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Cha Ching

I told you so. 

From the Sleep 2012 Conference-

(0801)   Insulin Sensitivity In Narcolepsy And The Effect Of Sodium Oxybate As Measured By A Hyperinsulinemic-Euglycemic Clamp

Introduction: Hypocretin deficiency causes narcolepsy, a condition characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy, and fragmented nocturnal sleep. Co-morbid obesity is present in more than half of narcolepsy patients. While a higher prevalence of the metabolic syndrome and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) has been reported in narcolepsy, recent studies could not detect differences in insulin sensitivity between patients and controls. However, none of these studies applied the gold standard, i.e. the hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp, to measure insulin sensitivity. Therefore, we performed a study using this gold standard to quantify insulin sensitivity in both narcolepsy patients and individually matched controls. Additionally, we investigated the effect on insulin sensitivity of three months of treatment with sodium oxybate (SXB).
Methods: Nine hypocretin deficient patients with narcolepsy-cataplexy (seven males), and nine sex, age, body mass index, and fat mass matched controls were enrolled. A hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp was performed at baseline (40mU/m2/min insulin infusion for 2 hours to attain a
circulating insulin level of about 40mU/L). In seven patients (five males)a second hyperinsulinemic-euglycemic clamp was performed after three months of treatment with SXB.
Results: Glucose disposal rate per unit serum insulin was significantly higher in narcolepsy patients compared to individually matched controls indicating higher insulin sensitivity in patients. Narcolepsy patients lost a substantial amount of weight (mean of 5.2 kg) after 3 months of treatment with SXB. Moreover, SXB treatment lowered insulin sensitivity in narcolepsy patients to levels comparable to those of control subjects.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that narcolepsy patients are actually more insulin sensitive than body weight and fat mass matched controls. Therefore, any potential tendency to develop T2DM probably stems from their propensity to grow obese. SXB decreased weight, and normalized insulin sensitivity.

I am working on the roundup.   This was just too good to wait.

Hartelijk bedankt to the Dutch researchers who did this work!!!
I love you guys...

Fun with liquid obsession


19th Century Alcohol Prohibition Posters

The Drunkard's Progress

Resiliency

A State of Military Mind 
To train future soldiers, the Department of Defense is using new technologies and centuries-old techniques, like yoga and meditation, to hone their minds, help them make better decisions on the battlefield, and prevent trauma.
First of all, you Psychs know nothing about anxiety, trauma, pain tolerance or resiliency.    
Nothing.  Zip.  Nada.  Jack.
Second-  None of that is going to help without a reality based diet and dental protocol.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

You don't say

Glucose Levels Affect Cognition in Diabetics
The participants also completed four cognitive function tests: Digit Symbol Substitution Test (DSST); Mini Mental Status Examination (MMSE); Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test; and the Stroop Test. As glycemic control worsened, so did the scores on all four tests. An increase of 1 percent in HbA1c levels was associated with a 1.75-point drop in the DSST score, 0.20-point decline in the MMSE, a 0.11-point decrease in the memory score, and worse results on the Stroop Test. All of these declines were statistically significant.
Eating disorders are common in older women 
Historically, eating disorder research has focused on teens and young women, but the study out Thursday in the International Journal of Eating Disorders shows 13% of women ages 50 and older struggle with the problem — some for the first time in their lives. Eating disorders are more common in women than men and include purging, binge eating, excessive dieting and excessive exercising .
Eating disorders induced by trying to lose weight using a low fat diet...

Check your scrips

Common Blood Pressure Drug Linked to Severe Gastrointestinal Problems
"We thought these cases were celiac disease initially because their biopsies showed features very like celiac disease, such as inflammation," says Dr. Murray, the lead author. "What made them different was they didn't have the antibodies in their blood that are typical for celiac disease."
After examining their medications, Mayo Clinic gastroenterologist Joseph Murray, M.D., pulled several of the patients off Olmesartan. Their symptoms dramatically improved. Eventually, all 22 were taken off the drug, and all showed improvement. Eighteen of the 22 patients had intestinal biopsies after stopping the medication and showed improvement.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Alarming Symptoms

Ticks Spreading A Meat Allergy Along The East Coast
The lone star tick, named because of a white spot on its back, is spreading a meat allergy so strong it's forcing some people to become vegetarians, researchers are now saying.
"People will eat beef and then anywhere from three to six hours later start having a reaction; anything from hives to full-blown anaphylactic shock," Dr. Scott Commins, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, told ABC News. "And most people want to avoid having the reaction, so they try to stay away from the food that triggers it."
Holy Crap.   That is really going to mess up people with pre-existing glucose problems.
Y'all be careful out there...

Things I take rather Seriously















Red Headed Warriors.

Brave Heroine Passes the “Fiery Redhead” Stereotype to a New Generation
Merida, whose challenge in Brave is to learn how to apologize and take responsibility for her mistakes... 
Heh.  Fairy Tales.

Things that make me laugh

I think this is hilarious-

No-Fat, Low-Fat Dressings Don't Get Most Nutrients out of Salads
"If you want to utilize more from your fruits and vegetables, you have to pair them correctly with fat-based dressings," said Mario Ferruzzi, the study's lead author and a Purdue associate professor of food science. "If you have a salad with a fat-free dressing, there is a reduction in calories, but you lose some of the benefits of the vegetables."

Happy Solstice

Fight the good fight.  Stay in the Light.

The Root of the Problem

Tivo Alert.

America’s Dental Care Crisis
More than 100 million Americans don’t go to the dentist because they can’t afford it. Instead, they end up broke, in severe pain and struggling to get by. Sometimes they even die.
Our next film, Dollars and Dentists, a joint investigation by FRONTLINE and the Center for Public Integrity, examines the nation’s ruptured dental-care system, and some solutions to fix it. It airs Tuesday, June 26 on PBS, and you can watch a preview of the film (at the link).

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

A couple articles

That seem to go together

Tending the Body’s Microbial Garden    NYT
This new approach to health is known as medical ecology. Rather than conducting indiscriminate slaughter, Dr. Segre and like-minded scientists want to be microbial wildlife managers.
No one wants to abandon antibiotics outright. But by nurturing the invisible ecosystem in and on our bodies, doctors may be able to find other ways to fight infectious diseases, and with less harmful side effects. Tending the microbiome may also help in the treatment of disorders that may not seem to have anything to do with bacteria, including obesity and diabetes.

Antibacterials in Personal-Care Products Linked to Allergy Risk in Children
Children with the highest urine levels of triclosan had nearly twice the risk of environmental allergies as children with the lowest urinary concentrations. Those with highest levels of propyl paraben in the urine had twice the risk of an environmental allergy. Food allergy risk was more than twice as pronounced in children with the highest levels of urinary triclosan as in children with the lowest triclosan levels. High paraben levels in the urine were not linked to food allergy risk.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Are You Effing Kidding Me?

Weight-Loss Surgery Increases Risk of Alcohol Addiction

Hypoglycemia.   Induced by endocrinologists.
You can be sure I will have more to say about this real soon.

Narco Girl

Doing Experiments!!
3 Day Fast Experiment, Part 1
In light of these findings, I am conducting a 3 day fast to determine it’s effects on wakefulness and energy levels.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

This is Why

Anorexic woman should be fed against her wishes, judge rules

and then there are other days when I read and weep.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Crazy People

Seventh-Generation World Class Obsession

Daredevil Nik Wallenda completes Niagara Falls tightrope walk
"This is what dreams are made of " Wallenda said shortly after he began walking the wire.

That is what my nightmares are made of.
I am terrified of heights and edges.   And cold water.   Hate it hate it hate it.

omg pics 

Astonishing

Breast Milk Blocks HIV Transmission in Mice 
Women with HIV are often told  by health care providers to refrain from breastfeeding  for fear their breast milk will transmit the virus to their infants. But a new study released Thursday in the journal PLoS Pathogens suggests breast milk may kill the virus and protect against its transmission.
What exciting news that is!  The implications go on forever...

Brain Food

Christina has put up a blog.   And her post on diet is just outstanding.
Starving Yourself Awake

Some days I'm just so glad I'm still alive.