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from the how-much^W-big-is-that-doggie-in-the-window? dept.
Big Dogs Face More Joint Problems if Neutered Early:
It's standard practice in the U.S. and much of Europe to neuter dogs by 6 months of age. This study, which analyzed 15 years of data from thousands of dogs at UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, suggests dog owners should consider their options carefully.
"Most dogs are mixed breeds," said lead author Benjamin Hart, distinguished professor emeritus at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.
[...] Researchers examined common joint disorders including hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia and cranial cruciate ligament tears, a knee injury, in five weight categories.
[...] The risk of joint disorders for heavier dogs can be up to a few times higher compared to dogs left intact. This was true for large mixed-breed dogs. For example, for female dogs over 43 pounds, the risk jumped from 4 percent for intact dogs to 10-12 percent if spayed before a year of age.
"The study raises unique challenges," noted co-author Lynette Hart, professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. "People like to adopt puppies from shelters, but with mixed breeds it may be difficult to determine just how big the dog will become if you don't know anything about the dog's parents."
Neutering prior to adoption is a common requirement or policy of humane societies, animal shelters and breeders. [...] Shelters, breeders and humane societies should consider adopting a standard of neutering at over a year of age for dogs that will grow into large sizes.
Journal Reference:
Hart, Benjamin L., Hart, Lynette A., Thigpen, Abigail P., et al. Assisting Decision-Making on Age of Neutering for Mixed Breed Dogs of Five Weight Categories: Associated Joint Disorders and Cancers, Frontiers in Veterinary Science (DOI: 10.3389/fvets.2020.00472)
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:15AM (44 children)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:07AM (5 children)
Whatever, Hudson.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @05:10PM (4 children)
If you had been paying attention, you would have noticed that Barbara has repeatedly championed the idea of requiring a registered account to leave comments. To my knowledge, they have been consistent in applying that to the majority of their comments.
You have to appreciate someone that has the balls to stand behind their convictions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @11:44PM (3 children)
"They" have been consistent? Fucking millenial transvestites... you don't realize that misusing pronouns only makes y'all sound more ridiculous than you look with your pink hair.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:47AM (1 child)
I could swear "they" as singular was acceptable even hundreds of years ago, something about people wanting to ape Shakespeare that lead to people starting to disapprove? It sounds awkward and I still prefer to use he and she, but eh...maybe it's time? Plenty of languages get along fine with a neuter third-person singular.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:08AM
"They" has always referred to "one or more." We're just not so used to it any more, but really, most people have adapted, and anyone who hasn't, that's THEIR problem. (Note the use of "THEIR" to refer to one or more).
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:59AM
Even in English nowadays we purposefully mix them up and alternate back and forth so as not to give predominance to either one.
And there's nothing wrong with Purple hair. Old farts mostly don't care any more. After all, it hides the grey and takes a decade off your appearance. And you can always change it, something that's a lot more painful with ink. Millennial-bashing is SO out of style and so stupid. After all, the boomers knew about how they were ruining the ecology, and did nothing. Wrecked the economy. Ran up debt that they won't pay back because they'll be dead. And they voted for Trump in the USA and Brexit in the UK.
And you have the fucking nerve to bitch about Purple hair? Grow up FFS.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @09:49AM (15 children)
The difference here is that fixing an animal completely removes two of their primary endocrine glands without otherwise replacing the hormones that would be produced. Transitioning usually does replace the hormones of one type of gonad with another, even in cases where they are not surgically removed. There are just too many side effects if you don't supplement hormones including bone and joint problems, that people usually don't stop them until older.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday August 14 2020, @08:00PM (14 children)
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(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @08:43PM (13 children)
HRT isn't free of side effects, adverse events, or contraindications. Sometimes the cons can outweigh the pros.
(Score: 1, Troll) by barbara hudson on Friday August 14 2020, @10:51PM (12 children)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:27AM (5 children)
That wasn't one of the studies I was referring to. You are also completely forgetting about things like EDNs, DVT, pregnancy, anaphylaxis, endometriosis, advanced hypothyroidism, certain thrombophilias, certain hepatic diseases, and more.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:37AM (4 children)
Nope. Lower risk for many, zero risk for some. No progesterone, which seems to be the culprit for some HRT regimes, regularly tested blood and urine work, my endocrinologist says it's all fine, liver is doing great, 64-year-old trans women don't need to worry about pregnancy, endometriosis, etc.
And my LDL is half the target, and my HDL is almost twice the target. 2-day MIBI test shows no signs of cardiovascular disease (which is weird because everyone in my family on both sides has it or died early of it, but I'm not gonna complain), torn my right shoulder rotator cuff twice and decided against surgery, in both cases healed in 2 years (the second time was an accident that would have torn it even without a history).
The extra muscle is a curse, but it's far better than being in a wheelchair, which I would be with my stupid back if it weren't for extra estrogen. Considering how many people break their hips and pelvises from falls due to loss of skeletal muscle as they age, estrogen supplementation is a cheap way for women to add years of freedom to their lives,
And menopause is not normal in mammals. Humans are defective in that respect. Just as well though, we don't need people breeding into their 90s. There's already way too many of us.
On an unrelated health subject, Donald Trump 's brother is in the hospital. If Donald visits him, it's serious because he's scoping out spare parts.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:20AM (3 children)
Your question was "Why would any woman on her (cis or trans) ever stop HRT?" And I answered that by providing some of the contraindications, many of which can be made much worse due to supplemental hormones. I'm glad you don't have to worry about things like pregnancy, endometriosis, and anaphylaxis, but not everything is about you. Plenty of other women do have to consider those things, other conditions, and more when deciding what treatments are right for them. For goodness sakes, if endometriosis and certain other conditions are bad enough, one of the preferred treatments is inducing artificial menopause through things like GnRH antagonists.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:06AM (2 children)
Menopause can cause serious mental problems as well as physical and mental decline. These are pretty much certainties. Suicidal depression is fatal. Physical and mental decline from a broken hip or pelvis often results in placement in a home after one fall, and pretty much all the time after a second break. Survival time after a second break is less than two years in most cases. Women can greatly postpone diseases of aging, so why wouldn't we?
BTW - rapid decline and premature death are greater for men. 40% after a first hip or pelvis break, as opposed to 25% for women - but this is one men's health problem we don't talk about because men don't like being seen as weak.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @04:08AM (1 child)
Most isn't all. You asked why a woman would decide against hormones and that is what was provided. The fact that there are pros to HRT doesn't mean that it is impossible for the cons outweigh them in certain circumstances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:11AM
Dude she doesn't care. She is not an honest actor. She is just getting her jollies acting like she is an expert in things she is not. You proved her wrong and she can't accept that so she is trying to pivot from the original point you were making to try and save face. If you reread with that in mind, it is easy to see how she is trying to change her original call of "bullshit" into either her being correct the whole time on a related topic or baiting you to comment on a completely different topic so everyone loses sight of her error.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:26AM (5 children)
The logical fallacy in that sentence is bigger than the sentence itself!
Compare:
After all, the vast majority of mammals never live in houses so it's definitely a flaw.
Google "spandrel".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @07:31AM (2 children)
Depends on how you define flaw too. Apparently, evolution believes the benefits exceed the drawbacks and it results in increased survival rates or is neutral. Otherwise, it wouldn't be so widespread today.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @08:49AM (1 child)
I don't think humans have been reliably living long enough to experience menopause for enough time that there would be an evolutionary bias in any direction. Considering that there's good evidence for other group-oriented traits being genetic/epigenetic, I'd bet you're right though.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:59PM
It took 4,000 years for a single random recessive mutation in one person to spread blue ayes over a significant part of the human population. We don't need hundreds of thousands of years for mutations to spread. The average person has something like 60-200 random mutations. We're a real-time experiment in rapid evolution and the advantage it gives, same as the flu virus.
Since humans for most of our short existence never lived long enough to experience menopause, there was no evolutionary pressure either way. Now that we're living much longer than even as recently as 1900, we're seeing that menopause is a huge risk of aging. Brittle bones that aren't fixed with calcium supplements, dementia, muscle loss, depression, and the biggest risk factor - being placed in an old age home. Large losses of cognitive function within weeks as people become "institutionalized", passive, anxious. But this is exactly what we expect - people go to nursing homes to die, not to be nursed back to health.
With the way COVID19 swept through nursing homes, more people are going to choose euthanasia or suicide. Because dying in a pool of your own shit is SO not what people want. Life expectancy in a nursing home is 2 years, so after a lifetime, why not just skip the bad stuff at the end? It adds nothing of value - unless you're making money off it either as an employee, operator, or supplier. It's your body - choosing when to take it with you is the ultimate freedom.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:42PM
many mammals live in dwellings. We call them "dens", same as the man-cave. Ditto birds - we call them nests when it's for raising young, but many birds shelter in inclement weather.
Same as among primates, only humans have a problem with cholesterol clogging the cardiovascular system. And not all humans. Researchers are now looking for people who have naturally very low LDL to see what genes are involved, because it's certainly not diet. They can eat high cholesterol food as much as they want.
They should be looking for the subset that has very high HDL, since scavenging all that cholesterol and converting it from LDL to HDL will also cause low LDL, but they're not looking for that, and the subjects they've found have normal levels of HDL.
Doctor suspected I had the low LDL mutation, but I suspect it's a consequence of my high HDL. So I'm a freak … so what else is new?
A couple of my sisters have pretty much the same situation - those that don't are either taking drugs to lower their cholesterol or have a history of cardiovascular disease and are dead before 60, same as our parents. Go figure.
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 19 2020, @03:38AM
The "flaw" is that humans significantly outlive our reproductive usefulness, whereas most animals... don't. So the age-related failing parts of the system become evident, simply because we outlive it.
Mostly this is thyroid decline (which takes about 15 years to kill you), but there's a feedback with gonadal hormones... if either goes down, the other follows. Fixing either (or ideally, both) improves both quality and length of life.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Friday August 14 2020, @03:24PM (4 children)
Be careful not to fall into the trap of thinking there are only two genders when the underlying evidence indicates there are 87 genders.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:50AM (3 children)
As far as I can tell, there are 7.5 billion and a bit genders, and most people just cluster really, really strongly onto one end or another of an extremely sharp bimodal distribution. I don't get the whole trans* thing but I don't understand why people have a problem, either. Nature may have "intended" such and such a thing, but an unconscious, emergent process is going to have errors.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:49AM (1 child)
Kind of works, when you think about it. Transformers (people who change sex) and Decepticons (drag queens, etc). Never watched the cartoons when I was a kid, but I remember the jingle from the commercials. And thanks to some action movies on tv, I now know what transformers and decepticons are. And wish I didn't. What a cheesy idea for a kids cartoon.
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(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:53AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday August 17 2020, @03:04PM
I don't get the trans thing, but I do understand that it is quite real to people who experience that feeling. At least, I believe them when they say so. (Not that I have a device to perform a measurement of that feeling.)
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Friday August 14 2020, @05:36PM (16 children)
This should have been expected given the muscle mass lost after menopause, and the fact that estrogen and testosterone are both sex steroids.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2020, @07:58PM (15 children)
It seems odd then that trans women lose their muscular (but not skeletal) advantage over time, almost as if the replacement of testosterone with estrogen explains the difference in physical strength between (actual) men and women.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday August 14 2020, @10:23PM (14 children)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2020, @12:10AM (13 children)
I thought excess estrogen gets converted into testosterone? (and excess testosterone gets converted into estrogen?)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:14AM (12 children)
Not at very high levels of estrogen. I have no detectable testosterone and estrogen levels at least twice the peak of a 20-25 year old woman. Anything less and I end up with serious back and neck pain (fractures of the c5 and t6 vertebrae that were missed on x-rays until last year, causing lots of pain). Tripling the dose of estrogen strengthened the muscles enough to keep everything aligned through the day and accelerated the healing of damages at night. When I tried to cut back, after a month I'd start the day in pain.
It makes the world of difference. I went in to help out at the local food bank today, stacked 700 kg of fruit juice on pallets, unpacked, sorted, and shelved a couple hundred kg of other food, and I feel fine - and I'll be 65 in less than a year. It's a bit frightening. Never had this much muscle before HRT, so go figure. The back and neck vertebrae healed at an angle to the surrounding vertebrae, so I really should not be able to do this, but better than a back brace or surgery, especially since I also used to have lower back pain as well.
I know another woman who's a couple of years older, she had back surgery years ago and last year the screws started to come out. Now she's on OxyContin to function, and still needs leg braces and arm crutches. I'll stick with overdoses of estrogen. Even after a 22 km walk back in April I'm fine the next day
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:11AM (11 children)
It's probably not the estrogen as such, but rather the thyroid-estrogen feedback loop encouraging better thyroid function than you could otherwise expect at that age. Increasing one leads to an increase in the other, and good thyroid level prevents both early aging and a host of age-related health issues (including the heart problems you mention in family).
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @02:39AM (10 children)
"You're depressed."
"Of course. I just lost my job."
"Take this pill every day."
"That won't get me a job."
"You have a chemical imbalance in your brain that is causing your depression. The pill will fix it."
"How do you know I have a chemical imbalance. You didn't do a test."
"You're depressed and it's caused by a chemical imbalance."
"I'm depressed because I lost my job. Cause and effect. I need another job to fix my depression."
"No, you have a chemical imbalance in your brain and this pill will fix it."
"You say I have a chemical imbalance but there's no physical test, no blood test, cerebrospinal fluid test, MRI to detect it."
"Don't need a test. Your brain has a chemical imbalance. We know this because you're depressed."
You sound like a quack, or a faith healer, no proof, no test, and you're missing the obvious cause of my depression. I lost my fucking job!" Just refer me to a social worker so I can talk to someone to help deal with my problems. You know, help me get to a better place mentally so I can find a job."
"A social worker won't fix your chemical imbalance."
"Any proof I have a chemical imbalance?"
"You're depressed."
"I'm depressed because I lost my job. It's NORMAL to be depressed when you lose your job."
"So you admit you're depressed. You therefore have a chemical imbalance. You need to take this pill."
"If you lost your job, would you be depressed?"
"Yes."
"Would you take the pill?"
"I'd get another job,"
"BINGO!"
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 15 2020, @03:00AM (9 children)
There's situational depression (such as from losing your job), and there's biochemical depression (usually due to endocrine dysfunction). One is cured by getting another job; the other is cured by fixing your busted hormones. Naturally it is possible for the two to overlap.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday August 15 2020, @08:34AM (5 children)
Yes, but Barbara was pointing out that doctors tend to treat everything with a pill and ignore the obvious cause. There's a lot of truth to what she says. I haven't had that exact conversation with my various doctors, but very similar ones. I cannot tell you how often my doctor recommended a cure worse than the disease.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday August 15 2020, @01:09PM (4 children)
Oh, get me started on how doctors treat the test results rather than treating the patient...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @05:28PM (3 children)
Was convinced to go back on a different brand, 5 years of absolute hell and antidepressant use, which made the whole depression far worse. Finally got fed up, stopped all the drugs 6 months of hell, then life started getting better.
Was over at my sisters talking about this (pre-covid, obviously - none of us allow visitors or visit friends in their homes because we take this shit seriously, and yesterday the Canadian government said we will probably never have a really effective vaccine, and that we're in for what will probably be a much larger second wave, followed by successive smaller waves). My brother in law is a retired pharmacist. He got out the automatic blood pressure machine, I told them it won't work properly on me. First test - your blood pressure is dangerously high. Told him to try again. Your blood pressure is dangerously low. See? Try again. Your blood pressure is dangerously high.
As expected. Totally inconsistent readings because the mechanics of the test don't work properly with people without shallow blood vessels in their arms. Taking a blood sample from me is often more hit than miss. Sometimes they can't find one in either arm and have to take it off the back of the hand. I'm aware of the problem, so I ignore results, which is okay because the recommendations have changed so much over the years that what was considered dangerous isn't any more. Plus I have a really serious "white lab coat " reaction to blood pressure tests. Given a few minutes to adapt, and it goes from dangerous to lower than normal. So the medication was never needed in the first place. And neither were the antidepressants, which also caused serious leakage of exudates in my retinas for years. 6 months after stopping the drugs, they no longer had cotton wool patches that covered half the surface. And the holes in both healed spontaneously.
I've had one large bleeder since, but it dispersed quickly, and I took it easy for a while to let the clot anchor itself. One in almost 2 years I can live with.
Should have expected that drugs that affect brain cells negatively would also affect the retina negatively, and the OCT scans and retina photos show the correlation. Antidepressants do a lot of harm, with no independent studies showing effects over that of a placebo, and twice the suicide rate of those with the same tested severity who opt for other forms of treatment.
Booze would probably be better. You can share it, so decreased social isolation, and the negative physical side effects take a lot longer to manifest. And people who aren't naturally drinkers won't have the stigma of "going off their meds," whether it's for a week or forever.
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 19 2020, @03:52AM (2 children)
That whole mess of symptoms are in the spectrum for hypothyroidism. And when that's the cause, treating symptoms (especially depression!) often makes things worse, or unstable -- it's like painting the house to fix a failing foundation. As noted the hefty estrogen dose is probably keeping your thyroid going strong, thereby fixing all manner of vague and seemingly-unrelated issues. (Look up "300 thyroid symptoms" -- a non-exclusive list.) Anyway, I'm glad you're doing well. If things start going pear-shaped, get a detailed thyroid/endocrine workup and go from there, before trying to treat anything else. Tho given your age, if you're stable now, you're likely to remain so.
High blood pressure is a common but generally unrecognized result of low thyroid (via two different mechanisms). Wild fluctuations can happen when potassium and sodium levels get out of whack (either secondary to thyroid or due to goofy dietary intake, such as not enough sodium). You can see how HBP meds can be the wrong answer.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday August 19 2020, @10:12PM (1 child)
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 19 2020, @11:16PM
Good. Here's to your continued good health.
If you go unstable, thyroid should be the first thing checked (and not just the accurate-but-misleading TSH test). But as noted, with the high estrogen, it's likely to stay put.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday August 15 2020, @04:46PM (2 children)
Even "clinical depression" or major depressive disorder is always situational. Which explains why long-term those who attempt to treat it with medication have twice the suicide rate of those who don't, everything else being kept the same. Independent studies (there are very few - most have authors with connections to drug companies) fail to show a better rate for drugs over a placebo.
This is why the UN has called for the end of medicalizing the brain to treat depression back in 2017. Change the persons underlying economic or social situation and depression disappears. Most of the "disorders" in the DSM are fake pseudoscience, with no actual physical test (blood, imaging) to back them up. And every release they add more, resulting in an ever increasing spiral of unnecessary and dangerous drugs being prescribed.
Video game addiction? The care is simple - take a hammer to the kids Xbox or PlayStation. Not drugs.
Depression brought on by chronic pain on the job? Change the job or adapt it, not antidepressants.
Remember the long history of psychiatric fraud. Assertive women were "hysterical", being attracted to the same sex was a psychiatric pathology that was criminalizes, transsexuals were pathologized as delusional and overdosed with hormones of their birth sex (leaving many dead from suicide and others jailed for testosterone-induced rage). Keep in mind the whole field started with charlatans selling fake nostrums and circus acts of hypnosis.
One interesting thing in the UK, where many people on benefits that are so low its not really possible to maintain any sort of dignity and where people have committed suicide because they can't survive - many of the depressed get cured when they hit retirement age and collect a pension that is enough to live on without scrounging every day and worrying their benefits will be cut off for whatever reason.
Problem is it's cheaper to prescribe a pill than to help people gain insight into their lives or help them find meaningful work that gives them a sense of fulfillment and social engagement. Well, cheaper unless you account for the loss of tax revenues from putting people on brain damaging drugs that make them unable to work to their full potential, or even work at all. Because MRI studies show grey matter loss in people on antidepressants, and it takes about a year and 9 months to recover as much as you'll ever recover after stopping the drugs. It's also why people complain about personality changes, being in a fog, not being themselves - the drugs have the same effect as dementia. You'll still be depressed - you will have just been rendered passive enough to accept that this is your lot in life because you have a fictional brain chemical imbalance.
These drugs are very addictive, so when patients stop taking them and experience withdrawal symptoms, they're not told it's withdrawal, but "discontinuance syndrome." Amazing how those who persist in staying off the drugs eventually stop experiencing the effects of withdrawal, and as the brain fog decreases they're often able to get their lives back. Help from social workers who respect the decision to go "off their meds" makes a big difference.
Almost every patient seeing a psychiatrist will tell them within 15 minutes what the real problem is. Job loss, relationship problems, social isolation, experiences hatred, racism, prejudice, non-acceptance by key people in their normative social group for being lgbtA24Z, a physical handicap, decline in health.
You don't fix this shit with drugs that as their main means of effect cause pruning of brain synapses. That's just nuts. But psychiatry needs validation from drug companies, and drug companies need validation from psychiatrists. The psychiatrist who prescribe one ineffective drug after another "in the hope of finding something that works " aren't necessarily evil, just incredibly naive. And egged on by patients who want a pill to fix their broken lives, because working to effect real change is hard, and almost impossible in many cases without help. It doesn't help that you can't fix many of the problems because it's society, not the patient, who is sick.
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(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday August 19 2020, @04:04AM (1 child)
While back came across an interesting paper (which I can't find again) by a shrink who found that he could permanently cure 90% of his bipolar patients literally overnight by putting them on T3 (active form of thyroid hormone). To compress out all the tiresome details, what this means is that most cases of "bipolar syndrome" are actually undiagnosed Hashimoto's thyroiditis (an autoimmune disorder, which can be inherited or acquired). Basically the supplemental T3 shuts down (and replaces) the failing/leaking thyroid gland, halting the wild fluctuations in hormone levels, which had been making everything else flipflop between hyper and malaise. (IBS is a 100% dead-on symptom of Hashi, same reason.)
[10% of his patients reacted badly; those were doubtless due to some other cause. So he learned to do the initial dose under supervision. Fortunately any reaction is transient.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday August 19 2020, @10:56PM
Most "psychiatric illnesses" have caused and cures that don't involve any medication. We've been treating symptoms rather than causes. The twins study that claimed schizophrenia had a large genetic component was debunked after the lead investigator repeatedly refused to release the raw data. Others were able to track down many of the twins and found the claims that they didn't share the same environment were false.
Turns out the common factor was abusive home life, not a genetic predisposition.
If someone has situational depression, fix the situation. Seems obvious but psychiatry needs to do a hard reset. Even psychiatrists recognize how fucked the dependence on drugs and medicalizing the brain is doing way more harm than good.
We've become a society of wimps. A survey of over 1400 people asking if this was the worst year of their life had the majority say yes. I'm having a great year despite blowing my good eye again two weeks ago and again yesterday. This isn't even in the top 10 worst years ever.
How hard is it to wash your hands, wear a mask, and keep two meters away from people indoors? Millions being paid to sit at home - oh, the stress! There's tons of essential jobs begging for workers but people would rather sit at home and make more.
People are rational actors in the short term, so when their employers call them to come back to work, they only want one or two days work per week so they can continue to collect full benefits here in Canada.
it's like the university student who went on TV saying the proposal for a student benefit was too low - she wanted a permanent $2000 a month payment for going to school, no work requirements. Gee, sign me up for that! This is on top of massive subsidies. Of course she wants to be a lawyer … figures.
We've become a nation of wimps. And our prime minister wants to continue this? The universities are just as bad, wanting to charge full tuition for classes that are 100% remote, and also changing student fees for cancelled services. And we wonder where the sense of privilege comes from?
We knew that automation was going to change the nature and availability of work. Covid has given us a foretaste, and we've shown we aren't tough enough to face the future - people just want to hit the bars and party like it's 1999. And spread covid and force struggling businesses to shut down again..
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