A psychologist named L. Alan Sroufe who was there in the beginning when conditions like “A.D.D.” were first characterized as problems, and who believed treatment with drugs like Ritalin was correct and helpful, pens an interesting column in the NY Times: Ritalin Gone Wrong: Children’s A.D.D. Drugs Don’t Work Long Term. Read it and weep. [Read more →]
There has been considerable evidence accumulated through various studies that sitting for many hours each day—as so many people do as a matter of course at work, not to mention in recreational screen-watching—is extremely hazardous to one’s heath, especially when it comes to heart disease. A new report today has a cardiologist stating that it is every bit as dangerous as smoking. [Read more →]
With the news full of the nuclear reactor crisis in Japan, it seems that there is a run on potassium iodide tablets, pretty much across the world. In the United States, the president of a company in Virginia (which ran out of the product on Saturday) reports that they continue to receive about three new orders a minute for single $10 packages of the anti-radiation pills. He’s quoted as saying, “Those who don’t get it are crying. They’re terrified.”
Since experts, governments and the World Health Organization are insisting that the risk to people far away from Japan is negligible, I guess this is all evidence of just how little trust people have in their leaders and their supposed betters, and I can’t say I blame them one bit. [Read more →]
There’s a really remarkable story in the New York Times today, titled Giving Alzheimer’s Patients Their Way, Even Chocolate. It demands a complete reading, and will leave you moved and amazed — at least it did me. It follows the work being done at the Beatitudes nursing home in Arizona, where a very different approach from the norm is being followed in the care for Alzheimer’s patients, with dramatic and heartwarming results.
It amounts to an enormous testament to the dignity and value of human life, at all stages, and the tremendous power that comes from giving that dignity and deserved respect to people, especially when hardship seeks to rob them of it.
The Times doesn’t refer to the source of the name for this facility, i.e. Beatitudes. But I don’t mind making the reference at all.
From the Sermon on the Mount (ESV):
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
The evidence just keeps piling up. From the Beeb:
Having low vitamin D levels may increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s disease later in life, say Finnish researchers. [Read more →]
Why does the story of vitamin D interest me so? I swear, I’m not one of those vitamin-popping freaks. I’ve never been a vitamin C zealot, nor a loud advocate of ginseng, royal jelly or even wheat germ. Yet, the continuing story of how vitamin D levels have been massively overlooked by the scientific and medical communities as a vital factor in human health fascinates and compels me because it is a singular example which illuminates a much bigger picture.
Science is wonderful. Medical science has saved so many lives and every day works what would have been considered miracles not very long ago. It is to be greatly valued and scientists and doctors are to be admired and encouraged to continue in the same vein. All of that is true, and yet, it is even more important not to forget one underlying fact: Everything that scientists and doctors think they know could actually be wrong. Everything. [Read more →]
From the book How to Raise a Dog in the city and in the Suburbs
Due to their feeble-mindedness about eating anything and everything that comes their way, dogs let themselves in for all kinds of stomach upsets. Many of these upsets are minor. The dog eats something undesirable, the stomach rebels, vomiting follows, and that’s all there is to it. Any dog should be allowed to vomit once or twice with no questions asked. If he continues though, try to diagnose the trouble. Continued vomiting can mean worms or a foreign object in the stomach or throat; it can be a symptom of oncoming distemper, hepatitis, or other diseases, poisoning, constipation, or kidney disorder.
The treatment, of-course, depends upon the cause, but the first step in any case is to take the dog off food for twenty-four hours. Don’t give him water either, just cracked ice occasionally. The next step is to clean out his system and quiet his stomach down. Give him an enema and a dose of milk of magnesia. If he vomits up the milk of magnesia, don’t repeat it — just give the enema. Use warm water for this with bicarbonate of soda, a teaspoonful to a pint. Use any ordinary human rectal syringe or an infant-sized one, depending on the size of the dog. To settle his stomach, give two and half grains each of bismuth subnitrate and cerium oxolate in the white of an egg, or, if you haven’t this, or can’t get it, give rhubarb and soda or plain bismuth in the white of an egg, with a little whisky. This treatment should be given every two hours until the vomiting stops. If it doesn’t stop and the dog seems to be weakening fast, if there is blood in the vomitus, or if the vomitus is black or a dark brownish green, or if there is a temperature, get professional help at once.
Of-course, any book which recommends giving your dog whisky as part of a concoction to settle its stomach must be my favorite book on dog-care, and indeed this one is. I was lucky enough to pick up the 1953 edition in a used bookstore and I heartily recommend it if you can get it via Amazon
The story today is: Lack of Vitamin D in Children ‘Shocking’.
About 70 percent of U.S. children have low levels of vitamin D, which puts them at higher risk for bone and heart disease, researchers said today.
“We expected the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency would be high, but the magnitude of the problem nationwide was shocking,” said Dr. Juhi Kumar of Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center.
Cases of rickets, a bone disease in infants caused by low vitamin D levels, have also been increasing, other research shows.
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The cause? Poor diet and lack of sunshine, the researchers conclude today in the online version of the journal Pediatrics.
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And this doesn’t even get into the mounting evidence that [Read more →]
It used to be that mothers would tell their children, “Go out and play in the sunshine, it’s good for you.” In more recent years, saying something like that too loudly might have gotten a poor mom arrested and her children taken away from her. “The sun, good for you? Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill your kids with skin cancer?” At least, make sure the urchins are slathered all over in 45 SPF sunscreen, and preferably wearing hats and long sleeves. You might call this the Gospel of St. John the Dermatologist, and it has now been extremely well learned and internalized by a couple of generations of people in the United States and to varying degrees across what we call the developed world. And this much is now clear: it has been killing people. [Read more →]
