I almost didn’t write this. It wasn’t from not wanting to. I cradled my head in my hands, desperate to contribute to the reams of social media positivity I had seen surrounding Mental Health Awareness Week.
I almost didn’t – couldn’t – because I was depressed.
There came a certain point in my experience of being LGBT where I accepted that I had to be strong and uncompromising in the face of disapproving glances and withering remarks. I made a pact to throw myself into my community with zeal, no matter how exhausting, and to make full use of the privileges I was afforded in the tolerant metropolis I’d landed in.
And yet, for some reason, I find this an incredibly difficult attitude to transfer over to my struggle with depression. I will share with my co-workers that I am going on a date with a man or going to an LGBT-themed event with an almost belligerent pride, but am overwhelmed with fear in having to admit to those same people that I’m leaving slightly early to see my therapist or that I need to take some time off due to another episode.
Indeed, the word “depression” still has a bite to it, in the way that the word “gay” did when I first dared to say it to someone else in reference to myself. The tone of my voice takes on an odd quality as I approach it in a sentence, to the point where I sound intolerably meek by the time “depression” tumbles out.
The thing is, in many cases, mental illness and being queer go hand in hand. It’s an uncomfortable but important reality that LGBT youth are four times more likely to kill themselves than their heterosexual counterparts. More than half of individuals who identify as transgender experience depression or anxiety. Even among Stonewall’s own staff, people who dedicate themselves to the betterment and improved health of our community, 86% have experienced mental health issues first-hand. It’s a morbid point to make, but it makes perfect sense that we, as a community, struggle disproportionately.
At a recent event I attended, set up to train LGBT role models to visit schools and teach children about homophobia, no one explicitly mentioned their struggles with mental illness. We told one another stories of how we had come to accept ourselves in the face of adversity, talking in riddles about “dark times” or “feeling down” or being a “bit too much of a party animal”. But these problems have other names – depression, anxiety, addiction – that we consistently avoid, despite being in a community in which a large percentage of us will have undergone similar experiences.
And this phenomenon replays itself over and over. Despite there being a common understanding between me and my queer friends that we’ve probably all been vilified in the same way and made to feel a similar flavour of inadequate, we will rarely acknowledge, even within the safe boundaries of friendship, that this has had a lasting impact on our ability to maintain a healthy self-image.
But part of being proud of who we are as LGBT people is being able to be open about the struggles we’ve faced. It’s in naming and wearing the uncomfortable badges of anxiety, depression and addiction that we take the first step towards fully accepting mental illness as an important part of our collective identity. After all, how can we be true role models to the next generation if we refuse to tell the whole story?
And so, this Mental Health Awareness Week, I’m issuing a challenge to my community. If you are LGBT and suffer from a mental illness, be defiant in your acceptance of it in the same way that you would about your sexuality or gender identity. Bring it up, speak it out and feel sure that your voice, however seemingly small or insignificant, is a valid one. After all, we have been, and will always be, a community of fighters – it’s about time we dared to show our battle scars.
I have worked as a GP over the past decade in about a third of the around 140 prisons in England and Wales – all categories, male and female – and in all there has been a gradual increase in the prison population, leading to overcrowding.
This reflects the national situation. Ministry of Justice figures show that between June 1993 and June 2012 the prison population in England and Wales increased by 41,800 prisoners, to more than 86,000. Without urgent steps aimed at cutting the prison population this could exceed 100,000 by 2020. However, this has not been matched by a corresponding increase in the number of prison officers. On the contrary, their numbers have been cut.
When our prisons are at crisis point, amid continuing controversy about incidents such as the recent killing at Pentonville, consider our direction of travel. Take HMP Berwyn, the so-called super prison expected to open in February 2017.
Built at the cost of £212m and located at Wrexham in Wales, HMP Berwyn is expected to accommodate 2,100 category C prisoners – those who cannot be allowed to move freely but are considered unlikely to try to escape. Instead of taking steps to radically reduce the UK prison population the government keeps building more prisons to house even more prisoners.
I have come across numerous cases over the years where a noncustodial sentence would have been more appropriate than imprisonment. I recall a heavily pregnant lady suffering from a life-threatening condition who was jailed for breaching a restraining order. What was to be expected of a pregnant sufferer confined for a good deal of the time in a small, poorly ventilated prison cell? During her time behind bars she was rushed to hospital several times. Whenever she was there, for sometimes up to a week and longer, she was guarded round the clock by prison officers.
Sending people to jail in the hope of ridding society of the menace of drug abuse is a woefully inadequate approach
I recall another instance when the nurse, seeing the new arrivals on reception duty, sent me the following message, asking me to prescribe a short course of sleeping tablets for a recent arrival. She was in prison for failing to pay a bill. Her partner was supposed to be looking after their young children but, the message said: “she does not believe he is up to the task. She is in a very weepy state and unable to sleep. She has another four weeks to do – could you please help?”
These women represent a not insignificant proportion of the prison population who are not a “danger to the public”. So why is the state spending large sums to keep them behind bars?
Ministry of Justice figures from 2013 revealed that 55% of prisoners connected their offences to drug-taking, with the need for money to buy drugs the most commonly cited factor. Eliminating the addiction factor could lead to the closure of about half the prisons in the UK and free resources for other matters.
‘Prison is punishment enough’: are inmates paying price of industry politics?
Sending these people to jail in the hope of ridding society of the menace of drug abuse is a woefully inadequate approach to the complex problem of drugs. It is akin to a doctor treating the symptoms of a disease without concerning themselves with its cause or its future prevention. There should instead be a holistic approach to the problem of drug addiction, with treatment and rehabilitation forming the centrepiece.
And then there are the inmates with mental health issues. Surely these are best handled in psychiatric institutions rather than prison. Instead of spending millions on “super prisons”, the state would be better employed building additional psychiatric hospitals and homes to accommodate the hundreds, if not thousands, of them languishing in jail. Instead of helping them to overcome their mental impairment, society is punishing them for a condition they cannot help having. Labelling them criminals on a par with those who commit armed robbery, rape and murder is antiquated at best and nonsensical at worst. Samuel Butler lampooned this stance in his classic satire, Erewhon, describing a culture who imprisoned the sick for the crime of not being well. That was published in 1872, but what has changed since then?
A report published last month by the RSA’s Future Prison project says the prison and probation services in England and Wales are failing to protect the public because they do not rehabilitate offenders, and that they should be radically restructured. I welcome the rehabilitation aspect, but it still ignores the central issue of population.
We need urgently to address sentencing, because too many offenders are being sent to prison for short terms. A record-breaking case was that of a lady who was jailed one evening only to be released the next day. I believe any sentence below three months should be suspended, turned into fines or whatever other punishment society deems appropriate short of an actual prison sentence.
As for drug addicts, the power to sentence them to drug rehabilitation homes makes sense for everybody. Keeping the most dangerous criminals – sex offenders, murderers, terrorists, armed robbers, and so on – in jail, and finding alternative punishment for those committing petty crimes, would not only lead a radical reduction in the prison population, it would also allow for the proper supervision of extremely dangerous inmates.
Whatever else is said this week, population reduction is where our focus is and it is quite achievable. What is really needed is the will.
•Dr Gordon Cameron is a pseudonym. Memoirs of Her Majesty’s Prison Doctor by Dr Cameron is available now. Visit hmpdoctorsmemoirs.com
As a student, I used to have a ritual. I would wake up and immediately jump up and down 100 times. Then I would start work at 9.21am precisely. I would eat dinner at 5pm on the dot, and I’d finish work at 10pm. Before going to bed, I would touch wood five times. Whenever the cycle was broken, I would break down.
I would tell myself that this was normal, that this was how you make a success of yourself. I wouldn’t be doing my academic work any justice if I wasn’t constantly on the verge of a breakdown, right?
My OCD routine was damaging. I didn’t feel I could seek help because my problems seemed so trivial compared to others’.
It is often said that when it comes to mental health, ignoring your problem – if it is even recognised in the first place – is not the solution. But dealing with it alone isn’t either, since certain neuroses will intensify in solitude. Mine certainly did. I never ate with people, and in a way it helped to lower my anxiety levels in the short term. I was “managing”.
But over time I became more and more anxious, until one day I had a panic attack while walking to university. I didn’t want to face this alone anymore; I had to be brave and get help without feeling I was merely attention-seeking.
But going to the doctors didn’t help much. It was an impersonal experience, where I was told to fill out forms on how to “rate” my level of anxiety. I knew full well that I’d been suffering from OCD, a borderline eating disorder and depression for around four years. I was at breaking point, I was suicidal, I couldn’t face the day anymore without becoming overwhelmed with emotion.
That is where the role of university counselling comes in, or at least it should have. The value of speaking to someone external about your problems is often overlooked – but I wasn’t even aware of this service as an undergraduate student.
The large number of students on campus can make it difficult for individuals to form their own support networks, to fit in and to feel like they are part of a wider whole. The prevalence of mental illness in students will likely become worse without adequate funding for support. A new report that came out today recommends that some universities increase their spending in this area threefold.
There needs to be a more open and inclusive dialogue on campus about mental health, and where students can get support – whether that is through formal counselling services or peer-support networks. This would work to break down the stigma I found myself trapped by when I was at my lowest ebb.
Support should not come as the last resort when students are at breaking point. Problems need to be tackled as early as possible, no matter how small the students – or their peers – believe them to be.
Only 13% of the NHS budget is currently committed to mental health services, despite the fact that mental ill-health accounts for 28% of the total burden of disease. The problem in many universities across the UK is the same: the underfunding of support services doesn’t accurately reflect today’s reality. We need to debate this openly, and more often so that students don’t suffer in silence like I did.
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It’s clear that her symptoms are advancing and that she was right on the futility of further chemotherapy. She is having trouble staying awake, her appetite is deteriorating, and she is weaker by the day. This may well be our last appointment.
“We can get rid of a number of your medications,” I say, frowning at the long list that her daughter says is proving increasingly difficult to administer.
“Let’s do that,” she says joyfully.
So in one of my favourite acts, I slash half her list, explaining why as I go along.
But she stops me at the statin, an anti-cholesterol drug she was prescribed 20 years ago for a barely elevated cholesterol detected on an insurance test.
“I need that so I don’t die from a heart attack.”
“Not quite,” I say soothingly. “Statins exert their benefit over many years and we agree that now, it’s more important to maintain comfort.”
“I can’t imagine my day without my statin,” she declares, leaving me to wonder somewhat enviously how her cardiologist managed to evince such devout compliance for a questionable cause.
Just then her husband pipes up. He is a sprightly 74, still working, and unlike his wife, detests medications, including the statin he was prescribed after a serious heart attack some years ago.
“Well, I’ve decided that at 75, I am swapping the statin for sausages. From what I hear, the two are as bad as each other.”
She has heard this before because the wife adds with a smile, “At 75 or when I die, whichever happens sooner.”
I urge the husband to discuss his decision with his doctor before stopping treatment, I tell my patient to stop her statin and I bid them both a fond goodbye.
As they leave, I find myself thinking about many recent conversations I have had with patients about statins. With cancer patients who have a limited life expectancy, stopping the statin is both safe and right. But during my stints in general medicine, where we treat heart attacks, strokes and dementia, the answer is more nuanced.
Does everyone need a high-dose statin? How many will experience side effects? Is lifestyle modification a reasonable starting point or should every patient be commenced on a statin? The reality of most hospital management is that a drug is prescribed and the patient finds out as an afterthought. But if a statin, once started, is likely to become a lifelong drug, what considerations are important beforehand?
Many patients have heard of statins but awareness does not mean familiarity and it certainly does not mean being informed. For every person who trusts a doctor’s recommendation to take a statin, someone else suspects a conspiracy theory fuelling the prescription of the world’s highest-selling drug.
For the patient who wants to know more, things can get complicated. A cursory internet search warns that statins make women (but not men) more aggressive, accelerate ageing, damage stem cells, worsen heart disease, cause dementia and are “unhealthy and unethical” to prescribe.
Alongside are studies asserting that statins significantly reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes and improve mortality. Their benefits are evident within the first year of intake and accumulate over time, making them among the few drugs to have a dramatic impact on health outcomes. Considering that heart disease is the number one killer in many parts of the world, this is no ambit claim. But pity the hapless patient trying to make an informed choice – it’s hard to know which “expert” advice to heed because everyone sounds knowledgeable.
Very few patients needed to stop statins due to adverse effects.
When I recently prescribed a statin to a young woman with a heart attack and a host of coronary risk factors, she expressed concern. I explained that no drug was without side effects but a new, rigorous, non-industry funded, meta-analysis by the clinical trial service unit of Oxford University, shows that the benefits of statins have been underestimated and harms exaggerated. The results were published in the Lancet medical journal.
Treating 10,000 high-risk patients with a low-cost, generic statin for five years prevented 1,000 strokes and heart attacks and treating 10,000 lower-risk patients prevented 500. Of 10,000 patients, five might suffer muscle aches, up to 100 may develop diabetes and five to 10 may suffer a brain haemorrhage but these side-effects have been included in the estimate of the absolute benefit.
Very few patients needed to stop statins due to adverse effects. It may not be the absolute final word but the meta-analysis concludes that many problems have been misattributed to statins, therefore planting fear in the minds of those at high cardiovascular risk and dissuading them from taking a potentially life-saving drug.
But how did these rare toxicities garner so much attention in the first place?
In October 2013, the British Medical Journal, as part of its mission to promote rational prescribing, published a paper quoting the incidence of statin-related side effects being as high as 18% and thus concluding that statins did not provide an overall health benefit to those patients deemed at low risk. But the 18% figure was based on flawed research and it was apparent that even in the quoted research, the figure was closer to 9%, but without the inclusion of a placebo-controlled group, which meant even the 9% could not be genuinely attributed to statins. (The meta-analysis says that statins are “no less well-tolerated than placebo”).
Seven months later the BMJ corrected the erroneous statements but did not retract the entire paper. Sir Rory Collins, the lead author of the Oxford meta-analysis, warned at the time that without full retraction, doctors and patients would continue to be misinformed. It turns out he was prescient.
Medical journal editors … owe it to society to publish papers that “first do no harm”.
Misleading media reports followed and led to increased reticence among doctors to prescribe or even discuss statins and increased unwillingness among patients to take them. Statins were already being under-used but a new wave of adverse media meant a further reduction in use.
In the UK, 200,000 patients stopped taking statins. 60,000 fewer statin prescriptions were dispensed in Australia following a now-withdrawn television program. If those patients avoided statins for the next five years, researchers estimated that a few thousand would suffer a fatal heart attack or stroke. For a disease that kills 17 million people around the world each year, an ounce of prevention is not to be sniffed at.
So what does the statin saga teach us? For one, it underlines the power of the media and in turn, the responsibility of health reporters and newspaper editors to think twice before exploiting health news to suit their audience.
“Beloved grandma loses mind to cholesterol drug” and “How statins ruined my life” might be guaranteed click-bait but responsible reporting might instead discuss the dreadful statistic of one Australian dying of cardiovascular disease every 12 minutes and how to prevent it. Statins are no panacea but combined with diet, exercise and curbing cigarettes and alcohol, they have a role.
Second, it reminds medical journal editors that they owe it to society to publish papers that “first do no harm”. If Big Pharma can’t be trusted to provide unbiased data and to base advice on sensational tabloid fare makes a mockery of medicine, doctors must put their faith in someone to provide credible information.
There is an old joke that the majority of academic papers are read only by the author and the editor – this may be a little harsh but busy clinicians mostly flick through abstracts and note key points rather than read even a fraction of the million scientific papers published annually with an interrogating mind. It is up to journal editors to simplify the task and spell out the difference between interesting research and findings that transform patient care.
Finally, better health arises from better health literacy. In a free society, patients are allowed to make poor choices but the media shouldn’t facilitate it. Just this week an acquaintance asked me what I thought of her daughter’s “courageous” bid to not vaccinate her child for fear of “giving her autism”. I reminded her that the fraudulent data had long been exposed and retracted but she said she had seen it on the net and that was that. Dashing my hopes, she next took on statins.
“What do you make of the controversy?”
“There is no controversy,” I replied. “Read the report.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you?”
Then, after a pause, “But seriously, did you see the story about the old lady who went mad on her statin?”
No, I didn’t. But newspaper editors, please take note!
Women are crazy. This isn’t me being hysterical; it’s historical. The trope of the crazy woman stretches from Plato to Plath to popular culture. Women, we have been told in thousands of ways for thousands of years, are simply more emotional and more irrational than men.
Madness-as-womanness is something we were first sold by the Ancient Greeks. The problem with women, they decided, was that they had wandering wombs. So, thanks to a few wise men, half the world’s population was diagnosed with a sex-specific disorder: hysteria. As medicine progressed, the definition of hysteria evolved until it was eventually discredited. Nevertheless the idea that women were biologically wired for instability became engrained in culture. What’s more, women started actively buying into the idea. The crazy woman began taking on a crazy appeal.
There is, perhaps, no better example of this than The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s classic autobiographical novel about a woman driven to insanity, in part, by the constraints imposed on her by society. Published in 1963, the novel influenced generations of women, inspired a wave of female confessional writing, and continues to have an enduring appeal. Earlier this year it was announced that Kirsten Dunst is to direct a new movie adaptation.
There are many types of “crazy woman”, each fulfilling slightly different roles. In the taxonomy of crazy women, Plath’s protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is the doomed heroine, the woman that society wants to keep as a girl. While Esther gave crazy character, a majority of “crazy women” are caricatures of female sexuality. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and history has a lot of scorned women: Miss Havisham, the psychotic spinster in Great Expectations; the bunny boiler, made famous by Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction; the psychopathically sexual Amy Dunne in Gone Girl.
What all these characters have in common, however, is that over time they have become more than a trope; they have become a cultural norm. The “crazy woman” has become a kneejerk way to put women in their place and remind them that, no matter what they achieve, they are inherently flawed.
Take Taylor Swift, for example: she is worth $ 250m (£190m) and is one of the US’s richest self-made women. Impressive, eh? However, Swift is routinely mocked by the media; painted as a clingy man-eater who races through boyfriends then enacts lyric-based revenge on her ex-lovers.
Swift could have ignored the persona the media had created for her but she chose to satirise it with her hit single Blank Space. This featured lyrics like: “Got a long list of ex-lovers/They’ll tell you I’m insane,” and was accompanied with an over-the-top music video in which she acts out the crazy woman she is painted to be. “Everybody in these tabloidy gossipy blogs thinks they have you pegged, like ‘Taylor’s boy-crazy,” she told Vanity Fair. “I’m work-crazy. That’s the thing that I’m crazy about, that I don’t stop thinking about.”
Swift isn’t the only woman to have subverted the entrenched narrative around “crazy women”. Indeed the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (on Netflix), tackles it head on and has become an unexpected hit. The musical-comedy features Rebecca Bunch, a high-flying but depressed New York lawyer, who quits her job and moves to California because her boyfriend from summer camp lives there. So far, so “crazy woman”. But the show’s theme song dramatises its tension and demonstrates there is more: “She’s the crazy ex-girlfriend!” the chorus trills. “What? No, I’m not! That’s a sexist term!” replies the star. “The situation’s a lot more nuanced than that.”
One person I’d wager would not be able to see that nuance is Donald Trump. The presidential nominee routinely calls women “crazy” and reduces them to their bodily functions. In an ironic twist, however, it looks like Trump might be getting served a little taste of the crazy medicine society has been serving women up for centuries.
“Is Donald Trump just plain crazy?” asked the Washington Post. “During the primary season, as Donald Trump’s bizarre outbursts helped him crush the competition, I thought he was being crazy like a fox,” the article explained. “Now I am increasingly convinced that he’s just plain crazy.”
It wasn’t just that particular journalist who gave Trump the benefit of the doubt at the start of his campaign. Initially, his eccentricities were largely explained away. Trump was a man, so he wasn’t mad – he was a maverick. He was crazy like a fox. Now, however, people are starting to wonder whether he is crazy like, you know, a woman.
Related: Time to change the language we use about mental health | Mind your language
As more people start to diagnose Trump as crazy, discussion has sprung up around the suitability of the word. Stop calling Trump “crazy”, urges a recent CNN article. It makes the rational argument that crazy stigmatises mental illness and equates mental illness with incompetence. Basically, it explains, “crazy” is not a nice term and you should be careful how you use it.
Call me crazy, but women are painfully aware of this. Perhaps the ultimate irony is that in thousands of years of dismissing crazy women, it will take one of the craziest men of the 21st century to make us rethink how we’ve used and abused the word.
With juice bars popping up all in excess of London, juicing appears like the latest craze. But there is also a whole lot of confusion around the topic –we’ve been told that fruit juices are total of sugar, that cold pressing is the greatest way to extract vitamins and that orange juice in a box is the most evil of them all. So in which does that depart the beginner juicer?
‘We see juices as an addition to a wholesome balanced diet program, when enjoyed with other food items, they can have actual overall health positive aspects, from greater digestion, higher energy ranges and brighter skin,’ Lily Simpson from the Detox Kitchen says.
Earlier this month she invited nutritionists and fitness pros to speak about juicing. ‘With celebrities and versions as frequent ambassadors of juicing, many folks assume it indicates starving by yourself,’ Danielle Copperman, a nutritionist, model and founder of Qnola, a granola-based mostly breakfast merchandise, says. ‘I personally think it is critical to supplement your diet with fresh juice.’
Nutritionist Yvonne Wake agrees: ‘We would be a significantly healthier nation if we had been to take juicing a bit more critically and not treat it as the most current slimming craze. The truth that antioxidants are abundant in a good green juice and we could be so significantly healthier if juicing was part of our everyday existence.’
Now we’re supposed to be consuming at least ten portions of fruit and vegetables per day, in accordance to a 12-year study by UCL in March, and primarily vegetables, which were found to be 4 occasions healthier than fruit. But this, Wake says, is straightforward when you juice. ‘All it takes is one particular juice in the morning, stuffed full of kale, cucumber, celery, spinach and an apple and we would have fulfilled most of our green needs for the day.’
Three juice recipes to attempt at home
And what about sugar? ‘There are so many green juices as options now which can incorporate no sugar at all,’ Simpson says. Companies this kind of as Imbibery London, exactly where all their juices are cold pressed – meaning no heat to destroy off the nutrients. They say their green juice, containing spinach, cucumber, celery, apple and lemon, is their most common (they also have a more tough core version, Phyto, which has parsley instead of apple). One particular bottle includes 1 to two kilos of produce.
Which has the comfort marketplace cornered. But if you do not want to (or cannot afford to) commit £7 for 250ml of juice per day, the nutritionists were in agreement that the very best way is just to do it yourself. ‘Don’t worry also significantly about what you’re carrying out, what machine you are using or what components you are placing in,’ Rhian Stephenson, nutritionist at Psycle London says, ‘just do it.’
Read: Word of mouth: Detox Kitchen, a service producing dieting less dull
She made the front page of the Financial Times as the blogger who humbled Big Food and whose latest campaign for transparency in beer ingredients left “The King of Beers,” Anheuser Busch InBev, and close running rival SabMiller clamoring like Neville Chamberlain to appease a bully. “The rapid response by AB InBev and SABMiller—which capitulated to Ms Hari’s demands within 36 hours—underscores the growing power of social media over corporate policy,” wrote the FT’s Consumer Industries Editor, Scheherazade Daneshkhu.
Ironically, one of the key factoids in blogger Vani Hari—aka, “The Food Babe’s”—attack on Big Beer was that they “even use fish swim bladders” to make their product without putting this self-evidently dodgy fact on the label; the implication is that beer should not from fish bladder be made. Yet, isinglass—as dried fish bladder is Tolkienesquely called—has been used to clarify beer, wine and liquor since the early 18th century, and its manufacture was widespread in Colonial America (a versatile compound, it was also mixed with gin and used as a glue to repair broken china). While this may cause vegans to pause before a draught, isinglass has been used and consumed without incident for centuries.
Unfortunately, this kind of clarification, where a blogger takes something commonplace and gives it a nefarious social media friendly twist to advance an agenda, did not make the Financial Times, Business Insider, USA Today, NBC News, and undoubtedly many more news stories that uncritically reported the Food Babe’s victory.
Budweiser – Before 1968 (Photo credit: roger4336)
Fortunately, there are real experts on the Internet, and they are not pulling any punches. The Food Babe “is the Jenny McCarthy of the food industry,” writes “beer snob” and cancer surgeon David Gorski on Science-Based Medicine. “Of course,” he adds, “I don’t mean that as a compliment.”
As Gorski notes, Hari’s strategy is to “name a bunch of chemicals and count on the chemical illiteracy of your audience to result in fear at hearing their very names.” Anti-freeze in beer? propylene glycol has many uses, but the reason it’s used in de-icing solutions is that it lowers the freezing temperature of water. That’s it. There are no concerns about toxicity because you’d have to consume huge quantities of it very quickly to have any effect. More to the point writes Gorski, it’s not, as Derek Zoolander might think, in the beer, it’s in the cooling system for the beer; it just appears that propylene glycol is an ingredient because the law requires listing every production process.
That the media should give The Food Babe a free pass as an expert or as a credible consumer watchdog is especially troubling when you look at some of her other claims, as recorded by the doctors at Science-Based Medicine. As infectious disease specialist Mark Crislip MD noted, Hari out goops Gwyneth Paltrow on the feelings of water by claiming that if you expose water to the words “Hitler” and “Satan” it will change its physical structure in exactly the same way as if you microwaved it. She believes getting the flu shot will give you cancer from all the “chemicals.” She is, naturally, against GMOs.
As Gorski notes, “companies live and die by public perception. It’s far easier to give a blackmailer like Hari what she wants than to try to resist or to counter her propaganda by educating the public. And, make no mistake, blackmail is exactly what Vani Hari is about.”
Actually, a better word would be “quackmail.”
So when are journalists going to hold truth up to this new self-promoting social media juggernaut? Why have so many news stories avoided questioning her claims as they would question her targets in the food industry? Surely, someone who believes that saying “Satan,” repeatedly, to a glass of water will alter the water’s physical properties needs to be treated with a dash of skepticism—no?
‘I wonder regardless of whether there may be a few shocks in store for men and women who consider mobile phone technological innovation spells doom for today’s youngsters. It seems to me that the opposite might be the case.’ Photograph: Getty Images
Like most twelve-yr-olds, my daughter received her 1st mobile phone a number of months ago – just as she started out secondary school. Yr seven is the time when existence really opens up for younger men and women: suddenly they are travelling solo to college and going out on their own, meeting up with pals to go buying or to the park or to the cinema. It manufactured sense to me as a mother or father, as it does to most mothers and fathers with youngsters of this age group, to get her a telephone.
Do I be concerned about her connection with her cellphone, not just now but on into the adolescent many years that are nearly upon her? Yes, I do – and so do many other parents. So I welcome today’s information that Imperial University is launching a examine into the use of mobiles, focusing on two,500 year seven college students who will be assessed now and again in two years’ time. The research is not seeking at well being risks around the use of mobile phones – of brain tumours and so on – although these will continue to be monitored in the years and decades ahead. Rather, it really is hunting at cognitive issues connected with the use of mobiles: such as how the use of phones may affect children’s memory or interest span.
I seem forward enormously to what the study reveals, but I wonder whether or not there may be a few shocks in shop for individuals who feel mobile phone technologies spells doom for today’s youngsters, eating up their brain cells with mindless chit-chat and pointless online video games. It appears to me that the opposite may be the case: my older daughter, who is 15 and uber-linked (even for a 15-year-previous), looks to me to have honed her rapid-wittedness hand in glove with her mobile mobile phone. Multitasking? Fast contemplating? Dilemma solving? Information gathering? My daughter utilizes her smartphone for all this and much more and I consider you’d agree that all the above are helpful, existence-enhancing attributes for a teenager.
Another massive advantage mobile phones offer youthful men and women is independence, some thing that they crave and that parents want for them. My 12-12 months-previous can do all kinds of duties by herself that I, aged twelve, would have relied on my mother and father to do: she can find out cinema occasions, supply garments she would like in retailers, check what time the vet opens so we can get the rabbit’s claws clipped. Her globe has opened up thanks to her mobile mobile phone, in an fully positive way, and it will undoubtedly have knock-on effects for her development.
So what are my worries about mobiles? Effectively, considerably much more than both brain tumours or arrested cognitive growth, I’m concerned about addiction. I truthfully cannot don’t forget the final time I noticed my 15-yr-outdated without having her smartphone, other than possibly when she was in the swimming pool on holiday final summer time (and even then, it was positioned close by on a sunbed). Teenagers can appear obsessed with their mobile: checking them every single couple of minutes, texting individuals all the time, checking to see how a lot of “likes” they’ve got following they’ve posted on social media, refusing to place their phones to 1 side when they are sitting round the table for Sunday lunch …
Then once more, that reminds me of some other individuals I know – me and my husband. We’re fairly wedded to our phones as well. Challenge us about it (our youngsters certainly do) and we’ll cheerfully reassure you that it’s all to do with function, that we’re just monitoring some information story, or that we’re waiting for an essential call. Sadly, however, I have to admit that the cause I check my telephone also frequently is almost certainly for the same motives my daughters do the same with theirs: boredom and insecurity. Youngsters, of course, have these issues by the bucketload, and I sometimes think mobiles have made adolescents of us all.
So in many techniques I suspect that, no matter what the Imperial University survey discovers, the individuals we should be seeking most closely at is not our youngsters, it really is ourselves. After all, we’re grappling with the newness and the unknowns of mobile cellphone technologies just as our children are, and the items they’re receiving incorrect may possibly be the factors we’re not function-modelling very well for them. Time, and this review, will hopefully tell us far more.
Residing in a county with a massive aging population, I regularly see information reviews about accidents and tragedies involving elderly drivers. In latest instances, older drivers have crashed into plate glass storefronts, hit pedestrians, driven into a physique of water and even disappeared altogether when evening driving. Maybe household had advised them or asked them to cease without good results.
The struggle to get an aging mother or father to give up driving can be quite tough for family members, notably when the aging individual thinks he or she is perfectly fine. Loss of independence is a very threatening factor for most people. An aging mother or father who is determined to preserve driving, regardless of warning signs that it is time to give up the keys may not be ready to listen to family members members. But, the elder may possibly be persuaded to get a driving evaluation by an goal particular person just to “prove I’m fine”.
The Burke Institute http://www.burke.org/outpatient/services/occupational-therapy in White Plains, N.Y. delivers what seems to be to me like a model program for drivers who might be marginal. It’s their Driver Evaluation System, carried out by licensed occupational therapists.
The plan is described on their site as evaluating “vision, perception, attention, reaction time, memory, judgment, security awareness and cognition. Every single is completely assessed to determine if the patient can carry on to drive safely for themselves and those all around them. The in-motor vehicle evaluation, performed by participating certified driving instructors, permits a third party professional to assess how all locations come with each other throughout the actual job of driving. This thorough testing allows experts to make a dependable recommendation based mostly on health care expertise.”
I have extended been an advocate of making use of licensed occupational therapists to do the work of assessing the several abilities concerned in aging parents’ driving, rather than relying only on family’s opinions when there is a conflict with the elder. This is the first system I’ve seen that is conducted in a rehabilitation facility by a group of expert occupational therapists. It lends an air of credibility to the idea of assessment and could make it easier to get the elder there for evaluation. A doctor’s prescription is necessary. That also will take the onus off the medical professional, who may possibly be reluctant to say that an aging patient need to end driving when the medical professional and patient have had a lengthy relationship and the medical doctor has never ever witnessed the elder’s driving. There could be indicators of early dementia in the elder, but everybody, like the physician, is hesitant to say that the elder ought to end driving now.
As a retired individual damage lawyer who represented victims of car accidents, some brought on by these aging drivers who must have offered up the keys just before they hurt my clientele, I can only applaud the Burke Institute for its plan. I would like to see packages like it all over the nation, making use of their method as a model. Getting this type of testing is 1 sure way to inform if your aging parent need to give up the car keys for good.
The cost of the program is $ 268, like a one particular-hour evaluation (potential testing), with recommendations and a report that is sent to the driver or doctor requesting the evaluation. With a report describing driving impairments in hand, it would be less complicated for any doctor to tell an aging client it’s time to quit driving. If the elder gave permission to the family members to acquire the details, all concerned could strategy for substitute transportation arrangements to preserve the elder’s pursuits. And the expense of this testing is far reduced than the value a dangerous driver hurting someone or even damaging a automobile.
From what I’ve observed with aging folks, nevertheless, the greatest challenge for families may not be finding an occupational therapist to do such an evaluation of driving potential. It will be receiving the elder to go for evaluation. Perhaps individuals who need it most will protest the loudest and refuse to be tested. It may possibly be up to responsible family members members to use other signifies of persuasion.
Till up coming time, Carolyn Rosenblatt AgingParents.com
It is sobering to see how speedily patient autonomy could morph into patient blaming. Professor David Haslam, chairman of the NHS rationing physique, the National Institute of Wellness and Care Excellence (Wonderful), has mentioned that individuals must see themselves as “equal partners” with their physicians and be “pushier” to get the remedy they need to have. Professor Haslam stated that, when he worked as a medical doctor near a US air force base, he mentioned the assertiveness of the American sufferers, in contrast to the deferential accepting British.
Whilst not suggesting confrontation, Haslam said it was “important for the future of the health support and the future wellness of the nation” for folks to have a greater comprehending of their circumstances and the remedies they are legally entitled to. Effectively, yes, but shouldn’t physicians instantly inform individuals about their best options, without what amounts to nerve-racking patient-medic haggling?
This was in response to a report stating that some significantly ill men and women, such as the elderly, have been not obtaining required treatment options. There are difficult places right here. When, for instance, calculating a gruelling drug regime for an elderly cancer patient, it looks reasonable that high quality of life and very likely excellent end result ought to be taken into consideration, the obvious caveat being that these choices are produced with the patient’s total consent.
As regards “British deference”, why do individuals constantly refer to this, when, these days, it truly is about age and class? A lot of men and women already “push” for themselves and their family members. Undoubtedly, it really is frequent with hospital stays for a household member (usually the one particular with the “greatest” accent) to be nominated as patient advocate (or “complaining sod in chief”). In fairness to physicians, there’s also the contemporary scourge, which Haslam isn’t going to mention, of self-diagnosing individuals arriving with bundles of “evidence” from the net, which includes not only very good data, but also a veritable Niagara of snake oil.
However, all this pales towards this notion that patients are eventually responsible for their care and just need to be assertive. This sounds like a overall health edition of “the squeakiest wheel gets the most oil”, which is terrifying. Granted, there’s an element of private obligation to illness, as there is with everything, and a bit of self-schooling never hurt. Nevertheless, this rationale areas as well much of the responsibility and, crucially, the blame, on people who’re presently sick and stressed.
Such men and women have ample to cope with with out researching and scrabbling for remedies or, without a doubt, getting into this charade of “equal partners”. Of program medical professionals must respect and pay attention to their sufferers, but unless of course they are medically qualified, they are not “equal”, nor ought to they be burdened with striving to be. Do bankers demand that medical doctors know about the stock marketplace? Do florists need that GPs know their orchids from their irises? No, so why do we truly feel we should know as much as medical professionals? If a medical doctor trains for several many years, and performs a lot of far more, how could a patient possibly match all that with some stressed hrs on the net? Why must they truly feel they have to?
With respect to Haslam, who at least is not telling the public to “shut up and place up”, this onus on patient duty sounds like some sort of Darwinian care pathway, where only the fittest (and loudest) will survive – when these people are the opposite of match, they are ill. Individuals have a right to the most powerful treatment options as suggested by physicians who know (or ought to know) what they’re speaking about. It really is the doctor’s responsibility to advise the greatest program and not fob off or cow folks into accepting inferior therapies – for price factors or otherwise. If this isn’t happening, which is the dilemma right there, not patient-wimps who want to increase a pair and push harder. Although, ultimately, decisions need to rest with the sufferers, it is a dark day when the blame and accountability follows shut behind.
Miley and Justin are not so bad. They are just kids
Has someone passed a law whereby celebrity meltdowns have to attribute the very younger? Is, without a doubt, the celebrity meltdown itself getting younger?
Appropriate now, there’s Justin Bieber, charged with drunk driving, and Miley Cyrus, the poor princess to Bieber’s dark princeling. Both are almost certainly just hardworking self-selling pop stars who are about as genuinely rebellious as a pair of Hello Kitty hair slides.
Nevertheless, they entertain twice over – as musicians cum A-listing social pariahs they are this season’s paparazzi manna from heaven. It is reminiscent of when individuals such as Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse had their troubles. Nonetheless, even though there are occasional mature “meltdowners” (Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen, Demi Moore), the bulk are truly younger, which tends to make me come to feel uncomfortable.
I see the likes of Miley and Justin on the very same degree as those teenagers who truanted to go holidaying in the Caribbean – a mite idiotic, but who wasn’t at that age? From now on, I’m going to try to exercising age-awareness concerning celebrity meltdowns. My new rule is no sneering at popular men and women until finally they’ve received at least sufficient body hair to vogue an eyebrow.
Why veggies need to boycott Canada
Justin Bieber is an export for which Canada has been celebrated, or at least forgiven. So what is behind the Canadian Marmite ban? A man promoting “British meals” in his Canadian shop had a consignment seized, such as goodies this kind of as Marmite, Irn-Bru, Penguin bars and Ovaltine (all the greats, then, of British cuisine), since they incorporate “illegal ingredients”.
At first, I was intrigued by what these illegal ingredients could be (I was sniffing at my jar of Marmite, making an attempt to get a buzz going), but then I realised they are most likely just additives with no which, let us face it, Irn-Bru wouldn’t be such a great normal orange colour.
Nevertheless, I want to speak about Marmite and what appears to be a grave human rights violation by Canada, depriving Britons abroad of their higher-good quality yeast extract. My elder daughter is on an exchange in Toronto and I will not even know but what her Marmite scenario is. I guess I’m just going to have to sit here and wait for the Canadian embassy to contact.
Additionally, expat vegetarians will be collapsing in droves (vegetarians want the B12, located in Marmite, or we turn into vampire beings who feast on the flesh of carnivores. Or something). Please note that I have study all the “sugar is the devil” books, so don’t bore on about how Vegemite is greater – nothing is better than Marmite to a British vegetarian. Nothing at all. It is our holy nectar.
I’m a massive fan of Canada, but what sort of country bans Marmite and expects to keep pole position in the global local community? I will not want to preserve mentioning younger Master Bieber, but Britons have a lot more than proved their tolerance for dodgy imports. Some yeasty clemency wouldn’t go amiss.
