I have been listening to Dr. Christopher Palmer talk about mental illness and started reading Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. He talks about diet, sleep and other lifestyle factors dramtically curing extreme mental health iss…
I have been listening to Dr. Christopher Palmer talk about mental illness and started reading Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. He talks about diet, sleep and other lifestyle factors dramtically curing extreme mental health issues, for even those who have been heavily medicated for years. I hope Bari interviews him. The medical community is driven by drug research, to the point of denying food interventions for even digestive issues like IBS. To Bari's point, you can't tell a person who is yeilding a machete to eat whole foods, but our society is promoting a very unhealthy lifestyle, which is creating a population that is very sick, physically and mentally. And many medications, if not most, are making it worse.
Linda, I agree that SO many of people’s issues could be at least partially fixed by cleaning up their diet. Unfortunately we live in a world run by western doctors who have been trained to give a pill for every ailment.
Sometimes the hardest thing to accept is that there are indeed things about which we can do very little. We probably understand more about the depths of the Marianas Trench than we do the human brain and even more so, the human mind. Our medications don't reverse defects; they almost always just mask or blunt the disorder so that the person can be somewhat functional. And patients don't like the medications; they often feel "shot down" or stunned.
At the urging of a psychiatrist-professor, several of my classmates (not me!) ingested small amounts of antipsychotics, supplied by the professor himself. (You could do that then.) I looked-after my study partner, Tom. He told me it was the worst experience of his life; he felt like he had the worst flu ever, and couldn't get together any sort of a plan to do anything. No wonder patients don't take their meds.
On a personal note, an old friend's 55 year-old husband began having hallucinations last year and was put on medication. He was, though, not taking his meds and hiding the fact. About a month ago, he shot and killed his father-in-law living in the same house and then himself, doing the deed in the marital bed, with his wife beside him. Some folks just can't be fixed. (edited for typos)
Also, what about the combination of medicines? In Grad School, we were reviewing cases and creating a table. One of the spaces was for medications. The individual I was reviewing was taking 6 different medications, related to behavior and sleep needs. I was stunned, wondering what would be the impact, from the combination of all these chemicals.
A grade-school friend and I were discussing this last week. We agreed that I was probably the poster child in my class for ADHD. Always animated, always talking, always being called-down for talking. But the ADHD "medications" were as unheard-of then as ADHD itself. Fortunately, I was a good student, and probably my saving grace was that we had three recesses per day: morning - 1/2 hour, noon/lunch - 1 hour, afternoon - 1/2 hour. We played "chase" at noon - always boys chase girls/girls chase boys. Never any crossovers or "transgender" stuff. Since we were young, the girls were every bit as fast and had every bit as much stamina, but I was the champ. I could run down anyone in my class because I had so much energy and I never gave up. Those recesses were critical and burned all the students' normal child's energy, and the fact that the teacher would "bust your ass" - that paddle was not just for show - probably kept me focused long enough to get the job done. (And by the way, there was one and one only fat kid in my school - Rita - who grew up to be a normal-sized, black-headed, stunning beauty.)
Now they can't touch the kids, can't even scold them, can't embarrass them, certainly can't bust their asses. In short, they cannot maintain order. If I went to school today, I'll lay 5:1 odds that I would end up dropping out, overmedicated, labeled for life, and working in a Wawa. Maybe everyone in the US teachers' unions need a five-year sabbatical to China to see how it's done when you are serious.
Maybe, Jim, the real problem is that our doctors are being taught to treat symptoms with chemical drugs rather than to get at the symptoms. E.g., treat type 2 diabetes with drugs rather than a strict regime of diet, exercise and perhaps probiotics. The examples abound. I was recently prescribed statins. Absolutely awful side effects. Went on strict diet to reduce cholesterol from 227 to 161. Doctor's response - "It was the statins." Which I had stopped taking for months. Ugh.
Doctors advise strict diet and exercise, but, in most cases, patients won’t do it. People know that obesity leads to diabetes, cardiac problems, etc., yet over 40% of Americans are obese.
If you look at hospital food, it is cereal, juice, toast - for a diabetic. Most doctors get a few hours of nutrition training, so they don't really know what is a healthy diet. The most successful programs for diabetics (Verta Health) include weekly support, an online community and monitoring of stats, like blood sugar, weight, etc. The reason why 40% of people are obese (70% overweight) is that we live in a toxic world that is breaking our metabolism. Kids are overfat, and none of them want that. Telling people to improve their health without support, is like asking an alcoholic to work in a bar and tell him to just not drink. I am saying this as a health coach of 28 years, and a person who has maintained a healthy weight, but with a lot of work. And there is no money in health, but plenty in sickness.
That’s a misrepresentation of how the body works. I have lost 80 pounds since being diagnosed with insulin resistance. Now I take a hormone and eat a high fat, high protein, low carb menu. Problem solved. If I had followed conventional wisdom which says to eat less and exercise more I would be on the unhealthy diet rollercoaster that serves the industrial food industry.
One need only consider the comical "food pyramid" pushed for years by the federal Agriculture Department (of all agencies) to realize the cause for this epidemic. Funniest of all? The SNAP cards that are supposed to provide "nutrition" for the poor allow purchases of soda, snacks, cakes and candy etc.
Seriously? And they want my tax dollars used to poison my fellow citizens?
LOL! No, my point was that we cannot count on doctors or the medical community to solve the obesity epidemic and chronic diseases. Even in a controlled enviroment, they give you crap, cheap food that does not assist in healing.
I have been listening to Dr. Christopher Palmer talk about mental illness and started reading Brain Energy: A Revolutionary Breakthrough in Understanding Mental Health--and Improving Treatment for Anxiety, Depression, OCD, PTSD, and More. He talks about diet, sleep and other lifestyle factors dramtically curing extreme mental health issues, for even those who have been heavily medicated for years. I hope Bari interviews him. The medical community is driven by drug research, to the point of denying food interventions for even digestive issues like IBS. To Bari's point, you can't tell a person who is yeilding a machete to eat whole foods, but our society is promoting a very unhealthy lifestyle, which is creating a population that is very sick, physically and mentally. And many medications, if not most, are making it worse.
Linda, I agree that SO many of people’s issues could be at least partially fixed by cleaning up their diet. Unfortunately we live in a world run by western doctors who have been trained to give a pill for every ailment.
Sometimes the hardest thing to accept is that there are indeed things about which we can do very little. We probably understand more about the depths of the Marianas Trench than we do the human brain and even more so, the human mind. Our medications don't reverse defects; they almost always just mask or blunt the disorder so that the person can be somewhat functional. And patients don't like the medications; they often feel "shot down" or stunned.
At the urging of a psychiatrist-professor, several of my classmates (not me!) ingested small amounts of antipsychotics, supplied by the professor himself. (You could do that then.) I looked-after my study partner, Tom. He told me it was the worst experience of his life; he felt like he had the worst flu ever, and couldn't get together any sort of a plan to do anything. No wonder patients don't take their meds.
On a personal note, an old friend's 55 year-old husband began having hallucinations last year and was put on medication. He was, though, not taking his meds and hiding the fact. About a month ago, he shot and killed his father-in-law living in the same house and then himself, doing the deed in the marital bed, with his wife beside him. Some folks just can't be fixed. (edited for typos)
Also, what about the combination of medicines? In Grad School, we were reviewing cases and creating a table. One of the spaces was for medications. The individual I was reviewing was taking 6 different medications, related to behavior and sleep needs. I was stunned, wondering what would be the impact, from the combination of all these chemicals.
We were told by the chief of Internal Medicine that if we had a patient on more than three medications, they should probably be in hospital.
Sometimes, I wonder what is impacting our students' behavior the most, medication or their specific disabilities.
A grade-school friend and I were discussing this last week. We agreed that I was probably the poster child in my class for ADHD. Always animated, always talking, always being called-down for talking. But the ADHD "medications" were as unheard-of then as ADHD itself. Fortunately, I was a good student, and probably my saving grace was that we had three recesses per day: morning - 1/2 hour, noon/lunch - 1 hour, afternoon - 1/2 hour. We played "chase" at noon - always boys chase girls/girls chase boys. Never any crossovers or "transgender" stuff. Since we were young, the girls were every bit as fast and had every bit as much stamina, but I was the champ. I could run down anyone in my class because I had so much energy and I never gave up. Those recesses were critical and burned all the students' normal child's energy, and the fact that the teacher would "bust your ass" - that paddle was not just for show - probably kept me focused long enough to get the job done. (And by the way, there was one and one only fat kid in my school - Rita - who grew up to be a normal-sized, black-headed, stunning beauty.)
Now they can't touch the kids, can't even scold them, can't embarrass them, certainly can't bust their asses. In short, they cannot maintain order. If I went to school today, I'll lay 5:1 odds that I would end up dropping out, overmedicated, labeled for life, and working in a Wawa. Maybe everyone in the US teachers' unions need a five-year sabbatical to China to see how it's done when you are serious.
Oh, that poor wife. How awful to live with that memory for life. 😢
Yep. Her father, her husband, beside her in her bed. With her gun.
Maybe, Jim, the real problem is that our doctors are being taught to treat symptoms with chemical drugs rather than to get at the symptoms. E.g., treat type 2 diabetes with drugs rather than a strict regime of diet, exercise and perhaps probiotics. The examples abound. I was recently prescribed statins. Absolutely awful side effects. Went on strict diet to reduce cholesterol from 227 to 161. Doctor's response - "It was the statins." Which I had stopped taking for months. Ugh.
Doctors advise strict diet and exercise, but, in most cases, patients won’t do it. People know that obesity leads to diabetes, cardiac problems, etc., yet over 40% of Americans are obese.
If you look at hospital food, it is cereal, juice, toast - for a diabetic. Most doctors get a few hours of nutrition training, so they don't really know what is a healthy diet. The most successful programs for diabetics (Verta Health) include weekly support, an online community and monitoring of stats, like blood sugar, weight, etc. The reason why 40% of people are obese (70% overweight) is that we live in a toxic world that is breaking our metabolism. Kids are overfat, and none of them want that. Telling people to improve their health without support, is like asking an alcoholic to work in a bar and tell him to just not drink. I am saying this as a health coach of 28 years, and a person who has maintained a healthy weight, but with a lot of work. And there is no money in health, but plenty in sickness.
I thought it was because we eat too much and move too little.
That’s a misrepresentation of how the body works. I have lost 80 pounds since being diagnosed with insulin resistance. Now I take a hormone and eat a high fat, high protein, low carb menu. Problem solved. If I had followed conventional wisdom which says to eat less and exercise more I would be on the unhealthy diet rollercoaster that serves the industrial food industry.
One need only consider the comical "food pyramid" pushed for years by the federal Agriculture Department (of all agencies) to realize the cause for this epidemic. Funniest of all? The SNAP cards that are supposed to provide "nutrition" for the poor allow purchases of soda, snacks, cakes and candy etc.
Seriously? And they want my tax dollars used to poison my fellow citizens?
LOL! No, my point was that we cannot count on doctors or the medical community to solve the obesity epidemic and chronic diseases. Even in a controlled enviroment, they give you crap, cheap food that does not assist in healing.
Personal responsibility is hard to come by when there is always a little pill to fix whatever ailment-if it doesn’t kill you first.