Will Health Care for Aging Boomers Cripple Their Kids?
There are some issues that refuse to go away. Of the stubborn ones that assail our community, the notion of the Grey Tsunami is the most intractable and pernicious.
- Moses Znaimer, "Tsunami Redux: Going One More Round with the Save that Never Was," Zoomer, December 2012
The real-estate crash has added to nursing homes' budget crunch. Many clients sell their homes and use the money to pay out of pocket for long-term-care services from a nursing home. By obliterating more than $8 trillion in home equity, the collapse cut the number of patients who can pay their own way.
- The coming nursing home shortage, msn Money, 4/10/2012
First let's clear away a major--but largely unrecognized--factor that affects our perception of this issue. Our major public media love tabloid style journalism. They want to make us afraid, preferably every day.
News media have always been enamoured by both scandal and potential sources for fear (think "if it bleeds, it leads" for newspapers and television news). The issue of Baby Boomers cluttering our health systems and clogging the provision of adequate care as they age is the latter. It has been so much promoted that Republicans in the USA believe care for the elderly will eventually cripple the economy. They call it Obamacare in an effort to place blame on the Democratic president.
After a decade of severe and trying times of the Great Depression, followed by the Second World War (aka World War II), the West was ready to settle down and raise families. In so doing, the decade following the war generated the greatest number of births in any period of history.
Those post-war babies are now beginning to retire. Many, due to economic crashes and debt resulting from extraordinarily successful advertising and convenience of borrowing on credit, will stop working with no bankroll to support them in their "Golden Years."
The media play on the fear that they will become dependant on public support and cripple the economy of the once most powerful nation on earth. Is the fear realistic? About half the population of America have bought into the fear, so the fear is real even if its cause is not.
One of the problems is that the fear, as with many forms of worry, has no evidence to support it. Those who oppose this fear-mongering can't argue against the evidence presented to support the fear because very little has been presented.
In my country, Canada, fully 75% of the wealth of the nation is owned by people over the age of 65 years. Seniors are the wealthiest generation of older people in my country's history. This is the same demographic it's claimed will not be able to pay for its own health care.
Baby Boomers have held power in the marketplace since manufacturers first saw the need for new toys for young children. As they passed through middle age they forced huge improvements in health care. One was in medical imaging which allowed for earlier diagnosis of problems and their correction before patients became victims. Before they became bed ridden incapacitated patients.
This powerful generation does not want to be confined to beds and wheel chairs for the final few decades of their life. So it has pushed for better medical treatment, a better range of healthy foods available in the markets and many more facilities available to help them stay fit and active.
I belong to CARP (Canadian Association of Retired People), which has a US equivalent known as AARP. Just how active are the member groups of CARP?
Led by the organization's president, Moses Znaimer, known for recognizing people needs before others have caught on, a very popular magazine associated with CARP is known as Zoomer ("Boomers with Zip"). Zoomer is the most popular magazine in Canada geared to the over-45 demographic.
Znaimer has also founded Zoomer Media, a rapidly grown multimedia empire that goes beyond magazine publishing into radio stations, television specialty channels, speakers conferences and so on. Moses Znaimer is not known for failure and his success with CARP and Zoomer Media is ample evidence that aging Boomers will not lie down and be sick and helpless.
As a result of economic setbacks, bankruptcies and failures in the stock markets, many seniors find themselves without enough security behind them to retire at age 65. Instead they have decided to continue working until they can afford to retire. The point here is that they are healthy enough to continue working and companies are happy to have them continue working beyond the traditional retirement age.
The Canadian government even plans to raise the age of eligibility for Old Age Security payments because there are too many healthy seniors collecting pension money they don't really need.
Recent studies in Canada and the USA have shown that seniors are the happiest demographic among all ages. Other studies have shown that happiness is one of the best indicators of health, and one of the best ingredients for someone who wants to be healthy.
True, with recent market drops, two-thirds of Canadians over the age of 60 do not feel they have enough income ready for them to collect for them to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. Given that these very same people have been living with excesses far beyond their needs--some have so much stuff they don't know what to do with it when they move--that may very well be a non-problem.
When you have become accustomed to living with far more than you need, reducing your expectations of unnecessary excesses and shopping sprees may be something seniors would have to do anyway. When you stop feeling the need to "keep up with the Joneses", or even to surpass them, you can live with far less income.
Older people are also the most educated and experienced generation of folks on the planet. They have amassed skills and accumulated experience that simply can't be matched by younger people in the working world. Many large companies are happy to hire retired seniors part time to help with projects their younger employees might not be able to do well.
Volunteerism has become a vast field of opportunities for retired people who do not need extra income, who have time and who have a desire to help others. We have more people volunteering in the world today than ever before in history.
Most volunteering helps others in some way. This altruism is not only satisfying for participants and beneficial for those who are helped, it is also healthy for the volunteers themselves. It gives them the feeling of being needed and wanted beyond anything they have experienced earlier in their lives.
These people not only do not want to be sick or disabled, dependant on others for their survival, they insist on being well. They will do whatever they can to stay well and healthy. Check out the popularity of activities for seniors in your own area and you may be surprised at how vigorous they are and how many participate in them.
Seniors not only do not want to become disabled, they are determined to avoid it. As the old saying goes, they want to die with their boots on.
That's what is happening. The media don't cover that news because there is nothing scandalous or fearful about it. The situation is something to be excited about, not fearful of.
Bill Allin in the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who do not become troubled adults.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Monday, January 28, 2013
The Myths Surrounding Alien Life Forms
The Myths Surrounding Alien Life Forms
Bookmaker Paddy Power is offering odds of 16-1 that the existence of extraterrestrial life will be confirmed this year.Maggie Aderin-Pocock, There IS life out there: Space scientist says there could be four intelligent alien civilisations in our galaxy, Mirror News, 2 July 2012
Note the dates: "confirmed this year" and "July 2012". Apparently bookmakers know little more about extraterrestrial (aka alien) life as the scientists who study the cosmos looking for it. That's not much.
Let's put a little perspective into this. Scientists who believe they know about such things as life on earth claim that the chances of life happening on a chunk of rock at just the right distance from a relatively small and remote star as our sun would be about the same as you or I winning a big lottery each and every day in the coming year.
They would be primarily biologists and others who have studied the intricacies of life on earth and its relationship with the respective environments of each. The odds against us being the way we are seem staggering.
Over on the physics side of science we have those who look at where earth is relative to the rest of the Milky Way galaxy and the universe and say there must be countless planets similar to ours. They conclude that the components that are necessary to generate living things (call them chemicals) exist in abundance in the universe, so there must be thousands, even millions, of planets like ours with life already growing and evolving.
With odds like those, it's no wonder bookies can offer grand looking odds to those who believe they have a decent chance of winning a big lottery.
Scientists claim that it's likely that life on another planet somewhere must be more evolved than we are, thus they have figured out how to travel astronomical distances (literally) in a relatively short period of time. They never explain why this could have happened faster elsewhere than it did on earth. Nor how the aliens could have found us amongst billions off possible locations.
Light from the nearest star system to earth takes over four years to reach earth. Scientists have not even imagined a way to travel faster than a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Indeed, most still believe Einstein's claim that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Even at the speed of light, the stressors on life forms inside a vessel would likely be greater than their bodies could withstand.
Meanwhile science fiction writers have so influenced real scientists that the latter now believe that alien life forms coming to earth will want to destroy it, or at least turn humans into slaves. They never explain how a few alien life forms would manage to conquer and overcome an entire planet. Or why, as they would not come in massive numbers as they would only be explorers and adventurers anyway.
We know that distances between earth and other planets that could be somewhat like earth are so great that it would require propulsion systems far advanced of anything science could conceive of today in order to make such a trip in fewer than several successive lifetimes.
Think about that for a moment. Would you send your astronaut son or daughter into space knowing they would (could) never return and that their children and grandchildren and even generations beyond that would be born and live their entire lifetimes on a vessel moving through uncharted space? Never to set foot on land. That doesn't make sense.
If one of our space vessels made it, over several generations of humans, to a distant planet that could sustain life, what are the chances that the vessel could turn around and make the trip back to earth without a problem that would destroy it? Remember, two of those very dependable American shuttlecraft were destroyed right here on our own planet.
Protection against space debris, wandering space litter such as rogue asteroids and radiation science has not even discovered yet--to say nothing of living in cramped quarters for decades at a time, with resulting muscle atrophy--would present problems beyond what science today can address with confidence.
Other small questions should enter the picture. We know that unmanned space vessels are the way to go when exploring beyond our own atmosphere, so why would an alien vessel travel with a complete crew (including earth-shattering weaponry) for generations, only to return home generations later to say "Hey, we found one!"?
If we were to send out an exploration vessel today, which direction should we go? Science has no evidence from decades of watching and listening to space that suggests there could be life anywhere else in the universe. A "shot in the dark" would have a much greater possibility for success than a probe with no known or prescribed destination.
We have sent out messages into space and listened for incoming messages for decades, but heard nothing. The SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) had to be shut down after decades of searching for lack of evidence of any kind.
This is not to say that there is no life out there, be it microscopic or even more advanced that we are on earth. It is to say that the effort may not be worth the cost, at least at this point.
In other words, finding a distant planet to which we could send a sampling of life from earth, in order to preserve what we have today, will not likely be feasible in the foreseeable future. Maybe never, as the universe itself is expanding at a horrendous rate, making everything in it farther apart.
We had better get busy cleaning up our own backyard before we have nothing left to send out into space in order to preserve life as we know it.
We allow some 300,000 chemicals to be poured into our waterways from factories and half a million chemicals to be whooshed into the air from smokestacks. We know very little about what effects they have on life right here on our planet. Yet our governments and our industries want us to worry about the temperature of our atmosphere warming by half a degree.
Of course industries want us to be concerned over global warming, it will take our attention away from the countless chemicals they put into our food, our medicines and our vaccines (dozens of which are now given to very young children, by law, with no evidence of their effectiveness or their long term effects on health, but an increasing body of evidence telling us they do more harm than good).
If you were an intelligent species that had travelled for hundreds of years through space, would you want to adopt homo sapiens as slaves?
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and governments who want to make the future of our planet livable.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Bookmaker Paddy Power is offering odds of 16-1 that the existence of extraterrestrial life will be confirmed this year.Maggie Aderin-Pocock, There IS life out there: Space scientist says there could be four intelligent alien civilisations in our galaxy, Mirror News, 2 July 2012
Note the dates: "confirmed this year" and "July 2012". Apparently bookmakers know little more about extraterrestrial (aka alien) life as the scientists who study the cosmos looking for it. That's not much.
Let's put a little perspective into this. Scientists who believe they know about such things as life on earth claim that the chances of life happening on a chunk of rock at just the right distance from a relatively small and remote star as our sun would be about the same as you or I winning a big lottery each and every day in the coming year.
They would be primarily biologists and others who have studied the intricacies of life on earth and its relationship with the respective environments of each. The odds against us being the way we are seem staggering.
Over on the physics side of science we have those who look at where earth is relative to the rest of the Milky Way galaxy and the universe and say there must be countless planets similar to ours. They conclude that the components that are necessary to generate living things (call them chemicals) exist in abundance in the universe, so there must be thousands, even millions, of planets like ours with life already growing and evolving.
With odds like those, it's no wonder bookies can offer grand looking odds to those who believe they have a decent chance of winning a big lottery.
Scientists claim that it's likely that life on another planet somewhere must be more evolved than we are, thus they have figured out how to travel astronomical distances (literally) in a relatively short period of time. They never explain why this could have happened faster elsewhere than it did on earth. Nor how the aliens could have found us amongst billions off possible locations.
Light from the nearest star system to earth takes over four years to reach earth. Scientists have not even imagined a way to travel faster than a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Indeed, most still believe Einstein's claim that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Even at the speed of light, the stressors on life forms inside a vessel would likely be greater than their bodies could withstand.
Meanwhile science fiction writers have so influenced real scientists that the latter now believe that alien life forms coming to earth will want to destroy it, or at least turn humans into slaves. They never explain how a few alien life forms would manage to conquer and overcome an entire planet. Or why, as they would not come in massive numbers as they would only be explorers and adventurers anyway.
We know that distances between earth and other planets that could be somewhat like earth are so great that it would require propulsion systems far advanced of anything science could conceive of today in order to make such a trip in fewer than several successive lifetimes.
Think about that for a moment. Would you send your astronaut son or daughter into space knowing they would (could) never return and that their children and grandchildren and even generations beyond that would be born and live their entire lifetimes on a vessel moving through uncharted space? Never to set foot on land. That doesn't make sense.
If one of our space vessels made it, over several generations of humans, to a distant planet that could sustain life, what are the chances that the vessel could turn around and make the trip back to earth without a problem that would destroy it? Remember, two of those very dependable American shuttlecraft were destroyed right here on our own planet.
Protection against space debris, wandering space litter such as rogue asteroids and radiation science has not even discovered yet--to say nothing of living in cramped quarters for decades at a time, with resulting muscle atrophy--would present problems beyond what science today can address with confidence.
Other small questions should enter the picture. We know that unmanned space vessels are the way to go when exploring beyond our own atmosphere, so why would an alien vessel travel with a complete crew (including earth-shattering weaponry) for generations, only to return home generations later to say "Hey, we found one!"?
If we were to send out an exploration vessel today, which direction should we go? Science has no evidence from decades of watching and listening to space that suggests there could be life anywhere else in the universe. A "shot in the dark" would have a much greater possibility for success than a probe with no known or prescribed destination.
We have sent out messages into space and listened for incoming messages for decades, but heard nothing. The SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) had to be shut down after decades of searching for lack of evidence of any kind.
This is not to say that there is no life out there, be it microscopic or even more advanced that we are on earth. It is to say that the effort may not be worth the cost, at least at this point.
In other words, finding a distant planet to which we could send a sampling of life from earth, in order to preserve what we have today, will not likely be feasible in the foreseeable future. Maybe never, as the universe itself is expanding at a horrendous rate, making everything in it farther apart.
We had better get busy cleaning up our own backyard before we have nothing left to send out into space in order to preserve life as we know it.
We allow some 300,000 chemicals to be poured into our waterways from factories and half a million chemicals to be whooshed into the air from smokestacks. We know very little about what effects they have on life right here on our planet. Yet our governments and our industries want us to worry about the temperature of our atmosphere warming by half a degree.
Of course industries want us to be concerned over global warming, it will take our attention away from the countless chemicals they put into our food, our medicines and our vaccines (dozens of which are now given to very young children, by law, with no evidence of their effectiveness or their long term effects on health, but an increasing body of evidence telling us they do more harm than good).
If you were an intelligent species that had travelled for hundreds of years through space, would you want to adopt homo sapiens as slaves?
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and governments who want to make the future of our planet livable.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Suicide: A Small Informal (Personal) Study
Suicide: A Small Informal (Personal) Study
"Why did you try to kill yourself?"
"You told me to be happy."
- Anonymous source, internet forum, (validity unconfirmed)
A few days ago, as a result of an unfortunate series of coincidences, I found myself experiencing some old familiar feelings.
I wanted the pain to be over.
As I have been through these experiences before and lived to think and tell about them, I decided to do a small experiment to see if people who believe they know me could recognize the telltale signs of potential suicide we hear about (always after the tragic event itself).
What, I wondered, would people do if they knew I was troubled enough to rant, with little self control, about the state of the world and my life? Such ranting is as common as depression as a sign of someone who is potentially suicidal. Would people recognize a person in trouble, someone in danger of considering suicide? Or might they just think I had not had enough sleep? Or that I was having a bad hair day?
How many would care enough to ask if they did suspect something? I expected that most, if they recognized anything, would go introspective or selfish and try to avoid meddling.
"Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain."
- Tiffanie DeBartolo, American novelist (b. 1970), How to Kill a Rock Star
I also wondered what people would do if they found someone at risk, what actions they would take. Would they, in fact, do anything or would they be too afraid to "interfere" in something they know little about.
Finally, I wondered what kinds of clues might cause people to clue-in that they were suddenly aware of a person they knew who was in trouble.
"A lot of you cared, just not enough."
- Jay Asher, American writer (b. 1975), Thirteen Reasons Why
Most people who believe they know me paid little attention when I seemed to go off the deep end. "He has done it before, so we know he will be all right" they thought. It never occurred to them that I might see that as a challenge to prove them wrong. Suicidal people rise to challenges.
It never occurred to them that this time might be somehow different. In fact, brain chemistry imbalances may never be identical twice. Brain chemistry imbalances account for most depression and suicides.
It also never occurred to them that I might really end my life. They didn't allow that possibility to enter their minds. In psychology, that is called denial. For those who are left behind after someone has ended their life, it's a lifetime or knowing that they could have done something, but didn't.
What some friends have seen as strange cranky periods I get sometimes were really periods when I seriously considered suicide. I didn't follow through, for one reason or another. I delayed so long in trying to figure out how to end my life without hurting others that the chemistry in my brain corrected itself.
"and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart."
- Jodi Picoult, American author (b. 1966)
When I was a child, it was common to hear of people dying of a "broken heart." Of course this seemed silly, but people had no other way to account for why I person who had been very close to another (such as a spouse) for many years would die within weeks or months of the death of the partner (on some occasions it has been as short a time as a few days or even hours).
Today medical science has proven that people can die of a broken heart. It doesn't break like an invaded piggy bank, but it does cease to function properly. It gets so weak, even leaky, it can't pump blood efficiently. Why? Brain chemistry weakens the immune system and body organs.
Most of my "friends" on Facebook and all of those who subscribe to my posts gave no reaction to my ranting or telling of my tragic family history.
A few Facebook friends, notably those who are known to be particularly sensitive to the feelings of others and who those close to them know they have suffered tragedy more than once in their lives, took action. They tried to interfere, to intervene in a situation they sensed was risky.
The second best reaction I had was from two people who said, in effect, "I know something is terribly wrong in your life and I want you to know that I am with you for whatever you need." Some tried to give advice, which most people knew was the wrong approach. But the stuck their necks out in a situation they knew might be risky. They tried. They did something.
The best reaction I had was from a real life and Facebook friend who said, in effect, "I know something is troubling you terribly. How can I help?"
That kind of offer is open ended. The person making the offer is laying herself or himself open, as if to say "I am here for the taking." For someone who is close enough to find death appealing, that kind of offer is hard to resist. It says "I care. You matter to me."
What does it actually feel like when you want to end your life? First of all, there are two kinds of suicide attempts. Both are dangerous. The first is really a cry for help. The person wants to fail, wants to be discovered before dying. But he knows that he will be considered a fake if he doesn't make the action he takes severe enough that it could be convincing.
The second kind is the person who wants it all to end, wants the pain to end, wants it to be over. Don't ask what the pain is because an objective third party (the first being the person considering suicide and the second being his pain, which is so strong that it is almost personified) would not find the pain severe enough to warrant needing it to end immediately.
That last paragraph should be a clue to you as reader. No reason given for committing suicide may seem valid to someone looking on from the "outside." Something else must be going on for the person to feel that bad.
What is going on is bad brain chemistry. The chemistry is beyond the control of the victim. No amount of being told to think positive, to smile or to brighten up will help. If anything, it could alienate the victim from the others, making him feel more alone.
That aloneness is characteristic of suicide. People do not end their lives to punish others, though it might seem that way to people who read their "suicide notes." (Most people who commit suicide leave a note, but not all.) They end their life because they feel alone.
This aloneness is not loneliness. It's a feeling of being isolated from the world. It's as if you are in a parallel dimension, being able to see the other dimension without those in the other dimension being able to see you or to communicate with you.
It is not extreme selfishness either, though it might seem that way to someone who is close to the victim. It's not that he only thinks of himself, but that there is only one person in his world to think about.
In my case, I felt that way on several occasions over many years, but not for long. When I considered possible ways to end my life, I always thought about the consequences for people who were left behind. Most suicide victims do not do that.
When my paternal grandfather ended his life in 1917, he left a wife with five children to raise, no source of income, no social assistance, who not long afterwards contracted tuberculosis because she was so weak from working her life away to look after her family without knowing how or having any hope of a way out.
I learned early in my life what it was like for my father to grow up in a fatherless family. He had no access to parenting skills because he never had a father of his own. He could not be what many consider a "good father" because he didn't know how. He did his best, but had no one to turn to for advice about being a father. Or for that matter, about being a husband.
I did not want to leave my wife or anyone I knew or who knew me with that kind of legacy. I was aware of what they didn't know. I was aware of what I did know, of what I had learned from experience and from years of study. I knew that what I had learned would be lost if I ended my life too soon.
Fortunately, I am a naturally positive person. I became that way as an adult, but only when I gained enough self esteem that I could feel positive about myself. Before I gained that about 15 years ago, I had to depend on my instincts for survival, which were stronger than anything else in my life.
When some truly tragic events that were beyond my control sculpted my life, I survived on the belief that there was a better life for me out there somewhere, I just had to learn how to find it. I had to keep looking. Through those early decades I did not suffer a problem with wonky brain chemistry.
When the chemistry in my brain goes awry, and no one can predict when that might be, my positive attitude toward life fights with the damaging brain chemistry. The positive attitude eventually wins out, though sometimes it takes a few days for the battle to conclude.
Some people are not fortunate enough to have a strong positive attitude toward life. Some people are not strong enough to have an accumulation of self esteem. They are at risk. Some do not hold to the hope--or belief--that there is a better life waiting for them to find it. They believe a better life will never happen. They are at severe risk.
What can you do if you believe that someone you know is at risk of ending their life? The most important thing is to not go into denial. Second is to not insist that the person cheer up, think happy thoughts, be positive. It won't work and may cause the wrong reaction.
It will also not be effective to tell the person that he will get through it, that he will recover. At the moment of crisis, he will not believe. It is true that he will get through it and recover, but to a person who is suicidal, future is not a reality. Future does not exist.
For intervention strategies, I can speak from personal experience. I do not know what a medical professional, someone who has not been on the "inside" of a suicidal experience but has lots of "book experience" would say. Frankly, they usually don't say much because they don't really know. I know what would work for me.
Constant companionship. A suicidal person not only feels as if he is alone, he wants to actually be alone to complete the task of ending his life. He will only act if and when he is alone. No one ends their life with company watching.
Companionship not only prevents the person from committing the final act, in most cases it also tends to confuse the issue so much that the brain reacts to right its own chemical problem.
Companionship does not mean keeping up a constant conversation. It means just "being there." Keep it simple and plain. Touch, which is essential to humans and which the person at risk may have lacked for too long, may or may not be needed. A hug or touch on the arm or shoulder may be appreciated, but it may also be strongly rejected. Don't feel bad if the person doesn't want to be touched. Just stay with him.
I hope you never need to make use of what you have just read. But if you do, you will be able to save a life. Don't be afraid. It will be surprisingly easy.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for parents and teachers who want to help children and for police and politicians who want to reduce one of the most expensive drains on tax funds.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
"Why did you try to kill yourself?"
"You told me to be happy."
- Anonymous source, internet forum, (validity unconfirmed)
A few days ago, as a result of an unfortunate series of coincidences, I found myself experiencing some old familiar feelings.
I wanted the pain to be over.
As I have been through these experiences before and lived to think and tell about them, I decided to do a small experiment to see if people who believe they know me could recognize the telltale signs of potential suicide we hear about (always after the tragic event itself).
What, I wondered, would people do if they knew I was troubled enough to rant, with little self control, about the state of the world and my life? Such ranting is as common as depression as a sign of someone who is potentially suicidal. Would people recognize a person in trouble, someone in danger of considering suicide? Or might they just think I had not had enough sleep? Or that I was having a bad hair day?
How many would care enough to ask if they did suspect something? I expected that most, if they recognized anything, would go introspective or selfish and try to avoid meddling.
"Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain."
- Tiffanie DeBartolo, American novelist (b. 1970), How to Kill a Rock Star
I also wondered what people would do if they found someone at risk, what actions they would take. Would they, in fact, do anything or would they be too afraid to "interfere" in something they know little about.
Finally, I wondered what kinds of clues might cause people to clue-in that they were suddenly aware of a person they knew who was in trouble.
"A lot of you cared, just not enough."
- Jay Asher, American writer (b. 1975), Thirteen Reasons Why
Most people who believe they know me paid little attention when I seemed to go off the deep end. "He has done it before, so we know he will be all right" they thought. It never occurred to them that I might see that as a challenge to prove them wrong. Suicidal people rise to challenges.
It never occurred to them that this time might be somehow different. In fact, brain chemistry imbalances may never be identical twice. Brain chemistry imbalances account for most depression and suicides.
It also never occurred to them that I might really end my life. They didn't allow that possibility to enter their minds. In psychology, that is called denial. For those who are left behind after someone has ended their life, it's a lifetime or knowing that they could have done something, but didn't.
What some friends have seen as strange cranky periods I get sometimes were really periods when I seriously considered suicide. I didn't follow through, for one reason or another. I delayed so long in trying to figure out how to end my life without hurting others that the chemistry in my brain corrected itself.
"and he suddenly knew that if she killed herself, he would die. Maybe not immediately, maybe not with the same blinding rush of pain, but it would happen. You couldn't live for very long without a heart."
- Jodi Picoult, American author (b. 1966)
When I was a child, it was common to hear of people dying of a "broken heart." Of course this seemed silly, but people had no other way to account for why I person who had been very close to another (such as a spouse) for many years would die within weeks or months of the death of the partner (on some occasions it has been as short a time as a few days or even hours).
Today medical science has proven that people can die of a broken heart. It doesn't break like an invaded piggy bank, but it does cease to function properly. It gets so weak, even leaky, it can't pump blood efficiently. Why? Brain chemistry weakens the immune system and body organs.
Most of my "friends" on Facebook and all of those who subscribe to my posts gave no reaction to my ranting or telling of my tragic family history.
A few Facebook friends, notably those who are known to be particularly sensitive to the feelings of others and who those close to them know they have suffered tragedy more than once in their lives, took action. They tried to interfere, to intervene in a situation they sensed was risky.
The second best reaction I had was from two people who said, in effect, "I know something is terribly wrong in your life and I want you to know that I am with you for whatever you need." Some tried to give advice, which most people knew was the wrong approach. But the stuck their necks out in a situation they knew might be risky. They tried. They did something.
The best reaction I had was from a real life and Facebook friend who said, in effect, "I know something is troubling you terribly. How can I help?"
That kind of offer is open ended. The person making the offer is laying herself or himself open, as if to say "I am here for the taking." For someone who is close enough to find death appealing, that kind of offer is hard to resist. It says "I care. You matter to me."
What does it actually feel like when you want to end your life? First of all, there are two kinds of suicide attempts. Both are dangerous. The first is really a cry for help. The person wants to fail, wants to be discovered before dying. But he knows that he will be considered a fake if he doesn't make the action he takes severe enough that it could be convincing.
The second kind is the person who wants it all to end, wants the pain to end, wants it to be over. Don't ask what the pain is because an objective third party (the first being the person considering suicide and the second being his pain, which is so strong that it is almost personified) would not find the pain severe enough to warrant needing it to end immediately.
That last paragraph should be a clue to you as reader. No reason given for committing suicide may seem valid to someone looking on from the "outside." Something else must be going on for the person to feel that bad.
What is going on is bad brain chemistry. The chemistry is beyond the control of the victim. No amount of being told to think positive, to smile or to brighten up will help. If anything, it could alienate the victim from the others, making him feel more alone.
That aloneness is characteristic of suicide. People do not end their lives to punish others, though it might seem that way to people who read their "suicide notes." (Most people who commit suicide leave a note, but not all.) They end their life because they feel alone.
This aloneness is not loneliness. It's a feeling of being isolated from the world. It's as if you are in a parallel dimension, being able to see the other dimension without those in the other dimension being able to see you or to communicate with you.
It is not extreme selfishness either, though it might seem that way to someone who is close to the victim. It's not that he only thinks of himself, but that there is only one person in his world to think about.
In my case, I felt that way on several occasions over many years, but not for long. When I considered possible ways to end my life, I always thought about the consequences for people who were left behind. Most suicide victims do not do that.
When my paternal grandfather ended his life in 1917, he left a wife with five children to raise, no source of income, no social assistance, who not long afterwards contracted tuberculosis because she was so weak from working her life away to look after her family without knowing how or having any hope of a way out.
I learned early in my life what it was like for my father to grow up in a fatherless family. He had no access to parenting skills because he never had a father of his own. He could not be what many consider a "good father" because he didn't know how. He did his best, but had no one to turn to for advice about being a father. Or for that matter, about being a husband.
I did not want to leave my wife or anyone I knew or who knew me with that kind of legacy. I was aware of what they didn't know. I was aware of what I did know, of what I had learned from experience and from years of study. I knew that what I had learned would be lost if I ended my life too soon.
Fortunately, I am a naturally positive person. I became that way as an adult, but only when I gained enough self esteem that I could feel positive about myself. Before I gained that about 15 years ago, I had to depend on my instincts for survival, which were stronger than anything else in my life.
When some truly tragic events that were beyond my control sculpted my life, I survived on the belief that there was a better life for me out there somewhere, I just had to learn how to find it. I had to keep looking. Through those early decades I did not suffer a problem with wonky brain chemistry.
When the chemistry in my brain goes awry, and no one can predict when that might be, my positive attitude toward life fights with the damaging brain chemistry. The positive attitude eventually wins out, though sometimes it takes a few days for the battle to conclude.
Some people are not fortunate enough to have a strong positive attitude toward life. Some people are not strong enough to have an accumulation of self esteem. They are at risk. Some do not hold to the hope--or belief--that there is a better life waiting for them to find it. They believe a better life will never happen. They are at severe risk.
What can you do if you believe that someone you know is at risk of ending their life? The most important thing is to not go into denial. Second is to not insist that the person cheer up, think happy thoughts, be positive. It won't work and may cause the wrong reaction.
It will also not be effective to tell the person that he will get through it, that he will recover. At the moment of crisis, he will not believe. It is true that he will get through it and recover, but to a person who is suicidal, future is not a reality. Future does not exist.
For intervention strategies, I can speak from personal experience. I do not know what a medical professional, someone who has not been on the "inside" of a suicidal experience but has lots of "book experience" would say. Frankly, they usually don't say much because they don't really know. I know what would work for me.
Constant companionship. A suicidal person not only feels as if he is alone, he wants to actually be alone to complete the task of ending his life. He will only act if and when he is alone. No one ends their life with company watching.
Companionship not only prevents the person from committing the final act, in most cases it also tends to confuse the issue so much that the brain reacts to right its own chemical problem.
Companionship does not mean keeping up a constant conversation. It means just "being there." Keep it simple and plain. Touch, which is essential to humans and which the person at risk may have lacked for too long, may or may not be needed. A hug or touch on the arm or shoulder may be appreciated, but it may also be strongly rejected. Don't feel bad if the person doesn't want to be touched. Just stay with him.
I hope you never need to make use of what you have just read. But if you do, you will be able to save a life. Don't be afraid. It will be surprisingly easy.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book for parents and teachers who want to help children and for police and politicians who want to reduce one of the most expensive drains on tax funds.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, January 06, 2013
Why Older People Feel Cold More
Why Older People Feel Cold More
My father, who will be 81 soon, says the cold affects him very badly these days. So much so, that if he moves from a relatively warm room to a cooler temperature, he starts shaking and shivering uncontrollably. In addition he says he feels very cold "inside". - Helga C., internet question
Perhaps the most common complaint of elderly people who live outside of the subtropical zones of the world is about feeling cold, especially (but not exclusively) in winter.
Within the subtropical zones, older people may feel the heat more than they did when they were younger. (In the tropics, temperatures vary little throughout the year so the body adjusts to whatever the common ambient temperature norm is.)
A search for explanations for why older people feel cold more produces a variety of guesses, always based on the experience of the writer, either with herself or others close to her.
The most common explanation offered is poor circulation. It is true that blood vessels tend to get narrower as people get older. Cholesterol, in some blood vessels, makes the passage through them even smaller. Cholesterol accumulates in arteries, not in veins, and mostly in the core of the body, not in the extremities.
Blood circulation alone could not account for feeling cold, especially in extremities such as hands and feet. So long as blood is flowing to the feet, for example, heat is travelling from the body core to the feet. Where is it going once it reaches the feet? It is obviously not hanging around long enough.
Blood thinners are often labeled as the cause for older people feeling the cold more than younger folks. Thinner blood is needed for those with high blood pressure. Thinner blood should travel faster through blood vessels and people with high blood pressure should have blood pumping near the optimum all the way to the feet. Neither of these should account for cold feet.
My feet and hands sometimes feel extra cold, even when I am in a warmed house. At my age (into traditional retirement years) my blood pressure is on the low side of normal, never high. I do not take blood thinners. Again, if heat from my body core is not having a problem getting to my feet and hands, what is happening to the heat once it gets there?
Skin, particularly the epidermis, the extreme outer layer, gets thinner as people get older. Why?
The extreme outer layer of skin is comprised mostly of dead skin cells. These tend to hang onto what is below better when people are younger because their skin is moister with oil (and water). Younger people have more oil in their skin than older people.
As skin dries out, the outer layer of dead cells tends to flake off, exposing the layers that are underneath. That means the nerves are closer to the surface. The nerves are what make people feel cold (gives the sensation of being cold).
The skin also has fewer dead skin cells to act as insulation to prevent heat from escaping to the outside. Older people may notice dust flying around when they take off socks or put them on. That dust is dead skin cells. House dust itself is comprised mostly of dead skin cells. Older people see their skin getting thinner as they spot skin cells flying off into the air.
Thinner skin exposes feet and hands to ambient (room) air, which is always cooler than body temperature. Heat, as is nature's way, moves from a warmer place to a cooler place, so body heat in the feet and hands escapes through thin skin to the outside, making the person feel cold.
"I hate winter. I can't stand the cold" is a refrain I have heard countless times from elderly people in the cold climate country where I live. Some who can afford it move south to a warmer country during the cold season. Others simply have to bundle up.
Remember that heat escapes quickly from thinner skin, so extra insulation on the parts of the body that get cold should be considered essential.
Note that the core of the body may not feel cold, may not be cold. Warming the whole body just to get the hands and feet warm may not be the wisest choice. Putting the house thermostat up could raise the body's core temperature. Even a tiny rise in core temperature beyond what is normal for that body could have negative effects on health. Body cells and the immune system function best at a constant temperature.
In conclusion, older people feel cold easier than younger people, but the safest choice to make is to add insulation to the cold parts, not to warm the whole body beyond what is necessary.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of help for parents and teachers of young children. Feeling cold is not a social problem in the usual sense, but as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age, it will become a very common problem.
Learn more at http://billallin .com
My father, who will be 81 soon, says the cold affects him very badly these days. So much so, that if he moves from a relatively warm room to a cooler temperature, he starts shaking and shivering uncontrollably. In addition he says he feels very cold "inside". - Helga C., internet question
Perhaps the most common complaint of elderly people who live outside of the subtropical zones of the world is about feeling cold, especially (but not exclusively) in winter.
Within the subtropical zones, older people may feel the heat more than they did when they were younger. (In the tropics, temperatures vary little throughout the year so the body adjusts to whatever the common ambient temperature norm is.)
A search for explanations for why older people feel cold more produces a variety of guesses, always based on the experience of the writer, either with herself or others close to her.
The most common explanation offered is poor circulation. It is true that blood vessels tend to get narrower as people get older. Cholesterol, in some blood vessels, makes the passage through them even smaller. Cholesterol accumulates in arteries, not in veins, and mostly in the core of the body, not in the extremities.
Blood circulation alone could not account for feeling cold, especially in extremities such as hands and feet. So long as blood is flowing to the feet, for example, heat is travelling from the body core to the feet. Where is it going once it reaches the feet? It is obviously not hanging around long enough.
Blood thinners are often labeled as the cause for older people feeling the cold more than younger folks. Thinner blood is needed for those with high blood pressure. Thinner blood should travel faster through blood vessels and people with high blood pressure should have blood pumping near the optimum all the way to the feet. Neither of these should account for cold feet.
My feet and hands sometimes feel extra cold, even when I am in a warmed house. At my age (into traditional retirement years) my blood pressure is on the low side of normal, never high. I do not take blood thinners. Again, if heat from my body core is not having a problem getting to my feet and hands, what is happening to the heat once it gets there?
Skin, particularly the epidermis, the extreme outer layer, gets thinner as people get older. Why?
The extreme outer layer of skin is comprised mostly of dead skin cells. These tend to hang onto what is below better when people are younger because their skin is moister with oil (and water). Younger people have more oil in their skin than older people.
As skin dries out, the outer layer of dead cells tends to flake off, exposing the layers that are underneath. That means the nerves are closer to the surface. The nerves are what make people feel cold (gives the sensation of being cold).
The skin also has fewer dead skin cells to act as insulation to prevent heat from escaping to the outside. Older people may notice dust flying around when they take off socks or put them on. That dust is dead skin cells. House dust itself is comprised mostly of dead skin cells. Older people see their skin getting thinner as they spot skin cells flying off into the air.
Thinner skin exposes feet and hands to ambient (room) air, which is always cooler than body temperature. Heat, as is nature's way, moves from a warmer place to a cooler place, so body heat in the feet and hands escapes through thin skin to the outside, making the person feel cold.
"I hate winter. I can't stand the cold" is a refrain I have heard countless times from elderly people in the cold climate country where I live. Some who can afford it move south to a warmer country during the cold season. Others simply have to bundle up.
Remember that heat escapes quickly from thinner skin, so extra insulation on the parts of the body that get cold should be considered essential.
Note that the core of the body may not feel cold, may not be cold. Warming the whole body just to get the hands and feet warm may not be the wisest choice. Putting the house thermostat up could raise the body's core temperature. Even a tiny rise in core temperature beyond what is normal for that body could have negative effects on health. Body cells and the immune system function best at a constant temperature.
In conclusion, older people feel cold easier than younger people, but the safest choice to make is to add insulation to the cold parts, not to warm the whole body beyond what is necessary.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of help for parents and teachers of young children. Feeling cold is not a social problem in the usual sense, but as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age, it will become a very common problem.
Learn more at http://billallin .com
Sunday, December 16, 2012
How Researchers Studying the Aging Brain Have It Wrong
How Researchers Studying the Aging Brain Have It Wrong
"[B.F.] Skinner’s memory and analytical skills were also declining during the years when I knew him. Sometimes he had no recollection of a conversation we had had only days before."
"The sad truth is that even normal aging has a devastating effect on our ability to learn and remember, on the speed with which we process information, and on our ability to reason."- Robert Epstein, "Brutal Truths About the Aging Brain," Discover, October 2012
Epstein began his article by noting how brilliant American psychologist B.F. Skinner was in his younger years. Decades younger than his friend Skinner, Epstein assessed the brain power of the older man based on what his brain capabilities were as a younger man, and on what his own brain abilities were at the time.
The decline of Professor Skinner’s brain, Epstein noted (also in the title of the article) was "brutal." But was that conclusion reasonable?
Others have written about how muddled Albert Einstein became in his latter years, jumping around intellectually as he tried to find the ultimate theory of everything, justifying quantum physics and relativity at once. Einstein questioned and doubted everything, even his own work. He was considered, though a great scientist in his younger years, progressively confused as he aged. Was that fair?
I am not suggesting that we should acknowledge older people for what they accomplished in the past and ignore their apparent cognitive decline. I am saying that younger scientists and writers have very little understanding of the capacity and new abilities of the aging brain.
There is little doubt that older people are not capable of the same skills at the same levels as they were when they were younger. Does that mean that younger writers should consider them goofy old farts because they don’t understand the abilities of the older brain?
Are older people stupider than they were when they were younger, or than their counterparts a generation or two younger? There, that’s as brutally candid as I can make it. Many people believe that, so lets lay it out and examine it.
The reasoning used by younger brain researchers is flawed, just plain illogical. Why? The reasoning is based on an unacceptable premise. To pass the test of logic, we must begin with an acceptable premise.
Do we claim that septuagenarian men dress poorly because they don’t wear the same styles of clothing as teenage boys or twenty-something men? Of course not, that would be a ridiculous comparison. Nor do most of us accept criticism of teenage boys by 70-year-old men that the young ones dress wrong. They each dress to suit their needs.
It’s the same kind of reasoning scientists use to claim that other life forms are not as intelligent as we humans. They begin with the assumption that humans are the most intelligent animals (never giving a first thought to the intelligence of plant life), then compare what other animals can do (more often can't do) as well as humans. The assumption--the premise of a logical argument--is wrong, unacceptable.
Please try this. Name one activity that any animal does--any one at all, for any animal--that a human can do as well. I have asked that question many times, in many places, to many people and not received a reply. Each animal can do what it needs to do to survive. Does survival not show intelligence?
If humans cannot do anything as well as any animal does as part of its normal course of life, does that make humans less intelligent than every other animal? That is the method of reasoning brain researchers and journalists use.
A common test to show memory decline as people age is for the researcher to read a list of 15 words, then ask the testee to say as many of those words as he or she can remember after a break of a few minutes. Who has to memorize random words of little relevant value? High school students. Why should someone beyond the commonly accepted age of retirement need to be able to memorize random words?
If older people ever had any real need to memorize random unassociated words, they haven't needed that skill for decades.
Let's keep in mind something that younger brain researchers tend to ignore. Think about how much a 20-year-old brain has learned and experienced over two decades. A huge amount, right? An 80-year-old brain has learned and experienced, and is somehow expected to remember, four times as much as the younger brain. Four times.
Ask an elementary school teacher how often some facts and skills must be taught and learned by kids in their classroom, because the kids forget. Somehow we accept that. But if someone aged 85 can't remember where he left his car keys, he is considered to be "losing it." In total value to a life, which is more important to remember, an arithmetic skill such as how to add or where someone left their keys? A little value perspective is needed.
Of course the maxim of "use it or lose it" applies as we age. We accept that kids of high school age should be able to memorize random and unassociated facts (usually of no further value after the test), but researchers believe that old people should be able to perform the same tasks as their younger counterparts. Why? No reason.
This is wrong. This is flawed reasoning. It begins with the assumption that older brains have no value other than for what they could do when they were younger. No matter what your age today, it is highly likely that you have forgotten almost everything you learned in high school. In fact, once you pass age eleven, that ability to memorize apparently random and meaningless facts has little value.
Before age 11 you must remember because you never know when you will need to draw on the memory. Kids learn languages other than their mother tongue much easier before age 11. As they learn words, they collect them, eventually assembling them into sentences, thoughts and concepts. Kids very much need the ability to memorize apparently random information. Adults need facts to be relevant, to "fit" immediately.
Would you want to choose, at election time, among candidates who were all in their twenties to be head of state of your country? Of course not. We expect men and women who have lived through a few decades of life experiences to be wiser, to have the ability to think clearly over a wide range of topics. Or to consider a wide scope of information input on a single topic. Young brains can't do that as well.
This is how the human brain works. A 26-year-old woman can stand beside a 66-year-old woman, looking at the same panoramic view, but see things differently. The younger woman will spot distinctive features in the view (a building, a hill, a camel), whereas the older woman will take in more of the full value of the scene (a brown pollution cloud over the city, multitudes of people gathering in a square for a particular purpose, even a sense of general activity or lack of it across the whole scene). Older and younger brains perform differently.
Most people find that time seems to pass faster as they get older. Why? The older brain is able to sustain thought and work on several different subjects within the same time period. Younger people tend to focus their thought and activity on one or two main things at a time. A retired person may be involved with several different activities, turning their attention to each in its time. Even young people learn that time seems to pass faster when they are busy. The older brain, for many people, is always busy.
Generally speaking, we expect an older head of state to provide better guidance to our country than a younger person could give. We value the words of wiser older clerics who speak to us in our places of worship more than we would of younger people. Younger parents will expect tips about raising children from their own parents, who are older and more experienced, more than they will from the teenager next door.
There can be no doubt that some older people are dumb, even dumber than they were when younger. That is practice (atrophy). But look around you at the behaviour of teenagers and young adults to see that they do some pretty stupid things as well. Older people do not dominate when it comes to dumbosity. (Yes, I invented that word and have used it for years because the language needed a word with that meaning.)
B.F. Skinner, at age 70, may not have had the ability to do the kind of ground breaking research he did at age 20. He did, however, have the ability to teach a younger generation how to take his basic research to much greater heights.
Albert Einstein developed his concepts of relativity and gravity when he was young. In his latter years, he struggled unsuccessfully to find a "theory of everything" that would unite his work with that of quantum physics. Yet look at the legacy of work by those he inspired, taking physics far beyond anything imaginable in Einstein's youth. People today are inspired by the older Einstein, not the younger man.
That's how life is supposed to work. The older brain has a purpose the younger brain has trouble conceiving. When a younger person thinks an older person is "losing it," we call that ageism. In my country, discriminating on the basis of age is a criminal offence.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions and tips that parents and teachers can use to help their children avoid the social problems they see in every community today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
"[B.F.] Skinner’s memory and analytical skills were also declining during the years when I knew him. Sometimes he had no recollection of a conversation we had had only days before."
"The sad truth is that even normal aging has a devastating effect on our ability to learn and remember, on the speed with which we process information, and on our ability to reason."- Robert Epstein, "Brutal Truths About the Aging Brain," Discover, October 2012
Epstein began his article by noting how brilliant American psychologist B.F. Skinner was in his younger years. Decades younger than his friend Skinner, Epstein assessed the brain power of the older man based on what his brain capabilities were as a younger man, and on what his own brain abilities were at the time.
The decline of Professor Skinner’s brain, Epstein noted (also in the title of the article) was "brutal." But was that conclusion reasonable?
Others have written about how muddled Albert Einstein became in his latter years, jumping around intellectually as he tried to find the ultimate theory of everything, justifying quantum physics and relativity at once. Einstein questioned and doubted everything, even his own work. He was considered, though a great scientist in his younger years, progressively confused as he aged. Was that fair?
I am not suggesting that we should acknowledge older people for what they accomplished in the past and ignore their apparent cognitive decline. I am saying that younger scientists and writers have very little understanding of the capacity and new abilities of the aging brain.
There is little doubt that older people are not capable of the same skills at the same levels as they were when they were younger. Does that mean that younger writers should consider them goofy old farts because they don’t understand the abilities of the older brain?
Are older people stupider than they were when they were younger, or than their counterparts a generation or two younger? There, that’s as brutally candid as I can make it. Many people believe that, so lets lay it out and examine it.
The reasoning used by younger brain researchers is flawed, just plain illogical. Why? The reasoning is based on an unacceptable premise. To pass the test of logic, we must begin with an acceptable premise.
Do we claim that septuagenarian men dress poorly because they don’t wear the same styles of clothing as teenage boys or twenty-something men? Of course not, that would be a ridiculous comparison. Nor do most of us accept criticism of teenage boys by 70-year-old men that the young ones dress wrong. They each dress to suit their needs.
It’s the same kind of reasoning scientists use to claim that other life forms are not as intelligent as we humans. They begin with the assumption that humans are the most intelligent animals (never giving a first thought to the intelligence of plant life), then compare what other animals can do (more often can't do) as well as humans. The assumption--the premise of a logical argument--is wrong, unacceptable.
Please try this. Name one activity that any animal does--any one at all, for any animal--that a human can do as well. I have asked that question many times, in many places, to many people and not received a reply. Each animal can do what it needs to do to survive. Does survival not show intelligence?
If humans cannot do anything as well as any animal does as part of its normal course of life, does that make humans less intelligent than every other animal? That is the method of reasoning brain researchers and journalists use.
A common test to show memory decline as people age is for the researcher to read a list of 15 words, then ask the testee to say as many of those words as he or she can remember after a break of a few minutes. Who has to memorize random words of little relevant value? High school students. Why should someone beyond the commonly accepted age of retirement need to be able to memorize random words?
If older people ever had any real need to memorize random unassociated words, they haven't needed that skill for decades.
Let's keep in mind something that younger brain researchers tend to ignore. Think about how much a 20-year-old brain has learned and experienced over two decades. A huge amount, right? An 80-year-old brain has learned and experienced, and is somehow expected to remember, four times as much as the younger brain. Four times.
Ask an elementary school teacher how often some facts and skills must be taught and learned by kids in their classroom, because the kids forget. Somehow we accept that. But if someone aged 85 can't remember where he left his car keys, he is considered to be "losing it." In total value to a life, which is more important to remember, an arithmetic skill such as how to add or where someone left their keys? A little value perspective is needed.
Of course the maxim of "use it or lose it" applies as we age. We accept that kids of high school age should be able to memorize random and unassociated facts (usually of no further value after the test), but researchers believe that old people should be able to perform the same tasks as their younger counterparts. Why? No reason.
This is wrong. This is flawed reasoning. It begins with the assumption that older brains have no value other than for what they could do when they were younger. No matter what your age today, it is highly likely that you have forgotten almost everything you learned in high school. In fact, once you pass age eleven, that ability to memorize apparently random and meaningless facts has little value.
Before age 11 you must remember because you never know when you will need to draw on the memory. Kids learn languages other than their mother tongue much easier before age 11. As they learn words, they collect them, eventually assembling them into sentences, thoughts and concepts. Kids very much need the ability to memorize apparently random information. Adults need facts to be relevant, to "fit" immediately.
Would you want to choose, at election time, among candidates who were all in their twenties to be head of state of your country? Of course not. We expect men and women who have lived through a few decades of life experiences to be wiser, to have the ability to think clearly over a wide range of topics. Or to consider a wide scope of information input on a single topic. Young brains can't do that as well.
This is how the human brain works. A 26-year-old woman can stand beside a 66-year-old woman, looking at the same panoramic view, but see things differently. The younger woman will spot distinctive features in the view (a building, a hill, a camel), whereas the older woman will take in more of the full value of the scene (a brown pollution cloud over the city, multitudes of people gathering in a square for a particular purpose, even a sense of general activity or lack of it across the whole scene). Older and younger brains perform differently.
Most people find that time seems to pass faster as they get older. Why? The older brain is able to sustain thought and work on several different subjects within the same time period. Younger people tend to focus their thought and activity on one or two main things at a time. A retired person may be involved with several different activities, turning their attention to each in its time. Even young people learn that time seems to pass faster when they are busy. The older brain, for many people, is always busy.
Generally speaking, we expect an older head of state to provide better guidance to our country than a younger person could give. We value the words of wiser older clerics who speak to us in our places of worship more than we would of younger people. Younger parents will expect tips about raising children from their own parents, who are older and more experienced, more than they will from the teenager next door.
There can be no doubt that some older people are dumb, even dumber than they were when younger. That is practice (atrophy). But look around you at the behaviour of teenagers and young adults to see that they do some pretty stupid things as well. Older people do not dominate when it comes to dumbosity. (Yes, I invented that word and have used it for years because the language needed a word with that meaning.)
B.F. Skinner, at age 70, may not have had the ability to do the kind of ground breaking research he did at age 20. He did, however, have the ability to teach a younger generation how to take his basic research to much greater heights.
Albert Einstein developed his concepts of relativity and gravity when he was young. In his latter years, he struggled unsuccessfully to find a "theory of everything" that would unite his work with that of quantum physics. Yet look at the legacy of work by those he inspired, taking physics far beyond anything imaginable in Einstein's youth. People today are inspired by the older Einstein, not the younger man.
That's how life is supposed to work. The older brain has a purpose the younger brain has trouble conceiving. When a younger person thinks an older person is "losing it," we call that ageism. In my country, discriminating on the basis of age is a criminal offence.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions and tips that parents and teachers can use to help their children avoid the social problems they see in every community today.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Now Almost Everyone Has Allergies
Now Almost Everyone Has Allergies
"They’re just allergies."- quote from a Reactine allergy medication commercial
The point of the commercial is that they are not "just allergies." But what are allergies?
Our bodies are set up to fight invasions by foreign bodies that could do them harm. Our immune system does most of the work fighting invaders, though billions of bacteria that live symbiotically with us (primarily on our skin and in our gut) help out considerably.
Generally speaking those good bacteria (we could not live without them) don’t cause us much trouble. They depend on us, we depend on them, and we all get along splendidly. Our own immune systems cause the problems. (Antibiotics kill these good bacteria, by the way.)
Allergies are mostly an affliction of the modern era. In my classroom career teaching young children, which ended a generation ago, I came across only two kids with severe allergies. Both had problems learning because their allergies prevented them from thinking clearly.
One child, that I knew was of at least average intelligence, went through a battery of tests by a psychologist twice in the school year, then was sent the following year to a special education class for children with learning disabilities. I objected strenuously to my principal, but was overruled. I insisted that the tests had been given when the boy suffered most from his allergies, not when he was clear headed. I was not included in the decision. He joined a special class for children who mostly had low intelligence.
The other child, no doubt destined for the same fate, moved out of the community in February. His mother had tears in her eyes when she told me that they had to move, because her son had done so well in my care, but circumstances dictated. I could foresee a similar school track for him.
In those days, severe allergies were rare. A few kids had allergic reactions to pollen, in season, but only a few. One child suffered from asthma--the only student I had who did, and I only discovered it when the class went on an outing that required hiking in a wilderness area.
Today allergies in the classroom are so common that teachers expect them and classmates expect to be inconvenienced by those who require special treatment. Some teachers today need emergency medical training and training in the dispensing of medication for their kids.
Allergies are the body’s overreaction to a stimulus it doesn’t like. Asthma is, fundamentally, an extreme version of an allergy. Something gets into the body and the body reacts violently to get rid of it.
Just over a decade ago I developed an allergy. After extensive tests, my doctor declared that I had a "mild environmental allergy." Nothing that could be identified, thus avoided. I could either begin taking allergy shots or continue using profound quantities of tissues daily. I chose the latter.
Over the past year, my wife has developed the same allergy. To what? We don’t drink city water, so we do not subject our bodies to the 300,000 chemical pollutants that city water treatment plants don’t remove. But we can’t do anything about the half million pollutants factories put in the air that everyone breathes. All things considered, we decided to avoid wearing chemical gas masks all day long.
I also have an allergy to breathing very cold air. When I walk outside in winter, my sinuses go to work and my nose runs. Inconvenient. But, in doing so, the mucus may continue to warm my breathing passage, preventing them from freezing. This might be an adaptation by body has made to protect itself. In this case, is an allergy an adaptation to the environment?
As well, I begin to sneeze when my body senses a temperature change of two degrees or more. This "allergy" likely has the same cause, but is a side effect of the adaptation. It’s an overreaction by natural functions of my body, as all true allergies are.
These days, asthma is common. Allergies are so ubiquitous that almost everyone has one or more. Some have an allergy that is so common to them and that affects them year round that they don’t even know they have it. To them, it’s "just life as I am getting older."
Science and archeology writer Jeff D. Leach believes, as do many people, including health professionals, that kids and adults develop allergies because their homes are so clean that their immune systems have not been challenged enough. He wrote in the New York Times "the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us."
He quotes research that suggests we reintroduce some dirt into our lives to see a reduction in diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, several allergies and other diseases. Our immune systems were built to fight hard and constantly, and if they don’t they redirect their efforts and work against us.
If this has you scratching your head and doubting, more reading on the subject of allergies will relieve that doubt.
One allergy you likely were not aware of has been shown to cause obesity. It’s not the only cause, but it is one that has been identified through scientific tests.
Here are a few other facts you likely don’t know about allergies.
Thanks to advertisers who want us to live in a "clean" environment, our immune system has fewer enemies to fight. In desperation, it fires on relatively innocent targets such as peanuts and cat dander. Our immune system is designed to fight for our survival throughout our life. When it doesn’t have an enemy, it invents one. Allergy symptoms are the results of a one-sided war.
The National Institutes of Health in the USA estimates that over half of Americans have at least one testable allergy. One of them is an allergy to penicillin, which can cause fatal anaphylaxis. Penicillin, when it first became public, was considered a great saviour against disease.
Food allergies are usually to a protein. A team at Trinity College Dublin, in 2004, injected mice with parasites of the kind that mouse immune systems would fight in the wild. It worked. The mice with previously weak immune systems developed healthy ones.
British entrepreneur Jasper Lawrence walked barefoot near some latrines in Cameroon, in 2007, to get infected by hookworms he believed would defeat asthma and seasonal allergies. It worked. For $3000 a person can receive up to 35 hookworm larvae which they put on a bandage and apply to their skin. Mr. Lawrence has not publicly reported the success rate for his business. (NOTE: this therapy is not legal in the USA.)
Between 150 and 200 Americans die each year from allergies to shellfish, nuts, fish, milk, eggs and other foods. They are serious allergies.
Tick bites you could get from walking barefoot in grass could cause your immune system to produce antibodies to alpha-gal, a carbohydrate commonly found in beef, pork and lamb. Resulting allergies to these meats could be fatal.
As many as 40,000 American women may be affected by an allergic sensitivity to male ejaculate (specifically seminal plasma hypersensitivity) which could result in symptoms from local swelling to systemic shock. Another reason for them to insist on the man using a condom.
An allergy to sex seems unfair. However, some women are allergic to their own progesterone, a sex hormone, developing anything from a rash to full shock.
Yes, pets can be allergic to human dander (cast off skin) as well as people can be allergic to pet dander.
Yes, some people are allergic to the sun. And some couples have to separate because they are allergic to each other.
But wait! A few rare individuals can develop aquagenic urticaria, a rash caused when they come in contact with water. Apparently they do not react to the 70 percent of their own body weight that is composed of water.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers.
Learn more about the book at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, May 2012]
"They’re just allergies."- quote from a Reactine allergy medication commercial
The point of the commercial is that they are not "just allergies." But what are allergies?
Our bodies are set up to fight invasions by foreign bodies that could do them harm. Our immune system does most of the work fighting invaders, though billions of bacteria that live symbiotically with us (primarily on our skin and in our gut) help out considerably.
Generally speaking those good bacteria (we could not live without them) don’t cause us much trouble. They depend on us, we depend on them, and we all get along splendidly. Our own immune systems cause the problems. (Antibiotics kill these good bacteria, by the way.)
Allergies are mostly an affliction of the modern era. In my classroom career teaching young children, which ended a generation ago, I came across only two kids with severe allergies. Both had problems learning because their allergies prevented them from thinking clearly.
One child, that I knew was of at least average intelligence, went through a battery of tests by a psychologist twice in the school year, then was sent the following year to a special education class for children with learning disabilities. I objected strenuously to my principal, but was overruled. I insisted that the tests had been given when the boy suffered most from his allergies, not when he was clear headed. I was not included in the decision. He joined a special class for children who mostly had low intelligence.
The other child, no doubt destined for the same fate, moved out of the community in February. His mother had tears in her eyes when she told me that they had to move, because her son had done so well in my care, but circumstances dictated. I could foresee a similar school track for him.
In those days, severe allergies were rare. A few kids had allergic reactions to pollen, in season, but only a few. One child suffered from asthma--the only student I had who did, and I only discovered it when the class went on an outing that required hiking in a wilderness area.
Today allergies in the classroom are so common that teachers expect them and classmates expect to be inconvenienced by those who require special treatment. Some teachers today need emergency medical training and training in the dispensing of medication for their kids.
Allergies are the body’s overreaction to a stimulus it doesn’t like. Asthma is, fundamentally, an extreme version of an allergy. Something gets into the body and the body reacts violently to get rid of it.
Just over a decade ago I developed an allergy. After extensive tests, my doctor declared that I had a "mild environmental allergy." Nothing that could be identified, thus avoided. I could either begin taking allergy shots or continue using profound quantities of tissues daily. I chose the latter.
Over the past year, my wife has developed the same allergy. To what? We don’t drink city water, so we do not subject our bodies to the 300,000 chemical pollutants that city water treatment plants don’t remove. But we can’t do anything about the half million pollutants factories put in the air that everyone breathes. All things considered, we decided to avoid wearing chemical gas masks all day long.
I also have an allergy to breathing very cold air. When I walk outside in winter, my sinuses go to work and my nose runs. Inconvenient. But, in doing so, the mucus may continue to warm my breathing passage, preventing them from freezing. This might be an adaptation by body has made to protect itself. In this case, is an allergy an adaptation to the environment?
As well, I begin to sneeze when my body senses a temperature change of two degrees or more. This "allergy" likely has the same cause, but is a side effect of the adaptation. It’s an overreaction by natural functions of my body, as all true allergies are.
These days, asthma is common. Allergies are so ubiquitous that almost everyone has one or more. Some have an allergy that is so common to them and that affects them year round that they don’t even know they have it. To them, it’s "just life as I am getting older."
Science and archeology writer Jeff D. Leach believes, as do many people, including health professionals, that kids and adults develop allergies because their homes are so clean that their immune systems have not been challenged enough. He wrote in the New York Times "the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us."
He quotes research that suggests we reintroduce some dirt into our lives to see a reduction in diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, several allergies and other diseases. Our immune systems were built to fight hard and constantly, and if they don’t they redirect their efforts and work against us.
If this has you scratching your head and doubting, more reading on the subject of allergies will relieve that doubt.
One allergy you likely were not aware of has been shown to cause obesity. It’s not the only cause, but it is one that has been identified through scientific tests.
Here are a few other facts you likely don’t know about allergies.
Thanks to advertisers who want us to live in a "clean" environment, our immune system has fewer enemies to fight. In desperation, it fires on relatively innocent targets such as peanuts and cat dander. Our immune system is designed to fight for our survival throughout our life. When it doesn’t have an enemy, it invents one. Allergy symptoms are the results of a one-sided war.
The National Institutes of Health in the USA estimates that over half of Americans have at least one testable allergy. One of them is an allergy to penicillin, which can cause fatal anaphylaxis. Penicillin, when it first became public, was considered a great saviour against disease.
Food allergies are usually to a protein. A team at Trinity College Dublin, in 2004, injected mice with parasites of the kind that mouse immune systems would fight in the wild. It worked. The mice with previously weak immune systems developed healthy ones.
British entrepreneur Jasper Lawrence walked barefoot near some latrines in Cameroon, in 2007, to get infected by hookworms he believed would defeat asthma and seasonal allergies. It worked. For $3000 a person can receive up to 35 hookworm larvae which they put on a bandage and apply to their skin. Mr. Lawrence has not publicly reported the success rate for his business. (NOTE: this therapy is not legal in the USA.)
Between 150 and 200 Americans die each year from allergies to shellfish, nuts, fish, milk, eggs and other foods. They are serious allergies.
Tick bites you could get from walking barefoot in grass could cause your immune system to produce antibodies to alpha-gal, a carbohydrate commonly found in beef, pork and lamb. Resulting allergies to these meats could be fatal.
As many as 40,000 American women may be affected by an allergic sensitivity to male ejaculate (specifically seminal plasma hypersensitivity) which could result in symptoms from local swelling to systemic shock. Another reason for them to insist on the man using a condom.
An allergy to sex seems unfair. However, some women are allergic to their own progesterone, a sex hormone, developing anything from a rash to full shock.
Yes, pets can be allergic to human dander (cast off skin) as well as people can be allergic to pet dander.
Yes, some people are allergic to the sun. And some couples have to separate because they are allergic to each other.
But wait! A few rare individuals can develop aquagenic urticaria, a rash caused when they come in contact with water. Apparently they do not react to the 70 percent of their own body weight that is composed of water.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers.
Learn more about the book at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, May 2012]
Monday, October 15, 2012
Prime Cause for Obesity No One Expected
Prime Cause for Obesity No One Expected
More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight--and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight. "The global epidemic of obesity is completely out of control," the BBC noted, reporting from the first international obesity conference in 2004.
- Morgan Spurlok, American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter (b. 1970)
News that over half the population of the USA is overweight, one-third is clinically obese, no longer surprises people. The fact that one-third of school children are obese alarms them.
Few seem aware that obesity is a worldwide problem that affects people even in poor countries. That is, poor people in poor countries may be obese. That goes against the belief by many that obese people simply eat too much.
Our natural tendency with social problems is to blame the behaviour of the victims. No doubt this is true of some obese people. But it doesn’t work for others, which must cause us to look elsewhere. Overeating and obesity are not soulmates.
Valid research has been done on many possible causes, including additives to prepackaged foods and even chemicals in the air we breathe. Most of the research shows positive results. How could we avoid gaining weight if the cause is something in the air? A genetic component must play a role as not everyone gets fat. Some people must be preprogrammed to be thin. Or others to be fat. Yet how could this be without a family DNA connection, a propensity to become obese?
Advocates of food based theories look back at 150,000 years of human history (as homo sapiens) to claim that we should eat as our previously thin ancestors did for most of that time. However, the fact is that we simply cannot eat the kinds of foods they ate. Almost none of it is available for us to buy or gather. The names of the animals and plants may be the same, but the foods themselves are not as a result of continual agricultural evolution.
Let’s look at when those ancients might have had cause for their bodies to take more than the normal amount of nutrition from the food they ate. In periods when there was lots of food available, they tended to eat so that they could sustain themselves when the famine seasons arrived. Today we have feast times all year long, so our bodies may tend to over-gather nutrition even when we do not overeat (by common standards).
In times of stress, such as when they were chased by a predator, the condition known as fight or flight would kick in. All the body systems associated with short term high anxiety would cause their bodies to fill the gaps in nutrition left from over-exerting themselves. They would not eat more, but their bodies would take more nutrients from the food they did eat.
That condition existed for almost all of the pre-civilization 150,000 years of homo sapiens. But, after all, humans were not being chased by predators every day, so that natural super-saving of nutrients was only temporary.
A recent study done by the University of Waterloo, in Canada, has demonstrated that boredom is stressful. Unlike what would be intuitive, that bored people relax all the time, the study showed that physiological conditions we associate with high anxiety apply exactly to those who are bored. Boredom equates with physiological conditions of anxiety. Which, in turn, means that the bodies of bored people act as if they should take more than the usual amount of nutrients from the food they eat.
But who gets bored? As a sociologist, I maintained for years that only boring people get bored. I had the association right, but the causality wrong. Bored people become boring as a consequence. There is much more of significance to this study.
How do we become bored? The Waterloo study associated a lack of movement of the spine with unusual activity in the orbital prefrontal cortex of the brain, also known as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). The OFC at least partly controls behaviour. It tells bored people that they need excitement.
So people seek thrills, indulge in addictive behaviours as they look for something different in their lives, they drive too fast and fly into rage too easily.
What causes this unpleasant connection of the spine and the OFC? Usually sitting in one position for too long. That could be sitting watching TV at home. It could be sitting at your desk at the office. It could be sitting at meetings (witness videos of politicians falling asleep in their seats in legislative assemblies).
It also can be children who are forced to sit quietly in their desks in their school classrooms, for long periods of time. Teachers have long been aware that kids who get distracted easily tend to make the most trouble in a classroom. Bored kids get distracted.
Now we have children who are well behaved, who sit quietly at their desks, getting bored. And fat. Simply because they can’t move around enough.
The Waterloo study showed that people who did the most repetitive work, such as on production lines in factories or data processing, were much more interested in their work if they could move around every few minutes than if they had to remain in place for long periods of time.
Our whole concept of boredom needs to change as a result of this study and its applications to schools, workplaces and home life.
Boredom produces conditions of high anxiety. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive. High anxiety creates body conditions whereby the digestive system takes more nutrients from food than is necessary. That results in weight gain.
Think about people you know who sit in one position for extended periods of time, no matter what the reason. Chances are their personalities are fairly boring. Chances are they are in the process of gaining weight, eventually to be classed as clinically obese, or at least overweight.
In an age when many jobs are more stressful than jobs of previous generations, we now have people who must stay in the same places for long periods of time. The reasons don’t matter. The body reacts to conditions that are not stimulating by becoming bored. Boredom means anxiety, which results eventually in weight gain.
I have no research to support this theory. The whole concept just recently presented itself to me over a short period of time. But if human history means anything, we may have the major cause of obesity at hand. Science supports each step of the reasoning.
The solution may be as simple as moving around every few minutes. Studies have already proven that this kind of activity increases production of employees.
Now we may have the clue that it will also prevent obesity.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems. Yes, obesity is a social problem. Yes, the book and Bill’s many online articles address them all, including increasing use of drugs and rising crime rates.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight--and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight. "The global epidemic of obesity is completely out of control," the BBC noted, reporting from the first international obesity conference in 2004.
- Morgan Spurlok, American documentary filmmaker, humorist, television producer, screenwriter (b. 1970)
News that over half the population of the USA is overweight, one-third is clinically obese, no longer surprises people. The fact that one-third of school children are obese alarms them.
Few seem aware that obesity is a worldwide problem that affects people even in poor countries. That is, poor people in poor countries may be obese. That goes against the belief by many that obese people simply eat too much.
Our natural tendency with social problems is to blame the behaviour of the victims. No doubt this is true of some obese people. But it doesn’t work for others, which must cause us to look elsewhere. Overeating and obesity are not soulmates.
Valid research has been done on many possible causes, including additives to prepackaged foods and even chemicals in the air we breathe. Most of the research shows positive results. How could we avoid gaining weight if the cause is something in the air? A genetic component must play a role as not everyone gets fat. Some people must be preprogrammed to be thin. Or others to be fat. Yet how could this be without a family DNA connection, a propensity to become obese?
Advocates of food based theories look back at 150,000 years of human history (as homo sapiens) to claim that we should eat as our previously thin ancestors did for most of that time. However, the fact is that we simply cannot eat the kinds of foods they ate. Almost none of it is available for us to buy or gather. The names of the animals and plants may be the same, but the foods themselves are not as a result of continual agricultural evolution.
Let’s look at when those ancients might have had cause for their bodies to take more than the normal amount of nutrition from the food they ate. In periods when there was lots of food available, they tended to eat so that they could sustain themselves when the famine seasons arrived. Today we have feast times all year long, so our bodies may tend to over-gather nutrition even when we do not overeat (by common standards).
In times of stress, such as when they were chased by a predator, the condition known as fight or flight would kick in. All the body systems associated with short term high anxiety would cause their bodies to fill the gaps in nutrition left from over-exerting themselves. They would not eat more, but their bodies would take more nutrients from the food they did eat.
That condition existed for almost all of the pre-civilization 150,000 years of homo sapiens. But, after all, humans were not being chased by predators every day, so that natural super-saving of nutrients was only temporary.
A recent study done by the University of Waterloo, in Canada, has demonstrated that boredom is stressful. Unlike what would be intuitive, that bored people relax all the time, the study showed that physiological conditions we associate with high anxiety apply exactly to those who are bored. Boredom equates with physiological conditions of anxiety. Which, in turn, means that the bodies of bored people act as if they should take more than the usual amount of nutrients from the food they eat.
But who gets bored? As a sociologist, I maintained for years that only boring people get bored. I had the association right, but the causality wrong. Bored people become boring as a consequence. There is much more of significance to this study.
How do we become bored? The Waterloo study associated a lack of movement of the spine with unusual activity in the orbital prefrontal cortex of the brain, also known as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). The OFC at least partly controls behaviour. It tells bored people that they need excitement.
So people seek thrills, indulge in addictive behaviours as they look for something different in their lives, they drive too fast and fly into rage too easily.
What causes this unpleasant connection of the spine and the OFC? Usually sitting in one position for too long. That could be sitting watching TV at home. It could be sitting at your desk at the office. It could be sitting at meetings (witness videos of politicians falling asleep in their seats in legislative assemblies).
It also can be children who are forced to sit quietly in their desks in their school classrooms, for long periods of time. Teachers have long been aware that kids who get distracted easily tend to make the most trouble in a classroom. Bored kids get distracted.
Now we have children who are well behaved, who sit quietly at their desks, getting bored. And fat. Simply because they can’t move around enough.
The Waterloo study showed that people who did the most repetitive work, such as on production lines in factories or data processing, were much more interested in their work if they could move around every few minutes than if they had to remain in place for long periods of time.
Our whole concept of boredom needs to change as a result of this study and its applications to schools, workplaces and home life.
Boredom produces conditions of high anxiety. Yes, it’s counter-intuitive. High anxiety creates body conditions whereby the digestive system takes more nutrients from food than is necessary. That results in weight gain.
Think about people you know who sit in one position for extended periods of time, no matter what the reason. Chances are their personalities are fairly boring. Chances are they are in the process of gaining weight, eventually to be classed as clinically obese, or at least overweight.
In an age when many jobs are more stressful than jobs of previous generations, we now have people who must stay in the same places for long periods of time. The reasons don’t matter. The body reacts to conditions that are not stimulating by becoming bored. Boredom means anxiety, which results eventually in weight gain.
I have no research to support this theory. The whole concept just recently presented itself to me over a short period of time. But if human history means anything, we may have the major cause of obesity at hand. Science supports each step of the reasoning.
The solution may be as simple as moving around every few minutes. Studies have already proven that this kind of activity increases production of employees.
Now we may have the clue that it will also prevent obesity.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems. Yes, obesity is a social problem. Yes, the book and Bill’s many online articles address them all, including increasing use of drugs and rising crime rates.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Killing Ourselves with Cleanliness and Trusting the Untrustworthy
Killing Ourselves with Cleanliness and Trusting the Untrustworthy
"But raw milk from a Jersey cow is a totally different substance from what I'd thought of as milk. If you do not own a cow or know someone who owns a cow, I must caution you never to try raw milk straight from the teat of a Jersey cow, because it would be cruel to taste it once and not have access to it again. Only a few people in America remember this type of milk now, elderly people mostly, who grew up with a cow. They come to the farm sometimes, looking for that taste from their childhood."
- Kristin Kimball, American writer, farmer city-refugee, from The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love
Perhaps the worst thing that has happened to food in the modern era was the creation of pasteurization for milk, by Louis Pasteur.
In 1862, heating raw milk to eliminate most of the germs (pathogens) seemed like a great idea. After all, people were dying all over the world from mysterious illnesses that Pasteur identified as microscopic organisms, which we now know as bacteria.
We know much more than we did in the mid-1800s about bacteria. Back then was a time when cleanliness was a matter of removing dirt from your hands before coming to supper and bathing once a week (or a couple of times a year, in some cases) to stop the body from smelling bad (if you couldn’t afford perfume, which was invented to cover bad body odour). Surgeons didn’t even wash their hands or butt out their cigarettes before dipping their hands into the bodies of patients on their operating tables.
When Pasteur invented the process that came to be named after him, he was hailed as a hero. He killed germs. Pasteurized milk and other foods would be "clean."
We now know that our bodies are not composed only of our own cells (and invading bacteria and viruses that sneak in). We have some twenty times as many good bacteria living inside us as we have of our own body cells. These bacteria are so important that we could not live without them. Most are in our gut (they help us digest good) and on our skin (where they protect us against invasion from the environment). In lesser numbers, good and critically important bacteria appear in many other places on and in our bodies.
Milk was, at one time, called "the perfect food" because it contained so many nutrients and beneficial elements (we now know as good bacteria, vitamins and minerals). Now, thanks to pasteurization, our milk is mostly white water, with any goodness being added manually at the dairy, such as vitamins.
Pasteur was so influential on the topic of human health that our ancestors accepted that all microbes were "germs," bad for us by definition. We came to believe that if we couldn’t see it and it was living, it was bad.
We now know that by killing off so many of the good bacteria that aid our health, we have made ourselves unhealthy. Milk, "the perfect food," is now perfectly useless for our health, except for the vitamins added after the cow and pasteurization.
We use mouthwash to make our mouths perfectly "clean." Our mouth is another of those first lines of defence against disease invasion. With a "clean" mouth, our bodies are open to disease against which we have no protection. Clean, but vulnerable.
We use electric toothbrushes to remove that terrible plaque that supposedly causes decay and destroys our health. Many of us spend many minutes each day brushing far longer than a dental hygienist spends cleaning our teeth. This does not make sense, but it delights dentists. Patients keep coming back to their offices when they have weak dentin and super sensitive teeth, for which they must use a special toothpaste for sensitive teeth. Not necessary. Sensitive teeth were almost unheard of among our ancestors.
We suffer pain, have no protection against disease invasion, but our mouths are "clean" according to the advertisers. Who profit from our ignorance and reluctance to learn what we should know.
Speaking of "clean," a TV commercial shows CLR efficiently removing calcium, lime and rust from devices in our homes. Then we can just flush it down the drain. "Clean" homes. But sewage treatment facilities do not remove chemicals from waste water, nor do water treatment plants remove them from incoming water before communities downstream of our chemical waste drink "treated" water that has biological pathogens removed, but not chemical waste. Somebody is drinking water with chemical components that are strong enough to dissolve rust.
Back in the days of our grandparents and earlier, kids got sick. Sometimes regularly. Sometimes parents with large families caused all their children to be infected with diseases like measles, just so they would all gain immunity at once. As adults, they got few diseases because their immune systems had been built up in childhood. It’s commopn today for adults to be off work several times during the year because their weak immune systems allowed them to invaded by some pathogen.
Today we have children who must, in some jurisdictions, take as many as 48 vaccinations (with documented evidence to prove it) before they will be allowed to enter school. Their parents may be forced to home-school if they refuse to subject their kids to these vaccines.
And what is in the vaccines? To avoid legal ramifications, I will let you do some research yourself. But here is a quote from NaturalNews.com:
"Suspicions have been confirmed for those wary of vaccinating their children. A recent large study corroborates other independent study surveys comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children.
"They all show that vaccinated children have two to five times more childhood diseases, illnesses, and allergies than unvaccinated children."
What kids in school have these days are "asthma, reoccurring tonsillitis, chronic bronchitis, sinusitis, allergies, eczema, ear infections, diabetes, sleep disorders, bedwetting, dyslexia, migraines, hyperactivity, ADD, epilepsy, depression, and slower development of speech or motor skills."
But schools rarely have cases of chicken pox or measles. Vaccines look after that.
Now in my senior years myself, I sometimes face a new medical professional (such as in a lab) who asks if I brought a list of my medications with me. I say I don’t take any. Some don’t believe me until I insist that I don’t take medication because I don’t need any.
They say I’m lucky. I know that luck has nothing to do with it. I am very attentive to my health and that of my wife. I have studied and learned.
That requires commitment to learning what is real about health claims and what is fraud. Or even what is dangerous to human health, even if proposed by a family doctor or in advertising by pharmaceutical companies.
Most people have no interested in doing that much work. The older they get, the more they suffer. They just consider that they have bad luck. They refuse to consider that they were lazy or ignorant in their younger years.
I was born with two autoimmune diseases (technically they are called syndromes) that were in both sides of my family. I studied and learned how to minimize their symptoms and maximize my own potential. Sure, I have problems sometimes, mostly during stressful periods. But my problems are manageable, which can’t be said by many with autoimmune diseases.
Many people consider me lucky. A few know how hard I have studied to learn what I need to know to safeguard my health, without having to depend on doctors and medication. On the rare occasion I pay a visit to a doctor’s office, I come prepared with a description of my symptoms, what I believe causes them and what the doctor might do to help. Rarely do I leave without the doctor agreeing with me.
That’s not luck.
There is no reason why you can’t control your health as well. The internet is filled with health advice. Some is trash, others are treasures. As you are a reader, you can read it and make your own choices. Don’t wait for someone else to provide the best solutions to good health on a platter.
You can make your own luck when it comes to your own health. You don’t need to depend on professionals who earn their living from people who are chronically unhealthy. Or who refuse to learn.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers. Yes, bad health is a social problem. You catch it by listening to advertising.
Learn more on this subject at http://billallin.com
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Are We Really the Most Intelligent Species?
Are We Really the Most Intelligent Species?
Intelligence is not only difficult to define, some people claim that it is a construct with no validity in nature. Albert Einstein himself claimed that all babies are born geniuses, then we overcome that potential in the following years of childhood.
- Bill Allin, Intelligence and Unhappiness: Likely, But Not Inevitably Linked
Depending on the literature you read or the media sources you use, you may find yourself assaulted a few times each week by statements claiming that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet. I say "assaulted" because they happen so frequently.
We are brainwashed into believing that we are the most intelligent species. But are we?
The sources of this information are ourselves. Our sources never give evidence because none actually exists. It’s a tautology: we are the most intelligent species because we are the only species that can say we are.
Speaking of saying, we partly determine the intelligence of other animals according to the number of human words they can understand or speak or otherwise communicate. How many words (or other method of communication) of another species of animal do you speak (or concepts can you communicate)?
For that matter, what can you do better than any other animal does as part of its regular life habits? Pick an animal, any animal, think about something it does, then consider if you could do it better. The answer inevitably is "No." We can’t do anything that any other animal does that is not part of regular human experience.
Science generally agrees that dolphins are very intelligent. But not quite as intelligent as us, most say. They can’t carry on a conversation with us. But then, we can’t carry on a conversation or any other form of extended communication with dolphins either. But we claim we are smarter.
Dolphins live in a water environment, yet breathe air as we do. We can swim under water, but only briefly. At this point, we are incapable of living in any environment that lacks air, or even lasting for more than a few minutes. [NOTE: It is technically possible for our lungs to take oxygen from water, but it’s not something you should attempt.]
We understand that ants and bees have their own forms of intelligence. But we excuse them from the intelligence competition because they are exclusively a social species--their collective intelligence is shared among all members of the hive or nest. According to science, shared intelligence is different from individual intelligence. Why? Because it’s convenient for us.
Now, about individual intelligence. Are humans intelligent as a species, or is it true that just a limited few are as intelligent as we claim our species is as a whole? Remember, it’s only the most highly educated and (likely) those with the highest IQ among us who claim our superiority.
Next time you go to a supermarket, stop for a few minutes and observe people shopping in the aisles. Or looking for a parking space in the lot. Or trying to find their car in the lot after they have finished shopping. Did any of those people have anything at all to do with the organization or the technologies they use in those situations? Some need to use their remote devices to make their car horn sound just so they can find their vehicle.
When it comes to IQ (Intelligence Quotient, the most common measure for human intelligence), does it seem right for us to claim intelligence as a species because a few of us excel at taking IQ tests, or at publishing university study papers?
Though we still hear about IQ once in a while, the concept has little recognized value these days (unless you happen to be a member of or qualify for membership in Mensa). The Stanford-Binet test of IQ was written by educated white men of the middle class, where questions that applied best to the lives and experiences of educated white men of the middle class could best answer them.
Lo and behold, when the test was administered to everyone else, including those from different cultures and with different forms of education and people whose first language was not one in which the test was created, they performed at lower levels on the scale. This served the racial prejudice of educated white middle class Europeans in the early 20th century well.
In general, the form of intelligence evaluation preferred by any one person tends to be one composed by the same language and cultural group as that person. And they stick to it as if were religious gospel or political idealism. In other words, my way is best; other ways are not as good because......my way is best.
Those who perform well on IQ tests give little credit to EQ (Emotional Quotient intelligence) or any of dozens of other forms of tests of personal knowledge, talents or skills because the test which gives them the highest scores is their favourite. That includes tests for happiness, on which highly intelligent people tend to score lower than some other groups (who often have lower IQ scores).
In conclusion, those with the highest scores on any test of intelligence will be among the group into which fall those who composed the test.
[Side note: I just asked my cat about which is the most intelligent species. She told me to get back to work cleaning her litter box and vacuuming up the fur she left on the furniture where she slept. Of course I obeyed, isn’t that what the most intelligent species would do?]
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents, anyone who wants kids to grow up without experiencing anti-social problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Intelligence is not only difficult to define, some people claim that it is a construct with no validity in nature. Albert Einstein himself claimed that all babies are born geniuses, then we overcome that potential in the following years of childhood.
- Bill Allin, Intelligence and Unhappiness: Likely, But Not Inevitably Linked
Depending on the literature you read or the media sources you use, you may find yourself assaulted a few times each week by statements claiming that humans are the most intelligent species on the planet. I say "assaulted" because they happen so frequently.
We are brainwashed into believing that we are the most intelligent species. But are we?
The sources of this information are ourselves. Our sources never give evidence because none actually exists. It’s a tautology: we are the most intelligent species because we are the only species that can say we are.
Speaking of saying, we partly determine the intelligence of other animals according to the number of human words they can understand or speak or otherwise communicate. How many words (or other method of communication) of another species of animal do you speak (or concepts can you communicate)?
For that matter, what can you do better than any other animal does as part of its regular life habits? Pick an animal, any animal, think about something it does, then consider if you could do it better. The answer inevitably is "No." We can’t do anything that any other animal does that is not part of regular human experience.
Science generally agrees that dolphins are very intelligent. But not quite as intelligent as us, most say. They can’t carry on a conversation with us. But then, we can’t carry on a conversation or any other form of extended communication with dolphins either. But we claim we are smarter.
Dolphins live in a water environment, yet breathe air as we do. We can swim under water, but only briefly. At this point, we are incapable of living in any environment that lacks air, or even lasting for more than a few minutes. [NOTE: It is technically possible for our lungs to take oxygen from water, but it’s not something you should attempt.]
We understand that ants and bees have their own forms of intelligence. But we excuse them from the intelligence competition because they are exclusively a social species--their collective intelligence is shared among all members of the hive or nest. According to science, shared intelligence is different from individual intelligence. Why? Because it’s convenient for us.
Now, about individual intelligence. Are humans intelligent as a species, or is it true that just a limited few are as intelligent as we claim our species is as a whole? Remember, it’s only the most highly educated and (likely) those with the highest IQ among us who claim our superiority.
Next time you go to a supermarket, stop for a few minutes and observe people shopping in the aisles. Or looking for a parking space in the lot. Or trying to find their car in the lot after they have finished shopping. Did any of those people have anything at all to do with the organization or the technologies they use in those situations? Some need to use their remote devices to make their car horn sound just so they can find their vehicle.
When it comes to IQ (Intelligence Quotient, the most common measure for human intelligence), does it seem right for us to claim intelligence as a species because a few of us excel at taking IQ tests, or at publishing university study papers?
Though we still hear about IQ once in a while, the concept has little recognized value these days (unless you happen to be a member of or qualify for membership in Mensa). The Stanford-Binet test of IQ was written by educated white men of the middle class, where questions that applied best to the lives and experiences of educated white men of the middle class could best answer them.
Lo and behold, when the test was administered to everyone else, including those from different cultures and with different forms of education and people whose first language was not one in which the test was created, they performed at lower levels on the scale. This served the racial prejudice of educated white middle class Europeans in the early 20th century well.
In general, the form of intelligence evaluation preferred by any one person tends to be one composed by the same language and cultural group as that person. And they stick to it as if were religious gospel or political idealism. In other words, my way is best; other ways are not as good because......my way is best.
Those who perform well on IQ tests give little credit to EQ (Emotional Quotient intelligence) or any of dozens of other forms of tests of personal knowledge, talents or skills because the test which gives them the highest scores is their favourite. That includes tests for happiness, on which highly intelligent people tend to score lower than some other groups (who often have lower IQ scores).
In conclusion, those with the highest scores on any test of intelligence will be among the group into which fall those who composed the test.
[Side note: I just asked my cat about which is the most intelligent species. She told me to get back to work cleaning her litter box and vacuuming up the fur she left on the furniture where she slept. Of course I obeyed, isn’t that what the most intelligent species would do?]
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers, parents, anyone who wants kids to grow up without experiencing anti-social problems.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Why Canadians Are Different from Americans
Why Canadians Are Different from Americans
Canadians are generally indistinguishable from Americans, and the surest way of telling the two apart is to make the observation to a Canadian.
- Richard Staines
As recently as the 1970s, many Canadians could name almost no differences between Canadians and Americans. Except one that stands out. They knew they were Canadians, not Americans.
That is a credit to nationalist pride, pride in one’s homeland. But what else?
Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.
- Marshall McLuhan (Canadian who worked for many years in the USA)
[Canada and Canadians have clear identities among people elsewhere in the world, even if they are not clear about their own identity at home. They are too close to see what the identity is.]
Canada and the United States of America have very different histories. That, more than anything of importance today, has made Canadians distinctly different from Americans.
A few centuries ago, Britain was the mightiest nation in the world. At one time it controlled fully one-quarter of the land mass of the planet. English merchants viewed North America as a massive natural resource with the potential to provide massive wealth to the home country and those who controlled its economy. So did the French.
The Seven Years’ War settled their difference of opinion. While England and France were driving themselves into poverty through long periods of war with each other, English General James Wolfe (a major general in North America, while still only a colonel in England) defeated French General Montcalm (a real general and leader of New France), at what is now Quebec City. North America was then English, for the most part.
France had nothing left to give to New France, so defeat at Quebec was mostly a damage to its pride. England had nothing left to give to New England. But a thriving economy among English merchants in the New World became an attractive and lucrative resource for the impoverished homeland. This thrilled the English merchants in England, but greatly troubled the English merchants in the New World.
The two groups of English settled their differences with the War of Independence (aka Revolutionary War), which established the United States of America, in 1776, out of 13 existing English colonies.
There were now, in effect, two English empires, one centred in Washington, the other in London. As the London based empire faded, the one based in Washington took over as the most powerful nation on the planet. Set their respective histories of the period side by side to see how similar the attitudes and styles of economy and approach to the wealth to be gained through war by the senior merchant class to see how the USA became the British Empire, Part 2.
The separation and succession of empires was not without precedent. The ancient Greeks, who could not unite in Greece due to what amounted to tribal conflicts, formed the Roman Empire, which later morphed into the Byzantine Empire, which in turn lasted for another 1000 years while Rome and Europe entered the Dark Ages. Both the Roman and the Byzantine Empires were essentially Greek empires.
The northern part of England’s New World colonies, what much later became Canada, bolstered by what had been New France and the English Loyalists who migrated from the USA north into territory still held by the British, gained its own identity. It did so partly because it had to survive on its own, with little assistance from the motherland.
While the USA had much of its legal system formed with the help of formerly Scottish immigrants, its political, economic and religious systems remained basically copies of the English ancestors. The English in the USA held control. They gained that control through war.
Canada gained its foundation, its legal system, its ethical system and its work force from the Scots and the Irish who came under the umbrella term "British." Canada’s first Prime Minister was Sir John A. Macdonald, who brought his Scottish accent with him when he immigrated from Scotland with his family, as a child.
As some American comedians like to put it, Canada, unlike the USA model, gained its own independence from Britain by asking nicely. This suited the Canadians because they were tired of war. Canada settled its differences with the native Indians through a series of treaties (which the Indians upheld, while the Canadian government kept nary a single promised, but that’s another story).
Canada settled most of its differences with its French speaking citizens by giving the Province of Quebec the legal system (which is different from that in any other Canadian province) it wanted and control of most of its own destiny. Some Quebeckers (known as Québécois) have still not recovered from the shame they felt from the loss by Montcalm, and still demand independence for Quebec from the rest of Canada, but most Quebec Francophones prefer to remain with the larger and wealthier Canada. They don’t want to fight.
That still does not quite explain the major differences between Canadians and Americans today.
Canada is not the British Empire, Part 3. It is not a melting pot, as the USA claims to be. Instead of trying to assimilate immigrants from almost every other culture on the planet that have come to make their homes in Canada, it has encouraged immigrants to retain the best of their home cultures and add them to the greater Canadian culture, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Canada is officially multicultural. It is still officially bilingual, retaining the two founding languages, English and French.
There is one more major influence on Canada today that even most Canadians do not recognize. It’s an influence that the USA never had, or at least never recognized because it insisted on integrating and assimilating every cultural group in the nation. Canada had (and still has) the Acadians.
While relatively small in number in Canada today, the Acadians must have had a huge influence on what Canada became out of its somewhat confusing past. I won’t go into the history of Acadians in Canada (and Cajuns subsequently in the USA), because it is too extensive, though fascinating. You can learn more about the Acadians here.
Ask 100 Canadians what they take pride in about their country and the way it is known to the world (or ask 1000 people of other countries their opinions about Canada). Then look at the values of the original Acadians, the values that guided their lives, their social structure, their culture, who were in what became Canada when it was taken over by the British, and you will find shocking similarities. Canadian values today are essentially Acadian values, the two match up that closely.
The Acadians of Canada, although a colony of New France, were not really a significant part of New France, which was centred in Quebec, the part that was at least a bit supported by France before Wolfe and Montcalm. The Acadians were originally French, but not from the part of France that held the power in Paris. They were mostly farmers sent from northeastern provinces of France to populate New France. Almost immediately the Acadians were left on their own to fend for themselves with very little support financially or militarily (for defence).
The Acadians settled, survived, and thrived, again and again despite many efforts to get rid of them or to assimilate them. Ask 100 Acadians from Canada today what they are proud of about their Acadian heritage and culture and the answers will be very similar to what you got when you asked the other 100 Canadians a couple of paragraphs back.
All Canadians today know about the Acadians and their storied history. Few know how much they influenced the culture of Canada today. Today’s Acadians seem blissfully unaware of the remarkable similarity of the values by which they live their lives to the core values of the nation their ancestors came to 400 years ago.
How typically Canadian.
If you want to know what makes Canadians different from Americans today, read some history of Acadians in Canada. Canada adopted Acadian values. Canadians today proudly think of them as clearly Canadian values.
Here are a few more quotes about differences between Canadians and Americans:
A Canadian is sort of like an American, but without the gun.
- Anonymous
[Recent studies show that Canadians own more guns per capita than Americans, but have only a tiny fraction of the US murder rate.]
Canada has never been a melting-pot; more like a tossed salad.
- Arnold Edinborough
Canada is probably the most free country in the world where a man still has room to breathe, to spread out, to move forward, to move out, an open country with an open frontier. Canada has created harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups, and it must take this experience to the world because there is yet to be such an example of harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups.
- Valentyn Moroz
Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians.
- Helen Gordon McPherson
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.
- former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, From the Canadian Bill of Rights, July 1, 1960
In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect.
- former US President Bill Clinton
The Canadian is not an American - at least, not entirely, not yet.
Alistair Horne
You look at the history [of Canada] -- the aboriginal people welcomed the first settlers here with open arms, fed us and took care of us ... that continues today, we welcome people from all nations to come in and share.
- Peter Stoffer
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for solving social problems that plague cities and countries around the world today. It’s a simple and effective plan that will work.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Canadians are generally indistinguishable from Americans, and the surest way of telling the two apart is to make the observation to a Canadian.
- Richard Staines
As recently as the 1970s, many Canadians could name almost no differences between Canadians and Americans. Except one that stands out. They knew they were Canadians, not Americans.
That is a credit to nationalist pride, pride in one’s homeland. But what else?
Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.
- Marshall McLuhan (Canadian who worked for many years in the USA)
[Canada and Canadians have clear identities among people elsewhere in the world, even if they are not clear about their own identity at home. They are too close to see what the identity is.]
Canada and the United States of America have very different histories. That, more than anything of importance today, has made Canadians distinctly different from Americans.
A few centuries ago, Britain was the mightiest nation in the world. At one time it controlled fully one-quarter of the land mass of the planet. English merchants viewed North America as a massive natural resource with the potential to provide massive wealth to the home country and those who controlled its economy. So did the French.
The Seven Years’ War settled their difference of opinion. While England and France were driving themselves into poverty through long periods of war with each other, English General James Wolfe (a major general in North America, while still only a colonel in England) defeated French General Montcalm (a real general and leader of New France), at what is now Quebec City. North America was then English, for the most part.
France had nothing left to give to New France, so defeat at Quebec was mostly a damage to its pride. England had nothing left to give to New England. But a thriving economy among English merchants in the New World became an attractive and lucrative resource for the impoverished homeland. This thrilled the English merchants in England, but greatly troubled the English merchants in the New World.
The two groups of English settled their differences with the War of Independence (aka Revolutionary War), which established the United States of America, in 1776, out of 13 existing English colonies.
There were now, in effect, two English empires, one centred in Washington, the other in London. As the London based empire faded, the one based in Washington took over as the most powerful nation on the planet. Set their respective histories of the period side by side to see how similar the attitudes and styles of economy and approach to the wealth to be gained through war by the senior merchant class to see how the USA became the British Empire, Part 2.
The separation and succession of empires was not without precedent. The ancient Greeks, who could not unite in Greece due to what amounted to tribal conflicts, formed the Roman Empire, which later morphed into the Byzantine Empire, which in turn lasted for another 1000 years while Rome and Europe entered the Dark Ages. Both the Roman and the Byzantine Empires were essentially Greek empires.
The northern part of England’s New World colonies, what much later became Canada, bolstered by what had been New France and the English Loyalists who migrated from the USA north into territory still held by the British, gained its own identity. It did so partly because it had to survive on its own, with little assistance from the motherland.
While the USA had much of its legal system formed with the help of formerly Scottish immigrants, its political, economic and religious systems remained basically copies of the English ancestors. The English in the USA held control. They gained that control through war.
Canada gained its foundation, its legal system, its ethical system and its work force from the Scots and the Irish who came under the umbrella term "British." Canada’s first Prime Minister was Sir John A. Macdonald, who brought his Scottish accent with him when he immigrated from Scotland with his family, as a child.
As some American comedians like to put it, Canada, unlike the USA model, gained its own independence from Britain by asking nicely. This suited the Canadians because they were tired of war. Canada settled its differences with the native Indians through a series of treaties (which the Indians upheld, while the Canadian government kept nary a single promised, but that’s another story).
Canada settled most of its differences with its French speaking citizens by giving the Province of Quebec the legal system (which is different from that in any other Canadian province) it wanted and control of most of its own destiny. Some Quebeckers (known as Québécois) have still not recovered from the shame they felt from the loss by Montcalm, and still demand independence for Quebec from the rest of Canada, but most Quebec Francophones prefer to remain with the larger and wealthier Canada. They don’t want to fight.
That still does not quite explain the major differences between Canadians and Americans today.
Canada is not the British Empire, Part 3. It is not a melting pot, as the USA claims to be. Instead of trying to assimilate immigrants from almost every other culture on the planet that have come to make their homes in Canada, it has encouraged immigrants to retain the best of their home cultures and add them to the greater Canadian culture, making the whole greater than the sum of its parts. Canada is officially multicultural. It is still officially bilingual, retaining the two founding languages, English and French.
There is one more major influence on Canada today that even most Canadians do not recognize. It’s an influence that the USA never had, or at least never recognized because it insisted on integrating and assimilating every cultural group in the nation. Canada had (and still has) the Acadians.
While relatively small in number in Canada today, the Acadians must have had a huge influence on what Canada became out of its somewhat confusing past. I won’t go into the history of Acadians in Canada (and Cajuns subsequently in the USA), because it is too extensive, though fascinating. You can learn more about the Acadians here.
Ask 100 Canadians what they take pride in about their country and the way it is known to the world (or ask 1000 people of other countries their opinions about Canada). Then look at the values of the original Acadians, the values that guided their lives, their social structure, their culture, who were in what became Canada when it was taken over by the British, and you will find shocking similarities. Canadian values today are essentially Acadian values, the two match up that closely.
The Acadians of Canada, although a colony of New France, were not really a significant part of New France, which was centred in Quebec, the part that was at least a bit supported by France before Wolfe and Montcalm. The Acadians were originally French, but not from the part of France that held the power in Paris. They were mostly farmers sent from northeastern provinces of France to populate New France. Almost immediately the Acadians were left on their own to fend for themselves with very little support financially or militarily (for defence).
The Acadians settled, survived, and thrived, again and again despite many efforts to get rid of them or to assimilate them. Ask 100 Acadians from Canada today what they are proud of about their Acadian heritage and culture and the answers will be very similar to what you got when you asked the other 100 Canadians a couple of paragraphs back.
All Canadians today know about the Acadians and their storied history. Few know how much they influenced the culture of Canada today. Today’s Acadians seem blissfully unaware of the remarkable similarity of the values by which they live their lives to the core values of the nation their ancestors came to 400 years ago.
How typically Canadian.
If you want to know what makes Canadians different from Americans today, read some history of Acadians in Canada. Canada adopted Acadian values. Canadians today proudly think of them as clearly Canadian values.
Here are a few more quotes about differences between Canadians and Americans:
A Canadian is sort of like an American, but without the gun.
- Anonymous
[Recent studies show that Canadians own more guns per capita than Americans, but have only a tiny fraction of the US murder rate.]
Canada has never been a melting-pot; more like a tossed salad.
- Arnold Edinborough
Canada is probably the most free country in the world where a man still has room to breathe, to spread out, to move forward, to move out, an open country with an open frontier. Canada has created harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups, and it must take this experience to the world because there is yet to be such an example of harmony and cooperation among ethnic groups.
- Valentyn Moroz
Canadians have been so busy explaining to the Americans that we aren't British, and to the British that we aren't Americans that we haven't had time to become Canadians.
- Helen Gordon McPherson
I am a Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, or free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.
- former Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, From the Canadian Bill of Rights, July 1, 1960
In a world darkened by ethnic conflicts that tear nations apart, Canada stands as a model of how people of different cultures can live and work together in peace, prosperity, and mutual respect.
- former US President Bill Clinton
The Canadian is not an American - at least, not entirely, not yet.
Alistair Horne
You look at the history [of Canada] -- the aboriginal people welcomed the first settlers here with open arms, fed us and took care of us ... that continues today, we welcome people from all nations to come in and share.
- Peter Stoffer
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for solving social problems that plague cities and countries around the world today. It’s a simple and effective plan that will work.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Cause for Rampant Afflictions Our Grandparents Never Had
Cause for Rampant Afflictions Our Grandparents Never Had
"I have never met a parent willing to sacrifice their child for the good of the herd. The vaccines have become more important than the child. It is time to stop allowing our children to be used as pharmaceutical pincushions. It is time to demand transparency in the tight relationship between pharmaceutical profits and government vaccine mandates."
- Allison MacNeil
If you mixed mercury, aluminum phosphate, ammonium sulphate, and formaldehyde, then got a syringe and injected it into your child, you would be arrested and sent to jail for child endangerment and abuse. Then why is it legal for a doctor to do it? And why would you let them [inject your child with a vaccine that contains these elements]?
- Facebook anti-vaccine poster
Almost everyone has opinion about why children need to get so many vaccinations these days--one count says 49 inoculations of 14 different vaccines
in one area, others say more--and those are before a child enters the first grade of school. Most centre around two claims:
(1) Each vaccine prevents a child from getting a disease;
(2) Each vaccine helps the pharmaceutical company that made it increase its annual sales exponentially (customers) and to provide capital to develop more health vaccine safeguards (companies).
In a sense, both are correct. Yet both miss the most important point about childhood vaccines. Vaccines are meant to tweak the immune system, gently, to produce antibodies that will ward off attack by their respective diseases in the future.
In trying to protect our children from having any harm come to them, we overprotect them. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Harm happens anyway, but not in ways we expect or understand.
We don’t allow our kids to go out with other children on the streets because we believe it’s too dangerous out there. So we keep them home, give them video games, iPads and television to keep them busy because today’s parents don’t have any more time to devote to playing with their kids than parents of previous generations. In some areas it’s even illegal for kids to play in the street.
We watch them get fat. We don’t see them fail to develop social and emotional skills children always did by playing with other kids. We focus on the intellectual and physical development we know more about.
We see them--some of them--develop autism, allergies their grandparents knew hardly anything about, diseases such as asthma that were extremely rare a couple of generations ago, and put it down to modern life in the city.
Families of some school children have been told to not feed peanuts or peanut butter to the kids in case they touch a child with a dangerous peanut allergy, at school, and that child dies. One news story even had a US school banning kids who have eaten peanut butter in case the child breathes on another child with a peanut allergy.
We don’t understand why our children become obese (about one-third of them), why they don’t have interests we had as kids or why they develop health problems that we rare or almost unknown until recent decades. And why they have more problems getting along with their peers than any previous generation.
One thing that affects each of us every day of our lives is our immune system. Yet we know so little about it. We take the word of our family doctors that we should protect ourselves--flu and other vaccines for adults and dozens of vaccines for our kids--so that we will be protected from terrible diseases.
Setting aside the great debate about whether or not these vaccines do more harm than good, let’s look at one of the fundamentals of our own bodies.
Our immune systems protect us from diseases and help to cure us when we get one. Do we actually protect ourselves by getting needles? Remember, many of us believe those commercials that tell us we should rid our mouths of "germs" (bacteria and other microbes), despite the fact that good bacteria in our mouths are our first line of defence against disease. Does that make sense? We do the same thing with our immune systems.
The whole purpose of a long childhood for humans--far longer than the development periods of most other animals--is to prepare us for adulthood. We need that long to prepare. That includes our immune systems.
Our immune system, like other body systems, is not designed to be eased into adulthood. We don’t gain strength by pushing open swinging doors and pulling on our socks, but by working our muscles, sometimes very hard. We don’t gain intellectual strength by spoon feeding our brain with facts and ideas from television, but by forcing ourselves to think our way through difficult problems.
And we don’t develop a robust immune system by easing it along with regular vaccinations. In the past, our ancestors got sick and their immune systems had to work extremely hard just to help them recover. They did, and in the process they became stronger, more immune to disease attack, and overall healthier.
Yes, some children died. That’s the hook pharmaceutical companies use to get us to buy their vaccines. We don’t want our kids to die, so we administer all sorts of chemicals we know nothing about, hoping to save them. School age kids didn’t die in huge numbers in the past, as we have been misled to believe by Big Pharma.
Immune systems that are fed regularly in childhood with vaccines never have to work very hard. Without thinking about it much, that seems lovely. When we examine it, an easy life for the immune system in childhood means a major body function looking for work has nothing much to find.
So what does it do? For one thing, it develops allergies so it has some work to do. It develops asthma, which is basically a form of allergy. Allergies are, in effect, the body attacking itself. It doesn’t have diseases to fight, so it fights itself. Like a cat chasing its own tail, only the cat knows enough not to bite hard. Our immune system is not allowed to develop enough to learn that.
Our bodies are designed to work hard. When they don’t, they find other ways to work. Muscles that don’t have much physical work to do, as those of our ancestors did, find themselves having to tote around far more body weight than in the past. Some of that comes from increased height, some from more fat.
Young brains that find themselves understimulated by lockstep lessons in school find other forms of stimulation, such as with drugs and video games. They want excitement, which is the brain’s backup plan when other opportunities for stimulation don’t present themselves.
Adults that have relatively safe and anxiety-free daytime lives may have overly exciting dreams. Even the brain needs to work hard, at something useless at night if not something productive or dangerous during the daytime.
While it is certainly true that some children died from childhood diseases in the past, was that not a form of natural selection, the process by which those with certain weaknesses or inability to adapt to certain environmental conditions die out? Yes, that seems harsh, but it may be true.
By feeding young children so many vaccines, we may be condemning them to a lifetime of weak health. Of dependence on doctors and medicines. Yes, medicines made by the very same companies that convinced us and our governments and education systems that it was the healthy thing to do to give our young children vaccines.
By feeding our kids dozens of vaccines, pharmaceutical companies develop lifelong customers. A close examination of the health care industry shows that their plan is working. Today’s parents raise patients, not healthy young children.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow healthy children, not mentally and physically health-hampered kids.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
"I have never met a parent willing to sacrifice their child for the good of the herd. The vaccines have become more important than the child. It is time to stop allowing our children to be used as pharmaceutical pincushions. It is time to demand transparency in the tight relationship between pharmaceutical profits and government vaccine mandates."
- Allison MacNeil
If you mixed mercury, aluminum phosphate, ammonium sulphate, and formaldehyde, then got a syringe and injected it into your child, you would be arrested and sent to jail for child endangerment and abuse. Then why is it legal for a doctor to do it? And why would you let them [inject your child with a vaccine that contains these elements]?
- Facebook anti-vaccine poster
Almost everyone has opinion about why children need to get so many vaccinations these days--one count says 49 inoculations of 14 different vaccines
in one area, others say more--and those are before a child enters the first grade of school. Most centre around two claims:
(1) Each vaccine prevents a child from getting a disease;
(2) Each vaccine helps the pharmaceutical company that made it increase its annual sales exponentially (customers) and to provide capital to develop more health vaccine safeguards (companies).
In a sense, both are correct. Yet both miss the most important point about childhood vaccines. Vaccines are meant to tweak the immune system, gently, to produce antibodies that will ward off attack by their respective diseases in the future.
In trying to protect our children from having any harm come to them, we overprotect them. We don’t want anything bad to happen to them. Harm happens anyway, but not in ways we expect or understand.
We don’t allow our kids to go out with other children on the streets because we believe it’s too dangerous out there. So we keep them home, give them video games, iPads and television to keep them busy because today’s parents don’t have any more time to devote to playing with their kids than parents of previous generations. In some areas it’s even illegal for kids to play in the street.
We watch them get fat. We don’t see them fail to develop social and emotional skills children always did by playing with other kids. We focus on the intellectual and physical development we know more about.
We see them--some of them--develop autism, allergies their grandparents knew hardly anything about, diseases such as asthma that were extremely rare a couple of generations ago, and put it down to modern life in the city.
Families of some school children have been told to not feed peanuts or peanut butter to the kids in case they touch a child with a dangerous peanut allergy, at school, and that child dies. One news story even had a US school banning kids who have eaten peanut butter in case the child breathes on another child with a peanut allergy.
We don’t understand why our children become obese (about one-third of them), why they don’t have interests we had as kids or why they develop health problems that we rare or almost unknown until recent decades. And why they have more problems getting along with their peers than any previous generation.
One thing that affects each of us every day of our lives is our immune system. Yet we know so little about it. We take the word of our family doctors that we should protect ourselves--flu and other vaccines for adults and dozens of vaccines for our kids--so that we will be protected from terrible diseases.
Setting aside the great debate about whether or not these vaccines do more harm than good, let’s look at one of the fundamentals of our own bodies.
Our immune systems protect us from diseases and help to cure us when we get one. Do we actually protect ourselves by getting needles? Remember, many of us believe those commercials that tell us we should rid our mouths of "germs" (bacteria and other microbes), despite the fact that good bacteria in our mouths are our first line of defence against disease. Does that make sense? We do the same thing with our immune systems.
The whole purpose of a long childhood for humans--far longer than the development periods of most other animals--is to prepare us for adulthood. We need that long to prepare. That includes our immune systems.
Our immune system, like other body systems, is not designed to be eased into adulthood. We don’t gain strength by pushing open swinging doors and pulling on our socks, but by working our muscles, sometimes very hard. We don’t gain intellectual strength by spoon feeding our brain with facts and ideas from television, but by forcing ourselves to think our way through difficult problems.
And we don’t develop a robust immune system by easing it along with regular vaccinations. In the past, our ancestors got sick and their immune systems had to work extremely hard just to help them recover. They did, and in the process they became stronger, more immune to disease attack, and overall healthier.
Yes, some children died. That’s the hook pharmaceutical companies use to get us to buy their vaccines. We don’t want our kids to die, so we administer all sorts of chemicals we know nothing about, hoping to save them. School age kids didn’t die in huge numbers in the past, as we have been misled to believe by Big Pharma.
Immune systems that are fed regularly in childhood with vaccines never have to work very hard. Without thinking about it much, that seems lovely. When we examine it, an easy life for the immune system in childhood means a major body function looking for work has nothing much to find.
So what does it do? For one thing, it develops allergies so it has some work to do. It develops asthma, which is basically a form of allergy. Allergies are, in effect, the body attacking itself. It doesn’t have diseases to fight, so it fights itself. Like a cat chasing its own tail, only the cat knows enough not to bite hard. Our immune system is not allowed to develop enough to learn that.
Our bodies are designed to work hard. When they don’t, they find other ways to work. Muscles that don’t have much physical work to do, as those of our ancestors did, find themselves having to tote around far more body weight than in the past. Some of that comes from increased height, some from more fat.
Young brains that find themselves understimulated by lockstep lessons in school find other forms of stimulation, such as with drugs and video games. They want excitement, which is the brain’s backup plan when other opportunities for stimulation don’t present themselves.
Adults that have relatively safe and anxiety-free daytime lives may have overly exciting dreams. Even the brain needs to work hard, at something useless at night if not something productive or dangerous during the daytime.
While it is certainly true that some children died from childhood diseases in the past, was that not a form of natural selection, the process by which those with certain weaknesses or inability to adapt to certain environmental conditions die out? Yes, that seems harsh, but it may be true.
By feeding young children so many vaccines, we may be condemning them to a lifetime of weak health. Of dependence on doctors and medicines. Yes, medicines made by the very same companies that convinced us and our governments and education systems that it was the healthy thing to do to give our young children vaccines.
By feeding our kids dozens of vaccines, pharmaceutical companies develop lifelong customers. A close examination of the health care industry shows that their plan is working. Today’s parents raise patients, not healthy young children.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for teachers and parents who want to grow healthy children, not mentally and physically health-hampered kids.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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