Society MD

If you have ever tasted blood before… you might be some kind of freak, and you should not be surprised if parents keep their children far away from you. But if it was just something you were curious about (“Hmm, I wonder what this tastes like…”), you may have noticed that blood is fairly salty in nature. And this leads to the question of why blood would be that way. After all, salt is something that should only be used in small measure on most things – it is very potent stuff, you know. So the notion that there is salt coursing through our veins can be a bizarre revelation.

Interestingly enough, it all began with sea water. As most any child who paid attention could tell you, the ocean is 3.5% salinities, which makes the aggregate total of the water 2.5% ordinary salt. It is no coincidence that our blood has the same level of salinity in it. The very first life forms evolved in the sea, because it is the perfect breeding ground for life. And the fact that the first of these life forms to become replicators (which meant that they could replicate themselves) built increasingly more sophisticated protein sheaths means that they essentially became our DNA.

In a sense, our bodies are nothing more than giant robots, designed to carry around and propagate these replicating life forms. And since they thrive in salt water, we carry around salt water inside of our veins. Therefore, the reason why we have salt in our blood is because of the way our bodies (and indeed, pretty much all bodies) evolved. Though we live on the land, we carry the sea around inside of us, in order to facilitate these life forms – which is a pretty good trade off, considering that they essentially created us.

More than 23 million people over the age of 12 need help for drug and alcohol addiction. As the number of addicts continues to grow, the need for additional residential drug and alcohol treatment centers grows as well.

Residential drug and alcohol treatment centers focus on two key components necessary to fight addiction: the physical dependency and the psychological dependency. Addicts must first overcome the addiction by removing the drugs and alcohol from their body. There are coping techniques and pharmaceuticals that physicians in treatment centers can provide to aid addicts in the detoxification process. Some drugs take months to fully exit the body, so it’s possible the physical phase of overcoming addiction can take a while. Solving the psychological issues of addiction can take even longer. Addicts must uncover and understand why they turn to drugs and alcohol, and then solve that problem, before they can recover from addiction.

It’s common for people fighting drug and alcohol addiction to seek treatment multiple times before achieving long-term success. For these patients, there is proven success in using residential drug and alcohol treatment centers. These centers help the patient transition from a life of addiction to a life where the patient can function socially in everyday society. Professionals at the center will incorporate individual, group, and family counseling to help the patient make a successful transition.

Long term success for drug and alcohol addiction means that the patient needs long term specialized care. Residential treatment centers offer assistance for patients after they leave the facility, either through accountability partners or even a hotline that the patient can call during times of temptation or emotional stress. Utilizing all services available through these facilities helps increase the odds of success and can help the patient finally overcome addiction for good.

The people who say things say that most of the modern world’s population will live to be about 80 years old. However, the average age for symphony conductors is approximately 94 years old. While this could simply be a coincidence (or the people who say things telling more lies, as their propaganda machine churns and bubbles in the background like an industrial strength Mr. Coffee), it could also mean that conductors tend to have longer life spans than the rest of us. While that is the obvious answer, it boggles the mind that one particular profession would live longer than most others would.

After all, it is not as if conductors do not have their share of stressors to contend with. After all, if a show goes poorly, the audience has one person (who is literally “up on a pedestal”) to blame and to throw rotten vegetables at. The conductor may brow beat the players, but they are ultimately wielding the instruments. If they make a sour note, or hold too long (or perhaps not long enough), the conductor is ultimately considered to be accountable. But perhaps, and this is only a vague theory, the concept of control is the most important part of living a longer life span.

If you plan out what you do, and keep it organized (while you cast yourself as the divinely appointed dictator of the whole mess), you might just have more than “a shot” of living to be exceptionally mature. It may very well be that the act of taking responsibility for things that are under your influence but not your direct control, and planning for future occurrences, can be a deciding factor in living a longer life span. And while there is no guarantee that a longer life is a more satisfying one, you may end up being more satisfied if you plan things and they actually work out.

A very neat thing happens when you get close to someone for awhile. Any non violent touch between higher life forms (mammals in general, and humans and apes in particular) causes a chemical to be produced in your brain. This chemical, called Oxytocin, is known as the “cuddle chemical.” And it is called this because it is produced when you cuddle with someone you love. All physical love is strengthened by the presence of oxytocin – and without it, it would be very possible that mothers would take very little care of their children. Sad as it is, even mother’s love is a chemical reaction, just like vinegar and baking soda.

When an infant sucks on its mother’s nipples, it causes her brain to release a rush of oxytocin. And when the woman’s lover does the same thing, it causes the exact same effect. When a pair of lovers hold one another in a restaurant while they await their meal, the connection they feel is built out of oxytocin. The warmth two people experience together, and the feeling of connectedness that they share are both caused, again, by an oxytocin reaction in their brains. In short, in nearly every occasion in which two higher life forms feel emotionally connected to one another, there is an oxytocin reaction in place.

And oxytocin does more than just make you feel good. It also produces a calming effect that lowers your heart rate. Positive brain chemistry of this nature does more than just make you feel good “in the moment” – it can also help you to live a longer and healthier life overall. Since the oxytocin you experience when you connect with someone is a pleasant sensation, seek it out more often. It’s in your best interests to cuddle someone, if you can.

What is Lithium?
Lithium is a medication commonly used to treat the manic episodes of manic depression. These manic episodes can severely affect a person’s ability to function properly at work and at home. Symptoms of such episodes may include hyperactivity, aggression, anger, and intense feelings. Lithium helps make these episodes less severe. Lithium is also one of the only medications that has been proven to decrease the risk of suicide in patients who have manic depression.

How Does Lithium Work?
Lithium is actually a form of salt that the body produces naturally. Sodium affects your mood, and taking lithium is believed to stabilize sodium levels in your body.

Is Lithium Safe?
Lithium has been successfully used to treat manic depression for years. However, lithium is risky to take, and it affects the blood levels so much that patients must undertake regular blood tests while on lithium to ensure safety. Even a small overdose can result in death. People who have been taking lithium for years also have an increased risk of kidney disease.

What Are Some Lithium Side Effects?
Like any drug, Lithium side effects vary in intensity and severity. Some of the most common side effects that come from taking lithium include tremors, nausea and upset stomach, loss of appetite, dried and thinning hair, and an itchy sensation.

Some of the more serious side effects of taking lithium include hallucinations, lack of coordination, extreme thirst or weakness, feelings of confusion or restlessness, seizures, severely slowed heart rate, and fainting. If any of these occur after taking lithium, you should seek medical help immediately and stop taking it until speaking with your doctor.

Lithium can successfully treat manic episodes, but some of the side effects can be serious and even deadly. Open communication with your doctor will help you know if lithium is right for you.

We all know how it goes. People continue to ignore your requests that they not make you angry, because they will not like you when you are angry. Unfortunately, we all know that it is only a matter of time before you simply can not take it anymore. And once your eyes turn bright green, it is way too late to try and placate you. Because once the beast has been awakened, his massive green muscles will smash everything in his path until his rage is satiated. And that usually takes a really long time, and causes a whole lot of collateral damage. If only it were simply a matter of ventilating your rage against everything in your path (which, in some cases, might be some kind of machine).

But you have to remember that what Yoda said was true. Anger leads to hatred, and hatred leads to suffering. In the end, no matter how much you smash, and no matter how many of the rotting, shattered corpses of your foes you leave to draws fly in the noon time Sun, you will ultimately have to face the inner results of your rage. Rage releases cortisol, which causes your muscles to weaken. And since your heart is a muscle, your life can actually be shortened by the effects of your rage.

As your anger grows, consider that we become angry because we feel threatened. When the fact of the matter is that your own anger can cause you more pain and suffering than any person’s words can, and that your own rage can ultimately be your destroyer, it might actually be best if you stop raging against those who would anger you despite your warnings. After all, all of the anger in the world does nothing more than hurt people – and hurting yourself just does not make any sense.

Medical science says that, like all muscles, a heart can only contract so many times before it is destined to fail. If this is true, then it would be antithetical to figure that getting your heart to beat more quickly would be anything but a bad idea. The irony of this supposition is that it neglects the fact that the heart is a muscle. And just like the muscles of your legs get stronger when you run and your arms get stronger when you pick up a weight, your heart grows stronger when it beats faster than its average speed. If you want to get into better shape, you need to jack up your heart rate.

The concept of a heart only having so many beats in its operational life span is a reasonable thought to carry on with. After all, a muscle carries physical stress forward, the same way that aluminum air plane bodies carry metal fatigue that they accrue with every flight they go on. When a plane’s body mysteriously rips apart in mid air (or especially during the especially damaging take off and landing phases of the flight), it is much like what could happen to your heart after a long enough life span. It might just explode, you never know.

But when your heart beats more quickly, its muscular components do something that airplane parts will not do. They take small amounts of damage, but then they heal themselves and become stronger for it. And as your heart grows stronger, it needs to beat less frequently when you are in a state of rest. So when you raise the rate at which your heart beats, you end up giving yourself the ability for it to beat more slowly most of the time. The notions starts out ironic, but quickly becomes very sensible.

Society tends to believe that the mentally ill are a set of people who are permanently ready to become violent, striking out at random times for reasons that the rest of us simply can not fathom.  Unfortunately, this belief is a salacious exaggeration by the media, who have a vested interest in only providing the “interesting” part of any story.  While it is definitely newsworthy when a psychotic or a bipolar person commits a crime, the saddest part of all (besides the crime itself) is that there is rarely any balance given to the story.  If there were more explanation of why a person with a mental illness would commit a heinous act, the public might understand better.

The unfortunate truth is, only people who have a family member or a close family friend who has a mental illness generally have a balanced understanding of what this disability means in practical terms.  While Hollywood has long known that it makes for a great story to have a mad scientist or a psychotic killer tormenting the protagonists, these images are terribly misleading to those who are not in the know about the issues themselves.  And for those of us who have neither a clinical background nor a personal history with such a mentally challenged individual, there may be no understanding of what really goes through the mind of a mentally or emotionally disturbed person.

Consider that according to the statistics of violent crime, people with mental illnesses commit no more per capita than any other members of the population do.  While the motivations of a person whose perception of the world may be completely different (such as a psychotic) may not be readily understood by a person of more typical neurology, the fact is that the person may have believed that they were under threat, and thus needed to defend themselves.

Diabetes is a manageable health condition that millions of Americans live with every day.  You can still live a long, healthy life, even if you become diabetic.  And even though diabetes used to be the confirmation of a death sentence (that usually occurred within a year or two after the diagnosis), great strides have been made in medicine which facilitate managing this disease.  But while synthetic insulin may have been one of the premier developments of the 1920s, in the ensuing decades one fact has remained unchanged.  The best way to treat or cure diabetes is to simply never have it in the first place.

There are two different types of diabetes: type 1 and type 2.  Type 1 diabetes is generally of a genetic nature, and is a poorly understood condition which borders on a full autoimmune disease.  In essence, for the type 1 diabetic, their own body seeks to harm itself, through no longer being able to properly assimilate the sugar that all digestible food is broken down into.  But by contrast to this, type 2 diabetes is just shy of a truly horrible form of masochism.  Through abusing the body’s ability to withstand sugar and a lack of use for the sugar that is assimilated, a person can make him or herself diabetic through poor diet and a lack of exercise.

Simply put, you can avoid having diabetes just by doing (and avoiding) a few reasonably simple things.  You can start by eating reasonably sized meals, exercising regularly (at least half an hour, four days a week), and by keeping your sugar levels reasonable.  Diabetics have all sorts of complex numbers they need to follow.  But all a non diabetic really needs to think of is to keep carbs to no more than 3/5 of the meal, and to eat fibrous things such as wheat bread.  And the insulin you produce will be plenty.

While the phrase “for the love of grape juice” never quite caught on in the popular vernacular, it is a very good reminder of the health benefits of the humble grape. While it takes the tortuous process through which vineyards put their grapes to produce the high levels of resveratrol that give grapes their most modern shot of fame, grapes are not going anywhere. They have been popular since the first wines over 2,000 years ago, and they will continue to be popular, even in their non fermented form. After all, anything that is so purple and so sweet simply can not be denied its place of glory.

If you are a juice drinker, you are no doubt familiar with how much vitamin C so many fruit juices contain. And if you are not, you ought to be tied down and forced to do shots of juice until you turn the color of the fruit it is made out of. And grape juice is as good as any of the rest (and far better than that urine looking apple nonsense). The fact is, grape juice is about as maddeningly healthy as anything you will ever be able to drink, acai and goji notwithstanding.

If you are a fan of grape juice, you are part of an elite group of individuals who associate purple with royalty instead of homosexuality. And as well, the grape lovers of the world are the people who keep the noble tradition of wine from turning into a tiny niche of elitists. After all else is said and done, grapes are for everyone, wealthy plutocrat and common pauper alike. The love of grape juice is the kind of affliction that should strike everyone at some point in their lives, as grapes are simply the best fruit that ever grew on a vine.