Reading from the last few days:
- Depression medication: Patients report 20 times more side effects than recorded in charts, study finds Science Daily — This won’t be surprising to the readers of this blog. We know doctors don’t pay attention to our complaints already.
- America’s medicated adults — Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia — I’ve had the same thoughts expressed in this piece many times. It’s a valid line of reasoning in my mind. I, however, will take the critiques of medication where they come. If parents and kids develop an alternative curriculum of care it’s more likely to carry the children into adulthood. I still share the sentiment as follows. — “So, when it comes to the overmedication of the children, permit me to be just a tiny bit cynical. Not for the reasons you are thinking. It is horribly wrong to stuff children full of unproven psychiatric drugs for dubious diagnoses. But, are we overlooking that is is just as wrong to stuff adults full of these same unproven drugs for dubious diagnoses? Why is a 17 year old a child and an 18 year old an adult when it comes to bad medication and lack of access to more effective non-drug interventions? Let’s not let the wholesale assault on adults go unlamented. If it’s wrong for children, it’s wrong for adults.” (and I say a mighty Amen to that!)
- Experiment shows brief meditative exercise helps cognition — Science Daily — While past research using neuroimaging technology has shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration, it has always been assumed that extensive training was required to achieve this effect. Though many people would like to boost their cognitive abilities, the monk-like discipline required seems like a daunting time commitment and financial cost for this benefit. — Surprisingly, the benefits may be achievable even without all the work. Though it sounds almost like an advertisement for a “miracle” weight-loss product, new research now suggests that the mind may be easier to cognitively train than we previously believed. Psychologists studying the effects of a meditation technique known as “mindfulness ” found that meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.
- Genetically Modified Soy Linked to Sterility, Infant Mortality — Another reason to avoid GMO foods and anything at all that Monsanto has messed with — “This study was just routine,” said Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov, in what could end up as the understatement of this century. Surov and his colleagues set out to discover if Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) soy, grown on 91% of US soybean fields, leads to problems in growth or reproduction. What he discovered may uproot a multi-billion dollar industry. — After feeding hamsters for two years over three generations, those on the GM diet, and especially the group on the maximum GM soy diet, showed devastating results. By the third generation, most GM soy-fed hamsters lost the ability to have babies. They also suffered slower growth, and a high mortality rate among the pups. — And if this isn’t shocking enough, some in the third generation even had hair growing inside their mouths—a phenomenon rarely seen, but apparently more prevalent among hamsters eating GM soy.
- How Scientific Is Modern Medicine Really? — It’s not just psychiatry, but all medicine. — Doctors today commonly assert that they practice “scientific medicine,” and patients think that the medical treatments they receive are “scientifically proven.” However, this ideal is a dream, not reality, and a clever and profitable marketing ruse, not fact.