Archive for May, 2006
Memorial Day–Remembering What We Fought For
Friday, May 26th, 2006In this day and age where Congress passes laws people don’t want, where corruption reigns, where influence and manipulation triumph over openness and transparency, we celebrate and memorialize those brave men and women who fought for the common man. They fought against taxation without representation. They fought against an elite class forcing their will on the masses. They fought for freedom from oppression. They fought for a rule of law that applied to every man, equally. They fought for a sovereign, independant, unified nation without interference from others. Finally, they fought for other people to have the same thing. Many nations, not just America, owe thanks to the men and women who fought for an idea, a belief embodied in Thomas Jefferson’s words:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.-
Congress should be careful of their “abuses and usurpations”. The President should be careful to avoid “a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism”.
Throughout America’s short history, her citizens in the form of the military, have fought over and over not as a tool to dominate her own people or others but to liberate. I am thankful for these people. Each day my family lives safely, protected, under a rule of law, yet free to speak, to dissent, free to congregate, free to bear arms, free to own my property, free to vote, free to enjoy a presumption of innocence. Free.
This freedom has been bought at a great price. Blood of many worthy and noble people spilled for this cause.
While our Senators and Representatives and the President pontificate on these themes this weekend, I hope they listen to their own words. They aren’t empty and meaningless words. They are important words. But these words can be undone by evil actions. In fact, it is a lot easier to destroy freedom than to build and protect it.
Memorial Day comes at a perfect time, this year, to remember not just who fought for America but what they fought for. Remember.
God & Health: How Spiritual Problems Affect Health
Friday, May 26th, 2006A common American “dis-ease” that has received lots of press recently, Post-Partum Depression, I would like to rename as L.O.S.S. or Lack of Support Syndrome. Women who have suffered LOSS have the disease reverse when someone helps them clean the house, takes care of the other children, holds the baby for a while so she can sleep, and provides her with some good meals. Women rarely suffer PPD when all these supports, all this love in action, are given. Medication suddenly becomes unnecessary.
How many other diseases grow because of social and spiritual isolation? In the case of PPD, there was a time when the notion of leaving a new mother with an infant at one day old by herself would have been perceived as crazy. It was simply not done. In the ancient nation of Israel, a mother had full-time support for 30 days. Can you imagine? How much PPD occurred? And how often was an unstable mother left to her own devices? She wasn’t.
Many other primitive societies did the same thing. The birth was not just a physical phenomena, it was a spiritual event surrounded by ritual, religious celebration and God-infused significance.
When did birth become a medical event?
At the other end of the spectrum, illnesses were almost exclusively viewed through a spiritual lense (this extreme was unhealthy in it’s own way). Our language continues this legacy: galled, hard-headed, stiff-necked, anal-rententive, choked-up, gut-wrenching. Through our language we acknowledge the mind-body-spirit connection.
But somewhere in time that connection was disconnected. What happened?
In a European land far, far away, some old guys decided to divide and conquer. Yawn, right? The history books of Western Civilization are filled with dividing and conquering. This division affects you and me, though, to a degree we can’t even fully comprehend. That is because what was divided affected life in civilization throughout the world to this day.
These men divided man. To this day, men are still divided. The spirit was given to the church. The body was given to science. The mind hovered all around and in between pushing intrusively into both domains.
This division resulted in fantastic scientific advances. Superstition got stripped away from bodily functions. Doctors could now examine the human body and learn it in infinite ways that had been prohibited in the past. Antibiotics, medication geared toward specific physiological processes, and intricate surgeries were discovered and saved lives.
Meanwhile, the church’s influence (especially in Europe) diminished. Rationalism and more important, mechanism (the philosophical theory that all phenomena can be explained in terms of physical or biological causes), and in extreme cases, utilitarianism, became the belief systems that informed people’s views of the world.
The result of this artificial separation was that people ceased to ponder spiritual causes of dis-ease. Even more significant, since spiritual problems aren’t always a cause of dis-ease, spiritual problems weren’t entertained as possible inhibitors of healing. While spiritual problems might not cause a dis-ease, they can certainly interefere with healing.
How does this manifest today? Well, if you feel depressed, there is a good chance you’ll be given an anti-depressant for your “imbalanced brain chemistry”. While it’s true that the brain chemistry is indeed imbalanced, the bigger questions of why and what causes this aren’t even entertained. Fear of answering these questions explains why the questions are avoided. Few doctors want to address “bitterness” or “lack of forgiveness” or “hatred” as the cause of depression.
Unfortunately, the person suffering with illness loses out on a very potent help in healing when the spiritual is avoided. Humans, says Viktor Frankl, search for meaning. Devoid of meaning, they wander and often unconsciously seek meaning. Like Solomon, they try food, drugs, sex, and every other sensory experience seeking, seeking a connection, answers, meaning.
Like Solomon, some people finally make a spiritual connection to God and a community of believers. And other people float, rudderless, no spirit in their sails on the vast open sea of experience. When trouble comes, as it does for nearly everyone, they are tossed about. Some succomb to the sea, some float further away never to be moored, some find a lifeline–some finally find meaning.
Rather than God being a peripheral idea, for us, God is the foundation upon which the rest of practice is built. Our practice is vitalistic. We believe that organic life cannot be explained by biology and chemistry alone. Instead of the spirit and the body or the mind and the body as separate, we believe that together they form the whole human.
We don’t sit around pondering existential questions with patients, or debate theology or philosophy for that matter. We do consider a person’s “spirit” and connection as part of their whole health, though. And we do this for plenty of scientific reasons.
All kinds of research shows that people who consistantly go to church, who believe as part of a community, who are socially connected, who pray regularly, who profess strong faith, who volunteer to serve others, who meditate, and who worship as a family have better health and longevity. These people have better sex lives. Yes, they do. They suffer depression much less. They enjoy the support of a community during difficult times.
These spiritual actions are very reasoned, very rational decisions. And they are often ignored. People focus on diet and exercise, some obsessively so, and ignore the big elephant in the room: their spiritual life, their connection to God and their connnection to their fellow man. One research study says that guys who smoked, drank and were overweight suffered less heart problems if they believed they were loved by their wives, than guys who were fit and believed their wives hated them. Their belief affected their health.
While we rarely pray with a patient, we almost always pray before we work with a patient. We pray for their healing. We pray for our wisdom. We ask God to help them in ways we can’t see.
A smart doctor recognizes his or her limitations. Ever hear, “he’s only human”? Well humans have limitations of time, space and matter.
God, on the other hand, is infinite. His wisdom is not defined or limited by time or space or things. Connection to this source of Power is a catalyst for healing.
It is my opinion that loneliness, isolation, and lack of support create and prolong illness and interfere with healing. A rich spiritual connection with Universal Intelligence sustains people even when they are alone. Confidence, centeredness, connectedness create an environment where healing occurs. Fearful and frayed people don’t heal, they hide and die.
A holistic approach includes God in the equation. The spirit in man matters more than matter matters. Beliefs and faith in ideas change the mind and inform the spirit and those things drive behavior and actions.
Invisible: Now You See Me, Now You Don’t
Friday, May 26th, 2006Forget Tolkien’s Ring of Power, scientists think they can make things invisible. For real!
I will add my Stealth Shield to my Thought Projections. Woo hoo! Dr. Melissa morphs into Dr. Magnificent. All I need is a Red, White and Blue Dominatrix get-up like Wonder Woman and I’m set.
Dr. Magnificent would also have a Taser (those seem really cool) to stun bad guys and travel via Bobcat (those mini back-hoes–sublime). Once I’ve corralled the bad guys, they’d get collars like those dogs do with invisible fences, except the fence frequency would be set on fry if they crossed the boundary. One or two would try–criminals aren’t that bright.
Technology…..good thing mad scientists don’t think up things like this.
Lay & Skilling Go Down, Stock Market Goes Up
Thursday, May 25th, 2006Well, it’s over. Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling are guilty. They will likely appeal. They will likely go to jail. Lay will lose what little white hair he still has on his head.
I know a lot of people who are thrilled with this result. While I think the boys are guilty and that Andrew Fastow is the worst of the bunch, I still wonder if these criminals belong with the thugs with whom they will likely share cells.
The unevenhandedness of justice makes me uncomfortable, to say the least. I’ve talked about it before here, when discussing what a life is worth.
Book: Chapter 1: God Heals
Thursday, May 25th, 2006In this day and age, many people will be stunned that my foray into writing about health and healing starts at the feet of the Almighty Creator. Well, it does and for good reason. With all the technological advances, with all the scientific evidence, with all the knowledge that is spread via various forms of communication, sometimes the big picture is lost. And the big picture is this: God heals, people help.
Your body was created to heal. There is an innate drive for wholeness, completeness, and wellness. And while doctors can remove interference to healing, can help accelerate the healing, can augment the healing–they cannot make the body heal.
What do I mean? While scientists can create artificial valves, joints, even blood, they cannot create valves, joints and blood. The best they can hope for in the future is cloning–reproducing what already exists. Doctors can manipulate the body’s biochemistry, but the effects are hardly as delicate and elegant as when the body manipulates biochemistry itself. Most important, while a doctor with drugs or a person with diet can destroy the immune system, or through diet the immune system can be given tools to be boosted, the immune system through innate power changes itself, regulates itself, and modulates itself.
This power to change, to find equilibrium again and to change again is so complex, so variable that it is impossible to comprehend in its entirety. The scripture saying that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” comes to mind. When faced with even creating something as simple as a one-celled organism, humans fall flat. It can’t be done.
Humility needs to be the beginning of any health-building equation. Doctors need to be viewed in their proper perspective. Neither creators nor healers, they are helpers. Hopefully.
Sometimes people so desperate for escape from their pain and dis-ease approach the Health Care profession as saviors. Some doctors enjoy this position. They set themselves up for a fall–all of them.
Doctor is better rendered in Latin where it means teacher. A doctor should inform you and help you make a decision. A doctor can then put together a plan, with you, to help approach your healing. A patient decides to what extent the plan is followed or ignored. A patient decides whether he or she wants to be advised by another Doctor.
Ultimately, though, any healing that occurs happens because God created a human to heal. Humans can interfere with the healing or help it. Hopefully the Doctor you choose as your teacher and advisor develops a plan where the body does what it was created to do: Heal.
Brain Waves Make Robot Work
Thursday, May 25th, 2006This is the future, and depending on who you are, your reaction is terrified or triumphant.
Me, I’m waiting for the brain powered floor scrubber, the brain powered diaper changer (there’s a great episode of Rolie Polie Olie with a robot diaper changer–wave of the future man), the brain powered naggy wife (I envision the ability to thought-project a message to my husband on his flat screen TV–which at some point will be the inside of glasses or something–”Are the taxes done? Paint the bathroom. The toilet is clogged!”)
I’d love to hear how you would mind-direct your robot. Any ideas?
Oooo! I just had one more! I’d sit in front of the computer, think “Amazon” and “gifts for mom” and based on their metrics, they’d pop up choices. Then I’d think “pay with Visa”, since they already know who I am via my ISP, they’d confirm my mental signature.
Before you know it, I’d be Stephen Hawking by choice.
Parent Trap: Part IV To Breed, or not to breed. That is the Question
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006Man, is this issue getting a lot of play. But I can see why. To breed, or not to breed, that is the question.
Glenn Reynolds piece is getting picked up everywhere–the Wall Street Journal, Ann Althouse with a myriad of comments, and the most interesting and accurate counter-opinion, in my opinion, The Washington Post’s Mark Samuelson. He says:
Children are now usually a conscious choice — whereas they were once considered economic necessities or religious obligations. Somehow American society better mixes child rearing and jobs than do other societies that provide greater child subsidies (government day care, family allowances). Indeed, generous welfare states may discourage having children. A study by economists at the University of Minnesota found that high Social Security payments and payroll taxes are associated with low fertility rates. People may feel they don’t need children to care for them in old age. Or high taxes and poor economies may deter young people from starting families.
No one knows. Among experts, there is much skepticism that Putin-like economic incentives alone will revive fertility rates. By not having children, people are voting against the future — their countries’ and perhaps their own. It is easy to imagine the sacrifices and disappointments of raising children. It is hard, try as people might, to imagine the intense joys and selfish pleasures. People ignore Adam Smith’s keen insight: “The chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved.”
Amen to that.
I have posted about this before here, here, and here.
To reiterate my most salient point, if there was one, I decided that the pill and the resulting choice that children became changed everything:
Birth control:
- Takes the consequences out of unprotected sex
- Removes men from the child equation
- Allows mom to delay–she gets her education, waits for the perfect mate
- A delay can mean less/no kids
- Reduces fertility in some forms
- Increases STDs reducing fertility
- Increases risky behavior–resulting in unplanned pregnancies (false sense of security)
- Unplanned pregnancies result in abortions
- Unplanned pregnancies result in single motherhood
- Supercedes church doctrine (families started to rationalize away church teachings–a father used to have to be willing to forgo sex a lot of the time to not create a child, so either big families or male misery or mistress–birth control solved his problem)
When these things happened and people had fewer kids by “choice” instead of by “nature” (remember the song “Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage?”), lots of societal changes followed.
Birth Control explains birth rate declines more than any other single change. Why would Mexico, with a vast, relatively uneducated population have such a steep decline in birthrates, too? Increased female education doesn’t explain it. Access to birth control does, though.
As an aside, I added up food/clothing/lessons misc. and came up with roughly 15,000 extra/year kids costs without private/home schooling. I think that some costs diminish. For example, my second son has incured almost zip except for some child care costs, but that has been made up because I am working (which I didn’t with the other two). It’s a net gain. He wears almost exclusively hand-me-downs. We bought nice baby stuff for the first kid and have not bought other stuff since–maybe an exersaucer because Little Toot is active. Toys? Check. Books? Check. Blankets? Check. Every baby thing ever needed? Check. Same with clothes all the way up to school age. I’ve bought an outfit here or there for him but mainly for fun. I think after one boy and one girl, the costs diminish because the initial investments have been made to a certain extent. For example, we bought an SUV with kid #2, we didn’t need to buy another one for kid #3.
Another thing: some of the niceties we have bought we would have bought anyway. No kids: after making more money we would have bought a bigger house anyway, because we’re greedy, materialistic Americans like everyone else. In fact, all that extra money would be going to investments or consumer goods. So it’s not just a matter of “expensive kids”, it’s a matter of “expensive habits”. The amount of money spent would be the same, it would just go different places–self-centered ones, rather than other-centered ones.
We must be more judicious in our activities–we don’t go to ten baseball games a year. We go to one or two. We don’t Jet Set all over all the time (although we do a fair bit of traveling), we pick our vacations and plan and anticipate. We rarely leave the kids. We don’t have extended families supporting us. We’re on our own. Childcare is expensive. Oh well! We better raise our kids right otherwise we will be living a claustrophobic, miserable experience of our own making.
Oh, and another thing! My personal experience is that I didn’t get over my tight-assed perfectionism until Kid #3. The learning curve licked, my enjoyment and personal satisfaction has increased significantly. I’ve read all the research about depression rising for women with more than two children. True for some, no doubt. But I’ve experienced the opposite. My anxiety has decreased as my experience has increased.
Yes children can burn through money like souped up Hummers guzzle gas. But that reality just puts off the pessimists among us. The optimists have kids. What I see around me is that big-by-choice families are optimistic, abundant, joy-filled, imperfect social groups of their own making. They believe in life, themselves, God, and the future.
Altenative Therapies: UK "Eminant Physicians" Call It Hocus Pocus
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006Alternative Medicine in the UK is being debated as a subset of Socialized Medicine. The debate there is more intense because the government pays for everything. Traditional medical doctors are irritated that their fine services are even debated with Alternative Medicine. Why, Alternative Medicine is bunk, pure and simple. The lack of research proves it. The research that exists is sub-par. The gold standard of research is double blind studies. The gold standard for drug companies: medicines that can be patented.
Alternative Medicine will probably never enjoy the same religious standing as the hallowed halls of Medicine (at least with Medical Doctors). The approach is radically different. The difficulty with most Alternative Medicines? Double-blind studies are difficult (ever tried a pretend needle? or sham adjustment?). The results can’t be patented. Since vitamins and minerals and herbs are food, they can’t be patented. No money to be made. No research conducted.
While plenty of Traditional Medicine Docs hate Alternative Medicine in the U.S., they have a rougher time of it with patients, because the patients disregard their opinions and pay cash to see their Chiropractor, Acupuncturist, Massage Therapist, Naturopath or even Energy Healer. That makes it even worse! These other practitioners get cash while MDs are slaves to the government health care system and insurance. And if you think slavery is too strong a word, you haven’t been in the double bind of wanting to help a patient, get paid nothing for it and having care managed by some pointy headed accountant or undereducated nurse somewhere.
What patients want is results. While traditional docs may loathe the touchy-feely, lack-of-stats treatments that many enjoy (much of it traditional medicine, btw), as long as people get results, they’ll pay.
The great thing about being an Alternative Doctor is that I know, my husband knows, that if we don’t produce results, people won’t come back. We can’t rely on guaranteed payments–insurance companies are very unkind to Chiropractors. The government is even worse. There is no insurance equality–that is, other practitioners get paid more for doing the exact same thing even though we have as much, and in some cases more education in the area.
Oh well… Life is tough all over. We help people. People get better and refer their friends. And people pay cash because they’ve tried all the stuff that should work and doesn’t. Medical professionals and even some Alternative Docs swoon over statistics and double-blind studies. Most people are interested in what works. Clinical results are valid, too, even if they are only anecdotal.
While there is no shortage of people benefitting from and/or enduring drugs and surgery (traditional medicine has job security), there is also no shortage of peopld benefitting from and/or enduring alternatives. Why must Medical professionals insist upon their way or the highway? It couldn’t possibly be market competition, could it? Nah…. It couldn’t be that.
