life

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In 1987 I started my psychiatry residency. Since then, they have changed the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual three times and it still does not seem to be keeping up with how fast the world is changing around me.

I one saw lots of “lethargic” depressions. Slow and sleepy “ain’t got no energy” depressions. “I feel like a human blob” kind of depressions.

Now most of them turn out to be Type II (“adult onset”) sugar diabetes or the thyroid just stopped working for some creative reason. Read more on Then and Now…

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There is paranoia about the coronavirus. Patients come into my office for other reasons and we have often ended up talking about it.

There are a variety of classifications of paranoid thoughts in the latest (fifth) edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of psychiatry. Even though I have to hang a moniker from it on my work in order to get paid by any insurance for my services, there have been plenty of research articles published by responsible people tho show that it is pretty much useless. Read more on The State Of The Coronavirus…

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All over the internet, many people have come up with diagrams know as “histomaps.” These are long longitudinal diagrams that show the relative strength and power of different countries of the globe.

I am not linking to any of them because the print is too small and everyone wants to sell hard copies.

But I do have a vivid memory of the one on the wall of my sixth grade classroom. Read more on Coronavirus Testing Urgently Needed…

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Governments and public health authorities respond to situations such as the Coronavirus pandemic. Our government and public health authorities seem to have fumbled a window of opportunity and Coronavirus cases are multiplying so that the United States leads the world.

Axios seems to be a pretty good and fairly impartial reporter of news and has slowly, over time, won my endorsement. Read more on Sunday — Personal Mobility…

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A fair amount of psychiatric illnesses have a genetic component.

Being formally “diagnosed” by a doctor does not make them official.

It is hard to tell when a woman says “my mother was probably depressed and anxious” what was going on. There may be a genetic component. Read more on Family Histories…

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There is one thing I heard in medical school in France that, if anyone ever heard in America, well, they have long since forgotten it.

He was a little country doctor who came in from the country. He was one of the kind, he told us, that was the “backbone” of French medicine.

He taught us to keep the financial records of our (general) practices in a bound school-notebook. To enter each receipt for service on a separate line, and to cross out entries with a single line made horizontally with a ruler, leaving the original (erroneous) entry legible, so that we remained always above reproach. Read more on Science And Reality…

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It is probably Oscar Wilde who said it.  “Youth is wasted on the young.”

He was clever and witty and literate and gay in the days when being gay could land you in prison. (In his case, it did.)

Youth comes along with a feeling of being invulnerable. This is a false feeling, for the average human life expectancy gives a person plenty enough years to feel in her or his body the consequences of the decisions made when he or she was young. Read more on You Don’t Want To See Your Brain On Drugs…

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Sometimes a good psychosis or delusion, is less harmful than medication — especially in a person who has previously been compromised by illness.

The first I saw was a veteran many years ago. Curiously enough, he was the kind of “old salt” you see plenty in San Diego street clinics but I saw him back at the Wichita V.A.

Then as now I enjoy the older veterans, The kind of folks who, although they were members of a nameless hoard of uniformed youth, have assimilated the serviceman’s identity into their own. Read more on When A Doctor Decides Not To Treat The Hallucinations…

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I do not know this person, Nina Teicholz.

I do know that she is a very-well informed journalist and does her scientific research. She has done something very wonderful. She is spreading the correct information about the ketogenic diet.

So have I, actually. I promote it in my private practice and I practice what I preach.

I have been on some variant of the low carbohydrate/ketogenic diet for several years.

I was not terribly obsessive about collecting my own clinical data while on the diet. I have lost about 200 lbs. and basically reversed my own Type II Diabetes since I have been on this diet.

I say “basically” and not “totally” because I have not “cured” it.

Just gotten myself down to normal blood sugar range. If I ate a bread-and-pasta type meal, it might result in anything from a mildly raised glucometer reading to diabetic coma.

I absolutely do not want to find out.

I think I picked up some of the common complications of diabetes during the dozen or so years since my hospitalization (and initial diagnosis) of type II diabetes (with blood sugars around 600) which caused the docs to tell my husband I could snuff it during my intensive care hospital stay (at age 46).

I am still here.

I walk with a cane mostly, because of nerve damage in my feet. With meganutrition and exercise it has improved somewhat.

This despite the women in my family who did not have diabetes and yet managed to walk poorly (with canes) with weak and tingly feet. It may be a familial peripheral neuropathy.

At least it does not keep me from (my own brand of) dancing.

My visual acuity is down a bit because of retinal damage. All I can do now is watch my diet and monitor my blood sugar.

I did not decide how to manage my life and infirmity by anything other than … reading science. I have been doing that for a very long time. For all of my ups and downs, I have used applying science to resolve all the seemingly impossible problems of my life.

Loneliness. (See my book on “How to locate and marry your lifetime love.”)

Obesity/Type II Diabetes. (See “This is Not a Diet Book.”)

The real problem, is the finding of scientific truth.

Although academics, professors at universities and such, are pressured individuals in a painful distillate of scientific achievement, I trust the process of academic achievement more than the processes of government or insurance.

The processes of the latter seem to be more profit-motivated than anything else.

Read more on Keto Saves The Day — And My Life…

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Just when I was reminiscing about the ideal of everything that was SUPPOSED to be included in a psychiatric assessment in the 1950’s (biological, psychological, and social issues) I have tripped over a new psychiatric disorder.

Somehow it does not much bother me that most constructions made for the various diagnostic and statistical manuals may or may not correspond to actual (psychiatric!) illnesses.

What does bother me is that people may have found new ways to suffer. Even if we cannot quite describe them yet we got suffering people crying and wailing in our offices.

I can’t possibly be the only one, (Although some of my patients say that I am the only one who takes the time to listen…) Read more on Video Game Addiction…

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