Daily Inspiration: 8/29/08

And love is not the easy thing The only baggage you can bring Is all that you can't leave behind

-U2
(New house move in today!)

Daily Inspiration: 8/28/08

Hope is what led a band of colonists to rise up against an empire; what led the greatest of generations to free a continent and heal a nation; what led young women and young men to sit at lunch counters and brave fire hoses and march through Selma and Montgomery for freedom's cause. Hope is what led me here today--with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be.
- Barack Obama
(In honor of his acceptance of the Democratic Presidential Nomination)

Daily Inspiration: 8/27/08

You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics. Charles Bukowski

Daily Inspiration: 8/26/08

Philosophers make imaginary laws for imaginary commonwealths, and their discourses are as the stars, which give little light because they are so high. -Sir Francis Bacon

Daily Inspiration: 8/25/08

A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. - Carl Sagan

Friday Chronic Roundup: August 22, 2008

PCOS/Insulin Resistance/Diabetes

• Daughters of women with PCOS are at an increased risk of having PCOS (duh)
• A test to spot insulin resistance?
• A new stody is able to stop aging in mice livers--impacts on insulin resistance.
• Just wanted to put it here again: fit and fat do mix.
• Very interesting: babies born to mothers with high folate levels and low vitamin B-12 levels are more insulin resistant
  

Interstitial Cystitis/IBS/Vulvodynia/Pelvic Floor Dysfunction

• Nothing new to report: painful bladder syndrome/IC difficult to treat and diagnose
  

Allergies/Asthma/Celiac Disease

• Another bad thing about global warming: more ragweed allergies.
• Allergy mechanisms discussed.
• Boys outgrow asthma symptoms more/faster than girls
• Do Puerto Ricans have a higher rate of asthma?
  

Mental Health

• Does severe depression + antidepressants = bad driving?
  

Daily Inspiration: 8/22/08

Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures, but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the absence of the impulse to ask questions. -Eric Hoffer

Environmental Hazards: Arsenic Causing Type II DIabetes

That's right folks, apparently trying to eat healthy and stay healthy isn't enough. It turns out environmental poisons, such as arsenic are causing health problems...big chronic health problems.

And guess where we're getting the arsenic from? Our drinking water. So being told to drink a lot of water may, in some weird way, have contributed to our ailments.

It's a shocking story and I hope you take the time to read it. Whether there is anything that can be done about it, is another story.

According to background information in the study, about 13 million people in the United States live in areas with a concentration of inorganic arsenic in the public water supply that exceeds recommended levels.

Well, guess that's a reason to get a bottle of water today.

Daily Inspiration: 8/21/08

Every now and then go away and have a little relaxation. To remain constantly at work will diminish your judgment. Go some distance away, because work will be in perspective and a lack of harmony is more readily seen. - Leonardo DiVinci

Daily Inspiration: 8/20/08

One of the tragic ironies of history is that such original and creative geniuses as Buddha and Jesus have been extolled as perfect patterns for all to emulate. In the very struggle to be like someone else rather than to be one's own true self, or to do one's own best in one's own environment, a child is in danger of losing the pearl that is really beyond price - the integrity of his (or her) own soul. - Sophia Lyons Fahs

Daily Inspiration: 8/19/08

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself. - Truman Capote

The Thin Line of Fat: Fat and Fit--Health At Every Size

This article was surprising to some. Saying fat people can be fit is somehow seen as an oxymoron as we've cast aside the fat as unhealthy, sickly, disgusting or otherwise in an attempt to cleanse everything of the different.

Not so fast.

It turns out fat people can be fit after all, supporting years of advocacy by those in the Fat Acceptance and Health At Every Size movements. It seems that one's heart health has less to do with their weight than other factors. Being a size 4 or a size 24 doesn't determine heart health.

I'd like to think that this will finally start to seep in to the science of chronic pain and chronic illness. I cannot tell you how many times I've had doctors use my weight and size as a cop-out to doing any actual doctoring. It was even more frustrating when they used it two summers ago, when I was sixty pounds lighter than I am currently and, ironically, when all my chronic problems came to a head.

All of us fatties have stories about how doctors have used fat to determine the cause of an ailment. Being fat doesn't cause an upper respiratory infection. My weight is not relevant to determine whether I have pink eye. And young girls should not be encouraged to eat less than 1400 calories a day. (All things I have personally encountered.)

So maybe, just maybe, we can start to gain a little ground...or at least keep the ground that hasn't been taken from us yet.

Daily Inspiration: 8/18/08

Sometimes it pays to stay in bed in Monday, rather than spending the rest of the week debuging Monday's code. - Dan Salomon

Body Chronic On Hiatus: 8/11/08-8/17/08

Call it summer vacation...We just bought a home and it's been crazy. So TBC is on break. Enjoy some past reads.

What to do When Chronic Conditions Haunt You

A controversial Spa

More evidence for the inflammation theory

Lessons from The Chronic Cat

Forced Allergy Experiment

Friday Chronic Roundup: 8/8/08

PCOS/Insulin Resistance/Diabetes

• Can insulin resistance lead to cancer?
• How good is metformin to induce ovulation?
• The role of certain receptors in insulin resistance and "obesity"
• A certain tissue may contribute to insulin resistance
• Byetta may reduce risk of death
  

Interstitial Cystitis/Vuvlodynia/Pelvic Floor Dysfunction/IBS

• The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Diseases and NIH publish on urologic and kidney disorders
• IBS or fructose malabsorbtion?
• IC and pelvic pain syndromes
• The use of TENS units to ease vaginal pain
  

Fibromyalgia/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

• The possible significance of CFS and Fibro
• Acupuncture to treat fibro?
• Fibromyalgia: unreal or misunderstood?
  

Allergies/Asthma

• Global warming linked to allergy problems?
• Wyndham Hotels to offer allergy-friendly rooms and meeting spaces
• What molecule holds the key to allergic reactions?
  

Mental Health

• Type I diabetes patients also are at risk for depression
• Exercise does not alleviate anxiety and depression (?????)
• Common signs and symptoms of depression
  

Daily Inspiration: 08/08/08

Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible. Mark Hopkins

Daily Inspiration: 08/07/08

Where is the justice of political power if it executes the murderer and jails the plunderer, and then itself marches upon neighboring lands, killing thousands and pillaging the very hills? - Kahlil Gibran

Daily Inspiration: 8/6/08

Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game. - Johann von Goethe

Daily Inspiration: 8/5/08

The biggest danger for a politician is to shake hands with a man who is physically stronger, has been drinking and is voting for the other guy. - William Proxmire

Daily Inspiration: 8/4/08

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.
-John Lennon

Daily Inspiration: 8/01/08

Love can sometimes be magic. But magic can sometimes...just be an illusion. - Javan