Category: education

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Healthier groups may also be more peaceful groups

Research into group and individual behavior suggests that the rate of infectious disease in a group is significantly associated with the rate of violent and property crime and with the rate of violent crime against strangers. [1]

“Disease threat activates responses that function to guard against the threat, such as out-group avoidance and in-group preference. When these responses are widespread among many individuals—for example, in places where infection risk is chronically elevated—they foster xenophobia [“fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners,” 2] and produce a fragmented social structure that increases the potential for out-group aggression (Letendre et al., 2010). We found that infection rates explained a substantial proportion of the variance in violent and property crimes, and in most cases was a stronger predictor than established crime covariates. Interestingly, the homicide results showed that the aggression was directed primarily at out-group members, with pathogens predicting stranger homicides more strongly than any of the control variables.”

“Only diseases with over 20,000 new cases in at least one of the five years examined (1995–1999) were used. This criterion left us with eight diseases: AIDS, Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, Hepatitis A, salmonellosis, shigellosis, and tuberculosis. These eight diseases accounted for over 90% of all the infection counts reported in this system over these years; the incidence of the other diseases (e.g., cholera, malaria) tended to be very low.”

– I. Shrira, A. Wisman, G. D. Webster, [1, “Guns, Germs, and Stealing: Exploring the Link between Infectious Disease and Crime,” 2013]

Historically a condition known as amok was first described in 1893 where an individual suddenly acted violently and then would forget the manic episode. Descriptions of the disorder were recorded by the British medical superintendent of the Government Asylum in Singapore. Increases in cases of amok were more associated with “times of social tension or impending disaster.” The use of the term has become more commonly associated in modern times with the phrase “running amok” which is not a medical term but more of a slang phrase.  [Infectious Madness, by Harriet A. Washington, page 163, 3] Gun violence in modern times has involved racist xenophobia in many cases and in a few cases may have involved a shooter who claimed to have amnesia of the event afterwards. [4, 5]

To have healthier groups we may need less stress overall and more jobs and stability in our local and global economies. Working together to help achieve healthier groups may require us first to recognize our subtle tendencies to distrust others during times of increased rates of illness.

/Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. Information is not a substitute for individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

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Other fringe topics revealed the connection between our health and that of the environment

Recently I wrote about a quote regarding investigative reporting and mainstream media. According to the quote investigative reporting is the job of fringe investigators, rather than a job for mainstream media. [Fringe Reports]

Vitamin D and hormone D metabolism has been an my self assigned Don Quixote project but I have also written about other health topics in the past that had seemed to be suppressed or ignored by the mainstream media at the time.

Ignoring or suppressing worrisome events in the news may seem more comfortable in the short term but not addressing unspoken anxieties can lead to greater fear and worse problems over time. Not addressing problems also wastes time that could have been used to develop and implement improved strategies. Worrying by itself is not helpful but worrying that leads to improved procedures can save time, money and health over the long run.

I’m going to summarize some other fringe topics from my archives as a review of what we may not have heard much about over the last few years.

Fracking – I learned about the hydraulic fracturing technique used in the petroleum industry in a round-about way. Over the years I had noticed that the pets and pet farm animals of a family I knew living in the north east area of Ohio that seemed to have roughly a 25% cancer rate – whenever I talked to the family it seemed like at least one of the family’s animals had cancer. It was a hobby farm so there weren’t chemicals being sprayed on their own land but they did live within a farming community. What I discovered when I started searching for information about cancer prevalence in the area was that children in the area also had been having an increased rate of cancer. [1]

However the types of cancers varied among the children and the types of contaminants found in the ground water supplies that were tested varied from area to area – no specific culprit or toxin could be named or held accountable – except that coincidentally hydraulic fracturing techniques had been used in the area since approximately 1965. [2, includes an interactive map of Ohio marked with locations where fracking incidents have occurred. Governor Kasich’s policies in Ohio have allowed for expansion of the fracking industry in the state and have even allowed waste water from fracking operations taking place in other states to be stored, treated and dumped into Ohio rivers  – per the information on this link by Earthjustice, a legal defense oriented environmental nonprofit group.]

The increased rate of cancer found in children living in the northern area of Ohio was never officially blamed on fracking or on any other industry.

The technique that became known as ‘fracking’ pumps extremely large amounts of water deep underground under high pressure. The water has a mixture of unidentified and corporate protected chemical solvents added before being injected underground in order to help dissolve tiny deposits of oil from the shale rock. The water picks up more contaminants while it is deep underground and the waste water that returns to the surface has to be collected and treated as a toxin. I learned that unfortunately for our clean water supplies, during Dick Cheney’s administration businesses using hydraulic fracturing techniques were exempted from being required to follow Clean Water Act standards.

The waste water that returns to the surface may be stored in open ponds that can flood during rainy seasons and, even worse, in some places the waste water has been sprayed on dirt roads to reduce dust or even used to irrigate farm crops. [5] And wastewater has been allowed to be injected directly into underground clean water aquifers in the state of California even though there is a severe multi year long drought occurring in the state. [6]

Articles on fracking from my archives – 1 & 2 are brief with a single link, 3 is a long series of old posts copied onto one page and the formatting is wrong, sorry, many links though: [1, 2, 3]

Citizens of Oklahoma and Texas and elsewhere have also been experiencing earthquakes almost daily in some places. The earthquakes may be due to the quantity of fluid that is being pumped deep underground either during the initial fracking process, or afterwards, as a way to get rid of the contaminated waste water. The citizens of Oklahoma are expected to just get used to rattling around on a regular basis as the fracking process was protected at the state level there even though the increase in earthquakes has been associated with the hydraulic fracturing techniques. [4]

I will continue this summary of other fringe topics in a series of posts.

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

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Babies have dignity too; Magical Child Matures, a book review

Babies should have the right to human dignity too. The recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize gay marriage was based on a human right to dignity. The decision has brought up the question of whether polyamory, marriage between more than two people, should be the next human rights question to discuss. [2] Before broaching that topic I would suggest that the infant’s and birth mother’s right to a good delivery and breast feeding experience need to be clarified legally. The legalization of same sex marriage may lead to an increase in the number of infants born to surrogate mothers or other contracted parenting arrangements which may not allow for a normal amount of time for breast feeding. Ideally an infant would nurse for at least 3 to 9 months and in nature primate species tend to nurse their infants for two to three years. Research into artificial womb incubators also exists which might greatly impact the infant’s right to a dignified (ie close to natural) prenatal and birth experience.

I found the book Magical Child (1977) by Joseph Chilton Pearce to be very helpful during my first pregnancy. It is the precursor to the book Magical Child Matures, (E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1985, New York), which I had mentioned in a previous post and again in my last post where I mentioned that it is now selling used for one penny. I posed the question of whether it is worth a penny and answered that, yes, to me it is worth it specifically because of the third chapter which is titled “Bonding and Attachment.”

The author has written twelve books in all and has focused on child development and the importance of the child-parent bond and breast feeding relationship and also on topics of spirituality and the heart-mind connection or  the “compassionate mind.” [1]

In the third chapter of the book Magical Child Matures labor is described from the infant’s perspective. The stress of delivery causes an increase in an infant’s stress chemicals and establishing a breast feeding relationship as soon as possible after delivery helps bring the levels back down to normal levels.

The chapter titled Bonding and Attachment (1985, page 24-40) first describes an ideal delivery experience for the infant and then describes how disturbing delivery could be in an over-crowded and rushed hospital in the 1970s. The baby and mothers from the over-crowded setting are described as black people receiving care at an inner-city hospital and my impression is that he included the information because he’s not racist, because he felt that #Blacklivesmatter and that all mothers and infants deserve a low stress delivery with a positive bonding experience. Bringing up traumatic history reminds us to investigate routine practices and evaluate them for fairness, effectiveness, and safety risks. He includes in the chapter that the old practice of holding a baby upside down and smacking it on the bottom to stimulate their first breath may also have caused some infants to have internal bleeding in the upper spinal column and die prematurely from silent crib death (found in 80% of autopsies of infants who had died of silent crib death in one study) (Magical Child Matures, 1985, page 35).

He also described a practice that may have been commonly used to save time after delivery in some busy hospitals. The medical professional would just yank the laboring mother’s placenta out by the umbilical cord instead of allowing her body to progress through the final stage of labor at her own pace.

Never discussing uncomfortable history may be more comfortable for us but it doesn’t promote learning from our mistakes or lead to our making changes in routine practices. Holding a baby upside down and smacking it always seemed like a horrible practice to me so finding information that suggests it might indeed have caused traumatic injury was disturbing and revealing. We do many things each day because that is just the way things have always been done but if we never stop to evaluate procedures for their effectiveness or safety then we may be causing harm on a routine basis without realizing it.

Having a baby, for me, was painful and amazing and euphoric and joyful and beautiful, and kind of sweaty and gross, and just as wonderful as the author describes for the well bonded, good delivery experience.

So is the book Magical Child Matures worth a penny (plus shipping and handling)? Yes I think so. The author discusses development of consciousness during the different stages of the lifespan along with his interpretation of how thinking might occur in a triune brain but that speculative discussion of consciousness could be skimmed and the reader may find the developmental information helpful on its own. The author also describes some personal experiences with psychic phenomenon and meditative practices. So that might be a reason for some potential readers to avoid the book or it might be a reason to seek out the book because they are topics that are infrequently discussed.

I’m expecting my first grandchild this month so I made a copy of the chapter on bonding and attachment for the expectant parents just in case they also would find it helpful. However the discussion of bonding and attachment may also be helpful for any age person to read because early childhood experiences might impact our behavior throughout life – a well bonded infant may grow up to be a more trusting adult while a stressed out infant may have more delayed development during early infancy and grow up to be more focused on collecting things and being dominating within relationships rather than being trusting.

The newborn’s first lesson in life is trust. The fetus had warmth and a constant swishing heartbeat and soothing amniotic fluid and suddenly they are forced out into a cold bright noisy world. Newborns certainly don’t deserve to be held upside down and smacked as their first experience in life whatever their skin color may be. And mothers deserve time to labor at their own pace, rather than have the process rushed for the convenience of the medical professional. Hormonal changes occur for the infant and mother during different phases of labor and delivery, rushing the process may interfere with the infant’s health and development and with the development of the mother’s mammary glands and ability to make an adequate supply of breast milk.

Growing a baby isn’t rocket science – it’s much more complicated than that – but worth it. Thanks for sharing your experience in Magical Child Matures, Joseph Chilton Pearce.

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a lactation educator and Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

 

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Consciousness discussed without zombies, aliens, or frogs; a link

Consciousness may be more non-verbal than we realize. Our verbal mind may have significant input from our nonverbal mind in order to save us time in life threatening situations. A team led by Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University published a paper in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences about their idea regarding consciousness called the “Passive Frame Theory.” Consciousness is suggested to be a frame for directing and constraining the action of the skeletal muscles for productive output but the direction may be more passive than previously theorized.

Time.com: [Why You’re Pretty Much Unconscious All the Time, June 26, 2015]

The zombies, aliens and frogs were in my last post that was about consciousness and nonverbal behavior patterns. Passive Frame Theory sounds much more scientific but I did find the list of nonverbal behavior patterns very helpful for understanding group and individual behavior. The second book in the list from that post used the term “module” to describe behavior patterns – driving the car module, playing tennis module, sweeping the floor module – we don’t think verbally about how we do much of our daily activities and yet somehow we function.

2. Thomas R. Blakeslee, Beyond the Conscious Mind: Unlocking the Secrets of the Self, (iUniverse, Inc. An Authors Guild BackinPrint.com Edition, 1996, 2004, Lincoln, NE), This book is written for the average reader and is not very long. Personally though, I found it so helpful that I followed a reference in it to find the complete list of nonverbal behavior patterns by Paul MacLean in the book: 1. Editor: Harold Harris, Astride the Two Cultures, Arthur Koestler at 70, (Random House,1976, New York) and in the text: 4. Paul D. MacLean,  The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions, (Plenum Press, 1990, New York) National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland.

I happened on the book by David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, (Pantheon Books, 2011, New York), by chance but was glad to find the explanation about Paul MacLean’s work in the more recent book because I had been disappointed not to find more about his work online, so it was an explanation at least.

3. Joseph Chilton Pearce, Magical Child Matures, (E. P. Dutton, Inc., 1985, New York) – This one is an odd book that sells for a penny used on Amazon – Is it worth a penny? to me the chapter on Bonding and Attachment is worth the price of three sets of copies at least but that is a longer discussion for another post.

 

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Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.