Pain, Pain, Go Away!

The latest issue of The Wilson Quarterly has a the elements of a plan for losing weight: monkey meat and reading. Journalist Scott Wallace, on an assignment with National Geographic, trekked through the Amazon eating "nothing but monkey meat for days on end, losing 30 pounds on the journey."(1) That's not all--the magazine adds that reading is associated with lower BMI (body mass index). "In particular, readers are less likely to be overweight than TV watchers. Indeed, regular book-reading seems to predict lower BMI about as reliably as regular exercise."(2) (The article cites a forthcoming paper by Fred C. Pampel  in Sociology of Health and Illness .) "Pampel found that education, employment, and other components of socioeconomic status correlate with body mass index (BMI)." I'm going with reading because it's easier than raising your socioeconomic status. You'll have to source the monkey meat yourself, though. I can't solve all y

If you've ever been pressured to act a part, you know how exhausting it is. If you're in a world where you don't feel at home, you might think something is wrong with you. This is the theme of a new book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain.(1) It's estimated that one-third to one-half of people are introverts, yet American culture reveres extroverts and sets up schools, homes and workplaces for interaction. Think open concept offices and schools and big, airy houses. Give me a quiet classroom and a Craftsman house with private nooks and crannies if I have to live with someone. (I don't, and don't want to.) I spent four years in a noisy open concept grade school, where I quickly developed headaches and insomnia. My mother lost part of her hearing during her rehabilitation in the din of a noisy nursing home. My life now has a Do Not Disturb sign: no Facebook page, cell phone, listed phone number, iPod, T

Donating blood yesterday, going to bed late last night, a light breakfast, light lunch, and coming home lightheaded tonight: this is how I account for thinking that a dinner I knew added up to a lot of carbs (46) was a good idea. My resistance was lowered and not replenished. At least I didn't go far over my  daily 50-carb limit, and the meal was real food full of nutrients. But I know that big meals make me feel like a slug. There's been research over the past few years about willpower being limited. Some clinical studies have looked at glucose's relationship to willpower, others have looked at performance on sequential tasks. Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang write , In one pioneering study, some people were asked to eat radishes while others received freshly baked chocolate chip cookies before trying to solve an impossible puzzle. The radish-eaters abandoned the puzzle in eight minutes on average, working less than half as long as people who got cookies or those who were

A friend and I talked today about her grandson, whom I'll call James. At age ten, James is a binge eater and nearly 40 pounds overweight. "His parents need to get all the junk food out of the house," I said. My friend replied that James's father doesn't want to punish his other kids. Let's consider this for a moment: getting rid of the soda, chips, pizza, cup cakes, ice cream, and any other sugary, starchy junk that provides no nutrients, which is harming one of the kids, is a punishment. What if two parents had living under their roof a fifteen-year-old alcoholic and a twenty-one-year-old who enjoyed a beer now and then. Getting rid of the beer, wine, liquor, and any other other alcohol, which provides no nutrients, which is harming one of the kids, would be common sense. What if a family had a child who needed a lot of medical care, and they all had to scale back their lifestyle to pay for it--would that be a punishment, or what families are supposed

Have you ever had nightmares about being in a confined space, or a weight pressing down on you? This is how I feel about clutter. It's hard for me to sleep in a room full of clutter, and I've had nightmares about the day I will have to clean out the rooms full of papers, nick-nacks, clothes, gadgets, appliances and junk from my parents' house. Sometimes I wonder if firemen or paramedics would be able to help my parents in an emergency amidst the clutter. I don't buy the argument that people who never get rid of anything are thrifty. When you can't find something, you run out and get a new one. Or spend an hour looking for it. Over the holidays, I've been de-cluttering my house. Boxes of stuff went to Goodwill, bags of papers went to the shredder, cupboards were organized, and junk got tossed. Getting rid of things I didn't need or enjoy was key, otherwise, I'd have wasted my time shuffling things from pile to pile and room to room an

After [Dr. Connie Wilbur's] presentation a Q & A followed, and someone asked how [recovered multiple personality disorder patient] Sybil was doing. Connie's answer was brief, almost throwaway. Sybil had lived for a long time without much energy, she said, because in addition to everything else that was wrong with her, she had suffered for years from a disease called pernicious anemia. Another audience member followed with an unrelated question, and that was the end of pernicious anemia and Sybil. No one stopped to think about the bombshell Connie had just revealed. -from the book  Sybil Exposed(1) My, how times have changed. In days of old, people who acted strangely enough were said to be possessed and put through bizarre and dangerous rituals to cure them. Wait, we're still living in that era. Change "possessed" to "multiple personality disorder" (or "dissociative identity disorder" as it's called now) and you have the story of