FWIW

Short DescriptionFWIW:

FWIW, the acronym FWIW has plenty of uses.

+For what it’s worth!
+For whoever is wondering!
+From what I’ve witnessed!
+Forgot where I was!

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/FWIW

Are you the average American?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYHSUVCwk1s&feature=youtu.be

Look for the Bare Necessities

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ogQ0uge06o

Is anyone you know growing older?

Here is a website advertised as "aging with attitude."  Lots of information here, in case you are interested.

http://seniorplanet.org/

Here is a blurb from their website (7/22/2016)
Online since 2006 and relaunched in fall 2012, SeniorPlanet.org celebrates aging by sharing information and resources that support aging with attitude, and helps people who were born long before the digital revolution to stay engaged and active by bringing a digital-technology focus to a range of topics – among them news, health, sex and dating, art and design, senior style, travel and entertainment.

Tips for coping with pain are not in short supply

Pain is part of life and can not be totally avoided and still have a meaningful life.  Still it is worthwhile to search for ideas that allow the most satisfying life even as pain intrudes.

http://seniorplanet.org/30-osteoarthritis-tips-you-can-trust/

Tip number 31 for pain relief

The AARP Bulletin offers tip number 31 for pain relief -- if you dare. You hear about this now because some people have defied the naysayers and acepted that marijuana actually works to reduce pain and to increase mobility and health. Reports on this are becoming more and more prevalent as barriers fall.

http://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-10-2010/older_americans_increasingly_using_medical_marijuana_to_combat_nausea_pain.2.html

A rant -- medical care communications and physicians

Communicating with your Health Care Provider (i.e. HCP) 
--
Some people want attention given to their medical needs all the time and some do not want or need medical care. For those with insurance, medical visits are required, testing insisted upon, and prescriptions expected. Value of this process to the patient sometimes seem to be given scant attention. An annual visit to the health care provider (HCP) is expected, whether wanted or not. Unfortunately, one of the driving forces in the insurance based system is the need to generate medical care for the HCP to receive their insurance payments. As we also know, those with inadequate insurance move off the books, and may receive little or no care.

Growing Older? Have fun anyway.

Image sampled from http://www.purpleclover.com/

The website identified here describes itself as the cool online destination for people over 50.  That description seems fitting.  You can check it out while you are having your coffee or whatever, and reading your online news and your email.

Cobbling together pain relief for patients

The FDA wordsmiths language to accompany medicines including pain relievers. This is a complicated and often lengthy deliberative process. For example warnings about some NSAIDS were introduced ten years ago and were recently updated. 
http://blog.aarp.org/2015/07/20/new-painkiller-warning-what-does-it-mean-for-you/

"Consumers" are allowed input as well. http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Dockets/.  

An illustration of the deliberative process for acetaminophen is found here. http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/02/briefing/3882b1_01_A-Overview%2009-19-20%20meeting.pdf

The next link is a consumer update from FDA titled 'A guide to Safe Use of Pain Medicine.' From a skeptics viewpoint, the only really safe use is to not use pain medicine, and just suck it up. While the result of abstaining may be safe, it can be a dismal quality of life. Pain is part of life and people cobble together solutions allowing them to somehow live life to the fullest despite limitations.
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm095673.htm

The next link FWIW is from the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine. The title is 'Treatment options for chronic pain.' The previous comments apply here as well. Again from the skeptic viewpoint, think "cobble". Please note also that cannabis is not included among the choices. A post on this pain relief alternative is found elsewhere on this blog. https://www.asra.com/page/46/treatment-options-for-chronic-pain

Capitalism

http://www.reddit.com/tb/170m5c

Physician Frustration and Cost

If someone is sick or injured, they visit their local doctor for assistance -- if financially possible. For those growing older (GO), the frequency of needing medical assistance increases. Typically, because the cost is less, medical information is often sought from other places, such as friends and online sources. Most of us realize that online advice can be good or bad. In fact, the online advice can actually be truly excellent or it can be horrid!  It practically goes without saying that local doctor advice may also range between good and bad extremes.

A Faustian Choice for Pain Relief: NSAIDs

The Food and Drug Administration is changing its warnings on drugs referred to as NSAIDS (e.g. Advil, Motrin, and Aleve).   NSAIDS have not changed, but the warnings have changed in the hope that patients and doctors will modify behavior and choose more pain rather than more NSAIDS.  

NSAIDs are a tradeoff. The trade is a seriously increased risk of heart attack or stroke in the future for pain relief and mobility now.  One trades less pain now for more likely early death or morbidity later.

Social evolution: The ritual animal : Nature News & Comment - Google Chrome

Praying, fighting, dancing, chanting — human rituals could illuminate the growth of community and the origins of civilization.

As an example of how rituals can cause values and preferences to become sacralized, Atran points to his studies showing that, in the United States, people who attend church more frequently are more likely to consider the right to bear arms a sacred value.

“Emotionally intense rituals have bound us together and pitted us against our enemies throughout the history of our species,” says Whitehouse.

Sources:
http://www.nature.com/news/social-evolution-the-ritual-animal-1.12256
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Filial_Piety_Rituals.jpg

Saving Planet Earth -- A Complaint?

Much has been said and written about saving the planet from destruction by its human inhabitants.  We are asked to have a small 'footprint' on the planet, to "reduce, reuse, recycle," and to take other actions to help save the planet. The call to change often implies that we should feel guilty for damage to the planet from our ever more expansive lifestyles.  We are informed that without sacrifices, we will experience irreversible planet damage, and life on planet Earth could be doomed, if it is not already be too late.

All this may be completely true, and in consequence we are expected to take on a spartan and ascetic existence. But wait a minute.  

Slums in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
photo by World Resources on Flickr

Saving Planet Earth -- What is wrong with you people?

When it comes to saying that the Earth is in peril, too many people are deniers and non-caring to be dismissed. The diversity of human attitudes presents a quandary.

People are polarized in their viewpoints.  The deniers, the uncaring, together with the guilt-ridden believers are an unholy combination.  We can ask whether there is any commonality among the groups so as to make progress towards an effective response to the changing condition of the Earth.

http://mindprod.com/image/environment/overpopulation.jpg

For one thing, most people feel compelled to protect themselves with some sort of contingency planning for unknown future events. What is to be the contingency plan for possible destruction of the Earth? Sometimes life insurance is seen as meeting contingency needs, which in this case might be thought of as a life insurance policy on the life of the planet.  However, if planet life fails, collection on the policy will be difficult.

Do we build survival shelters so we can continue to live through an apocalyptic era, surviving on a spent planet, with the few remaining people using diminished earth resources?  These are questions too big for one short discussion.  Some visionary answers can be found in movies of apocalypse and post-apocalypse life -- if you can accept them.

Saving Planet Earth -- You too can be guilt-free

[When it comes to saying that the Earth is in peril, too many people are deniers and non-caring to be dismissed. The diversity of human attitudes presents a quandary.]

Photo: Dennis Stefani, (c) Mrs. Me, Inc., 2008,
made available under a CC
BY-NC-ND license

The people who deny that the planet is experiencing risky human behaviors and those who do not care about the risk are people who do not feel guilty about population growth.  Good for them because their lack of guilt helps to keep them healthy. (Guilt is considered bad for health.) They respond to increasing population in a fashion analogous to saying "there is always more room at the inn."  Read this as the world instead of the inn, and more room is room for more people.  In other words, there is always room on the planet for more people. so the deniers and non-caring enjoy life without guilt even as they create more babies. They think there is always more room on Earth no matter how crowded it gets.