Dafuq!?

Sigh... Okay, I'd never intended to go on about celebrities in this blog, but I'd say that this does warrant a mention in my blog, as it's something I'd meant to address for quite awhile now.

Pasta-loving Lady Gaga puts on 25 pounds.

Dafuq!?

Okay, I'm not particularly a Lady Gaga fan... that is to say, I don't have any of her CD's, nor are there at present any songs of hers in my iTunes. But I do generally enjoy her music when I hear it. The lyrics are intelligently written and have a depth uncommon in much of today's pop music, and I especially like how out-spoken she is on the issues.

But what this post is about is going to be body image issues... and how society is fucking up generations of people, women and men.

But, I digress. Let's take a look at Lady Gaga. This picture is from 2011, before the weight gain:

...and here she is with some meat on her bones (pun intended):

Now, Lady Gaga is so kind as to not overdress so that we may fully admire analyze her body on this subject. Purely analytical. Yeah. Now, I'm not so sure about the meat-wrapping... but to me, she is still as hot as ever. But, it's in the news as some kind of world-changing, life-altering event. But she still is, and always will be Lady Gaga - the musician, the advocate, and the beauty.

The problem is that society's idea of beauty is such that people should be popped out of a mold. Society as a whole doesn't seem to appreciate beauty in uniqueness, but in sameness. And Lady Gaga, except for being skinny, never really fit that mold. She was never really the empty-headed pop star, staying close to the edge but never really crossing it, that society has come to appreciate. She jumped off that edge. Early on, a lot of half-wits were suggesting that she was in fact a he. Considering that she doesn't seem to own a single pair of pants, I'd say such an assertion is easily debunked.

Now, I'm only using her as an example, so let's step away from the Gaga.

You're still looking for dirty pictures of her on Google, aren't ya?

Well dammit, at least wipe the keyboard!

Anyway, we see it all the damned time. First, it was the models. Okay, we know that those are "beautiful people." Regardless, more and more people started measuring themselves by models' standards. Obviously, that didn't work out so well.  Then other people measuring them up to models' standards. Again, didn't work out so well.

The media started outright saying that if we didn't look like those models, we were grossly obese. We started seeing all kinds of articles with titles like "the Girth of a Nation." Articles from sources that people trust were now calling them fat, disgusting slobs.

Of course, like I often say, this is nothing new. We've been seeing the body image issues being passed down from generation to generation... just that now, it's getting especially vicious. We see concern-trolling mothers telling their daughters that they're just so worried that they seem to be putting on a couple pounds, or not losing those couple pounds. If you mention your body image issues to a doctor or even to a psychiatrist, rather than telling you to first learn to love the body you have, they give you exercise and diet advice. Understandable if the weight is a real health issue... heart disease, diabetes, etc. But I'm specifically talking about ideas of what beauty is. And the ones giving the exercise or diet advice don't even realize that they're contributing to the problem. The psychiatrists/counselors in particular, their area of expertise is supposed to be mental illness and emotional healing. By giving exercise and dieting advice to a patient with body image issues, they are only validating the issues.

I've seen cases where a girl is hospitalized for starving herself almost to death, and those closest to her are saying things like, "but I don't understand - she was doing so well!" Obviously not. Obviously there's a big problem here.

Then there's the idea that models are no different from anyone else; if they can do it, so can we. Perhaps true, but not without some major risks. Eating disorders are fairly routine in the modeling industry and quietly encouraged. I hear of models going on all-liquid diets. A friend of mine who used to be in modeling has said that watching a certain popular fashion show has made her regret every carb she ever ate. Last I knew, this friend was already a size 4 with a body most women would kill for, but she's still not happy.

I do have to give Lady Gaga props for this: Lady Gaga has no intention of dieting to combat weight gain, wants fans to love themselves for what they are.

Sounds good to me.

Vaccines and Autism

There is at present, as many know, a growing movement opposing vaccination, saying that it causes autism. The suspicions may seem well-founded, as many parents with autistic children first noticed symptoms after a round of vaccinations. Dig a little deeper, and you find that in most vaccines, a mercury derivative called thimerosal is used as a preservative. Thimerosal does have some well-established antibacterial and antifungal properties, but the mercury it's derived from also has its own very well-known neurotoxicity. Logic does suggest that autism could easily be linked to a neurotoxin such as mercury, especially in the more sensitive bodies of infants.

Sharing a bit of medical knowledge here, it is crucial that such preservatives be added to multi-dose vials of parenteral (injectable) medications. Such things must be kept sterile, as the body simply does not have built-in defenses against things being injected directly into the blood or muscle. From a financial standpoint, the multi-dose vials are preferred because as anyone who goes to Costco or Sam's Club knows, you save when you buy in bulk. In this case, the savings is most obvious on the packaging. This of course makes it the preference of the insurance companies who pay the healthcare fees, the healthcare providers who order them, and the patients who receive them and pay the co-pays or the entire cost.

And so, considering that it's been used since the 1930's with minimal if any problems, it just seemed to make sense to keep using thimerosal. Yet we have a seemingly growing number of kids with autism.

Autism itself is a poorly understood disease. For my own part, I suspect there might be a few different diseases under the blanket term of autism. No one seems to know what causes it, and it hits some harder than others. It's upsetting to parents, as their child may never be able to live independently and achieve all those dreams they have for them, and for the children who have it and have some function, it's also upsetting. They have a harder time fitting in, and tend to have sensory issues which may prevent them from enjoying many of the same things their peers enjoy.

The thing is though that the link between vaccines and autism has never been established, and is close to being debunked, thanks in large part to a Danish Study. There are many groups who spend their time and efforts looking for flaws in the study, but it looks fairly straightforward to me. I actually rather wish that autism could be attributed to thimerosal, as then we would know and could solve the problem in short order. But so far, the evidence is stacking up against this mercury derivative in childhood vaccinations being the culprit. That being the case, one could easily make the argument that efforts and funding could be better put to use in finding the real culprit than in beating this dead horse.

It is easy to understand however the concern about any form of mercury in any amount being injected into your infant. And you are not alone in this concern. As it turns out, thimerosal is being phased out of childhood vaccines and is now absent from most, if not all, childhood vaccines. I consider this to be good news. While there is no scientific evidence thus far of the chemical causing problems in the small amounts that it's used, that doesn't mean we won't find the evidence later. If you question this however, by all means talk to your healthcare provider to verify that the vaccine your child is being given doesn't contain thimerosal.

In either case, I would say that getting the vaccinations outweighs the possible risks, unless the possible risks are a known allergy or such like. Thimerosal aside, the way a vaccine works is fairly natural. You've heard the phrase that you can't catch the same cold twice? Well, that's essentially what a vaccine does... except that you can skip that rather inconvenient "getting sick" part.

The first vaccine was created by an English physician by the name of Edward Jenner. The vaccine was against smallpox. He had noticed that milkmaids seemed somehow immune to the smallpox epidemics, and this got him thinking. If you remember your nursery rhymes and the like, I'm sure you remember some that talk glowingly of the beautiful complexions of milkmaids. Consider that this was in contrast to the faces of those who had suffered smallpox, which did leave some ugly scars on the faces of its survivors. Further, it was theorized that the protection of smallpox came from the milkmaids' having to suffer cowpox, a relatively mild disease whose victims typically fully recover. It wasn't hard for Jenner to put two and two together.

In an experiment that would have had him arrested in modern society, and perhaps justifiably so, he infected an eight year old boy with cowpox from a milkmaid's fresh, juicy lesions. The boy predictably came down with cowpox, then recovered. A couple months later, he then inoculated the boy with smallpox from a fresh and juicy smallpox lesion. The boy didn't get sick. Turned out the two were similar enough that the body's safeguards against a re-infection of cowpox also protected against smallpox.

And that's more or less the way vaccine works, the very name "vaccine" being a tribute to Jenner's work (vac- referring to a cow in Latin). Smallpox is something that's wiped out entire civilizations, and had an overall fatality rate of 30%. Notice I use the past tense. This is because, thanks to vaccinations, it has been eradicated from the world's population. It still exists, I'm certain, in various freezers around the world "just in case," and with this, there is the potential for it to be used in bioterrorism (think nuclear is scary?). But the point is that you didn't have it, and chances are, no one you know has had it. It's not killing people now. The last case in the US was in 1949, the last in the world having been in the late 1970's.

You can also thank vaccination programs for the fact that Polio (link goes to informative photo gallery) is now more often referred to in the past tense. While not eradicated, it hasn't been seen in the US for decades, and is well on its way to being eradicated.

While it is easy to forget these plagues in today's world, there was a time not that long ago where they were common. Kids with withered limbs from Polio (remember Franklin Roosevelt?), mass graves from the 1918 influenza pandemic... the list goes on. It is good to have legitimate concerns for your children, but it's also important to protect them and remember that ultimately, scientists are on our side.

Sorry about the quality of the video, it's the only one I could find of this clip on YouTube. Before the start of the video, the mother explained to House that she refused on principle to vaccinate her child, also talking about how she only gives the kid her all-natural breast milk as opposed to formula.

Nanny State Lunchbox Inspections

When I heard about this originally a couple days ago, I was skeptical. I was figuring it seemed kind of far-fetched to be true. But the story persisted through a few different sources, so it caught my attention.

State officials inspecting lunchboxes for nutrition.

The above story takes place in North Carolina, specifically. Were it extreme circumstances, say, the kid showing signs of malnutrition, I'd support it. But policing kids' lunchboxes? Come on! Oh, and the unhealthy lunch being provided provided to this poor, malnourished kid by her negligent and uncaring parent/guardian: a turkey and cheese sandwich (meat, dairy, grains), a banana (fruit/vegetables), potato chips (kinda vegetables), and apple juice (more fruit/veggies!). As is the case with most kids, this one is kind of picky too, so her negligent and uncaring parent/guardian packs the food according to what she eats.

So, enter the state inspector, who says that her lunch does not meet nutritional guidelines (yes, that's guidelines, not law... yet). It seems unclear whether the lunch was actually taken away or not, as you can imagine the headline alone tends to ignite all sorts of anger and speculation. At any rate, it is clear however that the four year old girl was told her lunch wasn't nutritious enough. I read somewhere that the girl brought home the lunch, which means that it wasn't thrown away... but it may have been taken away during the lunch period, or the little girl may have been given the impression that she wasn't allowed to eat it. Keep in mind, this is a four year old we're talking about, and kids generally don't make these fine distinctions.

So, what do these heroic lunch box police do? They give her a cafeteria lunch and bill those darn dirty negligent and uncaring parents/guardians $1.25. What did this healthy and nutritious cafeteria lunch consist of? Apparently, the main part of it was chicken nuggets, of which the girl ate three. I dunno... I don't claim to be a doctor or nutritionist, but that turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, banana, and apple juice are sounding pretty good right now... especially in comparison to a few chicken nuggets.

Generally, if a parent cares enough to pack a lunch, they care enough to make it something relatively nutritious. And speaking as someone who vividly remembers what it's like to be a kid, I'll say that chances are, a packed lunch from home will taste much, much better than one the school would serve up, thus making it more likely the kid might actually... are you ready for this? You may want to sit down. Okay, continuing... making it more likely the kid might actually eat it.

Not too many kids praise the taste of school lunches, if you haven't noticed. This is for good reason - they suck. The quality is poor (for all you fast food haters, McDonald's has more strenuous quality and food safety standards). By the time of high school, I was ignoring school lunches pretty much entirely because of how bad they tasted, instead opting to get a bag of chips and a soda on most days.

Don't misunderstand - I'm not bashing the school lunch program as a whole, but I am discussing the relative merits of school lunch versus homemade lunch, and the stupidity of policing lunch boxes to replace their contents with a "more nutritious" school lunch. Yes, that has to stop... else, the nanny state mentality will grow, guidelines will become laws, and freedoms and liberties will be further eroded.