Thursday 13 July 2017

Takes the Biscuit

In "What cookies and meth have in common", Richard A Friedman, "professor of clinical psychiatry and the director of the psychopharmacology clinic at the Weill Cornell Medical College" is trying to flog "food addiction".

First though the origins of this term are worth perusing - there's evidence of professionals seeking to dump this on their usual patsies, hoi polloi.
About a decade ago, a group of American psychiatrists studying obesity decided to look into whether some people's anecdotal claims of food addiction could be proven.
Anecdotal eh?
The idea of food addiction, far from being something new, was first proposed by T.G. Randolph in a 1956 paper, “The descriptive features of food addiction; addictive eating and drinking.”
That paper is not available to view. It seems to include alcohol which is no longer seen as a food [as well as a drug] but probably was then. I had no idea this came from a professional source. Friedman again,
Neuroscientists have found that food and recreational drugs have a common target in the “reward circuit” of the brain,
Wow. There's no comparison and I'm sure he knows this.
All rewards — sex, food, money and drugs — cause a release of dopamine
Meeting your body's energy needs-eating- is not so much a reward as rewarding. The release of chemicals like dopamine express the usefulness of energy to the body, along with any other life-enhancing or worthwhile activity.

Drug abuse on the other hand beats the ever loving crap out of neural (and other) structures like reward circuitry in the course of bringing about its effects.
...the gentle impact of natural opioids, produced by our own bodies, resembles a summer breeze compared to the hurricane of physiological disruption caused by drugs designed to mimic their function.
It's like the difference between exhaling and vomiting your guts up, eyes teary and with bust blood vessels, nerves shredding vibrating with the effort.
The drug’s ability to release high levels of dopamine rapidly in reward areas of the brain produces the "rush" (euphoria) or "flash" that many people experience.
Evidence of low D2 receptors in the case of drug users or addicts is largely down to damage done during the process of drug taking. These drugs are classed as "neurotoxins";
Dr. Volkow discovered that people addicted to cocaine, heroin, alcohol and methamphetamines experience a significant reduction in their D2 receptor levels that persists long after drug use has stopped.
Versus the origins of lower D2 levels identified in people who are merely fat/ter,
In a 2010 study, Diana Martinez and colleagues at Columbia scanned the brains of a group of healthy controls and found that lower social status and a lower degree of perceived social support...were correlated with fewer dopamine receptors, called D2s, in the brain’s reward circuit.
A significant reduction versus fewer. This study's findings are consistent with others showing this tendency can cluster among families regardless of their respective sizes. I also have to go back to that low D2 and the functionality of such as the reward circuitry, "Dopamine is involved in.... (pleasure from natural behaviors such as eating)".

If your life is less rewarding than it might be is a lessening of these receptors sign of a circuitry that's not being overly used? Use it or lose it as they say.

Monday 10 July 2017

S-s-p-l-i-ttt

That was quick. The minute you appear to be personifying the ob puppet-you are a subject for 'compassion'. Go off script by finding common ground with someone who's also had cause to question and think about that script versus your experience and boom. 

Back to the beginning. Before weight was about dressing your body to control the actions of others. Which sounds suspiciously like the way you dress is the key to seeing off assault. I'm not blaming those stuck in this, little of our discourse comes from within us and we need to be more aware of that.

Those implanting hackneyed tropes as some kind of psychological self assertion have absolutely no respect for the humiliation invoked by finding out what you are saying with your heart isn't really yours. No one gives a damn about what that might be.

More and more people are going through pyschoanalysis of various kinds and are being taught whatever memes are set out for fat people-which I'm sure I need not tell you is being presented increasingly as a mental health signifier and issue.We are then expected to pick up on this and spread it to others.

No-one feels sorry for fat people-not that its desired or needed. If they did, they'd find the failure of dieting/weight management/lifestyle-whatever euphemism to be intolerable and demand proper means of altering weight were found pronto.

Instead, they collude with people happy to shaft them any time in order to keep people stuck in a trap they can usually only escape by damaging themselves, sometimes irreparably. The only time people respond to fat people approvingly or with confirmation is when they spit up what they want us to.
...the definition of obesity has been further complicated and addled by long-standing stigmatisation and prejudice within our society, fuelled by abuse of a plethora of pejorative terms for people living with obesity. The cause of such societal rancour is likely due to a number of factors. ....lack of a clear understanding of obesity within our society and its causes is surely an important contributor
In other words its the public's fault! They're inherently stupid and bigoted that's why there's fat hate. It's nothing to do with our constant propaganda about how worthless fat people are. And inspite of even the most trolly troll constantly talking about how scientific this is, linking to much garbage 'research' to support the non-arguments contained therein. Keep thinking you're going to get away with this when the sh1t really hits the fan.

I expected the professionals to weasel out of their central role in all this nastiness, but even I did not expect such shameless displays of evasion, blaming others for their own hate campaign. 'Obesity' is their coinage, so how can anyone "addle" what was introduced, defined and controled by the authors of that narrative?

I'm seeing more people are waking up to just how incompatible the 'obesity' discourse is with anything but itself, that was the whole point of it. If it wished to include or to help it wouldn't exist. Remember, we all wanted to be slim, we used what was given to us, it didn't work. Not our fault.

There's a real split here and it isn't between lay and professional, fat v slim, those who want to be slim versus those who don't care, it's between those who wish to deal with the reality of human function and those who wish to avoid this and continue imposing their interpretation of what they want that to be. 

Wednesday 5 July 2017

Hunger for a Change

Extracts from Roxane Gay's book Hunger featured in the guardian the other day. I admit I wasn't looking forward, I'm not her type of reader. "My body is a cage of my own making" turned out to be a different kettle of fish all together.

Beautifully written-so say those who know about these things. I'm kidding, even I could tell! At first I was wound up by that title-I doubt its anything of the sort, her own making that is. After some time I remembered the book is called Hunger. I began to sense a certain aggression-"I'm saying, I did it to myself, now you can stfu and listen for once."

Someone used to crowd control. 

I even began to wonder whether I've been at fault for not being more prepared to accommodate what's required. For me though, it wouldn't be true. I know weight isn't conscious choice. I know a body demanding more energy than is about function not emotion.

Is weight an unconscious choice choice though? I've always tried to leave that open, but the more people claim it is, the less convincing that feels, esp. given their explanations. Why is the big question, why go to all that trouble?

And where does this wellspring of what-ob-means come from? Is it genetically influenced?

It's a case of only when proper means of reversing body mass is available, will it be easier to perceive just how mechanical this all is.

In some sense, the reaction of the readers was most peculiar. Never have so many 'nice' middle class people been so relieved and joyous about such monstrous violation. As long as you're working within the current favoured ob trope for those who think they're nice-Nice Guys [I'm using that pansexually]-"Food addiction", that is.

Though more rigorously moderated-to minimise the, "I was raped and still managed to maintain a hell-thay wait" type comments, the extent of collapse of the usual impenetrable gabble, you know it, I'm not even going to mention it, was quite alarming. As if the biggest problem people have with fat metaphysics is the lack of (perceived) brokenness on offer- that complaint undermined only by self-pitying whines about "self-pity".

Like, this is how to be a woman/ finally-a fat woman.

Slimness signifies woman in some way, the absence of it seems to equate to the absence of womanhood, with the knowledge that it is there. Which lends a sense of impertinence. The criticisms of fat activists are tendentious and strained.

Fat women it seems are perceived as impinging on the space usually assigned to masculinity- without the qualifications for it. Therefore we come across something like aggressive, but low (very) low status males. Notable are the reaction of women, who were just as relieved/happy that finally fatz had joined them and they could get behind a fatty-joy of joys.

Nothing new, but I'm still surprised it makes this much difference especially to the sort of women informed by feminism. 

Though it is 2017 and not 18 or even 1717, it seems women cannot advocate through argument, or rely on reason they must emote, from a place of being breached. The more 'unsympathetic' the greater the impact needed to crack through the hard carapace of favoured delusion.

----------------------------

Four aspects spoke to me. How these types require you to talk about being, i.e. "I chose fat, using food" to do x. How people treat you as a fat person. The impotence imposed on any fat person who's ever tried to be slim/lose weight-the latter goal replaced the former when it became clear that this route had turned that into a pipe dream.

And the parts I enjoyed most, about playing your duty,
I am, perhaps, self-obsessed beyond measure. No matter where I am, I wonder about where I stand and how I look. I think, I am the fattest person in this apartment building. I am the fattest person in this class. I am the fattest person at this university. I am the fattest person in this theatre. I am the fattest person on this aeroplane. I am the fattest person in this airport. I am the fattest person in this city. I am the fattest person at this conference. I am the fattest person in this restaurant. I am the fattest person in this shopping mall. I am the fattest person on this panel. I am the fattest person in this casino.
The self absorption of neurosis, in this case imposed neurosis of the 'obese' characterisation, so true. It's this kind of crap that drove me to step out of dutiful portrayal of the 'obese' role, remembering you are doing baad.  I know the comment is more about Roxane's awareness of her size, but its what you're supposed to say to yourself, remember you are fat.

It's motivational.

Being multiply-raped at the age of 12 is so unthinkable that it was just as much so after I read it as before. Nothing can make that fit in my head, my imagination runs out. Yet I recognised parts;
...no one but those boys could hear me scream.....the surprising strength in their limbs. I remember that they laughed a lot. I remember that they had nothing but disdain for me.
At that moment I thought, how little has changed, I couldn't help myself. So much of being abused in general is like what people want the experience of fat to be. Not for their own personal satisfaction you understand, for the good of health. Of society.

If folks want a mythos about why people "choose" to be fat, why not that when you have a trauma or shock, your nervous system assumes the construction of that trauma, the head becomes dissonant. Being an ob thing is a good alignment.

Is that true? Not the point, its better than the ones made up by others.

As it is those assaults-and this is why the Internet feels strangely old-fashioned a lot of the time-seemed to reshape RG's nervous system, straining it. Around that goes gain, over time, especially if that doesn't retreat sufficiently. It depends on tendency as always.

Eating is taking in energy. It is the response to hunger and hunger increases when the systems that regulate and colate it are disturbed, and/or the body needs more energy. Few can sit and just eat and eat without hunger or energy misalignment. 

She also seems to be a metabolic outlier. At the end of an interview she said that she'd grow 12 or so inches at around age 16, which seems extraordinary to me. Though not all tall people are fat obviously, it shows real potential toward growth.

Her top weight was 577lbs and if you still have to ask why she had to hit that, the answer is of course, no reason whatever....except, if you can stop a person's body from hitting 577, then you can stop them from hitting 200 or less.

The first rule of medicine is to stabilise. We are still waiting for the industry/field to manage that rather conservative target after all these decades due to it not being found in how much sugar is in digestive buscuits. All that despite their sniffiness at our lack of anorexia talent. Not to mention the increasing ability of others to stop all sorts of cells from proliferating.
I wish I had known I could talk to my parents and get help, and turn to something other than food.
I must say I laughed out loud at the mention of "help" out there that would have stopped Roxane's body in its tracks. If proper investigation had lent itself to inducing a neural realignment, that would have taken something out of the trauma, make her more able to discuss it.

Why would a girl want to tell the parents she has so much compassion for what had happened to their young daughter? Children often feel for their parents. For the responsibilities they have, their emotional/mental states, and what it would mean to them if they knew. Why should a child so utterly betrayed have go through another unthinkable thing? Another loss?

Many people cope by not telling those they love. They're hanging on to the view of themselves before.

She has so many symptoms of the kind of souped up traumatised system and if mercifully that could be made to return to a rest state, the relief she'd have gotten and would still get would probably be appreciable.

That's supposed to motivate research. 

The fact that she loses a bit of weight every time she goes on a dietary regime is a possible sign that her body might respond rather readily to this in a way that would aid the reversal she desires.

We are told constantly we are sick, yet people are expressing surprise that Roxane is in pain, really? So they do know they're lying. Certainly 'obesity' wallahs know some are in pain, they just don't give a damn, they want to tell you you deserve it and there all, "We don't know nuttin' about nuttin'."

I have been wracking my brains for years as to why they've developed this hang 'em and flog 'em mentality when it comes to fat people. I don't claim to be perfect, but over and above umm ethics, the idea of other people's suffering doesn't interest. I don't get what makes this so compelling.

I doubt we'll find out any time soon, they don't want to be that in touch with their fee fees.

Getting people like Roxane's systems to return to a more normalised state would would be grand, but that would also interrupt the ob narrative of distress and sickness. So, many of those involved are just going to keep fucking around with nonsense like "food/eating addiction", whilst pretending to be doing science.

A reminder of what certain establishment scientists and medics wanted to do to gay men and AIDS, under the cover of science. One shudders to think what would have happened there if they'd got their way. 

The thing that's saved fat people is that being fat is not disease or inherently a pathology in and of itself, though if it was, the sort of body count of the various opiate crises ironically would have jerked people out of this ugly stupor.

That doesn't mean there isn't a job to be done. I've made it plain that scientists/researchers owe people a debt of honour in this affair. And, that would open up a portal to greater achievement in various fields of physical and mental health.

Slander and lies have been told to hurt people who simply haven't deserved it. Whatever anyone thinks or says, the phony baloney attempts to cast weight as addiction/eating disorder/mental health problem won't work. The buck for this culture of false disease must stop somewhere and it has to be here.

This is going to have to be solved properly, nothing less will do.

Presumably that's the underlying source of rage.

Monday 3 July 2017

Life Needs Life

Chanowk Yisrael grows produce in his urban landscape.
Yisrael.... tells me that for some of the folks (even into their 30s), this was the first time they’d experienced the joy of pulling a piece of fruit off the vine and biting into it right then and there. It’s a life-changing experience, he says, that he provides for people year-round in his backyard garden.  
Pick it, smell it, taste it. Even imagining that is more enticing than any healthist bulletin of eat this or pay the wages of disease and death. Whatever you opinion neither food industrialists, many of whom would put unrefined canine poop in your food if they could get away with it, nor fanatical fantasists poisoning our understanding of food, should be allowed to dictate your experience of food and eating.

People eat according to the best and most suitable choices for them available in their environment, whatever any projection insists. Folks do not exist in a vacuum.  Not according to the dictates of the price of everything and the value of nothing and/or the pleasure watching prudes.

Both are lacking sense and sensuality.