Does it cause you to laugh and frantically try to move away from the tickling? My understanding is that that is what most people don't experience when they try to tickle themselves.
People who spend all their time indoors (in front of screens) will seek to justify their lifestyles, just as those who spend their time outdoors will seek to justify theirs. There is nothing rational about pre-supposing that your personal habits represent some sort of optimium: it is only through careful study that benefits and costs may be determined.
Because Jews are the primary enemy in Nazi ideology, and the idea of communism being a Jewish plot was an existing antisemitic belief well before Hitler was a known entity in Germany's political scene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Bolshevism
I got on 10 mg escitalopram (Lexapro) in 2014 for social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and depression. I just tapered off these last few months.
Pros:
* Legitimate reductions to anxiety - no longer crippling most of the time.
* Made it harder to fall into depressive episodes. So, it did its job, I guess.
* Did not make me a blunted zombie or sterilize my brain.
Cons:
* Increased sleepiness: unable to wake up at "normal" hours without significant effort, frequent urge to take naps during the day. I slept a lot over the past 8 years, more than I would have liked to. My sleep schedule normalized as soon as I quit.
* Extremely hard to quit, even with a taper. You have to take it really, really, really slow. I developed severe appetite loss and nausea as a withdrawal symptom and ended up losing 13-14 lbs and became underweight. I've only just now got it under control.
If you don't mind me asking, why did you decide to discontinue use? Do you feel like you're done needing it? Are you checking back in with your "natural" self to compare against the past 8 years? I assume the effects of the drug don't last after discontinuing use so your anxieties will theoretically return?
I was tired (literally) of the side effects, and I simply felt that I didn't need it anymore. I'm a different person than I was when I started, and I know how to manage my anxiety and depression a lot better now.
> I assume the effects of the drug don't last after discontinuing use so your anxieties will theoretically return?
Yeah, in theory, my anxiety could get much worse sometime in the next few months. I've dealt with that before when I discontinued a different SSRI. If it happens though, I'll be much more prepared this time.
> We're looking for reasons why we feel sick all the time but the reality is beyond basic things like being too fat and too sedentary, we are healthier than ever, and many many people had wretched miserable lives of chronic pain before modernity. The expectation of health is a modern conceit and this research is just a reflection of the constant anxiety that there is something wrong with us all - a cultural hypochondria.
Aside from things like infectious diseases, we're not healthier than ever. We have better medicine than ever, but disease states that were once rarities have become commonplace in our modern world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestyle_disease
By the way, these are diseases which cannot all be blamed on "being too fat and too sedentary", as even skinny people can develop type 2 diabetes. Unheard of centuries ago.
This is true, but lifestyle diseases are somewhat easier to avoid than infectious diseases (plus all the various other things that could easily kill you in your first decade or so in bygone eras). I'd almost say lifestyle diseases seem to be, to a large degree, a choice - maybe not directly, but as a society we accept that if we want to enjoy all the privileges of modern technology and food availability etc., then we pay for it with heart disease or diabetes or certain cancers etc.
> I'd almost say lifestyle diseases seem to be, to a large degree, a choice - maybe not directly, but as a society we accept that if we want to enjoy all the privileges of modern technology and food availability etc., then we pay for it with heart disease or diabetes or certain cancers etc.
It's a choice for many, but I think it's not a fully informed one. If I'd known in my teens and early twenties what I know now, there is a zero percent chance I would have eaten and lived the way that I did. These things don't seem to hit people until the point that their personal health is affected, and sometimes not even then.
Seems to me the same way we treat environmental damage, though in that case most of the suffering will fall on our kids and grandkids. But even the choices young adults are making today aren't really compatible with having a decent planet to live on in 60 years or so, barring some technological miracles.
> Genetic predisposition to something != inevitability.
That depends on the thing. Whether you grow five or six fingers on your hands is determined by your genes without much reference to anything else. Whether you reach a "natural" height or develop stunted by malnutrition is also determined by your genes. It is more responsive to environmental conditions than the number of fingers on your hand is - but that responsiveness is determined by your genes.
> the inflammation from the Omega 6 is what probably caused his ankylosing spondylitis and triple bypass.
How confident are you that this is the case? This is now the second story I've read of someone on a keto/carnivore diet having to get a triple bypass after eating too much red meat. Was his omega-3/omega-6 ratio really that much worse than that of the average person not on such a diet (not that that's a great standard to compare against, but the average person is also not getting triple bypass surgery)?
I know there's a lot of evidence against the notion that saturated fats cause CVD, and omega-6s and inflammation is a compelling case, but I'm worried we're missing something.
> I'll suggest anyone that disbelieves that to spend some 30min into a moderate/high UV intensity day outside without sunscreen. Especially around midday.
30 minutes? I did that today for two hours. My arms, legs, face, and neck were all exposed without sunscreen, and I didn't burn at all. It all depends on your skin type.
