Pat Hartman | Childhood Obesity News

What in the World Is BrainWeighve?

Pat Hartman August 30, 2022 No Comments

Glad you asked! BrainWeighve is a new phone app in its final stages of development by Dr. Pretlow and an amazing team. Today, we discuss some of the basic ideas behind it.

One major problem shared by adults and young people who are overweight, is a feeling of guilt, as if compulsive eating were the person’s own fault. This is a very heavy and discouraging emotion to live with. But the thing is, compulsive eating is one of the glitches in the way that humans are wired. The basic cause is the buildup of nervous energy in the brain and, as Dr. Pretlow says, “This brain energy overflows or is ‘displaced’ to your feeding drive, causing you to overeat.”

And so…?

Fine, but what is the source of this nervous energy? It originates from psychological conflict over life situations that the person feels unequipped to face, but cannot avoid. This extends out to any kind of frustration. So, what the BrainWeighve app does is help a person identify these situations of conflict or frustration, which is the first step toward any kind of remedy in any situation. Define exactly what you are dealing with, and sometimes even just putting a name to it can help a lot.

So does the realization that nobody is alone in these situations. Whether it shows or not, every person you know is required to face conflicts and frustrations, sometimes on a daily basis. After identifying such a roadblock, the next step is to come up with an Action Plan to deal with it effectively. Of course, “roadblock” is only a figure of speech. Dynamite is of no use here. The last thing anyone wants is for a situation to blow up — which is why Action Plans are so helpful.

But what happens to all that excess brain energy, buzzing around in a person’s head? Fortunately, it does not go to waste, but can be put to good use. It can be usefully rechanneled into non-harmful displacement behaviors, and we will talk about that more later.

Skipping ahead a bit

Let’s focus for a moment on a difficult situation, or trigger, that affects many people all too often. A person can skip this section of the app if they prefer, but for anyone who finds holidays and other celebrations hard to manage, it can be very helpful. Occasions where people get together and share food and drink with a festive spirit are sometimes dreaded by individuals who are obese or trying hard not to be.

There is immense cultural pressure; there is the force of habit from past experiences of communal feasting; there is a reluctance to hurt the cook’s feelings; there is the fear of being “jokingly” called a wet blanket or a party-pooper by “friends.”

But worst of all is the battle against the self, the urge to say, “What the heck, it’s a holiday, I’ll make up for it by being careful next week….” and on and on, blah blah blah. We all know the inner monologue that broadcasts its predictable and destructive tapes on these occasions.

The section, not surprisingly, is called Celebrations. For anyone who wants to give it a try, this is an important area where BrainWeighve can provide a path to calmness and competency.

More coming up!

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 8

Pat Hartman August 29, 2022 No Comments

We left off at the crucial moment when a pair of sticklebacks fall in love. In the nest he has prepared, she lays her eggs and then waves goodbye; he fertilizes them and hangs around for a week or two until the fry are able to fend for themselves.

However… One thing that could happen is that the female just might check back to see if any eggs were snuck into the nest by some hussy, because she is not prepared to tolerate that, and will eat them. Or an entire roving gang of female sticklebacks might attack the nest and eat the babies, just because they are feeling ornery.

Under this threat, the male is apt to heroically and creatively try to distract the attackers with some kind of fake news. Professor of Biology Susan A. Foster wrote,

[T]hese conspicuous displays appear to include elements of behavior co-opted from other contexts, and subsequently ritualized or made more conspicuous in the new context of the diversionary display.

Typically, human researchers insist on defining displacement activity as wrong, inappropriate, irrelevant, etc. Sure, it may be “behavior co-opted from other contexts,” but why is that framed as an indictment? It is a positive defense that protects the young from cannibalistic wild women — yet humans insist on denigrating it as “displacement.”

In all fairness, it seems like the determination to save babies should be called a basic drive. And what could be more in-context than a diversionary tactic — especially if it succeeds? What could possibly be more appropriate than a clever life hack that works?

And yet so many humans, like salmon expert Thomas Kline, are adamant: “Essentially a displacement activity is doing the wrong thing.” Another explainer says,

Certain species of fish, such as the stickleback, also exhibit such out-of-context displacement activity. When at the boundary between its own territory and that of another stickleback, where both attack and escape behaviors are elicited, inappropriate nest-building behavior is often displayed.

Early behaviorists N. Tinbergen and J. J. A. Van Iersel wrote in 1946,

[S]uch irrelevant movements occur when the animal is under the influence of a powerful urge, but at the same time is in some way prevented from expressing this urge in the appropriate way. The animal, under such conditions, does not suspend action, but vents its urge in movements belonging to another drive. The behavior “sparks over” from one drive to another.

Okay, combat is a drive, and escape is a drive, but what if sliding out of the situation peacefully is also an equally strong and valid drive? Surely, diversionary tactics are successful at least some of the time. And when that happens, why is the action deemed a mere substitute caused by frustration engendered by the inability to fulfill another drive?

Why isn’t the avoidance of violence (or the avoidance of disgraceful flight) seen as the fulfillment of a legitimate drive, in and of itself? If a diversionary tactic produces a peaceful outcome, why is that judged as inappropriate, irrelevant, out-of-context, and wrong?

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Evolutionary and Natural History of the Threespine Stickleback,” ScienceDirect.com, undated
Source: “Salmon displacement activity,” Salmonography.com, undated
Source: “English Dream,” Naver.com, 08/27/2020
Source: “’Displacement Reactions’ in the Three-Spined Stickleback,” Jstor.org, undated
Image by Biodiversity Heritage Library/Public Domain

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 7

Pat Hartman August 26, 2022 No Comments

More on the inquiries into what kind of fish might behave like the Slide 14 subject. There is a type that acts in a certain way:

Male stickleback fish stand on their heads and dig into the sand as if building a nest when the impulses of attack and retreat are evenly balanced…

The description of the Slide 14 action was that the male engaged in displacement behavior — bouncing on his head — because of inner conflict over whether to perform a reproductive act. (Dropping a load of sperm into a nest does not seem like that big of a deal, really, and certainly not worth dying over.)

But the whole basis of his psychological conflict was that if he messed around with her, she would kill him. So, maybe he should flee instead. But again, why? Since female sticklebacks do not murder their baby daddies, it seems like, as the stars of that drama, the species would be ruled out. Another source says that sticklebacks exhibit…

[…] out-of-context displacement activity. When at the boundary between its own territory and that of another stickleback, where both attack and escape behaviors are elicited, inappropriate nest-building behavior is often displayed.

A stickleback makes a nest on the sea floor, so he just might stand on his head and dig into the sand, even if a human calls it “bouncing.” But Slide 14 wasn’t about a male-on-male territorial dispute. The scenario was introduced as one in which a lady was ready and waiting to consummate a relationship. For a stickleback, that would mean she deposits eggs in his nest, and then says, “Bye, have fun raising the kids.” And he is so there for it! Not exactly an existential crisis, or an occasion suitable for frantic displacement activity.

Some stickleback lore

Behaviorist pioneer Niko Tinbergen liked working with sticklebacks. In the wild, apparently, the males are very aggressive. They compete for territory, and for dates. To the female, red equals hot. Here is a small snippet of Gregory F. Grether’s fascinating discourse about her preference:

In most populations of three-spined stickleback, females prefer males with red coloration, and this is a condition-dependent trait that reflects variation among males in parental care and parasite resistance.

In other words, a red throat is a stellar résumé and a winning recommendation letter. Armed with those, the male builds a nest from weeds stuck together with a secretion from his kidneys. He likes a gal who is bigger than him and has a bulging stomach, which means bigger eggs. He attracts a likely prospect with a courtship dance, and if that goes well, they enjoy a piscine equivalent of foreplay, which a bold female will sometimes even initiate.

(To be continued!)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Displacement activity,” OxfordReference.com, undated
Source: “English Dream,” Naver.com, 08/27/2020
Source: “The Evolution of Mate Preferences, Sensory Biases, and Indicator Traits,” ScienceDirect.com, 2010
Image by M Krijnsen/Public Domain

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 6

Pat Hartman August 25, 2022 No Comments

Here is a callback to Slide 14. What kind of fish might those have been? Simple curiosity initiated a quest as epic as Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole. First, how much can we reasonably expect from a fish, anyway?

Leonor Galhardo wrote that fish are sometimes accused of having no mental experiences because they lack neocortices. Still, they do have neuroendocrine, cognitive and emotional processes that “allow inferring some forms of mental representation.” According to Galhardo,

The integration of psychological elements in fish stress physiology is insufficiently studied, but, as discussed in this article, there is already indirect evidence to admit that some form of stimuli appraisal can take place in fish. This fact has profound implications on the regulation of the stress response…

Do fish even engage in displacement activity? Apparently, some of them do. The male sockeye salmon, for instance, has been observed to dig in a stream during the summer. The source says, “This behavior is considered a displacement activity indicative of the male’s frustration in not being able to spawn.”

His activity is considered to be of the displacement variety, because usually, it is the female salmon who digs the redd, or spawning nest, the depression where the parents will place their eggs and sperm. And also, the female “may dig at a location a short distance away from her redd as a displacement activity.” There is also some talk of cichlid fish using displaced aggression to manage conflict among a group of social fish, but we will not go into that.

Something fishy going on

Why would a fish bounce on its head, which is how the Slide 14 male is described? Maybe it wasn’t actually doing a pointless displacement activity. After all, there is a species where the lady fish buries her eggs, and the male has to burrow into the substrate to fertilize them. A male might get crazy and bounce on his head, but that kind of displacement behavior is supposed to be reserved for when a male challenger comes knocking. But this female willingly offers herself, and most importantly, she has no reason to take umbrage.

Could they be sticklebacks? If so, he even volunteers to kill any offspring that happened to be fertilized by a male inferior to himself, her chosen one — that is how much he respects her. The females are cannibalistic, too, but only with the eggs of other females. They don’t eat their own eggs, and there is no mention of spousal murder.

Why would she slay the fellow who immediately relieves her of child-care responsibilities? He housekeeps the nest, and fans it to prevent sedimentation, and ensure well-oxygenated water for the kids — while she goes on her merry way. He protects the little ones from predators. Some exemplary stickleback dads will even anxiously follow fry who wander away, and bring them back to the nest.

So, these two must not be sticklebacks. Because stickleback women have good sense.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Psychological Stress and Welfare in Fish,” Annual Review of Biomedical Sciences, March 2009
Source: “Focused Collection,” FocusedCollection.com, undated
Source: “Salmon displacement activity,” Salmonography.com, undated
Image by Lake Clark National Park/Public Domain

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 5

Pat Hartman August 24, 2022 No Comments

In Dr. Pretlow’s presentation, one section concerns a male fish who somehow knows that after he mates with the female, she will kill him. He actually should run away. But he wants to stay and mate, so there is a tremendous conflict, which he deals with by doing a displacement behavior, bouncing up and down on his head.

Next is a section about displacement behaviors in dogs, which can include yawning “when they are confused about what to do.” This recalls advice given to drivers who need to stay alert on long trips. They are told to chew gum, because supposedly when the jaw moves, more oxygen gets to the brain. (Is it possible that the yawn is not pointless, and this is not an out-of-context, inappropriate action? Maybe a confused dog knows from experience that some jaw motion will help clear his head a bit, and end his confusion?)

Likewise, excessive paw-licking, to the point where it becomes an acral lick disorder, is believed to be caused by psychological reasons like boredom, stress, or anxiety. But even an amoeba knows to avoid pain (or at least to distance itself from something that would hurt, if it had a nervous system). Is it possible, at least sometimes, that paw-licking is not displacement behavior; that the animal is simply licking because the paw hurts or itches, and the humans have not yet understood that? There are several physical causes that a good veterinarian will first rule out, before declaring the harmful licking activity to be psychologically based.

How do researchers know such things?

Some of this science is based on looking at what is effective for humans and working backward from that. Clomipramine treats OCD, panic disorder, depressive disorder, and chronic pain in humans. So, it was given to dogs, who then ceased their obsessive and harmful licking. But was that because the drug had a psychological effect, or simply because it relieved physically-caused pain or itching?

Because of its side effects, clomipramine is disliked by humans. Another drug, sertraline, is much better tolerated, and preferred by people suffering from OCD, panic attacks, depression, PTSD, and social anxiety. However, sertraline also treats chronic pain, so the same shadow of doubt might remain. When a dog abandons excessive paw-licking, is it responding well because the drug is effective against the canine equivalent of OCD? Or is it simply responding to the relief of pain caused by some other, as-yet-unknown physical problem?

One of the fun things about a pet cat is watching what it does, on the rare occasion when it embarrassingly loses its footing. More than likely, the cat will casually start licking itself, as if to say, “What are you looking at? I’m just doing my normal grooming over here.” What else is it supposed to do? It can’t blush. Chances are, any activity the cat engaged in at this moment would be classified by the human observer as displacement behavior.

The tricky thing about displacement behavior is that it can look just like normal behavior, except that human observers have determined that the activity is not proper in the animal’s particular context at the moment.

A cat tip

Experts say, go easy with the laser pointer. Don’t let it be your only cat toy, or even the main one. The laser is a lot more fun for the human than for the cat, who experiences frustration at chasing prey it can never catch. This might lead to some wacky displacement behavior, like licking a big patch of fur off itself.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by jeffreyw/CC BY 2.0

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 4

Pat Hartman August 23, 2022 No Comments

Here are more details about Dr. Pretlow’s World Obesity Federation Conference presentation.

In talking about why overeating is often irresistible, he says,

It’s like something pushes a person to overeat or get drunk — It’s like a switch gets pulled in their brain. Like a tape plays, and the individual must go along with the tape until it stops running… The behavior doesn’t make sense to the person involved.

And even if one does understand certain aspects of one’s own behavior, there is no guarantee that it can be gotten rid of. To comprehend is fine, but as some believe, “That and a dime will get you a cup of coffee.” As Werner Erhard put it, “Understanding is the booby prize.”

No, what a person needs is a way to change. And often, it helps to do things in (what you have always believed is ) the reverse order. If somebody you respect says, “This works,” why not at least give it an honest try? And sometimes, not always but sometimes, what works is this: Do the things suggested by a trusted person, and you might get results; and then after a while, you may receive understanding.

But that part doesn’t really matter. To have positive results, without necessarily wrapping your head around it, is a better deal than an understanding that brings intellectual satisfaction, but does nothing to mend the damage.

Again, with the multifactorial

Plenty of people figure out how to disconnect that troublemaking switch, and there is more than one way to do it. There are nutrition programs, for instance, that seem able to affect the chemical factors that flip those treacherous brain switches (or let them be). Some people become Zen monks. Others walk 10,000 steps per day. Some answers work for some people, while others are effective for other demographics.

(Actually, Dr. Pretlow just happens to know of a way that is very promising for young people… more soon…)

But, back to the presentation. Like drunkenness and other addictive excesses, the symptomology of obesity-causing behavior includes actions and attitudes that do not suit the situation, and out-of-control behavior that brings down negative consequences. For these and other reasons, it seems to have been decided that obesity fits the definition of addiction.

Then, what naturally follows is the question: What causes addiction? Especially the kinds that do not involve chemicals.

Digression: But doesn’t every addiction necessarily include chemicals produced by one’s own body? Whether the chemicals are endogenous or exogenous, they are certainly present in, for instance, porn addiction, even if no substances are consumed. For the sake of discussion, it is sometimes necessary to separate other addictions from literal substance abuse.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: Source: Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation,” Weigh2Rock, undated
Image by Owen Parrish/CC BY-SA 2.0

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 3

Pat Hartman August 22, 2022 No Comments

This is a continuation of comments related to the presentation Dr. Pretlow gave at the World Obesity Federation Conference in 2019, which can be found on his Weigh2Rock website.

An encouraging feature of the whole problem is that some kids realize how urgently they need help, and will ask for it. This is an audio-visual presentation in which one quotation from a young person talks about how the immediate presence of food, in front of you and within reach, just banishes any shred of motivation to develop more useful habits. The issue might be encapsulated in three words: “Can’t say no.”

In other words, the instant gratification of eating right now erases any thought of waiting for delayed gratification, which would be the weight loss they so desperately crave.

A youth is heard saying, “I just really like the way food tastes.” That might be a clue about one of the overall structural, institutionalized causes of obesity for everyone, everywhere. Processed foods can be interfered with in probably a dozen ways, and the one that has an enormous impact is the creation of hyperpalatable groceries.

The easy availability of unnaturally tasty foods is a con game and a terrible cheat. Even more sadly, almost no one realizes it. The film business will make a movie about the terrible price of messing around with atomic energy, but where is the cinematic drama about weird chemicals in the cupcakes?

Can’t say no

Kids are not oblivious to the inner contradiction, and that just makes things even worse, because then, along come a bunch of bad feelings. A teenage boy says, “After I eat, I feel horrible.” Dr. Pretlow quotes a statistic where “95% of binge eaters report regret, guilt, or anger with themselves.” This does not improve with age. Adult binge eaters regularly (and psychologically) beat themselves up for their wayward behavior.

A girl speaks, who does not even offer the excuse of being captivated by an irresistible, delicious flavor, but just eats anything that happens to be around, because it is there. “I would overeat just to eat whatever was available.”

Anyone who has ever experienced the dangerous lure of binge eating will attest that this is a bad bargain and a cold, malicious twist of fate. You get all the unattractive results, the extra pounds, and everything that comes along with them — and it wasn’t even fun. You ate two-week-old leftover lasagna without even warming it up! You might as well have long COVID, with its concomitant anosmia and ageusia — loss of the senses of smell and taste.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation,” Weigh2Rock, undated
Images by Wrapped Up (modified) and Internet Archive/Public Domain

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 2

Pat Hartman August 19, 2022 No Comments

This continues a look at Dr. Pretlow’s presentation about addiction and displacement theory, which is also available in viewable form, with illustrations and the actual recording of the presentation.

There is a thing called the motor component, which is separate from the most obvious attractions of food, such as aroma, taste, texture, “mouth feel,” and so on. Take a bag of chips as an example. In many cases, just tearing open the bag is the gateway to a sensory experience, as the delicious smell pours out. So, even that could become an element of what in this talk is termed motor addiction. But there is much, much more to come. Biting is enjoyable in and of itself, and so are crunching, and chewing.

Moving on from chips to, for instance, cooked meat, the activity of gnawing is extremely pleasurable to people with good teeth, and perhaps explains the widespread popularity of the snack called buffalo wings. Subconsciously, gnawing takes us back to ancient times, when members of a human settlement brought home dead game animals so the group could eat.

The hunter had spent so much time in pursuit of this moment — watching, tracking, enduring heat or cold or rain, running, spearing, carrying the carcass back to camp, and perhaps being wounded himself in any one of several possible ways. Then, the meat would need preparation, it would need to be skinned and cooked before, finally, being eaten.

All the patience and the physical exertion and long-practiced skills of the hunt, all the privation experienced to catch that animal, now paid off in the opportunity to use the teeth to scrape every bit of nutrition from the animal’s body. It was not only an individual reward but an altruistic one, that temporarily ended the hunger of the entire group.

To gnaw on a creature’s fire-singed bones must have been incredibly satisfying, engendering feelings of competence, triumph, and worthiness. One can imagine the hunter thinking, “Take that, animal! After all the hard work you put me through, here I am, home and safe, gnawing on your bones!”

Some of the other mouth motions named are licking and sucking. Sucking, obviously, harkens back to the most primal activity of all, pulling nourishment from the mother’s breast. The swallowing of chewed, solid food is a definitive sensation. First it was up here, up in the oral cavity. Now it is traveling to its new destination, the stomach, and often can be decisively felt making that journey.

In our studies, up to 85% of the participants report that when they overeat, they overeat on whatever is available, not some specific, hyperpalatable food. So this motor addiction component is similar to what are called Body Focused Repetitive Behaviors.

One of the many polls submitted for consideration to the young readers of Dr. Pretlow’s website, Weigh2Rock, asked the question, “Do you think overeating is like nail biting?” 53% of the respondents replied affirmatively to, “Yes, I do both when stressed.” Now, obviously, the answer to this dilemma is not, “Well then, just bite your nails more, and it will help you eat less.” Many kids realize that they have been virtually held in chains by the cycle of overeating and regret, and understand that they need help.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation,” Weigh2Rock.com, undated
Images by Jason Lander: 1, 2, 3/CC BY 2.0

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation

Pat Hartman August 18, 2022 No Comments

Today we take a look at the information provided by one of Dr. Pretlow’s addresses to professional colleagues. Specifically, this one was presented at the 2019 World Obesity Federation Conference in Oman. Obviously, this does not mean anything is out-of-date, because the concepts are the same now as they were then. The talk concerns the concepts of food addiction and eating addiction, as they relate to displacement theory.

Dr. Pretlow begins by describing the features of his long-established interactive website, Weigh2Rock. Young people can submit questions whose responses are not personally aimed, but phrased to include any youngsters who suffer from the same problems. There is a Teens Bulletin Board, where they can express their feelings on many aspects of their overweight situation. The large majority of their difficulties can be condensed into one generic statement: “I can’t stop eating.”

Many young people in various kinds of trouble have full awareness that they need help, and one of the things we are doing here is to aid in creating a society where young people can find the help they desperately need. Often, a teen will elaborate by adding that they know what to do, so a lack of information is not the problem. The problem is finding something — a method, a program, a plan of action — that will enable them to actually do what is necessary to get their consumption under control.

Measuring the pain

Why is this such a significant problem? Well, for one thing, there are metrics in the soft sciences as well as in the hard sciences. One of the metrics employed here is a comparison of the quality of life among obese kids, to the QOL experienced by young people receiving chemotherapy treatment for cancer. To our dismay, their subjective experiences of unhappiness are about the same. So this can definitively be deemed a serious problem.

Why, asks Dr. Pretlow, is it so nearly impossible for these unhappy young people to do such a seemingly simple thing as stop eating so much? If a simple change, like substituting healthful foods for high-calorie, low-nutrition junk food, is available as a life choice, why isn’t everybody doing it? As Dr. Pretlow phrases it, “Something else is going on.”

What is that something? Could it be addiction? Dr. Pretlow wrote,

The definition of addiction is continuing a behavior even though the behavior will cause substantial negative consequences to the person’s life. And obesity seems to qualify under that definition.

The brains of obese people, when exposed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology, show similarities to the brains of known confirmed and diagnosed addicts. This has led to the creation of two terms, one of them being food addiction. This is a substance dependence on the ingredients — mainly sugar — found in far too many types of food. When fMRI technology is employed to visualize it, it shows up looking very much like drug or alcohol dependence. The other term is eating addiction, or behavioral addiction to the act of eating.

It has been shown by some researchers that food ingredients have a direct effect on the brain’s reward system. Maybe; maybe not. It seems more likely that the dopamine rush, the “high,” is produced by such factors as the taste, texture and temperature of food. It appears to be a sensory addiction similar to that found in, for instance, sex addiction. Dr. Pretlow wrote,

We also believe that there is a motor addiction component, involving the actions of eating, like biting, chewing, gnawing, crunching, licking, swallowing, and hand-to-mouth motion.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Food/Eating Addiction and Displacement Theory,” Weigh2Rock.com, 2019
Image by Pat Hartman

Coronavirus Chronicles — Milder Does Not Mean Mild

Pat Hartman August 15, 2022 No Comments

At the beginning of this year, American hospitals were in dire straits. Journalist Ed Yong looked into it for The Atlantic and interviewed, among others, Megan Ranney, a Rhode Island emergency physician, who revealed that because of staff shortages, “whole sections of beds” were closed. Yong traced how the COVID crisis crushed every part of the healthcare system:

A lack of pharmacists and outpatient clinicians makes it harder for people to get tests, vaccines, and even medications… There aren’t enough paramedics, making it more difficult for people to get to the hospital at all. Lab technicians are falling ill, which means that COVID-test results (and medical-test results in general) are taking longer to come back. Respiratory therapists are in short supply, making it harder to ventilate patients who need oxygen.

The scarce beds had to receive virus victims, meaning that people with other kinds of emergency health events or recurring chronic problems were out of luck. Even hospital patients who no longer needed acute care were affected, because they could not be released due to a shortage of beds in facilities for post-acute long-term care. And that made the shortage in general hospitals even worse. For people who depended on dialysis, mental health counseling, and many other outpatient services, support was hard to find.

A new demon

Thanks to the ambitions omicron coronavirus variant, there was a brief resurgence of public interest and even concern. “Do we need to wipe down packages that arrive, or simply stop ordering consumer goods from overseas? Should we wear gloves in the grocery store? They say this new COVID spreads really fast. What are we supposed to do about that?”

By the end of January, there were well over 600,000 new cases nationwide each and every day. Emergency room visits and hospital admissions were going way, way up. The patients had shorter stays, and not as many needed the ICU, but there were a whole lot more of them. And the daily death toll was described as “substantial.” While the overall proportion of ICU admissions and deaths may be smaller, that’s a ratio, a percentage of the whole. When the overall number is enormous, the number of people seriously damaged can still be huge.

Sneaking up

But in the realm of public awareness, it did not take long for emotions to settle down. Because the omicron variant was described as milder than some of its predecessors, many people believed (or tried to believe, or at least proclaimed) that it was no big deal, a walk in the park. Many health care professionals hastened to point out the obvious: milder does not mean mild. It just means, marginally less likely to undergo gruesome ordeals like being on a ventilator, or to die.

Meanwhile, a whole separate crisis continued to build — Long COVID, which has not yet disclosed all the mysteries of its longevity or its ultimate potential for damage. But as the year began, several mentions were made in the media of the increased occurrence of myocardial infarction (heart attack) soon after the patients had seemingly recovered from COVID. The virus was clearly observed to exacerbate several chronic illnesses, leading to the patient’s demise, but was unlikely to be listed as the cause of death — even though that chronically ill patient might have lasted several more years, had COVID not interfered.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Hospitals Are in Serious Trouble,” TheAtlantic.com, 01/07/22
Source: “Omicron’s wave is at least 386% taller than delta’s — and it’s crushing hospitals,” ArsTechnica.com, 1/26/2022
Image by Navy Medicine/Public Domain

What in the World Is BrainWeighve?

And so…?

Skipping ahead a bit

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 8

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 7

Some stickleback lore

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 6

Something fishy going on

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 5

How do researchers know such things?

A cat tip

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 4

Again, with the multifactorial

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 3

Can’t say no

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation 2

Addiction and Displacement Theory Presentation

Measuring the pain

Coronavirus Chronicles — Milder Does Not Mean Mild

A new demon

Sneaking up

Profiles: Kids Struggling with Weight

The Book

About Dr. Robert A. Pretlow

Presentations

Food & Health Resources