Articles from the Week of October 6, 2023
Interesting Quotes
Your world is a living expression of how you are using and have used your mind.
Earl Nightingale
I don’t know what’s more exhausting about parenting: the getting up early or the acting like you know what you are doing.
Jim Gaffigan, father of five
The greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they're loved and capable of loving.
Fred Rogers
Fascinating Facts (from InterestingFacts.com unless otherwise noted)
The human brain runs on less power than a 60-watt lightbulb. IBM’s Watson, that in 2011 tried to outfox Jeopardy’s champions, used about 85,000 watts. It’s interesting that highly intelligent designers took years to create Watson but claim there’s no evidence of an intelligent designer for the human brain.
“The first-ever speeding ticket was issued to a driver going 8 miles an hour.
“Walter Arnold probably didn’t think he’d be making history when he took his “horseless carriage” (read: automobile) for a spin through the humble English village of Paddock Wood on January 28, 1896, but make history he did — by traveling at an absolutely blinding pace of 8 miles per hour on the main thoroughfare. And while you may find it difficult to believe that a bicycle-riding constable was able to catch up to him, the ensuing low-speed pursuit led to Arnold paying the first-ever speeding ticket.
“Speeding wasn’t all he was charged with. Arnold was cited on four counts: using a “locomotive without a horse” (the nerve!) on a public road, operating said contraption with fewer than three people, failing to clearly display his name and address on that absolute manifestation of speed, and, last but not least, traveling at a higher velocity than 2 miles per hour. Arnold, one of England’s first car dealers, was driving a Benz that fateful day and paid the equivalent of more than $300 in today’s money for his quartet of criminality.” (All quoted material from InterestingFacts.com)
Earth's Hidden Eighth Continent Is No Longer Lost (from Popular Mechanics)
One of earth’s largest continents, Zealandia, (approximately 2 million square miles) has now been largely mapped. Much of it will probably never be inhabited by humans, since it is now (except for New Zealand) almost completely submerged.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a45226285/eighth-continent-zealandia-mapped/?utm_source=recommendedreads.com
Did you know there is a relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and the FBI? A grandson of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother Jérôme, Charles Bonaparte created the forerunner of the FBI.
Counseling Articles
Unveiling an Overlooked Disorder
This article is written for psychiatrists about the fact that ADHD in older adults is often missed and the symptoms mistaken for part of the aging process. I think the article has some important information that counselors could benefit from and encourage everyone who counsels older adults to read it.
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Motor Vehicle Crash Risk in Older Adult Drivers With Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder
It is well-known that teens with ADHD were at significantly greater risk of vehicle accidents than other teens. This research found that older adult drivers with ADHD had a similar increased risk, suggesting the need for greater care of this issue with these drivers.
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How a ‘Beer Goggles’ Study Could Lead to Sobering Insights
It has often been thought that drinking alcohol gives men “beer goggles,” i.e., they see women as more attractive than they really are. This study disputed that belief. What it found is that drinking alcohol relaxed some of their social inhibitions and made them more likely to approach women socially. The authors of the study discuss their findings and how they might relate to men developing an alcohol abuse problem.
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Gene Therapy Offers New Way to Fight Alcohol Use Disorder
Alcohol use disorder is a growing problem among adults. A study with monkeys found that those who had been conditioned to drink 8 to 10 drinks per day were injected with a growth hormone that stimulates growth in the part of the brain that controls dopamine production. The article gives more details. It found that the experimental treatment reduced alcohol use in primates by 90% when compared with controls. The treatment still has to be used with adults, but this treatment has already been approved for adults with Parkinson’s disease, so there may be another treatment available soon for those with serious alcohol use disorder.
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What Is the ‘Carrot Tan’ Trending on Social Media? A Dermatologist Weighs In
You may have clients who have discovered one of the newest social crazes—that they can get what looks like a tan from eating lots and lots of carrots. (If a client comes in looking orange this might be a good thing to ask about.) This article explains the science behind it. As with most things, moderation in carrot intake is the best way to ensure good health and there are healthier ways to get a good tan.
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Pediatrician Group Launches New Initiative to Expose Danger Of Transgender Procedures On Kids
If you listen to or read some medical group’s material, you would be inclined to believe that the only humane way to treat gender dysphoria is puberty blockers, followed by cross-sex hormones, and then sex-change therapy. But not all doctors believe this, and a group called the American College of Pediatricians, a non-profit group that has members in 47 states and several countries, believes that putting young people on cross-sex hormones, such as putting young girls on testosterone, can be associated with an “increased risk of heart attacks, stroke, diabetes, blood clots and cancers across their lifespan.” This caution is very compatible with the approaches of several European countries, which have sharply curtailed the use of such procedures until more long-term studies have been concluded.
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Unintentional Pediatric Ingestion of Cannabis—Addressing a Growing Public Health Risk
If you have a client who uses medically-prescribed THC, this might be something to warn them of. There are many copycat versions of THC, and children sometimes accidentally ingest this. So it’s important to encourage these parents to take precautions to keep this medication out of reach of children (or to only get medication from sources they trust to be legitimate.
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How Living with Bipolar Disorder Taught Me the Art of Time Management
This author, who has bipolar disorder, discusses a method that has helped her manage to be more effective and efficient in her use of time. If you have clients with bipolar disorder, it may be helpful to some of them.
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How brain implants are treating depression
Deep brain stimulation has been used since 1997 to treat things like tremor, Parkinson’s disease, and severe cases of epilepsy and dystonia (involuntary muscle contractions). Now it’s being used experimentally to treat cases of severe depression that haven’t responded to antidepressants, counseling, or ECT. This is one of the most complete descriptions that is written for non-physicians. It explains how the surgery is done, how it is individualized for each patient, and then gives summaries of the results for several patients who have had it done. I would recommend you download the article to use if you have a client who has severe depression and hasn’t responded to any of the less-invasive procedures (if they haven’t had ECT, they’ll probably need to try that first before they would be eligible for deep-brain stimulation treatment).
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“Still Depressed” or “Recovering”? Researchers Find Biomarker Signaling Recovery in Treatments for Severe Depression Using Deep Brain Stimulation
Another finding regarding the experimental use of deep brain stimulation for extremely resistant depression. Early results suggest that using data from deep brain stimulation researchers were able to identify when patients were beginning to recover. This objective data was important because during the early stages of treatment patients could have temporary periods of dysphoria, making it difficult to discern whether they were actually recovering. So here is a second promising finding from this new treatment for extremely-resistant severe depression.
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Low Relapse Rates with Twice-Yearly Schizophrenia Treatment
If you work with clients who have schizophrenia you will probably want to be aware of this treatment if you aren’t already. Every-6-month dosing of the long-acting injectable paliperidone palmitate was effective and safe up to 3 years. See article for more details.
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Supreme Court Refuses to Help Pro-Life Advocate Forced to Pay Planned Parenthood $18 Million
This is not a counseling article, but something that perhaps we all can pray about. Even though these defendants were able to collect evidence that Planned Parenthood was selling tissues and organs from babies who had been aborted, they received a verdict that they had to pay Planned Parenthood eighteen million dollars, and the Supreme Court refused to review the case.
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Planned Parenthood is Helping Teenagers Transition After a 30 Minute Consult. Parents and Doctors are Sounding the Alarm.
This article in the Free Beacon highlights the fact that even two leaders in the Gender Affirmation movement are publicly speaking of concerns about Planned Parenthood giving out puberty blocking hormones and cross gender hormones without adequate safeguards and without adequate training of their staff. Children and teens who do not want to postpone their treatment because of waiting lists at traditional gender clinics are often turning to Planned Parenthood.
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The Cell as an Embedded Computing System
Although many of us do not need any more evidence that we were created by a very intelligent designer, these two scientists say that the many processes carried out by cells resemble those activities that we would expect from computer systems embedded within each cell.
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Mania and Overspending: Don’t Break the Bank!
This article describes some of the financial incidents that occurred when people with bipolar disorder were either in a manic or hypomanic episode (yes, overspending can occur when hypomanic). It also shares some of the safeguards these folks have taken to protect themselves and their bank accounts should they have future manic or hypomanic episodes. If you counsel bipolar clients or bipolar couples I highly recommend you read and keep a copy of this article to use with them.
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I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend!
Henry Virkler