Wow, this is the reason why elephants don’t get cancer!!
We have genes called tumor suppressor genes, such as p53, these genes make proteins that can repair damage to our DNA or they can kill cells on their way to becoming cancer cells. We have two copies of this gene, just as we have two copies of all genes. People who have a mutation in one copy of p53, meaning they only have one good copy, these people are prone to many different kinds of cancer.
And elephants, what about elephants? Well they have 40 copies of p53!!!! No wonder they don’t get cancer!
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/10/08/elephants-cancer-genes/#.VhnxjDf3bCR​
Intense and Extreme
Thank you Blahpolar for the inspiration! Those two words are very apt adjectives for people with mood disorders. We are very intensely emotional and very extreme in our viewpoints. Is that right? Or am I just projecting my own traits onto everyone with a mood disorder? Well, at any rate, I am very intense and I have been known to have views that may be judged to be quite extreme. In some ways, I see things as black and white and sometimes fail to notice the shades of gray in between. People, in my estimation are either good as gold, or demonically evil. Sometimes, I do realize that a bit of both can exist in the same person.
What’s an interesting question to me is are all people with mood disorders like that? It makes sense that it should be so. We are creatures of high emotions and labile moods. I am vehement in my opinions, not moderate, not calm. I try to be calm, but my emotions are strong, and they don’t overpower me as much I am swept away by them. Things MEAN a lot me. The health of my loved ones, the welfare of my friends, the state of the world and all the injustices in it. Cruelty to humans, or especially helpless animals… Phew… don’t even get me started on that. Images haunt me for years after I’ve seen them. I live in the past and mourn the bad things that happened in it, my heart breaks that I could not give my son the perfect life I wanted to give him when he was a child. I miss my home at 36 Plumwood. I miss it terribly. That is the one place I’ve ever lived, that I will always think of as home. See, all emotions, pure emotions. But why always sadness, despair, heartbreak? Why not happy emotions, like joy, happiness, optimism? Is that a trait of my illness or is it because of my shattered childhood, that my brain got programmed to be negative and live in anxiety and fear and despair? I don’t know. I’ll never know. I just know that I’ve been where I’ve been and who knows where it is I’m going, but I am here. I am. And somehow, that has to be enough. When I’m at the end of my life, will it all have been enough? Will it have been good enough? Play the cards you’re dealt, Samina. That was my mother’s motto. Mine was: In the end, only kindness matters.
World Mental Health Day
Today is World Mental Health Day. And that’s all I have to say about that. Well actually I have this to say as well: take your medications, see your psychiatrist regularly, talk to a therapist, go to support groups, do meditation, relaxation and yoga, have a wide circle of good friend with whom you get together regularly, have something meaningful to do in your life, have meaningful relationships with significant others, raise your children well, pets are good if you don’t kill them, and viola! You will have oodles of mental health. Oh yes physical exercise, don’t forget physical exercise. And if you still end up in a psych ward in some hospital, well then you just get better and do all those things all over again. But, truly, if you do all of the things above, chances are slim to none that you will ever be an inpatient in a psych ward. Good luck to all of us with mental illnesses on this World Mental Health Day.
Fluffin is feeling better :-)
Yesterday I took Fluffin to the vet to have her nails trimmed. While at the vet, I asked them to do a blood test just to make sure she was doing well, just like we’d done every time she went for a checkup. Well… She is 20 years old! And it was not a good idea, considering her age. She got so stressed from having her blood drawn that she stopped eating or drinking water for a day and a half. All 8 lbs of her. I got tuna fish and tried to make her eat that. I put some tuna juice in her water to get her to drink. I put some baby food on my fingers and she licked it off, she had half a jar of baby food like that. I bought all her favorite foods and catnip. She’s finally getting over the stress I stupidly, unwittingly caused her. She is so precious to me, and I am so upset with myself. If you’ve never had pets, you won’t understand. If you have, this post will make the utmost sense to you. One thing’s for sure, never, ever again any blood tests. Never.
She’s doing well today, she ate some cat food, and drank water and is sleeping in her fall residence today.
Gosh, the road to hell really is paved with good intentions. People, be careful of what you do with your senior cats, and dogs for that matter. They are a lot more fragile and cannot stand what they could when they were young. Just please take care of these precious beings. I’m so glad my Fluff is getting better, and I will not expose her to any more unnecessary stress.
An intelligent, responsible gun owner, Mark Carman: GUN OWNERS 2nd Amendment
In the video, he says: “This is responsible gun ownership, not gun control! Get guns away who shouldn’t have them. Screen people and make it illegal to sell firearms without a background check! ” And more sensible ideas for responsible gun ownership!
He has started a movement to have responsible gum ownership, please lets all get behind him and make this movement a success! #NotOneMore
#Enough
Here we go again! The positives of having bipolar d/o? Zip, zilch, nada, NONE!
People keep asking this idiotic question: What are the positives of having bipolar disorder? Seriously? One thing of which I am certain, no one with bipolar d/o would ask this question, I know this as surely as I sit here typing! How about asking a cancer patient who has been given a few months to live, and is puking their guts out from chemotherapy, how about asking them the positives of having cancer? Really? Bipolar d/o is an awful, very often terminal disease that takes over your life and tortures you! What exactly is positive about this? If people who have bipolar d/o are creative, they would still be so without this hellish illness. If people with bipolar d/o are empathetic, they would still be so without this awful illness. This is an illness, there is NOTHING positive about having it! For International Bipolar Foundation to ask this tired and insulting and patronizing question really gets my goat! http://www.ibpf.org/article/5-positives-living-bipolar-disorder-besides-creativity
What are they saying? Since this is a mental illness, we don’t need to take it seriously, so lets ask people what the positives are about having it? Really? What’s positive about staying in bed for days on end, crying and contemplating suicide? I mean organizations like International Bipolar Foundation are there to support and promote understanding of people with BPD, not ask idiotic, patronizing, dismissive questions like what are the positives of having an awful illness that can make you kill yourself. Just stop with this idiotic question, please just stop!
My answer on their post on FB: “There are NO positives of having this hellish disease! None. Such an idiotic question, would you ever ask a cancer patient what the positives of having cancer are? This is a deadly disease no one needs. If people are creative. it isn’t because of bipolar disorder, they’d be creative even this illness hadn’t claimed their lives. Please stop trying to put a positive spin on this ugly illness. I expect more from an organization who calls themselves “International Bipolar Foundation” :-(“
The 2nd Amendment
Mental illness and violence
I have two points to make:
1) I understand people who have mental illness can have dark impulses, especially people with schizophrenia, like James Holmes, Adam Lanza, and the Oregon shooter. But the incidence of all mental illness around the world is the same. The same, I say. So why are mass shootings so much more common in the USA? Could it have anything to do with our lax gun laws? Anything to do with the 2nd amendment nutjobs?
2) Here’s a revelation: “If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about four percent,” Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke, told ProPublica last year. He notes a 2001 study of mass shooters that found three out of four had no psychiatric history.” This is from: http://www.newsweek.com/maybe-oregon-shooting-and-others-arent-about-mental-illness-378875
So although some people with mental illness do commit violent acts, the majority of them don’t. And stricter gun laws, hello NRA, would nip mass shootings right in the bud. When are we going to wake up to these much too numerous, tragic, wake up calls?
Mental illness and violence
I have two points to make:
1) I understand people who have mental illness can have dark impulses, especially people with schizophrenia, like James Holmes, Adam Lanza, and the Oregon shooter. But the incidence of all mental illness around the world is the same. The same, I say. So why are mass shootings so much more common in the USA? Could it have anything to do with our lax gun laws? Anything to do with the 2nd amendment nutjobs?
2) Here’s a revelation: “If we were able to magically cure schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, that would be wonderful, but overall violence would go down by only about four percent,” Dr. Jeffrey Swanson, a professor of psychiatry at Duke, told ProPublica last year. He notes a 2001 study of mass shooters that found three out of four had no psychiatric history.” This is from: http://www.newsweek.com/maybe-oregon-shooting-and-others-arent-about-mental-illness-378875
So although some people with mental illness do commit violent acts, the majority of them don’t. And stricter gun laws, hello NRA, would stop mass shootings right in the bud. When are we going to wake up to these much too numerous, tragic, wake up calls?
Don’t believe the lies bipolar d/o tells you!
When you are in a manic phase, skimming the world of what’s real and what’s not, your ill mind will tell you how special you are! Don’t believe it, you are not special because you can do what other people need LSD to do, you are sick, and in this state, you don’t have control of your mind. And that is not special, that is sick and scary.
When you are in a manic phase, your ill mind will tell you you are a genius! Look at all these brilliant ideas you are generating! Any one of them may very well save humanity from extinction and all of them are worthy of a nobel prize! Don’t listen to this! Yes you are getting a lot of ideas, some of them may actually be interesting, but they are only ideas, and require years of work to prove or implement. For example, I had the “brilliant” idea that mental illness was autoimmune in my manic phase in 2008. I wrote books and books about my theory, also weaving yoga ideas and psychoneuroimmunology precepts as well straight immunology. I still have pictures of those books, because I was so paranoid at that late stage of mania, that I thought my husband would steal my (groan) brilliant ideas and steal my nobel prize from me! Taking deep breaths as I write this… So I took pictures of the pages of the books and downloaded them into iphoto, kind of James Bondish… hahaha Haven’t really looked at all those pages since that manic time, but I’m sure if I did, they will be all over town, making sweeping statements, connecting things that possibly have no connection… hell i should take a look at them jsut for fun. Of course other people have had the same idea, that mental illness is autoimmune, there certainly are autoimmune illnesses associated with mental illness, like rheumatoid arthritis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and others. There certainly is cell death in the brain thereby enlarging the ventricles, this is seen in schizophrenia and in bipolar d/o. This cell death could be a result of our immune cells killing our neurons… this would require many years of experimentation and documentation, not something you can do in a manic phase. Ok, I’ll grant you, one may get brilliant ideas in mania, yes it can happen, but mostly what you get is flight of ideas, flitting from thought to thought and you also get delusions of grandeur, which make it seem all your thoughts are brilliant. But they’re not. If you are intelligent before mania, you do not become a genius when you are in mania, it just seems like it, haha.
When you are in a severe depression, your ill mind will tell you you’re not worth anything, don’t believe it. You are worth a LOT! Your mind is just sick at the moment and feeling bad, don’t believe anything it says, don’t believe it if it tells you to do away with yourself. Do not! You are valuable, you are beloved, you are loving. Depression or the depressed phase of bipolar is just an illness, this phase tells you lies too. Don’t believe them. Believe what your loved ones are telling you, believe what your doctor is telling you, have faith in your medication. It will work and you will come out of this awful downturn.
Don’t believe anything bipolar disorder tells you. Take your meds and be well.
Please contribute your stories in the comments section. Thank you.
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