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Medications that change who we are

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Re: Medications that change who we are

#261

Post by GordonS »

jczhang wrote: post #125
sugarkjube wrote: post #40

Definitely 100% true, first hand experience here. I had mild medication prescribed for regulating blood pressure. Supposedly without psychological side effects. I found out a year later that it dramatically affected my personality. More or less like in the article, but in the opposite way. The frightening thing is, I didn't know !!! I found out a year later when temporarily stopping the medication, my kids started to…

Why aren't you calling out the name of the medication given your story of warning?

It's almost certainly propranolol, but it is odd they wouldn't just name it

Re: Medications that change who we are

#262

Post by truth_be_told »

_8ljf wrote: post #259
truth_be_told wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTH ? That is a nice rant but one with some validity :-) First see my other responses in this thread so i don't have to repeat myself. >Real medicine does in fact study and treat the whole person. In Theory; Current practice has all but forgotten this. That is why many Physicians themselves are looking at Yoga, Meditation, TCM, Ayurveda etc. to supplement their treatment. >Medicine [which works] is just a rolling bug…

“In Theory; Current practice has all but forgotten this. That is why many Physicians themselves are looking at Yoga, Meditation, TCM, Ayurveda etc. to supplement their treatment.” Eh, no. If many Physicians are looking at TCM, Ayurveda, etc†, it’s because there’s piles of Money and Ego in it. Shock: some physicians really do miss the Good Old Days of “Doctor-as-God” Paternalistic Medicine, and are only too delighted…

Are you just an ass or are you just trying to get a rise out of people? It is hard to have a conversation when your tone is combative rather than rational.

You are trying to employ the "Gish Gallop" and throw all sorts of irrelevant noise to muddy the waters. What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Alex Jones etc. have to do with Medicine?. If you think physicians are looking at Ayurveda/TCM/Yoga etc. only for the money/ego/fad then you really don't know what you are talking about. Don't waste my time with nonsense.

You are also cherry-picking articles with sensational headlines eg. your last link about usage of Turmeric is an article which is very clearly sheer stupidity and nothing to do with the medicine itself.

Here is something for your edification;

Efficacy of Curcumin(Turmeric) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664031/

Read the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects" for scientific research on a variety of traditional herbs. Centuries of "Empirical Data" is what is being put to test to identify efficacy. This is the proper scientific method and not the offhand dismissal that you seem to embrace.

You are also very wrong about "Yoga and Meditation" being merely "Exercise and Relaxation". Read the following;

* A Physiological Handbook for Teachers of Yogasana

* Zen & the Brain

That should hold you for a while.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#263

Post by truth_be_told »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #236
truth_be_told wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood. While there is a lot of "woo woo" in Traditional Eastern Medicine against which we must guard ourselves, there is still a lot of empirical evidence for it though we may not subscribe to the explanatory models behind them. This is why people/hospitals are trying to introduce…

>When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood. And I have said, if you read carefully that some of it still works despite this. This is not the point, the point is the black box test still needs to work despite a garbage theory. ANd my point is, not only is the theory wrong, but there is very little overall scientific e…

There IS Scientific Research being done on aspects of Traditional Medicine.

As an example, see the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects".

Re: Medications that change who we are

#264

Post by _8ljf »

truth_be_told wrote: post #262
_8ljf wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“In Theory; Current practice has all but forgotten this. That is why many Physicians themselves are looking at Yoga, Meditation, TCM, Ayurveda etc. to supplement their treatment.” Eh, no. If many Physicians are looking at TCM, Ayurveda, etc†, it’s because there’s piles of Money and Ego in it. Shock: some physicians really do miss the Good Old Days of “Doctor-as-God” Paternalistic Medicine, and are only too delighted…

Are you just an ass or are you just trying to get a rise out of people? It is hard to have a conversation when your tone is combative rather than rational. You are trying to employ the "Gish Gallop" and throw all sorts of irrelevant noise to muddy the waters. What do Gwyneth Paltrow, Alex Jones etc. have to do with Medicine?. If you think physicians are looking at Ayurveda/TCM/Yoga etc. only for the money/ego/fad the…

[flagged]

Re: Medications that change who we are

#265

Post by ezequiel-garzon »

kerkeslager wrote: post #134
ezequiel-garzon wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the evidence that there is a brain or body in the first place, which is a big part of the original discussion? No, I don't mean that just because Plato said it cannot be "stupid", but you have clearly provoked the crowd bringing philosophy to the fore, and broadly speaking philosophy is where you stop having certain evidence for anything, as it precisely challenges anything deemed certain. Once the body is ass…

> What's the evidence that there is a brain or body in the first place, which is a big part of the original discussion? I'll sidestep this by saying that for my purposes, reality is just a theorized model of what our senses perceive. If we don't trust our senses, then it's possible none of the things we perceive exist, but who cares? The things we perceive as our brain and body can be modeled to predict what we will…

First of all, thank you for your thorough replies, and not just to me. I feel you engage in and know philosophy way more than I do, though I know in philosophical circles this is not supposed to be a problem. My main issue is simply that you labeled "stupid" and "unjustified" a position that indisputably has been justified at length (clearly not to your satisfaction), and that (at the risk of sounding stupid myself) makes some sense, like so many incompatible positions in this area. I understand people in philosophy are prone to dismiss other views, either as stupid, stating "we must pass over in silence", or with some remark in between. Interestingly, and I'm sure with plenty of precedent, in Wittgenstein's case he came to dismiss parts of his own dismissal later on.

I won't get into the philosophical issues themselves (as I'm sure it can only hurt my case:), but you must surely be aware that when dealing with philosophical matters, your, my or anybody's agreement or dismissal of a viewpoint will never be universal, not even nearly universal. To wit, philosophers will still in this century go back and forth about the law of non-contradiction [1], one of the pillars of classical logic, and there is no sign of a slowdown. So, before you find "evidence (empirical or logical)" you may have to first wrestle about the very nature and demarcation of logic, with turtles all the way down.

Like you say, these issues can be fun to think about... or not (I'm not sure I can agree, certainly not for the prolonged periods of time that would make a person a philosopher), but in any event I have great appreciation for the people that get involved seriously in this discipline. Precisely for this reason, I take issue with labeling most any position carefully put forth as stupid, moronic, unjustified, etc. Even more so when nobody will ever get nowhere near unanimous consensus on any topic in philosophy, which can easily be contrasted with science or mathematics, where you do find it, at least for some issues, such as the (sigh... nearly) universally dismissed geocentric and flat-Earth models.

[1] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-law-of-non-contr...

Re: Medications that change who we are

#266

Post by crimsonalucard »

truth_be_told wrote: post #263
crimsonalucard wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When it comes to the Human Organism and Medicine, in spite of all our advances, things are quite complex, interrelated and not fully understood. And I have said, if you read carefully that some of it still works despite this. This is not the point, the point is the black box test still needs to work despite a garbage theory. ANd my point is, not only is the theory wrong, but there is very little overall scientific e…

There IS Scientific Research being done on aspects of Traditional Medicine. As an example, see the book "Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects".

I never said there wasn't but the definition of western medicine is scientific research meaning that it is the primary method on how such treatments are developed. Scientific research on eastern medicine is not only minuscule in number but backwards in creation.

By backwards I mean that treatments are made up adhoc based off of the faulty chi logic then tried adhoc on people without rigorous double blind experiments. Only in modern times are we actually running true scientific experiments on the treatments to verify them. This is basically like the FDA allowing some random person to distribute drugs touting some miracle cure only to run experimental tests after the drug is released. More than likely most eastern medicine treatments will fail tests as this majority failure rate is already what happens in western medicine during clinical trials.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#267

Post by kerkeslager »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #258
kerkeslager wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you'd actually read some Plato, as opposed to summaries, I'd be shocked if you could keep the same belief. I guess that means you're shocked.

You mean you've read some Plato? That's great. I'm most inspired by Phaedo, Gorgias and Timaeus. I think it's really important to stay attuned to the Pythagorean tradition, which seemed to be Plato's largest philosophical influence.

I've read The Republic. There wasn't anything in there that inspired me to read more of his work.

I think Plato and a lot of other early writers should be studied as historical figures, but we should also recognize that they were products of their time. Plato got it wrong more often than he got it right, not because he was stupid (he wasn't), but because he didn't have the benefits of thousands of years of previous thinkers to refine his ideas against. But we do have that benefit, and we should use it. We have the opportunity to stand on the shoulders of 21st century giants, and we miss that opportunity if we choose to stand on the shoulders of philosophers in the infancy of philosophy.

Even where ancient philosophers got things right in their theories of the mind, it was mostly just lucky guesses, without the benefit of modern neuroscience to validate those guesses. And neuroscience itself is in its infancy: our theory of the mind should be expanding every day as new discoveries are made.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#268

Post by kerkeslager »

vanniv wrote: post #194
kerkeslager wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, if you're saying that the mind is just the sequence of events occurring inside the brain, I certainly won't argue that the sequence of events doesn't exist. However, I don't think that's what most people mean when they say "mind", and using the word "mind" brings with it a lot of baggage, so I'd prefer to use a more descriptive term, like "sequence of events".

I think it is at this part of the debate where the ship of Theseus becomes interesting. The sequence of events in the brain are what make up the mind. But, if you replace the brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous, you have a new brain and the same mind. Or maybe just the same brain. Ship of Theseus and all that.

> The sequence of events in the brain are what make up the mind. But, if you replace the brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous, you have a new brain and the same mind.

Okay, but as far as I know, we've never replaced a brain while keeping the sequence of events continuous--I'm not even sure what actions one would take to do that.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#269

Post by MandieD »

heavyset_go wrote: post #198
dpark wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. Except it is. The brain is a part of your body and the two are tightly integrated. Yet the brain is also not simply another organ. If you lose half of your liver, your personality might change due to the trauma, but you will still be you. If you lose a kidney, you’ll live on as if littl…

> If you lose half of your liver, your personality might change due to the trauma, but you will still be you. If your thyroid is damaged, it effects who you are through depression, lethargy, anxiety and significant behavioral changes. If your adrenal glands are overactive, it effects who you are through chronic stress, psychological conditioning and panic. Disorders of the gut effect who you are similarly, as does re…

Except that non/under-functioning thyroid can usually easily and cheaply be replaced with levothyroxin. Anyone who feels that they’ve slowly been getting more tired and just can’t stop gaining weight should ask their doctor to get their T3 and T4 levels checked.

Finding out mine was underfunctioning and getting the levothyroxin dosage right made a ton of difference in my energy levels and stopped (but didn’t reverse) my weight gain.

Re: Medications that change who we are

#270

Post by elwell »

dm03514 wrote: post #97

When I was younger, I believed that my spirit and thoughts and personality were somehow separate from my body. Like something uniquely me that was put in my body to animate it. As I get older I began to think the opposite; that our thoughts, personalities, and everything original about us are a product of our physical composition and brain structure. I began to really notice this after reading Principles where Ray Da…

I think it goes both ways. The physical body affects the thoughts/emotions/personality, and the manifestations of the mind/fallacies/affects affect the physical body.

Regarding spirit, I still believe that that is somehow separate. It's one of the things though that I'm not sure can be proven in the physical realm (e.g., brain) to an undeniable degree.

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