A mother's advice - not my mother's.
Brief follow up on bitesplints; gender issues, stress and trauma are the focus of the post with an interview of Dr. Tara Swart highlighted following an interview by Megyn Kelly with Jennifer Bilek.
“Life is too short to spend your time with unhealthy people.” Megyn Kelly shared her mother’s advice in an interview with Jennifer Bilek regarding gender dysphoria. Megyn would not want her children spending time with children who have gender dysphoria as she considers it a mental illness. (This is a clip of a longer news show that had three guests, youtube) Spoiler - the full version is supporting Israel in there Hamas 9/11 response. I am not a fan of international war criminals whether they are named Israel, US, Ukraine, or Hamas.
So clearly, based on that advice I will not be spending time with Megyn Kelly or her mother as they seem to have a genetic lack of compassion and empathy.
**Post spoiler - there is a surprise ending to this post. Zip on ahead if that’s your style.
People may not realize what they are implying when they say something. If no one is to spend time with unhealthy people then what are we to do with them? Turn them into fertilizer? Does Megyn Kelly or her mother likely think they are ‘unhealthy’ or that if they were unhealthy that their time is up and they should head for the glue factory equivalent (where old horses go to die…).
Looking at it from a kinder and gentler place — protecting yourself from unnecessary stress is a health strategy. If there are people who are just complaining about their health and not trying to do anything about it, then you can’t really help them beyond listening to them vent occasionally and how much ‘venting’ of someone else’s excessive complaints is reasonable to take versus saying you are in hurry: Let’s talk later, good-bye!
I flipped open one of my functional health texts to 9. Adrenal Section and the biggest tip is to reduce stress. The book is Signs and Symptoms Analysis from a Functional Perspective; A Question by Question Guide, 2nd Ed., by Dicken Weatherby, N.D. (Bear Mountain Publishing, 2004).
Modern life has too many stressors and it is an accumulative load on the adrenal glands. Whether emotional, chemical or physical, any stress on the body is adding a toxic burden to clean up. We are used to thinking about stress as emotional - the boss, the spouse, the kids, the school, the taxes - worrying about any of that or about a physical problem is also adding to the load.
Dr. Weatherby talks a bit about reducing worrying. Worrying about little problems is causing stress and may be adding more damage to your adrenal glands as someone with a lot more stress in their life but they don’t worry about it as much. Worrying is creating your own emotional stress in addition to whatever stress the worry is. Emotional feelings are translated into chemical messages within the body. Worry is adding inflammatory chemicals instead of more healing oxytocin or vasopressin (created from positive feelings of love and social connection, not necessarily about lust or ‘sex’). Learning how to reduce your worrying can directly lead to less effect from stress on your body or adrenal glands.
Physical stressors might be too much strenuous exertion during work or exercise or sports or play, or chronic postural problems, or some other physical illness.
Chemical stressors might be caused by eating too much sugar or too much food or food with excitotoxin chemicals, or getting too hot or too cold, or having too much loud noise or EMF activating calcium channels and causing excitotoxicity.
To reduce as much of that as possible will help the adrenal glands be able to cope instead of getting overwhelmed. Adrenal fatigue is a phrase that is kind of disrespected by mainstream medical systems but there is a decline in function with chronic stress. Research by Hans Selye, MD with rats, found three phases to the adrenal response. Short term stress caused the glands to enlarge and have increased blood supply - they worked harder. Longer stress caused the glands to start to shrink. Chronic stress, maximal stress, caused adrenal exhaustion.
The adrenal response is supposed to be a short term protective response to help us get away from a dangerous situation and to lose less blood if wounded. Chronic stress of modern life is just not natural in the wild. There aren’t that many Saber Tooth tigers to run from every minute of the day, yet we are being bathed in EMF and loud noise throughout the day.
Constant worrying only adds to the background stress of modern life. Spending a lot of time with people who are constantly focused on worries might not be very healthy either. Thinking about what part of a problem you can do something about may help with letting go of worry/control over the things you really can’t change. What can you do something about? Focus on that and let go of worrying about whether the boss will be having a bad day or not. You’ll learn soon enough, why anticipate the trouble?
Sarah Crewe’s point about just observing the behavior of others can be a healthy one. So the headmistress picks on you - that makes her a not nice person but you don’t have to feel devalued by her devaluing of you. She is likely just trying to feel better about herself and her bad French speaking ability. When we compare and compete, we are not celebrating what we are good at or what the other person is good at. Diversity is valuable because it adds to a collective skill set.
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And a comment regarding the topic of gender dysphoria, autogynophilia, and Jennifer Bilek’s suggestion that we do away with the term gender altogether and use only sex — as gender isn’t real or gender dysphoria isn’t real or something. Jennifer states that the small number of trans-gender children is being used to help make the autogynophilia male adults more acceptable to the public. Very possibly true, sadly, but children still matter. This is a prenatal health and environmental health topic in reality - if it wasn’t being suppressed that endocrine disrupting agricultural and other chemicals are causative along with soy formula for baby boys maybe.
Gender is real, innate behavior patterns with similarities across many species including humans.
Socially constructed gender expectations are also real and may vary quite a bit among different cultures. Sexuality got a little freaky over time in Japan. Geisha girls were a thing - refined, delicate tea preparers, as beautiful as a flower, and untouchable? unfeeling? unmoving? It became kind of a belief pattern that females shouldn’t move during sex….sounds boring for both partners. Porn art there became weirdly focused on huge tentacles entering a female body. That might be d!ck envy showing up regarding other ethnic group’s average size. News to Know - size isn’t as important as the MOVEMENT.
More News to Know - theoretically at least - gentle repetitive motion likely is increasing our aether energy flow - our Chi. Any type of gentle pulsing motion might be increasing our energy flow. Bell Hands or forming an invisible ball of energy between both hands with a gentle snowball packing motion are examples. Knitting or crocheting have been found to have healthy stress reducing benefits. And dance, or pelvic thrusts, likely increase our energy flow.
“Twerking” is a dance move from somewhere in the African continent that is an adult mating ritual rather than a dance to teach young children. (And I honestly do find it hard to believe that that even needs to be said.) Society was supposedly scandalized when Miley Cyrus twerked, but she kept doing more extreme things, and now society thinks it is reasonable for twerking to be taught to school children. I had to look it up. I didn’t know what the word meant and don’t watch popstars so only heard about it in constant social media mentions.
Social media is increasing our inputs, and an overload is a stressor even if you have learned to not take things personally or worry too excessively about the horrible news of the day, or distracting shiny bauble to complain about. All the research reading that I do can become too much occasionally. One of the passages in the Tao helped me see that, ~ students can splinter their minds into a 10,000 fragments. Info overload can happen.
Autogynophilia, or more specifically older men identifying as women may have increased for similar reasons as the increase in gender dysphoria - endocrine disrupting chemicals may be feminizing baby boys and men reaching manopause age and masculinizing baby girls. Autogynophilia seems also to be fetish oriented or compeating for male attention as the most womanly woman. It is typical male gender pattern behavior to be very competitive. True gender dysphoria is placing the opposite gendered behavior patterns in the child and it is generally easily recognized at a young age. We need to accept that children are being affected, but also, that that doesn’t mean they need to be surgically and pharmaceutically altered to be ‘healthy’. They need love and acceptance of their uniqueness as themselves, however they want to be, but not with mutilated body parts and reduced lifespan from the meds.
Prenatally, gender dysphoria occurs when the hormones in the mother’s uterus are out of balance for the DNA of the infant. This is very real and studied biologic thing that exists across varied species and IS happening in wild species. We ARE poisoning the environment for all species. Sexual differences in anatomy shape are also becoming more common - male parts shrinking in average size is common and the distance between parts is shrinking.
“EDCs that have an estrogenic or antiandrogenic activity will impact the testis, leading to their abnormal development and a possible feminization in male organisms, while androgenic EDCs will cause masculinization in female organisms by influencing female gonads [58,60,61,62].” (Rojas-Hucks, et al., 2022)
Boy babies are supposed to have a little extra testosterone floating around while female babies can receive the mother’s normal balance of female hormones. The sex hormones in the uterus cause changes in the baby’s brain that promote the instinctual gender behavior patterns. The idea that women can’t move during sex (or they are bad woman or something) would not be an innate instinct for anyone. That would be instilled later as a social expectation for well behaved females who hope for a good marriage’.
Stress coping check: Can we control rich men who want to dress as women and call themselves women? Not easily.
Do we have to be mean (not let your child play with them) to children who are truly gender dysphoric? No, but it might be an individual question rather than an always or never question.
Another voice on the topic of stress effects on the body - and the point that the negative stress chemicals may be spreading to other people and making them feel worse too. No.1 Neuroscientist: Stress Leaks Through Skin, Is Contagious & Gives You Belly Fat!- Dr. Tara Swart, Interview by Diary of a CEO (Youtube)
The stress level of leaders can affect the rest of the workers, even if the person tries to hide that they are stressed because the cortisol being produced is being shared through exosomes, like sex pheromones are spread. The excess cortisol adds to stubborn belly fat that won’t come off easily with a diet or exercise, while the extra stress is still happening. Sweaty exercise can help remove cortisol in the sweat. Venting - talking or writing about your thoughts and worries can help let them go. (Youtube)
Having a Worry Jar is a tip that may help. Have a worry? Write it down, put it in the jar. Set it aside to look through later. Schedule 15 minutes to look through your Worry Jar later and maybe they will seem minor by that time, or they still exist so leave the slip in the Jar until the next scheduled time to look at your Worries.
Dr. Swart includes a major theme - the idea that we are in spiritual crisis and CoV Lockdown in some ways may have helped us see it at least. More people are aware of how important spending some time in nature is and having a sense of purpose greater than themselves - whether helping a neighbor or sharing education or pulling invasive plants and picking up litter.
The interview touches on the impact of porn on society - Dr. Swart thinks it has increased the divide between sexes and created false expectations for both men and women about sex and relationships.
Dr. Swart does limit who she spends a lot of time with - choosing her tribe. How people treat each other is what she looks at. We try to be with people who are at a similar level of development as we presently are at. A relationship tends to grow between people who are at similar stages of spiritual growth or similar places on the Maslow hierarchy and then if the partners don’t grow at the same pace, the relationship may no longer work.
Doing the same job all your life may leave your brain at a plateau of development. Learning different new skills or a second language can help the brain develop or improve in other ways too. It puts the brain in a healthy growing mode - synaptic plasticity refers to nerves learning or forgetting connections between them. We know the way home so well we can space out on the drive home - our nerves know the way. But then we moved! The nerves need to stop using the old pattern and they eventually dissolve and new pathways are built as we repeatedly find our way to the new home. Before the patterns have fully changed you may find yourself outside the old address because you had spaced out and taken the old turns on the roadway.
Steps towards changing your brain pathways, paraphrased from the host Steven’s and Dr. Swart’s discussion:
Recognize the behavior pattern you want to change. — See what you doing, we aren’t always fully aware of routine habits.
Focus on the negatives or reason that you want to make the change to help motivate you to stick with working on building new habits.
Practice the new pattern that you want to build as much as possible
Dr. Swart adds that it can help to have accountability to your self, or having a friend or counselor or family member you share your goal with. (Youtube)
Steven asks about grief, Dr. Swart’s response: Types of grief
Loss of sense of self
Loss of a relationship
Loss of a family member
Dr. Swart recommends supporting and allowing people to grieve in the way they need to. Avoiding the painful emotions doesn’t help. They need to processed to heal and move on. She doesn’t talk more about the sense of self specifically.
Dr. Swart’s tips to improve neuroplasticity/health of the brain
Sleep well, average is 8 1/4 hours which means be in bed about 9 hours to achieve that.
Having a routine wake and sleep time seems to help, staying within about an hour range.
Eat more colorful produce, aiming for 30 plant foods per week.
Intermittent fasting may help, but safely, not extreme.
Moderate or even gentle exercise helps. Strenuous exercise is adding cortisol spikes.
Change the language in your mind about your own thoughts or self. We believe what is repeated, so stop telling yourself old lies from childhood or from others or that you thought were true but aren’t really. Tell yourself messages that set you up to get out there and do what you need to do. (Youtube)
I will add adequate water/hydration status is important for the brain to be able to clean itself at night too.
The interview is wide ranging as Dr. Tara Swart (@TaraSwart) answers questions from Steven Bartlett (@StevenBartlett). She is very helpful and his discussion is interesting and he provides good summary statements.
She has a podcast called Reinvent Yourself with Dr. Tara (taraswart.com).
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Brief bruxism update - a reply gives a dental horror story regarding poorly made bitesplints or nightguards that don’t cover all of the teeth at the back of the mouth - long term use may leave those back teeth having grown larger and then your bite is totally messed up. Strongly worded recommendation to only go to an orthodontist for bite gear and that dentists should not be allowed to make them at all. Thanks.
I did try to wear the NightGuard last night and it didn’t feel too big but did leave the back teeth uncovered — but I removed it because I wasn’t having an over-acidic crampy bad night and the silicon squeezes too tightly. My gums started to throb slightly and kept me awake. If I was having a bad crampy night then it would probably help the clenching pain more than cause a squeezed feeling.
I really don’t clench my teeth that often anymore, unless a bad night, and I haven’t noticed grinding since I was young. When a healthcare professional is absolutely positive they know more about your life than you do, then it is a good idea to seek another opinion rather than to dopamine excess believe their nocebo messaging. We can think ourselves sicker or better, so why not go for better? I highly recommend the Tara Swart interview - she is very helpful and Steven is a good interviewer. (Youtube) I summarized some good points but there were lots more.
TMJ pain remained a problem for me even after using the 1985 bitesplint but a chiropractor took time on my neck over months to modify an overstretched problem left from birth trauma. My neck didn’t have a normal curve. I shrank an inch after the work was done and the TMJ jaw pain was no longer much of a problem, yeah! I had been a forceps baby, so my neck was pulled on during delivery.
Health isn’t easy, but it is worth it.
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Returning to the Megyn Kelly’s mother quote, sadly it turns out that she is not really wrong. Dr. Swart made it clear that cortisol is spread from stressed people to others at levels that can cause stubborn abdominal weight gain in the other people. Dr. Swart worked with business CEOs or other executive focused courses. She shared that a funny comment was made at one office building when she shared the cortisol information. A woman blurted out, ~ You/the boss are making me fat. Tara said there was dead silence, it was clear everyone recognized the statement was true - they had a stressed out boss who stressed out everyone else.
This makes nurses and other caregivers real heroes, and/or really nice people that see nurturing as their purpose and a joy instead of a bad stressor that is making them sicker too.
My own take home points - reduce my stress level and don’t take aging for granted (point in the video that I didn’t summarize here - it really is worth watching. (Youtube)
Disclaimer: This information is being provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of Fair Use and is not intended to provide individual health care guidance.