By: jana
[2002-04-17]
Another Japan Story
In my ear? Excuse me, but what the fuck??
A year or so ago, I was living in Japan as an exchange student. Due
mostly to trading sleep for drinking, I caught a horrible cold. While
the fever dreams were lovely, the ear infection I ended up suffering
through was not. I mean sure, we got them all the time when we were
four, but we were stronger then. Also, it was okay to lie on the couch
and bawl back then.
So
one night last May, I was in a meeting at school and I got a strange
sensation in my left ear. I thought, "Ow. That hurts." On the train
ride home, I thought to myself, "Ow. That REALLY REALLY hurts." You see
where this is going. By the time I got home, I had decided it was time
to see a doctor. Except the hospital was closed. My host parents
decided to take me to see an ear doctor first thing in the morning.
Meanwhile, I decided to try and get some sleep. Hah! Oh the pain. So I
did what any self-respecting college student does when sick. I called
my Daddy. I think the conversation when something like, "Da-deeee! It
huuuurts!"
Dad recalled the ear infections of my youth and
instructed me to get something warm to lay my ear on. My host mother
suggested we use (and I wish I could remember the name of this stuff)
this gelatinous food product that looks (and tastes!) like rubber
tires. It makes a great heat pack - it was still warm in the morning.
God, I hope no one ate it later, considering the ooze that my ear
produced overnight.
Anyway, in the morning my host father
(who, I should add, rarely speaks and knows absolutely no English) and
I went to the ear doctor. A phone call had determined that the doctor
did not speak English. That was fine with me though. I had been to see
a doctor during the winter with a pulled muscle, and had done just fine
in Japanese. I was probably even a little full of myself.
I
handed the nurse my insurance card, I waited patiently in the waiting
area. Everything was fine until I went back to the examining room.
I
can't really do this place justice with words - everything was
stainless steel. There were all sorts of creepy instruments and these
huge vats of pink stuff that I HOPED was some sort of disinfectant,
even though the vats didn't have lids. It reminded me of this awful
horror movie I saw maybe ten years ago called "Dr. Giggles." So I got a
little nervous.
The doctor looked 70. Not that I should make
judgments, or that I could really see much of his face. He was wearing
a very thick cotton mask. He asked me a question. More cause for worry
- I couldn't understand a thing he said. So much for my "I can do it
myself" ego. The guy was speaking through a mask and I was partially
deaf. Plus old Japanese men mumble. I was screwed.
Thinking I
was an idiot, the doctor directed the questioning at my host father.
That is to say, the doctor quit looking in my direction entirely. My
security level did not increase with the realization that I was being
treated by a scary old man who pretends I'm not there.
He
asks my host father how long the ear has been hurting, whether I've
been sick. Like I said, my host father wasn't so social, so I was glad
we had been over all of this stuff the night before. Still, I felt like
I could have answered the questions, had he directed any of them at me:
"So how long has it been bothering her?"
"Since last night."
"Has she been sick?"
"Yes, she's had a cold for a couple of weeks."
and then the kicker:
"Any chance she could be pregnant?"
In my ear?! Excuse me, but what the fuck?
Also,
slightly more embarrassing to me, what can my host father be thinking?
I mean, the question was obviously directed at him. He doesn't
necessarily have a clue what I've been up to. I could be screwing all
of greater Tokyo for all he knows. But my host father simply said, "Uh,
no."
They moved on to questions about allergies, etc., that my
host father couldn't answer, so the nurse came in and repeated (still
in Japanese) everything the doctor said into my good ear so I could
understand. I must note that during this time the doctor directed the
questions at the nurse, not me.
Finally he looked in my ear.
"She's
injured herself," he said. "You know sometimes girls will clean their
ears out with bobby pins or guys will use matches. She's gone and
scratched herself. I'll have to clean it out and put some medicine on
it."
Bobby pins? I don't think I know anyone quite that dumb.
And I was really, really sure I hadn't done anything like that to
myself. Really, don't you think I would have noticed at the time? "My,
I seem to have pierced my eardrum. What a pleasant sensation..."
So
he sits my head in this (honest to god) vise, and the nurse holds me
in. Automatically here, we have to insert an "OH FUCK." I tried to stay
calm, really I did. Then he takes this wire that must be a foot long,
puts something on one end and holds the other. He points the wire at my
ear and brings it closer...
"This man is going to drive that
thing into my brain!" Honestly, that wire was long enough to have gone
in one ear and out the other. I couldn't take it anymore. I didn't
trust that man at all. So...
I cried. That's right. I cried
like a two-year-old. I don't ever recall doing that at the doctor's
office as a child, but there I was. How embarrassing.
Naturally,
the doctor was a bit unnerved by this development. I tried to tell them
I'd be fine in a second, but no one was listening to me. The doctor,
the nurse and my host father hold a little conference in the corner. I
can only make out my host father saying, "Well, she refuses to go to
the hospital when she has a cold - Maybe she's afraid of doctors..." I
was so embarrassed.
After a moment, my host father says, "Come on, let's go."
"I'm really fine."
"Come on, Jana."
"But
I didn't get any medicine." No one had been listening to me all
morning. I had to use all my strength not to stomp my feet and throw a
temper tantrum. I really wanted the pain to go away. I wanted drugs.
"But -" I said again.
"Come on, we're leaving."
Defeated, I got in the car with my host father and drove home.
From
the house, we called the coordinator for my exchange program. After my
host father talked to her (I didn't hear their conversation) I got on
the line. "It was so scary!" I said, "But I'm so embarrassed..."
"Don't
worry about it," she said, "your host father said the doctor was really
strange, even to a Japanese person..." Well, at least I wasn't the only
one who thought the guy was a quack.
Unfortunately, I was
still in pain. My host father tried to make me feel better by showing
me how he sometimes cleaned his ears out with matches.
I'll
spare you the details, but the next day I spent an hour in the pouring
rain searching for an ear doctor near campus. (Note: Addresses in Japan
do not make any sense.) Finally, I got in to see a doctor. He looked at
my ear:
"Yep, you've got an ear infection," he said. "Hurts, doesn't it?"
One of my sisters, her husband used to be a math teacher, but for his mid-life crisis, he decided that he wanted to be a motorcycle racer, so he started selling Yamahas so he could get one of their factory racers. That went well for a few years, until he ran through a stack of hay bales at 200 mph and my sister insisted that he quit the racing part; he was numb down one side for a couple of days, but nothing was broken, he routinely sanded off his boot toes on the turns. He kept on selling Yamahas, and sold more than anyone else on the East Coast, so Yamaha gave him prizes, which consisted of Japanese dolls: geishas, samuri, and kabuki dolls, not small ones, but big spiffy dolls about a meter tall. They are nice, and look all handmade, with wonderfully painted faces, especially the kabuki dolls. I want to learn more about the noh theater. Someone gave me a koto, but I never learned to play it very well.
when my grandfather has ear trouble my grandma pours peroxide in his ear. no one else finds this little home remedy strange but me.
Re: the connection between pregnancy and the ear. This is almost certainly related to the US occupation of Japan post-WWII, and a misunderstanding of the significance of the epic Western tale of "There once was a man from Nantucket".
Re: peroxide.
Oxygen therapy takes on many forms, but one of the more intriguing methodologies involves hydrogen peroxide and ozone. The basic premise is this: healthy cells have excellent defenses against free radicals at the cell membrane, whereas the cells we don't want (bacteria / virii / cancer cells), don't. Therefore, if you can put
more free radicals in your system, it will attack the stuff you don't want hanging around, while leaving your healthy cells unscathed.
Free radicals are molecules which have two interesting properties: they'll bond with damn near anything, and when they bond with something, another free radical will be produced in the process (unless two free radicals bond with each other, in which case you get a stable molecule). The anti-free-radical talk you'll hear at GNC is based on an invalid premise: that more free radicals in your blood means more free radicals in your cell nuclei, messing up your DNA. Doesn't work that way, though, because again, your cell membranes will keep the free radicals out.
A lone oxygen atom is an example of a free radical. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is basically water with a free radical in tow, and ozone (O3) is basically an oxygen molecule (O2, like in the air) with a free radical in tow. When they enter your body, the free radicals dislodge and do their stuff, playing hob with anything that doesn't have defenses -- which, again, would be the cells you wish would go away.
If you know someone with cancer or with AIDS or whatever, and you'd like to help them, ozone therapy might be a real good place to start. It's not widely practiced, and in some states it's illegal (!), but for my money it's the best purely-material cure for what ails ya.
I can't decide which hurts the ears more but I do know that ear infections die out more quickly.
When my ear itches, I use the sword from the samuri doll to scratch it (see above). I'd like to know what that food stuff was that they sent you to bed with that tastes like tires.
OUCH! Consider Britney Spears TAKEN DOWN!
I read once about someone getting their ears cleaned and the cleaner guy used peroxide to dissolve the earwax. It was a weird story.
I had a similar experience last fall when I was in Vancouver on business... when I flew in Monday morning, I was just starting to come down with a cold. By Tuesday night, I was experiencing probably the worst head cold of my life... besides the incredibly stuffy head, headaches and fatigue, both my hearing and my ears themselves felt like there was water in them, like I had just been swimming or something. By Thursday morning I was feeling alot better, but my ears still had the wierd stuffiness... I was supposed to fly out that night, but myself and my co-workers were suspecting I had an ear infection, which would mean no flying. So I go to a tiny clinic in a nearby mall that afternoon to see a doctor. The doctor who checked me out was exactly the kind of doctor I like: a total smartass/wiseguy. Sure enough, he tells me I've got an ear infection, and a bad one at that.
"It's red as a firetruck in there," he says, comparing the colour to that of some medical poster on the wall.
I tell him I'm supposed to be on a plane in a couple hours... he says I absolutely should not be flying with an ear infection, especially one this bad.
"I *absolutely* can't fly?" I ask, hoping it's one of those "well, you really shouldn't, but you still could if you really have to" things.
"Well, you could... but it's possible your eardrum could rupture from the pressure, causing pus to trickle down your neck onto the collar of that nice leather jacket you're wearing."
"Hmm... that's bad, right?"
"Yeah."
So to make a long story short, he gives me a writ for some pennicillin, and I cancel my flight and book a train ticket, because I've never taken the train before, and I'm thinking it'll be cooler and more comfortable than 15-16 hours on a Greyhound. For some reason, I also assumed the train would be faster... a train has no traffic and shit to deal with right? Right... just engine failure. Twenty-eight fucking hours later, I'm finally able to drag my wilted (and somewhat sore) carcass off this shakey metal tube. Nice scenery, though.
Dead interested in the peroxide/ozone bit, but I have a question. You say it's good for AIDS, but that virus lives in the bloodstream in large part... How the hell do you get peroxide into your bloodstream? Drink it? Would it be digested? Same with ozone. Would your lungs process it? If that were the case, wouldn't we be able to breathe ozone? (I don't *think* we can, but I'm no expert. It seems like that would be the equivalent of drinking heavy water.)
When you look at the eustachian tube and the other parts of the ear, it's a damned wonder that more things don't go wrong with it. I wonder why they glomp eye, ear, nose, and throat together as a specialty; it would seem that although they are sort of proximate, they would each warrant a specialist. Maybe there are secret passage ways interconnecting these bits.
Aye, there's the rub with hydrogen peroxide: the options for getting it into your system are not necessarily pleasant. You can dilute it and drink it; I forget the formula (it's been a while since I trusted peroxide more than breathing exercises), but think the recommended dilution is 0.1%. Alas, it gets to tasting icky, and it can make your innards feel all tingly, in a not-necessarily-pleasant way.
Ozone is supposed to be lots more potent, but the options are trickier ... they speak of vaginal insufflation (I don't know what that is but I'll pass on it), and letting your blood pass through a gizmo that infuses ozone into your blood. So it involves IVs and suchlike, which I admit is daunting.
Now, that having been said, I've heard tales of ozone working wonders. I'm about two handshakes away from someone who, I'm told, was supposed to have died from AIDS years ago, and he's living a basically normal life. He has to get periodic treatments, since AIDS tends to hide inside of cells (and is thus protected by the cell membrane), but the ozone keeps him basically asymptomatic.
I'd check
www.oxytherapy.com and see what they have to say -- I haven't kept up with this stuff.
It's amazing that there's this a way to negate the effects of AIDS and cancer (namely the dying effect) and yet millions of people are still dying anyway.
I guess they just haven't heard about it.
Maybe if they practiced this, plus breathing exercises, and, hell, let's throw in chelation therapy and a few herbal remedies, they could rise to the level of some sort of super-human.
Jana, are you sure the doctor wasn't trying to play the old "Hertz donut?" joke on you, and it just wasn't translated into Japanese correctly?
Yeah, it's even more amazing that it's illegal for doctors to recommend ozone as a treatment for things (in most states, anyway). If there's anything that makes me believe that the medical establishment would rather see people die than lose money, it's the way oxygen therapy is marginalized.
BTW, when Reagan had his problems with polyps, he went to Germany, where part of his regimen was -- you guessed it -- oxygen therapy.
Yes they are all connected by secret passages. The Eustachian tube you mentioned connects the ear to the nasopharynx, the top of the throat where it hits the nose. That's why opening your mouth while flying gets rid of earache; it opens up that tube and relieves the pressure. The face is pretty much riddled with passageways and caverns (the sinuses). But the only relationship the eyes have with the nose and throat is that they are located on the head. But eye medicine and ear, nose, throat medicine are usually different specialties.
... while blind faith is pretty foolish, blind skepticism is even moreso.
It's not blind skepticism. It's just reasonable doubt that there's some super-cure for the symptoms of something as widespread as AIDS and cancer and hardly anyone seems to know about.
I'm not saying there's no benefits to ozone therapy or rhythmic breathing or St. John's Ginkocenea Voodoo Bullshit Zinger or what have you. I'm just saying that I don't think it'd be wise to build up the confidence of your loved one who's dying of AIDS or cancer -- or even your own confidence -- by telling them you're going to give them some great new therapy you heard about on a web board by some guy who uses such medical phrases as "internal disharmony." I mean why not promise them a pony while you're at it? They're probably not disappointed enough that they're just dying.
Then if it's not blind skepticism ... please note that I suggested a person exploring this stuff for himself. I posted a link to the Oxytherapy web site, which is there if a person cares to read it and make up his own mind. Likewise, where disharmony and so forth are concerned, I invited the reader to try it and see if it makes a difference.
Maybe I'm right about this stuff. Maybe I'm wrong. But if reading things and trying simple techniques for yourself are too much for you to handle, then dude, I can't help you.
The ozone/AIDS story of Lou's wasn't about curing AIDS, just keeping it at bay. Bluberries staving off AIDS at least made it into the papers a while back (i.e., potential mainstream acceptance): who knows how effective they really are, but if I get AIDS, fuck if my mom isn't baking me blueberry muffins until I die of extreme obesity.
Also also, until Jamieson Labratories starts using "I'm not really a doctor, but I play one on TV" ads, I'd just as soon believe in not-so-alternative-anymore medicine as "normal" medicine--at least the former is cheaper, and I can pronounce the ingredients. (Not that I really take any medicine anyway--I don't have secret tactics like Lou, I just suffer; I've had a stuffed nose since 1996 (probably exacerbated by my reticence to dust).) Besides, everybody knows the established medical community is all about the benjamins: an ND can't order blood tests because the MDs won't grant them the proper licensing as that would take away their business.
Don't infer I'm being an apologist for naturopathy; but the universe is infinitely large, so I'll grant that there must be room for everything, to one degree or another--yes, even room for Lou and Halcyon. So there's
this and whatever else you decide to look into, if anything. As Levar Burton said, "But don't take my word for it." Healthy skepticism leads to defensible belief.
The last time I had an ear infection the doctor pumped water into my ears to flood them. It hurt more than the infection, and I cried the whole time. But I was like eight.
Jana, why did you have an ear infection? I wasn't much older than eight years old when I had my last one. Did you swim in raw sewage? ("I love it!") Did you stick dirt in there? Were you snorting things? Adults just don't usually.. I mean, you don't have tubes or anything, right?
Food sensitivities and sugar consumption are the most common cause of otitis media. Sugar suppresses cellular immunity and gives bacteria the edge they need to gain a foothold. 80% of food allergies are delayed and immune-complex mediated.
A good article, thanks! I'm all for exploring the different sides of an issue.
On the Oxytherapy site, I can find references to studies that produced very different results than the Quackwatch ones -- where ozone seems to have allowed at least some AIDS patients to live long beyond their predicted lifespans. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to say whether the Oxytherapy site or the QuackWatch site is "more right".
It seems to me that with too much oxygen, things burn too fast; and with too little oxygen, the process stops. There's nothing quite like a smokey fire, beads, rattles, skulls, animal entrails, and some good dancing around and whooping and chanting to establish a salubrious balance.
What is with you people? I was reading your commments and shaking my head, until I read Sean's comments. Sean, you have restored my faith in the younger generation. Skepticism, my religion of choice.
Hi Mom,
With your nursing experience, can you tell me if science has yet come up with any hard explanations as to any of the following:
- Why mood (good or ill) can influence how quickly one recovers from illness, if at all? (If endorphins are the answer, has science mapped out the chain of events that go from "endorphins" to "healing"?)
- Why remaining conscious makes any difference when a person has sustained a trauma? (A hard answer on this one please, no vague talk about how it "probably" has something to do with sustained neural activity, because "probably" means "it's just guesswork".)
- The placebo effect?
I could be mistaken, but I believe those are all cases where modern medicine begrudgingly admits a connection between mind and body, under its breath, even if it is at a loss for how the two are connected.
Skepticism is a good religion of choice, until it dulls one's ability to consider other possibilities. Then it's just another opiate. I find that an open mind, that is willing to try alternate possibilities and reject the ones that don't seem to work, is a lot healthier.
Most privately practicing doctors are incompetent shysters and most hospital doctors are overworked (and may or may not be competent). My advice would be avoid any medicine that's not proven (by many years on the market, not in pre-marketing tests) and try not to let the ambulance take you to a hospital in a poor neighborhood (Rancocas Valley in Riverside, NJ for example).
is not to say that I've any faith in alternative medicine. If I were
Piers Anthony I would pun together nihilistic and holistic, but we can all be glad I'm not.
"Blind skepticism" is not so bad as you make it out to be. It's simply the practice of not believing something until proof is seen. It's the same as with anything, say, like religion. I don't have to defend my atheism, rather, the religious person has to prove that the unseen higher power does exist.
And we don't all have time to contract AIDS and then drink peroxide. I volunteer Lou to try it out.
Blind skepticism means not keeping your eyes open to possibilities -- to assume that, since you didn't know about something already, it likely isn't true. Unless it's a field that you have considerable expertise in already, blind skepticism is very clearly a logically indefensible stance.
I've never bothered to contract AIDS, nor do I care to. However, I have used hydrogen peroxide to stop colds in their tracks -- one time, apparently, within ten minutes of drinking the stuff. I bothered to do the experimenting before posting about these things, such experimenting as I could reasonably do at any rate. I'd say that puts me ahead of everyone here, with the possible exception of Mom and her nursing experience.
Of course, since medical science still doesn't have anything approaching a cure to everyday colds, I reserve the right to remain skeptical about its almighty authority. As Chris Rock once observed, medicine hasn't really cured anything since polio. I give medical science credit for the many things it has done well, but it has more or less hit a wall.
I once cured a boner in ten minutes with masturbation
aspcp - no, I wasn't swimming in raw sewage, although I'm sure it would be easy to find a nice sewage-y spot in Japan. I was just really sick for a good long time. The ear infection wasn't even the last of it. I had strep-like sypmtoms after that. Stupid weak Japanese antibiotics.
alptraum - the peroxide in the ear sounds unpleasant. It might work on an infection that was on the outside, but some ear infections are on the inside of your eardrum. I'm not sure it would get through to kill those bugs. Nor would I want to pour peroxide into my brain.
sean - I'm pretty sure the "good" doctor wasn't making a pun. He said "chujien, ne. itai, ne" as if you wanted a transcription.
Lou, et al. - free radicals are Bad For You. Why the hell do you think you get cancer in the first place?
Hence the skepticizm.
also - anyone ever hear of people cleaning out their ears with bobby pins? I mean, am I the only one who was surprised by that?
can't hear you, cleaing out ears with drywall screws over here. but it's ok, i dipped them in hydrogen peroxide first.
So far I have taken three different treatments for a non-infected ear with a buildup of wax. The first one was flushing with water when I was 16 or so. It causes a plug of wax to fall out, if done properly. If not, it just pushes it in more. Fortunately, my wax (and scab, since I went to a lot more concerts then) was easily removed.
A few months ago, I had a plug of earwax removed by my former doctor (while she was checking to make sure the airbag I'd taken to the chest the previous day hadn't dislodged my heart or something) with what looked like a dental plaque-scraping tool. She said there was no chance of the wax being pushed in this way, though I was a bit worried about her popping my eardrum.
At various times, I've poured hydrogen peroxide in my ears to loosen earwax. It doesn't destroy it, but it has some kind of fizzing effect. Doesn't remove much wax, though.
"In the 18th century there was no such thing! Nobody'd ever imagined such a thing--no sane person anyway. Along comes this doctor... Semmelweiss, I think. He tries to convince people... other doctors mostly...that there are these teeny tiny invisible 'bad things' called germs that get into your body and make you... sick! He's trying to get doctors to wash their hands. What is this guy... crazy? Teeny tiny invisible whaddayou call 'em?... 'germs'! So cut to the 20th century! Last week in fact, right before I got dragged into this hellhole. I order a burger in this fast food joint. The waiter drops it on the floor. He picks it up, wipes it off, hands it to me... like it was all okay. 'What about the germs?' I say. He goes, 'I don't believe in germs. Germs are just a plot they made up so they can sell you disinfectants and soap!' Now, he's crazy, right?"
The point of skepticism isn't to keep everything at a distance, coming up with clever spoof names and attacks on improperly inferred arguments to indicate a refusal of potential acceptance, but to gather enough tenable information to make a proper decision in the end. A reticence to fairly consider "St. John's Ginkocenea Voodoo Bullshit Zinger" is pretty Eurocentric: an assumption I could make, using Sean and Mom as an example, is that they put more faith in Western medicine than naturopathy--probably because they have had much more positive experiences with it; probably because they don't have an equal amount of experience with the alternative.
Infer what you want about my position, knowing that skepticism is my religion of choice as well (bearing in mind Kierkegaard's advice). Hopefully the Chinese research into Eastern medicine that's gonna follow the now ended 2002 Human Genome Meeting will start to answer some questions.
So there.
"But the only relationship the eyes have with the nose and throat is that they are located on the head."
there are those people who can squirt milk out of the corners of their eyes, so there must be some connection to at least the eye rectums or tear holes or whatever the technical term is. and yes, i saw it on letterman.
I was going to mention that bit about some people squirting milk out of their eyes, but I got distracted thinking about a two-hour film on tears that I saw. One weird thing was that seagulls tears are very salty because they, like some other critters, eliminate excess salt by tearing; also, the extra salt keeps their eyes from freezing in cold weather. Also about eye milk, the body produces lactic acid from muscle activity, and this makes people feel tired and depressed, but some of the lactic acid and these lactic metabolites are excreted through tearing. Lactic acid is a hygroscopic organic acid C[3]H[6]O[3] present normally in tissue, but it seems that muscles might recycle faster and one feels more juiced if these levels are altered. My point is that dairy products seem to naturally come out the eyes, as well as by the old milk through the nose trick.
Jana, you seem to be saying that cancer comes from free radicals. Medical science has not shown this to be the case. It makes for nice ads at GNC, as they try to sell their snake oil, but "common knowledge" ain't always what it's cracked up to be.
The fact is (and it is a fact), cancer has science stumped. Scientists don't know why one person gets breast cancer and the other doesn't. They're trying to track down this gene or that, this dietary factor or that, and so on. But medical science still doesn't know.
Some stuff causes cancer, I can see that if binding sites are blocked, it might provide a resistance to rampant cell dysfunction. There seems to be an increase in non-Hodgkins lymphoma, and I would speculate that it is due mostly to environmantal toxins. I don't think that plastic plumbing is a good source of water, but traditional copper and lead are not so good either. Also, there seem to be many kinds of cancer, so I'm not sure that it makes much sense to discuss cancer in general, other than it's not a good thing. Over time, the cellular DNA seems to deteriorate and loose the ability to replicate accurately; it might be that nanomedicine will develope a gene therapy for this in the future, as well as a simple mechanical method of cancer therapy and prevention. I have supreme faith in those little robots.
Cheap smack cures colds, I guess, because lordy lordy, I sure can't feel them symptoms anymore.
apparently Asian earwax is notoriously harder or sticker than western earwax, instead of Q-tips a lot of Japanese use ear picks to scrape their ears clean, so a bobby pin would theoretically be a quick and useful substitute. they're called mimikaki and they come in all sorts of goofy Hello Kitty sort of styles.
One Tibetan earpick is made of very pure silver, and looks like a tiny icecream scoop with two skulls; good for a toot spoon.
Has anyone heard that tears are saltier when you're sad? Have you done any experiments to that effect? How did you measure sadness?
That's sort of what I was trying to get at, that tears contain lactic acid stuff that is eliminated by tearing. Evidently there was some research on antidepressants that specifically counter this stuff, kind of like reverse Gatorade. I don't know how they would measure a subjective state, and just chemical content of tearing might not be a 100% indicator either as tolerances might vary. But seagulls don't sweat, so they eliminate excess salt by tearing; apparently people eliminate various chemicals through tearing besides salt.
I am considering a pictorial scale, where the subject chooses the image that best represents his/her current sorrow:
level 1
level 2
level 3
level 4
I'm not sure that the placebo effect holds for junkies. I've studied some on suggestibility; the studies say that about 60% of people have a high level of primary suggestibility, and about 15% have a high level of secondary suggestibility (primary suggestibility is like, "Do this." and secondary suggestibility is like "Do this because________(insert weak argument here)). The scalar pictures, I sort of relate to a couple of them, but there are only four choices, and I'm not truncating my psychic life to make it easy for some clinician or marketing maven, especially if I get choices like McDonalds or Burger King. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco.
The pictures were sort of funny!
You're right. 4 levels does not allow for the complexity of human emotion. I think instead I will ask for a number... "How many puppies would it take to make you feel better?" This allows for more varied responses and efficiently disregards subjective implications (i.e., what you would do with the puppies if you had them).
how anticlimactic to end this thread with a broken link...
Please try the link on the previous page for, "What would I do with puppies," it seems to be working again. I can't account for the vagaries of the Canadian internet.
I have been running a new Free Radical Treatment that has had an hundred percent sucess rate with special machines that fill your blood with Carbon Monoxide, you can guarantee that 100% of all things in your blood have been killed.
So far patients usually respond by relaxing and falling into a deep sleep to our treatments, they like it so much its usually hard to get them to leave, but we find if we leave them out the back by the bins they are usually gone by morning.
The best thing is it is 100% effective not one of our patients has ever come back. We have cured people with AIDS, Cancer, Genital Herpes, the treatment has no bounds sign up today!
We are also piloting treatments which flood the body with Chlorine and Flourine Free Radicals, and so far the studys have shown great sucess, get in at the beginning of the treatment that will make you live forever.
i think you're talking about konnyaku. was it grey with little black dots in it? it comes packaged in water and is refrigerated?
WTF??? pregant? why jap. people are so retarded?
