...respecting and HONORING the science when it comes to my health. Even when it's inconvenient. That means maintaining a healthy Body Mass Index, avoiding alcohol/tobacco & promiscuous unprotected sex, staying up to date on all my necessary vaccines, engaging in good personal hygiene including universal precautions during contagious outbreaks, practicing harm reduction with my drugs of choice & getting at least 8 hours of sleep. To name a few.
If there's one thing I can't stand it's hypocrisy & double standards. In this age of catchy sound bites like "follow the science!," which has been pushed particularly hard by liberals, I still see far too much denialism when it comes to things like the "body positivity/fat acceptance movement" & cultural acceptance of alcohol abuse. Basically, everyone wants to push "the science" until it's THEIR vice or pet pseudoscientific belief that's under the scientific microscope.
Recall a few years back when the FDA encouraged women of childbearing age who weren't on birth control to avoid ingesting any alcohol lest they fall pregnant & damage their fetus without realizing it (around 50% of all pregnancies are unplanned)--the backlash was unreal. Cries of sexism & misogyny drowned out the important message that yes, ethanol is the single worst intoxicant that can be consumed during pregnancy (no other drug has its own fetal "syndrome"), and the 1st trimester is the worst time it can be consumed (note that there's no safe time, type or amount of alcohol during pregnancy). Not very "pro-science" & certainly not a good look in the responsibility/maturity department.
Unless you agree to get an abortion if you should have an unplanned pregnancy after drinking, this applies to you. Take it up with biology & the toxic nature of alcohol. Not infertile, using contraception correctly 100% of the time or committed to terminating a pregnancy should you end up drinking before you know you're pregnant? Then you're making a conscious choice to inflict harm on your unborn baby. A "baby" I'd normally refer to as a clump of cells, except that you're planning to carry it to term which means it's a future human & therefore deserving of a healthy prenatal environment. Sentencing a child to a lifetime of birth defects and mental/physical/emotional disabilities is infinitely more "offensive" than advising women of childbearing age not to drink poison unless they're committed to using contraception and/or terminating the pregnancy.
And flashback to the COVID pandemic when people--overwhelmingly conservative--were claiming in true hysterical fashion that paper masks "cut off their oxygen supply" and didn't prevent the spread of COVID anyway. Never mind that study after incredibly detailed study proved that yes, when everyone wears the right type of mask in the right way, masking significantly cuts down on the amount of live virus in the air and thus, dramatically reduces the number and severity of COVID infections contracted in indoor spaces. Instead of just saying they don't like how masks look or feel, they had to make up retarded lies about oxygen deprivation that any dentist or surgeon who operates for long periods wearing a mask could debunk. But that wasn't enough: they also hyperbolically compared them to dog muzzles, which are used to keep canines from biting & eating non-food items... not to prevent the spread of airborne germs. And I distinctly recall some idiotic argument about how being able to smell farts through pants proved that masks were ineffective for preventing the spread of COVID, a virus.
A-1 debate tactics there, Einsteins. 🤦🏻♀
Prez Trump poses proudly with his all-American junk food.
It's this type of delusional "believe-whatever-supports-my-biases-&-then-do-whatever-destructive-shit-I-want-in-service-of-those-biases" thinking that has led Americans off a cliff with their health for the last 100+ years, and it's only getting worse. (See: Monkeypox). From our diets to our workaholic ways to our chronic sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyles & general ignorance about germ theory & how illness is spread, we would get at best a D- on a national health evaluation compared to other developed nations. What used to be called "Adult Onset Diabetes" has now been detected in FETUSES, for fuck's sake. We couldn't be doing much worse, yet every time the issue comes up, we roundly reject things like the universal health care ("socialism!") that all other developed nations receive in favor of the racket that is private insurance, big Pharma price gouging & insane medical fees/copays. Then we turn around & bleat about the price of medicine & hospital stays as if we didn't just shit in our own bed and ask "who shat the bed?"
No baby, that's not "socialism," it's called getting something back for your tax dollars. Something that, again, every other developed nation on Earth offers its people. Not too bright I tell yew whut.
Faith & Feelings vs. Fact
This country was founded on religious freedom, which is great in theory but we've taken that (like many other things) way too far, confusing our right to believe in whatever deity/religion we want and applying it to literally everything else. The problem is, hard sciences don't allow for that much diversity of opinion. Just as 2 + 2 = 4, masks prevent & reduce the spread of COVID & other airborne contagions. All the "belief" in the world won't change the reality that COVID is a viral particle, not a gaseous odor, and unlike a fart it cannot penetrate through 2 correctly worn masks in amounts high enough to cause severe illness.* All the "faith" in the world won't change the fact that COVID is highly infectious, damages blood vessels throughout the body & can cause both acute & long-term health problems including death--something too many people only realized on their death beds. And just like a math problem, scientists can "show their work" and prove how they've come to these conclusions.
Reality also doesn't care if you think the FDA & CDC's advice to abstain from booze is "sexist" or your doctor's recommendation to lose a few lbs is "fatphobic"--it doesn't change the fact that those things are best medical practice & will prevent unnecessary suffering/disease. Feelings might trump facts in polite society or politically correct spaces like Twitter, but not in the science and medicine world. The same is true for the War on Drugs, which is an abject failure. Take your hysterical, hateful feelings about "lazy junkies" out of the equation & you'll see that giving people a safe drug supply not controlled by cartels & gangs is the sane thing to do & would end the overdose crisis nearly overnight, along with many other aspects of the illegal drug trade (violence, petty crime). These things require no faith/belief and are not changed one bit by your taking offense at them.
Speaking of which, the U.S. is in the throes of 2 dual epidemics--mental illness & addiction--unlike any we've ever seen. Deaths of despair--suicide, alcohol-induced liver disease & drug overdoses--are hitting white people, particularly white males, especially hard in places like West Virginia, Wisconsin, Delaware & Pennsylvania, where opioids have provided an alluring if temporary escape from the crushing poverty that runs rampant throughout Appalachia & other parts of rural America for a very long time now. What's being done about this entirely preventable crisis? Clearly not enough based on the numbers.
* Masks are part of a layered approach to preventing COVID: They work best when paired with vaccines, distancing, ventilation & proper hand hygiene but even when ONLY masks are used, they greatly reduced the amount of virus in the air.
Hypocrisy: America's real favorite pastime.
Who among us is perfect? I'll be the first to admit: I am far, far too sedentary & socially isolated. My diet is and has always been unadulterated crap thanks to my sensory issues. I deal with a lot of chronic pain & fatigue & I use psychoactive substances to self-medicate both. But I have my vitals checked every 3 months along with a urinalysis & a full blood/organ workup every 6 months. My BMI is smack dab in the middle of "normal", I don't drink or smoke tobacco at all, no red meat, rarely eat out, have no STDs (according to some very invasive tests I really didn't wanna take), normal blood pressure/blood sugar & I recently lowered my cholesterol 34 points in 3 months just by giving up butter. 🤦🏻♀ I've never had an abnormal liver or kidney test even in the midst of abusing codeine with large amounts of acetaminophen (which I no longer do) because I did cold water extractions & took liver supplements that specifically reverse Tylenol overdose. Provided they don't self-destruct, the people in my family live to be well over 80 on both sides. I'm not sure whether I consider that a positive or not yet but my genetic outlook is good at least.
I brush my teeth 2-3 times a day to combat the tooth decay caused by dry mouth from autoimmune disease & severe acid reflux, and so far I've managed to keep most of my real teeth. I wash my hands more times per day than is probably necessary & bathe at least once a day. While I could definitely eat better, I do take a quality multi-vitamin and extra Vitamin D for energy, and I drink tons of water. Nearly a gallon per day. Other supplements include N-acetylcysteine & D-mannose. My sleep "schedule" is non-existent but I aim for at least 8 hours in a row when I finally crash & usually get more than that. I've never really worn makeup, nail polish or used many multi-ingredient skin/beauty products--all of which are sources of endocrine-disrupting crap & ingredients banned in other countries. And I haven't used tampons since I was 15 because they increase my pain so bad. Thankfully.
I have no use for cell phones, which have been linked to bone spurs in the neck, distracted driving, sleep disruption, myopia (nearsightedness, for which I've already had surgery) & a small but statistically significant risk of cancer due to radiofrequency radiation. This risk is higher in kids who are smaller & have developing brains. In 2010 France banned the sale of cell phones to kids under 6 for this reason & most Western countries have banned their use in the classroom to reduce childhood exposure to this radiation. Not us... Parents in the U.S. have actually fought against cellphone bans in the classroom because being distracted is great for education & who are YOU to stop my kid from developing glioma you meddlin' big gubmint bitch?
Smart Enough to Run The Machines...
TL;DR - I think our faltering education system is at the root of many of our other problems in this nation. A society that can't think critically & doesn't even know the difference between facts & opinions won't know when they're being screwed over, which seems to be just what the lawmakers & billionaires in charge want. To paraphrase George Carlin: "They want a nation of workers just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough not to see how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago." This might be why all these uppity Wine Moms who freak out about the dangers of "drugs" while stuffing their worship-holes full of Sonic food & standing by their serial cheating mayun despite his numerous unprotected affairs tend to be doing a lot worse healthwise than this drug user of 23 years. Just sayin'.
Perhaps if our leaders told the truth about the proportional harms of various vices & habits, we would have a war on the junk food & alcohol industries, sleep deprivation, exploitative bosses overworking us to death & product manufacturers lacing our everyday products with toxic metals & other poisons instead of a War on (Some) Drugs. Perhaps in that alternate universe our military wouldn't have had to lower their recruitment standards & start accepting candidates who are unfit to serve. They did this because obesity rates among active duty members doubled in the last decade, putting total numbers of overweight or obese service members at a whopping 68%. America's junkfood addiction is officially a national security issue, yet our media & leaders stay hyperfocused on the "drug scourge" while notably doing nothing to actually help addicts not die.
#priorities 🇺🇲 🍔 🍺 🔫 📺 🏈 🛢 🍩 🧑🏻🍼 🧜🏻♂⚧ 🤳🏽 🖕🏽 🦠 🤠
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