Unsure of the rest of my family but it’s become a running gaga to get my mom the cheesiest custom-printed throw blanket we can think of. This year’s is a horribly cropped screenshot of a text conversation we had a while ago about buying groceries from Dollar General
I live in Colorado, so generally some unusual form of weed for those who enjoy that. A dispensary near me has THC chocolate truffles, those usually go over well.
I was a Christian until I was 18. One day I was reflecting on how Jihadist’s will blow themselves up because they’re totally convinced they’re right.
I asked myself if I would do the same, but ended up saying “I don’t believe that much”, which promoted me to ask myself “then why believe at all?”.
Since then I’ve totally deconverted and I’m now anti-theist. I resent that I was indoctrinated, and I see religion as the main culprit for most of the problems in the world.
I saw absolute human depravity growing up. In my early 20’s, I dived deep into spirituality. I found my answers on my own. Most importantly, that religion is poison. Poisonous to the whole world, and largely the cause for war, mass genocide, and to keep humanities progression crippled.
At 13 I realized one’s religion - and therefore whether they live in paradise or suffer for all eternity - depends almost entirely on the place of birth.
Why would God do it that way? There is only one correct religion and thousands of false ones? I would need to be very lucky to have been born into a culture that spoon fed me the one correct religion while discouraging all the others. What were the odds of me not going to hell?
From around 18 on it was religious people’s behavior and politics. Why do religion’s “morals” support irresponsible and hateful legislation?
Mid to late 20s I got into philosophy and realized “because God” is never the simplest answer.
Where did the universe come from? God made it of course.
But where did God come from? He was always there.
Then why couldn’t the universe just be the thing that was always there? Or at least the conditions that allowed for the universe to come into existence?
Adding God into the mix only complicates the answer and makes it less likely to be true compared to whatever our current best, simplest hypothesis is.
Personally, I think everyone should be taking this. Extremely safe, improves cardiac outcomes, some evidence that it can reverse damage in chronic kidney disease. Most people won’t feel different, but I take high dose CoQ10 for mitochondrial dysfunction, and I can tell you it definitely has a huge impact. Love this stuff.
I was up for confirmation, when allegedly the Holy Spirit enters you and you start a more adult phase relationship with God. Post-ceremony, the prep class teacher asked all of us newly confirmed kids if we had felt the holy Spirit enter us. Every single kid but me said yes. It was obvious to me that they were being influenced by each other and the encouragement of the teacher and the specialness of the ceremony. Realizing I didn’t want to be carried away by the wave of group fuzzies was the start of my drifting from the church.
And then the firm end to it all was when I left home and got away from the network of religious friends and family I grew up around and really saw how the church treats gay people and women and children.
When I was doing my sunday school classes getting ready for confirmation, I remember thinking, what if I don’t want to be confirmed? What if I get up there and just say no? I didn’t do that cause my parents obviously pressured me into religion in the first place, but that’s definitely the first time I realized it just wasn’t for me. Took me until college to convince my family I wasnt going to church with them anymore.
Im not a religious bashing person, but you just have to be blind to so many contradictions and horrible events to stay sane and believe it’s all for a better reason and that there is a higher power orchestrating it all. Props to those people cause I just can’t do it.
Derived from chamomile flowers (and other plant sources), I’ve found this to be more successful in treating my chronic insomnia than any of the pharmaceutical options. (And believe me, I’ve tried them all.)
It’s really safe even in absolutely large doses. (There are studies performed using doses in the multiple GRAM range.) I highly recommend trying it. Personally I take 400mg/night, which is twice the dosage you’ll see advertised. I only mention because I think the standard advertised range is probably too low for people like me.
Would you recommend it for other seniors particularly? My grandmother might like something like this? She liked Calm Magnesium Sleep except for the GI effect of magnesium citrate and I wonder it this might be easier on the system to the extent she’d be into it
I actually WOULD recommend this for seniors. It does not have any anticholinergic side effects like a lot of pharmaceutical sedatives do, and it doesn’t interact with the most common blood pressure or cardiac meds that older folks often take.
I have the same problem with magnesium supplements. Mag glycinate has less of that laxative effect than mag citrate, so she could try that as well.
The only two caveats I would add are: she should definitely tell her doctors she’s taking it, as with any OTC supplement. And if she’s specifically on a drug called warfarin (Coumadin), she should be very cautious. (Even Tylenol can cause warfarin to build up in the body. Warfarin sucks, so we don’t use it as much anymore, but it’s not unheard of.)
Hope that helps! (I’m a cardiac nurse. I work with older folks a lot.)
Literally the only thing that gives me refreshing sleep. (See also: mitochondrial dysfunction that I mentioned in my other comment about CQ10.) Apigenin seems to improve what’s called “sleep architecture” in a way that none of the pharmaceuticals I’ve ever tried do.
I gotta sleep soon aha but I’ll leave you with a last question for tonight: what do you think mediates Apigenin’s efficacy for sleep? Like what is the mechanism behind its efficacy, what systems does it modulate?
Thanks and no rush, I’ll listen to that article tomorrow :)
So, it’s interesting, because it’s well-known to have effects on the same GABA receptors as benzodiazepines (like Xanax), but none of the addictive, physical dependence problems, and apigenin doesn’t respond consistently to the drug we use to reverse benzos (called flumazenil).
So… we’re not entirely sure? It could still be the GABA effects that help with sleep. But there’s also a host of antiinflammatory neurological effects that probably better explain its efficacy against Alzheimer’s, for example.
Now, if you really want to put yourself to sleep, feel free to crawl through this alphabet soup of a research article lol:
I just had to look that shit up haha. I’ve never thought to check into it beyond just “you’re not breathing, so I’m about to make you very angry by reversing your high, sorry bro” lol
It seems as if _B ligands are both way less ubiquitous and also variably less-reinforcing than traditional alcohol-type sedatives like benzos/barbs/sleeps, although I say that very conjecturally (is that a word? Aha). And less likely to be overdone to the point the therapeutic window is being dangerously exceeded or a polypharmacy situation that leads to medical emergency like that
From my own experience with baclofen which I used to wean off drinking and help with the induced anxiety, I didn’t really find it super pleasent or enjoyable and there were enough annoying sides like tearing up and a crappy fuzziness that was super offputting. Alcohol and sedatives (especially sleeping pills), totes different story (I find them as a class GABA_A way more dangerous and mindlessly compulsive.
Ok you and I both have to go to sleep, but now you’ve got me wondering about the eternal debate amongst our medical residents about benzos vs. barbiturates for acute alcohol withdrawal. I’ll have to read up on this some more
Yeah, ask about baclofen, its famously advocated by a French dr who struggled to find a proper treatment for his alcoholism until he arrived on baclofen. End of My Addiction is the title.
I used it as an adjuvant treatment along with naltrexone and careful timing in terms of the actual drinking that was required to make the naltrexone effective in addressing the neurochemical basis for much of the compulsion from alcohol.
I know everybody hates Amazon and they want an alternative to the Kindle, but my Kindle is waterproof and I almost exclusively want to use it in the bathtub. I also want one that doesn't have a strong backlight and feels natural to look at. The Kindle is damn near perfect.
I’ve taken my Kobo into a stream that people cliff jump into. I felt off about it because it doesn’t look waterproof even though it is advertised as such. Maybe I’m just too old for waterproof electronics.
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