Now it’s Christmas, the season of gift giving and family tradition, and I forgot to buy my boyfriend a gift. The most important person in my life other than my mom and dad, and I forgot. There is really no logical explanation I can think of other than this was a very hard lesson in learning to think of others when being ten years out of practice.

I used to really outdo myself each Christmas in high school, doing handmade gifts that were thoughtful and personalized. I’ve never been a fan of buying gifts for the sake of buying gifts, trying to impress each other with the amount of money spent or the quality of the gift. My way around it was starting a month or two in advance and either sitting at a pottery wheel or a sewing machine, designing the perfect handmade keepsake for what was sometimes up to thirty people.

I have not celebrated a traditional Christmas since leaving college in 2005. I didn’t celebrate Christmas in 2006 due to an anti-religious phase I went through with a certain ex-boyfriend and the fact that my brother was in the military, and did not celebrate Christmas in 2007 because I was involved in an emergency move across the country after a month long hospitalization and then landed back in the ER with a kidney stone on Christmas eve. In 2008 I was sick again, so nothing was planned due to no one having the energy to do so. By the time 2009 came around, my extended family was used to the constant fission of family gatherings due to my health problems and my brother being overseas in various legs of the Iraq war, so no one planned anything. I sat at home in the dark because I was on the Marshall Protocol. In 2010, I had surgery, but by then we were already in the habit of not planning anything so once again I sat at home, bored with my parents who I see all the time anyway.

Christmas time has not been a time for reunion for me since my sophomore year of college. After 2004, when all of the 1999 high school graduates had finished college and found jobs, my “friends from back home” scattered. They were with their own spouses and families, so there was no longer a “back home” to go to.

We live in either St. Mary’s, Pittsburgh, or State College. My brother lives in Florida. With my family in cities only a few hundred miles apart and my brother a plane ride away, it seems to an outsider that we must be a “bad family” to not get together for the holidays. One thing my brother and I have talked about was how difficult it is to explain to someone why you do what you do — why you live where you live, eat what you eat, spend time with who you spend time with, work the job you work. The explanation is never simple, so there is no point trying to force an explanation into a sound byte and leave yourself open to the inevitable criticism.

I never learned this. So, when my boyfriend’s mother asked me what was wrong with sitting at home and why my parents are fine with spending Christmas alone, I felt the need to tell her an excuse-laden back story. I am pretty sure I made a fool of myself, which seems to be pretty easy to do around here considering I’ve lead a such a tragically average, imperfect life.

As such, I did not remember to buy my boyfriend a Christmas present until 4pm on Christmas eve. My initial instinct was to immediately admit it to everyone in his family, and I did, because my initial instinct is frequently wrong. My Spazz n’ Solve approach to problem solving, since I was a small child, is simple: 1. Spazz 2. Solve. If I could ever learn how to skip the spazz step, I think I might have saved myself the humiliation I endured.

An hour after admitting my fumble, I apologized profusely. I think they were more annoyed with my apology by that point than the fact that I forgot to give a gift. We went to church, and I cried through the entire service. When we got home, I excused myself to the bathroom with my laptop and got him an electronic gift card to his favorite drum shop. It is probably what I would have gotten him anyway, and in retrospect, if I had kept my stupid mouth shut about forgetting the gift, and just printed out the gift card, I could have given it to him under the tree along with all of the other gifts and no one would have been the wiser. At the very least, if his family has decided I’m a low class twat, at least I’m an honest low class twat.

Thinking of others is not one of my strengths. It would not seem so because I’m interested in making the world a better place. I have done volunteer work for a social services and counseling hotline and I have worked with the sick and the elderly. I’ve done fundraising for a public interest research group. I cry for other people’s losses and write music for their struggles. If I had all the money in the world, I can think of at least ten people I’d give it to before myself.

What frequently doesn’t register are the Regular Adult Societal Obligations. Treating people to dinner, offering rides, hosting gatherings at my home where I remember to offer people drinks and snacks and telling them where to put their coats and shoes when they come in, buying gifts for occasions, sending cards, and generally asking others about themselves. I forget these things because being sick exempt me from having to care. My parents did it all for me so I could concentrate on my own needs. Similarly, they did not require me to work full time in college so I could concentrate on getting good grades. Incidentally, the two things I am the worst at are working and thinking of the needs of others.

It is going to be a long haul rejoining the land of the living, and unfortunately I seem to be learning the hard way about how to be a complete person. I’m not excited about this and I am worried about how long it will take and who will be left in my life when I’m done.

There is plenty of heresy about “male” careers and “female” careers, “male” personalities and “female” personalities, and “male” ways of thinking and “female” ways of thinking. Many of these ideas are perpetuated by stand-up comedians, sitcoms, and evolutionary psychologists alike. They are reinforced by the average person’s superficial observations of the world.

While some of the finer, more elusive details of gender and sex differences are debatable, one cannot avoid the fact that men hold most of the high power positions in the world – political leaders, CEOs, college professors, rock stars, and hotshot scientists – while women tend to populate the lower paying careers such as nursing, bar tending, and teaching elementary school. Why?

Well, I don’t know. Baumeister’s crackpot theory explains that men are large scale networkers and women are better in small groups, resulting in a culture and society that is created by men. Men were able to learn from each other more rapidly through these large networks to make advancements in architecture, farming, art, literature, economics, technology, and medicine. So, traits more common to men are more highly valued. Consequently, the jobs that attract women and those at which women excel receive lower pay. There are so many logical fallacies here I think my head might explode.

Say for a minute that Baumeister is 100% correct and that there are male ways of doing things and female ways of doing things. There is a subtle tone in his book that even though men and women are “equal but different,” men’s work is still better. Many similar gender pigeonholing hypotheses share this tone.

And what is “men’s work” exactly? According to Baumeister, these include STEM careers, growing a business, philosophy, improvisational music, military, construction, etc. Men choose careers that pay more. Men are more capable of taking care of themselves financially when their marriages end (unless their ex-wives take half of their money in the divorce settlement! Those bitches!)

I’m a reasonable person. I wanted to be fair and balanced. I want to be able to take care of myself in my life and not benefit in life from more than I’ve earned with the work that I’ve done by marrying someone rich and elevating my standard of living to theirs. I also want to be smart. I have ambitions and if I start a business, I would want it to grow rather than stay as a one woman operation. I want to do useful things and if flocks of women are getting paid peanuts and amounting to nothing for caring about “people,” well, then I guess I should try to care more about “things.” And even if I go into a science, I shouldn’t do the woman sciences like biology. I should do Physics. Because if you understand physics, then you understand everything! Am I right?!

Never mind that nobody has ever developed a new drug or learned something new about the human body by studying pure physics. They have to study biology and chemistry. Also, I think the only people who say things like that are arrogant undergraduate (frequently male) STEM majors. That view is about as ridiculous as saying quantum physics means we can attain perfect health or a sports car just by visualizing it.

More importantly, I kind of suck at physics. Is that because I’m a woman? Is my inferior female brain incapable of mastering a STEM career? Am I doomed to be impotent and useless in the world? What of my ambitions? Will STEM always be harder for me because I’m female? I’ve cried and cried about this. CRIED? Oh shit. Is crying a WOMAN thing? Guess I’d better stop doing that, too. It’s probably frivolous and a waste of energy. After all, men don’t do it as much and they appear to be running the show. I want to have an impact on the world but maybe I can’t unless I work relentlessly to deny every feminine thing about myself.

Like most things, as soon as you start talking yourself into something, you see it everywhere. It’s one of the classic signs of bullshit. “But it Fits!” says Stephen Law of the book “Believing Bullshit.” Of course it fits. Your brain made it fit.

Baumeister’s pitiful explanation that men and women are “equal but different” still leaves me feeling unsatisfied. I am not assuaged by his assertion that women’s work is equally as important as men’s work, even though it pays less and is less valued by a male-created culture. Gee, thanks. Does he honestly think that he’s providing a viable “third” point of view, a neutral ground in the gender war, by saying that female-lead societies did not flourish because of deficient large-scale networking?

What about the women who don’t want to relate in small groups or enjoy improvisational music and philosophical discussions? What about women who get bored at the thought of housewifery, but also don’t want to major in physics or engineering? What if I like studying people, biology, and philosophy? What if improvisational music is the only kind of music I want to do? If I like medicine, maybe I should be interested in pharmacy rather than clinical research because drugs are “things” and clinical studies involve people? Would that make me more successful? It’s all just splitting hairs now.

Linda Hirschman wrote a book on female career choices called Get To Work: A Manifesto of Women of the World. She encouraged women to have at most only one child and pursue high paying, high powered careers to give them more bargaining power in their relationships and in society.

I loved the book for so many years. It fed my somewhat ambivalent attitude towards women adhering to destructive stereotypes. I came to believe that most of the stereotypes were destructive, even the harmless and possibly untrue implication that mostly women prefer biology. Last I checked, biology was a science. Isn’t science good? Doesn’t that require intelligence? Is it possible to make any of you critical gender-obsessed assholes happy?

And since when is being interested in people something to be looked down upon? Who started that rumor anyway? I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve tried to convince myself, in a last ditch effort to save face, that I was really focused on things (molecules) rather than people (patients) when I told people I wanted to pursue medical research. So which is it? I guess my ultimate motivation is to help people who are sick perhaps by contributing new ideas to the pool of understanding of chronic diseases, but only because that is the bigger philosophical picture. I don’t aspire to study a random molecule without some kind of context. Women want to help people, but men are philosophical. So, which am I? Why the fuck does this matter? Can’t I just do things I like?

Many people criticized Linda Hirschman’s book because she is vocally against what she calls “choice feminism.” She seemed to be implying that women should force themselves to want a high power, high paying technical career even if they weren’t good at it, even if it made them miserable, because it would be better for the gender as a whole. She looked down upon stay at home moms, who were so pissed off by her book that they crashed the server on Good Morning America calling and writing in hate mail when Hirshman was interviewed. I laughed at those stupid housewives, and for several years attempted to live my life by her creed. Who cares if I like people? I need to go learn to program computers and make as much or more money than my boyfriend. I needed to stop being such a female if I wanted to matter in the world.

What Hirshman may have meant is that rather than forcing yourself to do something you hate and aren’t good at, which would be pretty unproductive for society as a whole, perhaps she just meant that women shouldn’t use college as an opportunity to find a husband. If you go to college and major in chemistry, you should pursue your chemistry career rather than giving it all up to be an unemployed housewife. Why work that hard when you aren’t going to do anything with it? I can get behind this because I am at least a utilitarian. (Is that male or female of me?)

I’m making myself crazy because I make less money than my boyfriend, because I have fewer college degrees than he does, and have done less with my career in general. I floundered in college, but there were many reasons for that. I spent middle school hiding from bullies rather than studying. I was chronically ill from age 21-30 and was lucky to be able to stand up for more than three hours per day at a cash register. The whole time, though, I was pretty determined not to end up living off of anyone, whether it is my dad, a husband, or the government. I did shit jobs because that was what I could get. I did jobs I was embarrassed to be doing for money I was embarrassed to be making because I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. Is that relentless ambition a male thing or a female thing? Does it matter?

There’s a line on one of the songs from the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon: “No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.” That line has been going through my head for the last few days. I guess it was meant to relate to a young person’s dissatisfaction with what the work world has to offer them. I can relate. I grew up in this world thinking I could follow my ambitions and carve out a career for myself in something that I enjoyed. I was unaware that there were all these added stipulations that had to do with what type of genitalia I have. I’m running at the pace I’m comfortable with, thank you very much.

As a member of the American Dietetic Association, I subscribe to the ADA Knowledge Center mailer which arrives daily in my inbox. It contains a list of hot nutrition news items ranging from trendy editorials to news coverage of the latest research. I haven’t unsubscribed to it because my curiosity about nutrition trends is insatiable.

And no nutrition mailer would be complete without at least a few (hundred) links referencing articles about “the obesity epidemic” and how Americans do not follow the Dietary Guidelines. Shockingly, dietitians are trying to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables and educate the public about how eating too much makes you gain weight. Yes, Americans eat badly and are fat. Ya figure that one out all by yourself, science?

After so many years of watching the nutrition profession state the obvious, it has become evident to me that we are wasting research dollars and spinning our wheels. If, after roughly 50 years of science based nutrition research, people are still only following the dietary guidelines 2% of the time, we are probably doing something wrong.

The answer to the seemingly increasing fatness of America will not be an easy one. There are many pieces left out of the discussion that only interdisciplinary research could even begin to explore. We need doctors and dietitians to collaborate with some historians and anthropologists, economists and educators, shrinks and skeptics to crack this (“heart healthy”) nut.

However, I can venture some guesses. I have lived two diametrically opposed mindsets and lifestyles, health-nutism and fatassity, so I am in a unique philosophical position. When I had ulcerative colitis, I watched my diet meticulously. Regardless of whatever crazy diet I was on, usually it did not include alcohol, white bread, white sugar, or cheap oils. Now, I eat the standard American Diet. Having my colon removed was a blessing, but in some ways it gave me license to stuff my face with whatever I want without immediately feeling sick. The consequences of the standard American diet are now delayed like they are for most people. As a result, I have gained 20 pounds since my recovery and I hate myself.

I’m dealing with fat people things now. I look in the mirror and wonder who the troll is. My pants are all tight. I have lumps I try to hide and a tummy I want to suck in. My shirts ride up when I walk. I want to spend every waking moment in sweats and baggy shirts and I often find myself gazing upon tight clothes and thin twenty year old women with jealousy and disdain. Sugar and fat are the enemy. I have never felt more like a woman in my life and it’s time to put a stop to this nonsense.

How many people have come to this conclusion, to this place of self hatred, and still can’t find the willpower to change their behavior? My reasons for why I am not at the gym right now and why I no longer enjoy cooking the way I did when I was sick are as follows.

No form of strenuous activity seems appealing to me right now. I know that the work will not pay off for months; therefore, the gratification I need to keep going is just too far away. The odds are quite high that I will give up before I gain any benefit from it. But, the longer I wait to begin exercising, the more sluggish I will become, and the longer the drudgery period will be. The pressure is on, and it makes me want to hide under the covers with a bag of doughnuts.

Speaking of doughnuts, junk food is amazing. I don’t believe for a second when someone tells me that since they quit junk food, they just don’t want it anymore. I used to say that when I wasn’t eating the standard American diet, but it was a lie. Flaxseeds, yogurt, and honey do not taste better than a brownie or a french fry. I just had to tell myself I didn’t want it so I wouldn’t cry or break a rule and make myself sick.

When I am tired after a long day of work, I usually don’t feel like eating a bland, low calorie dinner. I want something exciting, because I need to feel good. I mostly like my job, but I imagine that many people spend their days doing something they don’t really enjoy and junk food is a fun, cheap, and convenient substitute for satisfaction and an excellent stress reliever. The textures and flavors are emotionally stimulating. To recreate this experience with a nutritious meal requires at least a hobby level of interest in cooking to pull off. Foodies and runners alike are fortunate.

Dietitians are not just on the “Food Industry Advertisers are Evil” bandwagon — they are driving it. But they are missing a crucial point. Because junk food is amazing, marketing is easier than ever. Dietitians blame so-called cunning marketers for brainwashing Americans into buying junk food, effectively calling all overweight people mindless, drooling sheep happily going to slaughter. At times, health educators try to steal those techniques to market healthy living in a sad attempt at a counter attack. It doesn’t work that well, though, because junk food is objectively more delicious and much more fun so convincing people that carrot sticks or yogurt are just as delicious and desirable as potato chips in all of their oily salty goodness is just going to piss people off and make dietitians look like tools.

Lest we forget good old classical conditioning. I’m a musician, so late at night when the show is over and everyone wants to go to Sheetz to grab something to munch on, it’s hard not to resist. I have now come to associate gigs with fun late night treats, and it’s an easy sell since junk food tastes good. It is also social event as well as gastronomically pleasing, and I am conditioned to become hungry for fast food as soon as I begin packing up my gear because it feels like the next phase of the night.

I also like being included and being “normal.” When I was sick, I could never participate in late night food runs, which always seemed like something that fun, light hearted, cool young people did. I was usually the wet blanket, the old lady, the un-fun one. Nobody wants to restrict themselves, because if you’re always the one with the restrictions, people will never forget it. It will be what you come to be known by. My friend told me just the other day that she still sometimes thinks of me as a person who only eats certain things. I don’t want to be a pussy. I want to be able to just eat whatever, because I can handle it! I’m tough! I’m not a picky pain in the ass or someone who is going to make others feel guilty for their choices and I don’t want to appear self righteous. That’s exactly how my college friends saw me, and the memory of lost friendships makes me sad and angry — all because I wanted to take care of myself the best way I knew how at the time.

Junk food is also easier to find. When I’m in a hurry, which is often, I would love to find a fast food meal that consists of some kind of protein and a cooked vegetable. It doesn’t exist. I hate salad, and it also hates me because of my new anatomy. Even if it did agree with me on any level, it only tastes good with cheese, nuts, and meat which make it just as high in calories as, if not higher than, a cheeseburger. Taco Bell, a place shockingly low in calories, is also terrible for my fiber-intolerant digestive system although it may be fine for the average colon-sporting human who doesn’t mind a little gas.

It’s difficult for me to reconcile what I know to be common sense about nutrition with what I want. I imagine this is how most people struggling with their diet and weight feel. If you eat too much, you gain weight. And “too much” is not easy to define because everyone has a different caloric threshold. If you cross it, you get fat. You don’t often know where the line is until it is crossed and you can’t get into your favorite jeans anymore. What’s worse, you also don’t know how far you have to go to cross back over it into skinny land. I’m afraid to invest a ton of energy into exercising only to realize I am now middle aged and can’t lose the weight like I could when I was 19. It is one of my greatest fears.

I’m convinced that I am not a bad person for this. I am educated about nutrition. I am able to discipline myself to do a lot of things, but when it comes to food, I don’t want to become obsessed. I suppose if I did eat the way I wanted to (Mostly local, minimal refined foods, less than 1800 calories per day, cooked mostly from scratch) I’d feel emotionally and philosophically good ABOUT myself, the way I feel after finishing a paper or writing a song. Those things are intellectually satisfying, but not very rewarding on a primal level. The basic chemical motivations driving my behavior are harder to ignore than the challenging noble causes I’ve built up in my mind.

As I write this, I’m scanning images of twelve well plates of viral infected cell cultures under a fluorescence microscope. I’ve been doing it all day. The project is many months behind and this is the second time we’ve had to do the scans due to some settings on the microscope that no one caught until half way through the process. Also, the computer has not been defragged in five years so it frequently crashes, further slowing down the work. As I receive the blue screen of death for the second time today, I’m reminded of something my first supervisor said about the logic that seems to drive the work flow in most labs.

“There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.”

I have changed jobs often because of my health history, and as a result I’ve often been “the new kid” learning everything from scratch. Everyone who trains me spends at least a little bit of time rattling off a list of things people do wrong hoping that I won’t carry on the tradition. Perhaps they assume that with the optimal training, THIS lab tech will be thorough and will do things right. They assume rather hastily that students are lazy, unobservant, and inefficient.

It is true that some people are lazy, unobservant, and inefficient, but I’m doubtful that those types of people would have applied to science graduate school. Because of the pressure to produce results quickly and publish often, researchers are forced to weigh the benefits and risks of spending time on thorough preparation versus getting the data quickly. Since most students do not yet have the finesse that comes with years or even decades of laboratory experience, but feel pressure to perform as though they do, so they choose the quick and dirty method and keep their fingers crossed that everything works out in the end.

The more pressure I am under, the more mistakes I make. I realize this is not how all people are. Some people love the pressure, or at least respond to it with results. Perhaps the best academic researchers are those who can perform under that type of scrutiny. That has not been and never will be me, although I have learned to tolerate it despite being very sensitive and at times, a slow worker. I often take the time to do the job right, despite the nagging from above, even if it means that I get less done in a day. It always takes longer to go back and fix the mistakes I will inevitably make from rushing.

On a day when my confidence was particularly low, I Googled “I hate working in a lab” to see what would come up. I found lots of blog posts in which the following complaints appeared over and over again:

1. My advisor isn’t helpful and thinks I’m lazy.
2. I put in more than 40 hours per week, and it’s killing me, but I still don’t have enough data.
3. I feel guilty when I want to hang out with my friends or relax sometimes.
4. I never get any sleep.
5. I can never completely stop thinking about my work.
6. I never feel like I’m good enough or smart enough to be in grad school.

Professors didn’t create this. They are victims, too. With the exception of two, most researchers I’ve met in recent memory are short tempered and addicted to coffee. They are usually stressed about keeping the flow of funding consistent long to buy themselves time to put out various fires that arise as a natural part of the process of science. Some may be up for tenure, which requires more hoop jumping. When in science do you finally earn the right to not have to prove yourself to a superior? When you achieve Emeritus status, five to ten years before you die?

I had very little luck when Googling the opposite sentiment, “I love working in a lab.” I did find a lot of blog entries and articles about people who love science, and why a research career is suitable for the curious, analytical person, but nothing specifically about how great laboratory work is.

It is possible that my Google search was incomplete and that had I entered in the correct terms, I may have found blogs about loving laboratory work. That aside, it was much easier to find lengthy rants about it’s many pitfalls. Perhaps very few people actually enjoy laboratory work or are usually too absorbed in the tasks to get online and gush about it.

Some advisers are assholes, lack strong management skills, and don’t even like teaching. But students who complain that their adviser is unhelpful often don’t realize that in grad school, students are in charge of their own education. There are no “right” answers that your adviser and professors “know.” You’re supposed to feel stupid. An undergraduate education rarely prepares most students to think independently, so just because you were good at school doesn’t automatically mean you will be good at graduate school. Balancing learning and productivity seems to be something you don’t figure out until you’re done with your degree.

There may be some truth to the perceived need to eschew sleep and live on coffee in order to succeed as a scientist. Pressure to publish and obtain grants only gets worse the further up the academic food chain you go. And for those on the bottom, the pressure trickles down. But the most dangerous thing is buying into the “I’m not good enough” mantra. It is a sure fire way to develop a mental illness.

Because the research world is so stressful, part of success in graduate school is learning to do good science despite the high expectations and crushing workload. You’re supposed to mess up, but don’t be surprised if the people above you make you feel like shit about it. It’s all part of the game. Tough love isn’t the best strategy for training young scientists, but it seems to be the easiest for most professors who usually have far more training in their chosen field than in educational theory. Many PhD graduates realize that they are treated with unexpected kindness and mutual respect as early as one or two days after their defense, indicating to me that some of this is a form of nerd hazing, where if you survive it, you are admitted into an elite club.

So, if you want a research career badly enough, you will put up with the hazing, shrug it off, remind yourself that it doesn’t really matter because everyone is a student and we’re all here to learn, then you can make it. Most people do graduate and get their degrees, even if it takes longer than they initially expected. You wouldn’t have been admitted if they thought you were a loser.

Science would be a lot more fun if it wasn’t cranked to eleven all the time. I’ve never worked in a lab where people did not say on a regular basis that a certain project was “behind.” Everything needs to be done yesterday and time for reflection is a luxury. After witnessing this type of workflow, I’m starting to doubt my dedication to a field that can’t accurately self assess. Some say there is a lack of big-picture thinking in the research world and that simply being an analytical person with good critical thinking skills does not mean that you are philosophical. That is probably why so few researchers seriously ask this question…

If it isn’t possible for most people to do good science and do it on time, why is it done this way?

The pressure to publish extensively and acquire lots of grant money exists and it is a machine bigger than any one of us. But, when I see professors sleeping in their offices and students spending the better part of their youth with their faces in a fume hood, alarms go off in my head. What is wrong with this picture?  Many are working harder than they ever have in their lives, and decidedly working harder than any one human should, but they think they aren’t good enough, that they aren’t working hard enough — assumptions that are based largely on an imagined standard. If you’re the only one who sucks, why are so many other people stressed out and thinking the exact same thing? For the sake of argument, if the bar was lowered, would the net productivity of science change very much? Experiments take as long as they take, regardless.

Of course, some would say that all jobs are hard and that all work is stressful. In all careers, there is pressure to perform and do well. This is probably accurate. But there isn’t much you can do to convince me that sleeping 3 hours a night, getting addicted to caffeine, neglecting my relationships, and abandoning my hobbies is the only alternative to being a super hero who is naturally awesome at everything. Something about that just doesn’t add up.

For the last 6 years of my life, I’ve considered getting a PhD. Barring any unusually amazing opportunity that may come my way, the last two years of lab work have changed my mind. But, I’m not necessarily giving up. I still love science and I want to find a way to do it that doesn’t require me to hate myself and neglect the non-science aspects of my life in the process. I know my natural personality would lead me to fall for hazing at least some of the time, and because I don’t work well under pressure, I may need to get into science through some kind of back door.

A science career can be a wonderful, rewarding thing. It has the capacity to fulfill one’s dream of making a difference in the world and satisfy personal, lifelong curiosities about nature and the universe. But when knowledge takes a backseat to competition and bulk output, it makes me want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Some avoid this problem by not participating in social networking, and hats off to them. It is probably just not their thing. Unfortunately, I fall into the category of people who actually enjoy social networking for what I dream that it should be, which is an decentralized forum in which to interact with others and spread ideas. If I want to post something on Facebook, I do, whether the posts are days apart or minutes apart. If someone thinks I’m a narcissist for it, then that’s their problem. I post often, because there are often things I want to say. Truly not caring what others think of me involves being who I am and doing what I want to do without worrying about how it will make me look, and I am pretty sure I’m doing that. I do try to be reasonable, obviously, and refrain from cursing out people or posting “too much information” such as the color and consistency of my latest shit. But, if there’s something that was funny, odd, or made me think it will sure as hell be up on my wall and that does not mean I am a lame loser with no life.

In fact, I have a pretty full life. I have a full time job and I play in a band. I pretty much work seven days a week. I have plenty of in-person friends with whom I interact online and at shows or work. My social skills are about a 6.5 on a scale of 1-10, meaning that I am an introvert who enjoys people but needs to recharge in solitude. The internet is a wonderful way for me to get social interaction while also being alone. My recharge time is incredibly valuable to me and if I burned it all up talking on the phone or hanging out with groups of friends in the evenings, I’d likely be too wiped out to play shows or work.

Of course, there is also the unavoidable fact that I have a loud brain. It talks to me almost constantly. If anyone would spend a day in my head, they’d be like “Oh. My. God. Who IS that? Make it stop!!!!!” I have gotten used to it. I channel it into blog posts, songwriting, poetry, articles, discussions, etc. There seems to be no satiating my desire for verbal acrobatics. I fill buckets with words and still feel like I’m spilling over everyday. I’m even writing a book right now, which I’m about 60% done with. I sometimes wish that I could turn off the words, but that has over the years proven to be a waste of energy as well. If I stifle it for the purposes of appearing aloof and cool, I end up stifling valuable creativity and thought.

In general, I am weary of posturing. There is far too much of it going on around me these days. I guess trying to be cool is one way that people cope with mediocrity, out of fear that they will look stupid if they don’t put extra effort into doing everything perfectly. Sometimes, we ask dumb questions, fumble our words, or use poor grammar. Sometimes we just make mistakes and there is no reasonable explanation for them. Surprise! Welcome to life. It is unbelievable to me how unwilling people are to confront mediocrity, assuming immediately that it is bad. It isn’t bad. That is the point of mediocrity. It is neither greatness nor failure, which makes it its own form of freedom.

Occupy Wallstreet and a certain political cartoon about women’s rights have reignited both my interest in and disdain for politics. Politics is one of those issues that seems to get people really charged up and I cannot figure out why. I guess part of the reason I don’t understand it is because I also don’t understand Americans’ fascination with competitive sports. Politics and sports are often compared because both fanbases are rabidly patriotic and get emotionally affected by conflicts in which they are not emotionally involved.

Well, since I’ve been told by you political types all my life that I am part of the problem rather than part of the solution because I don’t watch the news, stay informed on political issues, and enjoy history, now it’s my turn to criticize. I think what you all do is fucking idiotic. Raising awareness doesn’t solve jack shit, watching the news doesn’t inform you because the news (even your homey, touchy feely PBS or NPR or other such combination of letters) is a business and inherently biased towards what will gain readers and viewers. Face it. You’ve got nothing of substance to offer so you go around absorbing political and historical factoids, deluding yourself into thinking you know what’s going on, just so you can make other people feel guilty about not doing that.

Here is what is even harder to do. Actually do something. Relentlessly work to understand yourself and how you interact with others. Work to see yourself as objectively as you can. Stop judging others by what they wear and drive, how much they do or do not exercise, what books they read, how they speak, how they sing, what music they like, and spend your time figuring out how to contribute something of value to the world. Your stupid opinion doesn’t count.

Politics is one of those things that people love to get excited about because the adrenaline deludes them into thinking they are really making a difference. “I’m so outraged!” they say. Followed by, “If you’re not outraged you’re not paying attention!” meaning of course, “I am better than you!”

Yes, things are shitty. And when things are shitty, we all dive for the nearest illusion of control. I don’t blame anyone for that. But, why is it important that I devour hours upon hours of news stories that will only upset me and reinforce the belief that the world sucks? That is a distraction that I don’t need. I guess the difference is, I don’t sit around and watch TV or go to bars and football games instead. What the depressing news distracts me from is bringing joy into my heart so that I can share it with others, learning to write better and better music so I can reach people that much more effectively, writing articles and blog posts, building a science career, eating a 100% local diet, getting into better shape, and the list goes on.

So sure, if you’re being a self indulgent twit imagining that nothing is really wrong with the world, I could see why a little bad news might do you some good. But this is not a default recommendation for everyone. If I say to my coworker that I choose not to follow stories of shootings and displays of insanity by the extreme right wing ideologues because it causes me to lose sleep at night, she’ll say that it’s important to see it anyway. And I say that’s bullshit because if I lose sleep then that’s one more day that I wasn’t performing at my best. And if I’m not at my best, anyone who I may potentially help or impact will be at a loss.

And for the record, no, I don’t think I’m awesome. I think i’m an ordinary, mediocre individual who tries really fucking hard to make my time on Earth count. And I say that I help people because I’ve had people tell me I help them. I don’t just assume that. In fact, I typically assume the opposite which is why I keep trying to do a better job at it.

Before you attack me and say, “But what if people really LIKE politics and history?????” remember this. You’ve criticized me my entire life for liking what I like. I don’t care what wonderful liberal philosophies you believe in and whether or not you voted in the last election. I don’t care how many petitions you’ve signed and how many signs you’ve held on the street or how many mission trips you’ve been on. I don’t give a shit what you eat or what vehicle you take to work. I don’t care if you’re fucking fat and out of shape. You can be whatever stereotype you want as long as you contribute something of value to the human experience. And if you’re not contributing anything of value, SHUT YOUR GOD DAMNED MOUTH. The rest of us are trying to concentrate.

The above criticism is only one of the many directed at the protestors. Since hearing about the protest, I’ve trying to understand it for what it is, and how it could be made useful, regardless of what the different political ideological groups have to say about it. The world is in quite a strange place right now. At least in the developed world, we have begun to come to terms with the possibility that what we are doing is likely unsustainable (and I don’t mean that in a strictly environmentalist sense) but we don’t really know what else to do.

That’s a tough spot to be in. When humans feel backed into a corner, their survival instincts emerge. There are a lot of people on Earth now, too – probably around 7 billion – and when that many people go into survival mode at the same time, the results aren’t pretty. Self-interest seems like it has always been a driving force of human behavior, and now it’s just that much worse.

So what is this Occupy Wall Street thing? Are these brave youngsters fighting the power to make a better world? Are they spoonfed brats riding high on their sense of entitlement, grandiose expectations, and lack of desire to actually work hard? Are they a bunch of working class people who made bad decisions or suffer from the setbacks of generational poverty? Are they a representative sample of the American people who are finally pissed off enough to say so? Do they even have any idea why they are there?

At the time of this writing, the news media had just begun to cover the protest thanks to the fury of social networking that initially spread the word. Reporters seem to zero in on the dreadlocked hippie stereotype who says something dumb into the camera, making both hippies and protestors seem like fools.

The protestors have undoubtedly been labeled everything in the book, but what you call them isn’t the biggest point of contention. The critical difference of opinion over the purpose of Occupy Wall Street appears to be about where to lay the blame. Are people struggling to find work because of their own poorly calculated life choices, or is this a fault of the system of which they are victims?

I recently tried to submit my “story” to a Tumblr page called We Are The 99%, allegedly an online version of the NYC protest. The submission guidelines are to write your story on a piece of paper, take a picture of yourself holding it, and then upload the picture to be approved by moderators and shared with “the world.” Incidentally, my story was not posted. The only reason to explain this is that it was not sensational enough. Many people boasted large educational debt, horrible incurable medical conditions, marriages and children they can’t support, and other catastrophic things my measly sob story could not compete with.

However, it would be very easy for the top 1% (who I imagine this protest intends to target) to have little to no sympathy for these stories. They might say that taking out seventy thousand dollars for a sociology degree was a poor business decision, and that not everyone who is sick can be saved. These things are probably true on some level. Although, as a result of their rosy interpretations of their own experiences, the gainfully employed are inclined to believe that hard work and frugality are the keys to success. Anyone who does this should “succeed” and if you didn’t, then you did it wrong. Hard work and frugality aren’t ALL it takes. Chance also plays a significant role.

Even in prosperous times, it is challenging for people in the social sciences and humanities to find lucrative work. Moreover, sick people have always struggled to be productive and independent, because many chronic diseases have no cure and are lifelong and degenerative. I don’t think these problems are recent developments at all and should not be central to Occupy Wall Street’s position. They are in some ways faults of the system, and in some ways just the way life is. An important step in rationalizing Occupy Wall Street would be to determine what aspects of the current state of the world can actually be changed through policy.

The protestors who get caught on camera saying things like, “Uuuh, well, there isn’t just ONE reason or demand…” may have a point. They annoy me sometimes, but they aren’t asking for a handout. They are, perhaps naively, asking for something to change, anything at all, to help them feel a sense of control over their lives.

People don’t feel like they have a voice. Whether that is true or not is inconsequential. One cannot escape the fact that there are thousands of them in the street trying to be heard. A common criticism is that protests don’t really do any good. But, their purpose is not to actively fix what is wrong. It is to create a large physical inconvenience, to jam up the system a bit, to let those in power know that they need to act. It’s not ideal, but it’s available in a pinch

Problems, and therefore potential demands, can be found at every layer. In the educational system alone, there are plenty of scapegoats. Perhaps too many people are pressured into college for whom college is not a good fit, saddling them with insurmountable debt and frustration that only feeds the anti-intellectual monster that has devoured this country. If all school does is teach you a bunch of things you never use and costs you lots of money, what incentive is there to appreciate learning? Learning is often seen as just another commodity, a means to an end, rather than its own reward. College graduates may be “educated,” but are they critical thinkers? Are they creative and insightful? Can you teach resourcefulness?

If STEM careers tend to pay more right out of college, does that mean we should we all become computer programmers? Of course not. It is a cold hard fact that not all people are going to be good at technical careers. Some people do make excellent English professors and painters. I’m presently in a science career and I’m less able to pay the bills than my friend who is a music teacher.

The middle class has been told that hard work and a college degree will make you a winner, but it is not that simple. Some people are, in fact, immune to the recent financial downturn because they learned a marketable skill or possessed a particular talent that made them an asset to the workforce regardless of limited options. In any economy, the cream of the crop will have their pick of opportunities. In a prosperous economy, the less competitive and decidedly mediocre candidates will also have work. In less prosperous times, the mediocre will struggle. Is this a fault of the system or a fault of the individual?

Do I only make $11.50 an hour because I am mediocre? Perhaps. I also dropped out of the rat race because I was ill. I eventually got well. I used every opportunity available to me to better myself and this is where I got. Perhaps this is as far as I will get and I have to accept that. Things could improve if I eventually get a Masters degree. For science, it is funded so you don’t need to go into debt for it. After graduating, will a Master’s degree guarantee me freedom and financial stability? Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on how good I am at what I do, how hard I am willing to work, how resourceful I am, as well as a heaping helping of timing and luck. Is this a fault of the system or a fault of the individual? Most importantly, where does the system end and the individual begin? Assigning blame seems increasingly useless.

So what does it all mean? Are you struggling to pay your bills and find meaningful work because you’re tragically average or because the system is broken? Well, probably both.

Amusingly enough, this protest isn’t really about why mediocre people can’t get jobs. That is only one of many symptoms. Occupy Wall Street is about holding corporations accountable for their actions.

The disease of which these financial woes are a symptom is fundamental to our way of life. What we’ve been doing simply no longer works. There are too many people and we are getting increasingly stressed out as we try to meet the needs and wants of all of them. We are facing the sobering reality that not everyone wins and not everyone gets what they want. It is statistically impossible for that to happen, as much as I personally would like it to. Occupy Wall Street is an early symptom of the people of Earth confronting the reality of life in the middle. Most of us are there though, so at least we’ve got company.

Question: “Why am I not losing any weight if I’ve replaced all of my soda consumption with diet soda?”

Experience shows us that the calories-in/calories-out model works quite well for most individuals. What that means is, if you consume more calories than you need, regardless of the type of food, your body will store it and you will gain weight. Sugar, protein, and fat are all ultimately stored as fat because fats are the most energy dense. Your body takes advantage of this chemical property of fat to maximize energy output when your body needs it most.

The rationale behind replacing regular soda with diet is, at a glance, a reasonable one. Sugared soda is very high in calories and diet soda is artificially sweetened and functionally contains no calories.

There are a number of reasons for why a person would not experience weight loss after switching to diet soda. First of all, it might be important to figure out how many calories per day the person was originally getting from the regular soda and what percent of their total caloric intake was from the soda. This would highlight how much of an impact eliminating soda might have. If only a small percentage of the individual’s intake was from sugared soda and the bulk of the individual’s excess calories came from other high calorie foods, switching to diet would not make a noticeable difference.

Another question to ask is how long the person  has been abstaining from sugared soda. True fat loss can be very slow – at a rate of 1-2 pounds per week. Rapid weight loss seen in fad diets is most likely due to fluid loss from a dramatic decrease in calories from carbohydrates or starvation mechanisms from a dramatic decrease in total calories — both of which are unsafe and will most likely lead to relapse of both previous poor habits and weight gain. Weight loss from eliminating soda may be occurring at a rate lower than expected by the individual and in that case, there are a few options: eliminate more calories per day, increase physical activity to burn more calories, or be patient. Exercise is a critical component to any weight loss regimen and should not be ignored. Your body must have a need to mobilize stored fat, and moving more can help this process along.

Some individuals have difficulty losing weight due to an underactive thyroid, hormonal irregularities from menopause or other conditions, or as a side effect of certain medications such as birth control pills, various psychoactive medications, corticosteroids like prednisone. It would be wise to ask your doctor about possible side effects of medications you are taking and what medical conditions may be hindering progress toward a healthy weight.

Some more recent research may indicate that the individual’s intestinal bacteria may influence how he or she metabolizes food. Many studies have been published that explore this phenomenon. While interesting, this is a relatively new area of research and the details have not yet been worked out. What this means, then, is if gut microbes have anything to do with a person’s weight, even less is known about what to do about it.

In most cases, it is best to exploit the calories-in/calories-out model to it’s full extent before jumping to any conclusions about whether you have a medical disorder.

The Harris-Benedict Equation is a popular and easy to use formula for calculating your calorie needs at your current weight. To lose weight, then, you must consume less than that amount, conventionally 500 calories less. Why 500? One pound of fat is approximately equal to 3500 calories. Dividing 3500 by 7 days per week will equal 500 calories per day less than your needs to equal 1 pound of fat loss per week.  Decrease your caloric intake by 500 calories per day to lose 1 pound per week, or by more if you want to lose at a faster rate. Keep in mind that it is not recommended to eat below 1200-1400 calories per day or you may suffer from nutritient deficiencies.

Lastly, compare your results of the Harris Benedict Equation with the number of calories you are currently eating as a starting point to figuring out if it really is just a numbers game or if there is a need to seek medical attention.

The author of the aforementioned SBM article had linked to a 2005 story of a 16 year old girl dying from what was probably a treatable acute asthma attack. I felt incredibly sad from reading this. Tragic, sudden, unnecessary death of a young person is one of nature’s most unfair twists.

The story brought back memories of my own terrifying experiences with naturopathy. I remember one day, after weeks of unrelenting colitis symptoms, sitting down on the toilet and passing what looked like a half a cup of blood. I was dizzy, weak, and completely terrified. I called my naturopath in a panic, who told me I needed another couple of homeopathic remedies.

I told her I didn’t want to do homeopathy anymore because it didn’t seem to be helping. She argued with me that I was not being diligent enough with my regimen, and maybe if I had been, this wouldn’t be happening. I cursed her out, in tears, and slammed down the phone. That was the last time I communicated with anyone in natural medicine and had my roommate drive me to the emergency room. Shortly after, I vomited bile on my own lap and called my mother in tears to say goodbye because I thought I was dying.

On page 6 of the article, this disturbing quote can be found.

“Warren speaks of a medical doctor who recently went through Bastyr’s naturopathy training. His “come to Jesus moment,” as she describes it, happened while operating on a 300-pound woman and realizing he was never going to be able to help her unless she did something about her obesity. That would be part of a naturopathic approach, which searches for underlying causes to illnesses.”

I’ve seen it mentioned a number of times on Science Based Medicine about how nutrition (in this case, weight management) is hijacked by the naturopathic crowd and claimed as “alternative” when conventional doctors who know better about the negative effects of being obese most definitely also recommend weight loss to obese people and sometimes refer them to dietitians. It is preposterous to assume nutrition, at least for the treatment of obesity, is in anyway “alternative.”

More important to highlight here is the claim that what sets naturopathy apart from conventional medicine is that it seeks to find the underlying cause of disease when conventional medicine does not. This is one of those gems of the naturopathic rhetoric. They might as well have followed that sentence with a statement that all doctors are arrogant tools of the medical industrial complex and are either too stupid to help patients or would rather keep them sick to make money off of repeat business and the sale of drugs. Yadda yadda yadda.

A great deal of medicine does involve suppressing symptoms, because the cause of many chronic diseases is unknown and symptoms can kill a patient whether you know what causes them or not. Action is taken based on what has been repeatedly tested to work, not based on beliefs about what should work. It isn’t because there is a conspiracy to keep people sick to make money by selling them drugs. It is just incredibly difficult to determine causation through research.

Research often produces nothing but more questions and reveals the increasing complexity of disease. Some diagnostic techniques used in medical research are far too time consuming or expensive to be useful in a clinical setting. Determining if they could be and how to modify them accordingly takes even more research. ”Smoking gun” causal factors that patients and doctors alike always hope for can be difficult or even impossible to isolate. It takes a long time for new hypotheses to be tested enough times to yield information that can be turned into intervention. In the meantime, doctors still have an obligation to sick people to help them not suffer and not die when they come in for help. This may be why treatment appears to lag so far behind knowledge.

All of medicine, no matter the variety, would like to know the underlying cause of disease. I’d assume that is THE primary objective of medical research. More often, though, when one school of thought wants to appear more enlightened than the other, this accusation is made:  “Well, THEY just treat symptoms. WE look for the underlying cause.” Such a statement is nothing but rhetoric and politics. It isn’t a real distinction between conventional and alternative medicine.

Why did this girl’s family use alternative medicine at all? What sort of belief system lead them to the conclusion that it was a preferable means of treating disease? What rhetoric, if any, initially sold them on the idea that alternative medicine would satisfy the requirements of that belief system?

Contains: Snakes, False Hope

I know what lead me to naturopathy so many years ago. I wanted to be part of the paradigm that actually cured chronic disease. I thought I could subvert the mainstream and beat the unattractive odds offered to me. I also envied my healthy friends, who seemed to be able to freely live life without consequence. I dreamed of independence and not being in pain. I was so desperate that I would have bought a snake oil cure that included an actual snake.

Over the years I have become much better at asking useful questions of my doctors because I now understand how challenging it really is to “know” anything for certain in science, and how much goes into developing useful treatments. The average patient doesn’t understand that and becomes frustrated when conventional medicine fails to give them a definitive diagnosis and a surefire cure.

Alternative medicine, on the other hand, frequently claims to have those things. At least one chiropractor out there on the Interwebs has my picture on a dartboard in his office because I informed him that it was unethical to claim right on his website that he can cure all varieties of inflammatory bowel disease in 100% of cases, let alone cure any disease at all. He told me I was arrogant and misinformed.

Well, Dr. Cure-All, I wish medicine was that simple. The unfortunate truth is that in many cases, there are no easy solutions and the burden of being ill means having to put up with some pretty unpleasant things. Sometimes there is no way out, no way to unzip your body and walk away from it, and no magic wand.

I wish conventional medicine had more to offer the general public than coping mechanisms and maintenance drugs. I wonder sometimes if curing disease is beyond the limits of human intelligence. Our scientific method, which is still the best approach we have, is quite slow acting. To answer the question posed in the title of this post: “Who is really addressing the underlying cause of disease?” — Nobody…yet.

A popular rationale for herbal medicine is that humans “co-evolved” with plants over thousands of years and the fact that they have an impact on our biology shows that we are supposed to use them as medicine. This assumption may or may not be based on factual information about evolution and the history of medicinal plant use by humans. Regardless, it does contain at least three logical fallacies:

1) Appeal to tradition (things done for “thousands of years” must be right)
2) Naturalistic fallacy (whatever is natural is good)
3) Teleological fallacy (If it has a use, then it was designed for that purpose.)

Appeal to tradition and naturalistic fallacy have been explored extensively in herbal medicine discourse analyses. However, while teleological fallacy is frequently found in arguments for creationism, a quick Google search shows that not much has been said about its use in justifying the alleged superiority of herbal medicine over modern pharmaceutical drugs.

In the case of herbal medicine, success (or at least apparent success) with a particular supplement or regimen may convince an individual that herbal medicine “works.” Thusly, many proponents of herbal medicine commit the teleological fallacy — assuming that because an herb has an effect on the biology of the human, that it was meant to be used for that purpose. All it means is that it CAN be used for that purpose, granted it actually has that effect. It does not denote “rightness” or “betterness” when comparing herbal medicine to conventional medicine. Medical care providers have many tools at their disposal to fight disease, and a critical aspect of effective treatment is choosing the best tool for the job — whether it is an herb or a drug. Belief-based judgments of “good” and “bad” have little use in science based medicine.

Say for argument’s sake that both Plant A and Drug A are equally capable of decreasing mucus in the sinuses. Plant A was found to reduce mucus because a curious, primitive human put random plants into his or her mouth and, liking the effect, passed that discovery on to others. The behavior happened to be preserved because humans happened to like what it did. This does not mean this is what SHOULD have happened. It is just what happened.

Drug A, however, was intentionally designed in a laboratory by individuals who intended for it to reduce mucus in the sinuses. Say for the sake of argument that the actions of purified chemical drugs were inspired by our experiences with their unpurified plant counterparts. Because we still liked the feeling of less mucus, over time our curiosity lead us to identify the active ingredient(s) in the plant that reduces mucus, isolate it, and purify it into a “drug” for reducing mucus.

What if another hundred years of life experience and medical research shows us that actually, it was never a good idea to reduce mucus in the sinuses because mucus served the purpose of allowing us to remove foreign bodies from our noses that could otherwise be harmful? What good is it to reduce mucus with either a drug or a plant if reducing mucus was never a good idea to begin with?

The teleological argument is often used to “prove” the rightness of herbal medicine over conventional medicine, but it does no such thing. Just because a plant has an effect that we like, it does not mean it is supposed to have that effect. Drugs, on one hand, ARE designed by people to have a certain effect while the effects of plants are learned through trial and error. Some may believe that this is an indication for the superiority of drugs over plants. On the other hand, it still does not prove “rightness” of the effect simply because we like the effect.

Douglas Adams personifies a puddle of water, providing a poignant description of the teleological fallacy that may help put the issue into perspective.

Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, “This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!” This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for. -Douglas Adams

Logical fallacies are an error in reasoning. Critical thinking is one way in which individuals can overcome these errors in reasoning and the resulting assumptions about what he or she experiences. This is difficult, since personal experience can be quite convincing that what has been seen and felt must be objectively true. That is why these arguments are so hard to undo and why learning to identify logical fallacies helps people avoid being tricked by their own brains or by others gifted in the art of rhetoric. Rather than relying on belief-based judgements of anecdotal evidence, effective medicine uses the rigorous process of science to understand the mechanism of the disease being treated and choosing the best tools for the job.