Zen Meditaton Reduces Physical Pain, literally.

an excerpt from Science Daily

Slower breathing certainly coincided with reduced pain and may influence pain by keeping the body in a relaxed state." says Grant. "While previous studies have found that the emotional aspects of pain are influenced by meditation, we found that the sensation itself, as well as the emotional response, is different in meditators."

The ultimate result? Zen meditators experienced an 18 percent reduction in pain intensity. "If meditation can change the way someone feels pain, thereby reducing the amount of pain medication required for an ailment, that would be clearly beneficial," says Grant.

This light...

Clear morning skies, blue-white snow covering everything, the branches black, the light flashing orange and yellow in the tree tops and then off the ground...I took advantage of the two hour delay by standing outside for a half hour watching my pigeons, tracking the sunrise, and planning how I am going to prune the big mulberry tree. Sipping tea. Perfect.

WINTER! AGAIN!

Two hour delay today.
Drive Safely.

Welcome to Tiwes Dag

And for your reading pleasure, a possible answer to why our mouths are shaped as they are...could it be that speech co-evolved out of an ability to eat nuts?

Our earliest ancestors might have been crackers - specialised crackers of tough nuts and seeds, that is. Australopithecines boasted mouths ideal for accessing such well-protected food, suggests a new calculation of the ancient, upright hominin's bite.

Australopithecus possessed jaws and teeth larger and more powerful than those of its ape ancestors, says David Strait, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Albany in New York, who led the study. "It's been thought that these unique facial features are adaptations for chewing or feeding."

Some researchers see the australopithecine mouth as sculpted for munching small, hard objects such as seeds. While others have argued that their bigger mouths merely allowed them to eat more food with each bite. However, the new results cast doubt on both explanations.

Rather than analyse microscopic cracks in tooth enamel or the chemical composition of bone, as others had done, Strait's team took an approach more common to mechanical engineering...

go to the article

Bush threw a few last bones to Big Pharma

What a surprise.

By Chris Adams | McClatchy Newspapers

CORNELIUS, N.C. — In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Food and Drug Administration finalized new guidelines to make it easier for drug manufacturers to promote "off-label" prescription drug uses, which can be deadly for patients.

The move came despite criticism from Bush's own Department of Veterans Affairs, which said the change "favors business interests over public safety" and could lead to a "decline in drug safety." It also was crafted despite efforts by state and federal law-enforcement experts to clamp down on off-label drug marketing.

More here.

Plus commentary here.

Little Mary Wilson

It is not often that one goes back to the life of an urban, 19th century tenement, finds the story of an abused and scarred little girl who provoked a massive rethinking of the role of the state in the life of American families, and winds up with a happy ending.

Mary Ellen Wilson was born in 1864 to Francis and Thomas Wilson of New York City. Soon thereafter, Thomas died, and his widow took a job. No longer able to stay at home and care for her infant daughter, Francis boarded Mary Ellen (a common practice at the time) with a woman named Mary Score. As Francis’s economic situation deteriorated, she slipped further into poverty, falling behind in payments for and missing visits with her daughter. As a result, Mary Score turned two-year-old Mary Ellen over to the city’s Department of Charities.

The Department made a decision that would have grave consequences for little Mary Ellen; it placed her illegally, without proper documentation of the relationship, and with inadequate oversight in the home of Mary and Thomas McCormack, who claimed to be the child’s biological father. In an eerie repetition of events, Thomas died shortly thereafter. His widow married Francis Connolly, and the new family moved to a tenement on West 41st Street.

Mary McCormack Connolly badly mistreated Mary Ellen, and neighbors in the apartment building were aware of the child’s plight. The Connollys soon moved to another tenement, but in 1874, one of their original neighbors asked Etta Angell Wheeler, a caring Methodist mission worker who visited the impoverished residents of the tenements regularly, to check on the child. At the new address, Etta encountered a chronically ill and homebound tenant, Mary Smitt, who confirmed that she often heard the cries of a child across the hall. Under the pretext of asking for help for Mrs. Smitt, Etta Wheeler introduced herself to Mary Connolly. She saw Mary Ellen’s condition for herself. The 10-year-old appeared dirty and thin, was dressed in threadbare clothing, and had bruises and scars along her bare arms and legs. Ms. Wheeler began to explore how to seek legal redress and protection for Mary Ellen. Click here to read Etta Wheeler’s account of Mary Ellen.

The ill treatment continued unabated. Remarkable, though, is the very end:

At the age of 24, Mary Ellen married a widower and had two daughters -- Etta, named after Etta Wheeler, and Florence. Later, she became a foster mother to a young girl named Eunice. Etta and Florence both became teachers; Eunice was a businesswoman. Mary Ellen’s children and grandchildren described her as gentle and not much of a disciplinarian. Reportedly, she lived in relative anonymity and rarely spoke with her family about her early years of abuse. In 1913, however, she agreed to attend the American Humane Association’s national conference in Rochester, NY, with Etta Wheeler, her long-time advocate. Ms. Wheeler was a guest speaker at the conference. Her keynote address, “The Story of Mary Ellen, Which Started the Child Saving Crusade Throughout the World” was published by the American Humane Association. Mary Ellen died in 1956 at the age of 92.

(Watkins, S.A. (1990). The Mary Ellen myth: Correcting child welfare history. Social Work, 35(6), pp. 500-503)

One of my favorite analogies for a child is that of a neglected houseplant, unwatered, off in some dark corner. A little sprucing up, some bright, indirect light, and consistant care...next thing you know, a spectacular leafiness. Some kids are like that.

The quick version of the academic legend is that somehow the animal cruelty laws were bent to protect this girl. Untrue, but it points to a greater truth: the irony of animals having more protection, at least on the books, than children at that time. An animal is merely property, and the "takings clause" of the 5th Amendment notwithstanding, simple property is easily confiscated. But think of the huge interests (here, here, especially HERE and scroll a bit for a listing of photos here and here) that depended on child labor: coal, fishing, farming, manufacturing, newspapers, food distribution, and so on. And then think of the frightening economic vulnerability of most city dwellers and their need to maximize income at all costs.

Then come the well-to-do reformers, whose children have clean fingernails and attend school. Made comfortable by the blandishments of Victorian capitalism, and now made uncomfortable by its ferocity, they begin to tilt at injustice. Very interesting. All in all, a good thing, right? But the costs were enormous. Makes one think of 21st century China.

But Mary was a remarkable person during a time of enormous change. Amazing.

Albilify. Stay away from it?

This is all too typical:


(from Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry: A Closer Look): In April 2008, findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology which claimed that the atypical antipsychotic aripiprazole (Abilify) was an effective add-on treatment for depression. I heartily disagreed with the study's conclusions, noting that the patient-rated depression measure did not demonstrate an advantage over placebo, an inconvenient result that the authors tried to explain away as if was unimportant. I also pointed out that the study design was biased in favor of Abilify:
Study Design. Patients were initially assigned to receive an antidepressant plus a placebo for eight weeks. Those who failed to respond to treatment were assigned to Abilify + antidepressant or placebo + antidepressant. Those who responded during the initial 8 weeks were then eliminated from the study.

So we've already established that antidepressant + placebo didn't work for these people -- yet they were then assigned to treatment for 6 weeks with the same treatment (!) and compared to those who were assigned antidepressant + Abilify. So the antidepressant + placebo group started at a huge disadvantage because it was already established that they did not respond well to such a treatment regimen. No wonder Abilify came out on top (albeit by a modest margin).

Click here for an illuminating commentary on this study. Seriously, this is how many studies are done. It seems pretty clear that the researcher designed the study not to challenge his hypothesis (that Albify plus an antidepressant helps treatment resistant patients more than a placebo plus and antidepressant) but rather to confirm it.

There is a place for medication in psychology. But it needs credible science to support its use. This is not that.

Friday fishblogging and...Good Morning!

I trust everybody noticed the lovely school of fish that adorns this blog. It is as neptunian an effort as we could muster, truly multi-media, and thanks to Will for it. Now if only some of the other people around here would contribute. Perhaps some photos of frozen soil, icy cliffs, or chubby squirrels swinging from a bird feeder. Or comments.

My Monday routine has developed: go to bed early, get up early, read some books, prep for the week, set up my thoughts for a-blogging. Then sit meditation for a half-hour or so. I only have a few minutes before the window narrows (and everyone else here gets up).

But two things: first, Resiliency, or developmental assets. The idea that there are certain characteristics of an individual and her social world that can (to a limited degree) predict emotional health. Here is one list, concerning teenagers. These are very much the ideas our school evolved around; most striking to me is the idea that a young person needs at least three non-parent adults in their lives. Builds a bit of redundancy into the safety net. At TAS, the students really do have that. Over the course of three or four years, this makes a profound difference.

A second item is the strange, sad case that provoked the beginnings of the children's welfare movement. Mary Ellen Wilson was a scarred and frighten little tenement kid in the 1870's. After a couple of moves and disruptions- and thankfully, some former neighbors who continued to look in after here- her case came to the attention of the head of the ASPCA.

It is true: there was an animal rights movement before there was a children's rights movement. This oddity (which reflects the awkward role of the early modern/urban American state viz. the family) has fueled an academic urban legend that little Mary was protected under some sort of amibiguous status as an "animal".

There is a quote attributed to Helen Wheeler who pressed Henry Bergh of the ASPCA, by saying "she is a little animal, surely...". But it was rather Bergh's prestige that both got Mary's case in front of a judge and protected her over the short term.
More on this later- if I can get to it today. But read the story here. It has a happy ending.

Resiliency. Yep, that's the ticket.