25. Getting beyond the symptom is not easy
In another of these ‘sticky thoughts’, I explained that most medications work only symptomatically. This is: they relieve symptoms and this only as long as you take them. If you stop taking them, then either your symptoms return, or you have self-healed in the meantime. ◊◊◊ This is logical, since going beyond the symptom is Read the full article…
24. Love is the ultimate healer
‘Love conquers everything, even death.’ You’ve probably heard it (many times) before. And yes it sounds good, doesn’t it? So you may wonder: is there more to it than just sounding good and ever in a while, maybe, also a bit cheap? ◊◊◊ I think it has been heard and used so many times that Read the full article…
23. Sleeping pills are keeping us awake
Worldwide, many tons of sleeping pills are taken each year. A huge number of people take it on a chronic basis, while it is well known that the effect disappears after 3 weeks. Why is this? A question that may truly keep one awake. ◊◊◊ The answer, which is an answer-in-three-stages, may keep one awake Read the full article…
22. Life isn’t everything
The reason we die is not that nature didn’t find a way to let us live forever. It just didn’t look for one. ◊◊◊ Moreover, death was one of the biggest inventions of nature (or evolution) in order to make ‘better’ life. This is: more complex, more resilient, more all-encompassing life. Life ends itself in Read the full article…
21. The ethics of getting better
It’s already present in the terms: ethics is about ‘being good’, ‘getting better’. Medicine, the beloved art and science of ‘making better’, has always been involved in morality though in the last few centuries of Western cultural development, in a very hidden way. In times not so long gone, illness was explicitly seen as ‘curse Read the full article…
20. The subconscious: dustbin or city of angels?
There are two very opposing views on matters of the subconscious. As the title of this text suggests, one is rather negative and the other, well, altogether more positive. ◊◊◊ Freud is exemplar for looking at the subconscious as mainly a kind of dustbin for repressed emotions and things that in one way or another Read the full article…
19. Your medication or your life
One of the shocks of my professional life came rather late: after 7 years of study, 8 years of medical practice and several years of working on a medical decision support system. It came while reading about how many categories of medication act more than purely symptomatically. Or better said: how many don’t. ◊◊◊ Actually Read the full article…
18. Meditate and win!
Some people in the East (OK, not the average shopkeeper in a tourist resort) practice meditation for years, daily meditating many hours. They make progress towards ‘something’ over this time. Apparently they find it worthwhile … ◊◊◊ In the West, what is called ‘meditation’ is promulgated by many as a good method to cope with Read the full article…
17. Antidepressants: doors wide shut
Antidepressants have not been invented. They have been discovered. It happened through people taking drugs for another purpose. Some of these reported a diminishment in feelings of depression. ◊◊◊ As one says, the rest is history. ◊◊◊ Looking closer at it, the aim of that what has been discovered, is to indiscriminately diminish the suffering. Read the full article…
16. Materialism is the opium of modern people
Materialism nowadays resembles a religion in many aspects. People ‘believe’ in it not just in a superficial way. They ‘believe’ in it in a very deep, semi-religious way. In addition to this, present-day materialism often leaves aside rationalism and in doing so, goes back to magic. ◊◊◊ Of course, nothing seems more real than something Read the full article…
15. The message in the bottle: homeopathy
Classic ‘pure’ homeopathy: one takes a number of drops of ‘messaged’ water and gets better. That’s what we are told and guess what, it’s true indeed. ◊◊◊ What is also true is that the person not only takes the water, but also ‘takes’ the expectation that this water will help him. Question: which of both Read the full article…
14. Being critical is a good thing
Many people like to be ‘critical’ or ‘skeptical’. That’s a good thing. Or would be… ◊◊◊ …if it would really mean what it says. Being ‘critical / skeptical’ (let’s suppose it designates the same thing) means that a person has the energy and desire, one can rightly say ‘the guts’ to look at something from Read the full article…
13. Is medical science ready for emotions?
Emotions and health: in the agelong history of medicine, there has seldom been any doubt about the influence of the one on the other. Still, although it may well be of the utmost importance to us all, we don’t see medical science reach many definite conclusions on this domain. So: is the problem in the Read the full article…
12. ‘The cure sanctifies the means’… no way, mister!
‘I don’t care how it works, as long as it works.’ Western society is obsessed with ‘things that work’. We like to see distinctive results. It gives us a sense of achievement, control and if possible also progression towards ‘a better world’. ◊◊◊ I couldn’t agree more: it should work! ◊◊◊ At the same time, Read the full article…
11. Depression: in need of the lost soul
According to medical textbooks, depression is defined on the one hand as a number of symptoms: seeing the future bleak, having profound feelings of guilt and hopelessness, appetite and sleep disturbances etc. On the other hand, it’s looked upon as a hormonal or brain transmitter disorder. ◊◊◊ So we have the symptoms and we have Read the full article…
10. Not the smoking makes the smoker
Do you agree with the following? A ‘smoker’ who hasn’t smoke for a while, is still a ‘smoker’ as long as he keeps having the addiction inside. It doesn’t matter whether he hasn’t smoked for an hour, a day, a week or several years. ◊◊◊ This is of course a somewhat unusual definition of ‘smoker’. Read the full article…
9. Anorexia: being hungry for another kind of food
Hypothesis: an anorectic is someone who is in dire need of ‘soul food’ and because this is not available, enacts this deep need into not taking any other food either. ◊◊◊ This doesn’t make every anorectic a kind of saint, unless you assume that in the end we are all ‘saints’. What’s in a word. Read the full article…