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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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This documentary was recently made about [parts of][1] my city:

video

Basically there's a pretty serious epidemic of drug overdoses because there's Fentenyl (sp?) laced in the drugs people are buying, and it's so strong that an overdose is extremely common.

It's shitty that this city is going to crap. The major of the city was interviewed, and it's pretty clear that the politicians don't give a crap about the situation, and want to pretend it doesn't exist.

It's predominantly a poor person problem. Therefore, it's under the radar. It's rarely reported, and most people are living in a blissful ignorance (myself included). Pretty scary stuff.

References

  1. The city isn't entirely a slum or anything. There are very nice neighborhoods too. But the poorer neighborhoods are definitely getting worse, and the lines are blurring between the "poor" neighborhoods and the middle-class neighborhoods (the crime is spreading and no longer localized).
Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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bamccaig said:

It's shitty that this city is going to crap.

That seems to be the state of affairs all over. It's too bad. Some of the drugs are insane! My wife keeps track of these sorts of things and she has told me about some pretty destructive drugs out there now. I can't imagine why anyone would take them.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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Neil Roy said:

I can't imagine why anyone would take them

When living seems worth than death, risking your life for an escape becomes the logical solution.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I suppose so. Myself, I hesitate to even take an aspirin anymore. If I have a pain or something, I will wait it out instead. I haven't seen my doctor since I told him where to shove his pills (I wasn't rude, but felt like it after he practically yelled at me for stopping taking diabetes and cholesterol meds).

If you can afford to waste money on drugs and booze, than you can afford to not take them and use it to improve your life in a more positive way. It's too bad people feel there is no other way out, when there is.

And I am speaking from experience as I was addicted to pills about... 34 years ago (yeesh, that made me feel old! ;D). I was popping way too many of them and even had a stroke which I never told any doctor about, but it scared me into getting off of them (half my body was paralyzed for a while).

Plus I find all the meds and drugs in this world never help, but if you stay on them they almost always make things worse.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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The pharmaceutical companies are making huge profits producing barely understood complex chemicals for human consumption claimed to be beneficial or curative when in reality the affects are complex and cannot be predicted on a given individual. I certainly believe that government is failing to regulate medicine sufficiently, and I think that is overall having a damaging effect on our world. Insert: But more importantly, I think that government is failing to regulate food and drink sufficiently which is probably largely responsible for the diseases that we "need" medicines to treat in the first place. On the other hand, we do need to trust doctors to some extent because we have limited time on this planet and can't be masters of all. Diabetes and high cholesterol are pretty serious conditions. Hopefully you're at least eating better to curb the conditions (if god magically cured you please keep it to yourself, we don't need to fuel that debate here too ;)).

I've seen some compelling documentaries claiming that our diets are largely to blame for most of these health impediments (obviously) and that a change in diet can not only reduce the symptoms, but potentially reverse the diseases entirely. Unfortunately, there's money in treating symptoms, but not really in preventing disease so both government and corporations prefer you to get sick so that they can profit from your disease and control you. In that sense I think we would agree, but I don't know if I'm confident enough in my distrust of the system to stop taking drugs prescribed by a doctor. That said, there's a shortage of doctors where I live so I don't even have the luxury of ignoring the advice of a doctor because I don't have one. :P

I can somewhat rationalize why people get started taking serious drugs, albeit in a lot of cases it seems like a serious miscalculation and overreaction (i.e., first world problems 101). Some people obviously have it worse than others, and for the people that have it worse than me I'm in no position to judge. I think a lot of it comes down to poor neighborhoods having a higher percentage of people with shitty things to deal with influencing the decision, and then peer pressure spreads it to less poor people trying to keep up. It's sad anyway.

These days it seems crime is just climbing and climbing in the city, and spreading outside of "poor" neighborhoods and seemingly everywhere. Probably most or all of it is drug related. I don't know what the solution is, but I think it's fair to use words like "epidemic" and "emergency". Something needs to be fixed for sure. As you can see from the footage in the documentary, it doesn't seem like the city government really takes it seriously or gives a shit.

Erin Maus
Member #7,537
July 2006
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There's like FIVE ACTIVE POSTERS on this forum right now.

I'm an active lurker if that helps. :D

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ItsyRealm, a quirky 2D/3D RPG where you fight, skill, and explore in a medieval world with horrors unimaginable.
they / she

LennyLen
Member #5,313
December 2004
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I was playing around with MS Maps, and it has a pretty good view of the town I'm moving to:

{"name":"611285","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/0\/c0237ed45b56dd4f17244e138f487b63.png","w":1202,"h":933,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/c\/0\/c0237ed45b56dd4f17244e138f487b63"}611285

The town with the nice beach 10-15 minutes away is Kaiteriteri, near the top of the map. I'll be living right where the SH 60 marker on the map is.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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bamccaig said:

if god magically cured you please keep it to yourself, we don't need to fuel that debate here too

You started it! He did, but I purposely refrained from mentioning that (though I don't feel comfortable not giving Him credit where it is due). Just remember that YOU started it this time!!! ;D

I am perfectly normal and healthy now. I am more careful with my diet than before, but I am not overly strict. I give 100% credit to... you know who... for healing me. ;)

I don't take any medicines anymore, at all and I am fine. Considering I was on 4 pills a day for diabetes until I started to pray about it (sorry to bring it up, but I did) and a couple months after I started praying I was off the meds and perfectly fine. I had two more check-ups with my doctor and confirmed that. The first time he examined me he didn't know I hadn't taken meds for months, I wanted him to examine me without knowing. I told him after he said my numbers were good that I hadn't taken meds in months. He was furious, ah well. The next exam he had to admit that I was fine and there were no more problems. I have never been back since, and that was 3 years ago. Before I had him as a doctor, I didn't have a family doctor for over 10 years and I was fine. I only seen him for the diabetes and nothing he done for me was helpful at all.

LennyLen said:

I was playing around with MS Maps, and it has a pretty good view of the town I'm moving to:

Looks like a nice area. Have you tried Google street view?

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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Neil Roy said:

I have never been back since, and that was 3 years ago.

That's the part that has me worried. I mean, in so far as I care about you anyway. :P Many of those symptoms can go unnoticed if you're not monitoring it until it's too late. I can totally understand not using the meds if you don't believe in them, but it shouldn't hurt to still have the doctors at least test you to see if the science in so far as they understand it believes you to be "fine" or "not fine".

Quote:

I only seen him for the diabetes and nothing he done for me was helpful at all.

The medical industry seemingly only wants to treat the symptoms instead of curing the disease. To some extent, it's because they really don't understand the disease yet, but it's not hard to say that changes in lifestyle over the past century seem to have had an adverse affect. Most people would point to our food out of common sense. The government should be regulating food production processes that haven't been tested long term. Particularly foods that doctors understand is generally harmful (i.e., processed foods, GMO, high sugar content, etc.). If the government restricted the corporations from luring us to these seemingly "easy", but very hazardous foods, our national health would improve greatly in every way.

I recently watched documentaries that claimed that cancer and diabetes research shows a direct link to food, but health organizations refused to even talk about it when asked for the documentary. When the subject came up, they threw the film crew out of the building. It certainly makes for great TV, but who the Hell has the time to follow up with all of their sources and try to verify the claims? The point is that government and corporations always seem to say things that we all can recognize as bullshit, but we're powerless to make them put our health and wellbeing before their profits.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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I agree about food. I researched it a little when I got diabetes and was shocked about what I seen.

For example, compare the sugar content of low fat foods especially. You get flavour in one of two main ways in many foods, fat, or sugar. Fat is actually not bad for you, that is a myth. Sugar is really bad for you though. Numbers to keep in mind when you check the labels is that 4 grams = 1 teaspoon. When you check something like chocolate milk, a 1 litre carton will have around 28G of sugar PER SERVING (per 1 CUP!!!) which is 7 tsp of sugar... PER CUP! And people give that to their children for school! It would be healthier to give them coffee for school! ;)

Look at other low fat items when you are shopping, they will generally have a higher sugar content than their counterpart. It's their way of putting flavour back in when fat is reduced. I have even seen close to 2tsps of sugar per serving in vegetable juice! It's insane. So I tend to drink more water and coffee (1 tsp/sugar total, or about 1/2 tsp per cup) these days.

The thing about fat is that fat does not produce insulin like sugar does. The energy from fat is used right away, so you tend to stay full longer. Your body uses insulin to store energy as fat, so you gain weight more with sugar and it also leads to diabetes and heart problems. This is why low carb, high fat (LCHF is you search it online) diets work so well. You don't count calories, and you can eat until you are full, you don't go hungry and you lose weight because the types of food you eat fill you up, you stay full and you use the energy right away, so you don't tend to be as sleepy feeling, lethargic... but more energetic etc.

Our dietary pyramid we see is upside down. It tends to have more breads and other carbohydrate items and less meat when in fact we should have fewer carbs and more meat. To remember what to avoid, just remember GPS (fewer Grains/breads, Potatoes/root veggies with starch and Sugar).

I now avoid dietary foods like the plague, drink far less soda-drinks, though I still do have some once in a while and less breads. Potatoes are my weakness though, so I have a tough time cutting them out. ;)

The Fifth Estate done a great program on sugar, including secrets the sugar industry knew for decades on how sugar increased your risk of heart disease... check it out, it's quite the eye opener!

video

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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That meshes very well with what I've been reading about and watching as well. I now keep an eye on various nutritional facts when I buy something: fat (but as you said, it's not THAT bad, and I don't worry about it so much), sodium (another very bad for your health way that they add taste to food), and carbohydrates (which is basically sugar and things that will turn into sugar in your body so basically sugar in disguise).

If the sodium is relatively high or the carbohydrates are relatively high then I consider it bad for you. That doesn't always stop me if I'm already acclimated to it, but certainly gives me a good reason to turn it down in any case. It's really very hard to find foods that aren't pure carbohydrates or packed with sodium. Pretty much raw meat from the grocery store's butcher shop is my preferred food of choice. We should eat more vegetables and a few fruit (sugar!), but we really haven't adapted our pallet (and we struggle to find the time to prepare it). Most fresh produce just rots on our counter or in our crisper. What can I say, "I'm only 31".

I really wish that alcoholic beverage containers were required to contain nutritional facts too. There's no fucking good reason it should be exempt. Just more corruption in the government regulation.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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Wow, I just checked out this episode of the Fifth Estate on teh vitamin industry and it will shock the shit out of anyone who watches it. I was never one to take them, and now I am glad. It's unregulated, which I didn't know about, and much of what you are sold is not what you paid for plus there is no evidence they do any good at all (which is what I already thought as I can't see how replacing a healthy diet with pills would ever help).

This is a MUST WATCH for everyone... I really need to remember to watch this program... this and Market Watch and two good ones. I often wonder how the Fifth Estate remains on the air with all the stuff they have uncovered.

video

bamccaig said:

should eat more vegetables and a few fruit (sugar!)

While I agree, the thing about fruit is that it comes packaged with the fibre we need to help our bodies absorb it slowly and naturally, so I don't worry about fruit, so long as you eat it naturally. Fruit juice is just as bad for you as cola for example, because the juice has been separated from the needed fibre.

What I learned while I had diabetes is that fibre slows your body's absorption of sugar. Huge problems arise when we drink sugar drinks like cola or fruit juice because we're not getting the fibre with it. I was shocked to hear a scientist say this: "God packaged sugar with the fibre we need" (her words not mine, she wasn't a religious person, replace that with "nature" if you wish). And this is true. Have you ever seen sugar cane, the plant white sugar comes from? It's like a tree, you would be hard pressed to eat enough of it to equal a teaspoon of sugar... probably break your teeth trying! My grandfather brought some back in the '70s and showed me. So it's true about the fibre, so I don't have a problem with fruit. In fact, when I get a craving for sugar I will often grab green grapes. If you look at the number of grapes you need to eat to equal one glass of grape juice, you will see you could never eat that many, which should give most people a clue that they shouldn't drink just the juice.

I also use honey in things like herbal tea. Honey is sweet, but unlike sugar, it is actually very good for you and even has been shown to have certain medicinal properties. I personally like apple/cinnamon herbal tea (gonna make some now actually) with honey.

Edit: and before you decide to go out and eat healthy, check out this report on chicken sold at various fast food joints. I was not surprised to discover that Subway chicken was actually only 50% chicken and the rest was filler. Years ago they were caught selling "Multigrain buns" which were in fact, white bread with food colouring.

video

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
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bamccaig said:

The medical industry seemingly only wants to treat the symptoms instead of curing the disease

Sadly, there is no money in curing diseases. It's a billion dollar industry and pharmaceutical companies are run mainly by shareholders that focus only on the bottom line. And the drugs they do create are not 100% perfect.

Neil Roy said:

much of what you are sold is not what you paid for

Here in the US, the Food and Drug administration regulates and monitors all drugs. Their main job is to make sure that the drug strength is accurate, the drug is "safe", the drug is "effective". (Notice the quotes around "safe" and "effective") Extensive testing is done prior to release into the market and post release.

Vitamins and supplements are also monitored by the FDA, but they are listed as dietary agent and not as a drug. These supplements have different regulations. There is limited testing pre and post release. Without a proper assay, there is no guarantee that your vitamin C 500mg tablet actually has 500mg of vitamin C.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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DanielH said:

Here in the US, the Food and Drug administration regulates and monitors all drugs.

Watch the video I posted. There are no regulations covering vitamins and supplements in the USA at all (they mention the United States in that as well as Canada).

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
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Just make sure you get your vitamins from a reputable company. If there are enough complaints, the FDA will investigate. It has happened a few times.

Vaccinations is another sore subject. People talk of all the bad things about vaccinations.

1. Yes, mercury is used in the preservative Thimerosal. Mercury isn't as harmful as people make it out to be. Also, there are preservative-free vaccinations.

2. You CANNOT get the flu from the vaccine. You can have a reaction and get flu-like symptoms, but this is usually mild compared to the actual flu.

3. Autism ... Most evidence says Thimerosal cannot cause autism, but still not fully proven.

Most important!!!

4. Tens of thousands of people die each year due from the flu alone. Mostly children (not fully developed immune system) and elderly (compromised immune system).

Could the vaccine have helped these cases? I would say "Maybe". You can still get the flu even though you had the vaccine, but the odds of getting the flu go down dramatically.

I prefer the flu shot over possible death.

raynebc
Member #11,908
May 2010

My understanding is that many years, including this one, the flu vaccine has less than a 1/3 success rate. I don't really bother since I am at low risk of any serious harm from the flu and I follow decent sanitary practices so that I'm not likely going to make anybody else sick. I remember all of the sky falling panic about the swine flu, and if I remember correctly it turned out to be a lot of paranoia for a strain that ended up killing fewer people than the normal annual flu.

DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
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Because of how long it takes to make the vaccine, they have to make an educated guess on what strain will be prevalent when the season starts. Some times they make a bad guess.

A couple of years ago the strain didn't change. Do we still need the shot? No one could answer that, so we got the shot again.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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DanielH said:

Here in the US, the Food and Drug administration regulates and monitors all drugs. Their main job is to make sure that the drug strength is accurate, the drug is "safe", the drug is "effective". (Notice the quotes around "safe" and "effective") Extensive testing is done prior to release into the market and post release.

Actually, based on what I've read and heard, the FDA doesn't do any of its own testing. The companies that are selling the product have to do the testing and submit the results. How could you possibly cheat that system?! ::)

The FDA is basically a joke. They exist to enforce the laws where there's an incentive to, but they certainly don't go out of their way to enforce them.

DanielH said:

If there are enough complaints, the FDA will investigate. It has happened a few times.

You shouldn't need to complain to have the product investigated. If it was serving its purpose it would test everything randomly and punish people that are cutting costs or mislabeling their products. Though I would bet that the FDA is just as easily bought as the rest of the government is.

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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So long as there is money to be made in selling treatments for symptoms of diabetes, I doubt there will ever exist an outright cure. Even if a cure were to be made, it would surely be "watered down" and administered in multiple steps to allow for maximum profits. Thank God for people like Jonas Salk who opted not to pursue patenting the polio vaccine (something estimated to be worth $7 billion had it been patented!), instead saying it belonged to the people.

Unrelated: You can get Steam copies of Shinobi and Streets of Rage 2 for free right now by checking out makewarnotlove.com.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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:-/

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy

DanielH
Member #934
January 2001
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I find it funny when people talk about cures for diabetes.

Insulin is a naturally occurring hormone that processes the sugar in the blood and puts it into muscle tissue for use. It is created in the pancreas.

Type 1 Diabetes: is due to the pancreas not producing insulin. This usually happens early in life (nicknamed childhood diabetes) due to an autoimmune disorder that at one point attacked the pancreas.

Type 2 Diabetes: is due to insulin-resistance of the body. This occurs later in life and is due to excessive body weight and little to no exercise. There are 2 subtypes: insulin-dependent and non-insulin-dependent. Most people start at non-insulin dependent. Eventually the pancreas will fail and they will need to supplement with insulin.

In both cases: once the pancreas stops, there is no insulin.

For Type 1, you can get a pancreas transplant. However, it is very risky. Usually, the less risky option is a insulin-for-life lifestyle.

For Type 2, exercise and diet initially help. For newly diagnosed patients this is enough to reverse the diagnosis. However, this is always a temporary reversal.

One interesting fact: if you live long enough every single person would develop diabetes.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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The only people who are brain dead are the ones who don't get vaccinated. And then we have to deal with it when they spread their diseases.

Polio vaccine.
Smallpox.
TB.

Eradicated because of vaccines. So stuff it. Some people have bad reactions to vaccines, like any other medicine, because of allegies or low tolerances.

But to say no one should be vaccinated is like saying everyone should live in the Dark Ages again.

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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I agree with Edgar on this one. For the overwhelming majority of people, vaccines are the way to go. There are quite a few people these days who refuse to have their kids vaccinated, and we're seeing diseases that were once wiped out making a return as a result. Is that just a coincidence?

There are risks associated with everything though, so no doubt some people will inevitably have a negative reaction to some vaccines. For the great majority though, vaccines are totally fine. I'd prefer to get a tetanus shot every decade instead of actually getting tetanus and dying from it.

Neil Roy
Member #2,229
April 2002
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<retracted> My apologies. I need to get away from these and all forums I think.

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“I love you too.” - last words of Wanda Roy



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