“Redheads Need More Anesthesia”: 27 Incredibly Weird Phenomena That Seem Too Fake To Be True
Interview With ExpertThe world is full of mysteries, some of which we understand and others that we’re still figuring out. From all the incredible things that happen on our planet, some just seem way too far-fetched to be true. Almost like they can’t be backed up by scientific evidence.
That’s why we put together this list of weird phenomena and crazy happenings that seem extremely fake but are actually real. You better clear your schedule because some of these posts might lead you down an intense rabbit hole of research.
More info: Reddit
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Most of psychology and neurology sound like absolute b******t once you read into at first, and then there’s just this disgusting mountain of evidence in your face. Like just look at ADHD, for an ADHD person the reason they didn’t do something can QUITE LITERALLY be “my brain didn’t *let* me do it” and it’s not bs, like it’s a thing called executive dysfunction which is the brain not know what or how to do something or start or a lot of other things and then just doesn’t.
It the outside observer it looks like laziness, and that they’re just slacking off scrolling their phone or watching stuff, but inside is an entire monologue of said person screaming at themselves to just do the thing, but they can’t. It’s also not just for important or menial tasks, they’ll “procrastinate” on things they want to do, like playing a video game or reading a good book. It can often feel like “Locked In Syndrome” a condition where you’re locked inside your own body as an observer.
As a person with AuDHD I can confirm. My mom is my executive officer in a literal sense to manage those things my brain simply refuses to do
That gives me a hint about why having company makes it possible the break through the barrier when I can’t do it alone. I have a friend coming over tomorrow to help with something I’ve needed to do for months.
Load More Replies...I'd like to add that this kind of problem is not exclusive to ADHD. People suffering from depression for example can experience this too - the reasons are different but for outstanders it looks the same
I experience this all the time. It can be something as simple as writing a 3 sentence email for something very important, like taxes or the doctor or something that would get me a dream job. I often can't do it. It's like standing before a door and just not being able to reach out and turn the handle. You're just not able to do the thing. And you curse yourself and scream at yourself but you just can't do it. I hate it so much
Thank you for this. I am 67 years old, and I can still hear my mother telling me "you're LAZY" when I couldn't get something done she wanted me to. Cutting like a knife. It still hurts.
“He could do so much if he would just try”. My second grade teacher, from back before ADHD existed and we were just lazy or discipline cases.
Load More Replies...ADHD + Depression. I can know what I need to do, I can want to do it, it can be something I would enjoy doing....and I still. can't. do. it. Other times, of course, my brain will fixate on something, and refuse to let me stop doing it.
Yes! It’s so bizarre - I’m *trying* to do something I *want* to do and my brain just won’t. I’m sure it sounds like a load of excuses to someone who hasn’t been there, but it is very real and very infuriating for those experiencing it.
Load More Replies...To neurotypicals, neurodivergence is a bad excuse for poor behaviour / success :(
I’m so lucky I’m a guy and was diagnosed at 8, because I’m not totally sure I’d be able to handle being called lazy by people all the time.
Well, we who experience it certainly understand it. It’s the people who don’t experience it, and also refuse to accept that it’s true who are the problem.
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The illusory truth effect.
People will believe something *just* because it is repeated, even when they know that what's being said is not true.
“A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” - British Prime Minister Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
Tell your spouse and family that you love them three times every day. And show it by how you treat them.
To quote Kamala Harris, "Haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha haha."
Load More Replies...They're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs, they're eating the pets! And it's a shame..." or pollievre in Canada insisting Singh only cares about his pension... which is currently about a quarter of what pollievres pension is.
You absorb more nutrients from cooked eggs than you do from raw eggs. People don’t believe it because cooking eggs actually does reduce the amount of nutrients. BUT cooking them changes the protein structures and makes it easier for your body to actually absorb them. It’s called Protein Denaturation and it increases the bioavailability of the proteins. Bioavailability describes what is actually available for your body to digest and absorb.
More nutrients doesn’t necessarily mean more bioavailability and less nutrients doesn’t necessarily mean less bioavailability.
The same thing happens with a lot of food. Especially plants, many of them have complex proteins that are more bioavailable when denatured.
Same for the complex starches and fibers. Cooking softens and breaks things down making them more easily digested and absorbed. There's actually archaeological evidence pointing back 250,000 years to when humans started using fire to cook. The increased nutritional value had marked impacts on our brain size and overall health.
Load More Replies...Isn’t it the same, or similar with tomatoes. Cooked are better than raw. I’ll stand corrected.
Just like broccoli and many other foods. Broccoli has vitamin K but it practically useless unless cooked.
Part of this may be due to the fact that most people do not eat eggs raw.
I wouldn't get much nutrients from a raw egg since I would basically throw it up!
So many examples on this list might sound absurd at first, until you try and uncover the truth behind them. Like the idea that your personality changes when you switch between languages. The idea behind it is that you might speak in a different language when going to a new environment or culture and that ultimately affects the way you express yourself.
Compared to that, pseudoscience doesn’t have evidence backing it and is almost always based on flimsy ideas. To understand the difference between what information’s real and what’s fake, Bored Panda reached out to Paul M. Sutter. He is a theoretical cosmologist, NASA advisor, and author of a book called ‘Rescuing Science: Restoring Trust in an Age of Doubt.’
The most important thing Paul told us about pseudoscience is that it “takes the surface tools of science, like complex jargon and fancy equipment, but misses the deeper soul, like skepticism and openness.”
The effect on your dopamine receptors from fantasizing/ imagining things. I forget the exact term. As it turns out, you can achieve a pretty high dopamine response from fantasizing/ imagining/ talking about goals, which can provide your brain with enough happy chemicals to actually HINDER your drive to go and achieve those things for real. This sounds like b******t, but it’s true.
Can confirm on my part - diagnosis of ADD, I can get lost in my thoughts for hours. Plus side is that I never get bored when I always have my imaginary worlds, downside that I don't get anything done in reality 🫠
Load More Replies...That explains 99% of my thoughts... The other 1% is me trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.
It also can mess you up into forming an addiction to other people that you imagine you have a relationship with. Limerence. It's no party.
When I have a project - either personal or from work - I spend some time thinking about it. Once I've decided on the best way to approach it, and some actual solutions, I lose interest because the problem is solved.
And chronic worrying is a mix of that overactive imagination and a touch of OCD that focuses only on negative "what ifs".
I've known that for years. Many games are far more satisfying to think about how you'd dominate in it than to actually build up the skill necessary to do so. Smaller time investment, better reward.
Mycelium. You're telling me the 'roots' of mushrooms act as a big message delivery system that not only allows information to be sent large distances across a single specimen but can also be used by connected TREES to communicate with each other and swap nutrients??? This is an oversimplification and mycelium absolutely does not think (isn't sentient) like humans do-- however, I am not exaggerating just how implausible it all sounds. There are some amazing mushroom documentaries out there and it still baffles me.
Ha ha - I see what you did there, Andrew. Good one.
Load More Replies...Fungi are the largest organisms in the world. Mushrooms are the reproductive part of fungi. The real mass is under ground, In Oregon there’s a single honey mushroom that’s 30 some odd square miles or bigger?
They do it through the roots cos there ain't mushroom on top. I'll see myself out.
Maybe the pre-Abrahamic religions, particularly animistic ones, were more in tune with reality than the former.
That talk about you changing personalities when switching languages apparently has truth to it.
So which language will make my personality bubbly and outgoing? German seems to make it gloomy and sarcastic
When I speak German I'm typically more direct, more serious. Can also tell jokes with the well-known German "humor". Whereas when I speak English I'm bubblier ,friendlier, etc. Spanish is a bit flirty and chill, almost like summer. :)
Load More Replies...I would suppose the brain has to change slightl the way of thinking, when using different grammar rules.
That might be very true, different languages have sort of different aspects to things. For instance, in English, I might say "I dropped my fork", but in Finnish, I would say "my fork dropped from me" if it is an accident, pointing the "blame" to the fork. If I said in Finnish I dropped my fork, it would mean I did it on purpose. There are lots of small differences like this in the grammar itself, not to speak of the mentalities of different nations etc.
Load More Replies...I've never heard of this! I can see how it might work, though, almost as though you are playing a role.
I work with someone who is bilingual- English/French - and he is much louder in French. Other colleagues who are also bilingual have said they are also louder in French.
I have a long tendency to switch to French when expressing either affection or discipline/direction toward my kids. I always figured this was a combination of influences from my lovely Franco-Manitoban grandmother and several truly awful high school immersion teachers.
Totally true. I feel like a lighter and nicer person speaking in English or Spanish than my original language.
Across the globe, around 60% of folks believe that the average person in their country doesn't care about factual information and just believes what they want. That is quite worrisome, considering how easy it is to pass pseudoscience off as real science and how believable a lot of it seems.
That’s why we also contacted Melanie Trecek-King to share her views on this topic. Melanie is a speaker, writer, educator, and consultant specializing in critical thinking, information literacy, and science literacy. She is the creator of Thinking Is Power—which empowers individuals with skills to make better decisions and protect themselves from misinformation.
She is also an associate professor of biology at Massasoit Community College, the education director for the Mental Immunity Project and CIRCE (Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative), and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Melanie explained that “pseudoscience masquerades as science but doesn’t adhere to the rigorous processes that make science reliable. Pseudoscience is widespread and can be dangerous. To protect ourselves, we must understand its characteristics and why we’re vulnerable to it.”
The bacteria in your intestine exist to digest the foods you usually eat. If you stop eating those foods, the bacteria will die, so they send a message to your brain, causing you to crave those foods. If you're trying to give up french fries, for example, it will take about 4 weeks to kill all the bacteria accustomed to digesting that food, and you will continue to crave it while they live.
It also may be possible to lose weight by getting a fecal transplant from a thin person. The only problem is, it is also possible to get a mental illness (potentially) from that same person, so they should be screened carefully.
This explains why I just can't do without chocolate ... but how on Earth does a faecal transplant affect my mental health?
For instance, if they have schizophrenia, the bacteria in their gut could be effecting (I don't mean affecting) their mental health, and it could start that in you. Scientists are still studying that.
Load More Replies...We are, effectively, just vessels for the bacteria and other germs that make up most of our bodies.
This is by the way the same reason why a long time vegan might get sick from eating meat, or someone who eats a lot of meat will remain hungry when only eating vegetables for some time. Their gut bacteria is simply not adjusted to digest meat/take a sufficient amount of calories just from just greens.
Isn't there an easy way to kill off gluttonous bacteria? Drinking denatured alcohol?
Full regimen of antibiotics. But that's the nuke-'em-all strategy & you have to start over at that point.
Load More Replies...The science behind faecal transplants is still very new, so some studies have found merit in it and others haven't, but the sample size is still small. (hence 'may be possible) I hadn't heard of it in regards to mental illness though, mostly people with autoimmune conditions and IBS.
Well, they did (or rather their patients did). I seem to recall a story from years ago about a cancer patient, whose chemo had basically eradicated her intestinal residents, making it almost impossible for her to gain nutrients from food. Her husband was the donor. It worked - so well, in fact, that for the first time in her life she fully appreciated her husband's trouble of "gaining waight just from looking at a full plate". Before cancer she had never had to watch what she ate to keep her weight.
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Red heads need more Anaesthesia than non-read heads. (Not sure if this fits the bill, but it’s always been fascinating to me!).
As a natural redhead, I can confirm. It doesn’t apply to all redheads but for those of us it does, getting work done at the dentist, for example, requires an upfront conversation that injected anesthetic at a “normal” dose is going to wear off part way through the procedure. We start with a slightly higher dose and they are accustomed to me tapping the dentist’s arm when I start to feel pain.
Ugh, yes! Natural redhead and I have it, too. I had gum surgery this past year and the dentist didn't believe me when I said I could still feel him after multiple shots of Novacain. He called me a liar and a d**g seeker, which resulted in them not prescribing me pain meds for afterwards.
Load More Replies...Note to self: Dye hair red before any medical encounters that might lead to quality d***s.
I'm not red-haired but I need more anesthetics, so I tell this to every anesthesist or dentist. *Me who woke up still intubated and paralyzed after my first surgery and usually needs two shots for a molar*
This is something that worried me, I was born a redhead, and have always been a redhead until recently, due to chemo. My hair had fallen out, but I had to pause my chemo for a while for surgery, and my hair started coming back blonde, just before surgery. Thankfully, they knew I was a redhead, and of course, they do several checks to make sure you're fully out etc... now i'm bald again after finishing the rest of my chemo and now wondering if I'll be blonde again or go back to being ginger. :')
Redheads seem to have a higher resistance to many things. My wife is a redhead, she does need more anaesthesia but at the same time she has a very high pain tolerance. She birthed my sons without any pain meds.
Red haired Mommy here too. I didn't have any pain meds either. Sure, giving birth hurt but I can't really compare my pain with anyone else's. I was just determined to go through it without meds as I wanted everything as natural as possible.
Load More Replies...As a redhead I now refuse to go to the dentist because I've been drilled on too many times by dentists who did not believe me when I told them I did not numb easily.
Redheads also have a higher pain tolerance. There was a Mythbusters episode that tested this.
Dad's a redhead and has this problem. I'm not a redhead, but my secret ginger side has come out this summer since I've gotten sun for the first time in many, many years. I'm looking into something that requires anesthesia and I'm a bit...concerned.
I thought it was going to be greater tolerance for the anesthesia but sounds like it is lower tolerance for pain. Me - (brunette, not redhead) has always needed extra anesthesia and pain meds. They seem to be less effective on me according to some doctors and dentists I've had. So I thought it was like that. From the internet: "Red hair: The gene that causes red hair may also lower pain tolerance, which could mean redheads need more anesthesia"
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). essentially, you look at a moving light or object in the therapy room as you process painful memories (as in PTSD and related trauma disorders). it's very effective for most people and typically works faster than traditional therapeutic models. sometimes the relief is apparent even after one session.
it's broadly applied, too. PTSD, anxiety disorders, phobia, dissociative disorders....EMDR is indicated for a wide variety of life challenges.
privately, i call it the "little miracle". there are times when it appears to be almost mystical, but then, the human mind is vast and endless, and we know very little about it.
Our brains are sometimes like computers and in PTSD it's like the memory got stored at the wrong place, where it's always accessed by mistake. It needs to be moved to another part of the brain where long term memories belong to fade away eventually
It just needs to be processed in a non-threatening environment. The eye movement works like a mild hypnosis, dissociating the person from the terror. So when they recall it they can solidify that memory without terror. Ketamine is being used for this too. To get a dissociation then process the trauma without terror. Pretty fascinating stuff. When EMDR first came out we all thought it was bull. But no, it works, very well.
Load More Replies...I got EMDR for my Complex PTSD, and it was FANTASTIC. Very effective. So many therapists think they know how to treat trauma and they don't. My EMDR therapist -- who was the THIRTEENTH therapist I tried over the years! -- was the first one I ever met who was truly and genuinely taught how to treat trauma. Her approach was completely different than other therapists'.
This has been really good for fellow travellers in mental health groups over the years. But it did not work out well for me at all. I crawled up the wall behind me to get away from what I was seeing, screaming at the top of my lungs. It was a big set back on my recovery for a while. This however was right at the beginning of my time with my psychologist , he has a far better understanding now and I have a few more diagnosed disorders
My psychologist suggested this, but then the regular counselling was working well so I decided I didn't need it.
EMDR is one of the top three recommended by VA as evidenced-based for PTSD. (Unfortunately, training for providers isn't well-funded.) It can be effective, but is better for a specific traumatic stressor rather than multiple. Other identified top choices include Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE). Written Exposure Therapy (unfortunately, "WET") is an up-and-coming option. Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough research yet on psychedelic assisted therapies, because once they come online, they will represent a major boon (done properly, with therapists who are properly trained).
I guess that's why some people find it very therapeutic to look out the window of a moving vehicle while thinking. I wonder if that's contributed to many failed tests due to reviewing test materials on the bus/train on the way to said test though!
I was very sceptical about this but you can't reject something proven by science.
Load More Replies...To simplify things for everyone and help distinguish between the facts on this list and misinformation, we asked Paul Sutter for tips. He said: “Here are my warning signs that you might just be encountering pseudoscience:
- Secrecy: science is open to critique and evaluation. Watch out for ideas that rely on some secret or arcane knowledge that only a select few have access to.
- Convoluted: even the most complex of scientific theories are straightforward and to the point. We always try to have as few steps and assumptions as possible to explain the data.
- Conspiracy: if an idea needs vast conspiracy to work, like there's some cabal of scientists and government officials trying to hide the ‘truth,’ it's probably not true.
- Static: science is always changing and updating with new evidence. Keep an eye out for ideas that haven't changed for decades or longer.”
It’s not so much a pseudoscience as it is just good old fashioned, under funding for research but Gut microbiome health is way more than just the health of one’s gut.
We don't know the links we should know because it's deliberately been underfunded. But we do know that the microbiology of our guts impacts our health.
Load More Replies...The gut is responsible for more than people know. Not just the bacteria we use to digest food. The gut is also where serotonin is produced. People think all neurotransmitters are made in the brain and that’s not the case at all.
Ever heard of epigenetics? It sounds like pseudoscience with its talk of genes being turned on and off by environmental factors, but it’s a legit field of study. It’s all about how lifestyle and environment can influence gene expression without altering the DNA sequence itself.
A lot of it is how long term stresses can change the chemical makeup of your cells, which can then essentially wake up dormant DNA. So, if you have the DNA for certain cancers, experiencing the right stresses for the right protracted amount of time can wake them up and start them multiplying. This can also affect babies in the womb, as the stresses change the chemical makeup of the mother’s cells she shares with the baby. Additionally, the stresses of womb placement for multiple births can affect it—-there’s usually one dominant baby who ends up getting the lion’s share of nutrients from the mother, leaving little to their siblings. Even monozygotic twins (identical) aren’t 100% identical, and become less so as they grow up, because of differing life experiences. That’s how you can have one twin develop cancer or schizophrenia, and the other not develop it at all. It’s a really fascinating science, and truly answers the nature or nurture questions, by proving that it is a combination of both that shapes us.
I'm an identical twin and was born smaller and I've always been sickly. I was the baby that got colic and was ill a lot (I'm now disabled after various illnesses) and I have eczema and allergies. My twin has always been healthy apart from appendicitis when we were 7. My mum was convinced we couldn't be identical, despite looking the same, because we were so different health wise. We've since had a DNA test which shows we're definitely identical. Genetics and epigenetics are wild
Load More Replies...Epigenetics also affects the germ line (sperm and eggs), so experiences in a parent's life can be passed on to children, and even for several generations. The best studied of these is the effects of famine or starvation on descendants of survivors.
You are correct Becky. Don't know why you got downvoted. I was pregnant with my son from a donated embryo. Not my genetics. But I often wonder how much my epigenetics imprinted on him. He's super anxious. I was abused in childhood. Did I phosphylate or methylate some of his genes and turn up the scan for danger genes? I'll never know.
Load More Replies...This is why risk factors aren't 100% assured with certain hereditary disorders. Environmental factors play a real role!
I want to get a chicken and turn on the dinosaur DNA. Think of the savings on eggs!
Probably offset by the increase in the budget for feed.
Load More Replies...Stress causes a lot of problems because it affects our epigenetics so much. For instance: the ACEs test measures how many harmful stressors you experienced in your childhood. Statistically, the higher your ACE score, the more likely you are to experience mental and physical health problems in later life. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/02/387007941/take-the-ace-quiz-and-learn-what-it-does-and-doesnt-mean
Epigenetics is neither pseudoscience nor established science; it's an emerging discipline with no definite conclusions.
There are conclusions. Lots of animal studies where they document a gene being methylated or altered and the offspring with the same tweak. Now suddenly everyone's more afraid of bees or something. Can be down regulated too. If junior never experiences bee threats the methylation can fall off. Then the next generation is not afraid of bees. They've done this with many animal models. And it's been known for quite some time now.
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Placebo effect - your mind can genuinely heal your body just by believing it works.
So don't read the small print on the new medicine commercials!
Load More Replies...Like how people with multiple personality disorder may have identities with different allergies or medical needs - fascinating stuff.
It could actually heal SOME issues. It's not a guaranteed solution for everything but it can actually completely heal some problems
Load More Replies...The coolest thing about placebo is that it can work even when you know you are given a placebo!
The brain says to itself, placebo works. This is a placebo, and so it must work
Load More Replies...Yes and no. It’s more distracting your anxiety and focus away from what you think is wrong with your body. Stress itself is harmful to your whole system. Enough stress and it can shut your heart down. It’s called broken heart syndrome for short or Takutsubo acardiomyopathy. Have cause by a rare disease stressing my body but can be cause my mental stress as well.
Valid d**g trials require the d**g under test to be compared against a dummy pill. This is because the placebo effect is real. The placebo ("I please") effect is a real thing. The fact that a dummy pill can result in some people getting well when they otherwise wouldn't have doesn't mean that anyone can do anything if only they imagined it. Curing a cold is not the same as sprouting wings and flying.
Load More Replies...Most of us aren’t scientists, which is why it can be hard to distinguish between fact and fiction. Melanie Trecek-King explained that “the line between science and pseudoscience isn’t always clear, but there are a few telltale signs. Unlike scientific claims, many pseudoscientific claims are so vague that they can’t be tested.”
“By using overly broad statements (promotes vibrant health and wellness) or appealing to energies or spiritual forces (rebalances the body’s energy fields), pseudoscientific claims are difficult or impossible to verify. Pseudoscience promoters create an aura of mystery and encourage us to interpret their claims based on our hopes and desires,” Melanie explained.
When an amputee is experiencing phantom limb pains, massaging their stump and then the space where the limb was actually does help reduce the pains, especially if the person is already on the maximum dosage of pain meds and can't have anymore. Hearing the hands against the sheets where the limb would be tricks the brain into thinking that it's still there, so it stops the nerves from overfiring as much.
I read that book. Absolutely fascinating. The doctor had one patient that kept getting an itchy palm...of the hand he didn't have. The doctor discovered that if the patient scratched one particular part of his cheek, the itch in his nonexistent palm was relieved.
Load More Replies...Having gone through this myself, absolutely can confirm. It was maddening for the first 8 months trying to get my doctor to listen to me. As if the scar tissue pain wasn't sleep depriving enough, being told you're bonkers just MEAN.
As a side note, I was already on 10mg oxycontin and the surgeon gladly refilled it when I begged to see him. I just wanted off them darn pills. Yuck
Load More Replies...Yes. I saw experiments using a mirror to reflect the remaining limb to the patients eyes will get them thinking they still have the missing limb and then they massage it in the mirror and the pain dissipates.
Can confirm. I've done this for lots of my patients and most of them felt relief.
House MD covered this extremely well. The phantom limb box containing a mirror or rubber facsimile can trick your brain into thinking it's real.
I suppose this would be like the phenomenon shown on QI, where they put a divider with someone's hand on one side and a fake hand on the other. Used a brush to stroke the real hand first, then the fake one, and the person could 'feel' the brush stroking their hand even when it was stroking the fake one.
Load More Replies...I think the reverse may also be true, particularly with back pain sufferers. You can get referred pain when there is pressure on a nerve in your spine which you feel in the part of your body where the nerve endings actually are - for example your shin. If you then rub your shin you can get some temporary relief from the referred pain. I get this quite a lot and it is quite difficult to tell yourself that the pain is not in your legs, but coming from your back.
My radiculopathy never manifests in the spine, but next to the the calves. The pain is maddening.
Load More Replies...I fortunately have all my limbs but I know this kind of pain from nerve pain. For example you feel that your foot aches, but even if you put your hand on it the pain is somewhere else, further away or deep in you flesh. You can't relieve it because you can't touch it. It's an excruciating pain that never modulates, just 10/10. It drives me crazy. Same when my C-section scar regrew nerves, the itching inside my belly, I could have ripped it open to scratch it.
That reminds me of the sort of pain I get with restless leg syndrome. Also pain/itching on my moles for no reason.
Load More Replies...I knew a nice old lady who lost an arm in childhood. She grew up, had a job, built a family, and through all those years there were times when the phantom pain just came back. She was a grandmother when I met her and still suffered from it from time to time.
I've always thought it ought to help, at least a little.
I'm no expert but this is based on my firsthand experience:
Taking vitamin D supplements makes me feel *significantly* less depressed. Like, I have the potential to be normal, if I've consistently taken it. And if I haven't, I will definitely be depressed, even if everything else is going great.
Now, vitamins aren't exactly pseudo-science. They are, in fact, *actual science*. But I had a hard time taking certain people seriously about them.
But damned if it doesn't make a demonstrative difference in my life.
My dad who was a doctor worked in a nursing home. He would prescribe vitamins to his patients at double the recommended FDA amounts. He said that elderly people were more likely to take the vitamins if they were prescribed and that they needed all that nutrition since they didn't get it in their diet.
Before taking a vitamin D supplement first get a blood test to be sure you actually have low levels.
Load More Replies...This is exactly why it's so difficult to treat mental illness. It can absolutely be an emotional disorder all on its own, but it can also be caused by physiological problems (in my case, I found out it was my thyroid). That's why psychiatric care is so hit-or-miss. If it was treated alongside physical health instead of separately, I would imagine it would be far less difficult to find the right combination of medication.
We can't prove low Vit D causes depression. We've tried. But we have proven depression causes low Vit D. People get depressed and stop going outside. You need sunlight to make Vit D. I like to check Vit D on all my depressed patients. That and thyroid.
Vitamin D deficiency causes fatigue. In a person who already deals with depression, fatigue can trigger episodes. A person who is not suffering from a vitamin D deficiency will not be helped by taking extra vitamin D.
I thought I was depressed but it was actually just fatigue. I have thalassemia so it’s a life long fatigue.
Load More Replies...Can confirm. I had some blood tests and had very low vitamin D, got a high dose prescribed and within hours, I felt that a very dense sadness was taken from me. It felt unreal.
I started taking Iron pills and felt like a new person after a couple of days.
This is true. I got PPD and the first thing my ObGyn suggested was to check my vitD levels.. they were practically nonexistent...
There is some evidence this is true. I have low D all the time and need supplements. Since it’s made from skin and sun it can be thought the body associates it with outdoors but that’s theory at this moment.
Having blue eyes can make you prone to sneezing when exposed to bright light.
I have eyes so dark they're almost black and still sneeze in bright light. The photopic sneeze reflex is due to our optical nerve being very close to the trigeminus nerve coming from the nasal cavity. When the optic nerve gets excited, the trigeminus gets excited alongside it and the result is a sneeze
Thanks for that. I have green eyes, but the same problem.
Load More Replies...MIne cause migraine headaches when flashed with a reflection of the sun.
Do you get the aura in those instances. I used to get migraines a lot, often when I was walking to school, not long after leaving the house into the sunlight, but I never thought about that being the trigger. I would get the aura those times. Now I still get migraines but they are completely different and less common and I don't know what triggers them, except for melatonin tablets I tried recently.
Load More Replies...All my family have blue eyes. Only myself and two of my brothers get this (known as ACHOO). I haven't had it happen in a long time though.
I have green eyes and I got Photostatic Sneeze Reflex all the time when I went from indoors to the outside and saw the sun. As an adult I don’t get it anymore.
Blue eyes tend to be more sensitive to light in general. Example driving after ita snowed, or whilst snowing.
I rarely sneeze once. I always have a sneezing fit of about 15 to 20 sneezes and all quite loud and forceful. Ive pulled my back sneezing and bit my tongue more than once. These can be triggered by sunlight, incense, certain perfumes, peppermint, eating too quickly, eating too much, and occasionally really needing to pee. *The last one can be problematic.
If you take one thing from this list, it should always be to question the information that comes your way. A very important point that Melanie mentioned is: “Pseudoscientific beliefs are motivated by a desire to believe, often due to identity needs or wishful thinking. Hope is powerful, and it can overwhelm our critical thinking faculties.”
“Remember, true scientific claims are supported by rigorous evidence and are open to scrutiny and debate. By being aware of how pseudoscience can fool us, we can better protect ourselves from falling prey to its deceptive allure,” she added.
Let us know if you’ve got any examples of things that sound like pseudoscience but actually aren’t. Be warned: diligent Pandas will definitely fact-check you!
It's really hard to drown in quicksand, but rather easy in a grain silo.
Quicksand can trap you, then you drown when the tide comes in. I live near a part of the coast where this is a very real risk (we have very wide and fairly flat beaches). I also live near a couple of lifeboat stations equipped to rescue people who do get trapped like that. I've seen a documentary on the telly where the presenter volunteered to get trapped by what they typically call "soft sand", and watched how they freed her leg - local to me in NW England. It's genuinely scary stuff and nothing like the Hollywood version.
Quicksand isn't always by the ocean. I got stuck in quicksand beside a river.
Load More Replies...When I was about 6, I was staying with my grandparents. I usually followed my Grandpa every where. At one point I noticed the grain silo's door, and opened it. WOW! If I climb up the side of the wheat, I'll slide down! Nope! Thankfully my Grandpa picked me up and out of the wheat, and calmly explained why that wasn't a good idea. I never forgot the lesson! Both my sets of grandparents were calm, and taught me lots of things, which I value today, at 76 years of age.
The other problem with silos is the concentration of toxic fumes inside. I don't think there is a high survival rate when people fall in them.
I got stuck in quicksand when I was 14 years old. I almost died from exhaustion getting out of it.
Think you need fluid to drown, don't you? Not a doctor so feel free to correct me. But I don't think you drown in grain. Asphyxiate, yes. Drown, no.
I suspect you're most likely to drown in the foam at the breaking edge of waves - foam doesn't support your weight, even if you're a great swimmer. Get out of the break zone !
The lead-crime hypothesis. There was a massive increase in violent crime in a lot of countries between the 60s and the 90s that then disappeared, correlating with the addition and removal of leaded gasoline. You can google some studies that show a range of results, and there’s a good magazine article here. https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/02/an-updated-lead-crime-roundup-for-2018/.
It also had to do with taking lead out of paints used to paint the inside and outside of houses and apartments. When paint oxidizes, it turns to a fine dust that can be inhaled. Additionally, we all know how babies go through a phase where everything goes in their mouths. They found that paint chips that fell in their reach also were ingested. Just like we removed asbestos from our insulation, we removed lead from our paint—-and both were given time limits for abatement that have now long ago passed. If you ever come across old asbestos insulation or leaded paint, you have to have it correctly removed by professionals, and replaced with new. (I worked in real estate when the bulk of the abatement jobs were happening.)
Indirect results as lead exposure lowers IQ and other measures of intelligence. The human groups with more violent crime tendencies tend to be in the 80-90 IQ range. However, the most effective killers still tend to be politicians and generals with 120+ IQ
Load More Replies...So this is my theory, we have seen a surge of psychological disorders in recent years. Using the information of asbestos = cancer increase, lead = violence increase, maybe microplastics = psychological disorder increase. I have no formal education, so this may just be a whole lot of nonsense, but to me it seems to fit the timeline.
Research has found that microplastics can cause/increase problems like higher levels of dementia or ADHD. https://www.aamc.org/news/microplastics-are-inside-us-all-what-does-mean-our-health
Load More Replies...Lead isn't exactly good for your brain - and it may be that crime is more likely to occur when thinking is restricted. And do try www.motherjones.com - there's a lot of good stuff there
I was born in 1960, and was an adult when they phased out leaded gas and put catalytic converters in cars. What pisses me off is the lead in my lungs from leaded gasoline, even though I never lived in a big polluted city, but in small towns and rural areas. People were still driving around in those places, and filling their tanks with leaded gas. None of the agencies that are supposed to know and try to correct environmental stuff like this—-and I am willing to bet good money they knew it for decades before anything was done—- never said one word until the eighties, when I was already in my twenties, and the damage to my lungs was already done. Same goes for the microplastics in our bodies that we just now learned about, even though plastics have been around for more than a f*****g century now.
Load More Replies...It also had to do with the increase is unprotected sex plus the absence of legal abortion. As a result, there was an increase in unwanted kids born into poverty.
The freakonomics people found a strong correlation between the time of legal abortion and the time of crime downdrop. As far as I remember, it was 15 years between the two, in other words, lots of unwanted poor kids did not grow up to do lots of crime. But I guess we'll see how the statistics move again, fifteen years from the new abortion bans :-/
Load More Replies...Correlation is not causation. But it -can- be used to prove causation if the information is granular enough, and you have enough of it. If I’m remembering correctly, studies could track the correlation neighborhood by neighborhood, where the level of lead contamination tracked exactly to the crime rate.
Fertility is also dropping because of microplastics in foods. A scientist predicted that the movie "Children of Men" will actually happen in a way since people won't really be able to have kids in a couple of decades.
So now I'm wondering if the increase in violent behavior might be linked to lead in processed food and other sources. Could the addition of lead to food be deliberate - an attempt to increase military enlistment perhaps?
I doubt people craving violence employ the foresight, discipline, and patience to restrict their outbursts to military training and operations. More like pub brawls, extremist political congregations (where the other side has people with the same cravings, and the convenient pretexts to act on them), and hooliganism. Making people aggro via lead to use them in the military is not a viable solution - especially since a lot of the daily routine in the armed forces - in peace AND war - is less about actually fighting others and more about operating machinery of one kind or another, be it a helicopter, a tank, or a computer, and lead poisoning has a negative impact on intellectual development. So you'd get aggressive hunks who would be difficult to keep in line, and too stupid to be trusted with a gun.
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Crazy to think cooling your wrist, behind the knee or inside elbow can cool the whole body due to blood proximity to the surface.
I remember learning to run cold water over my wrists to cool my hands when working with pastry. A school cookery lesson in about 1978.
I'm NOT putting an ice cube THERE, young man! And I dare you to tell me you would! 😂
Load More Replies...This is why elephants can cool their whole bodies by flapping their ears.
Anywhere blood flows closest to the surface of skin, if you submerge in cool water it will eventually cool you down.
A bit more personal but sticking an ice pack in your crotch also cools you down a lot. Nothing 'sexual'. It just puts the cold back close to your femoral artery. A survival thing they taught us in the military was you could lose up to half of your body heat through your groin or your head. That was more about surviving the elements and the importance of keeping those areas covered/warm but it also works in reverse. Groin for the artery and head because your body tries really hard to keep blood flow to the brain and head in general.
VISUALIZING AND MIRROR NEURONs!! Research has showed that visualizing is actually incredibly powerful. It activates both motor neurons and mirror neurons. Watching someone do a squat with good form and visualizing yourself executing that same motion with good form are almost the same to your brain as physically doing it.
So if you’re working out, learning a dance etc. watch videos of other people doing it. Close your eyes and visualize yourself doing it, moving through the motion and then when you go to do it, it will be easier!
Aphantasia. I can’t visualize. At best I get an ephemeral shadow, but mostly I just get a close memory.
Some people cannot visualize an object, and some lack any mental interior dialogue. Some lack a conscience or any sense of remorse for their crimes. They become Republican presidential candidates.
Load More Replies...My son has awful mirroring. Makes him clumsy and decreases his empathy towards others. It's part of his autism. You coo and googoo at the baby. And smile. And the baby didn't coo back. I felt so detached from him. It was weird. You really need these for emotional development and sports.
I wonder if this works for mundane tasks? If I imagine myself throwing out the trash, will it be easier to do it the next time? 🤔😂
I used this method when I was a competitive archer, and it did seem to help if I was disciplined about it. I used a 10-minute "meditation" before going to the range.
Load More Replies...It's very effective for katas and oher excercises that require form.
Load More Replies...People who have been trained in ballet can pick up other forms of dance much more quickly because ballet forces you to concentrate on very small differences in body position and movement when steps are being demonstrated for you, and it makes it easier to imitate other kinds of dances.
This is false. Just google mirror neurons. Tons of studies and tests proving their existence.
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That the water content of bamboo is affected by what phase the moon is in.
Tidal forces affect a lot more than just the ocean! Any fluid in motion can and will be affected by them. It's just that usually we don't notice or have developed means to deal with it as "fluctuations".
I'm embarrassed to admit I had to look her up 😂😂 For those who would like to know: https://wiki.lspace.org/Sally_Cambric GNU, Sir Pterry!
Load More Replies...Bamboo is also the tallest grass plant in the world and the fastest growing. Some grow 3 feet a day.
Seeing with your tongue is possible by wearing a special helmet with a camera and an electric plate on your tongue that transmits low-voltage signals via the plate. The brain will interpret that information through the visual cortex.
The technique has also been used to help people with a malfunctioning cerebellum by helping them restore their balance.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-blind-see-with-tongues/
Load More Replies...There’s a condition called Synesthesia that mixes the senses. For example you can taste color or see music. This happened to me a few times when I was sick.
John von Neumann invented what he called a 'hearing glove' which broke spoken sounds into 5 (or 10, depending) frequencies which the brain was trained to understand as speech - for an easy example, put in earplugs, and hold a balloon while someone is talking; you can hear through your fingers
Quantum mechanics. All of it, but especially antimatter and the way the little bits pop in and out of existence.
True. I took an intro class. I interpreted QM as, everything everywhere all at once
Load More Replies...This is how it is when your ability to observe reality is limited to a fraction of all of reality.
Both QM and GR have been tested very rigorously and both have been found to be in compliance with their predictions. Higgs Boson and Gravity Waves being the most recent. What's amazing is they're incompatible with each other!!
QM = quantum mechanics. GR = general relativity. QM was developed to describe things at a very small scale. GR was developed to describe things moving fast at a large scale. Odd thing, though: Einstein came up with general relativity, and noticed that it implied energy = mass times the speed of light squared, which is how nuclear bombs work, and that's all down to particle physics and quantum mechanics. Don't ask me, I just live here.
Load More Replies...It makes sense if you have deep studied it. Yes it doesn’t coincide with classic physics but there will always be things we can never know because some things will always be a phenomena we can only theorize about. However, replicating evidence has verified many quantum effects.
If you hold a pencil between your teeth, forcing your mouth into a grin-like shape, it will make you evaluate your mood more positively. Your brain responds to body movements and postures, and this way you can trick the brain into thinking you've been smiling all day.
This works with dogs too - tail position. Fake it 'till you make it works both psychologically and physiologically.
Ears of horses. If one of them gets their snake-face, I gently move the ears into the "I am interested"-position. Only recommended if the horse trusts you and you know the snake-face has no actual reason, but is only a bad-hair-day.
I would try this on my cat except that I'm pretty sure she'd kill me lol
Load More Replies...Smiling at customers all day never put me in a good mood. I still always wanted to fist thump the rude ones.
It also works with looking up and not constantly on the pavement when you walk. And straightening your shoulders does it, too. Fake it till you make it is true, somehow
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for depression.
I told my doctor it sounded like pseudoscience once a long time ago, but I later found out that it really is a legit thing.
I haven't actually done it myself though, and I've heard personal reviews on both ends of the spectrum.
I would be really interested to know how this works for you.
Load More Replies...I've had TMS sessions. It didn't work for me but I encourage everyone to try it out. You never know what will work.
I've done it twice over a period of two years and I can say that without a doubt... That TMS and Ketamine have saved my life. After a lifetime on various psych meds and years of battling with my mental health, I have been med free for two years now and I no longer have overwhelming anxiety and depression. I did it for my ADHD as well and I am off those meds too!
My roommate also gets ketamine treatments for nerve pain, where they knock her out for a short period of time, and when she wakes up, she feels better. It's like the doctors said, "have you tried turning her off and back on again?"
Load More Replies...I'd it done for my depression. It definitely worked. I still get the situational depression (experiencing at the moment) and temporarily take low dose antidepressant. However, I no longer feel the helplessness or hopelessness I used to experience.
Wouldn't this be cheaper than being on meds for many years and potentially the associated costs and lost earnings??
A lot less hassle too. After a while keeping track of and portioning out a bunch of pills every day gets very old. So far it seems to be working.
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Fascia. Biology and anatomy ignored it until pretty recently, and it's probably the #1 cause of most general pain and aches.
What is fascia? Fascia is a thin casing of connective tissue that surrounds and holds every organ, blood vessel, bone, nerve fiber and muscle in place. The tissue does more than provide internal structure; fascia has nerves that make it almost as sensitive as skin. . . . . . . . https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/muscle-pain-it-may-actually-be-your-fascia#:~:text=What%20is%20fascia%3F,almost%20as%20sensitive%20as%20skin.
Not sure of OP's definition of "pretty recently" because I had my therapists (plural, as in physio, RMT, etc.) work on different fascia from 2007 to 2019.
Ida Rolf invented body work deep tissue massage therapy back in the 1960's. It saved me from having to undergo painful surgery to correct scoliosis. She realized that fascia can be softened and moved around to free up frozen posture and poorly functioning muscle tissue.
Load More Replies...When you cut a piece of red meat, you'll notice whitish semi transparent bit, almost like a tough tissue paper between the red muscles. That's the fascia. Some used to think it served no function, but I think it's now formally recognised as an organ in its own right.
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That cosmic rays (neutrinos) are responsible for a lot of random computer errors. The smaller components are and the less electricity the need makes them more susceptible to interference. They carry very little electrical charge but enough to flip zeros to ones. The wrong flip, and oops not working correctly.... temporarily. This is why turning things off and on again fixes so many issues.
Neutrinos do not carry any electric charge - that's why they are called neutrinos (tiny neutral ones in Italian). Also, although some of them come in large numbers from the Sun (and other cosmic sources), usually they are not considered as cosmic rays, due to extremely low chance of interacting. Cosmic rays close to Earth's surface are composed mostly of muons.
To add & modify just a little... Cosmic Ray is a catch-all term. We do get bombarded by energetic neutrons from the sun all the time. They don't deliver a charge themselves, but are easy to be grabbed by the atoms of a circuit they're passing through & slowing down. And when they do, they tip the balance just long enough to start a tiny chain reaction that can flip a Bit. It's called a Soft Error and is a pretty well-studied phenomenon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_error
Load More Replies...If anyone else was confused by how poorly this was written, here's an edited version: Cosmic rays (neutrinos) are responsible for a lot of random computer errors. The smaller a component is, and the less electricity it needs, the more susceptible it is to interference. They carry very little electrical charge - just enough to flip zeros to ones. If it flips at the wrong time, it will temporarily not work properly. This is why turning things off and on again fixes so many issues.
It grinds my gears when people write how they would speak, because I can't hear the inflection that is happening in their heads as they write. It makes a lot of people's writing quite unintelligible.
Load More Replies...This is the primary cause of data rot on devices that store data as electrical current. This is why verifying the data cache on software that seems to be malfunctioning is useful.
Nothing much stores data as an electric current. Lots of things store data as an electric charge or as a magnetic moment. Neutrinos hardly ever interact with matter; neutrons are totally different particles. Back in the olden days of the 1970s, IIRC, Intel did some research into what exactly was flipping bits in its RAM chips and discovered that it wasn't cosmic rays as some had thought, it was mostly down to alpha particles from the chip packaging material. So they specified new packaging material and the problem went away.
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Time moves slower closer to center of masses. So if you were to fly around the world, you're time traveling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment.
GPS has to allow for this on the satellite clocks. It's complicated ;-)
The more I think about how GPS works, the more impossible it sounds.
Load More Replies...Spacetime relativity is awesome like that. We actually have to factor in spacetime distortion to a significant degree when the signal is going near major gravity wells like Jupiter.
Gravity and acceleration are interchangeable. And as for mass it is strongest on the surface of mass. The center of he earth has no gravity. The strongest gravity is in north arctic sea. The further you move from the surface the less affected by gravity you are. The stronger the gravity the slower you experience time as opposed to someone who is at less gravity, just like acceleration. The faster you move the slower through time you experience as opposed to a stationary observer.
How to touch an object that's in the past: https://youtu.be/gp8PbIBlC-s
If not for time travel, the Delorean would be almost entirely forgotten today.
Has nothing to do with mass. Has everything to do with the strength of the gravimetric field you are in.
...the strength of which has to do with mass
Load More Replies...Because the sun isn't as bright. I've had a sensitivity to light my whole life. I got cataracts in my 40s.
Load More Replies...I really enjoyed this but also. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Do your own research. Stay curious. ;)
Because the sun isn't as bright. I've had a sensitivity to light my whole life. I got cataracts in my 40s.
Load More Replies...I really enjoyed this but also. Don't believe everything you read on the internet. Do your own research. Stay curious. ;)
