The DSM sucks

Here's a neat read from ShrinkTalk.Net

http://www.shrinktalk.net/archives/the_dsmivtr_is_stupid.phtml#comments

There are two sides here:

1. You're angry that you didn't get published. I'm sorry that it didn't work out for, I understand, but bringing up the bird journal just gives fuel to the opposition. That anger kind of "dequalified" point #2

2. The DSM is basically a piece of crap.

And it is, that book is the reason that I went into computing instead of psychology. 10 minutes and a little searching and all you're left with is "Man this is screwed up and useless, I can have two depressed people with totally different depressions"

The DSM is basically crap, but it's really just a small piece of the puzzle. B/c let's face it, most of North American medicine is crap. To follow up Amber's comment, I'm living in Canada (Edmonton) and I think that Canadian doctors over-prescribe (the American system is just a giant mess I don't want to touch).

But ironically, I think that the problem doesn't stem from the doctors, it stems from human nature (the pool from which we select doctors). Human nature is to desire the quick fix and the nature of the world is to favor the "gradual change": people want to wake up 20 lbs lighter, they don't want to lose weight; they want to "become" happy rather than "discover" happy. Like all classic dual-edged swords the "quick-fix" is both a source of success and failure.

So when it comes to medicine and health, people think the same way: "quick fix". We have pill for this a procedure for that and everything is fine. Human nature has reduced the concept of human health to a giant book of problems with an associated "lookup" for solutions. And it's done this under the very concept that such a "solution-lookup system" could feasibly exist and could feasibly be managed / maintained by doctors.

I can't be done. Sure it could theoretically be done, but it can't actually be done. At some point (as with all things) you have to cut your losses and work on your strengths.

Now sure, I'd love to yell at the doctors for believing that they could index all of humanity's problems, but hell We The People are basically yelling for it. We, the human race are just a bunch of "quick-fixers", that's our nature, heck that's our strength. Of course, at some point, we too have to cut our losses.

And this is where "modern medecine" has failed us, b/c our current medical scheme is highly focused on quick fixes. People (doctors) feel important when they are solving problems. "Processing" patients makes you feel good, it makes you feel like you're saving lives and making a difference. Of course, the problem with that logic is pretty clear: isn't the best news usually just no news at all? Wouldn't it be better to just have less people needing to visit the hospital?

Of course it would, but we (typical north americans) haven't built our system or our lives this way. We don't build for longevity, we don't "grow", we leap damnit! And that's why we're in trouble, we build bad foundations and then band-aid them up.

Think foundations:

1. Diet
2. Sleep
3. Activity
4. Mood

These things affect basically everything. Heck, these are the fundamental cycles of life, we eat, sleep, move around a bunch and act happy/sad about the whole deal.

So when you come in complaining about a headache, what does the doc ask you? He asks for descriptions or prior history, he's mostly trying to figure out what strength of pill to prescribe. But what he should be asking you is the above 4 questions. What he's fundamentally trying to do is return all of these to healthy norms.

Yeah, it doesn't always work, yeah some things are bigger, but unless we're trying to "normalize" these 4 factors, then how do we know what's causing the problem? How do we know what we're actually fixing? If your jaw hurts and you have a headache what's the problem? Unless I can ascertain that you've been sleeping well, eating well, treated your body well and were mentally positive, then how can I possibly evaluate the cause of your situation? Both of these issues could be caused by any of the above problems, face it, you could be having a headache b/c you aren't sleeping quite enough, but the doc probably just assumes that it's b/c of the jaw pain.

Yes to argue semantics I can't actually evaluate the exact cause of every ailment that you may have. But the least that the medical profession could enforce would be to throw out the most salient factors of variability. Anyone with a long-term ailment should be keeping diet/sleep/activity journals with a daily thought blurb. The goal, front and centre, should be normalizing these behaviours so that we can actually pick out the abnormality.

But we don't do this b/c it isn't quick. People, let alone doctors, don't want to keep these complicated journals and track their own progress, they don't want to get better, they want to be made better. So that's what the doctors deliver.

Deep-down, it angers me to no end that some of the smartest people around (doctors) can't actually behave like the smart people they are and learn to correctly guide the populace instead of buying into their weakness. But that's the fundamental problem, we don't just need doctors to pull out rotting teeth or replace broken hips or prescribe one-step solutions, we need doctors that can guide the patient on all levels but that's not what's happening.

Slimming down (part 1)

So I've lived the typical North American lifestyle for just a little too long. Or rather, I was living. For those outside the phenomenon, that means that I was overweight and in debt.

The debt thing was annoying... but at least my net worth was definitely in the plus. My weight however was really over the top.

When I was 18 I weighed in at slender 140 lbs (63.5kg), 5'8" (1.73m). Now at the time I was really thin, so I've pretty much absolved myself of ever getting back to that weight. But since my slender high school days, I had ballooned up to 205 lbs (93kg) right around my 26th birthday! The electronic scale had me at about 30% body fat and, well heck here's a pic of me.



Now to be honest, balloon may be the incorrect word. My growth was more like incremental. I could still run long distances and I still had some muscle mass: solid abs, rock hard legs it was all just wrapped in a healthy layer of fat. The fat part just kind of snuck up on me over time.

Of course, this is a success story, I dropped a bunch of the weight right down 175 (80 kg). Obviously, I'm on the successful end of the journey, but I'm definitely not done. My body fat rates at 24% and I'd really like to be at 12% long term. (A little math reveals that 30% of 205 = 61.5 lbs of fat and 24% of 175 = 42 lbs of fat, which means that I went from 143 to 133 of "lean" mass, it also means that my target of 15% puts me at about 160lbs).



As it turns out, 160 was my original goal, so I'm not quite done yet. But I just recently moved cities and this whole weight loss thing involves some planning. It's not really tough to maintain, but losing takes some planning.

Here's me now, post laser-eye surgery and accompanied by my wonderful fiance.




So yeah, down to the whole point. I hit a couple of blogs today that talked about people losing weight and I came to two sober conclusions.

1. I've been talking for months about how loss of weight and recovering from debt are very similar (hence the generic slimming down title). Overweight and in debt seem to carry many of the same mental characteristics and the anecdotal evidence seems to support this.
2. Lots of people know very little about weight loss. This is why crap like South Beach and Zone and Atkins all become so popular. They basically prey on people not knowing enough to see that they could do this stuff without silly diets.

Point #1 needs exploration another time, but Point #2 needs some attention.

So here it is, the point of my article: How I lost my weight for free with minimal emotional stress and no following of some silly "diet".

So first, here's the most important link: The Hacker's Diet. This was my secret. It was assembled by John Walker after he'd made his millions and lost 90 lbs in one year. He's publishing this book for free and he's letting people download it for free! I want to say that again, the guy who wrote this book has NO vested interest in making money off it. He's a millionaire programmer, he's offering the book for free, so that should all tell you something, he's not lying to you!

Of course, he's a programmer and the book is written for people with an engineering mindset, so it can be tough to read. So thusly, I'm embarking on a big journey, I'm going to write this for everyone else :)

So check in soon... this should be good.