Thursday 12 March 2015

Is Loneliness a Disease?

An enduring enigma at the heart of the 'obesity' cult, including this notorious brainfart is any assertion that though there's a field supposedly dedicated to the study of it, people must become 'disease' in order to prompt what should be that field's whole reason for existing.

The real issue is simple, there's no sure, direct, predictable, way to halt and/or reverse the process of weight gain. That is all that is needed, that's most of what should have been the central vocation of "obesity science."

It's dodged this forever and it can either see how long it can drag that out, or get the hell on with it. 

This paper looks at loneliness and the potential effects of a mindful approach on what is said to be negative health correlates. It explores mindfulness meditation to see if it can palliate these effects. Wait though.

Has loneliness been declared (a) disease? 

According AMA docs that's the motor of seeking to improve people's health in accessible ways. Not the intentions of those involved in the field, or anything.

It's a small study starting from the basis that loneliness is deemed to provoke potentially serious negative health effects. Focusing on the elderly population who tend to be more vulnerable to social isolation for a variety of factors.

They concluded mindfulness- maintaining focus in your present experience, allowing your thoughts to flow calmly, without becoming emotionally entangled with them-not only reduces the chemical markers associated with the health risks they were interested in.

The signs from the results were that it not only promises to lessen those risk factor markers, it also can reduce people's feelings of isolation.

This raises a question about how we see loneliness. On the one hand we think of it as aloneness-so how could that be lessened from within? Unless that concerned training on how to make friends or something like that.

It brings to mind the old axiom that you can feel lonely in a crowd yet not so on your own. Suggesting more (potential) harm is done, not in being alone so much as the habitual quality of your internal state and your (habitual) reaction to that. Or how you feel on the inside. Being alone, leaves you with that.

This can easily become a continual vicious cycle of negativity can help to wear you(r body) out. I note this so easily because let's face it, that's the 'obesity' strategy. To create a permanent state of negative feeling so acute, that one will do anything to escape those feelings.  The agonies of semi-starvation and overexercising are supposed to seem more tolerable than that.

The process of starting this, gives you permission to stop polluting your mind.

If you're asking, how can you participate in something so seemingly fake? In short, its pretty much boiling frogs. The first (unseen) hook is you accept it is wrong to be fat. Things roll on from there. Ultimately, you feel unethical not to keep participating in this scenario-which is actually very real whilst you are. Trying to stop this is like trying to stop feeling bad about being unfaithful, if that's an absolute no no in your mind. It feels unethical.

Any damage this exhausting cycle inflicts can be put down to 'obesity'. Which is why 'obesity' wallahs hate HAES or anything that remotely reports the reality of the weight/mortality graph.

Mindfulness is in essence, learning about detachment. I'm sure many people done with the cult instinctively start with a form of mindfulness. They learn to try and disengage from the internal cycle of negativity-as well as the external. If they either know or discover to really step off it, that begins to fade and they'll realize underneath this is-"self love."

If it is deemed;
People suffering from chronic inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma - in which psychological stress plays a major role - may benefit from mindfulness meditation techniques,
Then why wouldn't the field and its touting of "minor inflammation" be falling over itself to see the effects of something that can potentially lessen that level of said inflammation/response? Where are the numerous studies devoted to seeing if freeing people from the debilitating 'obese' mindset cultivated over such a long time improves health?

Oh, have I just answered the question?!

Follow up studies are needed. This is sort of like a guide for directing more a more fundamental search for underlying pathways of reversing inflammation and inflammatory response. It would be fascinating to see if this effect could be zoomed in on, intensified, made more direct, predictable and controllable. Perhaps with specific techniques, who knows?

It's the kind of approach that puts people in the driving seat helping us bypass the very professionals, some of whom affect disdain for certain bodies, oh boo hoo. And plus, no wretched nagging about what you eat.

This is my idea of "increased access" people doing stuff we can for ourselves, leaving the rest to the professionals. Rather than always being centered on dragging people into a healthcare system that isn't able or doesn't necessarily want to accommodate them.

Because someone gives a damn about the suffering of others, we can all potentially benefit. All who are lonely/isolated could benefit from this approach, let alone those with inflammatory conditions of all kinds, including of course mental health problems. Yes, inflammation's a bit of a buzz term right now, but I do think there's something in this.

Over time, practise of mindfulness can lead to a different consciousness which can lead to a kind of partnership between professionals and lay, where the latter get to use the deep desire to "take responsibility" denied by a pill for every ill.  Which of course could have started with fat people and our unusually high level of commitment to such cost for such minimal returns. But whatever. 

This is what I mean by "obesity"quackery has cost us all opportunities to learn more and do more about ourselves. 

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