Scientists
conducted two meta-analyses examining previous research on the possible
links between loneliness and health. In the first meta-analysis, they
looked at 148 different studies and found that more social connection is
associated with a 50% reduction in the risk of early death.
The second
meta-analysis examined 70 studies and found that three factors — social
isolation, feelings of loneliness and living alone — were all associated
with higher risks for premature death. Read more (8/7/17)
If you have an abortion, the baby will come out of your vagina. The baby will be a lot smaller, so your cervix won’t need to stretch as far (although in surgical abortions they do dilate you). There will be blood and pain. There are physical and emotional risks.
Abortion doesn’t make the baby disappear. It pulls the baby out of you in pieces.
Seriously, an abortion is essentially a forced miscarriage (which is why the medical term for miscarriage is “spontaneous abortion”). Your uterus will have to expel not just a fetus, but also the tissue and blood and other fluids that were keeping it alive. THEN you (your organs such as your uterus and cervix) still have to heal from it: the closer you are to the due date at the time of the abortion, the more like postpartum the healing will be. And it takes weeks for a woman to fully recover from birth, miscarriage, or abortion.
Anon clearly has no idea what an abortion is, how it’s performed, or what it can do to the human body: both to the unborn human and to the human mother.
Because all of that can also happen with a miscarriage, and they also tell you not to get pregnant again, because the high levels of HGH could cause cancer.
Which is what happens when you have a bunch of abortions. You can get cancer, such as cervical or breast cancer.
That’s how Eva Peron died, she had so many abortions because she 1) wanted to stay an actress and 2) wanted to be certain Juan got elected president, that she just had a bunch of abortions, then died, because she got cervical cancer.
So THAT’S the link between abortions and cancer! I had no idea! I thought it was a myth or something pro-choicers said we said to vilify the pro-life movement.
Nope, having ONE miscarriage (if you are already prone to it via family history) can make you get cancer, because cervical cancer (if I am not mistaken) is only because of high levels of HGH (human growth hormone) outside of pregnancy, and breast cancer is caused from either complete high risk in your genes OR high levels of HGH. Which is why if your your sisters, mom, aunts, or grandmother have had breast cancer you should be tested to see if you also have the same gene that gave them breast cancer, otherwise it was from over producing HGH after a pregnancy (either if it was terminated or the baby was born). Your HGH levels rise with most types of cancer, as it can make the growth metastize anywhere in your body, but generally it will be either in the breasts or cervix, as that’s where a lot of it is produced (HGH is in the breast milk for babies).
1. That’s not how abortion works. Most abortions are not D&E’s. The procedure takes five to ten minutes, you are given pain medication, and medical staff stay with you during your recovery:
Agreed, and this explanation of how abortion supposedly increases the risk of cancer is complete nonsense. HGH, Human Growth Hormone, more commonly referred to as Growth Hormone (GH) is produced in the pituitary gland of every living human being. Like that’s literally what makes you grow. If you have high levels of growth hormone you might have gigantism (if this happens in childhood) or acromegaly (if it happens in adulthood). But you wouldn’t have cancer. The only connection between HGH and cancer is that it seems to be associated with certain types of cancer later in life among patients who have been treated with HGH for growth deficiencies as children.
The only thing I can figure is that they somehow confused HGH with HCG, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, a hormone produced during pregnancy. And the only time HCG is associated with cancer is an extremely rare type called choriocarcinoma, which can happen after any pregnancy, regardless of outcome.
It’s always fascinating and horrifying to see the granular details of what Republicans believe. As an elite coastal Jew I never get a full look inside the world of bible colleges and home schooling. What a rich and vibrant culture.
Also fascinating to see what kind of weird-ass questions the pro-forced-birth crowd will make up to ask themselves “anonymously” so they can spread disinformation to girls and young women.
I’ve been saying for some years now that we’re teaching science terribly wrong in schools, and quite possibly the wrongest thing we’re doing is making no distinction between “facts about the universe that we have observed” and “categories and models that we have constructed in order to organize the facts we have observed”.
Essentially, kids are being taught that “cats are mammals” is the same kind of scientific fact as “cats give birth to live young,” and it isn’t. At all.
Which is why we get discussions like the one linked above. Or like the ones about Pluto being declared a dwarf planet instead of a planet, where people assert that the change in nomenclature is because “we understand better now what a planet is” and not because we’ve chosen to narrow the definition to (disputably) better organize our constructed categories of Things In Space. Or, for that matter, like the ones that call out “scientific error” in the Bible by citing references to calling a bat a “bird,” or calling a whale a “fish,” as though the classification system we use today is objective scientific fact instead of constructed model.
Because nobody is teaching kids how to tell the difference, or even that there is a difference.
@fredweasleyfreak said: i am very confused. giving birth to live young is a criteria for being a mammal? so what is wrong with teaching them both as scientific fact?
What’s wrong with it is that the definition of mammal isn’t scientific fact, it’s nomenclature. Which is to say, a thing we made up as a way of organizing scientific facts.
“Does/does not give birth to live young” is observed data. “Mammal” is a name we attached to a particular collection of observed data.
They’re both facts, but they’re not the same kind of fact at all. And in most grade-school science classes, they’re taught as though they are. To the point where it can be really difficult for most of us who were taught that way to get our heads around the difference.
Also, giving birth to live young is NOT a criteria for being a mammal. There are egg-laying mammals. We thought, at one point, that all mammals must give birth to live young; then we found mammals that didn’t. Our understanding of the natural world is constantly changing, because of discoveries just like this one.
think of the universe as your kitchen. in order to understand and make use of it, you keep it organized, and you name things. you say, this is a fork, this is a whisk. the fork goes in the silverware drawer. the whisk goes in the spatula drawer.
and then you go and scramble eggs with a fork.
does that mean you have to reclassify it as a whisk and keep it in the spatula drawer? if so, is it just that one fork, or all forks? any fork you’ve scrambled eggs with ever? what a mess. mistake classification for reality and suddenly everything is a terrifying whirl of impossible decisions that have to be made yesterday.
but if you understand that classifying forks and whisks differently and storing them in different drawers is just how you make sure you can talk about things and find them when you need them, that it’s a reaction to the form and function of the object rather than a part of it, everything runs smooth like butter.
Emotions are not innately programmed into our brains, but, in fact,
are cognitive states resulting from the gathering of information, New
York University Professor Joseph LeDoux and Richard Brown, a professor
at the City University of New York, conclude in the latest issue of the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content,
arise from one system in the brain,” explains LeDoux, a professor in New
York University’s Center for Neural Science. “Specifically, the
differences between emotional and non-emotional states are the kinds of
inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a
network essential for conscious experiences.”
As a result, LeDoux and Brown observe, “the brain mechanisms that
give rise to conscious emotional feelings are not fundamentally
different from those that give rise to perceptual conscious
experiences.”
Their paper—“A Higher-Order Theory of Emotional
Consciousness”—addresses a notable gap in neuroscience theory. While
emotions, or feelings, are the most significant events in our lives,
there has been relatively little integration of theories of emotion and
emerging theories of consciousness in cognitive science.
Existing work posits that emotions are innately programmed in the
brain’s subcortical circuits. As a result, emotions are often treated as
different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related
to the perception of external stimuli. In other words, emotions aren’t a
response to what our brain takes in from our observations, but, rather,
are intrinsic to our makeup.
However, after taking into account existing scholarship on both
cognition and emotion, LeDoux and Brown see a quite different
architecture for emotions—one more centered on process than on
composition. They conclude that emotions are “higher-order states”
embedded in cortical circuits. Therefore, unlike present theories, they
see emotional states as similar to other states of consciousness.
interesting! kind of a slippery distinction, isn’t it? i mean from the end-user point of view. from the neurological point of view it’s pretty significant.
This is just a very short article based on an abstract, so it’s difficult to assess it. Typically emotions are thought of as a response; an event happens, your brain is hardwired to respond to it with a specific, autonomic biochemical and anatomical reaction, which we label “emotions”. But what they’re saying is that emotions are how particular inputs, particular sorts of experiences, are processed by the brain using a single cognitive system. I’m going to talk this through for myself under the cut.
Here’s something I’d learned about before, but didn’t really understand until nursing school:
When you put your hand on a hot stove
(or any extremity on any major, unexpected source of pain), the decision to pull it away happens in your back. That’s what a spinal reflex means–not just that the action is automatic, but that your brain isn’t even consulted.
You will never remember it this way. You will always remember the event as “the stove felt hot so I pulled my hand away.” But “you” didn’t do anything. All you did was come up with a justification after your back had already acted. Even if you know this intellectually, it won’t change anything–you still won’t be able to remember your hand acting on its own. Your brain will not allow it.
There are more parts of the nervous system that work this way than you’d probably like to think about.
Alternate framing: your spinal cord (and indeed your whole body) is part of “you” just like your brain
Alternate, alternate framing: Almost none of your brain is “you” either.
The parts of your brain that consciously think “My name is [name]! I want to do good things and not do bad things! Here are some decisions I’m going to make!” are pretty much dwarfed by the ones that don’t. We usually frame them as acting in service to the consciousness–your non-conscious brain may help you balance when you walk, but you tell it where you want to go–but then again, you also think you decided to take your hand off the stove.
Have you ever walked into a room, and then wondered what you were supposed to do in there? You think you just forgot. But what if you really didn’t know?
–
(Please note: this is mostly me going “oooh, wouldn’t it be creepy if,” and at this point I have strayed pretty far from the amount of neuroscience I actually know.)
There’re a few sci-fi stories that play with this idea!
I’m pretty sure that the reason the ice fractured into six slices is the same reason snowflakes are often six sided and it has to do with the shape of a molecule of water and I just think that’s so freaking cool.
How would it even stay lit though?
!!!!! it IS actually because of the structure of water molecules! Water molecules are fuckin weird, as are lots of other liquid substance molecules, because theyre shaped like fuckin HEXAGONS! hexagons are those weird, six-sided shapes that re very sturdy, but they dont tend to sit very well when stacked together. thats why, when you fill up a glass of water to its full capacity, it can go OVER the brim a little and not spill over. It’s also why water beads.
anyway, so since water is essentially made up of a gazillion little hexagons, it tends to gather into larger hexagons as it shapes together. this is not visible unless the water is in a solid form, aka ice. when the water is split, it tends to crack around the established hexagons. that bottle rocket exploded in the PERFECT place to show this phenomenon and its geeking me out.
ALSO! the bottle rocket stays lit because the fuse was definitely waterproof and made with magnesium and an oxidizer of some sort. this means that they will burn underwater because they dont need the oxygen from the air to stay lit. thats so fucking weird isnt it. im tipsy and its the 4th of july. sorry for the science haha
Another woman utterly failed by our society’s devaluation of women’s reproductive health.
We can’t wait around for male doctors to decide what we need to know.
This is why we need to take control and educate ourselves about our own bodies.
and here’s some comments i saw under the post. why is this a pattern?? why is this a recurring theme?? why is this information not common knowledge? what the fuck are doctors doing??
This is news to me so let’s share it so people will know!
Gross tmi: but i passed a pretty big clot after having my daughter. It was about the size of a baseball. It actually hurt worse because while 15 hours of labor opened my cervix, i passed the clot in 30 minutes. I knew it was a possibility because of my midwife and reading, but everyone Ive told after this (mostly other pregnant women) were shocked that this could happen.
In our culture, it’s much more common to do deep research about what family cars we want to buy than we do about childbirth when we ’re pregnant.
Tmi: I passed a huge clot after birth in the bathroom of my hospital room and called the nurse sobbing because I didn’t know it was normal. She treated me like an idiot, but NO ONE told me it was a possibility. And the pain associated with healing for the first couple of weeks after birth was worse than the labor imo. Again, I had no idea. They didn’t tell me a thing besides “sitz bath regularly and change your pads.” Before discharging me from the hospital.
I was most definitely told about this in school. Fucking hell, 4-6 weeks of bleeding? My periods were/are bad enough, why the hell don’t we get told this?
I didn’t know it could last so long, wtf? Is the bleeding inevitable after birth?
Bleeding is inevitable after birth – your uterine wall is shedding a fuck ton of lining. It can last from three to six weeks (possible longer) and it tapers off.
More TMI – I passed a MASSIVE clot after my fourth birth. At this point I already knew this could happen – it’s normal. What I DIDN’T know, was that I had caused it.
My post birth contractions were so bad after the birth that it felt like full transition labor. And they don’t give you anything for the pain. So I used a hot water bottle, without the nurses knowing, and it caused me to bleed even more. I lost so much blood that by the first time they sat me up to go to the bathroom, I fainted. It took three more tries until I could sit up.
Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the next morning I passed a clot the SIZE OF ANOTHER PLACENTA I KID YOU NOT, and I know what is and is not normal. So I called for the nurse and through the door told her I had passed a huge clot, and her response was – “It’s not big. I know what big is.” She hadn’t even looked. So I rolled my eyes and said, “Yeah, no. It’s big, I’m telling you.”
So, sounding extremely put upon, she asked me to open the door. I did, and after a long pause she goes, “Okay, yeah, that’s a little big.”
YOU DON’T SAY.
The point I’m trying to get across is that this shit is so common – women not knowing this stuff is so expected, and it keeps getting reinforced. People don’t expect you to know anything, don’t teach you anything, and then make you feel like you’re totally ignorant and a burden for your lack of knowledge when THEY WON’T SHARE.
Fucking learn EVERYTHING you can when it comes to childbirth, girls. It is the single most empowering thing you can do for yourself. And if you missed something, that’s okay. But the more knowledge you arm yourself with, the more in control of your situation you’ll be.
A few post partum tips:
DON’T use a hot water bottle – lol.
ONLY pads – NO tampons. Tampons can cause severe infection, not to mention, you probably don’t want to be shoving anything up there any time soon.
If you’ve had stitches, sitz baths DO help relieve the pain. Another great pain reliever? Dampen some pads and freeze them. Let one thaw slightly and use it on top of another pad. This will help with the pain as well as reduce swelling. Change the pad out as soon as it’s thawed completely. This REALLY helps on the first couple days after giving birth.
If you pass a clot, don’t sweat it. Even the one I passed, which was fucking massive, just required that we keep an eye out to make sure it didn’t happen again. If it does, talk to your doctor.
Take a pain killer half an hour before nursing. Because YES – your uterus is contracting after you give birth, to get back to its original size, and nursing causes much stronger contractions. Taking nursing-safe painkillers won’t prevent the pain, but it will reduce it.
Buy disposable underwear for the first few days after birth. They will get VERY dirty. Or use your ratty old pairs that you’re ready to get rid of. Double up on pads – line them all the way up your ass-crack. I am so serious. And wear dark pants.
Pee in the shower. You do NOT want to wipe down there right after birth because ow. Peeing in the shower lets you just rinse afterwards. Especially if you’ve had stitches, peeing in the shower, with the shower-head rinsing AS you go, keeps stinging to a minimum. And fuck everyone else – keep on peeing in the shower until you feel ready to move back to toilet paper. Middle of the night and need to pee? Get your pants off – get in the shower and just go.
This is just a few things, but PLEASE feel free to send me an ask if you have any questions about ANYTHING childbirth/pregnancy/nursing related. I have four incredible kids. I’ve done it all – c-section, vacuume birth, episiotimy, stitches, with an epidural, without an epidural. I’m here.
More tips: GET A PERI-BOTTLE. If you have a hospital birth, they’ll probably give you one. If not, you can pick up any kind of small squeeze-y bottle (or even an empty, CLEAN CLEAN CLEAN spray bottle if it comes to it). It’s like a little portable bidet. Use it after you go to the bathroom, then pat dry. This way you don’t have to climb into a shower every time if you don’t want.
IME bags of frozen peas in your underwear with proper covering (you don’t want to get frostbite) are the best sort of cold compress.
Those contractions during nursing? They are v v important. They shrink your uterus, helping your body get back to normal faster (and helping you pass blood quicker). They hurt. Keep drinking red raspberry leaf tea (which hopefully you drank during your third trimester). It should help not only with the contractions, but with your milk supply as well. Take a nursing-safe NSAID if you can.
REST. I know this is especially hard for people who are already parents, for poor folk, for people with a ton of responsibilities in general. This is when you call in the cavalry, if you’re lucky enough to have support. FRIENDS AND FAM of birthing persons, leave the parent alone with their baby. Do a load of dishes. Pick up. Check to make sure the parent has their baby supplies handy (as in, within reach). Bring them food. The more they rest, the faster their body heals, and the shorter the bleeding period will be. If it tapers off and then ramps back up, YOU’RE DOING TOO MUCH. Slow down. This is the perfect time to learn that, as a parent, you can’t do it all. Always prioritise your kid. If there’s one time you’re allowed to just let shit go, it’s during your babymoon. (Google is telling me babymoon now means a trip you take with your partner before you have your baby. What. No. “Babymoon” means the first week after your birth. When the hell did that switch happen?) REST. REST. HOLD YOUR BABY. SLEEP. NURSE. EAT. This bonding time is imperative. You and your baby deserve this time.
….I know I keep reblogging this but people keep adding super important information.
I feel like no one tells women this stuff because if a woman was even a little on the fence about having a baby before this would kinda make them run for the damn hills.
…..you are correct, typing.
300% EXTRA SURE I’M NOT HAVING BABIES.
peri bottles, witch hazel or anti-pain anticeptic spray are your friends. Also passing large clots after birth is a WARNING SIGN. Bigger than a half dollar is a sign that you have not passed your entire placenta (this is most common in hospital vaginal births where the mother is not allowed to naturally birth the placenta and instead has it ripped out by the doctor) if there is any placenta left in your uterus you can get extremely ill. This happened to both myself and my mother in law
WOW I didn’t know any of this and I’m terrified of what more I’m unaware of about my own body 😦 Honestly when will we fucking abolish this taboo about the female body…
I had pretty great sex ed in school (lots of contraceptive information, and totally acknowledged that teenagers might have sex) and all of this is news to me.
And, as a 28-year-old person with a uterus, I’m extremely appalled I’m just learning this.
Long, but very important information, even for those who don’t plan to have children, because you will almost certainly know someone who will, and you might be able to to help them. Or at least increase your level of empathy for them.
even if you dont plan to have kids this info is really important to know. Uterus havers should know what their body does and why.
I KNOW I’VE POSTED THIS PHOTO BEFORE BUT, TBT, DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THE TIME A BAT FLEW INTO MY ROOM IN LIKE JANUARY
he came in all cold an sluggish and very little, took a little nappy-nap in my sweater’s pocket till he warmed up, and left
he’s my bro
Okay, please please do not touch bats, especially if they look unwell. The last comment person got very lucky because bats are the #1 carrier of rabies and they have the ability to aerosolize rabies, meaning you don’t necessarily have to be bitten.
When I was in undergrad studying animal science/pre-veterinary medicine, there was a guy in the nearest major city to my school who decided to pick up a sickly looking bat and put it in a box and bring it on public transit. Found out later the bat had rabies. The state+the CDC had to track down every single person who had been on that bus to give them rabies shots. Every. Single. One. It was a public health nightmare.
I know they’re adorable and if you live in a country that is rabies free (which is just the UK and Japan) then ignore this but otherwise PLEASE be careful handling wild bats or any wild animal! Rabies is just one of many zoonotic diseases (diseases that can pass from animals to people and vice versa) and unless you know what you’re doing and what precautions to take, you are putting yourself and others at risk by handling wild animals
^This is why, btw. In the era before germ theory, bats were these creepy scary things that defied miasma theory and where your cousin who touched one might have gone ballistic and then mysteriously died. That’s one of the reasons it got associated with vampire mythos, and why bats’ wings became so ubiquitous in anglo-christian depictions of fallen angels.
How do you stand there and just watch that? I would be hiding under the covers believing in Jesus again.
ball lightning?
It’s ionized air moving across a power line, searching for a place to ground. This happens when a power line shorts out, arcs, and spits out energy. That energy excites the molecules around them into a high energy state, which makes their electrons throw off photons, creating a glow. The director of operations at a power and light company explains exactly what’s happening in this video here!
just moving along like everyone else 