#one of them especially is having several mental breakdowns per year and is still allowed to transition

[radlymona]

TRAs having no empathy yet again

Teenagers who are pushed towards transitioning aren’t “pushovers” they’re mentally and emotionally vulnerable young people who shouldn’t be allowed to make life-changing medical decisions. Acknowledging this fact isn’t stopping adults from transitioning. It just aims to stops other vulnerable teenagers from doing the same.

[wri0thesley]

I am so sorry if this is invasive and weird, but may I ask what you work as? I'm at the stage where I have to build my future and I know you don't have an age specified but you seem to be doing really well (at least from the posts we've seen, again I really hope not to be invasive) for yourself and your partner and 25+ is still young! Again, I hope this isn't mean or weird, I'm just curious. (and severely nervous. First year of college is ruining me harder than any fictional man.)

ahh anon i'm afraid that the answer is probably not what you're looking for!

for the record, i am 27, i just find getting fandom older a little scary, especially having it listed right there!!!

i actually intended to be a performer and a singing teacher (my degree was going to be in music & musical theatre); unfortunately, due to a plethora of reasons (mostly my undiagnosed autism, unmedicated ocd/depression/anxiety combo, a nervous breakdown and my partner's physical health declining) i dropped out of my degree before the end of my first semester.

for about three years or so after that i was severely agoraphobic. talking 'can't answer the door' agoraphobic; 'never left the house alone, and even when with someone only went to the doctors and therapy' agoraphobic, 'rotted in my bedroom in an absolutely non romanticised way' agoraphobic. i was on the equivalent of disability because i literally could not function. meanwhile, my partner, who lived with me and my parents was getting physically worse whilst i was mentally struggling (since then haz has been diagnosed with ehlers danlos syndrome, fibromyalgia, lipoedema, thyroid issues and a lot of other things; they have a lot going on). i DID access several therapies, had . . . a couple of very bad relapses, went under crisis teams and all of that stuff (i had occupational therapy too which was HONESTLY i think one of the most useful things and helpful things for me in the long run; i cannot imagine what i would be like if i hadn't had the occupational therapist the crisis team found for me).

(coincidentally, if you are an og jojo follower you probably remember how bad it was; i've said it a hundred times, but running this silly little reader-insert blog probably helped save my life at a time when i had almost no contact with the outside world. i couldn't leave my bedroom, but i had my blog and i had my little internet friends and discord server).

i have gotten a lot better.

haz, unfortunately, has not gotten better physically and probably never will. they need help with a lot of things most people don't even realise disabled people might need help with. brushing their hair, fastening clothes . . . when haz first moved in, they were doing the same dance-intensive college course that i was. we danced maybe three or four hours a day. nowadays, haz needs me to hold their hand and keep them steady when they go from our bed to the bathroom (the room next door).

so i don't really 'work' as anything. well, my therapist would tell me off for saying that; the uk government classes me as an 'unpaid carer', which basically means i am on call for haz literally 24/7 and they pay me the pittance that is carer's allowance (carer's allowance assumes you care at least 35 hours a week, and pays you the privilege of about 45 pence per each of those hours. if, like me, you live with the person you care for and do more than those hours, it gets . . . yeah. oof. the government unfortuately know that most unpaid carers are loved ones and family members of the person who needs care and won't just stop doing it, and they'd be in the shit if we did because trained carers are expensive, so they can get away with that - FUCK the tories, honestly.

i am EXCEEDINGLY lucky that i live in a cheap area of the uk, that haz and i are internet savvy enough to be able to access carers/disability discounts, that we are in rent-controlled social housing (which my crisis team helped find for us because living with my parents was taking such a toll on us both, woo!!!!), and that we've been able to access services to help on the nhs. i got my autism assessment and diagnosis; haz is under several pain management teams.

all in all, i'm happy. i'm so much happier than i was seven years ago when i'd dropped out of university and felt like a huge failure, because all of my life i was a gifted overachiever and i thought my self-worth was tied to my academic achievements (and as an extension, what roles i got in what shows and when and who saw me and so on). i don't have a lot of money (i am a bargain shopped fgbnkjgjnfb) but i know what i like and because i'm Older Now (tm) i've amassed collections of it.

i am absolutely sure that you'll boss college, anon! that you will find that thing that works for you (one day i would LOVE to go back and get my degree! pre-covid i had an acceptance for a creative writing degree and i was getting ready to go back to uni as a mature student, but haz's health got bad again and then covid happens - and now ofc i have my autism diagnosis i can access so much more help!). but even if you don't, you can absolutely find happiness without 'traditional' success.

i don't have a lot in the grand scheme of things. but you're right in that i am doing pretty well, in terms of where i am, and where i've been. i have my own little home. i have my partner of ten years who is my soulmate in every conceivable way. i've had experiences that make me feel so happy i sometimes cry when i remember them. i have my own little cat now!!! things still stress me out. but i have come so so far and when i feel down i remember that.

good luck anon! i believe in you <3

[islamicrays]

10 Reasons Why Screens Are Bad For Your Kid

I'm a firm believer in a no-screen policy for kids. No TV, no iphone, no ipad, no laptop. No screens of any kind, especially before the age of 2.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents "place a reasonable limit on entertainment media," and not allow any screen time for children under 2. Despite those recommendations, kids between the ages of 8 and 18 average 7 ½ hours of entertainment media per day, according to a 2010 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

That is a lot of time a day in front of a screen. So I know that in this day and age, my no-screen stance is very odd. I'm good with that. (Partially because I grew up without TV as a kid myself, alhamdulellah.)

What's so bad about screens? Here are the main harms:

1. Shortened attention span: Screens provide fast-paced flashing images, which is correlated with shorter attention spans. Continuous exposure to such flashing images keeps eroding the attention span of children, and then we see rising rates of ADHD diagnoses.

2. Less reading: Screens become the primary source of entertainment, such that more sedate forms like reading, drawing, writing, etc become boring in comparison. TV presents an exciting extravaganza of lights and sounds. Books are still. Why read a book that requires the child to imagine and muster up the energy to summon mental pictures of the story being read, when the child can just sit and watch images made for him that parade themselves across a screen before his eyes? Reading now becomes arduous, taxing. TV is easier. It's easier to be passive than active.

3. Wasted time: Screens waste a lot of time. There are so many better, more beneficial ways for a child to spend his precious years of childhood than to plop down in front a screen, even if it's just one or two hours a day. That time is better spent exploring, piecing things together, adventuring, talking to a parent or a sibling, looking at pictures in a book (if the child is too young to read), being outdoors.

4. Less outdoor play: Screens have largely replaced outdoor time. This is a big one. We have slowly, over the past several decades, become a country of lazier, more sedentary people. We spend more time indoors than outdoors; much less time outdoors than our predecessors. Before this modern screen-riddled era we find ourselves in right now, people used to spend a substantial amount of time outdoors and in nature, which is proven to improve mood and overall physical and mental health (higher Vitamin D levels, lower rates of depression, etc). Now, however, we spend much of our time indoors, seated on couches, looking at screens. This shift from outdoors to indoors has impacted our collective health; we are now sicker, with weaker immune systems and more vulnerable bodies, than people before us. For kids especially, being outside is absolutely critical for healthy development. I will dedicate forthcoming posts to just this one issue alone, insha'Allah.

5. Obesity: it is constantly being announced that we are witnessing a national obesity epidemic in the United States, and that specifically childhood obesity is at an all-time high. Of course, the kinds of food we eat has a lot do with this phenomenon, but so does the amount of time we spend sitting down. The more active a person is, the better. Screens force us to sit down and be sedentary, which then slowly forms a habit of, and a preference for, sitting for long periods of time instead of moving.

6. Addiction: kids (and adults) can actually become addicted to electronic devices, like an ipad, a smartphone, TV, etc. They become dependent on devices and use them as their exclusive form of entertainment. Without it, some kids have meltdowns and the only way to appease them is to hand them that iPhone. This happens with children as young as 2 years old, tragically.

7. Communication breakdown: in our digital age, many people are replacing face-to-face communication with text messages and social media. Instead of having a real connection in person, with eye contact and physical touch (which humans need developmentally), kids are getting used to communicating on a more superficial level purely through written texts and messages. This stunts emotional growth and interpersonal skills.

8. Filthy content: this one is a no-brainer. The more exposure a child has to screens, the more he consumes the cultural programming of modern western society, which is hypersexualized and riddled with sexual content, violence, and foul language. As Muslims, this is the opposite of what we want to see, whether adults or kids. It's even worse for kids.

9. Less obedience to parents: there are 2 reasons for this harm. One is that in any kids' shows, including cartoons, parents in the show are made out to be bumbling buffoons who don't know anything and who are constantly being outsmarted and outwitted by their own kids. In many cartoons and kids' shows, the kids act flippant and disrespectful toward their idiot parents. The second part of this is that when a kid is watching TV and you try to call him over to you (to eat dinner, to help you with something, to go do homework), the kid is slower to respond to your call. They're too engrossed in whatever is flashing across the screen to heed your mere calling of their name a few times. You, as the parent, are forced to compete with TV for your child's attention.

10. Consumerism: TV, and even YouTube now, relies heavily on commercials. Every few minutes, the show is paused for the commercial break, and your kids will watch the commercials just as they watch the actual show. Companies rely on this captive audience to create artificial desire for their products and create revenue for their business. Avoiding screens allows you to keep your kids away from this endless parading of products and saves them from getting too deep into the comsumerist mentality that we're surrounded by.

Via Umm Khaled

[lionbarrage-a]

itachi

make me write about this au | accepting always 

wow we really just are… diving right in aren’t we??? in all seriousness, thank you chai, for both forcing me to write this headcanon / meta that i’ve been avoiding doing for like a week now and for walking me through itachi’s role in it. this will contain major, MAJOR developments for my au and how it effects shippuden so please read it! 

warning under the cut for mention of death, eye trauma, etc – you know, standard uchiha bullshit :))))))

let me begin with this, as i haven’t yet spoken in detail about it: but a major, major focal point in not letting hatred —- or the curse mark — consume him is letting go of, not what happened to him, but his revenge path. this does not happen over night. 

sasuke has years, years, and years of anger built up inside him, an obsessively one track mind, and a deep ache for power that, if you ask me, started before the massacre. no doubt is the massacre what sets his tunnel vision, but he’s shown to be obsessively training even before that in order to gain approval of his clan ( specifically, fugaku, which, by the way, fuck that guy ) and ‘catch up’ to his prodigy of a brother who is, frankly, out of sasuke’s reach. sasuke, in canon, still doesn’t graduate from the academy until he’s twelve, despite genius like abilities and endless work on his part to reach unattainable status as per what’s possible for himself. 

don’t think for a second he ever forgets about how far behind itachi is from the get go, and his inability to stop comparing himself to his older brother is absolutely what holds him back for so long. my point comes back to that while the catalyst of his tunnel vision - like obsession begins with the massacre, he already was halfway there. it really comes as no surprise to me that he turned out the way he did in canon, but i rest my case on this part. 

in my au, and i’ll give this a proper spiel in another meme ask i need to answer, his path is set by a very small margin, by the doubt that is shown at the valley of the end. he stops fighting, he comes back. he spends the following years regaining trust among the village, with his superiors and peers alike, and manages to rise in the ranks pretty fast as a result of both his abilities and his emotional growth. i can’t stress enough how far he comes, and how much it takes out of him to get to that point. like, it’s the only way this au can work. 

i’ve said it before, but kakashi is a focal point in his emotional progression. in his training with him, they work out a lot of that anger and kakashi shows him sides of himself that he doesn’t really show others, shows them how alike he actually was to sasuke, and shows him that he can overcome it, even if their motives were quite different — it’s the first time someone really tries to reach sasuke deep down, and it works. in conjunction with naruto and all he’s done for him, for the experiences sasuke gains in this two year period, and his own mental legwork, he gets there. 

i should note something, though, and it’s that i don’t think sasuke can not have tunnel vision on a goal — his mindset is a set routine, it’s why he’s so stubborn, in my opinion, and it’s why he’s so (unmovable object).png. you know? so, instead of his tunnel vision focusing on killing itachi, he shifts it to re-establishing the uchiha, the uchiha name, and growing stronger without influence of his brother, on his own terms. i’d say this is firmly set in by the time he’s a chuunin, and it’s why he’s able to prove himself further, in missions, etc, as worthy of being a jounin by the time shippuden starts. 

his biggest emotional trial, or one of them, is when he runs into ‘itachi’ during the gaara rescue arc, in chapter 256, and is told by kakashi to go onward. this leaves the battle virtually unchanged, and right here, kakashi says he would send naruto onward but needs him for backup. sasuke, however, can go forward — he’s both fast enough and also, it’s the right move. a show down with itachi is the last thing he needs, and it takes all his willpower not to crumble two years of progress to go ahead and focus on the mission. he goes ahead. i haven’t worked out the exact details of his role in the rest of the mission yet, but my point is: by this time, he’s able to do something he wasn’t when he was twelve, and that was charge right at itachi, regardless of if he was ready or not. 

god… that’s just all the basics too… okay. saddle up because this is where it gets real ( yeah, i know, “reid we’re on paragraph fucking eight” but we haven’t even started on the truth and itachi, which are two whole sections frankly ) 

so… fated battle between brothers. it’s still going to happen. initially i wanted it not to, but after talking with an itachi about it, ahem, chai, we decided that itachi would absolutely create a situation closer to the end of his life to make sure it still happens —– the exact mission is up in the air until i can talk to a naruto about it, but we were thinking a diversion including him, which would be super believable given the ninetails and all. the platoon that goes out definitely includes kakashi, sakura, sasuke, and whoever else might be available. from the beginning, they know to expect itachi. this is… harrowing, to say the least, especially for sasuke who seems to have settled upon not seeking revenge, but in the event he goes up against itachi, he knows that as a leaf shinobi, it’s his duty to stop him. to save naruto. to protect naruto. to protect konoha. 

when they approach the uchiha hideout, i imagine something much different is anticipated. they’ve probably been led on a fucking wild goose chase. naruto is somewhere different entirely, and like in canon, kisame allows only sasuke to pass. sasuke goes in, like in canon. once he goes in, the game changes for the platoon, and their focus remains on recovering naruto. how exactly all that goes down is dependent on kisame’s role and naruto’s respectively so i won’t talk too much about that quite yet && i have several people i wanna consult on that matter so yeah waiting. shifting back to inside the hideout

we haven’t worked out all of the details, or done a battle breakdown, but at some point we’re planning to collab on a drabble and post that and it’ll walk through the major points. what to know for now is that the dialogue will be much different, and sasuke’s focus is completely on 1) getting information and when that inevitably fails, 2) stopping itachi, by any means necessary. 3) surviving the fight. itachi doesn’t go easy on him, and at some point, it’s not about his motive, his revenge, etc, at all anymore. it’s about getting back to the platoon. it’s about finishing the mission. the too long, didn’t read version is that itachi doesn’t let him not kill him, as he’s dying anyway, and he’ll only have it be by sasuke’s hand. remember – itachi, all along, wanted sasuke to be renowned a hero for killing him, and wanted himself reviled. 

in a real, real fucked up way, he gets that. 

side note: we still havent worked out every detail but i also just noticed itachi gets rid of sasukes curse mark here :)))))))))))))

sasuke passes out at the end of their battle, and itachi does his thing with the fucking goddamn eyes and putting them in sasukes head before keeling over and fucking dying. he wakes up with tobi, as in canon. i can’t say this exchange is much different from canon, aside from sasuke being less reactionary? he’s already feeling really… i don’t know what the word is. killing him is all he wanted, for so fucking long, but there’s nothing satisfying about what he’s done here. he sees it as a means to an end on a fucked up chapter of his life. however, he does still panic at the initial speech by tobi, learning all this shit about a coup, it’d be too much for him – he still passes out, unable to process everything he’s being told. he wakes up again, probably tied up this time, and listens to the rest. 

so, where it gets different is chapter .. 401 / 402. he has his moment of grief before recollecting himself and leaving tobi / ‘madara uchiha’ and, even with all that he’s learned, and in his less than healthy state, he focuses once again on regrouping with the platoon, and ensuring that the original mission has been completed. little does he know, its been about a day, and they surely found itachi’s dead body, but no sign of him. it’s very likely they’re searching the surrounding area for him when he rejoins them, looking… well. calm, but carrying an air about him that is definitely out of character. 

he tells naruto that he’s glad to see him, and there’s a few others he may speak to before they get home, but… he otherwise doesn’t say much. there isn’t much he can say in this state. he doesn’t know what he believes – outside of the fact that if itachi wanted him dead, he would be dead. it’s this thought process that leads him to believe that the coup did in fact form. he has a lot of doubts about the man who introduced himself as madara uchiha, at this point in this au, he is after all a leaf shinobi??? and… i think he would, honestly, privately report ( the only one i can see being present for this is kakashi, if anyone ) what he was told to tsunade herself, who would not be aware of the truth. i read that only danzo, the third, and two others were. what the two of them do with this information is beyond me and i’d hoooonestly need a tsunade to work it out with. he’s probably pretty forward in saying he doesn’t know how much of this intelligence can be trusted, but if nothing else, someone claiming to be madara uchiha is a huge fucking red flag, and regardless of how he feels about the coup / konoha’s dealing with it, his loyalty is already where it is. 

whiiiiiich brings me to that next point… where he is with it. again, he doesn’t know how much he can trust from ‘tobi / madara / obito’, but if anything, i feel like his image of his clan is very twisted and uncertain from that point on. he definitely feels distrust in the elders mentioned for forcing itachi to do what he did, but not the entire village. in the end, he pays a lot of attention to the part of what was said about itachi wanting him to be renowned a hero for coming back to konoha and being able to say he killed a vicious, serial murderer, missing nin. 

so, if it’ll give itachi some peace, he does that. he comes back with his platoon, reports him dead, and what happens, happens. by no means does he consider himself a hero, though, and there’s forever an ache in him that things happened the way they did. however, holding a grudge now would backtrack him too far in his progress, and he’s… brutally aware of his own mindset, his own tendency to tunnel vision. so, once again, he redirects it.

he redirects his will to re-establishing his family name, to bringing peace in whatever way he can, and moving forward. at a later time, probably post - war, his efforts will go towards doing something about that police force. i noticed in the explanation that it was sort of konoha’s way of… making the uchiha think they had some kind of pull in the village but actually keeping an eye on them, and sasuke’s intention would more so be to establish an actual force within the village to protect it’s own. to protect konoha. you know, like itachi tried to. 

as he grows older, sasuke accepts what happened for what it is, and he finds most of his anger and sadness directing to one simple fact: that he and his brother were robbed, by circumstance, of having so many years together that they could have been happy in. 

that’s all i got for now.

[mustafa-el-fats]

Sacred Texts  Esoteric  Index  Previous  Next 

Cosmic Consciousness, by Richard Maurice Bucke, [1901], at sacred-texts.com

CHAPTER 3.

Devolution.

As in the evolution of an individual tree some branches flourish while others fail; as in a forest some trees grow tall and stretch out wide branches while others are stunted and die out; as in the onward and upward progress of any species some individuals are in advance of the main body while others lag behind; so in the forward march of the collective human mind across the centuries some individual minds are in the van of the great army, while in the rear of the column stagger and fall vast numbers of defective specimens.

In any race the stability of any faculty is in proportion to the age of the faculty in the race. That is, a comparatively new faculty is more subject to lapse, absence, aberration, to what is called disease, and is more liable to be lost, than an older faculty. To many this proposition will seem a truism. If an organ or faculty has been inherited in a race for, say, a million generations, it seems, a priori, certain that it is more likely to be inherited by a

p. 54

given individual of that race than is an organ or faculty which originated, say, three generations back. A case in point is what is called genius. Genius consists in the possession of a new faculty or new faculties, or in an increased development of an old faculty or old faculties. This being the case, it seems to Galton [92] necessary to write a good sized volume to prove that it is hereditary. So far was that from being an obvious fact that even yet the heredity of genius is far from being universally accepted. But no one ever wrote a book to prove that either sight, hearing, or self consciousness is hereditary, because every one (even the most ignorant) knows without any argument that they are so. On the point in question Darwin says, speaking of horses: "The want of uniformity in the parts which, at the time, are undergoing selection chiefly depends on the strength of the principle of reversion" [67: 288]. That is, parts or organs which are undergoing change by means of selection are liable to lose what has been gained by reverting to the initial condition. And again he says: "It is a general belief among breeders that characters of all kinds become fixed by long continued inheritance" [67: 289]. In another place he speaks of the "fluctuating and, as far as we can judge, never ending variability of our domestic productions, the plasticity of their whole organization" [67: 485], and he at, tributes this instability to the recent changes these have undergone under the influence of the artificial selection to which they have been subjected. And in still another place Darwin speaks of "the extreme variability of our domesticated animals and cultivated plants."

But it is scarcely necessary to carry this argument further. Any one who is willing to give the matter a thought will admit that the shorter time an organ or faculty has been possessed by a race the more unstable must it be in the race, and, consequently, in the individual; the more liable will it be to be dropped; the more liable to be defective; the more liable to vary; the more liable to be or to become imperfect—as we say, diseased. And that, per contra, the longer time an organ or faculty has existed in any race, the more certain it is to be inherited and the more certain it is to assume a

p. 55

definite, typical character—that is, the more certain it is to be normal, the more certain it is to agree with the norm or type of the said organ or faculty. In other words, the less likely it is to be imperfect—what we call defective or diseased. This being allowed, it will readily be granted: 1st, That the race whose evolution is the most rapid will (other things being equal) have the most breakdowns; and, 2d, That in any given race those functions whose evolution is the most rapid will be the most subject to breakdowns.

If these principles be applied to the domesticated animals (which have, most of them, within the last few hundred generations, been much differentiated by artificial selection), they will explain what has often been looked upon as anomalous—namely, the much greater liability to disease and early death of these as compared with their wild prototypes. For that domestic animals are more liable to disease and premature death than wild, is admitted on all hands. The same principle will explain also how it is that the more highly bred an animal is—that is, the more widely it has been differentiated in late generations from a previous type—the more liable will it be to disease and premature death.

Taking now these general rules home to ourselves—to the human race—we find them to mean that those organs and functions which have been the latest acquired will be most often defective, absent, abnormal, diseased. But it is notorious that in civilized man, especially in the Aryan race, the functions which have undergone most change in the last few thousand years are those called mental—that great group of functions (sensuous, intellectual, moral) which depend upon, spring from, the two great nervous systems—the cerebro-spinal and the great sympathetic. This great group of functions has grown, expanded, put forth new shoots and twigs, and is still in the act of producing new faculties, at a rate immeasurably greater than any other part of the human organism. If this is so then within this great congeries of faculties it is inevitable that we should meet with constant lapses, omissions, defects, breakdowns.

Clinical observation teaches day by day that the above reasoning

p. 56

is solidly grounded. It presents lapses of all degrees and in unlimited varieties; lapses in sense function, such as color-blindness and music deafness; lapses in the moral nature, of the whole or a part; in the intellect, of one or several faculties; or lapses, more or less complete, of the whole intellect, as in imbecility and idiocy. But over and above all these lapses, and as a necessary accompaniment of them, we have that inevitable breaking down of function, once established in the individual, which we call insanity, as distinguished from the various forms and degrees of idiocy. For it is easy to see that if a function or faculty belonging to any given species is liable for any general cause to be dropped in a certain proportion of the individuals of that species, it must be also liable to become diseased—that is, to break down—in cases where it is not dropped. For if the faculty in question is by no means always developed in the individual—if it quite frequently fails to appear—that must mean that in many other cases in which it does appear it will not be fully and solidly formed. We cannot imagine a jump from the total non-appearance of a given function in certain members of a species to the absolute perfection and solidity of the same function in the rest of the members. We know that species do not grow that way. We know that in a race in which we have some men seven feet high and others only four that we shall find, if we look, men of all statures between these extremes. We know that in all cases extremes presented by the race are bridged (from one to the other) by full sets of intermediary specimens. One man can lift a thousand pounds, another can lift only a hundred; but between these are men the limit of whose strength fills up the whole gap between the hundred and the thousand pounds. One man dies of old age at forty years, another at one hundred and thirty years, and every year and month between forty years and one hundred and thirty years is the limit of some man's possible life. The same law that holds for the limit of faculties holds also for the solidity and permanence of faculties. We know that in some men the intellectual functions are so unstable that as soon as they are established they crumble down—crushed (as it were) by their own weight—like a

p. 57

badly built house, the walls of which are not strong enough to sustain the roof. Such are extreme cases of so-called developmental insanity—cases in which the mind falls into ruins as soon as it comes into existence or even before it is fully formed; cases of insanity of puberty and adolescence, in which nature is barely able to form or half form a normal mind and totally unable to sustain it, the mind, consequently, running down at once back into chaos. The hopelessness of this class of cases (as regards recovery) is well understood by all alienists, and it is not difficult to see why such insanities should and must be practically incurable, since their very existence denotes the absence of the elements necessary to form and maintain a normal human mind in the subjects in question.

In the realm of insanity, properly so called—that is, excluding the idiocies—these cases occupy the extreme position at one end of the scale, while those persons who only become maniacal or melancholic under the most powerful exciting causes, such as child-birth and old age, occupy the other end. That is, we have a class in whom the mind, without a touch, crumbles into ruin as soon as formed or even before it is fully formed. Then we have another class in which the balance of the mental faculties is only overturned by the rudest shocks, and then only temporarily, since the cases to which I refer recover in a few weeks or months if placed under favorable conditions. But between these extremes the whole wide intermediate space is filled with an infinite variety of phases of insanity, exhibiting every possible condition of mental stability and instability between the two extremes noticed. But throughout the whole range of mental alienation this law holds, namely: that the latest evolved of the mental functions, whether intellectual or moral, suffer first and suffer most, while the earliest evolved of the mental and moral functions suffer (if at all) the latest and the least.

If the mind be likened to a growing tree, then it can be said that the lesser onsets of insanity shrivel its leaves—paralyze, or partially paralyze, their functions for a time, the leaves standing for the later formed and more fragile emotions and concepts, and

p. 58

especially for the later formed combinations of these; that deeper attacks kill the leaves and damage the finer twigs; that still more profound disturbances kill the finer twigs and injure the larger; and so on, until, in the most profound and deep-rooted insanities, as in the developmental dementias, the tree is left a bare, ghastly trunk, without leaves or twigs and almost without branches.

And in all this process of destruction the older formed faculties, such as perception and memory, desire for food and drink, shrinking from injury, and the more basic sense functions, endure the longest; while, as has been said, the latest evolved functions crumble down first, then the next latest, and so on.

A fact that well illustrates the contention that insanity is essentially the breaking down of mental faculties which are unstable chiefly because they are recent, and that it rests therefore upon an evolution which is modern and still in progress, is the comparative absence of insanity among negroes.

It has been said that the large percentage of insanity in America and Europe depends directly upon the rapid evolution in late millenniums of the mind of the Aryan people. Very few would claim that the negro mind is advancing at anything like the same rate. As a consequence of these different rates of progression we have in the Aryan people of America a much higher percentage of insanity than is found in the negro race.

When the United States census of 1880 was taken it was found that among forty-three millions of white people there were eighty-six thousand insane—exactly one in five hundred—while among six and three-quarter million negroes only a little more than six thousand were insane, which is a proportion of only about one to eleven hundred. Doubtless if we had statistics of other backward and stationary peoples a similar state of matters would be found—all such facts as we have leading to the conclusion that among savages and semi-savages there exists comparatively little insanity.

In conclusion the results arrived at in this chapter may be summed up as follows:

p. 59

1. The stability of a faculty in the individual depends upon its age in the race. The older the faculty the more stable it is, and the less old the less stable.

2. The race whose evolution is most rapid will be the most subject to breakdown.

3. Those functions in any given race whose evolutions are the most rapid will be the most subject to breakdown.

4. In the more progressive families of the Aryan race the mental faculties have for some millenniums last past developed with great rapidity.

5. In this race the large number of mental breakdowns, commonly called insanity, are due to the rapid and recent evolution of those faculties in that race.

Next: Part III. From Self to Cosmic Consciousness

[juniperpublishers-rr]

An Inclusive Approach to Care of the Elderly in Bangladesh- Juniper Publishers

Mini Review

The care for the elderly is now quite entrenched in most developed countries, with varying intensity; it was both more intensive and extensive in coverage in the earlier socialist countries and is also now more prevalent in countries with more socialistic spirits such as the eastern European and the Nordic countries. The debates on the care for elderly, both from societal perspectives and from the perspective of medical care systems continue in recent literature. In addition to, compared to the most developed countries, old age support program is a newer concept in most developing countries. In addition, Bangladesh’s issue of ‘care for the elderly’ is of recent origin, yet it is limited to care for the public sector retirees, through old age pension system, few rudimentary healthcare supports via public health care system, and few private sectors initiated ‘old age homes’. There is no comprehensive policy for systematically developing old age care system. In fact, care for the elderly is something that builds a civilized society with due respect and care for its elderly. It is a way of paying our debts to our mothers and fathers, our parents and grandparents who, left alone, may no longer be able to care for themselves.

Bangladesh, despite the prognosis of a demographic dividend, which some calculate to be optimally effective until 2032 and the longer-term projection being around 2038, is poised to face the growing elderly population (21 per cent) by 2025 and 40 per cent by the middle of this century. For the first time, in 2051, the aged population above 60 years will number more than the 15 years and less, age-groups. Aging is inevitable, and its effect will be of epic proportions upon the income, economy, lifestyle of the active population and the dependent populace. This study was, at core, aimed at assessing the gap between needs and ‘current provisions in the country’, in care for the elderly, and it was a first-cut assessment, underscoring the need for more studies. The basic objective was to take steps in the right direction in the coming months and years to develop a policy framework for an inclusive approach to care of the elderly. A survey of one hundred and thirty-six respondents has been done as a preliminary assessment, including a sizeable qualitative component from a cross-section of people who are interested, and involved in strategic positions, to benefit this society’s aging population. The quantitative survey respondents’ group was proportionately drawn from elderly male-female, also rural-urban areas and reflected the broad income-groups, methodology for which has been elaborated in the main report. It has empirically validated and informed the study on the target beneficiaries who comprise the elderly. And the qualitative opinion assessment has thrown light on the overarching issues and way forward.

The Qualitative Sample comprised of a comprehensive collation of 22 Key Informant Interviews and an Opinion Survey (30 Qualitative Responses) from a cross-section of society. The interviewees included lawyers, private entrepreneurs, community workers, recipients of services, service providers, social welfare officers, youth leaders, health care workers, Fire-Brigade Personnel etc. The recent Parent Care Act of 2013 is unique, as also the National Plans on the Elderly (2006 and 2014). These purport to cater to parent’s sustenance, but remain limited in scope, as discussed in the report. Policies and Act remain, effectively inactive. The other programmers such as micro-credit, health, nutrition, population sector programmer, community empowerment, etc. are yet to come into focus about elderly. Findings from the survey reveal that most respondents were in 60-65 age range with some in their early 90s. Most males and females are married. Those males who were widowers, often remarried (higher number of males remarried but few, almost none of the widowed women were remarried). The age gap between male spouse and female spouse was found to be high and thus, more women were widowed and alone. Majority of the respondents were illiterate; A third of the respondents 1/3 earn an income, where males predominate and are residing overwhelmingly in the cities; They suffer from an income deficit ranging from tk. 500 to 10,000 every month; this increases to 12,000 takas in the urban families who experience income deficit. Most who have the resources, have transferred their money and property to their children.

Health problems include eyesight; gout; diabetes, depression; dental; psychological, ailments. Their mental strain emanates from their inability to seek finance their Medicare and aggravated financial constraints lead to psychological depression. For care and service, elders prefer family care; but, increasing small families, pose lack of time & care; Elderly lack govt. health care program and insurance. Situation is worse for the urban residents; elderly females live with relatives and they often suffer immobility and they are abused because of food, money and inability to do house-hold chores. Policy recommendations include the need to keep a provision of adequate budget for the development of elders. There is also a strong call for review (to gauge effectiveness) of the government policies for a more enabling condition–to assess the efficacy of existing programmers and whether they are headed in the right direction, particularly in the light of the National Social Security Strategy (NSSS). The NSSS 2015 has furnished guidelines on Social Security for People with Disabilities. Besides the two groups targeted for “Child Disability Benefit” (all children with a disability, up to 18 years of age), and “A Disability Benefit” for all adults with severe disabilities, aged 19-59 years, there is no provision for disabled old people. It lays down that at 60 years, people with severe disabilities will transition to the Old Age Allowance.

Thus, despite the projected schemes, there remain important challenges to the implementation of the Strategy. Several studies point out that there are sizeable inclusion and exclusion errors, lack of gender targeting, thin dispersal of resources, and program weakness in the current structures of the SSN Programmes, which require attention prior to closure: a fact that must be considered by the NSSS and implementing agencies. The empirical findings reveal that elderly are in satisfactory condition in the context of Bangladesh, where there is still respect for them. This is especially true for those who are in the middle and higher income groups. Elderly people among low income families, or alone/single, who are extremely poor, find their existence, hard. There is a rural-urban, male-female distinction in the attitude, way-of-life of the elderly in Bangladesh. With growing nucleated families, breakdown of joint families, the issues of care for elderly is assuming noticeable proportions especially among the poorer sections and in urban areas. Majority of elderly people suggest that the old age allowance from government has to be enhanced and the magnitude of beneficiaries must be all encompassing and more inclusive.

Study has provided current data on the newly emerging needs and condition of the aged and youths, especially in view of taking advantage of the returns from population dividend that prevails in Bangladesh. Attitudes and perceptions are changing but needs of the poorer sections are becoming more acute, especially with regard to health care. Government should increase outdoor service units in government hospitals and special “Senior Citizens’ Card”, could be made available, so that they may avail of free transport services, in addition. To ensure good health and ensure a caring attitude, there is a need to ensure home-based and institute-based health care centers where the elderly would receive proper nursing and care. There should be free help provisions for the elderly in government hospitals as well as other established health care centers. Moreover, the elderly themselves should be educated in self-care. Creating and increasing new space to accommodate scope of work for the elderly who are willing and capable, is now needed. A “National Network of Elderly Persons”, could facilitate interaction among the elderly and their care givers, including community members who want to be active in social work, in addition, involvement of industrialist and philanthropists etc.

For more Open Access Journals in Juniper Publishers please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com 

For more articles in Open Access Journal of Reviews & Research please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/arr/index.php

To know more about Open Access Journals please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/index.php

[flauntpage]

Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0

My good friend Frank Seravalli of TSN in Canada had three successive tweets during the Flyers embarrassing (again) 6-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night that were not only really accurate but also quite timely in my opinion:

#Flyers now on their 5th goalie of the season in Game No. 23. Team save percentage is by far league-worst at .877 incl tonight. That’s almost 3 GA every 20 shots. Impossible to win with that. Utterly unacceptable – and you can’t say it snuck up on management.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

Let’s put it another way: #Flyers have allowed 4 or more goals in 12 of 23 games. No chance to win when you need to score 5 every other night. A team poised to “take a step forward” needed a bridge to Carter Hart. Instead, Elliott + Neuvirth = Malpractice. No hindsight there.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

I’m not a Hakstol defender, but I’d like to see what his team looks like with decent goaltending. 15-16: .917 (7th) | Lge Avg: .910 16-17: .901 (26th) | Avg: .910 17-18: .903 (22nd) | Avg: .908 18-19: .877 (31st) | Avg: .904 All considered: Playoffs in 2/3 isn’t bad.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

Rather than dive into the terrible play and continued malaise of the fragile Flyers team after their latest blow out loss, I’d like to breakdown Frank’s tweets instead and try to piece together an assessment from them, because that’s far more interesting than writing the Flyers sucked for the umpteenth time in my 14 months here at Crossing Broad.

So, analysis after the jump:

1. “Five goalies in 23 games”

That’s almost unbelievable, but it’s not, because it’s the Flyers, who have had goaltending issues since the dawn of time.

The latest was Anthony Stolarz, who was pressed into action in the most dire of dire situations. Stolarz was pretty much the odd man out for the Flyers organization. With Brian Elliott and Michael Neuvirth slated as the NHL netminders and Carter Hart and Alex Lyon slated to man the space between the pipes for the Phantoms in the AHL, Stolarz was sort of the odd man out.

In fact, in his time with the Phantoms this year, he had only appeared in three games total, and only one game since Oct. 14.

The Flyers had so soured on Stolarz that they chose instead to claim Calvin Pickard off waivers rather than turn to Stolarz for a backup role when both Lyon and Neuvirth weren’t healthy at the start of the season.

But now, Elliott is hurt again (second time in seven months), Neuvirth is on injured reserve, which is as unsurprising as statement as there are still Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge three days later, and now Lyon has a minor lower-body injury.

This left the Flyers with Pickard and no one else available to back him up.

The Flyers weren’t about to call on Carter Hart, who can’t stop pucks in the AHL right now (3.61 GAA, .884 save percentage in 12 games) so, by default, Stolarz was all they had left.

Of course, he was just being recalled to hold a seat on the NHL bench and basically be an emergency goalie – no different than, say, Scott Foster. 

OK… maybe it’s a little different, after all, Stolarz is truly under contract. But, he was not expected to play. At all.

Pickard, who shut out the New York Rangers Friday was going to start again. And he was going to do it against the Leafs, who waived him for the Flyers to claim him.

No doubt Pickard was amped for the opportunity to stick it to his old team – especially coming off the emotional high of a shutout the day before.

Except Pickard made only two saves, allowed four goals, and didn’t survive the first period. That’s because the Leafs, knowing him well, exploited his weaknesses – over-committing on plays and being prone to shots aimed for the five hole.

And with that, Stolarz got into the game. He played well in his two-plus periods. He made 32 saves on 34 shots.

But that really doesn’t matter. What matters is the Flyers goaltending situation is such a fetid disaster that they were forced to use five goalies in 23 games, and none of them have fared well. Elliott has been decent – basically a little better than league average (2.59 GAA, .911 save percentage) – despite having a losing record.

But otherwise, the Flyers goaltending has been trash. You can’t win, even occasionally, when you are using five different goalies in 23 games.

2. “Team save percentage is by far league-worst at .877 incl tonight. That’s almost 3 GA every 20 shots.”

The Flyers have allowed 3.57 goals per game. Only two teams in the entire NHL are worse – the Florida Panthers and the Ottawa Senators.

But that save percentage – it’s actually .880 now thanks to Stolarz’ effort against Toronto – is an abomination. It’s 0.24 below league average. Think about that for a second. The Flyers goalies are allowing one more goal for roughly every 40 shots taken against them than the average team. Not the best team but the middle-of-the-road goaltending team. They’re actually 0.45 behind the best team (Boston). That means that Boston goalies stop almost five percent more shots than Flyers goalies do. Woof.

Making matters worse, the Flyers are actually an OK offensive team production wise. Their 68 goals rank 17th in the NHL, which is right in the middle of the pack. And yet, their goal-differential is fourth-worst in the league (minus-14).

3. “Let’s put it another way: #Flyers have allowed 4 or more goals in 12 of 23 games. No chance to win when you need to score 5 every other night.”

No Frank. You can not.

4. “Utterly unacceptable – and you can’t say it snuck up on management.”

5. “A team poised to “take a step forward” needed a bridge to Carter Hart. Instead, Elliott + Neuvirth = Malpractice.”

That’s the word I really wanted to get to – malpractice. Because that’s what this is. Ron Hextall had to know his goaltending situation was shaky at best coming into the season.

Neuvirth was constantly hurt last year.

Elliott played well at times, but he was felled by a serious core muscle injury (nee, hernia) and never looked the same after coming back.

Trading for Peter Mrazek was a disaster and he wasn’t welcomed back.

Although Lyon gave it the old college try, he’s still not really ready for the NHL, and if and when he ever is, it’s likely as a backup at best.

Stolarz was coming off a pretty bad knee injury himself, and it was obvious he wasn’t part of the team’s plans moving forward.

And yet, despite all of these concerns, this issue was not addressed by Hextall in the offseason. Rather than pursue a goalie who could be a bridge to Carter Hart and keep the Flyers competitive, Hextall closed his eyes and hoped for the best.

And it has been the most unmitigated disaster of his tenure as general manager.

People can complain all they want about the coach, or the players not living up to expectations, or the penalty kill being terrible or the power play nose-diving, or any other myriad maladies the Flyers have – and all of them have merit.

But those would be masked a little better if there was even a sense of stability in net, and Hextall ignored it. This is akin to leaving the surgical scissors inside the patient after stitching him back up.

He has to know it. His bosses have to know it. It’s why they’ve been circling the Wells Fargo Center press box more lately than ever before.

Blame whoever you want, and there’s a lot of finger-pointing that is valid at this juncture, but the first target you should have in your sights is the GM.

6. “I’m not a Hakstol defender, but I’d like to see what his team looks like with decent goaltending.”

Again, I agree with Frank – and I’ve been one of the more fervent Hakstol critics out there. But the guy has been a different coach this season. Maybe we’re seeing him react to the pressure that is on him and this organization to finally succeed. Maybe it’s taken him longer than it should to figure this NHL game out, but he is figuring it out.

Or maybe he’s coaching by the seat of his pants and isn’t really good at his job. Who knows for sure. But Frank makes a great point. Hakstol and the Flyers have been the poster child for traditionalists against the analytics boom in hockey.

The Flyers do often have good underlying metrics to their game. The fancy stats usually show that this team is playing better than the results would indicate.

It’s why we heard last season during a 10-game losing streak that the team was playing far better than their record would indicate.

And yet, despite all of these good sub-statistics, the Flyers are still mediocre at best, and well below average at worst.

But maybe, just maybe, this team would be what they think and believe they can be with better goaltending. Maybe it’s mental. Maybe the players lack confidence in who they are trotting out there in the crease game after game – and maybe that confidence is completely shaken after a bad goal or two, or the goalie not bailing out a mistake in front of him.

Maybe that causes the team to play tight, and once you tighten up, the odds of making mistakes increases. Turnovers, penalties. Making plays where you overthink instead of playing instinctively in the moment.

Or maybe, as Scott Laughton said several games back, the Flyers try to cheat too much to create offense because that confidence on the last line of defense isn’t too high, and that more cavalier approach to hockey ends up biting them.

All of these things are possible. And the GM needs to be able to recognize that and rectify that, and he hasn’t been able to do so in his four-plus years at the helm.

Which brings me to this:

7. A conclusion

What if all of the focus by fans and the media have been on Hakstol’s job as the coach, but internally the focus is on Hextall’s job as the GM?

What if Hextall is on the hot seat more than his coach is?

Sound crazy?

Maybe it is. But then again, maybe it’s not.

Maybe the conversations between Senior Vice President Bob Clarke – who is basically a highly paid consultant for the team these days – and President Paul Holmgren – which have been happening regularly with little to no reporting or fanfare – are more about Hexy than Hak.

Tough decisions are coming. It could start with the coaching staff – but not necessarily Hakstol.

I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if Ian Laperriere is finally relieved of his assistant coaching position and replaced by Phantoms head coach Scott Gordon. Gordon has a long history of coaching good penalty kill units at all levels of hockey.

And I know the Flyers organization really likes assistant coach Kris Knoblauch as a potential future head coach, but I also know they would want him to gain experience on that front too. So I could see Knoblauch re-assigned to the Phantoms as their new head coach.

I’m not sure the Flyers would add another assistant, or just roll with Gordon and Gord Murphy on the bench with Hakstol. The latter seems more likely, but one can’t be sure.

Those changes would likely come first before Hextall or Hakstol ended up on the chopping block.

A big trade can also happen. And we’ve covered this extensively here, on the Snow The Goalie podcast and during the Press Row Show live on my Twitter feed (Periscope) and the Crossing Broad Facebook  page (FB live) from Flyers home games. Jake Voracek continues to be the name I think would bring the Flyers the most return and have a significant impact on the locker room.

And if Hakstol were to be let go, I think Gordon to close out the season makes the most sense and then evaluate the situation at season’s end with several options like Gordon, Knoblauch or an outside option (Quenneville?)

But the real interesting seat is the GM’s chair. Can Hextall preserve his job by changing his far-too-patient and conservative management style? And if not, who could replace him? Internally Chris Pryor has been a long-time good soldier for the organization, patiently waiting his turn. He’s been with the organization for 20 years, has been director of player personnel for more than five years and was promoted to assistant GM prior to the start of the 2016-17 season.

And then there’s Dean Lombardi, who won a couple Cups as GM of the Kings, who currently serves as a senior advisor to the scouting staff.

Or the Flyers could look outside of the organization, although that’s rarely been the case (Russ Farwell has been the only GM brought in “from the outside” in the history of the franchise.)

Anyway, I get the sense that change is on the horizon in some capacity – and the coach, who has been the target of so much fan-generated ire – might not be the first to go.

The post Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0 appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0 published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/

[paullassiterca]

The Science of Sleep and Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have a number of health effects and ramifications, ranging from mild to devastating. The 2015 National Geographic video, “Science of Sleep,” starts out with the story of third mate Gregory Cousins, whose sleep deprivation led to one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history.

Cousins had slept only six hours in the past 48 hours when he ran the supertanker Exxon Valdez aground, causing the 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into Prince Williams Sound, devastating 23 species of wildlife and nearly 13,000 miles of shoreline habitat.

Indeed, research shows getting less than six hours of sleep in any given 24-hour period will slow your reaction time and leave you cognitively impaired, unable to make rational decisions. This is a devastating combination, and accident statistics offer sobering reminders of the seriousness of the situation.

In 2013 alone, drowsy drivers caused 72,000 car accidents in which 800 Americans were killed and 44,000 were injured.1 This is more than died from those texting and drunk drivers combined.

Sleep Deprivation Is a Recipe for Serious Accidents and Puts Lives at Risk

According to the American Sleep Association,2 nearly 40 percent of people report unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once a month, and nearly 5 percent have nodded off while driving. Most people skimp on sleep because they feel they have to “get things done.” However, the evidence clearly shows that what you end up with is the complete opposite of productivity.

Sleep deprivation is actually costing the U.S. economy $411 billion each year in accidents and lost productivity3 — an amount equivalent to 2.28 percent of the gross domestic product. An estimated 1.2 million working days are also lost.

In worst case scenarios such as the Valdez oil spill and the space shuttle Challenger accident, life is lost. The latter is described in the 1988 paper “Catastrophes, Sleep and Public Policy: Consensus Report,” published in the journal Sleep.4 Other costly accidents caused by sleep-deprived personnel include the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident and the Mir space station collision.

Polls show 63 percent of people do not get enough sleep to be healthy, 69 percent struggle with frequent sleep problems and 22 percent are so sleepy during the day it affects their quality of life. Still, most say they will simply push through their sleepiness in order to complete whatever it is that needs to be done.

But when construction workers, nurses, doctors, mechanics, pilots or truck drivers, for example, go to work and “push through,” it can have lethal consequences for those around them. Needless to say, sleep deprivation itself is also hazardous to your health and is perhaps one of the fastest ways to break down your immune function and make yourself sick.

Research by Eve Van Cauter, director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago, also shows that sleeping less than six hours a night dramatically increases your risk of insulin resistance, which is at the core of most chronic diseases.

As noted in “Science of Sleep,” research conducted in the 1980s discovered that depriving mice of sleep for 17 days straight led to certain death. Two contributing causes were immune system breakdown and blood poisoning.

Lack of Sleep Ages Your Heart

Studies have linked poor sleep with a variety of health problems, including excessive aging of your heart. People who got seven hours of sleep each night had hearts showing signs of being 3.7 years older, based on biological age, than their chronological age.5

People who regularly slept either six or eight hours had hearts that were on average 4.5 years older than their chronological age, while those who got just five hours or less of sleep each night had the oldest biological heart age — 5.1 years older than their chronological age.

As noted by lead author Quanhe Yang, senior scientist in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:6

“The difference between a person’s estimated heart age and his or her chronological age is ‘excess heart age.’ Higher excess heart age indicates a higher risk of developing heart disease.

For example, if a 40-year-old man has a heart age of 44 years based on his cardiovascular risk profile — the personal risk of having a heart disease — then his excess heart age is 4 years. In effect, his heart is four years older than it should be, for a typical man his age. The concept of heart age helps to simplify risk communication.”

Of the 12,755 participants in this study, 13 percent slept just five hours or less per night; 24 percent got six hours; 31 percent got seven hours; 26 percent slept for eight; and about 5 percent got nine or more hours of sleep each night. Considering the ideal sleep time is between seven and nine hours, these statistics reveal at least 37 percent of American adults aren’t getting anywhere near healthy amounts of sleep.

Sleep Quality Also Affects Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Risk

Other recent research7 strengthens the link between sleep problems and heart disease. While this link has been previously noted, recent research found that even if you sleep a healthy number of hours, the quality of that sleep can have a significant impact on your risk for high blood pressure and vascular inflammation associated with heart disease.

Women who had mild sleep disturbance such as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up one or more times during the night were “significantly more likely to have high blood pressure than those who fell asleep quickly and slept soundly,” Forbes reports.8 According to the researchers:9

“Systolic blood pressure was associated directly with poor sleep quality, and diastolic blood pressure was of borderline significance with obstructive sleep apnea risk after adjusting for confounders. Poor sleep quality was associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation.

Insomnia and longer sleep onset latency were also associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation … These findings provide direct evidence that common but frequently neglected sleep disturbances such as poor sleep quality and insomnia are associated with increased blood pressure and vascular inflammation even in the absence of inadequate sleep duration in women.”

Different Stages of Sleep and Their Importance

Sleep is not a single state. Healthy sleep consists of several stages,10 each stage lasting five to 15 minutes, with a complete cycle (light, deep and rapid eye movement or REM sleep) taking between 90 and 120 minutes.

A full sleep cycle starts out in light sleep and progresses through to deep sleep, then reverses back from deep to light sleep before entering REM. You cycle through each of these stages four to five times during the night, and this cycling is tremendously important, from both a biological and psychological perspective.

• Stages 1 and 2 (light sleep; non-REM) — During the initial stages of sleep, biological processes in your body slow down but your brain remains active as it begins the editing process where decisions are made about which memories to store and which to discard.

• Stages 3 and 4 (deep sleep; non-REM) — In these deeper sleep stages you enter into a near coma-like state, during which physiological cleansing and detoxification processes in the brain11 take place. Your brain cells actually shrink by about 60 percent during this deep sleep phase. This creates more space in-between the cells, giving your cerebrospinal fluid more space to flush out the debris.

• Stage 5 (REM) — During this last phase, you enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where dreaming takes place. In this phase, your brain is as active as it is during wakefulness, but your body is paralyzed, which prevents you from acting out your dreams.

The frightening experience of sleep paralysis occurs when you awaken during this phase and find your body unresponsive. The “treatment” for this disorder is knowledge. As noted in “Science of Sleep,” you simply need to be educated about what’s happening so that you can calmly ride out the episode, which typically will not last more than a few minutes.

All of these stages are important, and it’s important to cycle through them enough times each night — especially the deeper stages. When stages 3 and 4 are missing or interrupted, your brain gets clogged with debris associated with Alzheimer’s disease and, indeed, sleep deprivation is a risk factor for severe dementia. Stages 1 through 4 are also what allow you to feel refreshed in the morning, while stage 5 is important for memory.

Sleep Deprivation Takes a Toll on Mental Health

Forgoing REM sleep for extended periods of time may also lead to a state where you actually start dreaming while you’re awake, resulting in delusions and wild hallucinations. “Science of Sleep” features Dr. William Dement, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, who in 1963 oversaw a sleep deprivation experiment by a young man named Randy Gardner.

“We were waiting to see if he would become psychotic,” Dement says. Gardner stayed awake for a record 264 hours — 63 hours longer than Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who, in 1959, tried to break the world record for sleeplessness. Tripp stayed awake for 201 hours straight, doing a continuous broadcast from Times Square.

For Tripp, hallucinations set in on Day Three. He saw spiders in his shoes and became desperately paranoid, convinced people were trying to poison him. He also became belligerent and abusive, and according to one of the attending psychiatrists, “clearly psychotic.”

Gardner, on the other hand, claims he was feeling all right up until the eighth or ninth day, and didn’t start having hallucinatory experiences until the very end. Once the experiment ended, after 11 days of wakefulness followed by 14 hours of sleep, a comprehensive exam and mental health check was performed. Gardner was found to be completely normal.

According to Dement, Gardner’s experiment proved extended sleep loss did not cause psychosis. Tripp’s experiment, on the other hand, revealed that even though he was awake — walking around and talking — his brainwaves showed he was asleep, and it was during the REM cycles that he was most likely to hallucinate. Essentially, he was experiencing his nightmares in an awake state.

What’s more, while Tripp had no signs of psychosis after the experiment ended and he’d slept for 24 hours, many insisted his personality had permanently changed for the worse. He was no longer as cheerful and easygoing as he’d been before, and those who knew him best insist those eight days of sleep deprivation damaged his psyche long-term.

In all likelihood, the effects of sleep deprivation will affect different people in different ways, depending on a variety of biological, environmental and perhaps even genetic factors.

The Influence of Genetics, Jet Lag and Stress Chemicals on Sleep

Sleep deprivation can be worsened by jet lag. Also known as flight fatigue, time zone change syndrome or desynchronosis, jet lag occurs when travel across time zones disrupts your internal body clock, resulting in daytime sleepiness and lethargy, nighttime insomnia, irritability, confusion and poor concentration.12,13

Interestingly, researchers have found that people with a genetically inherited sleep disorder called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome have a circadian body clock that runs about three hours faster than normal. According to “Science of Sleep,” scientists are trying to determine the protein associated with this gene, in the hopes that it might be used to develop “jet lag drugs.”

Whether or not such drugs will ever be realized, there are other, more natural ways to minimize the effects of jet lag. For tips and tricks, see “Can You Decrease Jet Lag With Exposure to Light?”

“Science of Sleep” also discusses research showing the role of stress chemicals in waking. Tests have revealed your body will begin to release certain stress chemicals about an hour before your intended wakeup hour, and that this occurs through mental expectation or intention alone. In other words, the stress chemicals act as a sort of internal alarm clock, readying your body to wake up at the time you mentally prepared yourself to get up.

General Sleep Guidelines

So, how much sleep do you need to optimize your mental and physical health? According to a scientific review of more than 300 studies published between 2004 and 2014, a panel of experts came up with the following recommendations. Keep in mind that if you’re sick, injured or pregnant, you may need a bit more than normal.

Age Group Hours of sleep needed for health

Newborns (0 to 3 months)

14 to 17 hours

Infants (4 to 11 months)

12 to 15 hours

Toddlers (1 to 2 years)

11 to 14 hours

Preschoolers (3 to 5)

10 to 13 hours

School-age children (6 to 13)

9 to 11 hours

Teenagers (14 to 17)

8 to 10 hours

Adults (18 to 64)

7 to 9 hours

Seniors (65 and older)

7 to 8 hours

There’s simply no doubt that sleep needs to be a priority in your life if you intend to live a long and healthy life. For many, this means forgoing night-owl tendencies and getting to bed at a reasonable time.

If you need to be up at 6 a.m., you have to have a lights-out deadline of 9:30 or 10 p.m., depending on how quickly you tend to fall asleep. As for how to improve your sleep if you’re having trouble falling or staying asleep, see “Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It.”

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/10/the-science-of-sleep-and-sleep-deprivation.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/179952893116

[jakehglover]

The Science of Sleep and Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have a number of health effects and ramifications, ranging from mild to devastating. The 2015 National Geographic video, "Science of Sleep," starts out with the story of third mate Gregory Cousins, whose sleep deprivation led to one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history.

Cousins had slept only six hours in the past 48 hours when he ran the supertanker Exxon Valdez aground, causing the 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into Prince Williams Sound, devastating 23 species of wildlife and nearly 13,000 miles of shoreline habitat.

Indeed, research shows getting less than six hours of sleep in any given 24-hour period will slow your reaction time and leave you cognitively impaired, unable to make rational decisions. This is a devastating combination, and accident statistics offer sobering reminders of the seriousness of the situation.

In 2013 alone, drowsy drivers caused 72,000 car accidents in which 800 Americans were killed and 44,000 were injured.1 This is more than died from those texting and drunk drivers combined.

Sleep Deprivation Is a Recipe for Serious Accidents and Puts Lives at Risk

According to the American Sleep Association,2 nearly 40 percent of people report unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once a month, and nearly 5 percent have nodded off while driving. Most people skimp on sleep because they feel they have to "get things done." However, the evidence clearly shows that what you end up with is the complete opposite of productivity.

Sleep deprivation is actually costing the U.S. economy $411 billion each year in accidents and lost productivity3 — an amount equivalent to 2.28 percent of the gross domestic product. An estimated 1.2 million working days are also lost.

In worst case scenarios such as the Valdez oil spill and the space shuttle Challenger accident, life is lost. The latter is described in the 1988 paper "Catastrophes, Sleep and Public Policy: Consensus Report," published in the journal Sleep.4 Other costly accidents caused by sleep-deprived personnel include the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident and the Mir space station collision.

Polls show 63 percent of people do not get enough sleep to be healthy, 69 percent struggle with frequent sleep problems and 22 percent are so sleepy during the day it affects their quality of life. Still, most say they will simply push through their sleepiness in order to complete whatever it is that needs to be done.

But when construction workers, nurses, doctors, mechanics, pilots or truck drivers, for example, go to work and "push through," it can have lethal consequences for those around them. Needless to say, sleep deprivation itself is also hazardous to your health and is perhaps one of the fastest ways to break down your immune function and make yourself sick.

Research by Eve Van Cauter, director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago, also shows that sleeping less than six hours a night dramatically increases your risk of insulin resistance, which is at the core of most chronic diseases.

As noted in "Science of Sleep," research conducted in the 1980s discovered that depriving mice of sleep for 17 days straight led to certain death. Two contributing causes were immune system breakdown and blood poisoning.

Lack of Sleep Ages Your Heart

Studies have linked poor sleep with a variety of health problems, including excessive aging of your heart. People who got seven hours of sleep each night had hearts showing signs of being 3.7 years older, based on biological age, than their chronological age.5

People who regularly slept either six or eight hours had hearts that were on average 4.5 years older than their chronological age, while those who got just five hours or less of sleep each night had the oldest biological heart age — 5.1 years older than their chronological age.

As noted by lead author Quanhe Yang, senior scientist in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:6

"The difference between a person's estimated heart age and his or her chronological age is 'excess heart age.' Higher excess heart age indicates a higher risk of developing heart disease.

For example, if a 40-year-old man has a heart age of 44 years based on his cardiovascular risk profile — the personal risk of having a heart disease — then his excess heart age is 4 years. In effect, his heart is four years older than it should be, for a typical man his age. The concept of heart age helps to simplify risk communication."

Of the 12,755 participants in this study, 13 percent slept just five hours or less per night; 24 percent got six hours; 31 percent got seven hours; 26 percent slept for eight; and about 5 percent got nine or more hours of sleep each night. Considering the ideal sleep time is between seven and nine hours, these statistics reveal at least 37 percent of American adults aren't getting anywhere near healthy amounts of sleep.

Sleep Quality Also Affects Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Risk

Other recent research7 strengthens the link between sleep problems and heart disease. While this link has been previously noted, recent research found that even if you sleep a healthy number of hours, the quality of that sleep can have a significant impact on your risk for high blood pressure and vascular inflammation associated with heart disease.

Women who had mild sleep disturbance such as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up one or more times during the night were "significantly more likely to have high blood pressure than those who fell asleep quickly and slept soundly," Forbes reports.8 According to the researchers:9

"Systolic blood pressure was associated directly with poor sleep quality, and diastolic blood pressure was of borderline significance with obstructive sleep apnea risk after adjusting for confounders. Poor sleep quality was associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation.

Insomnia and longer sleep onset latency were also associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation … These findings provide direct evidence that common but frequently neglected sleep disturbances such as poor sleep quality and insomnia are associated with increased blood pressure and vascular inflammation even in the absence of inadequate sleep duration in women."

Different Stages of Sleep and Their Importance

Sleep is not a single state. Healthy sleep consists of several stages,10 each stage lasting five to 15 minutes, with a complete cycle (light, deep and rapid eye movement or REM sleep) taking between 90 and 120 minutes.

A full sleep cycle starts out in light sleep and progresses through to deep sleep, then reverses back from deep to light sleep before entering REM. You cycle through each of these stages four to five times during the night, and this cycling is tremendously important, from both a biological and psychological perspective.

• Stages 1 and 2 (light sleep; non-REM) — During the initial stages of sleep, biological processes in your body slow down but your brain remains active as it begins the editing process where decisions are made about which memories to store and which to discard.

• Stages 3 and 4 (deep sleep; non-REM) — In these deeper sleep stages you enter into a near coma-like state, during which physiological cleansing and detoxification processes in the brain11 take place. Your brain cells actually shrink by about 60 percent during this deep sleep phase. This creates more space in-between the cells, giving your cerebrospinal fluid more space to flush out the debris.

• Stage 5 (REM) — During this last phase, you enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where dreaming takes place. In this phase, your brain is as active as it is during wakefulness, but your body is paralyzed, which prevents you from acting out your dreams.

The frightening experience of sleep paralysis occurs when you awaken during this phase and find your body unresponsive. The "treatment" for this disorder is knowledge. As noted in "Science of Sleep," you simply need to be educated about what's happening so that you can calmly ride out the episode, which typically will not last more than a few minutes.

All of these stages are important, and it's important to cycle through them enough times each night — especially the deeper stages. When stages 3 and 4 are missing or interrupted, your brain gets clogged with debris associated with Alzheimer's disease and, indeed, sleep deprivation is a risk factor for severe dementia. Stages 1 through 4 are also what allow you to feel refreshed in the morning, while stage 5 is important for memory.

Sleep Deprivation Takes a Toll on Mental Health

Forgoing REM sleep for extended periods of time may also lead to a state where you actually start dreaming while you're awake, resulting in delusions and wild hallucinations. "Science of Sleep" features Dr. William Dement, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, who in 1963 oversaw a sleep deprivation experiment by a young man named Randy Gardner.

"We were waiting to see if he would become psychotic," Dement says. Gardner stayed awake for a record 264 hours — 63 hours longer than Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who, in 1959, tried to break the world record for sleeplessness. Tripp stayed awake for 201 hours straight, doing a continuous broadcast from Times Square.

For Tripp, hallucinations set in on Day Three. He saw spiders in his shoes and became desperately paranoid, convinced people were trying to poison him. He also became belligerent and abusive, and according to one of the attending psychiatrists, "clearly psychotic."

Gardner, on the other hand, claims he was feeling all right up until the eighth or ninth day, and didn't start having hallucinatory experiences until the very end. Once the experiment ended, after 11 days of wakefulness followed by 14 hours of sleep, a comprehensive exam and mental health check was performed. Gardner was found to be completely normal.

According to Dement, Gardner's experiment proved extended sleep loss did not cause psychosis. Tripp's experiment, on the other hand, revealed that even though he was awake — walking around and talking — his brainwaves showed he was asleep, and it was during the REM cycles that he was most likely to hallucinate. Essentially, he was experiencing his nightmares in an awake state.

What's more, while Tripp had no signs of psychosis after the experiment ended and he'd slept for 24 hours, many insisted his personality had permanently changed for the worse. He was no longer as cheerful and easygoing as he'd been before, and those who knew him best insist those eight days of sleep deprivation damaged his psyche long-term.

In all likelihood, the effects of sleep deprivation will affect different people in different ways, depending on a variety of biological, environmental and perhaps even genetic factors.

The Influence of Genetics, Jet Lag and Stress Chemicals on Sleep

Sleep deprivation can be worsened by jet lag. Also known as flight fatigue, time zone change syndrome or desynchronosis, jet lag occurs when travel across time zones disrupts your internal body clock, resulting in daytime sleepiness and lethargy, nighttime insomnia, irritability, confusion and poor concentration.12,13

Interestingly, researchers have found that people with a genetically inherited sleep disorder called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome have a circadian body clock that runs about three hours faster than normal. According to "Science of Sleep," scientists are trying to determine the protein associated with this gene, in the hopes that it might be used to develop "jet lag drugs."

Whether or not such drugs will ever be realized, there are other, more natural ways to minimize the effects of jet lag. For tips and tricks, see "Can You Decrease Jet Lag With Exposure to Light?"

"Science of Sleep" also discusses research showing the role of stress chemicals in waking. Tests have revealed your body will begin to release certain stress chemicals about an hour before your intended wakeup hour, and that this occurs through mental expectation or intention alone. In other words, the stress chemicals act as a sort of internal alarm clock, readying your body to wake up at the time you mentally prepared yourself to get up.

General Sleep Guidelines

So, how much sleep do you need to optimize your mental and physical health? According to a scientific review of more than 300 studies published between 2004 and 2014, a panel of experts came up with the following recommendations. Keep in mind that if you're sick, injured or pregnant, you may need a bit more than normal.

Age Group Hours of sleep needed for health

Newborns (0 to 3 months)

14 to 17 hours

Infants (4 to 11 months)

12 to 15 hours

Toddlers (1 to 2 years)

11 to 14 hours

Preschoolers (3 to 5)

10 to 13 hours

School-age children (6 to 13)

9 to 11 hours

Teenagers (14 to 17)

8 to 10 hours

Adults (18 to 64)

7 to 9 hours

Seniors (65 and older)

7 to 8 hours

There's simply no doubt that sleep needs to be a priority in your life if you intend to live a long and healthy life. For many, this means forgoing night-owl tendencies and getting to bed at a reasonable time.

If you need to be up at 6 a.m., you have to have a lights-out deadline of 9:30 or 10 p.m., depending on how quickly you tend to fall asleep. As for how to improve your sleep if you're having trouble falling or staying asleep, see "Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It."

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/10/the-science-of-sleep-and-sleep-deprivation.aspx

[jerrytackettca]

The Science of Sleep and Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have a number of health effects and ramifications, ranging from mild to devastating. The 2015 National Geographic video, "Science of Sleep," starts out with the story of third mate Gregory Cousins, whose sleep deprivation led to one of the greatest environmental catastrophes in history.

Cousins had slept only six hours in the past 48 hours when he ran the supertanker Exxon Valdez aground, causing the 11 million gallons of crude oil to spill into Prince Williams Sound, devastating 23 species of wildlife and nearly 13,000 miles of shoreline habitat.

Indeed, research shows getting less than six hours of sleep in any given 24-hour period will slow your reaction time and leave you cognitively impaired, unable to make rational decisions. This is a devastating combination, and accident statistics offer sobering reminders of the seriousness of the situation.

In 2013 alone, drowsy drivers caused 72,000 car accidents in which 800 Americans were killed and 44,000 were injured.1 This is more than died from those texting and drunk drivers combined.

Sleep Deprivation Is a Recipe for Serious Accidents and Puts Lives at Risk

According to the American Sleep Association,2 nearly 40 percent of people report unintentionally falling asleep during the day at least once a month, and nearly 5 percent have nodded off while driving. Most people skimp on sleep because they feel they have to "get things done." However, the evidence clearly shows that what you end up with is the complete opposite of productivity.

Sleep deprivation is actually costing the U.S. economy $411 billion each year in accidents and lost productivity3 — an amount equivalent to 2.28 percent of the gross domestic product. An estimated 1.2 million working days are also lost.

In worst case scenarios such as the Valdez oil spill and the space shuttle Challenger accident, life is lost. The latter is described in the 1988 paper "Catastrophes, Sleep and Public Policy: Consensus Report," published in the journal Sleep.4 Other costly accidents caused by sleep-deprived personnel include the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident and the Mir space station collision.

Polls show 63 percent of people do not get enough sleep to be healthy, 69 percent struggle with frequent sleep problems and 22 percent are so sleepy during the day it affects their quality of life. Still, most say they will simply push through their sleepiness in order to complete whatever it is that needs to be done.

But when construction workers, nurses, doctors, mechanics, pilots or truck drivers, for example, go to work and "push through," it can have lethal consequences for those around them. Needless to say, sleep deprivation itself is also hazardous to your health and is perhaps one of the fastest ways to break down your immune function and make yourself sick.

Research by Eve Van Cauter, director of the Sleep, Metabolism and Health Center at the University of Chicago, also shows that sleeping less than six hours a night dramatically increases your risk of insulin resistance, which is at the core of most chronic diseases.

As noted in "Science of Sleep," research conducted in the 1980s discovered that depriving mice of sleep for 17 days straight led to certain death. Two contributing causes were immune system breakdown and blood poisoning.

Lack of Sleep Ages Your Heart

Studies have linked poor sleep with a variety of health problems, including excessive aging of your heart. People who got seven hours of sleep each night had hearts showing signs of being 3.7 years older, based on biological age, than their chronological age.5

People who regularly slept either six or eight hours had hearts that were on average 4.5 years older than their chronological age, while those who got just five hours or less of sleep each night had the oldest biological heart age — 5.1 years older than their chronological age.

As noted by lead author Quanhe Yang, senior scientist in the Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:6

"The difference between a person's estimated heart age and his or her chronological age is 'excess heart age.' Higher excess heart age indicates a higher risk of developing heart disease.

For example, if a 40-year-old man has a heart age of 44 years based on his cardiovascular risk profile — the personal risk of having a heart disease — then his excess heart age is 4 years. In effect, his heart is four years older than it should be, for a typical man his age. The concept of heart age helps to simplify risk communication."

Of the 12,755 participants in this study, 13 percent slept just five hours or less per night; 24 percent got six hours; 31 percent got seven hours; 26 percent slept for eight; and about 5 percent got nine or more hours of sleep each night. Considering the ideal sleep time is between seven and nine hours, these statistics reveal at least 37 percent of American adults aren't getting anywhere near healthy amounts of sleep.

Sleep Quality Also Affects Blood Pressure and Heart Disease Risk

Other recent research7 strengthens the link between sleep problems and heart disease. While this link has been previously noted, recent research found that even if you sleep a healthy number of hours, the quality of that sleep can have a significant impact on your risk for high blood pressure and vascular inflammation associated with heart disease.

Women who had mild sleep disturbance such as taking longer to fall asleep or waking up one or more times during the night were "significantly more likely to have high blood pressure than those who fell asleep quickly and slept soundly," Forbes reports.8 According to the researchers:9

"Systolic blood pressure was associated directly with poor sleep quality, and diastolic blood pressure was of borderline significance with obstructive sleep apnea risk after adjusting for confounders. Poor sleep quality was associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation.

Insomnia and longer sleep onset latency were also associated with endothelial nuclear factor kappa B activation … These findings provide direct evidence that common but frequently neglected sleep disturbances such as poor sleep quality and insomnia are associated with increased blood pressure and vascular inflammation even in the absence of inadequate sleep duration in women."

Different Stages of Sleep and Their Importance

Sleep is not a single state. Healthy sleep consists of several stages,10 each stage lasting five to 15 minutes, with a complete cycle (light, deep and rapid eye movement or REM sleep) taking between 90 and 120 minutes.

A full sleep cycle starts out in light sleep and progresses through to deep sleep, then reverses back from deep to light sleep before entering REM. You cycle through each of these stages four to five times during the night, and this cycling is tremendously important, from both a biological and psychological perspective.

• Stages 1 and 2 (light sleep; non-REM) — During the initial stages of sleep, biological processes in your body slow down but your brain remains active as it begins the editing process where decisions are made about which memories to store and which to discard.

• Stages 3 and 4 (deep sleep; non-REM) — In these deeper sleep stages you enter into a near coma-like state, during which physiological cleansing and detoxification processes in the brain11 take place. Your brain cells actually shrink by about 60 percent during this deep sleep phase. This creates more space in-between the cells, giving your cerebrospinal fluid more space to flush out the debris.

• Stage 5 (REM) — During this last phase, you enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, where dreaming takes place. In this phase, your brain is as active as it is during wakefulness, but your body is paralyzed, which prevents you from acting out your dreams.

The frightening experience of sleep paralysis occurs when you awaken during this phase and find your body unresponsive. The "treatment" for this disorder is knowledge. As noted in "Science of Sleep," you simply need to be educated about what's happening so that you can calmly ride out the episode, which typically will not last more than a few minutes.

All of these stages are important, and it's important to cycle through them enough times each night — especially the deeper stages. When stages 3 and 4 are missing or interrupted, your brain gets clogged with debris associated with Alzheimer's disease and, indeed, sleep deprivation is a risk factor for severe dementia. Stages 1 through 4 are also what allow you to feel refreshed in the morning, while stage 5 is important for memory.

Sleep Deprivation Takes a Toll on Mental Health

Forgoing REM sleep for extended periods of time may also lead to a state where you actually start dreaming while you're awake, resulting in delusions and wild hallucinations. "Science of Sleep" features Dr. William Dement, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford, who in 1963 oversaw a sleep deprivation experiment by a young man named Randy Gardner.

"We were waiting to see if he would become psychotic," Dement says. Gardner stayed awake for a record 264 hours — 63 hours longer than Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who, in 1959, tried to break the world record for sleeplessness. Tripp stayed awake for 201 hours straight, doing a continuous broadcast from Times Square.

For Tripp, hallucinations set in on Day Three. He saw spiders in his shoes and became desperately paranoid, convinced people were trying to poison him. He also became belligerent and abusive, and according to one of the attending psychiatrists, "clearly psychotic."

Gardner, on the other hand, claims he was feeling all right up until the eighth or ninth day, and didn't start having hallucinatory experiences until the very end. Once the experiment ended, after 11 days of wakefulness followed by 14 hours of sleep, a comprehensive exam and mental health check was performed. Gardner was found to be completely normal.

According to Dement, Gardner's experiment proved extended sleep loss did not cause psychosis. Tripp's experiment, on the other hand, revealed that even though he was awake — walking around and talking — his brainwaves showed he was asleep, and it was during the REM cycles that he was most likely to hallucinate. Essentially, he was experiencing his nightmares in an awake state.

What's more, while Tripp had no signs of psychosis after the experiment ended and he'd slept for 24 hours, many insisted his personality had permanently changed for the worse. He was no longer as cheerful and easygoing as he'd been before, and those who knew him best insist those eight days of sleep deprivation damaged his psyche long-term.

In all likelihood, the effects of sleep deprivation will affect different people in different ways, depending on a variety of biological, environmental and perhaps even genetic factors.

The Influence of Genetics, Jet Lag and Stress Chemicals on Sleep

Sleep deprivation can be worsened by jet lag. Also known as flight fatigue, time zone change syndrome or desynchronosis, jet lag occurs when travel across time zones disrupts your internal body clock, resulting in daytime sleepiness and lethargy, nighttime insomnia, irritability, confusion and poor concentration.12,13

Interestingly, researchers have found that people with a genetically inherited sleep disorder called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome have a circadian body clock that runs about three hours faster than normal. According to "Science of Sleep," scientists are trying to determine the protein associated with this gene, in the hopes that it might be used to develop "jet lag drugs."

Whether or not such drugs will ever be realized, there are other, more natural ways to minimize the effects of jet lag. For tips and tricks, see "Can You Decrease Jet Lag With Exposure to Light?"

"Science of Sleep" also discusses research showing the role of stress chemicals in waking. Tests have revealed your body will begin to release certain stress chemicals about an hour before your intended wakeup hour, and that this occurs through mental expectation or intention alone. In other words, the stress chemicals act as a sort of internal alarm clock, readying your body to wake up at the time you mentally prepared yourself to get up.

General Sleep Guidelines

So, how much sleep do you need to optimize your mental and physical health? According to a scientific review of more than 300 studies published between 2004 and 2014, a panel of experts came up with the following recommendations. Keep in mind that if you're sick, injured or pregnant, you may need a bit more than normal.

Age GroupHours of sleep needed for health

Newborns (0 to 3 months)

14 to 17 hours

Infants (4 to 11 months)

12 to 15 hours

Toddlers (1 to 2 years)

11 to 14 hours

Preschoolers (3 to 5)

10 to 13 hours

School-age children (6 to 13)

9 to 11 hours

Teenagers (14 to 17)

8 to 10 hours

Adults (18 to 64)

7 to 9 hours

Seniors (65 and older)

7 to 8 hours

There's simply no doubt that sleep needs to be a priority in your life if you intend to live a long and healthy life. For many, this means forgoing night-owl tendencies and getting to bed at a reasonable time.

If you need to be up at 6 a.m., you have to have a lights-out deadline of 9:30 or 10 p.m., depending on how quickly you tend to fall asleep. As for how to improve your sleep if you're having trouble falling or staying asleep, see "Sleep — Why You Need It and 50 Ways to Improve It."

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2018/11/10/the-science-of-sleep-and-sleep-deprivation.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/the-science-of-sleep-and-sleep-deprivation

[healthylifepage]

PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe

As long as you are a freak for fitness and body maintenance, there are many supplements that claim to assist you shed that annoying weight off. You will always have some concerns about increasing weight, and you will resort to strict diets, many exercise and weight loss pills.

However, before going out to buy weight loss pills, it is good to do some research. Among the pills in the market that work effectively is Ph.375, which you can purchase over the counter as an alternative to Amphetamine or Phentermine.

If you take PH.375 pills on a regular basis and combine that with small amounts of workout time, you will discover that the supplement is not just a tool to help in weight management and shedding off calories, but also helps in boosting your immune system and metabolism. The best part though – it is not harmful to your body in any way because natural ingredients comprise it.

Watch This Video

Get it Here from official website

What is PH.375?

This is a weight loss pill, which is among the pioneers in the market. Eight ingredients comprise it, and all of them work together to help your body reduce harmful fat in a natural way.

The supplement not only burns the body fat but also aids your body to maintain its physique and mental health. 

The product manufacturer us a global-renowned supplement company, WOLFSON BERG LIMITED.. It has certain benefits that include:

Boosting energy levels and metabolism on a significant level

Reducing appetite

Improving the ability of the body to breakdown body fat

Improves athletic performance

 Ingredients in the supplement that make it effective

Calcium carbonate – Calcium is important in bone strength, but few people know it also plays an important role in weight management. In fact, some studies show that calcium supplements among obese individuals (especially women) may result in moderate loss of weight.

L-Carnitine – this is a helpful ingredient for the muscles, which helps them to burn fat. It acts as a delivery channel, because it moves molecules of fat to the mitochondria to help them burn for energy. In this way, it makes it easy for your body to absorb fat from the blood, and change it into an energy source for the muscles. It is also beneficial for treating conditions like thyroid issues, asthma, diabetes, male infertility issues, kidney problems, depression and other issues.

Chromium Pikolinate – this ingredient is a trace mineral occurring naturally, and people think of it as a good agent to control appetite. This is because it maintains blood sugar levels, therefore reducing sugar cravings. It is also good for metabolism of protein, carbohydrates and fat.

Anhydrous caffeine powder – many weight loss pills that you will find will have caffeine (1, 3, 7-Trimethylxanine) as an ingredient. This is because it acts as a thermogenic – it increases the body temperature, therefore increasing metabolism rates. The result is your body using fat as an energy source. This way, you are killing two birds with one stone – shedding pounds and feeling energized while doing so.

Dendrobium Nobile extract – this is an extract from a specific species of an orchid flower. Widely useful in replacing DMAA, which is the cause of deaths in many weight loss pills. It is however, not proven how this ingredient leads to weight loss.

Fruit extract (Citrus aurantium) – this is a substance containing many fruits such as bitter orange, seville orange, synephrine, and much more. An extract from an orange peel, its particular weight loss power comes in some stimulant-like substances like synephrine. Bitter orange itself is less powerful than ephedrine, phentermine over the counter is safe to use by most individuals.

Artichoke leaf extract – the herbal extract from some artichoke leaves, it assists you to reducing the calories you consume. The result is you get satisfied without eating large quantities of food.

Coleus Forskolii leaf extract – the relation between this ingredient (Forskolin) and weight loss is unclear, though some studies show small amounts of weight loss from consuming the ingredient (mostly due to promoting the thyroid).

 Dosage and directions

The bottles have thirty pills that should last two weeks. The dosage is one tablet 20 minutes before your breakfast, and one tablet 20 minutes before your lunch. One should not exceed two tablets daily.

Start Your Dose Today With Ph.375

Possible side effects

No serious side effects come with the product, however, on rare occasions, you might experience the following:

Calcium carbonate – this may cause small side effects like gas on 1st day of usage but then everything should be back to normal.

Chromium – this is safe for the most part, though some people may go through some rare side effects like dizziness & skin irritation.

L-Cartinine – this can lead to stomach upsets.

Caffeine powder – this is a stimulant, so it may have effects such as a temporary increase in heart rates and palpitation, insomnia.

 The thing to note though is that these effects are not very strong, since the ingredients are natural-based. The side effects are common to diet pills, but the balanced approach with the product pays off well. On the good side, the energy the pills give you are very high, and you will not need additional caffeine.

 Whom is ph.375 for?

If you have been searching for a diet pill that works effectively but have struggled to find one, this is for you. The pill is effective for both women and men. Even though it is for burning energy to a large extent as well as weight loss, it can also work as an energy booster. To sum it up, this supplement is for you if:

You feel weak on a constant basis

You want to get rid of stubborn fat

You want to burn calories on a constant basis (even at rest)

You have issues with shedding the extra pounds

You are on a diet and working out, but are not getting the ideal results

You are frustrated with the results of your diet

You want a diet pill that has natural ingredients and is safe

You need energy boosts as you lose weight

If you seek one or more of the above, grab your Ph.375 today

What about who should not use it?

If you are breastfeeding, pregnant, dealing with cardiac disorders or you are a person under 18 years of age, you should avoid the supplement as well. If you are under prescription of other medicines, ensure that you consult with your doctor.

 Ph.375 reviews – testimonials and results

Many consumers report that the supplement works very well, regardless of their current body weights. Though some reports have been negative, the reaction to the product is largely positive. Some of them include:

Trying and failing with other products, but reaching their weight loss goals from using the product, as well as maintaining the weight they desire.

The product failing to assist you achieve your weight loss goals (especially when you do not exercise regularly).

One user notes that the product works more effectively when you change your diet, eat healthy and exercise (even if it is moderate such as walking).

The benefits start right away because the supplement acts very quickly – in fact, the alertness begins about fifteen minutes after you ingest the pill.

The appetite also reduces, and even after doing several activities, you still feel satisfied. This is because of certain ingredients within the supplement, which signals to the brain that you are full.

Drawbacks of the supplement

The problem of this supplement is that you cannot access it from other sources, except their official website. This means you cannot purchase it from sites like Amazon.

Another issue is the price – the price of the product is premium price, and these mean the final product is more expensive than other supplements.

 Pricing structure (review)

As said above, the bottles of the supplement are more expensive than other supplements, so it is better to purchase more of it – this means you get free bottles (on offer) and more discounts. Note that FREE SHIPPING is available to any country including in the UK and Europe Region.

30 tablets. This costs about £49.95 / 55.95€

There is an offer of 60 tablets, which is 30 tablets (plus 30 free tablets) – if you purchase two bottles, you get a free bottle. This costs £98.95 / 111.95€

120 tablets – this is free 60 tablets as well as a 14-day fat burning eBook. This is the best deal for serious dieters, and costs £196.95 / 223.95€.

Overall, this is a fair structure, considering the ingredients are of premium quality. The issue probably would be the discount amounts per bottle, though this is not a major issue. There are discount coupons that come with the product, and you can avail these via the discount codes when you buy it.

Money-back guarantee

An interesting aspect this product has is a 60-day money back guarantee. This indicates that the manufacturer is confident in their product, and in the case of changing your mind, you can contact the customer support easily. However, to ensure the guarantee stays effective, you must follow these steps:

Downloading the diet plan from the official website

Note the initial weight

Following the diet plan and tracking the progress

Note the end weight after 30 days

 Shipping

Even though the product is expensive, the good news is shipping is fast and free to any country worldwide. There are certain exceptions, however. These are mainly the countries that do not allow phentermine over the counter:

Myanmar, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Rwanda, Palestinian territories and the Balkans.

 Where to buy

Even though you can get many supplements in stores or pharmacies, the case of Ph.375 is different – you cannot get it in these places.

In most cases, when you find the supplement in local stores, either then it is a counterfeit product or the product is from the original website and is being sold at a high price.

The reason for the rarity of the product is the manufacturer, WOLFSON BERG LIMITED, does not want to risk the quality of the product.

Due to the desire to maintain high maintenance of the product, the company does not allow anyone to sell the product on their behalf. This may change eventually, though this decision is still in progress, so avoid purchasing the product outside of the original website.

You can buy the product using the currency of your choice, and if you do not use English, the site supports other languages.

Visit Official Website Here

 Final thoughts

The product is very good, and is worth your money. Purchasing Ph.375 is beneficial, especially when you consider the extra bottles, the information, customer support and money-back guarantee. In fact, you can take the product without going through the overbearing side effects that most of the weight loss supplements can cause.

The post PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe appeared first on YummyLooks.

PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe posted first on yummylooksbest.blogspot.com

[equinoxpage]

PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe

As long as you are a freak for fitness and body maintenance, there are many supplements that claim to assist you shed that annoying weight off. You will always have some concerns about increasing weight, and you will resort to strict diets, many exercise and weight loss pills.

However, before going out to buy weight loss pills, it is good to do some research. Among the pills in the market that work effectively is Ph.375, which you can purchase over the counter as an alternative to Amphetamine or Phentermine.

If you take PH.375 pills on a regular basis and combine that with small amounts of workout time, you will discover that the supplement is not just a tool to help in weight management and shedding off calories, but also helps in boosting your immune system and metabolism. The best part though – it is not harmful to your body in any way because natural ingredients comprise it.

Watch This Video

Get it Here from official website

What is PH.375?

This is a weight loss pill, which is among the pioneers in the market. Eight ingredients comprise it, and all of them work together to help your body reduce harmful fat in a natural way.

The supplement not only burns the body fat but also aids your body to maintain its physique and mental health. 

The product manufacturer us a global-renowned supplement company, WOLFSON BERG LIMITED.. It has certain benefits that include:

Boosting energy levels and metabolism on a significant level

Reducing appetite

Improving the ability of the body to breakdown body fat

Improves athletic performance

Ingredients in the supplement that make it effective

Calcium carbonate – Calcium is important in bone strength, but few people know it also plays an important role in weight management. In fact, some studies show that calcium supplements among obese individuals (especially women) may result in moderate loss of weight.

L-Carnitine – this is a helpful ingredient for the muscles, which helps them to burn fat. It acts as a delivery channel, because it moves molecules of fat to the mitochondria to help them burn for energy. In this way, it makes it easy for your body to absorb fat from the blood, and change it into an energy source for the muscles. It is also beneficial for treating conditions like thyroid issues, asthma, diabetes, male infertility issues, kidney problems, depression and other issues.

Chromium Pikolinate – this ingredient is a trace mineral occurring naturally, and people think of it as a good agent to control appetite. This is because it maintains blood sugar levels, therefore reducing sugar cravings. It is also good for metabolism of protein, carbohydrates and fat.

Anhydrous caffeine powder – many weight loss pills that you will find will have caffeine (1, 3, 7-Trimethylxanine) as an ingredient. This is because it acts as a thermogenic – it increases the body temperature, therefore increasing metabolism rates. The result is your body using fat as an energy source. This way, you are killing two birds with one stone – shedding pounds and feeling energized while doing so.

Dendrobium Nobile extract – this is an extract from a specific species of an orchid flower. Widely useful in replacing DMAA, which is the cause of deaths in many weight loss pills. It is however, not proven how this ingredient leads to weight loss.

Fruit extract (Citrus aurantium) – this is a substance containing many fruits such as bitter orange, seville orange, synephrine, and much more. An extract from an orange peel, its particular weight loss power comes in some stimulant-like substances like synephrine. Bitter orange itself is less powerful than ephedrine, phentermine over the counter is safe to use by most individuals.

Artichoke leaf extract – the herbal extract from some artichoke leaves, it assists you to reducing the calories you consume. The result is you get satisfied without eating large quantities of food.

Coleus Forskolii leaf extract – the relation between this ingredient (Forskolin) and weight loss is unclear, though some studies show small amounts of weight loss from consuming the ingredient (mostly due to promoting the thyroid).

Dosage and directions

The bottles have thirty pills that should last two weeks. The dosage is one tablet 20 minutes before your breakfast, and one tablet 20 minutes before your lunch. One should not exceed two tablets daily.

Start Your Dose Today With Ph.375

Possible side effects

No serious side effects come with the product, however, on rare occasions, you might experience the following:

Calcium carbonate – this may cause small side effects like gas on 1st day of usage but then everything should be back to normal.

Chromium – this is safe for the most part, though some people may go through some rare side effects like dizziness & skin irritation.

L-Cartinine – this can lead to stomach upsets.

Caffeine powder – this is a stimulant, so it may have effects such as a temporary increase in heart rates and palpitation, insomnia.

The thing to note though is that these effects are not very strong, since the ingredients are natural-based. The side effects are common to diet pills, but the balanced approach with the product pays off well. On the good side, the energy the pills give you are very high, and you will not need additional caffeine.

Whom is ph.375 for?

If you have been searching for a diet pill that works effectively but have struggled to find one, this is for you. The pill is effective for both women and men. Even though it is for burning energy to a large extent as well as weight loss, it can also work as an energy booster. To sum it up, this supplement is for you if:

You feel weak on a constant basis

You want to get rid of stubborn fat

You want to burn calories on a constant basis (even at rest)

You have issues with shedding the extra pounds

You are on a diet and working out, but are not getting the ideal results

You are frustrated with the results of your diet

You want a diet pill that has natural ingredients and is safe

You need energy boosts as you lose weight

If you seek one or more of the above, grab your Ph.375 today

What about who should not use it?

If you are breastfeeding, pregnant, dealing with cardiac disorders or you are a person under 18 years of age, you should avoid the supplement as well. If you are under prescription of other medicines, ensure that you consult with your doctor.

Ph.375 reviews – testimonials and results

Many consumers report that the supplement works very well, regardless of their current body weights. Though some reports have been negative, the reaction to the product is largely positive. Some of them include:

Trying and failing with other products, but reaching their weight loss goals from using the product, as well as maintaining the weight they desire.

The product failing to assist you achieve your weight loss goals (especially when you do not exercise regularly).

One user notes that the product works more effectively when you change your diet, eat healthy and exercise (even if it is moderate such as walking).

The benefits start right away because the supplement acts very quickly – in fact, the alertness begins about fifteen minutes after you ingest the pill.

The appetite also reduces, and even after doing several activities, you still feel satisfied. This is because of certain ingredients within the supplement, which signals to the brain that you are full.

Drawbacks of the supplement

The problem of this supplement is that you cannot access it from other sources, except their official website. This means you cannot purchase it from sites like Amazon.

Another issue is the price – the price of the product is premium price, and these mean the final product is more expensive than other supplements.

Pricing structure (review)

As said above, the bottles of the supplement are more expensive than other supplements, so it is better to purchase more of it – this means you get free bottles (on offer) and more discounts. Note that FREE SHIPPING is available to any country including in the UK and Europe Region.

30 tablets. This costs about £49.95 / 55.95€

There is an offer of 60 tablets, which is 30 tablets (plus 30 free tablets) – if you purchase two bottles, you get a free bottle. This costs £98.95 / 111.95€

120 tablets – this is free 60 tablets as well as a 14-day fat burning eBook. This is the best deal for serious dieters, and costs £196.95 / 223.95€.

Overall, this is a fair structure, considering the ingredients are of premium quality. The issue probably would be the discount amounts per bottle, though this is not a major issue. There are discount coupons that come with the product, and you can avail these via the discount codes when you buy it.

Money-back guarantee

An interesting aspect this product has is a 60-day money back guarantee. This indicates that the manufacturer is confident in their product, and in the case of changing your mind, you can contact the customer support easily. However, to ensure the guarantee stays effective, you must follow these steps:

Downloading the diet plan from the official website

Note the initial weight

Following the diet plan and tracking the progress

Note the end weight after 30 days

Shipping

Even though the product is expensive, the good news is shipping is fast and free to any country worldwide. There are certain exceptions, however. These are mainly the countries that do not allow phentermine over the counter:

Myanmar, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Zimbabwe, Liberia, Rwanda, Palestinian territories and the Balkans.

Where to buy

Even though you can get many supplements in stores or pharmacies, the case of Ph.375 is different – you cannot get it in these places.

In most cases, when you find the supplement in local stores, either then it is a counterfeit product or the product is from the original website and is being sold at a high price.

The reason for the rarity of the product is the manufacturer, WOLFSON BERG LIMITED, does not want to risk the quality of the product.

Due to the desire to maintain high maintenance of the product, the company does not allow anyone to sell the product on their behalf. This may change eventually, though this decision is still in progress, so avoid purchasing the product outside of the original website.

You can buy the product using the currency of your choice, and if you do not use English, the site supports other languages.

Visit Official Website Here

Final thoughts

The product is very good, and is worth your money. Purchasing Ph.375 is beneficial, especially when you consider the extra bottles, the information, customer support and money-back guarantee. In fact, you can take the product without going through the overbearing side effects that most of the weight loss supplements can cause.

The post PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe appeared first on YummyLooks.

PH.375 – Best Seller Appetite Suppressant in UK & Europe published first on https://yummylooks.tumblr.com/

[preussischen-a]

Running The Gauntlet 1/?: Your Adventure Begins…With Government-Funded Child Abuse

So you thought Preuzien’s National Tournament was bad?

Wait until you find out what it takes to get there.

Like everything else the Prussians do, the entire Training system was developed because they didn’t think the traditional method was good enough. It became known as Running the Gauntlet, both domestically and internationally--named after a military punishment that Prussia was infamous for, in which soldiers were forced to strip half-naked and run between rows of fellow soldiers whipping them from both sides.

And while not even the Prussian League is harsh enough to do that to its trainers, that’s sure as hell how the journey feels.

[TW: Death, violence, child & animal abuse]

Welcome To Hell: The Starter Pack

Most regions offer one starter per person, of the Fire, Water or Grass typing. Thanks to Unit-style battling, however, Preuzien doesn’t do that shit. Preuzien is “above that”--young Prussian Trainers can think in more advanced and nuanced ways. Why? Because they’ve already committed to the program for an entire semester before they even pick their starters.

There is no “late bloomer” option for Trainers born in Preuzien. You either get your ass into two years of military--er, I mean Trainer School when you’re ten and do the whole hell run as a kid, or you don’t become a Trainer at all. (Note that you can get a Trainer’s license in Preuzien if you’re a foreigner who has already had League experience, which forces many “late bloomer” Prussian Trainers to go abroad first and then come back to the home league to apply for a foreigner’s license.) The good news is, Trainer school is completely funded by the government because Preuzien was one of the first countries to have universal education and so take it extremely seriously. The bad news is, well, everything else.

The Prussian Trainer School system has a rigorous, relentless curriculum in which the classes in the first year are specifically designed to be harder than a 10-11 year old can reasonably handle. They are not so much harder as to make learning impossible, but hard enough to make kids have at least one mental breakdown a semester over how stupid and inadequate they feel because of the speed at which advanced information is flung at them. In the second year, the courses are suddenly adjusted to meet the age level of their participants (11-12)--which tricks the young Trainers into feeling even more confident in the face of their insurmountable challenge, and ready to take on more. The point of this is to force children to learn the hard way what it means to overcome adversity, and toughen them for the even worse hell that will be their Trainer journeys. And the whole “weeding out the weak” sentiment is totally a thing, especially because the government doesn’t actually have the money to pay for all of its students--which is their dirty little secret. Of the 100,000 or so students who enter the government training academy every year, only 20,000 or so make it past the first year--and the Prussian education system actually plans a budget anticipating the four-fifths drop in the amount of students due to kids being too mentally broken to continue.

Want to back out already? Too bad, because you can’t get your Prussian Trainer’s License without this.

Trainers are given Pokémon based on their danger rankings, which go from Type I to IV, as I mention on one of my super old blogs here. Note that much of the information on that post is headcanon that I no longer take as my hc or am reconsidering, so I’m going to only reproduce the part that’s applicable, aka the tier system:

Type I Pokémon have been domesticated, present minimal danger to early Trainers, and are easily trained. If they are sapient, they are the most devoted to humans. This would include Pokémon like Pidgey, Rattata, Poochyena, etc. that most resemble their animal equivalents (seed-eating birds, rats and mice, dogs, etc.) Really, they’re no more harmful than the real-world household pet, and many young Trainers get their first taste of Pokémon handling with these guys before moving on to starters such as Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, etc.

Type II Pokémon have been domesticated, present a little more danger to early Trainers, and are reasonably well-trained. If they are sapient, they have a favorable opinion of humans. Within this tier are the formal starters that young Trainers receive alongside their licenses in traditional Leagues, as well as other “pet-like” creatures such as Shinx and Electrike. They differentiate themselves from Type I Pokémon because they can use more dangerous elemental attacks (Ember, Vine Whip, Water Gun, etc.), but if a young Trainer obtains them before the more serious attacks (Fire Spin, Leaf Blade, Water Pulse, etc.) are learned, they can still be pretty safe.

Type III Pokémon have not been domesticated OR are a more dangerous evolution of a domesticated species, are meant for medium-level Trainers, and are not necessarily obedient. If they are sapient, their society dislikes and distrusts humans. Obviously, humans haven’t had enough time (or capacity) throughout history to domesticate all 719 species, nor do many of the 719 species want to be domesticated. Essentially, these creatures are the type that Owen Grady would hang out with—they can be trained to like you, but they should be treated as wild beasts and given the necessary respect.

Type IV Pokémon have not been domesticated, are meant only for experts, do NOT tolerate chemical injections, and need special handling to ensure obedience. If they are sapient, they would be the ones to start a revolution. In the Jurassic Park of Trainer life, these Pokémon are the T. Rexes. They were really, really not meant for any contact with humans, not least because they see us as prey, or otherwise as an inferior species. Some are deadly because of their raw attack power, like Hydreigon and Gyarados, while others, like Alakazam, are dangerous because of their intelligence and bitterness toward human oppression. They absolutely MUST be socialized with humans and other Pokémon from a young age, or else they will never be trainable—and no matter what, nonsapient Type IVs will never go well with small children.

A Prussian Trainer’s first Pokémon is always a set of three Type I Pokémon, and one Type II of their choice—this constitutes the Trainer’s first Unit. They don’t even receive them, however, until the end of the first semester, which is when they rigorously study the basics of Typing and Unit battle mechanics but also some advanced strategies, and then the rest of their time at the center is spent putting what they learned into practice. As for catching new Pokémon, students are given exactly one-month catching intervals between the immersive battling sessions in which they set out with their advising groups and spend half the day learning academic subjects and half the day catching Pokémon. Advising groups basically do a backpacking trip throughout a huge section of Preuzien each month, and are then returned to their school via plane. There is no break between the rigors of being out in the wild catching Pokémon, and the grueling school schedule that ensues the day after one returns.

Worse Than My Mother’s Micro-Managing, Tbh

The daily schedule is intense. Students rise at exactly 5:00 A.M. and go to sleep at 10:00 P.M.—and they don’t have a choice in this, because there’s a building-wide alarm clock to wake them up, and at 11:00 P.M. all the electricity in the school instantly turns off except for heating and cooling. The schedule never changes Monday through Friday beginning in the second semester of the first year, with a small change at the end of Saturdays to allow for one-on-one consultations with the advisor.

5:00-5:15: Wake up and wash up.

5:15-5:30: Breakfast.

5:30-6:30: Strategy lecture for the entire school.

6:30-8:00: Drill session with advising group. Trainers and Pokémon both participate, as it is a Prussian custom for people and Pokémon to train with each other. This also provides a small opportunity for students to ask questions to the advisor about things they didn’t understand, and for the advisor to comment on the group’s progress as a whole. They have no qualms about humiliating students whom they feel have fallen behind.

8:00-8:30: Rest and plan for the battles ahead.

8:30-12:00: Students engage with each other in three 45-minute Unit-style battles.

12:00-1:00: Lunch and Pokémon care. Students learn the fundamentals of Pokémon healing as well as Pokémon battling during the first semester, and may only take their Pokémon to school caregivers in an emergency. New rankings are posted based on the results of the previous night and the day’s morning.

1:00-1:30: Recess.

1:30-6:30: Academic subjects are taught—45 minutes each for Math, Science, History & Philosophy (one subject), English and German, with 15-minute breaks in between. As mentioned before, academic subjects are more of a focus during the one-month Pokémon-catching intervals.

6:30-7:00: Dinner.

7:00-9:00: Two additional Unit-style battles on weekdays; one-on-one advisor consultations on Saturday.

9:00-11:00: Homework (though it’s surprisingly light), wash up and bed.

As for Sunday? Since Preuzien is an Arceist (Christian) nation, Sunday is seen as the “day of rest” even in the school, which holds a two-hour compulsory Calvinist Protestant religious service with no option to opt out if one practices a different faith. Though official rules expressly forbid training on Sunday, the school doesn’t bat an eye when people choose to anyway—to the point that training fields are booked up by overachieving students several Sundays in advance. Also, individual teachers hold mandatory training sessions for their students in flagrant violation of the official rule—which students have complained about, to no avail.

It should also be noted here that the school has absolutely no respect for any religion except its own. Doing the hard work and following the strict school schedule was far more important, even if that should trod over the holy days of another faith, and in the past, students were forbidden under any circumstances to take time off from the schedule to practice their religion, whether a few weeks for a holiday or a few minutes for a prayer—forcing them to do their religious practices in secret. Nowadays, though, it’s not much better. If someone of a non-Christian faith should request holiday time, they are actually penalized for it. They are forced to spend 1.5x the amount of time they “wasted” (and yes that is the actual word the school uses for their holiday time) making up lost training over the one-month summer break, which sometimes ends up consuming their break and puts them at a disadvantage against their well-rested Christian peers. It’s not even a good environment for Christians, either. Christian children who were raised devoutly to not work on Sundays are pressured and even bullied by Christian children who do train on Sundays because the toxic culture of the school regards resting on Sunday as “weak,” and non-Calvinists feel the same pressure to convert to Calvinism as non-Christians.

By the time they graduate from the training school at age 12, students already have Pokémon in the Level 50-60 range—and the Gym Challenge is all about getting their Pokémon to Level 100 for the League, which is yet another reason why the Prussian League is hands down the hardest League on Earth. When they graduate, Trainers are encouraged to leave behind Pokémon based on “merit,” which often translates to abandoning anyone you thought wasn’t good enough. Now here’s where it gets dark. If the Pokémon was “bad” enough, they are further encouraged to give the Pokémon a demerit. Thing is, the school doesn’t tell the kids that Pokémon--even sapient ones--who receive a demerit are euthanized by the school because they weren’t good enough. And the kids never find out because by the time they’re either consumed by the burdens of fame or chewed up and spit out by the system, they’re too bogged down by worldly concerns to remember or care about the Pokémon they left behind.

Forced to be Homeless

In the real world, most middle-class and upper-class Trainers who have the support of their parents will go from Gym to Gym by car or even plane; those you see traveling on foot are usually lower-income Trainers, Trainers from a higher socioeconomic status who were kicked out by/ran away from their parents, or Trainers from that higher status who seek the “real world” experience of roughing it (and usually run crying to their mommies for cash about two weeks later). But in Preuzien, all the riches and noble titles in the country won’t save you from a Training life lived at nature’s mercy. In this country, it is MANDATORY for every single Trainer, regardless of socioeconomic background, to travel on foot or by Pokémon.

And they are totally fucking serious about this. They were so fucking serious that even the bleating of the wealthiest, most spoiled Prussian families was not enough to change their minds--and keep in mind this is a country in which all goings-on were controlled by wealthy nobility for centuries. Using a mode of transportation that is not pre-approved by the League bureaucracy may even result in the revocation of your Trainer license--you will only receive the privilege to ride in a vehicle again once you have finished the Gym challenge. Only recently was the law changed to define “emergency” as encompassing a threat to the life of oneself or one’s Pokémon; in past years, you could save yourself by taking an ambulance, but you would be forced to let your Pokémon waste away if something should happen to them.

So Why The Hell Is Nobody Stopping This?!

Simple. It’s for the same reason that nobody stops injustice in the real world. Because sometimes the stars align in all the wrong ways, and there’s not much you can do about it.

Germany doesn’t like what Preuzien is doing. The world doesn’t like what Preuzien is doing. But not even the entire world can stop them because quite frankly, their efforts have fallen apart because they couldn’t get their shit together for two seconds to stop these flagrant Pokémon rights abuses and borderline human rights abuses from happening. 

Unova like America always has its head up its ass when it comes to international affairs, so it’s barely cognizant of what’s going on in Prussian Trainer schools. 

Alola, a former Unovese colony, literally just set up their League--and they’re too busy consolidating their own to worry about the problems of others.

Sinnoh fullheartedly supports the Prussian system, because it has its own normalized system of Pokémon and Trainer abuse. Therefore, it would not only see nothing wrong with the Prussian model, it might even find a kindred spirit in it.

Kanto is a governmental clusterfuck where it’s more likely than not everyone is just stoned, and Johto is too isolationist to care.

And Kalos was the country with the closest shot at stopping them, but Heureka Goeritz and Jötunheimr’s Army’s exposé on Kalos’s unethical continuation of the fascist Project Asgard halted its push for an International Pokémon League investigation of Prussian practices. And I mean, it’s not as though Project Asgard didn’t deserve to get exposed. It’s rather that one, Kalos was distracted from just about everything else they were doing by the human rights violation within their own borders--and two, Preuzien took advantage of that to completely discredit Kalosian attempts to correct anything they saw was “wrong” with the Prussian system.

As for Germany? Well. Since RL Prussia was a douche to the German government when it originally unified Germany, essentially seizing control of it and giving little representation for the other states, there’s no reason they couldn’t reestablish that system after an alternate history reunification in which Prussia/Preuzien came back from the dead. Which means they could be assholish enough to create a governmental blockade and shut down any attempts at League reform. And if I choose the route that Preuzien is independent from the South German states, there’s nothing South Germany can do to halt their crazy northern neighbor.

Clearly, the only change can come from within. But there isn’t a large enough impetus within Preuzien itself to change the system because most people think it’s for “the greater good” of Trainers. Remember, these abuses have been normalized. And the worst effect of abuse is that many times, the victims don’t even see it as a problem. 

[flauntpage]

Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0

My good friend Frank Seravalli of TSN in Canada had three successive tweets during the Flyers embarrassing (again) 6-0 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs Saturday night that were not only really accurate but also quite timely in my opinion:

#Flyers now on their 5th goalie of the season in Game No. 23. Team save percentage is by far league-worst at .877 incl tonight. That’s almost 3 GA every 20 shots. Impossible to win with that. Utterly unacceptable – and you can’t say it snuck up on management.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

Let’s put it another way: #Flyers have allowed 4 or more goals in 12 of 23 games. No chance to win when you need to score 5 every other night. A team poised to “take a step forward” needed a bridge to Carter Hart. Instead, Elliott + Neuvirth = Malpractice. No hindsight there.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

I’m not a Hakstol defender, but I’d like to see what his team looks like with decent goaltending. 15-16: .917 (7th) | Lge Avg: .910 16-17: .901 (26th) | Avg: .910 17-18: .903 (22nd) | Avg: .908 18-19: .877 (31st) | Avg: .904 All considered: Playoffs in 2/3 isn’t bad.

— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) November 25, 2018

Rather than dive into the terrible play and continued malaise of the fragile Flyers team after their latest blow out loss, I’d like to breakdown Frank’s tweets instead and try to piece together an assessment from them, because that’s far more interesting than writing the Flyers sucked for the umpteenth time in my 14 months here at Crossing Broad.

So, analysis after the jump:

1. “Five goalies in 23 games”

That’s almost unbelievable, but it’s not, because it’s the Flyers, who have had goaltending issues since the dawn of time.

The latest was Anthony Stolarz, who was pressed into action in the most dire of dire situations. Stolarz was pretty much the odd man out for the Flyers organization. With Brian Elliott and Michael Neuvirth slated as the NHL netminders and Carter Hart and Alex Lyon slated to man the space between the pipes for the Phantoms in the AHL, Stolarz was sort of the odd man out.

In fact, in his time with the Phantoms this year, he had only appeared in three games total, and only one game since Oct. 14.

The Flyers had so soured on Stolarz that they chose instead to claim Calvin Pickard off waivers rather than turn to Stolarz for a backup role when both Lyon and Neuvirth weren’t healthy at the start of the season.

But now, Elliott is hurt again (second time in seven months), Neuvirth is on injured reserve, which is as unsurprising as statement as there are still Thanksgiving leftovers in the fridge three days later, and now Lyon has a minor lower-body injury.

This left the Flyers with Pickard and no one else available to back him up.

The Flyers weren’t about to call on Carter Hart, who can’t stop pucks in the AHL right now (3.61 GAA, .884 save percentage in 12 games) so, by default, Stolarz was all they had left.

Of course, he was just being recalled to hold a seat on the NHL bench and basically be an emergency goalie – no different than, say, Scott Foster. 

OK… maybe it’s a little different, after all, Stolarz is truly under contract. But, he was not expected to play. At all.

Pickard, who shut out the New York Rangers Friday was going to start again. And he was going to do it against the Leafs, who waived him for the Flyers to claim him.

No doubt Pickard was amped for the opportunity to stick it to his old team – especially coming off the emotional high of a shutout the day before.

Except Pickard made only two saves, allowed four goals, and didn’t survive the first period. That’s because the Leafs, knowing him well, exploited his weaknesses – over-committing on plays and being prone to shots aimed for the five hole.

And with that, Stolarz got into the game. He played well in his two-plus periods. He made 32 saves on 34 shots.

But that really doesn’t matter. What matters is the Flyers goaltending situation is such a fetid disaster that they were forced to use five goalies in 23 games, and none of them have fared well. Elliott has been decent – basically a little better than league average (2.59 GAA, .911 save percentage) – despite having a losing record.

But otherwise, the Flyers goaltending has been trash. You can’t win, even occasionally, when you are using five different goalies in 23 games.

2. “Team save percentage is by far league-worst at .877 incl tonight. That’s almost 3 GA every 20 shots.”

The Flyers have allowed 3.57 goals per game. Only two teams in the entire NHL are worse – the Florida Panthers and the Ottawa Senators.

But that save percentage – it’s actually .880 now thanks to Stolarz’ effort against Toronto – is an abomination. It’s 0.24 below league average. Think about that for a second. The Flyers goalies are allowing one more goal for roughly every 40 shots taken against them than the average team. Not the best team but the middle-of-the-road goaltending team. They’re actually 0.45 behind the best team (Boston). That means that Boston goalies stop almost five percent more shots than Flyers goalies do. Woof.

Making matters worse, the Flyers are actually an OK offensive team production wise. Their 68 goals rank 17th in the NHL, which is right in the middle of the pack. And yet, their goal-differential is fourth-worst in the league (minus-14).

3. “Let’s put it another way: #Flyers have allowed 4 or more goals in 12 of 23 games. No chance to win when you need to score 5 every other night.”

No Frank. You can not.

4. “Utterly unacceptable – and you can’t say it snuck up on management.”

5. “A team poised to “take a step forward” needed a bridge to Carter Hart. Instead, Elliott + Neuvirth = Malpractice.”

That’s the word I really wanted to get to – malpractice. Because that’s what this is. Ron Hextall had to know his goaltending situation was shaky at best coming into the season.

Neuvirth was constantly hurt last year.

Elliott played well at times, but he was felled by a serious core muscle injury (nee, hernia) and never looked the same after coming back.

Trading for Peter Mrazek was a disaster and he wasn’t welcomed back.

Although Lyon gave it the old college try, he’s still not really ready for the NHL, and if and when he ever is, it’s likely as a backup at best.

Stolarz was coming off a pretty bad knee injury himself, and it was obvious he wasn’t part of the team’s plans moving forward.

And yet, despite all of these concerns, this issue was not addressed by Hextall in the offseason. Rather than pursue a goalie who could be a bridge to Carter Hart and keep the Flyers competitive, Hextall closed his eyes and hoped for the best.

And it has been the most unmitigated disaster of his tenure as general manager.

People can complain all they want about the coach, or the players not living up to expectations, or the penalty kill being terrible or the power play nose-diving, or any other myriad maladies the Flyers have – and all of them have merit.

But those would be masked a little better if there was even a sense of stability in net, and Hextall ignored it. This is akin to leaving the surgical scissors inside the patient after stitching him back up.

He has to know it. His bosses have to know it. It’s why they’ve been circling the Wells Fargo Center press box more lately than ever before.

Blame whoever you want, and there’s a lot of finger-pointing that is valid at this juncture, but the first target you should have in your sights is the GM.

6. “I’m not a Hakstol defender, but I’d like to see what his team looks like with decent goaltending.”

Again, I agree with Frank – and I’ve been one of the more fervent Hakstol critics out there. But the guy has been a different coach this season. Maybe we’re seeing him react to the pressure that is on him and this organization to finally succeed. Maybe it’s taken him longer than it should to figure this NHL game out, but he is figuring it out.

Or maybe he’s coaching by the seat of his pants and isn’t really good at his job. Who knows for sure. But Frank makes a great point. Hakstol and the Flyers have been the poster child for traditionalists against the analytics boom in hockey.

The Flyers do often have good underlying metrics to their game. The fancy stats usually show that this team is playing better than the results would indicate.

It’s why we heard last season during a 10-game losing streak that the team was playing far better than their record would indicate.

And yet, despite all of these good sub-statistics, the Flyers are still mediocre at best, and well below average at worst.

But maybe, just maybe, this team would be what they think and believe they can be with better goaltending. Maybe it’s mental. Maybe the players lack confidence in who they are trotting out there in the crease game after game – and maybe that confidence is completely shaken after a bad goal or two, or the goalie not bailing out a mistake in front of him.

Maybe that causes the team to play tight, and once you tighten up, the odds of making mistakes increases. Turnovers, penalties. Making plays where you overthink instead of playing instinctively in the moment.

Or maybe, as Scott Laughton said several games back, the Flyers try to cheat too much to create offense because that confidence on the last line of defense isn’t too high, and that more cavalier approach to hockey ends up biting them.

All of these things are possible. And the GM needs to be able to recognize that and rectify that, and he hasn’t been able to do so in his four-plus years at the helm.

Which brings me to this:

7. A conclusion

What if all of the focus by fans and the media have been on Hakstol’s job as the coach, but internally the focus is on Hextall’s job as the GM?

What if Hextall is on the hot seat more than his coach is?

Sound crazy?

Maybe it is. But then again, maybe it’s not.

Maybe the conversations between Senior Vice President Bob Clarke – who is basically a highly paid consultant for the team these days – and President Paul Holmgren – which have been happening regularly with little to know reporting or fanfare – are more about Hexy than Hak.

Tough decisions are coming. It could start with the coaching staff – but not necessarily Hakstol.

I wouldn’t be surprised, for instance, if Ian Laperriere is finally relieved of his assistant coaching position and replaced by Phantoms head coach Scott Gordon. Gordon has a long history of coaching good penalty kill units at all levels of hockey.

And I know the Flyers organization really likes assistant coach Kris Knoblauch as a potential future head coach, but I also know they would want him to gain experience on that front too. So I could see Knoblauch re-assigned to the Phantoms as their new head coach.

I’m not sure the Flyers would add another assistant, or just roll with Gordon and Gord Murphy on the bench with Hakstol. The latter seems more likely, but one can’t be sure.

Those changes would likely come first before Hextall or Hakstol ended up on the chopping block.

A big trade can also happen. And we’ve covered this extensively here, on the Snow The Goalie podcast and during the Press Row Show live on my Twitter feed (Periscope) and the Crossing Broad Facebook  page (FB live) from Flyers home games. Jake Voracek continues to be the name I think would bring the Flyers the most return and have a significant impact on the locker room.

And if Hakstol were to be let go, I think Gordon to close out the season makes the most sense and then evaluate the situation at season’s end with several options like Gordon, Knoblauch or an outside option (Quenneville?)

But the real interesting seat is the GM’s chair. Can Hextall preserve his job by changing his far-too-patient and conservative management style? And if not, who could replace him? Internally Chris Pryor has been a long-time good soldier for the organization, patiently waiting his turn. He’s been with the organization for 20 years, has been director of player personnel for more than five years and was promoted to assistant GM prior to the start of the 2016-17 season.

And then there’s Dean Lombardi, who won a couple Cups as GM of the Kings, who currently serves as a senior advisor to the scouting staff.

Or the Flyers could look outside of the organization, although that’s rarely been the case (Russ Farwell has been the only GM brought in “from the outside” in the history of the franchise.)

Anyway, I get the sense that change is on the horizon in some capacity – and the coach, who has been the target of so much fan-generated ire – might not be the first to go.

The post Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0 appeared first on Crossing Broad.

Changing the Target of Your Ire: Thoughts After Maple Leafs 6, Flyers 0 published first on https://footballhighlightseurope.tumblr.com/