tcj_phx

The billing threshold was formerly $15/quarter; now it's $30. I don't have a CC stored on my account, and have never hit the threshold for them to mail/email me a bill. I think they asked for a CC, but I saw the option for 'just bill me and I'll send a check'.

> Seems like an easy way to game the system...just sign up for a new account every quarter.

As I recall, they mailed me something via the USPS before my account was activated. I don't think it'd be very smart to intentionally rack up charges with the branch of government responsible for putting people in cages, and think you could just walk away from those charges.

You can get most of the documents for popular cases from RECAP (mentioned in this story). RECAP has a browser extension that harvests documents when people pay for them with their own PACER accounts, and reposts them to their service [0]. A federal judge rejected the State of Washington's motion for a temporary restraining order (in a lawsuit regarding CHAZ). I was interested in the filings, so I used my PACER account to download them. Then I checked RECAP, and found they were there already.

I don't think PACER requires a credit card -- my account is set up to bill me if I incur more charges than the complimentary $30/quarter.

I used my PACER account to file in the Court of Appeals. It was very convenient, much easier than mailing a big envelope to their filing clerk. Attorneys are required to file in the federal courts electronically with text-searchable PDFs. Pro Se (without an attorney) filers have to ask the district court for permission to file electronically, but the Court of Appeals didn't have that bar to filing electronically.

tl/dr: if you're going to file Pro-Se in federal court (bankruptcy/civil/etc), get a PACER account and sign up for electronic notification of filings.

[0] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/ and https://free.law/

>> Not sure how that can help poorer members of society, since most people are quite unlikely to be doing their own case law research anyway.

Legal opinions are free, for pro-se case law research: https://scholar.google.com/ etc. You need access to the filings to see if someone got screwed.

I use the filings in notable cases to help me figure out what I need to say in my own case. The State University's law school library has free access to Westlaw, and other resources (law journals, etc).

> That's frequently the only way the poor can pursue justice. Pro se representation is a thing;

The Federal Judicial Center has a report on helping the federal courts deal with unrepresented parties [2]. My local district court has a free attorney program for people like me who can't afford an attorney. My last free consultation, the attorney suggested I had a case of 'fraud on the court', which is when you get screwed by your opponent playing dirty.

Almost five years ago I'd petitioned the state court pro-se for a writ habeas corpus, on behalf of my friend, the day after I found the term mentioned in the state statutes: "habeas corpus [0]? oh how useful". The judge seemed impressed that she was able to rule in my favor. On returning to the hospital with my granted court order, I was attacked by the security guards and was charged with misdemeanors (the one hospital security guard got unhinged when I took his picture to document the situation).

> sometimes they even win.

My defense attorney was impressed with my granted pro-se habeas petition. He said he knows attorneys who couldn't do what I did as a rookie pro-se filer.

My subsequent filings have all been fine, but the various judges have found ways to avoid having to deal with them. The first judge misquoted the wording of state statutes to make my petition go away. The state court of appeals recruited one of their retired judges to dismiss my appeal. The state supreme court dismissed without comment.

Federal judges are supposedly better than state judges, on account of the lifetime appointments. I think the district court judge who had to deal with me didn't want to, so he just ignored the inconvenient parts of the case law. The court of appeals also got rid of my appeals, without addressing my contentions. Hrmph. I recently figured out how to get a new judge [1].

> But aside from that, without knowing what courts are doing, there is no way to assure they're acting in the public interest. The public must be able to inspect the work output of the courts if a free society is to stay free.

This is well said. My district court filings are all public, even though they ought to at least be anonymized (like was done in Roe v. Wade, for example). I've come to appreciate that my asking to file under seal gave the court of appeals judges and supreme court justices a convenient 'out' that allows them to avoid having to deal with me. My predicament is that don't want to give advanced notice to the perpetrators who ought to be prosecuted.

As far as these pacer fees: I'm glad my filings haven't been siphoned into courtlistener.com yet, as that means they can still be sealed...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

[1] 28 U.S. Code § 144.Bias or prejudice of judge -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/144

[2] https://www.fjc.gov/sites/default/files/2017/Pro_Se_Case_Man...

I read something that compared cocaine's mood-lifting effects to those of the MAOI's. I remember it further said the MAOI's were generally safe for short-term use, unless you consumed certain types of fine cheese, and that they fell out of favor as their patents expired, not because they didn't work anymore.

I have a hard time keeping track of where I read what; I haven't found a source on a cursory search.

What if your goal is to specifically suppress fertility [0]? Do you have a checkbox that says "I am making efforts to reduce my sperm count"?

IME, it takes about 3 weeks of consistent effort to get one's swimmers to go away. Maybe you know what is it about "3 weeks" in the spermatogenesis process?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception

(edit IMO -> IME)

It's easy enough to make your own magnesium water, using magnesium hydroxide (as the laxative Milk of Magnesia) and carbonated water: http://www.afibbers.org/Wallerwater.pdf

Milk of Magnesia is in every grocery store. I buy from Fry's (Kroeger), because their version doesn't have any additives.

When a patient's symptoms are treated instead of the cause, most people will have subpar results.

The SSRI Lexapro [0] helped my girlfriend relapse on cocaine, before i met her. Cocaine is a much stronger anti-depressant than the SSRI's due to its effects as a Mono-Amine Oxidase Inhibitor [2] (1st generation anti-depressants).

Eventually the professionals figured out she is a poor methylator, and can't convert folic acid into Folate. Folate (Vitamin B9) is important for DNA synthesis. Food companies fortify with folic acid because it's more stable than other forms of Vitamin B9, even though we now know that some people are harmed by this fortification [1]. On the whole, fortification seems to be beneficial (fewer deformed babies), but poor methylators and old people seem to have negative side effects from getting their vitamin B9 from folic acid.

She said adding the L-Methyl-Folate was like flipping a switch between "depressed" and "normal". Her involuntary medical professionals didn't say, "hey sorry we made a mistake, you're not actually broken", and continue to ignore the actual causes of her condition.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escitalopram

[1] https://now.tufts.edu/articles/folic-acid-too-much-good-thin... / https://www.futurity.org/folic-acid-too-much-of-a-good-thing...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor

(edit - added bit about cocaine being an MAOI)

One of the ways that Prozac helps people is by increasing allopregnanolone in the brain [1]. This is a well-known effect of Prozac, and perhaps the other SSRI's. Allopregnanolone "is a neurosteroid and acts as a positive allosteric modulator of the GABA-A receptor, the major biological target of the inhibitory neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)" [0]. GABA -> relaxation [2]. GABA supplements don't work very well on account of the blood brain barrier...

An evil pharma company recently got their version of allopregnanolone approved to treat postpartum depression. Cost of treatment: $34,000. It's cheaper to go upstream: progesterone, pregnenolone, or figure out why the body is having trouble making pregnenolone from cholesterol... Vitamin A? Thyroid?

One theory of why women experience postpartum depression is that their progesterone levels "fall off a cliff" after they give birth. In theory supplementing progesterone would help postpartum depression better than allopregnanolone. No one can afford to do that study because there'd be no pay off, as all the important patents have expired.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopregnanolone

[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=allopregnanolone+fluoxe...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Aminobutyric_acid

Stress is a rather generic term. Emotional stress and biological stress are two ways of distinguishing different kinds of stress.

Biological stress is not getting enough nutrients, having to deal with bacterial exotoxin/endotoxin [1] (as pneumonia, a hostile microbiome, etc), lack of sunlight (UV light -> Vitamin D; red light refreshes Cytochrome C Oxidase, an enzyme in the mitochondria [0]), consuming artificial sugar and other fake foods, etc...

Emotional stress is related to how a person responds to situations -- to quote the article, "why crappy childhoods make for adult brains that don’t work well". Different people can respond to the same situation in completely different ways... Some people are able to use their "crappy childhood" as motivation to make something of themselves, while others are disabled by their own similar childhood.

The tragedy of our situation is how the medical profession considers Dr. McEwen's work as interesting but doesn't do anything with it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase --- this page doesn't talk about the use of certain wavelengths of red/infrared light to refresh the enzyme. search for 'red light therapy', then buy heat lamps if you're interested. My current setup cost around $20.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin

Niacinamide (a form of Vitamin B3) is supposed to be somewhat similar to nicotine, and supposedly helps with nicotine withdrawal.

I think someone here at HN informed me that tobacco also has MAOI properties. Searching now turned up this link: "The results suggest that the inhibition of MAO activity by compounds present in tobacco smoke may combine with nicotine to produce the intense reinforcing properties of cigarette smoking that lead to addiction." -https://www.jneurosci.org/content/25/38/8593

You may find a MAOI helpful with getting your tobacco use under control: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor (a reversible MAOI would be preferable)

Deplin [0] is a patented prescription version of Vitamin B-9 aka L-Methylfolate. It's approved as an add-on treatment for when so-called antidepressants don't help with a person's symptoms. There's a genetic test that tells if a person is a poor methylator who especially needs Folate instead of folic acid.

I don't know how they decided to run the genetic test, I just heard that they did and that folate really helps her. She eventually switched to non-prescription folate (from the supplement aisle), probably mostly because of cost, or maybe some other reason.

Folate is cheap enough to experiment with: if you notice something dramatic, keep taking it.

[0] https://deplin.com/what-is-deplin

Stimulants have the adverse effect of harming the mitochondria/metabolism.

Most conditions improve when the metabolism is normalized. B-vitamins are pro-metabolic.

Sometimes doctors do good work. My girlfriend's doctors eventually figured out that she is a poor methylator, and can't convert folic acid into folate (Vitamin B-9). She therefore absolutely requires a dietary source of Folate, instead of the folic acid that is used to fortify many foods. She said this vitamin was profoundly helpful for her complaint of "depression".

Sometimes doctors make work for themselves. Using Stimulants to treat metabolic problems is an exercise in futility.

Thanks for commenting. The treatments I dismiss as 'palliative' are poor interventions when the patient's full circumstances are considered. For example, anti-psychotics are harmful for helping someone get their drinking under control. Anti-depressant is a marketing term. If someone's depressed because they've harmed their metabolism with cocaine, they don't need to be put on Prozac for years at a time, they need therapies that restore the mitochondria.

> Understanding a problem does not imply treatment is possible.

correct. But it seems to me like mental health practitioners artificially limit their diagnosis to conditions which can be treated with an FDA-approved pill, when an old-fashioned quaker asylum [0] would be more appropriate.

[0] http://qmh.haverford.edu/

> Saying that scientists know most of the causes, is pure bs.

A few years ago I caught a reference to a book originally published in 1956 and updated in the 1970's. My local state university's science library has a copy. It talked about the biochemistry of the organisms' response to stress, and the stress response's role in many "mental" conditions. Selye was the author iirc.

A few years ago some researchers figured out that psychotic patients don't make enough cortisol in the morning [0], as Selye's book might've indicated decades earlier.

20 years ago some scientists figured out the SSRIs help some people by influencing the neurosteroids [1].

The tragedy of our approach to mental health is that many/most patients deteriorate due to the FDA-approved palliative drug cocktails their doctors think are appropriate, instead of getting physiologic interventions. The widespread use of anti-dopamine drugs ("anti-psychotics") is a crime against science.

[0] https://psychcentral.com/news/2016/06/04/low-morning-cortiso...

[1] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/1999/11/5059/scientists-identify-n...

Stress/cortisol adversely affects young people's thinking ability: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ldquo-stress-horm...

study on the HPA and psychiatric conditions: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3707958/

> I wish people would stop saying online that SSRIs are a scam.

Some people like their SSRI's, some people kill themselves soon after starting that class of drug [0] (presumably due to the serotonin syndrome [1]).

> My life was saved by Lexapro, an SSRI.

My friend told me about how Lexapro seemed to help her. But it also didn't keep her from relapsing on cocaine, a pro-dopamine drug. The MAOIs are much more useful for a cocaine-like boost that doesn't make them crash after 20 minutes than the SSRIs, which take weeks/months before most people notice any benefit, and which help some people by helping them "not care" about their life situation.

20 years ago teh scientists figured out that it's not extra serotonin that helps people, but the SSRI's effects on neurosteroids: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/1999/11/5059/scientists-identify-n...

> If you need help don’t get spooked by the parent commentator. Help exists.

My observation is that some people don't actually get the help they need, and deteriorate from defective prescriptions. My friend needed help getting her drinking under control, but all she got was medically assaulted with anti-dopamine drugs (so-called "antipsychotics").

The tragedy is that we actually know how to help people. Some of the MAOIs are much better drugs to use temporarily while helping people deal with "stress".

[0] https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/10/11-9-million-paxil-suic... - I think the damages were overturned on appeal.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5370302/

The United States' mental health system feeds itself with its palliative approach. As bad as the system might have been 50 years ago, in Rosenhan's time, I'm sure it's much worse today, on account of 50 years of development of non-helpful drugs. For example, one of my sources says that each generation of anti-depressants was less effective than the generation that preceded it. The MAOI's were reasonably-effective for short-term use [2], but fell from favor as their patents expired. Their replacements were less effective, but patent profits paid for drug companies to promote them to doctors. The SSRI's are the least-effective of all. Second-generation "atypical antipsychotics" aren't appreciably better than first generation antipsychotics, and in some cases are actually much worse (some of the latest and greatest antipsychotics, which are actually anti-serotonin drugs, might be worth using on a very-short-term basis).

Robert Whitaker says that 20th century psychiatric medications take what would have been an episodic condition, and make it chronic [0][1].

There are now vastly more people who need help than capacity to help them. I've recently come to appreciate that we have a bifurcated approach. People who have no one to advocate for them get a catch-and-release treatment, because the holding tanks can only hold people for a few days before they have to be transferred for involuntary evaluation or released to the street. Those with an advocate are given priority.

In my state, the process for helping people who don't realize they need help goes 48-hour hold -> involuntary evaluation (3 days max) -> filing of petition for court-ordered treatment (weeks and weeks).

My friend got the catch-and-release treatment once. She'd escaped from her involuntary treatment program, where her ability to control her alcohol intake (the actual cause of her condition) was not helped by the palliative psychiatric drugs she was forced to take. She did well for a month, then resumed drinking.

After a few weeks of drinking she disappeared. Maybe two days later she called and asked me to pick her up from "big city", but didn't give a specific location. A few days later I got a call from a mental hospital. She said she was being transferred for involuntary evaluation, then she stopped calling. Her father said she'd been released.

I suggested to her father that we should file a missing person report. He concurred. When I called the police, the officer said they'd prefer I come down to the main station or a precinct to file the missing person report in person, so the officer would know I wasn't harassing someone. I was also told it'd help to get her family involved too.

So her father and I went down to the main station. The officer working the desk was skeptical, but after a few minutes he agreed to look up my friend. When he came back and said my friend wasn't missing, because they'd taken her back to the crazy-tank the day before.

Her father had already hired a lawyer. The social worker said they have dozens of petitions for court-ordered evaluation expire every week, on account of not having room to transfer the patients for their evaluations. I think the social worker greased the wheels to make sure my friend wasn't released to the street again.

From the fine article:

> But the problem is that scientific research needs to be sound. We cannot build progress on a rotten foundation.

The 'rotten foundation' in our mental health system is treating people's symptoms without concern for their cause. Scientists have actually figured out most of the causes behind patients' symptoms, so we don't actually have to treat them palliatively anymore. It's just conveniently profitable for the system to play make-believe that our current selection of FDA-approved patent medicines are the best we can do.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15353109 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12068958

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor - "New research into MAOIs indicates that much of the concern over their supposed dangerous dietary side effects stems from misconceptions and misinformation, and that it is still underutilized despite demonstrated efficacy. ..."

I don't particularly care about the NBA, but I followed your link anyways, and came across this gem:

> A recent study by WHOOP, a biometric device company with NBA clients, found what researchers called a "four-day hangover" in the post-drinking health metrics of 148 student-athletes. Heart rates were 16 percent higher after a night of drinking, and a measurement of heartbeat interval variation was 23 percent lower. According to the researchers, the effects are "a change of similar magnitude to that of aging 12 years."

Searching for "four day hangover" had this link at the top: https://www.whoop.com/the-locker/the-four-day-hangover/

Searching some more, this page has information about lab tests that provide evidence of chronic alcohol consumption: https://arupconsult.com/content/alcohol-abuse

I've observed how it takes some people days to fully recover from their drinking episodes. Thanks for the link.

I’d gotten my partner’s microbes... After some searching I decided it was the male equivalent of BV. I’ve used various kinds of iodine on myself successfully, but I don’t have a vagina to experiment on. I’d like to experiment on my current partner, but she’s not interested in the experiment, and her condition is very minor in comparison to the partner who motivated my searches.

Another factor to look at is the person’s body temperature. People who are a few degrees below normal supposedly have different intestinal bacteria than people who have a normal body temperature.

There are unique carbohydrates in medicinal mushrooms (uhm... “polysaccharides, glycoproteins and proteoglycans“) and cranberries (D-Mannose) that might be useful to you too...

Some years ago I did some searching on scholar.google.com about bacterial vaginosis.

While douching is generally discouraged as non-helpful at best or counter-productive at worst, I remember reading a study that found washing the vagina with iodine mostly eliminates all bacteria - desirable and undesirable - but that the beneficial lacto-bacteria are the first to repopulate the cavity.

Quotes and links to two studies about this approach are below.

I recall that when I was looking into the matter, I noticed that Walmart's store brand of iodine wash has that chemical in spermicide that some women are sensitive to. The adjacent bottle of brand-name iodine (Betadine?) doesn't have that chemical. Searching now, it must've been Nonoxynol-9 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonoxynol-9 / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Povidone-iodine

I'll look at my pictures... (EDIT: maybe it's been reformulated: "Active Ingredient: Povidone-iodine, 10%; Inactive ingredients: C12-13, PARETH-9, citric acid, disodium phosphate, glycerin, sodium hydroxide, water" - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Equate-First-Aid-Antiseptic-8-fl-...

This one has Nonoxynol-9: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Betadine-skin-cleanser/46068801

Betadine without Nonoxynol-9: Active Ingredients: Povidone-Iodine (10%) (1% Available Iodine). Purpose: First Aid Antiseptic. Inactive Ingredients: Pareth 25-8, Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide. - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Betadine-Solution-8-fl-oz/1732500... /EDIT)

tl/dr: use iodine to wipe out all bacteria, so the lactic-acid producing bacteria can repopulate the area.

Two studies that seem to support using iodine washes to take out all the bacteria:

" [...] Contrary to that the lactobacilli counts from patients treated with povidone iodine suppositories decreased after the first week but increased in the second one. Potentially pathogenic germs, e.g. Gardnerella, Bacteroides and Enterobacteria were reduced in a higher extent and with a longer lasting effect after treatment with povidone iodine suppositories than with capsules containing lactobacilli. The results of this study show that native lactobacilli rapidly re-colonize after the antiseptic treatment with povidone iodine. Therefore, there is no need to use lactobacilli in addition." - Efficacy of Povidone-Iodine Vaginal Suppositories in the Treatment of Bacterial Vaginosis - https://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/57731

"Repeated vaginal washings with 3% H2O2, 15% NaCl and 10% providone iodine were initiated. At the end of each washing, vaginal walls were thoroughly cleaned up with a small gauze. After 10 days of treatment the odor and the vaginal discharge had ceased and 12 months later no relapse had occurred" - Recurrent Bacterial Vaginosis in a Virgin Adolescent: A New Method of Treatment - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s15010-002-2001-9

> That, after all, is how we’ve ended up with anti vaxxers, a resurgence in largely cured infectious diseases, and many other medical and social ailments of our modern age (politics anyone?)

Medicine is great when it works, but sometimes it causes the diseases they supposedly treat.

Psychiatry is a case study in ideological capture resulting in iatrogenic illness. My girlfriend was misdiagnosed, but since they use the courts to force her to take the drugs that actually make people suicidal (common result of anti-psychotics) and die of liver failure (my aunt's friend), there's no way for her to escape.

The tragedy of Psychiatry is that the physiology of the conditions are largely understood, but this understanding didn't reach the practitioners working with patients.

People are drawn to "alternative medicine" when their mainstream medicine practitioners shrug their shoulders. In the United States, standard insurance-based medicine is a wealth-transfer operation: it's fantastically expensive approach to rendering needed services.

I really like your link [2]:

> A dose-dependent relationship was found between smoking and protection from schizophrenia. This is really interesting.

The study found smoking protects against schizophrenia. The blog author skewers later science for completely misrepresenting this study in their review.

Nicotine is sort of similar to niacin/niacinamide (vitamin b3), which is probably why it protects against schizophrenia. I recommended niacinamide to a young woman who’d just quit smoking, “again”. She says the vitamin is great, is still taking it 1.5 years later and recommends it to all her coworkers who want to quit smoking.

And it calmed down some of her “personalities”.

> Things like needle biopsy of the prostate can miss cancerous cells, unless you take 100 samples.

biopsies can cause a stable tumor to metastasize [0]. Sometimes medical screenings are useful, but when you’re looking for problems and don’t actually have symptoms, practitioners have an incentive to find something to treat you for. Ideally you’ll be fired as a patient, but I’ve heard of doctors who do procedures and operate every time they can possibly justify it (“he owes money to everyone.”)

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4015162/

I remember the first time I used a specific industrial gas recreationally. I felt the arteries in my brain open up, and there was a sort of clarity that wasn't there before.

Then the benefits faded into the background, and I now don't notice the effect like I did the first few times.

I think remedial biology hacking works this way. If you're deficient in a specific area you'll notice a huge benefit right away. If you don't need a specific hack, you won't notice a benefit.

Another brain-hack that I noticed the first few times was Methylene Blue [0], a potent MAOI and general metabolism-booster. I started out with microgram-level doses, and I definitely noticed ... something.

But then it too faded into the background, and I don't notice the benefits so much anymore. I still use this one occasionally but this too doesn't have exactly the magic I'm looking for. (I use it on my dog though - she developed a tumor when my dad took care of her for a few months - he took her off all the supplements and fed her what I consider junk. He left for the summer and my dog is back on my supplement program; I think she's got her spunk back. [Edit: google scholar has some articles about methylene blue having anti-tumor activity]).

[0] Methylene blue, the cheapest cognitive enhancer: https://selfhacked.com/blog/methylene-blue-the-cheapest-cogn...

At the other end of the mind-hacking spectrum, the mainstream mental health industry takes cognitive decelerants and tells certain patients that they have a chronic condition that requires chemical lobotomization. Today these drugs are marketed by the prescription drug cartels as anti-psychotics, but originally they were known as major tranquilizers. Patients can't protest the side effects of their medications because the psychiatrist will use the complaint to claim that their patient "lacks insight" into their condition, which justifies the use of force to make them take the drugs the professional thinks they require. Psychosis is mostly a treatable metabolic problem, but patients are much more profitable to the industry by pretending they have chronic conditions.

Because the best cognitive enhancers are natural substances and safe patent-expired medications, profiteers swoop in to repackage these vitamins and other Over the Counter substances. Everyone has to figure out what they actually need on their own.

The best mind-hack I've had is certain kinds of body work, which helped me relax like nothing else. Sometimes massage/etc practitioners have the magic touch that gets my body to turn off, but they tend to not know what they did and I don't consistently get the effect. It's very frustrating.

My understanding of "the statin issue" is that in the 1970's drug companies found new chemicals to poison the liver's ability to manufacture cholesterol. They reasoned, "as cholseterol is a major part of the arteriosclerosis that hardens blood vessels, people whose bodies are depositing cholesterol where it shouldn't will benefit from poisoning their liver," and promoted the new patent medicines to medical professionals as anti-heart-disease medications.

The medical profession is rather vulnerable the promise of miracle cures to offer their patients, and prescribed the new anti-cholesterol drugs with gusto. Later studies have found the benefit of statin therapy to be minuscule: the "number needed to treat" to prevent one fatal cardiac event is rather high, on the order of 217 for low-risk patients [1]. That is, ~216 patients get to experience the side effects of artificially-reduced cholesterol levels while only 1 person avoids the problem the pill was prescribed to prevent.

In the holistic way of looking at the role of cholesterol, it is more important to think about why the body is manufacturing excess cholesterol and depositing it where it does. As you indicated above, inflammation is an important consideration. Another line of thinking is that there is a roadblock in the steroidogenesis pathway, and that supporting the body's effort to make steroids takes care of the elevated cholesterol levels too.

But our medical professionals tend to develop tunnel vision as they specialize, and assume their specialty's understandings of their domain is basically correct. The drug companies find it much more profitable to peddle anti-cholesterol drugs than to address patients' actual problems.

At least patients who are harmed by statins have the freedom to discontinue their anti-treatment.

[1] http://www.thennt.com/nnt/statins-persons-low-risk-cardiovas...

Most of the supposed "mental-health conditions" are manifestations of stress. There are two kinds of stress: biological and emotional.

Biological stress is related to things like being malnourished and/or having hormonal imbalances (thyroid, cortisol, progesterone, etc), not getting enough sunlight (no red light -> winter sickness / UV light-> Vitamin D), etc. Biological stress is worsened when a person is medicated with patent medicines that are approved for treating behavioral symptoms by implementing wrong-theory about the cause of the behavioral symptom (i.e., inadequate serotonin -> depression [0], excess dopamine -> psychosis, etc).

Some scientists rediscovered a few years ago that the behavioral symptom of "psychosis" is strongly associated with an inability to make adequate amounts of the stress hormone cortisol [1].

Emotional stress has to do with people feeling trapped. From the article: "Importantly, what we call psychosis can also be a response to extreme stress or trauma."

Emotional stress leads to the release of cortisol too. If a person's long-term emotional stress exceeds their ability to compensate, their "mental health" will suffer.

One part of this article is about forcibly medicating people whom the professionals think don't realize they need the pills they're prescribed. IMHO, it is an act of violence to force a person to take pills that make them suicidal [2]. The legal systems generally recognize that people have a choice in medical treatments, but struggles with patients who don't even realize they have a problem [3], and/or don't like the treatments the professionals think they need. In the US the courts have decided that people can't be "helped" against their will without a court order. This is why Jared Loughner, the man who shot up Congresswoman Gifford's event, couldn't be helped, even though the people around him noticed that his behavior had changed [4].

The professionals tried to label my girlfriend as "schizophrenic". Really she was just stressed ("lonely"), and was suffering from the adverse effects of various medical interventions. Methadone causes sugar cravings; she'd taken to treating this medication-induced metabolic problem with alcohol a few days before we'd met (alcohol has 7 calories/gram, while sugar only has 4 calories/gram).

In my initial assessment she also reported being injected with a prescription endocrine disruptor maybe 10 years before [5]. This prescription drug has warnings about endocrine disruption [6], but doctors don't appreciate their patients' iatrogenic deterioration when it's associated with this defective drug.

My girlfriend became psychotic when she ran out of alcohol , but rather than treating her for the cause [7] they treat her for the symptom with "anti-psychotics". I consider her involuntary treatment program to be "medical assault". I found a lawyer a while back who was familiar with how the state's involuntary treatment system works, but lawyers are expensive, so I tried to go at it myself. Maybe the legal guild didn't take kindly to a legal-nobody pointing out that their system is ugly.

I guess I'm going to hire the lawyer.

tl/dr: The conventional practices of the mental health industry are wrong. Institutional inertia prevents the profession from fixing itself. Little bits of progress have been made in recognizing the system's contribution to the patient's problems. As I said before, the system needs a re-write: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19545964

[0] What has serotonin to do with depression? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/

[1] https://psychcentral.com/news/2016/06/04/low-morning-cortiso...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akathisia#Drug-induced

[3] Anosognosia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anosognosia

[4] Jared Loughner - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner#Behavior_ch... "In the months leading up to the shooting, Loughner's parents became increasingly alarmed at their son's behavior, at one point resorting to disabling his car every night in order to keep him at home."

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depo-Provera

[6] "Effects on the Hypothalmic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis: Some patients receiving medroxyprogesterone acetate may exhibit suppressed adrenal function. Medroxyprogesterone acetate may have cortisol-like glucocorticoid activity and provide negative feedback to the hypothalamus or pituitary. This may result in decreased plasma cortisol levels, decreased cortisol secretion, and low plasma ACTH levels.The use of DEPO-PROVERA Sterile Aqueous Suspension may, due to its cortisol-like glucocorticoid activity, also produce Cushingoid symptoms such as weight gain, edema/fluid retention, and facial swelling." - https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2017/01...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis#Su... - "Alcohol is a common cause of psychotic disorders or episodes, which may occur through acute intoxication, chronic alcoholism, withdrawal, exacerbation of existing disorders, or acute idiosyncratic reactions. Research has shown that alcohol abuse causes an 8-fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in men and a 3 fold increased risk of psychotic disorders in women. While the vast majority of cases are acute and resolve fairly quickly upon treatment and/or abstinence, they can occasionally become chronic and persistent. Alcoholic psychosis is sometimes misdiagnosed as another mental illness such as schizophrenia." (emphasis added)

(edit: added reference [7])

I recently went to a presentation by the Arizona Justice Project [0], an organization that works to free the wrongfully convicted. They said something about how the best way to do a lineup is to present photos one at a time, with no prompting whatsoever.

The Department of Justice has various pages about lineups, this one seems informative: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

[0] http://www.azjusticeproject.org/

You've been a passive observer for a long time. Psychiatrists usually see their patients for a few minutes when they're at their worst, and have no perspective on how the patient actually does on a day-to-day basis. They haven't observed the patient between 'episodes'. You can help fill in the gaps in the psychiatrist's profile of your friend.

> but stress got to him and when comparing to when he had his episode

Stress is the major factor in most of these conditions. My recent comment about the Quakers and their asylums [0] is relevant: most of their patients got better with nothing more than 4 meals a day and the expectation that they could recover if given appropriate support.

Malnourishment is the other major factor. My friend's involuntary treatment provider eventually did a genetic test that found she can't turn folic acid into folate. Getting supplemental folate has made a big difference for her misdiagnosed "mental" condition. B-vitamins... eggs... more coconut oil, less vegetable oil... fewer grains, more fruit (juice, apples, etc).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19243417

Sometimes less treatment is better than more treatment. If your friend will let you go to his appointments, maybe you can advocate on your friend's behalf.

If he's ordered to submit to involuntary mental health treatment, you can probably request judicial review on his behalf. This would be to let the court know that your friend was doing better before the ECT treatment, and that you are concerned that some of his problems are now caused by the treatment itself.

Edit: I commented on lithium a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19299137

Your profile says you have some experience in the mental health world.

> You can't cure psychosis with fucking coconut oil.

The person I responded to said in a later comment that his psychosis was related to alcohol use. This being the case, coconut oil is an appropriate treatment to help keep his alcohol use under control.

> PLease stop peddling this dangerous advice.

People like HN user clydethefrog (above) and my girlfriend (my comment history) are hurt by the mental health industry's standard of care. Someone probably told clydethefrog that he has now has a chronic condition and that he'll have to be on "antipsychotics" for the rest of his life to keep from becoming psychotic again.

One case study acknowledges the possibility that people who made themselves psychotic through alcohol withdrawal can be made delusional with Abilify [1]. The actual experience of patients is that maintenance antipsychotics makes their condition worse [2].

I think in the very near future the mental health system will have no choice but to listen to the resistance's complaints.

[1] https://europepmc.org/abstract/med/26502575 - "At first, we regarded all the symptoms as alcoholic hallucinosis, by a clinical standpoint, in spite of no auditory hallucination in this case. However, taking the overall clinical course into consideration, withdrawal syndrome could have been affected by some factors. One of the possibilities is that delusion might have been induced by aripiprazole." (emphasis added)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tardive_psychosis

> Very interesting, especially for someone which psychosis was alcohol induced

My earlier comment about the reason some people find alcohol to be so seductive: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14085230

> I avoid coconut oil because of the fats, but I will change it now!

If you're avoiding sugar too, try salted orange juice. This is a good source of sugar and potassium. If your OJ isn't very sweet you can add a spoonful of sugar.

> I already noticed probiotic foods make me much happier.

Good observation. Less-desirable intestinal microorganisms create endotoxin, which have to be detoxified by the liver.

> Cortisol is a stress hormone, how can a deficiency cause psychosis?

Cortisol tells the body to get more sugar into circulation. Cortisol levels are highest in the morning, when it's been the longest since the last meal. Cortisol is released when blood sugar gets low, or when a person might suddenly need a jolt of sugar to respond to a threatening situation.

My current understanding is that when a person runs low on fuel (sugar), their body will compensate by putting its most fuel-hungry organ (the brain) into hibernation: "psychosis".

Alcoholics train their nervous system to run on alcohol. People who become psychotic from alcohol withdrawal need help avoiding alcohol, and retraining their nerves to run on sugar. (Edit: alcoholic psychosis is some combination of inflammation, insulin resistance and fuel deprivation.)

See link above, and search my comment history for 'alcohol'.