The MSFN café - A Penny for Your Thoughts

[msfntor]

8 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

I'm closed off and reclusive so I'm no person to speak.

that's horrible, awful!

But you wrote in this same time:

8 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

I'm so lucky for the people that have entered my life because it was to teach me

- voilà, exactly...so keep in touch with the others, please!

8 hours ago, XPerceniol said:

Enough about me, I'm getting better.

How is everyone doing?

cool, hold it like this. I'm Ok., generally speaking.

[msfntor]

... and reread the "Self-care basics" post from this thread, please

[msfntor]

Medicine's bad philosophy threatens your health

Medicine has a mind-body problem

 

by Diane O'Leary

In recent years medicine has increasingly recognized a connection between mind and body and how the interaction between the two can affect our health. But in its effort to avoid a problematic separation between mind and body, medicine has been led astray. Due to misunderstanding what in philosophy is called mind-body dualism, trained medical doctors end up over-diagnosing conditions as psychosomatic, automatically construing medically unexplained symptoms as psychiatric problems. This is a philosophical error that ends up putting the health of patients at risk, argues Diane O’Leary.

Medicine and philosophy have an uneasy relationship.  Medicine is a practical endeavor, aiming for concrete results.  Philosophy, on the other hand, has been construed as a head-in-the-clouds kind of thing since antiquity.  Today, outside of medical ethics (which has taken a rightful place within the profession), it’s hard to see how philosophy’s abstractions could make a real difference to the nuts and bolts of diagnosis and treatment.

If medicine were just an applied science of the body, all of this would make good sense.  But in the late twentieth century, western medicine reconsidered its exclusive focus on the body and emphatically rejected it.  Patients, it turns out, are not just bodies, we’re people.  And persons have minds, as well as bodies. This shift raised one modern philosophy’s most intractable issues: the mind-body problem: How do our subjective, mental experiences relate to our objective, physical bodies?...

More here: https://iai.tv/articles/medicines-bad-philosophy-threatens-your-health-auid-2225

[msfntor]

Animal Welfare (Sentience) in the UK legal code

Animals to be formally recognised as sentient beings in domestic law

Introduction of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill as part of the Government's Action Plan for Animal Welfare

From: Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs and The Rt Hon Lord Goldsmith

Published 13 May 2021

 

Government introduces Bill to formally recognise animals as sentient beings

Animal Sentience Committee will put animal sentience at heart of government policy

Bill introduced as part of government’s first of a kind Action Plan for Animal Welfare

Vertebrate animals will be recognised as sentient beings for the first time in UK law thanks to the introduction of the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, introduced in Parliament today.

The legislation will also ensure that animal sentience is taken into account when developing policy across Government through the creation of a Animal Sentience Committee which will be made up of animal experts from within the field.

By enshrining sentience in domestic law in this way, any new legislation will have to take into account the fact that animals can experience feelings such as pain or joy. The Bill will underpin the Government’s Action Plan for Animal Welfare, which launched yesterday and sets out the government’s plans to improve standards and eradicate cruel practices for animals both domestically and internationally.

The Bill’s introduction, fulfilling a key Manifesto commitment, will further the UK’s position as a world-leader on animal welfare. Now that we have left the EU we have the opportunity to remake laws and go further to promote animal welfare by making sure that all Government departments properly consider animal sentience when designing policy, covering all vertebrate animals from farm to forest.

The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will:

formally recognise animals as sentient beings in domestic law

establish an Animal Sentience Committee made up of experts to ensure cross departmental government policy considers animal sentience

ensure Government Ministers update parliament on recommendations made by the Animal Sentience Committee

...

Here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/animals-to-be-formally-recognised-as-sentient-beings-in-domestic-law

Edited September 24, 2022 by msfntor

[msfntor]

Gravity: The Story So Far

What happens when we try to explain gravity?

by George Ellis | Templeton prize-winning cosmologist and co-author of 'The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time' with Stephen Hawking.

 

The basic issue

Gravity holds us to the Earth and makes apples drop to the ground when they fall off a tree. It controls how the Moon moves round the Earth and how the Moon causes tides on Earth. It controls how the Earth moves round the Sun and how the Sun moves round the Galaxy. But it’s not a force. That was Einstein’s great discovery. How can we say that? Well because you can, at least for a while, simply make it vanish! How do you do that? Just let go! In other words, jump off a building, and you’ll feel no gravity as you fall down (hitting the Earth does not count as falling down). More gently, join a freely orbiting space station crew, and you’ll find life difficult because there will be no felt gravity to hold you down on your seat or to hold your coffee in a cup. In short, what appears to be a gravitational force actually depends, locally at least, on how you are moving. You can make it go away by allowing yourself to fall freely.

The reason why

The reason this is true is because the gravitational mass of a body is the same as its inertial mass. This is what Galileo discovered, allegedly, by dropping objects of different weight from the Leaning Tower of Pisa (that experiment has since been done much more accurately by modern physicists - see this video for a feather and a ball falling at the same speed). That means that if you are in lift and the rope breaks, you and everything around you will fall at the same rate as the lift – so you will no longer feel gravity holding you to the floor of the lift.  This was Einstein’s “happiest discovery”.

What is it then?

Gravity is now understood as being an effect of space-time curvature; in a static situation, of spatial curvature. A model is as follows: if you consider two aircraft that start off 1000 miles apart at the same instant from the Earth’s equator and they each fly at the same speed in an unchanging Northerly direction, they will get closer and closer together and will eventually collide at the North Pole. It is as if a force was pulling them together even though there was no attractive force acting between them. It was the curvature of the Earth that was the cause of this apparent force. Spacetime curvature is like that: if, for example, you let a spacecraft fall freely around the Earth at the right speed, with the engine turned off, it will arrive back exactly where it started because of the curvature of space caused by the Earth’s gravitational field.  It never fired an engine to change direction but just kept going. ...

___ ...

Is General Relativity the right classical theory?

We don’t know. It has passed every test we have tried – there is no evidence against it. But to check if a theory is right, you need to compare it with other candidate theories and see which performs better. General Relativity has passed all these tests with flying colours. But some scientists, for example, are claiming you don’t need to have the huge amounts of dark matter in the universe that are suggested by standard studies – because they assume that General Relativity is correct. Maybe a modified gravitational theory, for example one in which the gravitational constant changes with space or time, might remove the need for dark matter. So many alternatives are being proposed and tested.

It is difficult to test on Earth because it is a long range force, It is dominant in the Universe on large scales because all gravitational mass is positive, unlike electricity, where there are equal numbers of positive and negatively charged particles.

We understand Einstein’s theory pretty well, despite its complexity. But that is not the end of the story. If you want to take part in the search for the ultimate answer, you will have to learn the maths (tensor calculus, maybe spinors) and the physics (variational principles and symmetry groups, for example) and then get going. No one knows what direction may lead to new and unexpected answers.

Editor's note - in light of the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in physics for the detection of gravitational waves, the author has added the below:

"Gravitational waves are very difficult to detect because their sources are so far away and, despite appearances, the gravitational force is so weak. The first related Nobel Prize was awarded in 1973 jointly to Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr, for the discovery of the effect of gravitational radiation emission on the orbits of binary pulsars (emission of gravitational waves causes energy loss that changes the orbits of the pulsars). This indirectly proved the existence of gravitational waves as foretold by the theory. Then this year, half the physics award went to Rainer Weiss  and the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for the extraordinary feat of constructing detectors that could measure gravitational waves directly - an incredible theoretical and observational tour de force.  

So Einstein proposed they could exist in 1917. We now have two independent ways of proving not only that they can exist , but that the carry energy with them (some of that energy being deposited in the LIGO/VIRGO gravitational wave detectors) as predicted."

Here: https://iai.tv/articles/gravity-the-story-so-far-auid-896

 

 

Gravity and the Dark Side of Science

Anti-gravity does not exist. Or does it?

- by Valia Allori | Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University

 

If anti-gravity existed, the book that explains it would be impossible to put down. Unfortunately, anti-gravity does not exist. Or does it? It is not a settled question, and there is a sense in which it will never be. Nonetheless, that does not matter much. How can that be? Keep reading!

There are two ingredients at play in this: theory and evidence. And their connection is more complicated than one may initially think. Let me start with theory. Gravity is responsible for stuff falling on the ground, as well as for planets moving in the sky. Scientific theories have been proposed to account for these phenomena: Newton’s theory of gravity first and Einstein’s general relativity later. Newton’s gravity is a force that acts instantaneously to pull bodies closer in virtue of their mass. In other words two massive bodies, no matter how distant, feel each other’s presence instantly and tend to get together.

Here now comes evidence. Newton’s theory has been very successful. The theory predicted, for instance, the Halley comet to be seen again in 1758. One may even think that our best scientific theories are definitely proven by experiments - Newton’s theory successfully predicted the return of the Halley comet, therefore Newton’s theory is true. Right? Well, no. It does not logically follow that Newton’s theory is true even if all experiments come out as predicted. It like someone concluding that it is snowing right now by starting with the consideration that if it's snowing then the streets will be covered with snow, and then observing that the streets are now covered with snow. This is unwarranted: it takes snow a very long time to melt, so snow could have fallen earlier in the day. Similarly, the Halley comet return is a good indication of the past success of Newton’s theory, but does not provide any guarantee of its future success.

Indeed, it later turned out that Newton’s theory was false and it was substituted by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein argued that gravity is not a force but rather the effect of the modification of the fabric of space-time due to the presence of material bodies. That is, in empty space a body will go straight, but the presence of another body will bend its trajectory as if it were affected by a pulling force. Even if it is an imprecise analogy, a ball thrown on a bed where a cat is sleeping will not go straight but will rather curve towards the cat. Anyway, we cannot prove beyond any doubt a theory to be true, no matter how successful it is. It is better to say that the theory is confirmed, or more cautiously corroborated, by positive experiments: arguably, we have more reasons to believe a theory with lots of confirmatory instances than one with fewer.

Can we at least prove a theory to be false? Newton’s theory would be proven false if the predicted acceleration of falling bodies were different from the measured one, say. Indeed, Newton’s theory was falsified by experiments: the theory predicted Mercury’s orbit around the Sun would not shift forward, which instead does. Such shift was predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. So, can falsification be definite? Again, no: sometimes old theories do not get replaced even if they have contrary evidence. In this case, experimental refutation of Newton’s theory was not the reason why relativity took the place of Newton’s theory in the physics books. Even if the predictions were wrong, scientists were not ready to consider Newton’s theory to be false and kept using it. After all, is it worth throwing away all the successes of such a powerful, explanatory theory just for such a small discrepancy? It could well be some experimental error. Nonetheless, eventually Newton’s theory was replaced because of theoretical, rather than empirical, reasons. Einstein proposed his theory of relativity because he found the ‘spooky action-at-a-distance’ of Newton’s theory of gravity extremely unsatisfactory. Therefore, he looked for another explanation and he found it. The bonus was that his theory could also correctly recover the shift in Mercury’s orbit that Newton’s theory could not account for.

__

"Even if the predictions were wrong, scientists were not ready to consider Newton's theory to be false and kept using it. After all, is it worth throwing away all the successes of such a powerful, explanatory theory just for such a small discrepancy?"
___

Also, consider this other example. Gravity keeps the universe together and one of the leading early theories of the origin of the universe is the big bang theory: the universe started expanding after a huge explosion at the beginning of time.  One should expect sooner or later the universe to slow down, just like the fragments of a more ‘regular’ explosion. However, recent astronomical data suggest that the fragments are getting away at increasing speed. This is a falsification of the big bang theory, which predicted deceleration. Nonetheless, sometimes, like in the case of Newton’s failure to predict Mercury’s orbital shift, rejecting falsified theories seems just too harsh. If I drop an egg on the floor and it does not break as expected, I will not claim I have refuted the current theory of gravity. Rather, I will check for false assumptions that would explain the mistaken result. Another example is that Newton’s theory predicted a different orbit for Uranus than the one observed. So the theory was, again, falsified. However, instead of rejecting Newton’s theory, astronomers questioned the assumption that there were seven planets: the existence of another planet, Neptune, would explain the observed orbit of Uranus, which they indeed later observed.

Back to the case of the accelerating universe, many astronomers decided to do the same thing: they did not refute the theory, even with contrary evidence. In a sense, they proposed that gravity has its own dark side: something, now known as dark energy, which overpowers gravity’s attraction. More precisely, they questioned the assumption that space-time has no energy in itself. One may think of this as a repulsive gravity or anti-gravity, but do not read too much into it. Notice that hidden, unquestioned, assumptions are everywhere. For instance, when using a microscope, we assume light propagates in a straight line, even if it does not. There are some situations in which this is irrelevant, but some others in which it may not. Hence, when facing empirical refutation, scientists always have the option to put the theory into question or to challenge some hidden assumption instead. In this case, astronomers could either deny the existence of dark energy and radically modify general relativity, or assume dark energy exists without modifying general relativity too much. If the former is the case, there is a sense in which there is anti-gravity; if the latter, there is not. The philosophical question therefore is: when is it reasonable for a scientist to hold on to her theory, and when is she just stubbornly in love with it?

Even if this is not the case here, I am sure you understand the gravity of the situation (pun intended!) if alternative theories are empirically equivalent. That is, in the case in which no experiment can be performed to tell them apart. This happens, for instance, between some different formulations of non-relativistic quantum mechanics. If we cannot choose which theory is correct based on the empirical results, what can help us? It is unclear: some will say super-empirical, or purely theoretical virtues, should be important. Simpler theories, for instance, should be preferred. However, what is simplicity? Why should we believe that the universe is simple?

The bottom line is therefore this: one is never able to prove or rule out a scientific theory beyond any doubt with experiments alone. That means that there will certainly be alternatives and it is unclear how theoretical virtues may help in theory selection. Having said that, I believe that scientific theories are powerful tools that can tell us about the nature of reality. Even if we cannot definitively prove they are true or false, they are either one or the other. There is something about the scientific method that allows science, as opposed to the unscientific alternatives like crystal ball gazing or tarot reading, to track truth, even if we do not know exactly what it is. Not knowing it yet does not imply we will never find out more. And not knowing what it is it does not mean that it does not work: my mum’s ignorance about the way in which a nuclear power plant works does not make the plant stop working.

So does anti-gravity exist? Either it does or it does not. We do not know yet and we will never be able to know for sure. However, science can still give fallible knowledge of the world: we sometime get things wrong but we are getting somewhere. Therefore, if you want to investigate the mysteries of gravity, as well as any other, keep studying, become a scientist and keep your philosophical eye open: the path is going to be uphill, but there is no fun without a challenge.

Here: https://iai.tv/articles/gravity-and-the-dark-side-of-science-auid-901

[msfntor]

La Voie lactée / The Milky Way

Au Lac-de-la-Chaîne. Lac-Bouchette, Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec, Canada. By Curculion: https://www.flickr.com/photos/curculion/ 

On Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/curculion/27572901630/

 

 

[XPerceniol]

11 hours ago, msfntor said:

... and reread the "Self-care basics" post from this thread, please

Thank you, I will

[XPerceniol]

[XPerceniol]

67°

Sunny

Day 68° • Night 51°

I am outside my porch today and its quiet

[UCyborg]

On 9/20/2022 at 2:39 AM, mina7601 said:

@UCyborg Great to see you back after approximately 3 months of your inactivity!

How's life going? Many people in this forum miss you. Mainly, me, @XPerceniol, @msfntor and @AstroSkipper miss you here. I hope you're fine.

Thanks, sending a virtual hug your way! It's not something I hear in real life. But then, I'm distrustful of other people in general and keep to myself. Anxiety doesn't help.

I see you're back as well, @msfntor . I had an odd feeling you contracted something heavier and fatal back then.

This is a particularly messed up year. I'd rather not talk about in detail about that specific event that happened recently and the can of worms it opened.

Other than that, I gave away the old car. Actually left it at the dealer where I bought a new one.

That one week during summer, the engine in the old car randomly shut down on a motorway. Didn't realize it at first, thought it'll snap back eventually, I retreated to the emergency lane and only several seconds later thought to hit the clutch so could see the tachometer turning to zero and the battery indicator lighting up. It did restart right away, but since I've come to a complete stop in the meantime, I had to wait a while before I could go because so many damn cars passing by. Not pleasant.

Then it happened again two days later, the experience from the first time helped that I managed to restart the engine while the car was still on the move.

Maybe they would've put it back in working order if I took it to the official service. It served well for 21,5 years, I was its 3rd owner for 5 years and after recent experiences and generally issues popping up in shorter periods in recent times, I thought it might be the time to update myself in that department.

[msfntor]

Sunset for you

Here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/136318162@N05/52377561207/in/explore-2022-09-23/

 

Edited September 25, 2022 by msfntor

[msfntor]

"MS is not the end": Claudia Brunner wants to encourage other sufferers with her book "MS and healthy".

7/2/2022, 5:04:00 PM

    

"MS is not the end": Claudia Brunner wants to encourage other sufferers with her book "MS and healthy".

Created: 07/02/2022, 17:00

By: Andrea Beschorner

 

“Everyone can actively work on their health.” Claudia Brunner wants to convey this message with her book about her MS disease.

© Birgit Gleixner

 

– Claudia Brunner from Kranzberg has been living with multiple sclerosis (MS) for more than 13 years.

The disease began in the now 39-year-old with up to five relapses a year.

She had to discontinue several basic therapies due to lack of effect or excessive side effects.

She has been living without relapses and symptoms for eight years now.

What sounds a bit like a miracle is, above all, one thing: knowledge.

Knowledge that Claudia Brunner has collected over the years and that she now wants to make available to all those affected and their families in a book.

"MS and healthy".

Sounds contradictory - but after talking to the author, it becomes clear that it is absolutely not.

Ms. Brunner, on your website you introduce yourself with the words: "Today, despite the crumble cake in my head, I've been free of relapses and symptoms for about eight years." How important is it to take an illness with a certain amount of humor?

Very important.

But I didn't always have that attitude.

When you get such a diagnosis out of nowhere, it pulls the rug out from under you.

It took me several years to get where I am today.

The diagnosis initially plunged me into depression.

I was 26 then.

Tell about the day you received the diagnosis.

Were you able to do something with it immediately?

I honestly didn't know what to do with it.

Although the path to this diagnosis was a process.

I have to go back a bit for that: I worked as a management consultant after graduating.

The job was extremely stressful.

And then came the consultant crisis.

Many people were exhibited - I was there too.

During this conversation I felt pain as if I had a knife in my head.

And this pain got worse every day, especially whenever I entered the office.

In addition, I was losing sight in one eye.

In the eye clinic, I was referred to the university clinic to clarify whether I had an inflammation in the optic nerve or whether something was pressing on the optic nerve.

A few weeks later, after an MRI, I finally sat at the neurologist, still having no idea what was wrong with me.

With that neurologist who then told you?

Yes.

That's 13 years ago now.

And I still know today exactly what the chair I sat on looked like.

I was there with my husband, we weren't married at the time.

The doctor's first question was: are you married?

When I said no, he said he had many married patients who had children.

He told me something about chronic inflammation of the central nervous system and gave me brochures.

That's it.

That didn't take five minutes.

The word MS was not mentioned.

I only read it after looking at the brochures.

It featured a woman in a wheelchair.

I never wanted to take myself out of my dreams.

Claudia Bruner

So there was no informational talk?

No, not with this doctor.

My boyfriend, who is now my husband, immediately looked for a specialist who then took his time and explained everything to me.

And how has the diagnosis affected your life?

First of all I suppressed it, convinced myself that there was nothing there.

After that I got really angry – first at myself, later at others.

I have to say that my illness didn't affect my work at the beginning, everything was fine there.

It was different in private life.

There were friends who had a big problem with it.

Some just didn't get in touch because they didn't know how to deal with it.

One asked me when I wanted to break up with my boyfriend because I couldn't do that to him.

You say everything was fine at your job.

Is it because you simply didn't allow the disease there?

In fact, I never wanted to take myself out of my dreams.

That's when I started my PhD.

I have always been a very goal-oriented person, success and career were important to me.

And yes, sickness and dysfunction weren't meant for me.

Keep going: That was my motto.

Looking back, do you still think that was true?

It was absolutely right to do the PhD.

But what I have to admit: I could and should have learned earlier that it's okay to say no and consciously get help.

It took me years to come to this realization - and frankly, I still find it difficult to this day.

I've learned that it's okay not to just function all the time.

Claudia Bruner

What has your MS disease taught you?

This allows me to recognize and accept my own needs.

I've learned that it's okay not to just function all the time.

To be honest, I wouldn't have had three children so quickly without my illness: The illness helped me to classify what is really important in life.

And that's not the next step in your career.

What is important is what remains: family.

In the first few years things went very badly for you.

Yes, it was a horrible time.

I had a lot of relapses at first, up to five a year.

I suffered from paraesthesia, numbness, further inflammation of the optic nerve.

Fatigue syndrome – a chronic state of exhaustion – was particularly bad while I was writing my doctoral thesis.

At noon I was absolutely unable to concentrate.

During that time I always did things that didn't attract attention.

And then you decided to take matters into your own hands.

Was there a key experience for this?

I was quite successful in my academic work.

That's why I was invited to the Lindau Nobel Laureate Conference as one of 400 young scientists.

I should sit next to John Nash, my biggest idol, he was my hero.

I was so looking forward to it.

It was my greatest dream, there was no greater honor for me.

Before that I was at a conference in Portland, USA, and traveled back to Germany three days before that.

It was all extremely stressful.

But I was fine.

That morning I woke up with the worst flare up to that point.

It was so frustrating, so incredibly bad.

Of course I went to this conference anyway, I would never have had the chance to meet John Nash again in my life.

Still, it was so frustrating to experience this dream under such circumstances.

My left arm was completely paralyzed, I couldn't go to the buffet.

That evening I made the decision that it couldn't go on like this.

A few days later I started sifting through all the scientific databases for what I can do myself to positively influence the course of the disease.

To be honest, that sounds a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack.

I've worked my way up there.

The first topic I tackled was stress.

From my own experience, I now knew that stress has a massive impact on the course of the disease.

And indeed, there were individual studies back then that showed that stress reduction might be helpful.

I've been doing qigong ever since.

Next was the issue of nutrition.

And so there were always new aspects.

In the end I had read thousands of studies.

I had learned through my PhD how to read, understand and interpret statistics and studies.

I am able to evaluate studies, to see how good a statement is and whether the study is really worth anything.

I summarized everything.

For example, in the area of MS and sports: 20 years ago it was still said that one should avoid sports and use the little energy

save what you have available.

This has also been refuted in the meantime by studies.

What did you do with all the information?

I have optimized myself, I have gradually looked to integrate everything that somehow works into my life.

And you've been relapse-free ever since...

Eight years, yes.

To person

Claudia Brunner studied business administration and philosophy before taking up a position in a well-known management consultancy after graduating.

The subsequent doctorate in the field of business economics led to numerous scientific publications.

Several years of research followed.

Various further training courses, including one on nutritional science ("Nutrition Science") at the Stanford School of Medicine, as well as one on "Evidence-Based Optimal Nutrition" at the Harvard School of Public Health as well as "The Brain" and "Brain Health" at the She also graduated from Harvard Extension School in order to optimally prepare for her book project.

Today Claudia Brunner works as a lecturer and is the mother of three daughters.

She received her MS diagnosis in 2009.

(Further information about the book and the author can be found online at www.ms-und-gesund.de.)

What specifically did you change?

I used to be more of a couch potato, but now I do a lot more.

Spinning training three times a week, riding a racing bike – in other words: training three to four times a week, very dedicated.

I switched my diet from fast food vegetarian to plant-based whole foods.

However, in my book I recommend eating fish regularly.

But that's an ethical consideration for me.

And many more things that I go into in detail in the book.

Your book “MS and healthy” was published on May 25th.

What is your intention behind this?

I would like to show that everyone can actively work on their health.

Self-efficacy is an important building block on the way to a self-determined life.

The book is intended to protect people from feeling at the mercy of an illness and the doctors for years, as was the case with me.

MS is not a set path.

Every MS patient can have a great, fulfilling life.

At that time, I was missing someone whose story could have shown that things went well.

And I would now like to be that someone for others.

Is the book giving people something they would have wished for after their diagnosis?

Yes, I would have wanted it that way, it would have helped me so much to be able to live well with this disease right from the start.

The book shows adjustment screws that everyone can turn for themselves.

It's about exercise, sleep, stress reduction, dealing with stimulants, mental health, nutrition, cognitive training and social life.

I also show the importance of socializing because solitude is extremely detrimental to brain health.

Basically, the right combination of medical care, medication and your own lifestyle is what everyone should optimize for themselves in order to live well with MS.

I advise anyone diagnosed with MS to seek psychotherapy.

Claudia Bruner

How is your book structured?

My personal story is told in the introduction.

This is followed by an easy-to-understand overview of the disease.

The main part of the book deals with the already mentioned building blocks for a good course of MS.

Each sub-module is summarized at the end, and there are also recommendations in a box with a gray background.

Background information and further explanations are marked with an info sign.

Personal experiences and my story are written in italics.

The second large part of the book will explain selected therapies as a compact reference work - including possible side effects, things to pay special attention to and the effectiveness of the therapies.

The following chapter is aimed at relatives before the book closes with the question

How have your values changed since your diagnosis?

I now know that the importance of relationships, people and family is so much more important than the pursuit of reputation and reputation.

What is your advice to people who are diagnosed with MS.

What can anyone do other than read your book?

I very, very strongly advise everyone to go into psychotherapy – and relatively soon.

It gives you stability and you learn to deal with it.

It's incredibly difficult to do alone.

It takes strength to adjust your lifestyle.

And for that, too, a psychotherapist is essential.

And everyone should find a doctor they feel comfortable with and have the courage to change doctors if they don't feel comfortable or no longer feel comfortable.

A good relationship with his doctor is the most important thing.

What message do you have for all those affected?

MS is not the end, nor is it a one-way street.

As those affected, we can significantly influence our course and lead a self-determined life.

Here: https://newsrnd.com/news/2022-07-02-"ms-is-not-the-end"--claudia-brunner-wants-to-encourage-other-sufferers-with-her-book-"ms-and-healthy"-.rkKwRAacc.html

 

EDIT:

The Italian epidemiologist Alberto Ascherio: 

"Of the factors that can be corrected, probably the most important factor is vitamin D deficiency. The second would be smoking.

Childhood obesity is associated with vitamin D deficiency."

Edited September 26, 2022 by msfntor
I made the highlights, and Edit remark.

[mina7601]

On 9/25/2022 at 12:10 AM, UCyborg said:

I had an odd feeling you contracted something heavier and fatal back then.

Yes, our friend @msfntor says why he was inactive here:

[mina7601]

On 9/25/2022 at 12:10 AM, UCyborg said:

Thanks, sending a virtual hug your way!

You're welcome!

On 9/25/2022 at 12:10 AM, UCyborg said:

Other than that, I gave away the old car. Actually left it at the dealer where I bought a new one.

That one week during summer, the engine in the old car randomly shut down on a motorway. Didn't realize it at first, thought it'll snap back eventually, I retreated to the emergency lane and only several seconds later thought to hit the clutch so could see the tachometer turning to zero and the battery indicator lighting up. It did restart right away, but since I've come to a complete stop in the meantime, I had to wait a while before I could go because so many damn cars passing by. Not pleasant.

Then it happened again two days later, the experience from the first time helped that I managed to restart the engine while the car was still on the move.

Maybe they would've put it back in working order if I took it to the official service. It served well for 21,5 years, I was its 3rd owner for 5 years and after recent experiences and generally issues popping up in shorter periods in recent times, I thought it might be the time to update myself in that department.

Well, I don't know my opinion about this, but that's a nice story really.

[msfntor]

16 hours ago, msfntor said:

"MS is not the end": Claudia Brunner wants to encourage other sufferers with her book "MS and healthy".

I did the underlining (bolding) in this post about Multiple Sclerosis (MS) to facilitate your reading... read on the precedent page (53).

Edited September 26, 2022 by msfntor