The new microbiome questions

Science writer Michael Pollan presents an honest and interesting assessment of the emerging science of microbiome health. Say Hello to the 100 Trillion Bacteria That Make Up Your Microbiome - NYTimes.com

The suggested trajectory of the research is that many health and dyshealth trends today might reflect the impacts of agriculural and dietary practices that impact the microbioecosystem we are.

As it turns out, we are a tiny 10% of our whole physiological self hosting the other 90% of microorganisms.

This research will challenge medicine that continues interventions like antibiotics that destroy our natural biosystems. It will challenge commercial food growing and processing practices responsible for massive profits and political advantages.

The end of mental disorders

The current controversy over the DSM-5 is an interesting study in how psychology has at least one foot in the past as it attempts to go forward. This is the psychiatric “bible” of mental disorders used to justify medications, services, benefits, and insurance to people labeled variously with “mental disorders.”

One of the more compelling criticisms of the whole effort is that it reflects outdated science and none of the more relevant and validated sciences like the neurosciences.

The provocation of the neurosciences and cognitive behavioral sciences is that choiceful behavior, regardless of diagnosis, has direct impact on the chemical structures of the brain that in the old sciences are held responsible for behavior.

The future of healthy behavior is requiring behavioral literacy from birth and before in parents and families. The unintended consequences of labels are the continuation of old sciences that have no practical validity because they create the very external locus of control that makes people give up hope in their own self-efficacy.

Fortunately, this is an actionable problem.

End of life solutions

I’m not sure if it's realistic or pessimistic to think that the end of life costs debate is unresolvable from the frame it’s currently approached. As end of life relevant technology and pharmacology spirals in options and costs, there is no foreseeable end to our debate about imposed or allowed limits. Arguments about what constitutes the biological and religious requirements for “life” add more heat than light to the problem.

As usual with wicked problems, we have to change the frame to get anywhere different.

One idea is to require any person or family with stressful cost-implicated end of life decisions to go through the process with coaching in meaningful end of life conversations. These are with each other or if possible with their beloved.

No amount of costs can address people’s incapacity for the kinds of conversations that make letting go more possible and meaningful. No technologies or pharmacologists can replace the power and efficacy of authentic conversations when life ends.