Recent comments in /f/science

scotty_dont t1_j8c8oll wrote

Reply to comment by EasternAssistance185 in Chinese researchers have reported what they claim is the world’s youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which may overturn the conventional perception that cognitive impairment rarely occurs in young people. by Wagamaga

Generally they lose the ability to swallow correctly. This leads to food aspiration which leads to infection. This becomes a cycle. Eventually (perhaps the first infection) families will choose not to treat and they will be kept on morphine as everything shuts down.

You could make more and more drastic interventions but at that point there is nothing of the person you knew remaining and there is no “better” way for them to die on offer. You will have a few days notice for loved ones to say their goodbyes and keep vigil if they want.

Unfortunately we don’t know how to do non-voluntary euthanasia. It’s just not a system we have figured out as a society/species. “Family consent” is hiding a lot of cost/complexity/trauma under the surface. The “decision not to treat” is effectively a soft form that offloads a lot of the complexity. So you need to present a cost/benefit analysis of how to move that date up and by how much. A much more traumatic process that only speeds things up by a few months probably isn’t worth it, but the earlier you aim for the more of the person remains.

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lawsarethreats t1_j8c8ieg wrote

Reply to comment by Scoobydoomed in Cultivating a sense of perspective about pet loss can lead to post-traumatic growth after their death by chrisdh79

In general, adaptive emotional regulation strategies are things like mindfulness (meditation, journaling, body scans to assess physical symptoms of your mental state) and CBT practices like recognizing cognitive distortions (which is a whole thing, hard to summarize) and actively working to shift your perspective/reaction to things, especially to difficult and negative thoughts.

The article seems to be trying to say that mindfully processing the loss of a pet reduces the negative emotions and thoughts that come with the loss. Which…yup. Sure does.

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SerialStateLineXer t1_j8c8hox wrote

Reply to comment by moredinosaurbutts in Chinese researchers have reported what they claim is the world’s youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which may overturn the conventional perception that cognitive impairment rarely occurs in young people. by Wagamaga

It's worth keeping in mind that most common neurodegenerative diseases are syndromes: clusters of diseases defined by symptoms and certain aspects of the disease process rather than by root cause. Even Huntington disease is actually a class of genetic mutation rather than one specific mutation: a sequence of three nucleotides is repeated many times, but the number of repetitions varies and affects the severity and age of onset. There are dozens of different mutations known to cause ALS, and severity, age of onset, and specific symptoms vary accordingly.

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MrGingerlicious t1_j8c8g3f wrote

Reply to comment by lappel-do-vide in Cultivating a sense of perspective about pet loss can lead to post-traumatic growth after their death by chrisdh79

Perspective is everything and everyone deals with grief differently, for sure.

I had the opposite experience. My Mum passed away (suddenly/unexpected) and my Cat (who I adopted when I moved out of home and had with me the entire, almost 12 years of his life) less than two years after that.

My Cat passing away hit me *way* harder. I was pretty close with my Mum and we had a very healthy relationship. That being said, she also prepared me for her eventual passing and always tried to get us kids to look for the good in every change.

The fact my Mum lived her life best she could and did the right thing by my Dad and her three kids, including doing a lot of travelling when we moved out, helped me deal with her passing in a big way.

But when *I* had to make the decision to put my best Mate to sleep and say goodbye to him... Part of me died with him and it still hurts the same now, so I try not to think about it too much tbh.

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moodRubicund t1_j8c7nwc wrote

Reply to comment by wallowsfan289 in Cultivating a sense of perspective about pet loss can lead to post-traumatic growth after their death by chrisdh79

When my grandfather died I was sad for a long time but he had lived a full and long life and had a massive community remember him at his funeral.

When my dog died I was devastated for months. He was just eight years old and had been sick for a year and a half and I had tried so hard to take care of him and in the end he died because the vet that my family took him to overdosed him on a medicine that, even months after he took it, gradually ruined his liver.

So I was not just sad about my dog but I was wracked with a horrible sense of guilt for trusting the wrong vets and not being smart enough to know better. I kept replaying scenarios where I managed to cure him early or sidestep a mistake over and over and over, even though it was a shared responsibility among my family (I didn't even see the particular vet that prescribed that medicine that killed him, I always took him to other ones) I kept seeing it as a solo mission that I failed.

So I think the thing about death is that the circumstances really make a big difference how you react to them. Not all passing will make you feel such an awful sense of guilt.

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Crazy-Cheesecake-945 t1_j8c6dzk wrote

Reply to Chinese researchers have reported what they claim is the world’s youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which may overturn the conventional perception that cognitive impairment rarely occurs in young people. by Wagamaga

I used to work in mental health in the Army. We had a kid in his early 20’s who developed dementia. Smart kid with a lot of talent and knew a lot about everything and then as the sun went down it was a whole other story. One of the few active duty soldiers being prescribed medical marijuana in pill form because it helped with his symptoms as he was stuck in the psych ward full time.

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Alleycat_Caveman t1_j8c5vry wrote

Reply to Chinese researchers have reported what they claim is the world’s youngest person diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, which may overturn the conventional perception that cognitive impairment rarely occurs in young people. by Wagamaga

I read, or maybe heard somewhere, that degenerative diseases like dementia, and more specifically, Alzheimer's actually take root quite early in life. Once the early symptoms start to pop up, it's already too late, and there's already quite extensive brain damage.

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Petaurus_australis t1_j8c4rr5 wrote

Reply to comment by acdha in Study links Covid-19 vaccination hesitancy in Africa to the use of media platforms that spread misinformation. The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa was accompanied by unprecedented and recurring waves of misinformation and disinformation. by Wagamaga

>It’s not. American education quite closely tracks the parents’ socioeconomic status, and we have a disproportionate level of poverty for a rich nation, however. Once you compare children of similar status things tend to be a lot more similar than you’d expect based on our political discourse.

But comparing children of similar status is not indicative of the overall state of education. If there's a lot of poor people, and poor people have worse education accessibility, then the country isn't likely going to be very well educated. If money is intrinsically tied to education in your country... that's still a factor in how educated the country is overall, and the quality of the education people receive.

We don't consider Ethiopia a very well educated country, and most of that is because of the abysmal socioeconomics, I mean what is the other explanation for the difference? That they are an innately stupid race of human? I think that kind of thinking is about three centuries past it's expiry date. If the top 5% in Ethiopia have similar education to the top 5% in New Zealand, that's all and good for the top 5%, but high quality for one small percentile bracket, does not translate to the quality of education for the overall population.

The even worse quality of that system is that it essentially maintains a dynamic where the poor remain uneducated, and therefore remain poor because education is tied to income, the poor go on to have more kids than other demographics (because that's what the demographic transition model shows) and the kids grow up poor, and soon you find the system becomes dominated by that demographic and the educated portion grows into a ever more concentrated elite. Exactly what you see in the USA, and exactly why countries where the highest quality education system is accessible to pretty much the entirety of the population tend to score higher overall nationally, than the USA, IE, Sweden.

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