As in "red china" communist, vs red state in the US, one with a republican majority.

And farm subsidies, hell tax credits in general, and the interest deduction, and at least half the military industrial complex (just corporate welfare anyway), NASA - welfare for eggheads. Sorry folks there is never going to be interstellar travel. Perhaps then we could have universal healthcare, fully funded public schools / universities, public transportation, clean water, decent housing, blah, blah, blah. nah.

I just hate how funny I find the name copepods

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What would be more interesting to know - how do we fix our gut biome in a way that directly benefits our mental health

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https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/probiotics-what-you-need-to-know "However, in most instances, we still don’t know which probiotics are helpful and which are not. We also don’t know how much of the probiotic people would have to take or who would be most likely to benefit. Even for the conditions that have been studied the most, researchers are still working toward finding the answers to these questions."

There are a lot of studies cited below, and most of them non clear about that relation.

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The problem is not overpopulation. It’s how we use resources. We have the resources to safely support 10-12 billion people currently. The problem is that they aren’t spread out equally, and are wasted on frivolous or unnecessary things (eg single use plastics). I’m all for people having less kids, but forcing them to or killing people is not the answer. After all, we care about climate change first and for foremost for the negative impact it has on humans. We’re part of the environment, when the environment is hurt we are too.

I’m child free. Same thing.

The emotional abuse would register on the ACE test, if the dad yelled, swore at, or insulted them frequently, or ever threatened physical harm. Nothing else, though.

I had very serious binge eating disorder, it was like a huge slow-moving hurricane, I got somewhat ravaged by but the hurricane is slightly moved away from me. I developed a stomach issue, where my stomach would just hurt if it got overfull, still undiagnosed, I do have a Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which might contribute. It became a chronic thing I basically couldn't binge but if I did I would have stomach pain for many days. Because of this I did go out the habit of bingeing. They get me wrong I still tried to. In fact I had the regular smaller sized meals. I had to learn to be really careful if I was eating out and there was a lot of delicious food. Also a little later I developed ulcerative colitis, the type of disease I got makes me prone to constipation rather than going several times a day. This meant I couldn't afford to be constipated because hard stools would tear up my colon, and I would get bleeding and mucus.

Because of my bowel issue, stomach issue I was forced to become healthy and Eat better, and it was in no way hard at all. I thought I'd be missing out but actually the peace of mind of not being on some blood sugar rollercoaster is really pleasant. Many ways you like the rollercoaster because it took up all my attention help me escape my problems.

But before I got the health problems I just could not stop food bingeing, it was a total prison when I had no choice it was so easy. I don't know how this helps anyone, Other than to say the addiction is all in the brain. Possibly it helps to have some major event, doesn't have to be health but may be moving to a different place, getting a different job. I don't know but wishing everyone the very best, good luck.

I do have a few replacement addictions, mostly Internet -related, life is a constant battle but it's possible to have great victories as well.

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As someone with IBS I can attest to these findings. They both tend to be cyclical. Whenever my IBS flares up I become more depressed and anxious. The more depressed and anxious I am, the more intestinal issues I have.

It's so bad I am unable to work outside of the home.

So which intolerance did you end up discovering with the elimination approach? I’m curious to work out my maybe trigger foods equally

Same with eczema. Having your skin itch, crack, and bleed constantly really ramps up the suicidal thoughts. Luckily the skin cream my doc gave me made it go away and it hasn’t returned for almost a decade now.

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makes sense that having a spontaneous urge to use the bathroom would cause all that

Which causes which, though? I think I'd be depressed and anxious if I was constantly dealing with pain and malfunctioning bowels.

I had major depression and a full blown general anxiety disorder in my 20s. For a long time I suspected there was a dietary link, as heavy stress would result in days diarrhea. Also had a bunch of other symptoms like silent reflux (that wore down my tooth enamel), frequent brain fog, food coma feeling after lunch some days, eczema, and arthritic pain.

The reflux eventually became chronic causing throat pain, and after not being content to just treat the symptoms with stomach acid blockers, I found some anecdotes on Internet forums that it could be the symptoms of food intolerances so I tried elimination dieting.

After a few months all my health problems began to fade, and after narrowing down and removing the trigger foods, they all resolved - no more brain fog, no more reflux, no more arthritis, and no more anxiety!

The last one is amazing, because anxiety up to that point was just the background noise of my life. The constant pit in the stomach, and adrenal exhaustion. The wild fight or flight response in any stressful situation.

I now know what “normal” feels like and it’s amazing! Genuine peace.

If you have anxiety or depression, I cannot recommend enough investigating into whether food intolerances might be the cause.

Edit - to answer some of the questions below:

My elimination diet was very strict at the start - I cut the foods I ate down to a few staples (oats, eggs, pea protein powder, rice, tuna, salmon, bananas, apples, water) until the reflux and gut pain died down, then stuck with it for a few months longer to give my gut some time to heal before starting to reintroduce different foods again. I probably would have added bone broth to the mix if I ate chicken/beef as I've read that is good for healing a damaged gut.

The annoying thing about food intolerances is that unlike allergies there's usually no immediate reaction, and sometimes it can take days or weeks of eating something before the symptoms start to become noticeable and the cycle of chronic inflammation kicks into overdrive again.

That made it quite a slow process to narrow down the culprits - it took about a year and a half of introducing and removing things to narrow them down, but the foods that trigger the inflammation cycle for me are: dairy (not only lactose, but the dairy proteins, dairy fat, and includes goat milk and other animal milks), gluten (wheat, barley, rye), amaranth, millet, and sorghum.

Soy doesn't seem to cause any gut pain or reflux for me, but does causes pain and inflammation of my thyroid, so I avoid that too.

On the grain side, I can tolerate oats, corn, rice, quinoa, buckwheat (it's a seed, not related to wheat), and a few other exotic grains like Teff just fine.

Early on in the elimination dieting process there were other foods that would set off gut pain and reflux - citrus, tomatoes, caffeine (tea, coffee, cocoa) being some of them - but now that my gut has healed I've noticed I can eat them regularly again and things are fine.

It's been about 5 years now since I fixed my gut and it's amazing how all of the spiraling health problems I was facing have cleared up completely. Even though it does suck not to be able to enjoy things like dairy ice-cream, French pastries, pizza, and the convenience of not having to scour menus before choosing a place to eat out, thankfully there are a lot of gluten free and dairy free options nowadays, and it's all worth it to have good health again!

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So microplastics don’t affect the food chain in Danish waters