For those with migraines:

What have you found that helps?


I've found that if I chug a beer at the first sign of an aura (I hate beer btw) then my pain is noticeably reduced. I've heard that anything that acts as a vaso-dilator helps. Marijuana helps me a little, but it makes it more difficult for me to stop thinking so it isn't a great choice. Painkillers don't really help either.

Funny how one can go from normal looking guy to vagrant just by growing a beard.

I liked watching the eyes. The pupils keep growing and shrinking with the changes in light. Sometimes just a pinpoint, other times really dilated.

The only sure way to know if a head or body is dead is to check its eyes for dilation, that is brain death. And Even then you may not know because the brain shuts down like a navy ship seals flooded compartments.

To the person with the head cut off, I would assume (because Ive never had my head cut off) that time dilation would make it an eternity.

We had a nurse come in to one of my classes last week. One of the things she said - Ladies: if you have ever used heroin, make sure you tell your doctor when you're pregnant. There is a drug they use during labor that can cause a psychotic episode when it interacts with the residual heroin in your fat cells, even if you only used heroin once, or it was 15 years ago.

She had a patient who had used heroin 10 years prior. They gave her two doses of the medication - one when she first went into labor, and one when she was 8 cm dilated. The woman was standing on her bed, screaming at the doctor and the nurses, and bearing down at the same time. Not exactly the safest environment for your baby to be born.

Time dilating kitty!

>> ^omnistegan:
Then what is the reference point for speed in space? For speed on Earth we can use the surface of the Earth as a reference point for speed, and in our own solar system we can use the Sun, but at what speed is the Sun moving? And in reference to what? And what does that make of the speed and direction of motion of the Earth? And us? So are we really moving? or is everything moving around us in reference to our own perception?



That has 2 answers really, a metaphysical one and a physical one.

First, let us use the physical reality in which we experience. The most modern explanation of motion is the law of relativity. The law of relativity states that each observer has a valid claim in saying the they are moving and the object in reference is staying still. So in other words. The person on the train has just a valid assertion that the train is moving and the man is staying still, as the man on the ground saying he is moving and the train is standing still. In other words, it is your observation that is true for you, and it is their observation that is true to them. Both are valid claims. One is not righter than the other.

This realization was huge for science. To quote wikipidia on the matter:

“Special relativity overthrows Newtonian notions of absolute space and time by stating that time and space are perceived differently by observers in different states of motion. “

So, in essence, there is no such idea in relativity as what is “really” moving or not moving. Everything is happening as you experience it in your own frame of reference! Mind blowing I know. This is what is known as special relativity however, general relativity has to deal with gravity and acceleration which complicate matters greatly because of time dilation and space time curvature.

Now, metaphysically speaking space and time might not be real things in and of themselves. They might be complete fabrications of the mind. There is no necessity for time to exist, the universe could exist very much like a formula which is timeless and without space. In other words, the idea of time, space, motion, and all these fundamental things could really just be a subject of the mind and not of the universe itself. I personally believe that there is not objective time, space, or motion. These are all subjects of the mind and not of the universe itself. I think of the universe as a formula and those ideas of time and space and motion only occur inside the formula; that huge equation of everything we know.

So in essence, my metaphysical understanding of the universe actually gives way to special relativity. I would say the truth of what you observe is an unshakable experience. In other words, no one can say that you didn't experience something the way that you experience it. But that experiences in and of itself doesn't point to any underlying truth of how the universe actually works. In other words, your experience with the stuff of the universe is filtered through your mind and changed from the stuff it actually is to the stuff your brain understands; it is no longer the actual but the interpreted. We have no subjective way to show any of the stuff we experience actually maps onto the actual, it just isn't possible.

While I do not doubt the effect of time dilation, I have serious doubts about our capabilities to test and measure it. When you take a clock up into a plane and fly it around, a lot of environmental factors change besides speed over time, several of which could be responsible for an error of such a small magnitude.

Rembar, go back to the video and listen at about 3:22. He says "the amygdala says this is not a safe place for birth... and the process of labour shuts down voluntarily until a safe haven can be found to birth"

He doesn't say the amygdala shuts down, but the process of labour does. He is absolutely correct in saying this, because when a woman experiences fear in labour, adrenalin neutralises oxytocin, which causes contractions to come to a screeching halt.

Later he says "the amygdala shuts down the system", meaning the system of birth and the interplay of hormones that I just described.

I have also been involved in many births, as a doula, and a brief stint as a trainee midwife and as a mother. I can tell you from my experience in all of these situations, that when a woman is afraid, her labour is sabotaged.

I can also tell you from my experience of birthing in a hospital, that hospitals can make a woman terrified. Routine procedures like putting an IV insert into her wrist upon arrival "just in case you need to have a caesarian" do nothing to send a positive message that she is going to be able to deliver with ease.

Telling a woman that her baby is in fetal distress because "It's not moving enough (prior to the onset of established labour), and telling her that "If you don't get it out today, chances are it will have an apgar score of 4 or less and its survival will be compromised" is using absolutely disgraceful fear tactics and is the kind of lies women are told, to get them to agree to hospital procedures like inducing labour at 10 days past the due date.

My amygdala serves me well in remembering these words, because the birth of my little girl was one of the most devastating days of my life. Not because she was in distress (she had apgars of 9 and 10), not because she was born with compromised well-being, she was perfectly healthy, but because birthing her was like going into battle.

We had to fight for the right to birth her naturally throughout the entire labour. Eight hours into established and difficult labour (because let me tell you, synthetic pitocin is no party. My cervix tore from the force of its unnaturally rapid dilation) the good doctor wanted to speed things up with an IV!

I'm happy to say that Dag was an amazing advocate for me, and we staved off the lions and did the rest of the labour naturally.

So, if you have any more questions about why hospitals are not a safe place to birth for the happy and healthy, just forward them to me, I'd be happy to tell you details of not-so-lucky women.

In reply to your comment:
“Deathcow, I'm not sure how closely you read into my previous comment, but I'm not talking about his conclusions. I agree to a large extent with his larger social and economic reasoning for why hospitals push women towards surgical procedures and chemically-induced contractions to speed up births. But that's no excuse for scientifically inaccurate claims. He's wrong. There's no two ways about it. Unless of course, in the middle of all those births, you witnessed some poor woman's amygdala shutting down and stopping her contractions in the middle of labor because a hospital setting scared her.”

Rembar, go back to the video and listen at about 3:22. He says "the amygdala says this is not a safe place for birth... and the process of labour shuts down voluntarily until a safe haven can be found to birth"

He doesn't say the amygdala shuts down, but the process of labour does. He is absolutely correct in saying this, because when a woman experiences fear in labour, adrenalin neutralises oxytocin, which causes contractions to come to a screeching halt.

Later he says "the amygdala shuts down the system", meaning the system of birth and the interplay of hormones that I just described.

I have also been involved in many births, as a doula, and a brief stint as a trainee midwife and as a mother. I can tell you from my experience in all of these situations, that when a woman is afraid, her labour is sabotaged.

I can also tell you from my experience of birthing in a hospital, that hospitals can make a woman terrified. Routine procedures like putting an IV insert into her wrist upon arrival "just in case you need to have a caesarian" do nothing to send a positive message that she is going to be able to deliver with ease.

Telling a woman that her baby is in fetal distress because "It's not moving enough (prior to the onset of established labour), and telling her that "If you don't get it out today, chances are it will have an apgar score of 4 or less and its survival will be compromised" is using absolutely disgraceful fear tactics and is the kind of lies women are told, to get them to agree to hospital procedures like inducing labour at 10 days past the due date.

My amygdala serves me well in remembering these words, because the birth of my little girl was one of the most devastating days of my life. Not because she was in distress (she had apgars of 9 and 10), not because she was born with compromised well-being, she was perfectly healthy, but because birthing her was like going into battle.

We had to fight for the right to birth her naturally throughout the entire labour. Eight hours into established and difficult labour (because let me tell you, synthetic prostaglandin is no party. My cervix tore from the force of its unnaturally rapid dilation) the good doctor wanted to speed things up with an IV of more oxytocin!

I'm happy to say that Dag was an amazing advocate for me, and we staved off the lions and did the rest of the labour naturally.

So, if you have any more questions about why hospitals are not a safe place to birth for the happy and healthy, just forward them to me, I'd be happy to tell you details of not-so-lucky women whose stories make mine look like a picnic.

Thanks for the extra detail, rusty. One question: I read somewhere that the classic reason poker players wore sunglasses was to mask the way their pupils dilated when they saw something unusual/interesting/pleasant. Do real players actually look for pupil dilation as a tell? I would think that the low light in a classic poker game would keep everyone's pupils dilated anyway most of the time, and that this trick would work only if the room was reasonably well lit.

- checks plastiquemonkey's IV drip, checks pupil dilation, administers injection of Acetyl-alpha-methylfentanyl, leaves room taking black lunch box with him -