Posted by gary g on January 27, 1999 at 16:20:19:
In Reply to: Diff meds/cluster victim physical traits (?) posted by Loretta (wife of sufferer) on January 27, 1999 at 09:19:47:
the physical trait business is out the window - your Dr has old info (even if the book it's in is new)
most of this comes from a couple articles written in 1950s by one Dr with a limited # of patients - those became the basis for way too many rewrites over the years (remember - the only original material is the actual research material in peer-reviewed journals - textbooks, etc are just rewrites, often through many repeats & revisions, and based on info that has long been rplaced, improved or proved false
this culture places WAY too much emphasis on "personality" (ie: whois "allowed" to even say anything on an issue) and way too little on "principle" (ie: the material on its own merits, no mater who's saying it)
BTW: same set of articles says it is a 99.9% male problem
try telling that to the 20% of CH patients who are much prettier and talk with a higher voice than the rest of us
there IS a possibilty (still "way out there" on a confidence factor basis, that there may be a general ethnic/regional background contributing factor to this - not where you live now, but how closely your cumulative LONGTERM family background is related to latitude of origin
the KNOWN high rates of alcoholism, clinical depression, suicide, etc in upper temperate and high latitudes is WELL documented, and it is now KNOWN that it is more than a simple emotional reaction to the shorter winter days, etc.
It has to do with a much more complex relationship of solar light cycles to the human body -
makes sense - man is the only creature that has spread out dramatically from his evolutionary origins (equatorial and lower temperate regions) and survived .........
this is actually getting back to an "old" science called Climatology, which was popular in late 19th early 20th centuries......
but they didn't have enough hard scientific data to back up the theories and it got pushed aside by changes in political, economic & moral trends as the world "shrunk" due to technology. . . . . it has been "reemerging" in the last 10 years or so as "environmental physiology", "place basis ecology" etc .......
find & stick with a GOOD Dr, but also keep doing your own homework - (part of judging a"good" doc is if he's willing to listen to your ideas) -
get on the Web - surf, surf & surf somemore - there are now 1000s of postings, all over the place on CH - THIS SITE IS THE BEST AND THE STARTING POINT
we need to BE CRITICAL of the info sources as we go - DON'T base anything on what I say, or any other INDIVIDUAL PERSON whether a doc or not (I'm not) - use individual theories as CLUES to keep digging
this won't be simple - but we CAN find the reason
(too much work ? don't know how ? .....it's actually EASY to do once you learn a few techniques (buy & read a good book on online researching)
and as far as the time goes - well, how serious are we about finding help ? inevitably, we are all ultimately responsible for dealing with our own cases, our motivation to do so is 1000s of times greater than anyone else
and remember:
"To every complicated problem there is a simple solution - and it's usually wrong."