Hey, why don’t you talk to my close friend from high school about Chinese Restaurant Syndrome? Oh yeah, you can’t. She’s dead. Anaphylaxis’ll do that to ya.
You asshole. You utter and complete asshole. What the HELL gives you the right to decide which diseases are “imaginary” or not? So, you know someone who thinks she has an MSG sensitivity, but appears to be mistaken? What does that prove? You want to tell someone who gets an itchy rash from wool that they’re just imagining it?
And, yeah, damn right “behavioral illnesses” like ADD and alcoholism are “touchy subjects.” Could that be…maybe…because the people who have to deal with these problems are fucking sick and tired of jerks like you wondering why they don’t just get over it?
So, why don’t you tell us which illnesses and conditions are acceptable to you? Is is okay to be diabetic? How about gout? Is that okay?
Wow. I’d like to introduce Crafter_Man to my “imaginary” problems, like the allergic sinus headaches that keep me on Sudafed for six months out of the year, or the alcoholism that kept me hostage in hell for several years.
My sister is “allergic to wool”, in that she is allergic to the lanolin present in the wool. She breaks out in red blotches when exposed to it in wool or in lotions that contain it. And the article you linked, Crafter_Man, says that “Many people do have a true contact allergy to lanolin”.
Yeah, some people are just silly/misinformed/mis-stating what their real situations are, but that’s no reason to dismiss everyone who claims an allergy.
And regarding the question in the original thread regarding environmental sensitivity, I had a colleague in grad school who couldn’t sit near anyone with serious perfume on (she had to sit across the room from my advisor, who was an avid user), among other things, or I’d see her break out in red blotches as well. Some people may use this as a crutch but I’ve seen at least one case of real physical symptoms occurring in reaction to chemicals.
Sorry to hijack this very worthy pitting but, Robin, have you tried Nasalcort or Bacanase? These are steroid sprays than helped me a great deal. I have an imaginary adverse reaction to antihistimines so Sudafed won’t work for me.
I’ve tried Vancenase, and that sort of worked, but not as well as Sudafed. Actually, the best stuff I’ve used was Seldane, but it’s been off the market for several years now.
I don’t see that Crafter_Man has claimed that these symptoms don’t exist at all - only that they are imaginary in many cases. This is undoubtedly true.
I think it was B.F. Skinner - or perhaps some followers of his - who demonstrated that pigeons can get “superstitious”, in that they would tend to associate random events together and believe that they consisted of cause and effect. So too do people sometimes make erroneous associations between Event A and Result B and think they are connected when they are not.
I know a woman whose 2 year old daughter used to get skin rash outbreaks, and her pediatrician suggested that she might be allergic to wheat. She took the kid off wheat. The outbreaks continued, but in every instance the woman was able to find some food with indeterminate ingredients that she suspected retroactively had contained wheat, thus reinforcing her belief. Eventually she took the girl to a top-line allergist who tested her and found no allergies to anything at all. So the child went back on wheat, with no ill effects. (Over the years the rashes eventually went away).
In adult humans it is a lot worse than pigeons, because people will tend to feel things if they have a strong sense that this is what they should be feeling. Particularly things like itches. So a belief in an allergy can be self-fulfilling.
On another note, I also tend to agree with CM about “behavioral diseases”, though I note here that it is probably mostly a matter of definition. You can probably define any aspect of intellect and personality as a “behavioral disease”. Is being a jerk a disease? On the whole, I think the recent move towards defining behaviors as diseases is harmful, because it removes responsibility from the individual. But this is just part of the larger affliction of psychology over the last 100 years or so, reaching greater and greater heights.
Ditto what IzzyR said. Note the following from Crafter_Man’s OP:
I’m pretty sure he was trying to avoid confrontration such as this thread. I believe that such things as ADD and ADHD are highly overdiagnosed and get much grief for that belief, but that doesn’t make them imaginary diseases by a long shot. Because of that, I would hesitate to discuss them in an imaginary disease thread. I might tack on a side note like the OP did and say that I prefer not to discuss them for fear of people coming into the thread and getting into a debate because of such a touchy issue.
Additionally, I know far too many people who claim certain allergies and hypersensitivies because they’re too lazy to say they don’t like foods/for attention. I am well aware some are really allergic to such foods, but lots of people are lying.
He called them “imaginary diseases.” I don’t know how you can get much clearer than that.
I don’t disagree that there are people out there who overstate or even invent illnesses in a ploy for attention or sympathy. I think we can all agree on that. But it’s not logical to say that because some people overstate their symptoms that the illnesses must be imaginary.
Unfortunately, when people have that attitude, they tend to disregard peoples’ statements they can not be exposed to a certain substance with the thought that “what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Well, that attitude put a wonderful, beautiful, talented girl into her grave. You can’t get more hurt than dead.
I see this all the time when dealing with my own sensitivity. If I consume aspartame (Nutra-sweet) I get a headache. If I tell people that I can’t have aspartame, they sometimes assume that I’m just being persnickety or that I don’t like the taste of it or that I’m just trying to avoid it because it’s “artificial.” (I’m a bit of an earthy-crunchy type.) Well no. If I drink a Diet Coke, it feels like I’m having an ice pick jammed into my cerebellum. Life-threatening? No. Intensely unpleasant? Yes. My body is telling me that I shouldn’t consume the stuff. I’ve had people try and sneak it to me after I’ve told them I can’t have it–I think they’re trying to trick me, so they can say “ha ha! There was Nutra-sweet in that, and you’re fine!” Gee thanks. So, what am I supposed to do?
And I’m not denying that there is a psychosomatic element to some sensitivities. I dislike Splenda. I find it repulsive. I don’t know that I have any physical sensitivities to it, but my reaction to another aspartame is strong enough that the whole artificial sweetener category repulses me.
If he didn’t want to discuss “behavioral illnesses,” why did he bring it up? The first part of the OP was clearly referring to allergies and sensitivities. I’m not sure what alcoholism and ADD have to do with lanolin allergies and “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome?”
It seems that he was just looking to get a dig in, and be able to say “hey, I said I didn’t want to talk about that!” Maybe he has a reasonable explanation. If so, I’m looking forward to hearing it.
Green Bean, I have no idea what his intentions were. The best I can do is hazard a guess, which I did. I also read the part in one of your previous posts about people trying to sneak aspartame on you. Fuck them. What you have there is a viable reason not to consume a food, and they seem stuck in the mindset that “anyone who says they can’t have a food is just being picky”. That’s a regrettable and ignorant attitude, and I’m with you in ranting about such people.
In some cases they are imaginary. That is not the same as saying that the entire disease is imaginary.
If someone is convinced that they have cancer but really don’t, they are suffering from an imaginary disease. This does not imply that the entire concept of cancer is completely imaginary, nor that all who claim to have cancer are imagining it.
I offer cancer only as an example, because it is probably very unusual for people to imagine that they have cancer. It is much more common in the case of allergic reactions, for reasons described in my previous post. But this does not imply that all who claim to be suffering from allergies are imagining it.
Sometimes there can be signs however. If a person has an allergic reaction only when they know they’ve eaten or come into contact with the substance, that would indicate an imagination at work. This is the case with CM’s Chinese-Food acquaintance. Or if there is an imbalance between medical science’s estimate of prevalence of a disease and the number of people who think they have it, it would indicate that many of these people are wrong (though it would be hard to tell which ones).
Actually such cases would not be imaginary - they would be lies. I am talking about people who genuinely believe that they are suffering from whatever disease or allergy it is that they are talking about.
Absolutely. I would reserve such opinions for message boards and general chit-chat - meanwhile go along with whatever people say.
I had a cousin who insisted a few years back that he could not eat anything made with oils (or something like that). His mother (a psychologist) was convinced that it was all in his head. He said it wasn’t. I don’t know how that got resolved, or if it ever did, but when he came to us he would give us a list of things that he did or did not eat and we went along. (Of course, he didn’t come that often, so it wasn’t as much of a hassle as his mother had to deal with).
If he meant to discuss “people who imagine they have certain diseases but really don’t”, then that’s one thing. If that is what he meant he surely phrased his OP poorly, because it does imply that the diseases themselves are imaginary. I hope this is just a case of bad wording.
I am also unsure why he included “Behavioral diseases” if he did not wish to discuss them. It is tiring to have to explain to people that ADD is real (or any other disease people don’t believe you have). In any case, if you are not my doctor, then you don’t get to tell me what disease I do or do not have.
This may be a shocker to some folks, but the idea that ADD and alcoholism are diseases is a subject of debate. There are those who believe they are, and there are those who believe they’re not. I’m in the latter camp. Don’t like it? Tough.
Same goes for “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” and “allergic reaction to wool.” There is no evidence the former exists (to the best of my knowledge). As for wool… yes, I know some people are allergic to lanolin. But I was talking about the wool itself. And no one is allergic to wool. Zip. Zero.
Green Bean has stated that she knows someone who died from it, so I would guess that’s a start. But I would also guess it doesn’t matter if there was evidence or not, since there is plenty of evidence that ADD is a real disease and that doesn’t seem to matter to you.
Yes, some people claim they have diseases they don’t have. That doesn’t mean the disease does not exist. I don’t see what you are trying to accomplish here - other than tell people they don’t have a disease. Excuse me, are you my Doctor?