When one of my coworkers sends a message that they're staying home because they don't feel well, I always tell them, "thank you for being considerate of the rest of us."
General Sickness
- Thread starter AgronAlum
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When one of my coworkers sends a message that they're staying home because they don't feel well, I always tell them, "thank you for being considerate of the rest of us."
For my position, I can do 99.9% of my work from home without any drop off. There's zero reason to go to the office if I have even the slightest of colds. Still though, the cultural pressure exists. Going back in before you're fully recovered, etc.
This was like tenish years ago and was just a theory iirc.
I work someplace where the leadership would knowingly come in with Covid during the heat of Covid.
Unsolicited advice/commentary here - if bf goes better second time, recognize that her time and effort and pain are not free. I get you on formula, especially this era of shortages. It can also be a real mind **** if you are newly postpartum trying to maintain production and your body won't comply. Combined with c-sections, I can guarantee she's already thought about the fact that in another time, she and her babies are probably non existent. So keep an eye on mental health. And if she's pumping and feeding overnight, do your damndest to see that she never has to wash bottles and parts. Good luck, I found 1 to 2 easier than 0 to 1 (and sounds like same age gap) but results vary, or so I hear.
Also, silverettes. I don't understand how the woo works, but it does. Eta: and tell her to have them add ferritin testing to a blood draw. Especially with a past c/s. It's a cheap test and easy to correct if low but not standard part of anemia testing. I'm convinced it impacted production, too. Now Friendly will be after me on my non scientific last paragraph
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That’s not us though and not any place I’ve ever worked. Some folks just like coming to work. I hate them
Actually, I presented my example to show the paradox. Case in point, how can science then say definitively that "X" does not cause cancer? They can't. Or, at the very least, they shouldn't.
I was joking there. I like to think I've been pretty good at those things. She tried everything with our first and just couldn't produce enough to make any sort of meaningful difference. She tried much longer than I owuld have, that's for sure.
And, I hate to say it, but at one time neither did tobacco or asbestos. Suffice it to say there are plenty of things with carcinogenic properties identified in other countries, but not here. The MO here, however, is to react when it reaches critical public perception. Case in point: the potential harm of wireless radiation. Using your same argument for cancer, some people are not affected, but many are. The U.S. has not done an independent study of the effects since the mid 90's. I think the fcc.gov site does a good job of deflecting the need, but the fact still stands. That's 30 years. I'm in technology. That is the jurassic era.
It’s a slightly different age in both testing and communication now than it was then. We knew smoking caused cancer way back in the 40’s but alot of people just didn’t care plus there was the tobacco lobby. Not discounting your point, we are always making advancements in understanding and somethings you simply need enough time to pass to determine long term effects. There is also the point that a great deal of things have carcinogenic properties but people consume them regularly, just look at grilled food or BBQ.
That’s why it’s so difficult to give an answer on what caused a particular cancer, we live in a world with so many known carcinogens that it could be any number of things or just good old fashioned genetic lottery.
I’m not going to get into wireless radiation with you because I know from your earlier posts it’s a very personally sensitive subject.
My advice is don’t get too worked up about it (and I say that as someone in the general research area).
As for breastfeeding, even a little bit supplemented with formula is probably better than straight formula.
Now with all that said…..
One of the things we know about health promoting effects of breast milk is that it contains specific types of carbohydrates called HMOs (short for human milk oligosaccharides). As far as we know, these HMOs are present in human breast milk, and maybe some primate breast milks, but essentially nowhere else in nature. Remarkably, there are a limited set of bacteria that have evolved to feed on these HMOs, allowing these bacteria to dominate the intestinal bacteria community in breastfed infants. These bacteria tend to be ones that we think of as ‘healthy’, since their presence is usually associated with better health outcomes. This really seems to be a remarkable case of evolution, where we’ve evolved to ‘feed’, via human breastmilk, specific health-promoting bacteria in an infant’s intestine.
Due to this research, nearly all formula sold in the US is now supplemented with HMOs. You can at least rest a bit easier by checking for ‘supplemented with HMOs’ on your formula.
(As always, I am not a physician, please don’t take anything I say as medical advice, do your own research and consult your own physician, etc etc)
With all due respect, medicine and biology in general are infinitely more difficult to work out causation compared to the perspective of human-developed technology like software and hardware (even though they all get lumped under the umbrella of ‘science and technology).
There are simply too many variables to work with in human biology, combined with ethical constraints on how we do research.
Using pure ‘cause and effect’ language, @FriendlySpartan raised an important point - can you really tell an individual that smoking causes his lung cancer? No, you can’t. Why? Well, many people smoked a pack a day for 60 years and never got cancer. Also, many people get lung cancer who never smoked. I can tell you with GREAT CERTAINTY that there have existed at some point, some individuals who smoked for 20 years and got lung cancer and yet smoking did NOT cause their lung cancer.
Biomedical science tends to work at the population level and with ‘risk’, for all the reasons above and probably many more.
I’m always happy to discuss issues around science, medicine, and society, and I will genuinely try to pursue a good faith conversation if you are interested
Here’s a golden rule for consuming news related to ‘science’ and health:
Never read any headlines in mass media about cancer or nutrition. That stuff is clickbait. If you read that stuff in mass media you are not getting a fair picture of science.
If you want better content related to the latest in science and health, try long form magazines like the Atlantic, New Yorker, or maybe even scientific American. Even the real scientific journals like Science and Nature have editorial sections written to be somewhat accessible to a reasonably-educated non-scientist.
Thank you. The emphasis on cancer is still my exact point. Different people react different ways. In regards to the 'paradox' I'm referring to: maybe I'm missing your point. Are you saying, science 'can' claim something is not carcinogenic, but the medical profession is still allowed to say "we don't know what causes a specific person's cancer"?
To your last question - yes, that is an accurate way to state it.
We say something ‘causes’ cancer if it statistically increases the frequency of cancer cases in a large population. Edited to add: if some factor has been studied in a large population, and found to have no statistical impact on cancer risk within that population, we would say (with the caveat: ‘to the best of our current knowledge’), that factor doesn’t cause cancer (within a population). That doesn’t rule out that that factor may have caused some individual’s cancer case.
That does not mean we can state conclusively that an individual who had that cancer-causing factor and had that cancer actually had that factor ‘cause’ the cancer.
Regarding your frustration with your medical team - once you have a cancer diagnosis their job is to figure out the best treatment plan going forward. You may have felt they brushed off your questions about what ‘caused’ the cancer - sorry if it felt that way.
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And family gatherings. I don't know how many times over the years family members still showed up for gatherings even if they didn't feel good, had been throwing up or fevering a few hours before. Since Covid my sister & I have been determined to make sure everyone is healthy, mainly for our aging parents. But our Dad is the worst and now (tries to) hide or gloss over if he or Mom hasn't felt well.
I worked in healthcare (pre-covid) and had one coworker that consistently came to work sick. She had plenty of PTO but didn't want to use it for sick days. One time she sat in the break room wrapped in a blanket and would only get up to help if no one else was around to jump in. We kept telling her to go home, but she wouldn't. We finally told our supervisor, who sent her home. She still showed up sick a couple times after that, but tried to play off that she was ok and didn't just sit in the break room.
Youngest is home sick today.
I could blame the illness on school kids or licking grocery carts
But I'm blaming this thread for unleashing bad juju
I could blame the illness on school kids or licking grocery carts
But I'm blaming this thread for unleashing bad juju
I’ve been saying out loud since ~Christmas that we’ve had an easy winter with the kids. So far so good.
Probably setting us up for severe flu cases in March (or maybe April when we plan to travel).
