Who is My Neighbor Voting For?
Who is My Neighbor Voting For?
Clearly this was a sign. But what exactly did it say?
Welcome back to your weekly dose of wisdom and wellness, aiming to help you make tomorrow a little better than today. Below you’ll find informative and actionable health and wellness articles by our team of experts. First, this week’s newsletter-only tidbit, with an emphasis on our promise to offer some wisdom…
The other day, I was jogging along a neighborhood street. In the distance, an open garage door revealed a large rectangular sign on the back wall. It was blue, with big white letters. One word. I wasn’t wearing my glasses, so it was all fuzzy, and I could only guess at what the word might be.
I’d recently met the neighbor, a big, burly guy who drives a giant Ford F-250 pickup truck. Seemed like a nice guy. Don’t know him beyond a handshake and a few pleasantries.
But I’ve seen signs like this in other garages around our very conservative-minded neighborhood.
I guessed it said TRUMP.
I focused on my running. Then as I got closer, the angle of view changed, and I could see only the right half of the sign.
Still no glasses on, and my eyes bouncing up and down, and my mind focused more on running than reading, the letters were a mere jumble in my mind. But I registered what might’ve been an A, an M, and another A. Ah, KAMALA, I thought. How interesting.
What turned out to be even more interesting and utterly ironic—what I realized afterward—is that I was engaging in a self-deceptive human mental foible called the illusion of information adequacy, a newly theorized form of self-deception that I explained in a story I’d published literally moments before I went for the run. Here’s how I’d explained this mental glitch:
Say you get impatient and honk at a driver stopped in front of you. Then you realize they’re waiting for someone to cross the street. You didn’t fully consider why the driver might be stopped; you reacted without key information. Or, as we non-scientists put it: You went off half-cocked.
The illusion of information adequacy is one of many cognitive biases, common mental shortcuts that help us sift through the flood of information that comes our way, “so that we can make decisions quickly, feel good about ourselves, and shuffle along with life, not even realizing the ignorance we’ve blissed ourselves with.”
During my run, I wasn’t thinking about what I’d just written. I was out there clearing my head, finding my zen, focusing on my breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. But it soon became clear I’d made two consecutive assumptions based on half-assed information.
When I finally came around the bend I couldn’t not look at the entire, huge blue sign on the back of this guy’s garage wall. The word emblazoned in giant white capital letters, clear as image at the top of this page, was … drum roll please… YAMAHA. So, yeah, I have no idea who my neighbor is voting for. I know nothing about his politics. But now I know he loves side-by-side ORVs (I caught a glimpse of one in his garage, presumably a Yamaha).
And while he doesn’t know it, his neighbor is just a wee bit more intellectually humble now, having fallen prey to the very cognitive bias he’d just warned the world about. Here’s the story I published moments before all this happened:
Other Wise & Well writers dug into other important topics this week, providing our usual science-backed actionable advice. Here are some of their most interesting stories:
Air Pollution’s Surprising Contribution to Acne, Wrinkles and Age Spots
We think of air pollution as bad for our lungs, and it is. But it’s bad for skin, too. This dermatologist pores over the many ways skin is damaged and defaced by particulate matter and noxious chemicals that seep into your pores. Then she tells you how to protect your body’s largest organ (yes, your skin) against bad air.
The environment significantly impacts those two square meters of integument that wrap your body’s organs. For instance, dry, low-humid air can parch your skin, leaving it more vulnerable to inflammation, while high humidity can lead to sweat-pooling, triggering acne. Introducing air pollution into the equation adds more harm, like an accelerant. But, just like with any catalyst, you can take steps to slow or mitigate the reaction.
—Annie Foley
Medicare vs. Medicare Advantage: Navigating the Thicket of Thorny Options
Open enrollment runs Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, when seniors can sign up or change their plans, choosing between government-run Medicare and for-profit Medicare Advantage plans. Figuring it all out is a nightmare full of tricks and traps. And if you make bad choices, you could be stuck with them forever. Here’s everything you need to know from a pair of objective experts.
We are health care policy experts who study Medicare, and even we find it complicated. One of us recently helped a relative enroll in Medicare for the first time. She’s healthy, has access to health insurance through her employer and doesn’t regularly take prescription drugs. Even in this straightforward scenario, the number of choices were overwhelming.
—Grace McCormack and Melissa Garrido
Tolerance to Medications Isn’t Always Bad
It’s a strange word, tolerance. A very good thing when it comes to human relationships (see my note about wisdom above). Not so good with medicine. Thing is, the word is highly misunderstood by patients. Anyone taking meds on an ongoing basis will want to understand, for example, the difference between tolerance and sensitization, and what it all means for efficacy, addiction and possible need for updosing.
Tolerance comes up often in my work treating adults with ADHD. The medications most effective for ADHD are stimulants such as Adderall and Ritalin. Patients often ask: “Doc, am I gonna need to keep upping the dose?” “Will this make me addicted?”
—John Kruse MD, PhD
In Chronic Pain? Be a Pain Warrior
I endured chronic back pain for several decades, and I long assumed it would never end. My pain was nothing like what some people go through, however. For many folks, including the writer Randall H. Duckett, the pain is unrelenting and unimaginably awful. So I very much appreciate Randall’s message: Don’t give up on finding a solution. I found mind, through yoga, at around age 60. There is always hope. And he’s got 7 pieces of specific advice, including be assertive, find ways to be grateful for the good things in life, and always be curious…
New developments in chronic pain care happen all the time, some revolutionary and some not-so-much. Researchers are hard at work on new interventions, medicines, and techniques for treating enduring hurt. If one seems to apply to you, don’t hesitate to ask your doctors about it
—Randall H. Duckett
A Supplement With a Knack for Strange Effects
When I learn about a supplement I hadn’t heard of, the marketing seems mostly hype, the benefits questionable, side effects left unspoken. So when I read that N-acetylcysteine is taken for everything from ADHD and OCD to depression, plus cystic fibrosis and chronic lung disease, I was naturally suspicious. Neuroscientist/psychiatrist John Kruse has his doubts, too, but he also points out that it has saved lives. So he did a deeeeep dive.
I hope we’ve helped make your tomorrow a little better than today. If you like what you see, please follow Wise & Well and/or subscribe to this newsletter. If you’re interested in writing for us, see our quality standards and requirements.
Cheers,
Rob
“It's an universal law-- intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.”
—Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn