Fire-Ass Lectures: Medicine and Beyond

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Framing: What You Emphasize is What They Hear

  Framing is the phenomenon where our perception of a choice changes depending on how the information is presented, even when the underlying facts are the same. Imagine a new drug for hypertension. In clinical trials, it lowered blood pressure to a healthy level in 90% of patients. We could say: "This drug is 90% effective!" and it would be seen as a triumph. But we could just as accurately say: "It fails to work in 1 out of every 10 patients." Suddenly, that same drug seems a little less impressive. Nothing about the data changed—only the story around it. This effect extends well beyond numbers. Take side effects: we could frame them as "most people experience none," or as "a significant minority do." Both are technically true. But the emotional and clinical weight those statements carry i...
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Energy Utilization: Lessons from "Brain Energy"

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  Hey team, I recently read/listened to the book “Brain Energy” by Chris Palmer MD, who discusses energy utilization and metabolism in the brain as the common pathway for mental illness. I first heard about this theory and book last year while talking to a pharmacist working in psychiatry during a conversation about the biology of depression and mental illness. I have continued to read up on modern psychiatry and some of the biology behind it, which I have discussed a few times on this site. I decided to read this book as a healthy segue into learning more about symptom burden and treatment. Dr. Chris Palmer describes how all mental health conditions can be traced back to mitochondria, metabolism, and energy utilization. Initially, I thought this theory was overly reductionistic, comparable to the chemical imbalance theory, and therefore had only limited value. However, the more I read, the more comprehensive I found it to be. I realized that this theory is not reductionistic at al...
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The Misplaced Faith in Nurture

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