Thursday, May 28, 2009

A Nation of Pantywaists

We are doomed.

17 comments:

  1. "Symptoms can range from mild weakness to serious paralysis, say Greek researchers who conducted a review of people who drank between two to nine liters of cola a day."

    9 liters a day! I would think that much WATER would cause problems.

    Protocol for the 21st century:

    Take two aspirin, stop drinking Coca-cola, and go to the emergency room.

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  2. andrew,
    nail hit squarely on head. have actually taken care of a few intellectually challenged young folks who came to see me with the dizzies and the 'heart jumping around in my chest' problem after drinking diet mountain dew (or rock star or red bull) to excess. now when i see young folks with the above sx i always ask about caffeine and over-the-counter weight loss supplements. how could it be dangerous if it's over the counter AND herbal?

    anon,
    love idiocracy.

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  3. Maybe we're not doomed. Maybe Darwin's theory is merely working well....

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  4. dear liz,
    and that's just the problem, Darwin was wrong about humans, the same people who drink 8 liters of soda a day are the ones who pump out 8 kids and have you pay for them. therefore the movie 'idiocracy' is probably closer to the truth than us evolving into superior beings.

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  5. How do you even consume 8 liters of coke daily for seven months? What happened to their brains that this somehow seemed like a good idea? I'm sure they were completely shocked when they found out what the problem was too.

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  6. In partial defense of the idiots--I notice the article specifically mentioned pregnant women. For a couple of months of each of my pregnancies, I have a very hard time keep down anything but grape juice or soda. I have spent a couple of weeks living on those and not much else. Yeah, I know carbonation and fructose should exacerbate and not improve nausea and vomiting, but pregnancy is weird. I'm also on asthma meds and am therefore at slightly higher risk anyway of developing hypokalemia, which I have developed in the past after being treated for asthma attacks. I'll be more careful with the fructose in the future, but when pregnant, sometimes one needs whatever calories one can get.

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  7. What was the HGA1C of these patients!? Unless it was diet cola....

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  8. Disgruntled Internist5:51 AM, May 29, 2009

    I have actually been consulted for unexplained hypokalemia in a few pregnant patients. I'll have to query more thoroughly about cola and caffeine consumption the next time I see this. Of course the idea of a thorough history is something you ER docs can't fathom. Interesting article, actually.

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  9. ..and we just KNOW that the kid fed this crap in utero is not likely to be another Einstein, but will join the legions of fat, dull American children spending their days chuggin cola and using their pasty, puffy thumbs to play video games for 15 hours a day. And, as 911 pointed out, this child will have a half dozen half-siblings and we will be footing the bill for the entire mess!

    PAttie, RN

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  10. Holy crap! I love my diet coke but can't imagine drinking that much in a week, let alone in one day.

    My oldest child is 11. She tells me that kids in her class bring red bull with their lunches. Silly me, I make her drink water. Very uncool.

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  11. D.I.,
    I don't need to know whether the octogenarian you sent to the ED ate key lime pie at Luby's last Tuesday or Jello (I have actually listened to a couple argue over this in the ED,during an MI) After seeing over 50,000 patients over the past 15 years, I leave the extended history to you guys (a cray supercomputer is usually needed to determine interactions between 20 meds-the permutations and combinations are mind boggling). I can usually tell sick versus not sick in 5 minutes. I have also developed a keen ability to tell whether someone is a douchebag or not just by one snide comment.

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  12. 8 liters of soda =?= 8 kids
    I see a study somewhere in this.

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  13. I think the time is right for some researcher to score a big NIH grant to study whether or not the consumption of HUGE amounts of other water containing, diuretic containing (caffeine), or diarrhea causing (fructose) products can cause electrolyte abnormalities.

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  14. Back to Darwin's theory.....soda drinkers and pumpers out of 8 kids who will also drink soda and play video games and develop diabetes and heart disease at an early age....ultimately these lifespans will be shortened....it may take a few generations but I think there may be hope yet.

    But, I'm no scientist.

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  15. dear liz,

    i'm no scientist either but i did major in biology. here's the flaw in your reasoning...

    1. the sole criteria for success in darwinian evolution is 'fitness'.
    2. fitness means your ability to propagate your own genetic blueprint therefore age of death or life-span means nothing, what matters is how many kids you have and at what age you had them and how many kids THEY have etc...
    3. natural selection is the mechanism of evolution and in the animal kingdom 'fitness' seems to relate fairly positively with what we would consider 'good health'. not so with humans, because of our ability to overcome the environment.

    so, if you are a sixteen year old gang-banger and you father 20 illegitimate chillins, but get 'kilt' when you are twenty, you are, by definition, more successful than a man who dies at age 100 with one son or daughter (unless the son in question is twice as shizzle-tastic as the gang-banger).

    so, the idiots who drink 8 liters of caffeinated, high-fructose containing bubbly water a day may die when they are 24, but i will bet a large amount of money that they will not die childless. if the apple falls near the tree then baby has babies when he or she is 16 and you can see that we not enter a geometric rather than arithmatic progression.

    and even though you are right that the mom in question and all of her brood will probably not reach sixty, they will almost certainly all reach the age of reproduction, which is not the same thing as the age of consent, which is, increasingly, whatever you want it to be dude, as long as you are cool with it .

    if darwin is right then, in america, "idiocracy" may be painfully close to the truth of our future. it's worth a watch if you like goofball, crude, slapstic humor like i do, but the point it's making should scare you to death.

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  16. I reluctantly do subscribe to the cockroach theory. Which (sigh) means you're right.

    Sometimes, I'm so glad that I won't live forever.

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  17. I can't imagine drinking 9 liters of anything in a day.

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