You’re not going deaf. It’s your TV.

We use closed captions when watching most TV shows (we don’t use it for Jeopardy and a few other shows). We just can’t understand what people are saying, especially the dialog on British shows. We assumed our problem was advanced age.

 I discovered, in a recent New York Times article, that 50 percent of Americans and most young people use subtitles, especially on streaming services such as Netflix. According to the article, the main problem is the speakers on your TV. Because TVs keep getting thinner and more minimal in design, their speakers are tiny and crammed into the back or bottom of the display where they blast sound away from your ears instead of toward them. One solution is to buy separate speakers, called soundbars. They cost $80 to $900.

 

But the problem is more complex than just bad speakers. To begin with, there’s the technical aspects of mixing, calibrating, and compressing sounds that must meet different specifications for different devices. There’s also the creative trend of “realism” in filmmaking. That is, actors no longer use “elocution” techniques, such as distinct pronunciation and articulation. These speech patterns would sound phony to us. Realistic dialog is often fast paced, mumbled, and accented. What’s more, music and other sounds compete with the actors’ speech, and darker imagery makes it more difficult to see mouth movements.

No wonder we—and most people we know—use closed captions.

Now, for your edification, I looked up what “closed” refers to. Here’s the answer: Closed captions can be turned on and off by the users. Open captions cannot.

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

How stress affects your gut

Scientists have recently found two pathways by which psychological stress causes inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Under stress the brain releases a hormone called CRH that sets off a chain reaction: first, it stimulates the pituitary gland, which then stimulates the adrenal glands on the kidneys, which then release hormones called glucocorticoids. What happens next is rather complicated. Suffice it to say that glucocorticoids induce an inflammatory response in the gut and also impair the movement of food through the gut.  

The reason your gut is so sensitive to stress is that it has its own nervous system, called the enteric nervous system (ENS). The  ENS is a web of sensory and motor neurons embedded in the wall of the gastrointestinal system. It’s a wide-ranging system that processes information and generates signals that affect other bodily systems. This web of neurons stretches from the lower third of the esophagus right through to the rectum. It’s been estimated that the ENS contains more neurons than the whole of the spinal cord. No wonder our guts are so sensitive to our mental states!

 While people with inflammatory bowel disease are often treated with immunosuppressants such as steroids, researchers believe that psychotherapy and stress-management techniques can play an important role in treating flareups. Even if you don’t have inflammatory bowel disease, you can see why your gut is so sensitive to your mental states. Don’t stress about it!

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

Do nonprofit hospitals deserve their tax exemptions?

 Our nearest hospital, in Santa Cruz, California, was founded in 1941 by the Adrian Dominican Sisters of Adrian, Michigan. Like other hospitals founded by religious organizations, Dominican was expected to focus on relieving the suffering of poor people. In 1988, Dominican—as it is now known—was taken over by Dignity Health to become one of 41 hospitals in that organization, which includes more than 60,000 employees and 10,000 physicians. Big business.

Hospitals are one of the largest industries in the United States, with annual revenues exceeding $1.4 trillion. Nonetheless, roughly 60% of community hospitals, including Dominican, are incorporated as nonprofit institutions, which means that they are tax exempt. To maintain their tax-exempt status, they are required to provide “community benefit,” including charity care, such as providing services for patients unable to pay and making emergency departments available to all people.

The value of tax exemptions for non-profit hospitals was estimated to be $28.1 billion in 2020. Studies have shown that 72 percent of private nonprofit hospitals spent less on community benefits than they received in tax breaks. What’s more, many nonprofit hospitals generate substantial profits from the federal 340B Drug Price Program that was designed to serve low-income patients. The idea was to “buy low” and “sell low.” But hospitals have turned this into a "buy low, sell high" program for well-insured patients. Some hospitals have adopted aggressive revenue-enhancing activities, such as declining to offer charity care to eligible patients and suing patients and garnishing wages because of unpaid medical bills.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find out whether Dominican shirks its community benefit obligations. I do know it’s gotten fancier over the years. For example, it installed a “rehabilitation garden.” Does that benefit the community?

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.

It’s not easy to be a food purist

The term “processed food” has negative connotations. We’re told it’s bad for us. But, as Adam Gopnik notes in a New Yorker article (“Sickening”), what makes something processed rather than preserved is not easy to define. Food has a natural tendency to spoil. Humans have always tried to delay that outcome through cooking, pickling, curing, salting, smoking, and soaking it in brine.

As Gopnik notes, “… it is not always easy to separate prudence from puritanism.” Sauerkraut, which is now a fashionable food, is processed. For that matter, much of our fresh produce is processed by way of breeding. Where do you draw the line? Some purists are scornful of added flavorings. Does that include curried rice, a centuries-old staple of India? And now we have “molecular gastronomy,” which is cuisine, such as transparent noodles, created from the perspective of chemistry. You can get this food at high end restaurants. One wit called it “ultra-processed food for rich people.”

Michael Pollan tells us that “Great-Grandmother never cooked with guar gum, carrageenan, mono- and diglycerides, hydrolyzed vegetable protein, modified food starch, soy lecithin….” But, as Gopnik notes, why is guar gum, extracted from one seed, any more artificial than cornstarch, extracted from another? Carrageenan comes from seaweed, lecithin comes from egg yolks, vegetable protein gets hydrolyzed when proteins are exposed to acids—a regular product of fermentation and pickling. Technical names make the familiar seem alien. Yet luteolin, hydroxytyrosol, apigenin, oleic acid, and oleocanthal are natural components of extra-virgin olive oil.

OK. I think most of us are not food purists. Like me, you probably have plenty of processed food in your kitchen, but most likely not Cocoa Puffs.  

For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.