15 Very Funny Tweets About CBD

Every time I turn a corner these days, there’s a CBD shop staring me in the face.

Which I guess is a good thing because (apparently )it helps out a lot of people who have to deal with anxiety, depression, and other ailments.

And one thing is for sure: people seem to LOVE it.

Are you one of them? Enjoy these tweets.

1. What is this feeling?

2. Might’ve chilled him out.

3. Not gonna work this time.

4. Chill out, pooch!

5. Thanks, Gramps.

6. Not the greatest side effect.

7. Give it a shot.

8. YOU WILL SEE GOD.

9. I’m sure it’ll be here soon.

10. You’re canceled.

11. Do it together.

12. Listen, I’m gonna fill you in…

13. It’s different, you see…

14. Gonna leave a mark.

15. Yes, pretty much.

I might have to give this CBD thing a shot…all the kids are doing it!

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Horseshoe Crab Blood Has Saved Millions of Lives

I’m not very familiar with horseshoe crabs. It turns out there’s a lot to learn – because any species that has managed to survive for 450 million years likely has at least a couple of evolutionary tricks up their sleeves.

If crabs had sleeves, I mean.

First up: horseshoe crab blood is bright blue, due to copper-based hemocyanin it uses to transport oxygen (instead of the hemoglobin that makes our blood red). Also, instead of using white blood cells to fight infection, they use amebocytes – and the Atlantic horseshoe crab has evolved to the point where their amebocytes of great value to the medical community.

These amebocytes coagulate around extremely small amounts of bacterial contamination, and the reaction takes only 45 minutes as opposed to the 2 days it takes most mammals’ immune systems to respond. Medical laboratories use it to test equipment and vaccines in a much more efficient manner, which prevents people from dying of infections.

The value of horseshoe crab blood is unfortunately leading to overharvesting – a quarter of a million crabs are harvested for their blood every year – and the population is in a steep decline that may be impossible to recover from, unless extreme measures are taken.

The crabs aren’t killed for their blood, though; 30% of their blood is harvested, then they’re returned to the ocean. That said, around 10-30% of the crabs don’t survive the process, and females who are bled often breed less afterward.

But the blood goes for $15k a liter, so I doubt people are going to stop anytime soon.

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10 Random Facts About All Sorts of Stuff for You to Ponder

We’re serving up some good facts for you here today!

So sit back, relax, and let’s learn about a bunch of different subjects together.

Start now!

1. Do you know anyone who might need this?

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2. That makes sense…

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3. Placebo sleep.

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4. I’ve always wondered about that…

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5. This can’t be real!

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6. You’re not alone, fruit flies…

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7. Two kinds of nostalgia.

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8. I love this!

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9. I did not know that!

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10. Please don’t tell me this.

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Nothing like a good fact set. NOTHING.

Please feel free to share with your family and friends…it might do them some good.

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15 People Share How They Got Their Scars

I have a couple of memorable scars on my body. One is from when a kid on the school bus in 8th grade (he shall remain nameless) cut me on the hand with his homemade wooden knife. Another is from getting burned by a piece of plastic that melted onto my right-hand ring finger. That was about 25 years ago, and it still looks fresh! (PS: we were really smart kids).

AskReddit users tell us the stories behind the scars on their bodies.

How did you get your scars? Share your stories in the comments.

1. A black eye for Christmas.

“I have a scar on my eyebrow from when I was an asshole 4 year old. I threw a tantrum and tried to pick up a small plastic kids table to throw it over my head. Instead I dropped it, the leg hit me with a sharp broken edge on the eyebrow/eye, I started bleeding, and I had a black eye for Christmas.”

2. X marks the spot.

“I was making a paper plate mask in grade 3 and stuck a pair of scissors through the plate for eyes… Right into my other hand.”

3. Hockey scars for life.

“I have like 5 or 6 deep ones in both eye brows from hockey and hair doesn’t grow there very well so they look all weird.”

4. Didn’t work out so well.

“I was four. I was bouncing on a beachball. My mom told me to go upstairs to bed, so I thought I could bounce up the stairs on the beach ball. I missed the first step and got stitches in my forehead. That’s kid logic for ya.”

5. Very unsightly.

“When I was 15 I had keyhole surgery for appendicitis. Three barely noticeable scars, one of which is in my belly button. Unfortunately, something was left inside me and the morning after being discharged I woke with a fist-sized cyst on my abdomen.

I had gone septic and had to have whatever was left inside of me removed via non-keyhole surgery which left me with a neat straight line scar about 12cm long. Also had to have a drain into my lower abdomen so I’ve got a big ol’ hole about 6cm below my belly button. Unsightly as hell.”

6. Cat scratch fever.

“I have a pretty noticeable scar on the right side of my neck that often gets mistaken for a really bad hickey. The story I tell everyone because I’m sick of explaining is that I was stabbed in the neck with a knife. The real story is that when I was 5, I had been scratched in my eye from one of our house cats while I was asleep. The scratch had infected lymph nodes in my neck, causing it to become extremely swollen, where it was difficult for me to even breathe.

Doctors were baffled by what it was, where I spent several weeks/months in and out of the hospital. They speculated it was lymphoma at the time. I had my neck drained from the fluid from massive syringes that I still have nightmares over, and also have a paralyzing fear of needles. The scar ultimately came from me undergoing 3 separate surgeries where they removed infected lymph nodes from my neck, and late discovered I suffered from a very severe case of cat scratch fever. Yes it’s a Ted Nugent song, and yes it also my anthem.”

7. That’s a bummer.

“Got shingles on my face as a teenager. Do not recommend. The bonus though is that the scar kind of looks like a love heart.”

8. Probably not a great idea.

“Catching a peacock. They have sharp talons.”

9. Boys will be boys.

“My brother and I were playing WWF in the house (even though we weren’t supposed to!). He grabbed the back of my head and slammed my forehead into the “turn buckle” which was the wooden corner of the arm rest on our couch. Blood started running down my face, he ran and hid under his bed. I got 7 stitches in my right eyebrow.”

10. What’s next for you?

“I have what I lovingly refer to as “Jesus Scars”.

When I was 13, I was trying to pry something apart with a chisel and stabbed myself in the right hand by accident.

When I was 23, I was using my box cutter at work to separate some boxes and cut my left hand in almost the exact same place.

Cant wait to see what stupid thing I do at 33.”

11. A whole list of them.

“Needle piercing my cheek during mother’s labor

Forceps tore the ish outta my face

Flint rock on my bare foot at 3, many stitches

Face smash, concrete

chicken pox

lawn mower muffler

angry rabbit”

12. Lucky to be here.

“I have a big scar down the center of my chest, and 2 little “star scars” right under it.

I had just turned 3 and I was at my grandparents’ house with my family. My older cousin was spinning me around in a swivel chair. I fell off of the chair and landed on my side, on top of my grandmother’s knitting stuff that was sitting in a basket by the chair. A knitting needle went through my side and pierced my heart. My aunt thought the needle was just caught in my shirt, and ripped it out of me. I went unconscious almost immediately.

By time I got to the hospital, I had lost a lot of blood and the doctors basically told my parents to prepare for the worst. Luckily, there was a badass heart surgeon there that performed emergency open heart surgery and saved my life! The star scars are from feeding tubes that were hooked up to me post surgery.

Very thankful!!”

13. Quite a story.

“Two scars on my left arm:

On my wrist from a bicycle wreck

On my bicep from when my arm was blown open by a homemade pipe bomb.

I was working a sketchy, under the table semi truck washing job. This job is typically done on a weekend when the trucks are home, usually on an unsupervised lot or farm.

A person we worked with, Person A, loved pranks. Their favorite, was to stuff some Piccolo Pete fireworks into a plastic 2 liter bottle and toss it at someone. Being plastic, the bottle would melt, and just make a super loud bang, scaring the shit out of someone.

Well, Person A had someone working him him, Person B. Person B also loved pranks, and tried to mimic Person A’s prank, but with PVC pipe instead of a plastic bottle. r/whatcouldgowrong

Person A tossed it my way. How neither of them knew PVC pipe would frag out instead of melt, is beyond me. So I’m washing this truck wheel, when out of nowhere, I get flashbanged Call of Duty style. Loud bang, vision went white, and all I could hear was ringing. I remember screaming “what the fuck”, but not because I heard myself say it; because I felt my vocal chords vibrating so hard.

Anyways, I come to, and my arm is just red. Completely red. I try to spray it off, but my boss is sheared and spewing water everywhere. My buddy nearby was also coming to, and saw what happened, so now we’re both in panic mode. I end up getting rinsed off, and I can see into the muscle of my arm. We get a towel wrapped around it, and get me to the hospital.

The wound itself was somewhat of a lightning bolt shape (Like Harry Potter’s scar, or the Metroid logo). So the doctor had to cut out the jagged inside to create a clean hole to stitch up. Fucking gnarly. 8 stitches. Being a stupid 19 year old with no money or understanding of how a lawsuit would work, I didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it and told Person A, you either pay for all of this and we leave it at that, it I sue the shit out of you. They paid all my medical expenses, and we left it at that.

And 6 years later, the story lives on through Reddit.”

14. Avoid the grill.

“I backed my arm up against a barbecue grill when I was younger. I was the perfect height to get my entire upper arm. Elbow up to shoulder. I still have noticeable scars 20 odd years later.”

15. This is interesting.

“Ben Carson looked at my brain.

Had craniosynostosis when I was born and he went in to put some bolts in my head. 152 stitches across the top of my head.

His politics are whack but dude saved my life.”

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10 Simple Ways You Can Help out the Environment

There are always little things you can do to help out the environment. Even if they seem inconsequential to you, taking small steps adds up – especially when countless other people are out there doing the same thing.

So try to implement these habits into your daily lives, and we’ll all be better for it in the long run.

Cause we’ve got a crisis on our hands, and every little bit helps.

1. Turn down the brightness on your monitor.

Desk Upgrade

You can save up to 20% of your monitor’s energy just by adjusting your brightness from 100% to 70%. Go on and do it now…I’ll wait.

2. Think about your music streaming.

Headphones

A study says that today’s music streaming might produce up to double the greenhouse gas emissions as compared to music streaming in the early part of this century. Consider downloading music instead of streaming and do a little research about which streaming companies use cleaner energy.

3. Streaming devices are important, too.

RCS_7989 - IPad - Game Changer

A gaming console might use 30 to 45 times as much power to stream a movie than a regular media player.

4. Order more.

Package

If you buy things online, order more than one item at a time. This cuts down on delivery and packaging in the long run.

5. Search engines matter.

Search engine optimization

Different search engines give back to the environment in different ways. For instance, Ecosia donates ad revenue to plant trees and, according to their website, they run net carbon negative. Do some research and see which ones are doing green work.

6. Unplug it.

Apple...Unplugged

When you’re not using your charger, unplug it. Simple as that. Phone and laptop chargers draw electricity even if you’re not actively charging a device, so give those breakers…a break.

7. Or use a surge protector.

Surge protector

Surge protectors with an On/Off switch are a good option too for those hard-to-reach plugs.

8. Get on that bike.

Kamilah on a Bike

Biking may actually be faster than driving a car in some American cities, so hop on that bicycle of yours to get to where you’re headed.

9. Spam is bad.

email-spam

Roughly 62 TRILLION spam emails are sent each year. Something you may not think about often: sending email actually has a carbon footprint from servers working. Which means those spam emails equal about 20 tons of CO2 each year. So go ahead and hit the “Unsubscribe” button, please.

10. Buy used and vintage clothes.

Thrift Store

According to The Economist, “From the pesticides poured on cotton fields to the washes in which denim is dunked, making 1kg of fabric generates 23kg of greenhouse gases on average.” Seems like kind of a waste, doesn’t it? So consider heading to the thrift store instead of grabbing a new flannel.

 

Give us some of your tips as well in the comments!

We’re in this together, so let’s all do our part, okay?

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Playgrounds for Elderly People Increase Activity and Decrease Loneliness

As people get older, they become more isolated. After all, it’s just harder to get out an about, and the people you know have the same trouble.

It’s also a face that often times aging people exercise less, if at all.

So how do we solve the problem? Playgrounds!

I have yet to see one of these in person, but I have to say, I think this is an amazing idea.

The phenomenon of playgrounds for adults is still kind of new in the United States, but the original concept dates back to 1995 in China.

They proved to be very popular in China, and soon spread across the globe to Europe, Canada, Japan, and the U.S. The trend has become especially popular in Spain, where the city of Barcelona alone has more than 300 adult playgrounds.

Playgrounds for older adults feature low-impact exercise equipment that’s designed to improve flexibility, balance, and core strength among users, all key attributes that undoubtedly lead to better overall well-being for elderly people who take advantage of these spaces. Some of the parks even feature group exercise classes so older folks don’t have to work up a sweat all by themselves – plus, they get the opportunity to meet people.

Cedric X. Bryant, president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, says, “[Playgrounds for elders] focus on promoting balance, flexibility, and range of motion, all of which can help with the functional capabilities of older people and allow them to do more of the things they want to do.”

Some park are strictly for adults, while some allow seniors to play along with their grandchildren. Right now, there are 53 “multigenerational” parks in the United States.

Here’s a video of some older folks taking advantage of such a park in Colorado.

I’d like to see these all over the country!

No, all over the world!

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A Public Service Announcement Compares the Dangers of Kids Playing Football to Smoking

When I was growing up, parents didn’t think twice about letting their kids play organized football. I played myself for several years, and I never thought about any of the possible repercussions that came along with getting hit over and over again on the field.

But parents with young kids today, including several of my friends who now have children of their own, are adamant that they will never, ever let their children play football. And maybe there’s a good reason for that…

Letting kids play football has come under fire in recent years due to the knowledge about chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the disease that many former football players and others have suffered from after receiving multiple head injuries. To make the point, the Concussion Legacy Foundation released a public service announcement comparing the long-term effects of kids playing football to children smoking cigarettes.

In the PSA, a young boy says, “Tackle football is like smoking. The younger I start, the longer I am exposed to danger. You wouldn’t let me smoke. When should I start tackling?”

A study reports that it’s the number of years spent playing football, not the number of head injuries a person suffers, that impacts the severity of CTE.

The PSA calls for parents to wait until their children are 14 years old to let them play tackle football. Take a look at the PSA below.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you let your kids play football or do you refuse?

Sound off in the comments.

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Take a Look at the Case for Putting Your Kids to Bed Super Early

Some of us are night owls, others thrive in the early hours of the morning, but one thing is true across the board – we need solid, consecutive hours of sleep in order to perform our best.

And since many people find themselves on a forced 9-5 schedule because of, you know, jobs, our kids don’t have a whole lot of choice what time they get up in the morning.

So if you want them to get enough sleep, they probably need to be in bed around 7pm.

Image Credit: Pixabay

I know that probably cuts into your evening schedule, or practices, or even things like church, but listen: getting enough sleep lowers kids’ risk for future obesity, makes kids less vulnerable to illness, and primes them for better growth, academic achievement, and emotional wellbeing.

In fact, experts like Andrew J. Bernstein, a doctor and professor at Northwestern University, warn that kids with later bedtimes aren’t lucky at all, but set up to fail in many important ways.

“Children’s natural rhythm is to need to go to sleep well before adults do, and if children are kept up as late as their parents, they’re being deprived the opportunity to grow and learn as well as possible.

Image Credit: Pixabay

If your baby is under a year old, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends they get between 12-16 hours of sleep, while kids between 1 and 2 should be snoozing between 11 and 14 hours a day. Kids who are between the ages of 3 and 5 should sleep 10-13 hours out of every 24.

These recommendations include naps.

You might be thinking, well, as long as my kid sleeps 12 hours a night, why does it matter what time they go to sleep, but, well…multiple studies have shown that it does.

Kids who go to bed earlier get more quality sleep, and evidence suggests enough good quality sleep can help prevent emotional meltdowns, childhood obesity, and other childhood issues that could have lifelong impact.

Image Credit: Pixabay

A study published in The Journal of Pediatrics followed 1,000 kids from preschool into adolescence, tracking their bedtimes and other baseline factors the entire time. They found that 39% of the kids who went to bed after 8 p.m. were overweight as teenagers, compared to only 10% of the kids with earlier bedtimes.

Additional studies have linked high BMI to kids going to bed late, and have also supported the claim that “catching up” during the day doesn’t do anything to curb the increased risk of obesity.

“Napping during the day to make up for poor nighttime sleep is just catch-up sleep and is the sign of an exhausted child. That child still suffers from the lack of good consecutive sleep at night.”

Good sleep, and plenty of it, is still important to teenagers. With it, they’re more likely to perform better in school and to display more control over their emotions, too.

And no one wants a teen in the house with bad emotional regulation…

 

 

Anyone who has ever had kids can attest to the fact that bedtime can be one of the most challenging times of the day. Babies like to be held and rocked, toddlers have a million reasons they can’t just lay down and pass out, and older kids need one more drink or one more book.

But if you can come up with a routine and stick with it – even on the nights they’re fighting you – your kids will likely be the better for hitting the sack early.

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When the Pollen Count Goes Up, Violent Crime Goes Down

Much in the same way you feel like crap when allergies attack, it turns out criminals are less likely to go about their regular day when they’re not feeling up to snuff.

Image Credit: Pixabay

We know this because of a study recently published in the Journal of Health Economics, which found that when large cities experience a drop in violent crime, it typically happens while the pollen count is unusually high.

“Leveraging daily variation in local pollen counts in 16 US cities, we present novel evidence that violent crime declines by approximately 4% on days in which the local pollen count is unusually high. …While this might sound like a small behavioral response, it is on par with the change in crime that would be expected to accrue from a 10% increase in the size of a city’s police force.”

The researchers looked at crime levels in Chicago, Georgia, and New York, and while the results matched up when it came to violent crime – even domestic violence – property crimes did not seem to be affected.

Image Credit: Pixabay

It seems that if a plan to rob a house or a bank is already in progress, no one is going to cancel because they’re under the weather. Gotta pay the bills and all that.

“Given that the effects we observe are driven by a decline in a residential, mostly family violence, despite the fact that, if anything, there is more residential interaction on high pollen days, this is not merely a story about a change in opportunity or routine activities.”

It’s pretty remarkable when you think about it – even though people are more likely to be at home, where domestic violence typically occurs – these violent crimes are still less frequent.

“Violence responds to other situational factors which shift the costs and benefits of offending and precaution: malaise driven by pollen allergies.”

Image Credit: Pixabay

Basically, people may be too drowsy or unwell to commit crimes of passion.

The authors of the study believe that their findings show not just how crime is sensitive to allergens, but how it can be affected by changes to public health altogether.

“Our results do not show evidence of temporal displacement or state dependence, and hence the data are most consistent with the proportion that high pollen days prevent crime rather than delay it.”

So, people don’t “make up” for their drowsy, crime-free days by doing more crime afterward – the high allergy days actually seem to prevent crime.

I’m not sure how local law enforcement could take all of this into consideration, but I feel like they should be able to, don’t you?

Let’s figure it out together in the comments…

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A Man’s Strange Reaction to Antibiotics Has His Guts Brewing Alcohol

Well, this is odd.

A week into his course of cephalexin, a common antibiotic prescribed to ward off infection in an injured thumb, a man checked into the emergency room with some strange symptoms.

They included memory loss, brain fog, and episodes of depression, along with personality changes and uncharacteristic aggression.

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Among my sleep studies research there are numerous notes about how alcohol disrupts sleep. Because it causes the brain to be simultaneously in alpha and delta activity patterns (one’s for being wide awake, the other for being in deep sleep), and blocks REM sleep, and messes with adenosine production interrupting your circadian rhythm, and aggravating breathing problems such as snoring and sleep apnea. . This has me thinking about a recently-discovered, seemingly-rare condition known as auto brewery/gut fermentation syndrome. It’s a condition in which the naturally-occurring yeast in your gut causes the sugars you consume to ferment into alcohol. Known cases lead to folks becoming drunk as a result of drinking fruit juice (for example), but — as with any condition — there should be cases that run the gambit between in-your-face (drunkenness) and subtle-enough-to-be-misdiagnosed-as-a-dozen-other-things-if-at-all. . With this in mind: What if an individual’s daily sugar intake, daily energy use, and overall gut yeast levels are balanced in such a way that their gut doesn’t automatically create alcohol during the day, but then at night (with some sugars still in the system and physical activity coming to a halt) the gut then creates alcohol? That person would have no trouble falling asleep, but would regularly have trouble staying asleep. . It’s just a theory. But it’s a theory that can be checked (at least on the individual level) via stool test and or glucose challenge test. And for those struggling to get a proper diagnosis for sleep issues, those are tests worth taking. . If it turns out a person has secondary insomnia resulting from auto brewery syndrome, that means there’s only a handful of underlying conditions that could be causing the whole kit-n-kaboodle. Because no one’s born with auto brewery syndrome, it arises as a result of some other condition creating too much yeast in your gut. And that really helps to narrow down the possibilities. . And as someone whose OCD was misdiagnosed and punished in equal measure for about 25 years before we finally knew what was what, if even one random-ass theory can help someone get to the right diagnosis a little fast

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Doctors were unable to get to the root of the cause, and he suffered those same symptoms for some time. Three years later, a psychiatrist treated him with antidepressants, but his issues persisted.

Things came to a head when he was pulled over on suspicion of drink driving, and was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 200mg/dL (about the equivalent of 7-10 drinks, depending on your weight). He was nauseous, vomiting, impaired, had no memory of the event, and passed out in the hospital.

The patient, however, insisted he had not had one single drink.

It was his aunt who brought him a breathalyzer, and as he tracked his measurements over time, he received similar readings.

A doctor in Ohio administered a carbohydrate test, where the patient consumes carbohydrates and then has their blood-alcohol levels monitored over the course of several hours, and found elevated alcohol levels in his blood. They also found brewer’s yeast in his stool, and eventually diagnosed him with auto-brewery syndrome (ABS).

The syndrome, also known as gut fermentation syndrome, is extremely rare. It causes the digestive system to produce ethanol that makes you intoxicated. Several cases have been reported over the years, usually discovered under similar circumstances (people arrested for drunk driving without having a drink).

This man, however, is the first documented case of ABS stemming from a course of antibiotics.

“We postulate that the antibiotic altered his gut microbiome, allowing fungal growth. This diagnosis should be considered in any patient with positive manifestations of alcohol toxicity who denies alcohol ingestion.”

He was given antifungal medications and, despite a relapse after a night of pizza and soda, is doing well.

I’m not saying this will work if you ever find yourself on the wrong end of a traffic stop, but I mean. It could be your guts making beer, and you just don’t know it.

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