I have been trolled. I have lost. I will have a nice day anyways.

If antibacterial products contribute to ADHD, I doubt it's through that mechanism. The impact of antibacterial cleaners versus non-antibacterial cleaners on a person's overall exposure to bacteria is negligible. On the other hand, there's evidence that triclosan, the usual active ingredient in antibacterial soap, could be an endocrine disruptor.

Hang on a second - how are they controlling for effective calorie intake? Intestinal bacteria steal calories, and I would expect that to affect activity level, especially in mice.

The inferential distance between this study and linking antibiotics to ADHD in humans is huge. It's the wrong species; a few antibiotics aren't at all like being raised in sealed plastic and fed autoclaved food (and as far as I know the few people that do live in hermetically sealed environments don't develop ADHD more often than normal); and for that matter, higher activity level isn't the same thing as ADHD. Neither the original study nor the Science Daily article mention antibiotics or ADHD. Sorry mom, there isn't anything here to even raise it as a possibility, let alone meet the elevated standard of evidence required for making reliable conclusions about human behavior.

Using measures of motor activity and anxiety-like behavior, we demonstrate that germ free (GF) mice display increased motor activity and reduced anxiety, compared with specific pathogen free (SPF) mice with a normal gut microbiota.

Are ADHD sufferers really less anxious than others? I would have said the opposite.

I'm a clinical social worker/therapist and know a bit about bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. My clients are all children and few have been given either diagnosis yet, although more will probably when they are older. I don't think that we really know yet whether avoiding medication increases ones chances of actual schizophrenia. One article I recently read actually suggested that taking anti-psychotics long term might prevent one from making a full recovery after a psychotic episode.

I do know that you should avoid certain psychoactive substances, most of which are illegal (LSD, uppers, etc.) and heavy alcohol use. It is also best to try to avoid super stressful situations as much as you can.

It is my understanding that many people with bi-polar disorder (and schizophrenia) don't like their medications because it makes them feel flat.

If you can get objective feedback from family or friends about your behavior in manic states it would be helpful for you to assess whether you should get treatment. You could ask them whether you are doing risky things? Are you so irritable/manic that you are antagonizing others?

My 2nd cousin once removed, Lizzie Simon has bi-polar disorder. She wrote a book, "Detour : My Bipolar Road Trip in 4-D " in which she writes about her own experiences and interviews with other individuals with bi-polar disorder. She was looking for individuals who were functioning well. Lizzie goes around the country lecturing about bi-polar disorder. You might want to check out the book or/and her website.

I don't think that's an accurate description of the legal restrictions on doctors. But the legal restrictions are not relevant, only the actual behavior, which has some resemblance to what you say.

I eat it on crackers (hummus is a good suggestion), but the two main areas that aren't that easy to replace are sandwiches and just plain eating slices of American cheese by themselves. Which was originally a replacement for eating slices of meat by themselves.

Cheese has a certain soft-yet-firm quality to it that A) makes it a good glue to hold other things together, B) I just like. I've tried a lot of the standard replacements and I could probably convince myself to prefer them if I worked at it long enough, but it'd be hard.

I suspect fixing the cheese situation will probably end up being last on the list. It's sort of my equivalent to cigarettes - comfort food that I get twitchy without. I don't know exactly how unhealthy it's making me, but I think it's the one thing that if I try to fix at the same time as everything else, I'll end up failing, and most of the other things are at least as high a priority.

To start with I'll try getting some hummus though, and seeing if I can at least cut back a little on the cracker-related stuff.

Splitting these into things that are time investments and things that you want to stop doing is one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is to divide things into recurring and non-recurring time investments. For example, exercising regularly is a recurring time investment, that takes a few hours every week; but scouting out gyms, choosing an exercise routine and setting the precedent for doing it is a one-time investment. For things that look like recurring time investments, or that look daunting, try to split off one-shot tasks that move you in the right direction.

Spending a higher percentage of the time working at a computer actually getting stuff done, instead of getting distracted by the internet.

More concretely: Install Leechblock (or a similar plugin) to either give yourself a time limit, or limit which times of the day you can surf in. Make your blogreading more efficient with RSS feeds. Choose the site with the lowest intellectual content to addictiveness ratio and delete it from your bookmarks.

finding some recurring activity where I'll probably meet the same people over and over to improve the odds of making longterm friends.

More concretely: Browse meetup.com and similar sites for recurring activities in your area which others have organized.

Improving my diet, which mostly means eating less cheese. I really like cheese, so this is difficult.

It is much easier to change your diet by adding things than by removing things. To displace cheese, add other sources of fat and protein. However, removing cheese from your diet would not necessarily be an improvement, and it's unlikely to be the best available improvement.

Stop making so many off-color jokes. Somewhere there is a line between doing it ironically and actually contributing to overall weight of prejudice, and I think I've crossed that line.

More concretely: come up with some general-purpose jokes that aren't off-color, and start using those instead.

Somehow stop losing things so much, and/or being generally careless/clumsy. I lost my wallet and dropped my lap top in the space of a month, and manage to lose a wide array of smaller things on a regular basis. It ends up costing me a lot of money.

More concretely: cultivate the habit of checking your inventory whenever you exit a building (even if you really do have everything). Put some thought into how you manage the inventory items you tend to carry. Throw out any clothes with insufficient pockets.

If they do complain,they generally do so more discreetly or put a positive spin on it.

Why Our Kind Can't Cooperate

I'm pretty sure I heightened expectations of perfection by saying people should pay (not me) for eating. Speaking of which, people should lower their expectations, this thing is going to be as informal as it gets. Like... I'll have adequate seating for everyone but no dining room table. My place isn't exactly set up for a dinner party and this isn't a dinner party so much as an extremely informal party at my house that happens to also have delicious food being served.