I think what the writer was pointing out, was that by the time it affects the brain, you are then dealing with behaviours that are not character flaws.
True. But this is also valid for hormonal problems (thyroid or peri-menopause for example), non-brain cancer, and several other non-brain illnesses and even for minerals and vitamins deficiency.
People behave badly for many reasons. Brain, body, brain & body, situations that deliberatly alter those (drink, drungs, lack of spleep), ambient, pack mentality, etc.
If it is an inflammatory process. Which we don't know if it is. Depression does not tend to be considered an inflammatory process. Then again, there are many ideas of what depression is, usually unbalanced brain chemicals, that idea is becoming old and researchers are looking for new things.
Depression has, of course, several causes. Hormones, like in post-part depression or thyroid. And the truth is we still don't know enough and still don't manage to cure it, aside from its mildests forms or the ones connected to hormones.
Mental illnesses other than depression still have no cure. And, despite years of HS, we aren't any close to really know what is going on, on our MLCer end up in crisis - what is being affected in their brains and bodies and how it tend stops affecting brain and body.
I would say that a change of lifestyle can do wonders. With Mr J, leaving clubbing and djing life aside would help. Not sort it all out, but her. Stop drinking would also help.
The problem is that MLC ends up leaving many, if not most, MLCer with a wide range of problems. The longer the crisis goes on, the more problems the MLCer is left with.
If these illnesses left untreated may, or may not lead to a higher incidence of Alzheimer's is a though some scientists and doctors have, but it is not a certainty. If Alzheimers is a protein, or protein related, or a virus, as it is now thought, those illnesses may, or may not, play a part.
We don't know if MLCer have a higher risk of having Alzheimer's than other people because there are no studied about it and on HB we still haven't reach a point where we can start to say it is so.
Much we now know about the brain, it still remains a big mistery. We know more and more, are able to do things that weren't possible, but we still have a long way to go.
And we still haven't found a way to put an end to MLC.
I feel we have been through all these issues for years on end and are still pretty much where we were at first, we don't have a clue how MLC really works on a brain level, we don't know how to cure/end it and we don't know how the person goes back to normal. Just that many MLCers go back to normal.
Strange it may sound, I have become a little tired of neuroscience and went back to my usual world or arts & culture. I know a little more than the basics of neurosciene/neurobiolgy, but I am not a scientists and there really isn't much I can do with that knowledge.
What I know is enough to understand what happens if a person has a stoke (a real life hepful thing), and so, much it doesn't really have much use when it comes to MLC.
I am enjoying a lot reading fiction, poetry, history/history of art/about art in several languages, watching movies and TV series, going to art shows, etc. again.
I am also a little more than bored with MLC. It never changes, they is no progress, no new discoveries of ways of solving the matter.