Schizophrenia

There are many things about schizophrenia that remain a mystery. A common myth is that people who suffer from schizophrenia will never recover when in fact there are multiple effective treatments. For someone with this disorder, the world is a jumble of confusing and disturbing thoughts, images and sounds. Symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, hallucinations, thought disorder and disorganized behavior; however some symptoms can also be attributed to other mental disorders. One definition for schizophrenia is that it is a long-term mental disorder of a type involving a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation (in general use) a mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements (google web dictionary). Imagine yourself trying to carry on a conversation with another person while being bombarded with voices coming from all over, these voices may constantly be telling you to do things or they may be insulting and make you angry. Situations like these are real for the people who experience them. The images and sounds do not seem in any way a trick of their imagination or something that can simply be ignored. Hallucinations and schizophrenic delusions can happen at any time of day or night. I’ve included a link here which provides many interesting facts about this disorder. The most common treatment for schizophrenia involves therapy and medications (antipsychotics). Treatments are usually ongoing and lifelong but they can provide much help especially in cases that involve suicidal thoughts. Living with schizophrenia involves many challenges but with a positive and supportive atmosphere there can be a steady growth of independence.

Mood Disorder

When we think of a mood disorder the first that are likely to come to mind are depression, bipolar disorder and seasonal affective disorder. This is because they are very common. I believe we have all at some point in our lives felt some type of variation in our mood. In a mood disorder the symptoms are tied down to how we feel. Some of us are usually in a moderate type of mood, while others may feel at an extreme low or other times in a state of euphoria. Another characteristic of mood disorder is when the mood gets stuck. While most of us may feel worse or better depending on what is going on in our lives, others may remain in profound despair or in an unrealistically high and exhilarated state of being as is the case with bipolar disorder.  I wanted to include a visual aid to help illustrate what a person with this condition might feel during this condition and was able to find a video in which a person who suffers from a mood disorder tries to put us in a first person view of the condition. It gave me a much clearer idea of how impacting this disorder really is.

Mood disorders do not discriminate and it can affect any person. I most recently read online that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr is currently undergoing treatment for depression and young teen celebrity Demi Lovato has also expressed how her diagnosis with bipolar disorder has affected her life. I have no idea what it is to go through everything that people go through with mood disorders but I’m glad to see public figures are willing to talk about it and let others know their story which can encourage others to seek treatment. Mood disorders are chronic illnesses that can be successfully managed and treated with medication, sleep and stress management and psycho-education. Family can be a valuable resource in helping a person with a mood disorder by positively encouraging them to fully participate in his or her own treatment. This can be done by simply monitoring medications, providing emotional support and helping with financial means. Having an effective treatment can help a person return to their normal work or home life. Also, by eliminating any negative behaviors a person with mood disorders can lead a productive, safe life.

Stress

Just because I’m running around in circles for ten minutes looking for my car keys without realizing that they’re in my left hand all that time does not mean I am undergoing stress. Or does it? The bad thing is that it’s not the first time this has happened in the same week. Ok, so maybe I am working too much and taking too many classes at the same time, but I can handle it! I’ve noticed that I say this to myself a lot. Recently, like I mentioned with the keys incident, I have experienced memory problems and difficulty concentrating along with some moodiness and irritability; I’m normally not like this, honest! So then let me just go ahead and admit that stress is not something that I had ever considered to be a health problem, until now. In my research on stress I came to find that it can actually lead to many serious future health complications. Stress is defined as an organism's total response to events that make you feel threatened or can upset your balance in some way. The body is wired to deal with different types of stress in different ways. The following video provides an illustration of how this works.

How much stress is too much depends from person to person. Some people just roll with the punches while others may crumble at the slightest frustration, which is why it is important to know one’s own limits. People’s ability to tolerate stress depends on several factors like their support network, sense of control, attitude and outlook towards their future. In reading about stress I’ve learned that long term exposure to stress can cause serious health problems like high blood pressure, depression, obesity, autoimmune diseases, and sleep problems just to name a few. While it is practically impossible to eliminate stress from our life, the good news is that we all have the power to reduce the impact of it. With practice we can learn how to stay in control when the pressure builds and recognize when it’s time to give our body a break. I know for me, listening to soft music and a bubble bath works wonders. Knowing that we have the ability to bring ourselves back into balance gives us confidence to keep moving forward in facing new challenges.

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA)

About a month ago, my dad told me that he was diagnosed with a sleeping disorder known as obstructive sleep apnea and I was surprised to learn that this condition causes him to stop breathing during his regular sleep. This was very confusing to me since I could not imagine how this happens. Sleep disorders include a range of problems, from narcolepsy to insomnia. I did a little “Googling” in order to help me get a better sense of it all. Obstructive sleep apnea is basically a disorder in which a person experiences abnormal pauses in breathing during sleep; some will stop breathing for a few seconds to a full minute. In my attempt for a better understanding of that, I imagined it was something like extreme snoring.  Little did I know sleep apnea is much worse, since after doing this repeatedly during one night it can deprive a person's brain from some much needed oxygen due to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the blood. This build up requires the heart to pump harder to try to remove the excess carbon dioxide from the blood.  This adds a great deal of stress on the heart, especially if it occurs repeatedly. I have added a video here with an illustrative overview.

 

 

Obstructive sleep apnea is a serious condition that can have some devastating effects on the body if it goes untreated. The effects of this condition vary depending on the severity of it. In the beginning the side effects may only be that the person feels tired and drowsy during the day. They may feel as if they are never able to get a good night of sleep no matter how long they are in bed. I am glad to know that there are many treatments, from lifestyle changes like losing weight to surgery, but the most common is the use of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which is a machine that delivers air pressure through a mask placed over your nose while you sleep. Many people don’t like having to sleep with something on their head but it has proven immediate results and a relief in symptoms. People who do not see a change in their symptoms are people who do not follow through with the treatment. With regards to my dad, he complains of sounding like Darth Vader, but I think that’s sort of cool.

Girl...? or Boy..?

The suspense is torture; will it be a boy or a girl? Very important question and it can become the central focus of a woman’s first part of pregnancy. One thing is for sure, it helps to know the sex of the baby in order to shop for baby clothes and pick out the color of the nursery. But on a more serious note, a baby’s sex is determined at the time of conception. While on my journey for information on this subject I came across an interesting website that gives a step-by-step explanation on how a babies sex is established, you can access it here. When the baby is conceived, a chromosome from the sperm cell, either X or Y, fuses with the X chromosome in the egg cell, determining whether the baby will be female or male. Two X’s means the baby will be a girl and XY means it will be a boy the following video gives a short explanation on this.

 Even though gender is determined at conception, the fetus doesn’t develop its external sexual organs until the fourth month of pregnancy. At seven weeks after conception you can see that the fetus appears to be sexually indifferent, looking neither male nor female. Over the next five weeks, the fetus begins producing hormones that cause its sex organs to grow into either male or female organs. This process is called sexual differentiation. If the fetus is going to be a male, it will produce hormones called androgens, which will cause his sexual organs to form. On the other hand, a female fetus would not produce androgens; she would produce estrogens. I have also included a video here in reference to this.

 

We all want to have healthy babies, but it is common to have a preference as to what sex we want our baby to be. I would consider this to be a matter of what sex we feel more familiar with. Women perhaps would prefer to have a little girl since she knows how to identify with her and a man may desire a son being that he was once a little boy himself. But in the end we all settle for whatever we get so long as the baby’s health is not a concern. Thank you for reading! :)

Ahhh... Stop and Smell the Roses..!!!



Up until this week I had not realized how important our sense of smell really is. It helps protect us from dangers and learn more about the world we live in. It helps us decide if something smells good or bad.  Our sense of smell begins at our nose, but it includes other parts of our head and brain. How can the nose do all of this?

Take for example, the tiny particles that come out floating after you have turned on a match. These particles are too little to be seen with the naked eye, but the nerve endings of the olfactory nerves located on the olfactory epithelium are very sensitive to them and can easily detect them once they have traveled through the air. This nerve is located high up in our nasal canals and it helps carry messages to our brain telling it that there is a burning match. The process is a little more detailed than how I have tried to explain it here, which is why I have provided a short video which might help understand this process much better.

 

 

 Also, we would not be able to taste the foods we eat if it were not for our sense of smell. Taste is a chemical sense detected by sensory cells called chemoreceptors. When an odor stimulates the chemoreceptors in the nose that detect smell, they pass an electrical impulse to the brain. The brain then interprets patterns in electrical activity as a specific odor. Olfactory sensation becomes perception, something we can recognize as smell.  Not being able to smell and taste the food you are craving to enjoy can be a great detriment for anyone. Here I have provided a video that tells of a man who faced having to live without a sense of smell after being diagnosed with viral anosmia and it nearly ruined his life.

 

Our sense of smell can help protect us from dangers because it is often our first response to certain stimuli like harmful chemicals or fumes. Imagine being in the middle of a fire and not knowing it until you see the flames!

Human beings have a weak sense of smell compared to other animals; take for instance, the bloodhound’s amazing sense of smell. As we evolved, our need to smell things quite as well diminished and as we became more civilized we began to rely on our eyes and brain more. Our sense of smell is unique in one way from all of our other senses. When you first come into the kitchen you can smell dinner or a cake in the oven but after some time you don’t smell them at all. This is because our olfactory nerve endings become less sensitive to a continuous odor and will stop sending those messages, all while remaining sensitive to new aromas. Some people are able to develop their sense of smell for a special use. A perfume maker can tell all the different smells between different flowers and a wine maker has the same talent for telling wines from each other by their smell. In my research to obtain more information about olfaction I came to find that some people firmly believe that dogs can detect cancer by smelling a person’s breathe. I have always been a skeptic about this kind of thing but feel free to make your own judgment from the following video, which talks about this and how scientists have recently begun conducting more studies with positive results in the detection of cancer by dog.

 Smell is one of the ways we have of knowing what the world has for us. Close your eyes and smell a rose, or after a long rainy day, go outside and take a sniff. And that nice green smell of fresh cut grass that tells you spring is here. How about a slice of hot apple pie? You would not be able to taste it without olfaction.  Scientists today continue to explore how it is that we pick up odors, process them and interpret them as a specific smell. There remain a great amount of controversies about olfaction, like the existence of human pheromones and how they might help us select a romantic partner or how pregnant women become more sensitive to specific odors, but for now let us leave these interesting discussions for a later time. Thank you for reading.



Where Is My Memory..?

Have you ever found yourself in that awkward situation where you cannot quite remember a word or someone’s name, but it is right “on the tip of your tongue”? This and many other types of memory lapses are normal in people of all ages. Short term memory simply means that you are retaining the information received for a short period, like a telephone number used to order a pizza. Scientists believe that all information is initially entered into short-term storage, where it stays until the brain has time to consolidate it into long-term memory. If at any time something interrupts the rehearsal before consolidation takes place, the information would be lost. Long term memory takes place when you have formed neural pathways for storing ideas and information which can then pass and be recalled weeks, months, or even years later. To create these pathways, you must make a deliberate attempt to encode the information in the way that you intend to recall it later. If you prefer visual memory, material must be actively visualized. Auditory memory can be enhanced by speaking aloud, for example when you study. Recall is then sought by listening for (remembering) what you heard, saw, etc. This encoding process is called active learning. The following video can give you a glimpse at what it may be like to live without memory.

 

There are many brain diseases that can cause memory complications; among them is Alzheimer’s disease which is a form of dementia which not only causes problems in memory but also in thinking and behavior. Symptoms will usually start off slow and get worse over time, eventually becoming severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. Some forms of brain damage due to accidents can also cause Amnesia, which is another type of memory loss. In this case, memory can be either totally or partially lost depending on the extent of the damage. People with amnesia are usually lucid and know who they are, but have trouble learning new information and forming new memories. In most situations where there is brain damage, the person would have to undergo extensive therapy to help them recover.  There is currently no specific treatment for amnesia, but techniques for enhancing memory can help.



Deep Into The Folds

Can you imagine having to live with going through up to 40 seizures in one day due to a brain condition known as hemimegalencephaly or megalencephaly, in which one hemisphere of the brain grows larger than the other? Children with this condition may have a larger head than average and sometimes asymmetrical.  Malformations of cortical development (known sometimes as cortical dysplasias) occur during the development of the brain when neurons do not migrate and organize themselves normally. This can lead to intractable epilepsy. Because seizures may be difficult to control with anticonvulsant medicine or other therapies, surgery is often the most successful treatment to control the seizures. There are several different surgical treatment options considered, including focal resections and in some cases when these children are severely mentally challenged they may require a procedure called hemispherectomy, which is an extremely rare surgery where half of the brain is completely removed or disabled. If the affected side of the brain is surgically removed, the remaining healthy side of the brain may gradually take over the functions whose control has been lost. The ability for one area of the brain to take over the function of others is known as "plasticity" - the brain’s ability to change throughout life. I have added a video here that may help understand how the remaining healthy brain will recover and in a sense accommodate for the other missing part.

Depending on what half of the brain hemisphere is removed will determine the type of life a person can live since they each have different functions.

Amazing Development

 Expectant mothers are excited and curious to know about the growth of their little one inside the womb. Besides the physical growth, fetal brain development timeline is imperative, not only to know, but also to understand it better. The human CNS begins to develop when the embryo is about 2 weeks old. The dorsal surface thickens forming a neural tube surrounding a fluid filled cavity. The forward end enlarges and differentiates into the hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain. The rest of the neural tube becomes the spinal cord.

 

Chemical processes develop the brain to an amazing degree even before the start of any experience with the world. Detailed changes in development continue to occur throughout life. The environmental, physical and emotional being of the mother, all have a profound effect on fetal brain development. The result of this is mental and cognitive disabilities. Throughout pregnancy, the fetus's brain is vulnerable to disruptions that may cause death, or mental disabilities and other physical developmental delays. It is incredible to know that all this goes on long before the mother even begins to have doubts about being pregnant. By the time the mother notices that she might be expecting, crucial days and weeks of brain development have passed and by when she visits her doctor for an accurate test another 2 weeks may have expired. By this time the fetus is already beginning its second or third month of development and may have been exposed to toxins like nicotine, alcohol, drugs or situations that could have exposed the fetus to some type of impairment.

Brain development in a fetus and its associated problems are still being researched. There are no specific answers to the how's and why's of brain development. However, what does not change is the wonder of a cell, an embryo that develops into a fetus, then a child and finally, an adult going through the passage of time, and physical, mental and cognitive development.



Rx Side Effects...

Drugs have different types of effects and side effects on people. It may depend on the physiological as well as the physical condition of the person taking them. Medically prescribed drugs from doctors may have a better or worse effect depending also on any other drugs being taken at the same time. Drugs almost always have more than one outcome on an organism. Aspirin for example is usually taken for pain but it can also be used to reduce a high fever and can irritate the stomach. When medications are taken for health reasons the importance is focused mainly on the positive properties it will have, while the negative side effects are ignored. It is interesting to see how many drugs are being used by so many people without even having the knowledge of how they will affect the body and brain. If I have a headache and ask anyone how many aspirin I should take, their response will probably be, take two. This knowledge is basic and can be obtained simply by reading the label but it is not always the same for other types of medications. For example the prescription drug Ambien. This drug is used to treat insomnia (inability to sleep), and anxiety. It is a type of imidazopyridine (sedative hypnotic). Also known as zolpidem. Ambien primarily interacts with a neurotransmitter known as GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid). GABA's primary job is to facilitate communication among brain cells. When GABA is not interacting with Ambien, it is actively increasing and decreasing the activity of your brain cells. When Ambien enters your system, GABA's job changes, it encourages GABA to basically "turn off" the electrical activity of nearby brain cells. These brain cells stay "asleep" until the drug has worked its way out of your system. Ambien encourages GABA to target a specific part of the brain cell, which is why the users are able to wake up without a serious drug-induced sleep hangover. What happens if a person wakes up before the drug is out of their system? You cannot simply take another pill. Many users of Ambien have reported memory loss, sleep walking, sleep talking and even sleep driving while under the effects of this medication. In almost all cases people have no memory of doing any of these things. For several years there have been reports of people with brain damage who have partially recovered from a coma or unconscious state just hours after being given this drug. It’s bizarre how a drug that is used to help someone sleep can also wake someone up from a coma. Research is currently being conducted to see if this drug really is working in other ways besides helping with insomnia. It would be great if a medication may perhaps provide a miracle for people who suffer from some form of brain disease or damage and that it may be used to restore a persons consciousness. The challenge would be to provide evidence of such occurrences since reports of changes in people who are in a coma for instance, will many times be dismissed by doctors as being caused by other natural factors.

In Simple Terms... Ouch!

A paper cut, how annoying! Especially on the index finger and on a day that involves a lot of typing. You can barely see the cut but the sting is so strong it almost feels like it will never go away. Even hours after it has happened you go to wash your hands and there it is again, Ouch! So we know that our brain tells us when something hurts. The brain processes the message received from the spinal cord which receive its message from nerve endings. Our pain receptors are found on these nerve endings located all throughout our body. These receptors are activated by a stimulus; let’s say a hammer to your thumb for example. When enough input is detected the nerves will allow positively charged ions in, therefore sending an electrical impulse at the speed of light to the central nervous system. In order for the spinal cord to send a message to the brain the threshold of the input must be recognized as a danger (the touch of a feather on your cheek would not be recognized as a danger). The brain will then send a coordinated reaction response back to the affected area (your thumb) which you will then feel throbbing. The brain sends a reaction signal so that you may then kiss your boo-boo, or seek medical attention if needed. The whole thing seems to happen in an instant and it would seem as if our sensory nerves have super powers. Well maybe not super powers but they are super because they help keep us from any further danger/tissue damage (stop hammering your thumb). The process is a lot more technical than I have tried to explain, so here is an image that might give you a better idea of it all.

 

Now after we have jumped around, kissed and sucked our thumb the pain magically starts to disappear, just wish the same thing happened when I find myself giving in to the pain in my leg muscles during the last 3 minutes of jogging, which almost always leave my legs feeling like two spaghetti noodles.

Who Is Smarter?

I find myself one day talking with a great friend who is a male college graduate in his late thirties and considers himself the smartest man alive. I accidently leave my keys locked up in my car and he quickly remarks "and all because you were born a girl!" Could he possibly be insinuating that something like this happens because I have a female brain? I am not very good with comebacks so all I can think of saying is "yes, and you are my knight in shining armor so get my keys!" The textbook on Psychological Biology very interestingly explains that the male brain is relatively larger than the female brain but it also recognizes that studies have shown the brain size is due to the higher amount of grey matter in the male brain. I can accept this as a fact and not feel disadvantaged because my male friend's brain has more grey matter than mine. Although, I must admit that this does make me wonder if maybe this contributes in some way to a person’s intelligence. The book gives an example of boys being better than girls at playing chess. The research on this topic shows that one reason why boys could be better is because they show interest in the game and play more frequently than girls. If we were to assume that the size of our brain is an indicator of our “smartness”, then what role would our interests and special abilities play? Scores on IQ tests have also proved that both men and women are about equal in intellect, but let’s say that a test to fix a car motor was applied instead? I imagine it would give a totally different result since a lot of women are not very interested in learning about this subject. All of this leads me to another question. Could the changes in generations also contribute to these differences among males and females? In the past almost all women dedicated themselves to the daily chores of their homes, tend to the needs of the children and husband, very rarely to their personal interests.  An article posted on ABC News titled “Women Beat Men on IQ Tests for First Time” makes me think that maybe the changes in opportunity and education have proven beneficial since recent studies show women scoring up to a point higher on IQ tests than their male counterparts.  This does not in any way make me feel that I am smarter than anyone else but I will admit it does give me a sense of encouragement and a lot to think about.