Conceptual synesthesia makes me hot.

I heart Aquatic Ape Theory!

Things that make me cry in my cubicle. Part IV

If you haven't seen Jill Bolte Taylor's Powerful Stroke of Insight, you should watch it immediately. "Jill Bolte Taylor got a research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: She had a massive stroke, and watched as her brain functions -- motion, speech, self-awareness –- shut down one by one. An astonishing story." Plus, you get to see a real human brain!

Dancing makes you smarter!

Researchers from The Albert Einstein College of Medicine studied the link between mental acuity and physical and cognitive recreational activities in senior citizens 75 years and older. Turns out, the best protection against dementia was frequent dancing!

"They studied cognitive activities such as reading books, writing for pleasure, doing crossword puzzles, playing cards and playing musical instruments. And they studied physical activities like playing tennis or golf, swimming, bicycling, dancing, walking for exercise and doing housework.

One of the surprises of the study was that almost none of the physical activities appeared to offer any protection against dementia. There can be cardiovascular benefits of course, but the focus of this study was the mind. There was one important exception: the only physical activity to offer protection against dementia was frequent dancing.

People who played the hardest gained the most: For example, seniors who did crossword puzzles four days a week had a 47% lower risk of dementia than those who did the puzzles once a week.

Reading - 35% reduced risk of dementia
Bicycling and swimming - 0%
Playing golf - 0%
Dancing frequently - 76%.

That was the greatest risk reduction of any activity studied, cognitive or physical."

Musings by Richard Powers can be found here.
The original article is over here.

What I think about at coffee shops instead of doing whatever it was that I went to the coffee shop to do.

Warning - I am a dork when it comes to language and embodiment. Read on at your own risk.

So I was sitting at Epoch and they started playing Modest Mouse. I started thinking about how Modest Mouse makes me feel a sense of unidentifiable longing, how it sounds bittersweet. Which then led me to thinking about the word bittersweet. It is interesting to describe a sound as bittersweet, since it is a word derived from the sense of taste. But really the meaning of the word comes from using taste as a metaphor for experience - how an experience that feels/tastes bitter can actually simultaneously feel/taste sweet. So I made a brief attempt to find other words like bittersweet, which led to the discovery that one of the definitions of bittersweet is "A dark to deep reddish orange," which I didn't know. (Interestingly, if I had to pick some colors for Modest Mouse, they would not be red and orange. Green, maybe?) Which is now adding the sense of sight to the word "bittersweet," in addition to the sense of taste, which I am now using to describe a sound.

Which then brings us to the lovely doorstep of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, who argue that language is inherently embodied. We use our experience of our bodies to construct language which we then use to create metaphors about our experience of life, feelings and thoughts. Meaning that language is fundamentally about the body, not about the mind, as we tend to think. Meaning we can't understand our minds unless we first understand our experience of our bodies. (I wrote about this over here and here, if you want more language and embodiment dorkiness)

So, in summation, life is bittersweet and I want to go dancing. Which is what I have been saying all these years. Which is what I am always trying to say.

Effects of The Pill

* Combined oral contraceptives raise the levels of blood fats, cholesterol, and tryglicerides
* It has been shown that one in every 200 women coming off the pill will have no periods for the rest of their lives and it can take up to two years for the body to return to normal.
* The youngest women have longer exposures to pills, and breast cancer will affect 1 in 4 pill takers.
* The pill raises copper to abnormal levels in the blood, depletes zinc, magnesium, B-vitamins, essential fats and amino acids, which cause depressive symptoms.
* Early cervical cancer in pill takers is epidemic. Only a few years on the pill causes cervical cancer risk to increase 5 - 6 fold
* Studies show that pill takers are more likely to suffer from depression and commit suicide
* Prescribed hormones cause serious vascular illness sooner than smoking, (4 years in pill takers, whilst 25 years in smokers)
* The pill lowers the protective fats in the blood, while elevating the artery clogging fats
* Pill hormones cause cancer of target organs: breast, cervix, endometrium, and ovaries. The cancer occurs from weeks, up to 40 years, after exposure
* A few years on the pill increases melanomas (skin tumors) 2 - 3 fold.
* The risk of rare liver tumor increases with hormone exposure. The risk of benign tumor increases 100-500 times after five years of pill use. Cancerous liver tumors increase 4-5 fold, after eight years of pill use.
* Contraceptive hormones upset immunity causing an increased risk of STDs, infections, cancers, lupus, ME and MS.
* Ex pill takers have more risk of infertility and re-occurent miscarriages
* Magnesium deficiency from pill use causes excess parathormone secretion, which increases bone loss and osteoprosis
* Fibroid growths are stimulated by synthetic oestrogens. Ovarian cysts and ovarian cancers are more common in ex pill takers
* Prescribed hormones contribute to food and skin allergies and cause gut candidia. Many girls on the pill get thrush and or skin allergies.
* Prescribed sex hormones raise levels of stress hormones
* The risk of diabetes occurs with longer exposure. Hypoglycemic symptoms in pill takers is common and are early warning signs of diabetes to come.
* Pill hormones change blood vessels, dilate and thicken arteries and veins in the womb, legs, eyes, brain and throughout the body, ausing migraine, palputations, high blood pressure, clots strokes and heart attacks
* Risk of pill induced vascular death (strokes and heart attacks) is 10 times higher for women over age 35 taking the pill
* Some of the symptoms that women notice are:
Weight gain
Increase or decrease in acne
Nausea and vomiting
Dizziness
Headaches
*DEPRESSION*
Anxiety and nervousness
High blood pressure
Loss of libido
*Please see the study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that with long term use loss of libido may be permanent http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060104232338.htm

There are other birth control options out there! Two you may not know about are Ladycomp and Centchroman.

Speaking of Mental Illness...

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS

Myth: It is unsafe to be around people with mental illnesses because they are likely to become violent.
Fact: People with a mental illness who are receiving treatment are less likely to be violent than the general population. They are more likely to hurt themselves than anyone else. In fact, someone diagnosed with schizophrenia is 2000 times more likely to commit suicide than they are to harm someone else.

Myth: Mental illness is a permanent condition. People diagnosed with psychiatric disabilities will never get better - they will just get worse and worse.
Fact: Mental illness can be treated just like any other illness. Over a 20 to 30 year period, the majority of people recover from even the most severe forms of mental illness. With treatment, 70-90 percent of individuals have significant reduction of symptoms and improved quality of life.

Myth: Depression is all in someone's head. They just need more will power to pull themselves out of it.
Fact: Mental illnesses are no different from physical illnesses. In many ways it is similar to diabetes. There are physical changes in an organ (for diabetes, the pancreas, for mental illnesses, the brain) that affect the levels of chemicals the organ produces (insulin for diabetes, neurotransmitters for mental illnesses). Someone with depression has difficulty changing their mood the way someone with diabetes has difficulty digesting sugar.

➢ One in five Americans suffers from a mental disorder.

➢ An estimated 44 million Americans experience a mental disorder in any given year

➢ Nearly two-thirds of people with mental illness do not seek help, even though effective treatments exist.

➢ Half of the population of the United States will have a mental illness some time in their lives.

➢ In 2000, mental illness, including suicide, was the Number 2 cause of disability, more than cancer and AIDS combined

➢ Among adults, 15% have anxiety disorder, 7 percent have mood disorders, and a little over 1 percent have schizophrenia

➢ Depression is common among people over 65. This group has the highest suicide rate. At the same time, depression is significantly under-diagnosed in this population. Many people think that depression is a normal part of life for older adults, so they do not seek help.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU THINK SOMEONE MIGHT BE SUICIDAL
1. Ask them if they are feeling suicidal.

Do not be afraid that you are going to plant the idea of suicide in their head. They will most likely be thankful that you are listening to them. If they say they are suicidal…

2. Find out if they have plan in place to kill themselves.

Ask if they have an idea of how they would kill themselves. You are trying to determine the seriousness of their intentions. The more specific the person is with their plan, the more they need immediate attention. Ask if they have thought about what method they would use and when and where they would do it. If someone says, “Oh, I haven’t thought about it too much” they still need your support and professional help, but it does not need to happen immediately. If they say, “I plan to kill myself on my father’s birthday next week by shooting myself with my grandfather’s gun in my garden” they need immediate professional attention.

3. Seek professional help immediately if the person seems to be in immediate danger.

You can call 911 or, in Austin, call the Crisis Line at 472-HELP

4. Remove means of suicide from environment

5. Make a no-harm contract with them.

Make a written contract with the person stating that they will not hurt themselves for a certain amount of time (decided between the two of you) without talking to someone first, particularly a mental health professional. Have them write it down.

6. Help them find professional help.

Help them find the number of a mental health professional and make an appointment. Offer to drive them to the appointment. Again, have them write it down.

7. Be supportive and listen to what they have to say

8. Get support for yourself, too.

Because in an ideal world I would make good money as a sexual health educator. But I live in Texas and George W. is president.

Alright, here are some lovely factoids about vaginas and semen - that's right, vaginas and semen! I am going to be throwing the phrase cervical mucus around, so you should start bracing yourself right now if that phrase makes you shudder. This is partly inspired by a fabulous website I found, mymonthlycycles.com, which helps users track their cycle, and will send you reminder emails when you are fertile, ovulating, or about to start your period (male readers, I apologize for use of the possessive "your").

* A woman usually ovulates 14 days before her next period. This means that if a woman has a 30 day cycle, she would ovulate on day 16.
* The normal vaginal pH is 3.8 to 4.5, the pH of semen is 7.2 to 8.0, and spermatozoa are immotile at a pH below 6. When a woman is fertile, her cervical mucus has a pH between 7.0 and 8.5, which is the optimum pH value for sperm migration and survival (according to the World Health Organization manual for examination of human semen and sperm-cervical mucus interaction 4th edition 2000). Below pH levels of 6.9, sperm die at a rate that increases with lowering pH.
*Sperm can live in the vagina 3-5 days on average under fertile conditions. During non-fertile conditions, sperm die in 2-4 hours.
* An egg lives 12-24 hours, and fertilization usually occurs 12-24 hours after ovulation.
* It takes about 2 hours for sperm to reach egg, but this can be as short as 2 minutes.
* It takes about 3 hours for sperm to fully penetrate egg.
* It takes an egg 3 days to travel down the Fallopian tube to the uterus. Once in the uterus, it takes another 3-4 days until implantation of the fertilized egg.
* An easy way for a woman to estimate her fertility is to use the Billings Method, a one-step reading of a woman's cervical mucus. "It is performed by the woman herself in a moment and without internal examination. Every day, she gently wipes the labia with clean, dry, white toilet paper. She looks at the paper to see if there is any mucus on it. If there is, she is likely to be fertile. If the mucus is wet and slippery, and can be easily stretched, then she is very fertile. If the paper stays dry, she is likely to be infertile that day. On the day of the most wet, slippery, clear mucus she is most fertile of all. This day is called the peak day, and is the very day she ovulates (Billings, 1978). She will also feel wettest on this day. She remains fertile for three days after the peak."

Things that are Curious - I

About 8 million blood cells die in the human body every second, and the same number are born each second.

That's the like the entire population of Austria (or New York City) dying and being reborn every second.

Descartes can suck it.

This is one long entry, chock-full of fact-filled goodness. Cause I'm a geek when it comes to embodiment, emotion, and metaphors. It's geeky to have even thought of that sentence.

I am reading Emotional Intelligence, and somehow it is stirring up old thoughts about, well, thoughts - mostly ideas from Philosophy in the Flesh about how humans think.

From Emotional Intelligence we learn...
1. "The emotional mind is far quicker than the rational mind," working so rapidly and automatically that its appraisals never enter conscious awareness.
2. However, there are two paths to emotions, one quick and one slow. "Because it takes the rational mind a moment or two longer to register and respond than it does the emotional mind, the 'first impulse' in an emotional situation is the heart's, not the head's. There is also a second kind of emotional reaction, slower than the quick-response, which simmers and brews first in our thoughts before it leads to feeling. This second pathway to triggering emotions is more deliberate, and we are typically quite aware of the thoughts that lead to it.... In this slower sequence, more fully articulated thought precedes feeling.... By contrast, in the fast-response sequence feeling seems to precede or be simultaneous with thought."
3. The emotional mind is symbolic. "The logic of the emotional mind is associative; it takes elements that symbolize a reality, or trigger a memory of it, to be the same as that reality. That is why similes, metaphors, and images speak directly to the emotional mind.... one object symbolizes another; one feeling displaces another and stands for it; wholes are condensed into parts. There is no time, no laws of cause-and-effect.... What something reminds us of can be far more important than what it 'is....' While the rational mind makes logical connection between causes and effects, the emotional mind is indiscriminate, connecting things that merely have similar striking features."
4. The emotional mind is childlike. It is categorical, seeing things in "black and white, with no shades of gray.... Another sign of this childlike mode is personalized thinking, with events perceived with a bias centering on oneself.... The childlike mode is self-confirming, suppressing or ignoring memories or facts that would undermine its beliefs and seizing those that support it.... The emotional mind takes its beliefs to be absolutely true and so discounts any evidence to the contrary." This means "actions that spring from the emotional mind carry a particularly strong sense of certainty."
5. The emotional mind reacts to the present as though it were the past.
6. The emotional mind is state-specific. "In the mechanics of emotion, each feeling has its own distinct repertoire of thought, reactions, even memories."

All of the above came from Appendix B of Emotional Intelligence, which is so far the most interesting part of the book. Since, I don't have Philosophy in the Flesh here with me, this part will be a lot shorter and mostly taken from an interview with George Lakoff about the book.

His three main points are...
1. The mind is inherently embodied. "What our bodies are like and how they function in the world structures the very concepts we can use to think.... Conceptual structure and the mechanisms of reason arise ultimately from and are shaped by the sensory-motor system of the brain and body."
2. Thought is mostly unconscious (see above for partial discussion of this)
3. Abstract concepts are largely metaphorical, "based on metaphors that make use of our sensory-motor capacities to perform abstract inferences." Metaphor is "not a minor kind of trope used in poetry, but rather a fundamental mechanism of mind."

So, in conclusion...
Human beings are more like words than numbers
We are more like poetry than equations
We are more like dancers than computers
We are more like dreams than encyclopedias
We are more like gods than robots
We are more like unknowing than knowing
We are more like chaos than order
We are metaphors

Love and chemicals, chemicals and love. Or Damn all this love inundation!

Fabulous excerpts from this month's National geographic Article, "This Thing Called Love."

"A woman unconsciously uses orgasms as a way of deciding whether or not a man is good for her."

"Love and obsessive-compulsive disorder could have a similar chemical profile. Translation: Love and mental illness may be difficult to tell apart. Translation: Don't be a fool. Stay away."

"According to this theory, we love whom we love not so much because of the future we hope to build but because of the past we hope to reclaim"

"Helen Fisher has suggested that relationships frequently break up after four years because that's how long it takes to raise a child through infancy."

"If the chemically altered state induced by romantic love is akin to mental illness or a drug-induced euphoria, exposing yourself for too long could result in psychological damage."

"Assuming a fairly healthy relationship, if you have enough orgasms with your partner, you may become attached to him or her. You will stimulate oxytocin."

"And I knew it wouldn't last, couldn't last, and so that infused it with a sweet sense of longing, almost as though we were watching the end approach while we were discovering each other"

Ah, luchtime readings on oxytocin

"The brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke."

And also, “We were not built to be happy but to reproduce.”

Amen. Sing it again Sister.

"The conditions of our lives never seem quite right, because our inner experience of them is unsatisfactory." Christopher Germer Mindfulness and Psychotherapy

I have been right this entire time

Ahem. For every 16 point raise in IQ, a man is 35% more likely to get married. For every 16 point raise in IQ, a woman is 40% less likely to get married. Yeah.

So, I am not crazy - I HAVE BEEN RIGHT THIS ENTIRE TIME.

Once you wrap your head around this fact, start telling people and watch their reaction. I've gotten everything from denial to apathy to giggles to people questioning my mental health. Just don't tell any evolutionary psychologists, because a) their reactions will make you want to punch them in the esophagus and spit in their eyes, and b) no one really wants to talk to an evolutionary psychologist anyway. Kind-of like Bush supporters.

I <3 aquatic ape theory

I forgot how much I love the aquatic ape hypothesis. Yea yea yea!

bodymind theorists - I love them so

I am in the middle of Candace Pert's The Molecules of Emotion and I am starting to feel vibratory and excited, almost joyful. I often feel this way when I am reading or hearing something that not only explains some of my world view, but gives me more information about what the hell is going on. Bodymind theorists - I love them so. The book is great for me becuase it synthesizes a lot of material that I have either already been interested in or have wanted to know more about: proteins, cells, (un)consciousness, state-dependent learning, emotions, information theory, and quantum physics. Whenever I skip ahead a little to see what else she writes about, the excitement increases. I can't wait to finish it.

Currently she is discussing the fact that the cells in the nervous system, endocrine system, and immune sytem all have receptors for and can produce the same peptides. She calls these peptides the molecules of emotion (since they are found and produced in abundance in the areas of the brain traditionally associated with emotions) or information substances. The implications of this, confirmed by studies, is that all of these systems affect one another - your state of mind affects your ability to heal, your hormones affect your state of mind, your immune system affects your hormones, and so on. Instead of all of these systems working independently of one another, each with it's own little master (brain, spleen, hypothalamus and pituitary gland), they are all swimming in the same informational juices and respond to them in their own way. These informational juices (peptides) co-ordinate the actions of these systems that were thought to act independently. We experience this as emotions, states, drives, and desires. So, simply put, our emotions coordinate our biological systems.

Think about that for a minute.

Did you know that your immune system can be conditioned in the same way that Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate at the sound of a metronome? I didn't.

How can you not feel vibratory and excited?

Another thing that she has briefly touched on, and I hope she will talk about more, is the importance of emotions in learning and memory. One of the main purposes of the coordination of our biological systems by emotions is to help us remember and learn. Emotions, in effect, tell the bodymind how to respond to its experiences, to remember them, and to learn from them. She also talks about how emotions in themselves are not good or bad, whether they are "negative" emotions, like fear, anger and sadness, or "positive" emotions, like happiness, love, and joy. "Negative" emotions help us learn and remember just as well as "positive" emotions do.

From a scientific standpoint I think the link between emotions, memory and learning sounds ground-breaking, but I think a lot of us understand this in a fundamental way in everyday life. The thing is, for me at least, I forget that I know that. I get so caught up in the emotion, so identified with it, give it so much weight, that I lose track of everything else. Reminding myself that emotions are tools to help us remember what is happening to us and learn from our experiences helps create a space where I can experience life instead of getting totally consumed by what I am feeling. I do still have problems with the fact that emotions disappear, that they are so temporary, but I think I will leave that discussion for another day.