Vagus Nerve & the Mind-Body Connection

The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve, a honking big nerve that runs from your skull, down your chest and into your abdomen. The punch-in-the-gut feeling of a jolt of adrenalin/the start of an anxiety attack is carried on the vagus nerve.

The usual paradigm for emotions is they start in the brain. Most of the body’s hormones have a dual purpose as a neurotransmitter. The vagus nerve helps coordinate the physical feeling with the emotional feeling – they are one and the same. The mind-body connection.

Most of the body’s serotonin is in the gut. A squirt of serotonin doesn’t just happen in the brain, it happens in the whole body. Ditto adrenaline. The vagus nerve conducts information in both directions. I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to blame anxiety on a brain malfunction.

An interesting treatment for anxiety is “Vagus Nerve Stimulation.” In VNS, a device is implanted that applies current to the vagus nerve is to overwhelm it. It’s kind of like a TENS unit for pain. VNS is a last resort for intractible anxiety.

One implication of this is that if you can control the physical aspects of anxiety – relax your muscles, slow down your breathing & heart rate – then the emotional component will follow. Once the emotions are managed you can work out whatever brought on the anxiety.
Candace Pert, Ph.D. discovered opium (endorphin) receptors in the brain. She wrote an enlightening book Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine.

Also check out Timothy Leary. One of his more interesting ideas is that we have receptor sites for chemicals that haven’t been invented yet. Alexander Shulgin was a chemist who formulated a lot of them, but I don’t recommend you try it.

HBO – Temple Grandin

HBO has made a movie about the life of Dr. Temple Grandin, author of "Thinking in Pictures," the autobiography of an autistic woman. Dr. Grandin is an expert in animal husbandry whose specialty is humane treatment of animals in the cattle industry. The movie is a must see. Preorder Temple Grandin from amazon.com.

Starring Claire Danes, Julia Ormond, Catherine O’Hara and David Strathairn, Temple Grandin paints a picture of a young woman’s perseverance and determination while struggling with the isolating challenges of autism at a time when it was still quite unknown. The film chronicles Temple’s early diagnosis; her turbulent growth and development during her school years; the enduring support she receied from her mother (Ormond) , aunt (O’Hara) and her science teacher (Strathairn); and her emergence as a woman with an innate sensitiviity and understanding of animal behavior.
– HBO Movies, Temple Grandin

On Meddling

“Is it not in the nature of complex social systems to go wrong, all by themselves, without external cause? Look at overpopulation, look at Calhoun’s famous model, those overcrowded colonies of rats and their malignant social pathology, all due to their own skewed behavior. Not at all, is my answer. All you have to do is find the meddler, in this case Professor Calhoun himself, and the system will put itself right. The trouble with those rats is not the innate tendency of crowded rats to go wrong, but the scientists who took them out of the world at large and put them in too small a box.”

Lewis Thomas
“On Meddling,” Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher.

Animals As Intelligent Beings

Tuning into your pet’s needs – BlogPaws

My cat turned me on to a new blog for pet owners called BlogPaws. There is some mention of a conference for bloggers, writers and pet supply companies. The first emphasis brought to my attention was the SEO aspect of writing a blog.

kittehboi.com is a fun blog, and though we make sure to mention others’ blogs, etc. for google juice, I don’t want it to end up looking like a Peruvian circus, full of multicolored flashing and dancing adverts.

The first requirement for SEO is to have content that brings readers back. I’m trying to wrap my brain around it, to come up with an idea that goes further than “funny pictures of cats.”

I have a personal interest in evolutionary psychology and neuropsychology, so my personal focus is on animals as intelligent, rational beings. Cats and dogs have the IQ of young children, but much more impulse control.

“C’mon, admit it – we all do it. Some of us talk to them as if they can actually understand us (I’m one of those).”

Did you catch that? The writer said “as if they can actually understand us.” Apparently this person has some doubts.

Eagle is EXTINCT. So what?

Dogs (and probably cats) have a Broca’s brain or Wernicke’s area, meaning they are capable of understanding speech. In practice cats have a vocabulary of around 20-30 words while dogs may be able to understand 100 or more. Animal behaviorists will tell you it’s “training.” 40 years ago human psychologists were behaviorists too, and explained all human behavior as learned responses to stimuli. How different *are* training and learning?

Man's Uniqueness

Man’s uniqueness among species rests upon his capacity to perfect the arrangements for his own Judgement Day, instead of waiting for nature to do it for him.

Robert Ardrey,
The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations

Self-Righteousness

Self-Righteousness stems from mental illness, from boundary issues. If you don’t own it, stop trying to control it.

Selecting a Juice Extractor

By now you’ve probably heard of the health benefits of eating raw foods. The nutrients in fruits and vegetables are largely destroyed by cooking, thus rendering them only marginally more nutritious than straw. Shipping produce long distances is another factor in vitamin loss. Unless you eat local food with the seasons, there are times when vegetables from California or oranges from Brazil aren’t as nutritious.

I’ve been looking at juicers off and on for the last year, ever since trying the “cold-fighter” drink at the local Juice Zone Healthy Cafe. The drink, by the way, is a mixture of carrot, orange and ginger juices and whether it really helps fight colds I cannot say. However, it’s juiced to order and tastes like the nectar of the Gods.

According to ConsumerSearch, Inc., a service of About.com, there are two types of juicer extractors that are of interest to users who wish to juice hard vegetables such as carrots. They are the centrifugal juice extractor and the single-auger masticating juice extractor.

A centrifugal juice extractor is similar to a home blender. It has sharp blades to pulverize the raw food. The difference is that it also rotates the collector to squeeze the juice out of the pulp, sort of like the washing machine spin cycle. A higher quality centrifugal juice extractor will extract a larger percentage of the juice, leaving drier pulp for your compost pile.

A single-auger masticating juice extractor is similar to a wood chipper and is better at chewing up fiberous leafy greens. The auger crushes the raw food before squeezing out the juice. The single-auger juice extractor may come with attachments for making fruit spreads and nut butters. It is quieter than centrifugal juicers.

In general, unless you plan on extracting wheat grass, the centrifugal juice extractor is adequate.

Juice extractor power is measured in Watts. A high-powered juicer will be able to handle harder vegetables in larger chunks and will extract the juice more quickly. However, the higher the power, the more expensive. Restaurant-quality extractors are 2000W or higher.

For reference, 1000W is about a horsepower. Compare a juicer to typical non-self-propelled lawn mower, about 6 hp. This is not at all what you want in a countertop unit.

In a centrifugal juicer, the spin speed helps determine the yield. A faster spin extracts a higher percentage of juice. Though a faster spin is more expensive, a more expensive model may produce up to 35% more juice. Depending upon how much fresh juice you drink, the savings may be significant over the life of a more durable model.

Durability is desirable. Less expensive juicers have more breakable plastic parts. An all-metal juicer will last longer but will be more expensive.

If using a masticating juicer, the available attachments enable grinding nut butters, pureeing homemade baby food, etc.

Another feature to take into account is the size of the feeder. A wider feeder saves time because the veggies don’t have to be cut up first.

Dishwasher-safe parts are desirable for ease of cleaning.

I have chosen the Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite 1000-Watt Juice Extractor based on the consumer reviews on ConsumerSearch.com and on Amazon.com.

How to Save Money on Meds

If you usually traipse over to your local Rite Aid to get medications, you can easily save money.

Number one is to get generics where available.

Lamictal	200 mg	60 tablets	$389.99
Lamotrigine	200 mg	60 tablets	$323.14 :: cheaper

Number two is that your drugstore probably sells drugs online for at
least 10% lower than at your neighborhood store.

Number three is to buy larger pills and split them. If you took 100mg doses:

Lamictal 100mg	100 tabs	$533.32	$5.33 per dose
Lamictal 200mg	60 tabs or 120 doses	$389.99	$3.25 per dose :: cheaper

Number four is to save by buying in bulk. Check before you order as it’s not a given.

Lamictal 200mg Tablets
60 tabs	$389.99	$6.50 ea
180 tabs	$1,138.09	$6.32 ea :: cheaper

Number five is to buy from overseas pharmacies, and remember they are NOT TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.

Lamotrigine 200mg Tablets
Drugstore.com	240 tabs	$1,156.51	$4.82 ea
Canadadrugs.com	280 tabs	$425.60	$1.52 ea :: cheaper

Do Plastics Contribute to Obesity?

Plastics… and other unusual explanations for the obesity epidemic

Weather.com just noticed years of research suggesting that some plastics contain estrogen-like chemicals which can leech out into the contents. Welcome to the REAL world.

If estrogen-like compounds really do leech into your soda, not only could it make you fat, it could also cause breast cancer, precocious puberty and even a class of birth defects known in developmental biology and teratology as Mullerian duct anomalies. The latter are defects in the reproductive organs that can lead to sterility or intersex states.

Until it is disproved, it might be a good idea to avoid drinking acidic substances from plastic bottles. Look for your favorites in glass bottles, and if you can’t find them write to the company. Switch to filtered tap water while you wait for an answer.

Bipolar Planet on Facebook

The Bipolar Planet has made it to the 21st century. Social Networking is all the rage, and though The Bipolar Planet has provided a private email list for over ten years and a web page for 15 years as of May 2009, I’ve resisted wandering. Ok, here we go… Become a fan at the official Bipolar Planet Facebook page.