Diabetes and Stress

I know I write a lot about stress and stuff you can do to prevent it, but I just really find this one topic very interesting and like learning about it and expanding my knowledge on it.

                Right now I want to talk about what we think of when we hear people talk about stress? Do you think about a lot of work? Maybe you think about needing resting time, but one common thing people tend to do when you are faced with stress is food. When we are stressed, we think that eating is going to help because it gives us something else to think about and it also helps produce a “feel-good” sensation in your body. However could all this sugar-eating be contributing to a large increase of diabetic people in the United States?

                Diabetes is a disease in which your kidneys are producing enough insulin in which you are able to maintain a steady blood sugar. When you are not able to maintain a steady blood sugar, that’s not good for your body because it causes it to not be able to break down the sugars as well and then you are not able to get your energy which causes you to either go too high or too low in your blood sugar range.

                Relating this all together, people with diabetes are normally more likely to not handle stress as well because they are not able to have that backup plan of “stress eating”. Also research says that if we are able to maintain our stress patterns, we might be able to decrease of cases of diabetes because we wouldn’t be finding that happy stress reliever and we would be a more healthy community.

                I think that a good way to also help with maintaining the stress levels would be finding something else to do other than eat or something. It would be better for you to exercise or read or find a new crafty idea. This could cut down on the gaining weight, which causes you to be at higher risk of diabetes and you also might start to live a happier life.

Genetic Modification

Would it be beneficial to be able to see infra-red or ultra violet? When seeing infra-red you are able to detect body heat off living organisms and ultra-violet you are able to see things like sunrays and sunlight. With a little bit of genetic modifications, us humans would be able to see things that we have never been able to see before, however, would that be helpful to us? Or could it just be another cool things that the human body can do?

                Today in my AP Bio class, we talked about light and the different wave lengths and in this discussion, we got a little off topic and started talking about all the different colors and how we are able to see those. Then when we got even farther off topic, we started talking about different animals and how some, such as a snake, are able to see this infra-red color which helps track down their pray. That led into the class wondering if we were able to see these, would that help us in any way, shape or form and if it was even a possible thing to do. To help solve this mystery, we asked and my teacher told us that we could potentially be genetically modified to be able to see these colors because we would just have to change one small DNA sequence to tell our brain not to filter these things out and then we would be able to see all these cool colors and energy forms.

                However, knowing this, do you think that it would be beneficial in any way? I think it would be more cool than beneficial because we don’t really hunt prey, like snakes, so it wouldn’t really be a helpful tactic there. However, being able to see the ultra-violet would be pretty cool because when you are able to see the sun’s rays and how strong they are. By doing thing, you could be able to save yourself from the harmful rays in the summer by judging how strong they are on that given day.

                Right now, I think in this generation, we are not reliant on this trait and I don’t think we are close to needing to be reliant, so for right now, it would just be a super cool trait for us to have but it wouldn’t help or harm us.

Nothing Sparks a Memory Like a Song

                “Nothing sparks a memory quite like a song”

-Spotify Music

On Wednesday last week, I went to hear a lady speak about her findings in her scientific research. I thought it would be cool to go hear her talk about it because it dealt with my two favorite things. Music and the Human Brain.

                This neuroscientist like to learn about the brain in a way that I never thought of before. She wanted to know if there really was some kind of correlation between music and memories. In order to find this out, she had to do some tests to see if there was a specific part of the brain was responsible for this. She found out that there was, in fact, a part of your brain that would “light up” when you would hear a song and feel an emotional tie with a memory. To come to this conclusion, she did tests on normal people with no brain damage, on people with brain damage in the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for memory, and people with brain damage in other regions of the brain, to make sure it wasn’t all brain damaged patients. In her experiment, she played music for all the patients and ask them to tell her any memory that came to mind. According to her hypothesis, she predicted that the patients with no brain damage at all would experience more, vivid memories and the patients with memories related brain damages would experience little vivid memories. When she concluded her experiment, she found that her hypothesis was correct in that patients suffering from memory related brain damages experience less vivid memories and people with brain damages elsewhere and people with no brain damage experience vivid, more emotional memories.

                I think this kind of information could be used to help students learn new topics in school. I think that would work because if they hear a song while learning something and then hear that same song again, maybe it could help them remember the idea better. This could also help patients slow the process of aging because elders could listen to a playlist made for them so they don’t forget things as easily. Lastly, knowing where all these memorable experiences are being retrieved from in the brain came help scientist find to cure people who experience brain damaging accidents. I think that would be super cool if they could find a way for elders to keep the memories they had when they were little instead of having them slowly erased from their memory.

Is Ebola more of a Fear than an actual threat?

Ebola has been around for many, many years and yet we are just now starting to freak out about it. One question I have among many others is why? I realize that due to our scare about it being brought into the United States we are freaked out that it might take your life next. But, as I heard from many different new reports and even my AP Biology teacher said that it is isn’t able to go through the air and many scientists believe that it isn’t going to be able to mutate itself to do that. At least, not right now.

                I do believe however that we should take precautions without going to overboard with it. For example, we need to stay as hygienic as we possibly can, and we can do that by washing our hands and not sharing any food or drinks with anyone. We mostly need to keep our bodily fluids to ourselves so in order to do that, if you don’t feel good, I believe it would be at best interest to yourself and to everyone around you that you stay home and away from everyone. This allows you to replenish your body’s energy so that it is able to go on functioning properly. Another thing you can do is cover your mouth with your hand or elbow to decrease the amount of body fluid from spreading to others.

                So once again I will say, why is there so much concern with this disease spreading now than 10 years ago? The best solution I have for that is the fact that now that it’s in our own comfort zone, we don’t know what to do. We always thought we were safe and just felt bad for the people in Africa dealing with this. Of course we probably said, let’s go cure them, but did anyone go over? Maybe a few but not a lot because we didn’t want the disease because we wouldn’t know what to do with it. So now that the disease is in our country, and has affected a few people, we now are thinking that we are inferior because a disease that wasn’t even supposed to be here is affecting us and we can’t stop it. That is a big psychology concept, the fact that if you believe something for a long time and then you are suddenly changed from that way of thinking, you don’t know how to react.

                I think once again that we should just keep our sanitation up so that we can try and limit the spread of germs, but there isn’t much to be scared of, unless the disease finds a way to mutate itself, which is very unlikely.

Study Habits

Are we learning good study habits or are we just trying to remember things for a couple days and then forget it right after the test? For many of us, that’s how our brains work because now-a-days, it seems we aren’t going to school for the education anymore, we are going there to pass and if we pick up a few extra things along the way then there’s a bonus for us.

                However, I think most of that comes from my generation being lazy sometimes and not actually taking the time to comprehend the stuff, but we merely just remember it for a little bit and then forget it. If you know that you can classify with this then here are some tips that can help you actually learn the concepts and not just remember them. One, you can fully learn something and then make sure you know it and then leave it for a couple of days and then come back and see if you can still fully remember everything. Another thing to do is instead of getting all worked up about something because you can’t figure it out the first time we can take a deep breath and skip it and come back to it when we are nice and calm so that we can think through it logically and not just go through it sloppily. That’s another thing, racing through your homework and in class work has no benefit because you didn’t let your brain think through it and comprehend it. Without it doing that then you are really unlikely to remember what you need to.

                Knowing this now a little better than when I started this post, I realized that I need to spend more time doing things that are going to better myself in all aspects. For example, I put the pro in procrastination. This leads me to wait until the very last minute which I have learned is something that I really need to get better at because it doesn’t help at all and it just causes me to be more stressed out than I need to be. I also learned that I need to spend more time doing the things assigned if I actually want to learn things instead of just know things.  

Crazy sleep cycle?

As you grow up from your elementary years to your middle school, then high school, then college, it always seems the amount of sleep we get daily decreases. It seems that the more homework you get the faster time goes and less amount of time we have to do it. When this occurs we slip into routine of staying up until 1 in the morning writing that paper that you procrastinated until the last minute and getting up at 5 or 6 in the morning to get ready for another day of school. Then while we have school to worry about, we are trying to juggle that with maintaining a job so that we can start figuring out how to make it in the “real world”. As our sleep cycle varies more and more as we get older, it becomes crutial that we try and make it better again.

                The reason you want a solid sleep cycle is because for one, you are constantly “recharging” your brain and allowing it to distress from the previous day. In order to function properly we need to give our brain a couple hours of rest a night. However, when we get older, we don’t plan ahead and think about all the things we could be doing to stay ahead so that we are able to say on the correct sleep cycle.

                Some things that can help regulate your sleep cycle is once again, not procrastinating your projects and waiting until the very last minute to do them because when you do that, you just add more stress onto yourself which is never good. Another thing you could do is limit yourself on what you can and can’t do. For example, if you know you want to do something like an extra sport or class but you know it’s going to pile on and make it hard for you to get everything done, then maybe you should rethink that decision because you still want to have time to relax and just be a teenager.

                When you don’t sleep, it can negatively impact yourself, which I believe I already talked about in a previous post but I will touch on them again. One is you can affect your learning habits make it so you have a hard time remembering stuff because your brain doesn’t have enough time to rest itself. Another is it can cause more health related issues such as depression which can be caused by all the stress you have to go through to get everything done on time.

                I think it’s very important to try new things and experience what it is like to be out in the “real world” as my parents like to call it. I also think it’s very important to also leave enough time to just have time to yourself or time with your friends and family. Finding that happy middle is a very difficult thing to do but I know that if we really work on not procrastinating and doing things well the first time we can all have enough time grow as a person and make new discoveries as well as having enough time to spend with yourself.

New Protein that is Involved with Cancer?

This is straying from my normal topic a little bit, but last week I read a really cool article for my AP Biology class and thought I would share it with you all.J

This article talked about cells and two new proteins discovered in the cell that help in transforming new cells into whatever kind of cell it needs to be, called YAP/TAZ. This protein is really cool because when a cell divides, creating a new cell, the protein attaches itself to the DNA in the nucleus of the cell and changes it into the different type of cell that it needs to be, whether it be a lung, skin, or blood cell.

Another thing about this protein is that it is the “switch” that turns off or turns on the process of cell division. For example, if you get a cut on your arm, YAP/TAP will “turn on” the process of cell division and create new cells to clear up the cut on the arm. However, if the protein does not turn off the process of cell division, the cells keep going, which is a new leading factor of the cause of tumors.

As you can probably conclude, this discovery of the new protein is a very huge impact on everyone. It is because it now suggests that cancer may not be genetic but may be more based on how your proteins are working in your body. This can help scientists and doctors because it gives them a new lead on where to start to cure cancer and get rid of it once and for all. The fact that we found out that the shape of a cell and how our proteins work just helps us figure out new ways to think about other discoveries which can help us create new treatments to cure this and also help narrow down how scientists can figure out this problem that has troubled us for many years.

Finding out this new scientific discovery is huge and very exciting because it is one step closer to curing cancer which is good because we wouldn’t lose so many people way too early than we actually should.    

Marijuana- Good or Bad?

Marijuana. It’s a drug everyone knows very well now because of the legalization that was sparked in Colorado. However, I’m not worried about where it is legalized… until it spreads to the rest of the country, but I am worried about the effects it has on our brain and body that some people don’t know or don’t care to know about.

In an article that I read I found out that the drug has a lot of effects on the brain than I originally thought. For one, I knew that it produced a “feel good” feeling. This is due to the chemicals in the drug mimicking the same chemicals that are produced by the brain naturally that give you the good feelings. One effect that I was not aware of was the fact that it slowed the efficiency of the memory. According to this article, the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, is effected because the chemical receptors bind to the hippocampus receptors and restrict it from continuing their job.

I believe the legalization of marijuana should not be legalized because of all the other side effects it causes. For example, besides the fact of it causing memory loss, and the “feel good” feeling, it also causes anxiety, panic and distrust. I think that all these aspects contribute to our generation lagging behind any other generation. Because children have better access to these drugs due to them becoming more legal, could be considered a leading factor in the growth of our declining generation. However, many people could argue that because the drugs have such a strict restriction, children are more curious to try them. I can see where they are coming from when they say these things, however, I still believe that if we give children and adults easier access to these drugs, they are going to be more likely to try them. All this can lead to many children and adults to grow up with long term to permanent disorders that will restrict them from doing what they really love when they actually grow up more and learn what they actually were doing when they tried all these stupid things.

Development of the Brain

Click here to read the study

    
         When I looked at this website, it instantly caught my eye because it was about new discoveries on how infants brains can transform into children brains and then to adult. This has always interested me because I have always wondered how our brains are able to transform themselves and without us doing anything physical to them. An even cooler part of this article was that they tested the different brain developmental aspects of children with specific disorders, such as being blind and concluded the differences between the two.

                The neuroscientists were shocked to gather the findings but also intrigued to continue their studies so that they can continue to develop more information. These findings show how the brain is developed through out time and the different experiences play roles in our everyday life by affecting our brain development.

                I’m really excited to hear about new discoveries when it comes to learning how the brain develops because, like I said before, I’m super interested when it comes to learning about the brain and how it functions. I think learning about how the brain develops can just lead to more information about ourselves that we before had no idea about. I think it is very important to know everything about ourselves and right now in this day and age of science, I think there is so much more we can learn about how our brains work which leads to how the body works together as a whole. I also think that learning the simple, fundamental things about our brain can help us later when it comes to learning how to treat different disabilities some people have, such as blindness. And if we can figure out how blindness works and how it affects brain development, we can soon try to come up with a treatment that cures it better. I also think that if we know what blindness is and how it affects us, we can have a little more respect for those people who are affected by this because we will know more how it works. If more and more people have a respect for it, we will have a new, more improved ways for parents, teachers, co-workers and even family members to coup with it as well as the ones actually dealing with it.

                This is just the beginning of all the discoveries that have been found and there are still many more to be found. All these discoveries will help us improve ourselves by giving us something in common while still having those differences between each other.  

Stress Talk

Stress takes a toll on everyone whether they like it or not. The reason it does is to keep everyone on their toes so they don’t get bored doing the same thing over and over again. If life was easy, it would be boring.

            When people are put under large amounts of stress, they are not able to function properly until they are able to get their stress levels back down to a normal level.  When you are put under a lot of stress, it’s best to not freak out because that just adds more stress. It’s best to let yourself calm down and think through what you are going to do logically so you don’t mess up and have to just keep piling more and more stress onto yourself.

            I feel like I am in the most stressful time of the busiest year of my life. Junior year. It is very stressful because many of us are just starting our new jobs, and trying to maintain school work, and trying to get enough time with friends and family, while still trying to get enough sleep at night so you can function properly. Also we are right around the corner for college and we need to start looking things up and trying to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. It’s a hard time, however, I know that if we manage our time and do not procrastinate with everything, we can all make it through with minimal amounts of stress.

            The best way to handle the stress, it to, like I said, take some time for yourself. Do not add more and more things to do for your “to do” list because that’s not going to help at all. Instead, take a nap, let your mind shut off for a few hours so you can try and reboot it. Or try saying yes to going out with your friends who you haven’t seen in forever. Anything that brings you joy and will help take the stress levels down, the better.

            So just remember to do as many things in high school as you can so you can be prepared for opportunities after high school but remember to take some time for yourself and stop to smell the daisies.

Memento

 

            I watched a movie last year and it was called Memento. This movie was about a man who is trying to piece his life back together after he suffers from anterograde amnesia after being attacked by one, maybe two men. As the movie progresses, you are trying to figure out, along with the main character who killed his wife. As you watch this moive, you feel like you yourself have anterograde amnesia because the movie plays from start to finish backwards revealing a little more every time.

            The main character Leonard, had anterograde amnesia, which means that he cannot form any new memories and keep them locked in his brain. This would have to do with something going wrong in the process of translating it from your short term memory into your long term memory. As you watch more of the movie, you realize that the main character has to do everything in his power to try and remember what he had tried so hard not to forget. By doing this, he takes pictures and gives himself tattoos all over his body.

            I would very much recommend this movie to anyone who would like to see what it would be like to have anterograde amnesia. Also if you want to see kind of what it would feel like to have it, this movie would be the way to go. You might have to watch it muiltple times in order to fully understand what happens because in some parts it goes from showing you the movie backwards to present day and it just gets kind of confusing. But it really is a great movie!

 

Phobia or Fear?

Do you have a fear of something? Everyone is scared of something, whether it be spiders, or falling off a cliff, or something as simple as tight spaces. Fears however are much different than phobias. Fears do not limit you on daily tasks. If you are scared of something so bad that you can’t even go near or even think of that thing, you probably have a phobia of that particular object. Because phobias limit you one everything you do on a daily basis, it is very hard for people with certain phobias to live a normal life.

            I don’t believe that I personally have any phobias, however, I am scared of a lot of things. But because they do not keep me from living a normal life, they would not be considered phobias. For example, I’m scared of being kidnapped, but me being scared of that does not lead me to live in constant fear of it. For people with phobias of being kidnapped, they would not even be able to function and go outside normally because they would be living in constant fear that someone is going to come up and take them.

            Some symptoms of phobias is dizziness, breathlessness, nausea, and in some cases a full on anxiety attack. Because these sympotoms can escalate to extreme cases, many go seek medical treatment. Phobias affect more than 10% of people in the United States alone. Because there is so many people with phobias living in the United States, they are able to go to the doctor and get many different options as to how to treat different types. For example, one type of treatment is called flooding. In this treatment, the patient is confronted with the fear for an extended amount of time with no way to get out of it. To me, this type of treatment seems a little too aggressive for my liking, however it seems to work because they are able to see that their fear is not actually harmful to them. Another type of treatment is counter-conditioning. In this treatment, the patient is taught to feel a different type of emotion when encountering that fear rather than feeling panicked. This type of treatment is mostly used for those who cannot handle the exposure treatments such as flooding.