Sleep and Circadian Rhythms

Oh how I love sleep!

Your sleep cycles and circadian rhythms play a vital role in the health of your body, but perhaps even more-so in the health of your brain. The area of your brain that controls your circadian rhythms is an area called the hypothalamus (because it resides just below your thalamus). The hypothalamus controls your drive states which is to say the drive you have for the behaviors you need in order to stay alive (eating, drinking, fighting, and sexual behaviors). Although sleep is not normally considered to be a vital drive state, I think sleep might be our most powerful drive state. I say this because although we can starve and dehydrate ourselves to the point of death we cannot resist the desire to sleep. If you could deprive yourself of sleep you would die, however our brains will not let that happen. Once our brain assesses the need for sleep it simply takes over and puts itself to sleep, and there is little we can do about it. Indeed, not even the strongest of men can resist sleep!

The control of circadian rhythms by the brain is one of my favotire subjects in Neuroscience and I could talk about it for hours, and in fact I do during more course at UCLA. I always end my lecture with my personal tips for sleeping well. That is because the majority of us will have sleep difficulties in our lives that are serious enough to warrant sleeping medication. I offer these tips as a way to avoid taking sleeping medications and as a way to help you achieve your highest mental acuity.  

 

• “Early to bed early to rise will make you healthy wealthy and wise”. Get bright light into your retinas as early in the morning as possible (after 7.5 – 8 hours of sleep). Also avoid getting bright light in your eyes if you get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water.
• Go to bed and wake up the same time every day. And yes, that means 7 days a week.
• Perform a bedtime ritual. Whether you wash your face, or brush your teeth, get in the habit of doing the same nightly ritual and this will tell your brain that it is time to prepare for sleep.
• Always get 8 hours of sleep. Don’t disrupt your sleep cytoarchitecture! You need to have that last long REM period to maintain your optimal mental health.
• If you cannot sleep get out of bed! Try sleeping on the couch. Do not use the bed for anything other than sleep (well, maybe one other thing). You need to pair sleep and bed in your mind.
• Avoid drinking alcohol or taking GABA agonists (barbiturates, benzodiazepines) to help you sleep. They may help you fall asleep initially, but will cause you to have abnormal sleep cycles, and sleep that is not very restful.
• Do NOT rely on sleeping pills. If you must use sleeping pills do not use them more than 3 days in a row. Sleeping pills can quickly become habit forming which means that when you don’t take them you won’t be able to sleep. When they become ineffective due to tolerance you will have a serious chronic sleeping problem.

 

I believe that “rhythmicity” in your life is very important. If you eat at the same time every day you will notice that your body (liver, gall bladder) will begin to release the enzymes that are necessary to digest the foods that you typically eat at this meal. Therefore, I think that you can aid your digestion by giving your body the nutrients that it has prepared to utilize at this time. I also believe that your body will prepare to undergo the strain of exercise prior to your exercise period if you train at the same time every day. You will notice that if you switch your training schedule from say morning to night that it will take you some time before your body adjusts to the new schedule. I remember once that I switched from an evening to a morning training schedule and the weights seemed twice as heavy in the morning. It took me some time before I felt “right” during the morning training routine. The most important rhythm you maintain is your circadian rhythm. Monitoring your sleep patterns so that you fall asleep and wake up at the same times each day can have a dramatic effect on your physical and mental health. Your brain will automatically prepare you for sleep and wakefulness if you follow your rhythm. Help your brain to help itself by maintaining your own natural life’s rhythms.

I would like to share more about how circadian rhythms are controlled by your brain, but it would be a little long for this blog entry.  If you contact me I will send you the Chapter on Sleep from my book The Triumvirate of Human Brain Fitness.

 

Simple Heuristics and Simple Rules of Nutrition

Let me provide you with some simplistic heuristics about your diet. The first heuristic is for you to think of yourself as a vegetarian that eats meat. Your diet should contain substantial portions of vegetables and fruits and whole grains and should include a palm sized portion of meat at your protein meals. I think that the protein you acquire in the form of small amounts of lean meats are essential for optimum health.

The second heuristic is to think of your diet as a medical prescription such as that prescribed by a doctor to a diabetic. I once was in a phase where I wanted to explore the world of nutrition and began to read many books on diets aimed at increased performance, weight loss, cleansing, and life extension. I have read many diet plans and diet books and I have rarely, if ever, seen a diet that is a vastly improved over the American Diabetic Associations 1800 calorie diet. Professional nutritionists know this diet as the ADA 1800. I found some of the diets in the diet books I read to be outright ridiculous and the majority to be hyped up versions of existing diets. Because I worked at a hospital I compared the diets in these books to the diets the patients were receiving. What I realized was that the calorie restriction, and weight loss diets, lacked any significant improvements over the ADA 1800 diet. Now I personally eat more calories a day than 1800, but if you are looking for the basic building blocks of nutritional planning I think that you will benefit from reviewing the American Diabetic Association and the American Dietetic Associations guidelines on healthy eating. Another excellent source of diet information is a professional nutritionist. Yes, getting diet information from a professional nutritionist is a good idea (imagine that).

 There appears to be a lot of health benefits gained from NOT overeating. This may already seem obvious and the evidence is getting stronger all the time. With regards to Life Extension it seems that calorie restriction is the most reproducible way to increase the life span of an animal. Please take the time to read or view some material presented by Aubrey de Grey PhD on this topic. I personally find him to be very entertaining as he comes across as a bit of a kook. However, I think the findings on life extension, primarily the evidence on calorie restriction, are very convincing. There are currently many scientists working on the riddle of calorie restriction, autophagy, telomeres, and DNA repair, on a prolonged life span.

 Some simple rules with regards to healthy eating include; 1) eating less overall, 2) eating smaller meals, 3) eating the majority of your food early in the day, and 4) eating foods that do not come with a list of ingredients (natural foods), 5) eating foods that are locally grown and are in season, 6) eating different colored foods, and avoiding “white” foods, namely potatoes, pasta and rice.

My “666″ Exercise Routine

If you want to get in shape fast, then you might want to try my 666 routine. I call it the 666 routine for a couple of reasons; the first is that you train at 6:00am, and 6:00pm, 6 days a week, the second reason is because it is hell! Doing “two-a-days” 6 days a week will get you into great shape in as little time as 6 weeks, but be warned, it is not easy.

 I follow the 666 routine whenever I feel the need to get into top shape or when I want to jump start my fitness training. Therefore, I usually do this routine in the Spring after a long winter of heavy lifting. The 666 routine helps me increase my cardiovascular fitness, increase muscle tone, and reduce body fat levels.

Here are the specifics of my 666 routine. I awaken at 5:30 and drink a cup of coffee in order to prepare for the gym. You can also drink water or juice if you prefer. Therefore, I perform my morning training session on an empty stomach. I arrive at the gym at 6:00 and perform my aerobic exercise activity that may include, stationary bike, stairmaster, rowing machine, or elliptical stepper. I vary the exercises in order to avoid boredom and stagnation. The key to this session is to get your heart rate at 80% of maximum (which depends upon your age and weight) for a period of 20 minutes. I start slowly and have a period of around 5 minutes warm up and a period of 5 minutes cool down, so the aerobic exercise takes 30 minutes. I then perform my abdominal routine of upper and lower abs which takes around 15 minutes. I perform my ab routine with slight variations at both the morning and evening sessions so that I am training my abs twice a day 6 days a week.

I arrive at the gym for my evening session at 6:00 and perform my weightlifting movements. The specific routine depends upon my specific goals. For example, I often follow my push-pull 6 day routine. Specifically, I perform all push movements on Day 1, pull movements on Day 2, and leg movements on Day 3. I then repeat; so that Day 4 is push, Day 5 is pull, and Day 6 is legs. I then rest on day 7.

 Once upon a time, in land far far away, I prepared for a bodybuilding contest using this routine with the exception that instead of utilizing the push-pull routine I used my “upper body one day – legs the next” routine. In this routine I train my entire upper body all in one day and do all legs the next day so that I am training upper body and legs 3 times each per week. It would take me around 4 hours to train my entire upper body and around 3 hours to train my legs. Abdominals were trained every day. This routine is very taxing and can only be maintained for a short period of time. Moreover, this routine is for creating lean muscle and you will be unable to sustain your strength or your athletic performance levels for more than a couple of weeks. Therefore, I recommend that you only attempt to perform either of these 666 routines for a period of 6 weeks or less.

This 666 routine is very taxing on your body so care must be taken in order to avoid injury. After all, if you get injured all of the benefits of this advanced training regimen will be lost. In order to avoid injury you must have very good nutrition and sleeping behaviors already in place. You simply cannot reap the benefits of this routine if you are neglecting either your nutrition or your sleep and you will be much more likely to develop a serious injury or a nagging ailmentif you are not eating and sleeping properly. Also, please use these 666 training regimens only if you already enjoy a heightened level of physical fitness.

Homeopathy Explained

I recently posted an article about homeopathy at www.humanbrainfitness.com and although I think this exposes homeopathy as a ridiculous concept, still many of us don’t really understand what homeopathy is, or why it is ridiculous. The idea behind homeopathy is that water maintains a memory, or an indentation in the form of a shadow if you will, of a substance that was once next to it. A water molecule will for example remember the molecule of ipecac that was placed next to it. Therefore, after many serial dilutions we are left with water that no longer contains any of the original treatment molecule (ipecac). Homeopathic practitioners will claim that the greater the dilution the greater the effectiveness of the treatment.

 

If we are to entertain this concept of homeopathy then some rather simple and logical questions readily come to mind.

Q: If instead of a homeopathic dose, you accidently gave the patient pure water, would you overdose them?

Q: Why does water only remember the molecule you choose? Wouldn’t it also remember molecules of feces and urine? Given that water has been on the planet for around 4 billion years, would it have 4 billion years of memories? Does water remember dinosaur feces being next to it?

 

Now for some logic. Let’s say that a homeopathy solution that is proposed is a 300C dilution and a practitioner suggests that it is not only the memory of the proposed treatment molecule but the molecule itself (ipecac) in trace amounts that is responsible for the effectiveness of the therapy. In a 1X solution you would have 1 mole, or Avogadro’s number of molecules (6.022 141 79(30)×10²³ mol^–1 ), in the sample. By diluting the sample 300X we would be left with a sample that is basically pure water. In other words, the probability that the sample you purchase would have a single molecule of the original Avogadro’s number of molecules would be extremely low. For example, in order to make a 1C dilution we would take 10mL of a 1X solution and add it to 90mL to make 100mL. Now repeat this process 300 times: 1M, to 0.1M, to 0.01M to 0.001M to 0.0001M… ok, you get the idea. In homeopathy these simple serial dilutions are called “potentisation” in order to make it sound more scientific.

  

Another reason why homeopathy simply makes no sense is the presence of isomeric compounds. Most of you are probably aware that in nature molecules exist in two isoforms that are mirror images of each other. It seems a general rule (with many exceptions) that the l-isoform is the most active in nature (e.g., l-tryptophan, l-tyrosine, l-alanine etc…). However the d-isoform is just as prevalent as the l-isoform. Some molecules used as drugs have either the l-, d- or even dl-isomers present in their chemical make-up. My question is why do water molecules only remember the isomeric structures that are relevant? Wouldn’t water molecules have equal memory of both isomers? If the memory is formed by the creation of a shadow of the molecule in question, is this shadow in the shape of the d-isomer for an l-isomeric molecule? How does this reverse shadow structure function to alleviate the condition in the patient? I don’t pose this question as a real scientific conundrum, but instead to point out just how ridiculous the whole concept of homeopathy and the memory of water molecules really is.

 

Another point that really makes me laugh out loud is that those that promote homeopathic treatments always claim that one of the key benefits of their “medicine” is that there are no side effects like those harmful drugs. Really, there are no side effects from taking pure water? I’m shocked! What is perhaps most shocking is that people like you and I would actually be foolish enough to part with a single penny of our money to purchase this ridiculous pseudoscientific snake-oil.  

 

Ridiculous Homeopathy

Below is an excerpt from an article by the guru of homeopathy. Whenever homeopaths need a scientific explanation for how homeopathy works the apparently turn to Lionel Milgrom. For those of you that do not have a PhD in science; the information below will NOT make sense to you, but do not be alarmed, it will not make sense to someone with a PhD either. That is because that which is written below is complete gibberish. The “paper” below sounds scientific but it is completely meaningless. The idea is to completely baffle the reader with bullshit so that they are entirely snowed over. This practice is really shameful. Instead of being embarrassed that you cannot understand this paper you should be angry that someone would attempt to pass off this complete nonsense as science.

However, now that you know the magician’s trick you can read this and enjoy it for its humorous quality. Read a few lines and enjoy the exercise your stomach gets from the hilarious laughter produced by this gobbledygook (”merging of the two semiotic tetrahedra provides a 3-D object called a stellated octahedron…”) indeed! LOL!
 
J Altern Complement Med. 2008  Apr;14(3):329-39 (i.e., fake journal)

A new geometrical description of  entanglement and the curative
homeopathic process.
Milgrom  L.R.

Abstract:

INTRODUCTION: The Memory of Water, a  “local” explanation of
homeopathy’s efficacy, has been supplemented  recently by complementary
“nonlocal” hypotheses. One of these envisages  “quantum
macro-entanglement” among patient, practitioner, and remedy to  form a
“PPR” entangled state, from which the possibility of cure may  manifest.
METHODS: Semiotic analysis affords a geometrical description of  this
entangled state as a patient-centered chiral tetrahedron. Its  four
corners depict three different types of symptoms (of the patient,  the
dis-ease, and the remedial substance) and the potentized  remedy.
RESULTS: Reflecting this state in a practitioner-derived  mirror-like
“therapeutic state space” generates two notional  patient-centered chiral
tetrahedra: cure may be thought to arise from their  patient-driven
combination “through the looking glass” of the therapeutic  state space,
into one polyhedron called a stella octangula or stellated  octahedron;
in essence, a 3-dimensional Star of David. CONCLUSIONS: The  practitioner
helps in forming these notional semiotic polyhedra, but the  patient is
at their epicenters (i.e., the practitioner facilitates but  ultimately
does not control the curative  process).

Excerpts:

Nonlocal entanglement “has been depicted  geometricallly as a hexagonal
bipyramid.  ‘Cure’ results from the  combination of this state with its
‘twisted reflection’ in a notional  two-dimensional mirror-like
‘therapeutic state space’ (an analogue of the  complex mathematical
Hilbert space more familiar from orthodox quantum  theory).”

Referring to semiotics, “the study of signs and symbols”:  “Walach
specifically applies modern semiotics to homeopathy by making some  quite
revolutionary assumptions.  Thus, the usual supposed local,  causal
effects of a potentized homeopathic remedy (i.e., its  pharmacologic
activity, regardless of the absence of molecules of the  substance) are
dropped.  Instead, Walach adopts the semiotic notion  that the
homeopathic remedy is a ’sign’ working simultaneously in and for  two
different but connected meaningful contexts: (1) the symptoms of a  sick
person signify a certain disease state (first meaningful context),  while
simultaneously signifying (2) a homeopathic remedy in the materia  medica
(second meaningful context), the two contexts of illness and  remedies
being connected by the Law of Similars.”

Referring to  “state functions” in “PPR entanglement” (patient,
practitioner, and  remedy):  “these state functions are not related to
quantifiable  physical observables…as in orthodox quantum theory.  They
are  related to more qualitative observables, such as the signs and
symptoms of  a dis-ease, as expressed by the patient and observed by  the
practitioner.”  (Note the use of “dis-ease,” a term popular  with
chiropractors.)

Referring to the complex conjugate as a “mirror  image” of a complex
number: “Such ideas can be used to interpret part of  practitioner’s
role, which is to be an ‘active’ mirror, reflecting back to  the patient
the possibility of a cure….In other words, the practitioner  creates
the conditions for cure (i.e., the therapeutic state space), and  then
operates within that space as the homeopathic operator, IIr, and as  part
of the PPR entangled state.”

“Opening out the two hexagonal  pyramids by ‘projecting’ them onto the
mirror plane defined by IIr shows  that the PPR entangled state is
twisted through 60 degrees relative to its  complex
conjugate…suggesting the practitioner is not a passive  ‘reflector,’
but is active in a way that may be represented metaphorically  as a
twisting motion.”

“It is for this reason the discourse of  quantum theory might be useful

in describing the homeopathic process,  where signs and symptdisease are
considered observable manifestations of an  ‘invisible’
disturbed vital force…”

“…the PPR entangled state by  its very nature is chiral.  By acting as
a mirror (i.e., providing a  therapeutic state space for the patient and
assisting in the formation of  the PPR entangled state), the practitioner
implies the state’s chirality,  and by active reflection, demonstrates it
to the patient.”  (This  leads to the 60 degree twisting noted above.)

“The merging of the two  semiotic tetrahedra in Figure 3G provides a 3-D
object called a stellated  octahedron…”

“…while it is the practitioner who provides the  mirrorlike therapeutic
state-space IIR, it is the patient who has to make  the movement ‘through
the looking glass’ toward cure, which the  practitioner may facilitate
but ultimately, does not control.”

“For  this to occur successfully, however, the practitioner may
notionally  facilitate formation of the tetrahedral entangled PPR and
curative stella  octangula states but not, in the semiotic terms, be a
their  epicenters.  These ‘places’ are reserved exclusively for the
patient  through the journey to cure.”

 

 

 

 

Ethics in Science and Medicine

I would like to begin this discussion on Ethics by telling you my impression of how a scientist thinks. First, the scientist must have an open mind. If you tell me that an elephant can fly through the eye of a needle without scraping its ass I would say “show me the data”! Every idea no matter how ridiculous must be approached with an open mind. Even ideas that sound strange such as; the world is round, or that the Earth actually revolves around the Sun and not the other way around, must be given a chance. Once you have accepted the question the hypotheses can be formed and tested.

 

A difficult notion for beginning scientists to wrap their heads around is that the experiments that they will perform will never prove anything. That’s right! The results from an experiment no matter how convincing only provide support for a hypothesis or theory. Good scientists never use the word prove. Lawyers and fools may throw the word “prove” around but good scientists never do (if in fact you read or hear that science has proven the benefit of “their” product/treatment/etc… this is a sign of quackery). There have only been a handful of theories ever proven and these we call “scientific laws”. The belief that a single experiment can prove something is one of the most common errors in logic made by lay people with regards to science. For example, an individual may believe that a ridiculous treatment such as Wolfberries “cured” their Uncle Joe. It’s ridiculous because the results from one non-random-controlled case study performed without a control group provides very little data to a scientific argument. This reminds me of a great line I heard in the movie “Two Weeks Notice” where the actress tells the actor that he is” the most selfish person on the Planet” to which he replies, “that’s ridiculous, have you met every person on the Planet”? A hypothesis about people cannot truly be proven because not even the largest of sample groups can include every person on Earth.

Once you have a hypothesis about the question to be tested you must simply follow what the evidence tells you without bringing your own preconceived notions with you to the table. You must go where the data leads you. This is where Ethics comes into play. We can all cheat at our jobs and scientists can cheat on almost every type of test that we perform. Scientists by nature do not, and cannot, cheat. You see, every thing we now study is based upon the rules and lessons learned in the past. Every piece of data is like a brick in a building. If we continue to build up, and up, and up, upon bricks that are false and are forged from lies, then the whole building could come crashing down upon us. That is why Ethics in science is so incredibly important. Every great discovery in science is found by a scientist that is standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before them.

 

The reason why I find snake-oil science to be so despicable is because of the great importance of Ethics in science. Once we start following unproven scientific claims as real science the whole thing can come crashing down upon us. The result would be that we would lose the ability to tell what is real and what is not. It seems to me that the line is already becoming blurred to the general public because of snake-oil salesmen as typified by Kevin Trudeau. Pseudo-science seems to be gaining momentum by actually attacking real science by purporting a vast scientific medical conspiracy. This type of propaganda is perhaps most evident with regards to cancer treatment. As a cancer researcher I find this to be morally irreprehensible. Think about it this way: almost every Doctor and Scientist has had someone close to them die of cancer (haven’t you also?). To believe that these Doctors and Scientists actually knew of treatments that would save their loved one’s lives and refused to divulge this “top-secret information” is utterly ridiculous. If you think that I would not share my knowledge of brain tumors with my own Mother when she was diagnosed with a brain tumor known as a meningioma, then you are being ridiculous.

 

Because the truth, and Ethics, are so vitally important in science and medicine we cannot treat people by giving them false hope. The placebo effect is very real and is part of every treatment regimen whether it is from a legitimate or illegitimate source. However, it is wrong ethically, morally, and legally for a Doctor to lie to a patient and give them a placebo instead of a scientifically verified treatment without written informed consent as part of a controlled clinical trial. To treat people with “medicines” and treatments in which the only benefit is the placebo effect is inherently wrong for these exact reasons. To reiterate these reasons: because we cannot permit health care professionals to lie to their patients even if it will help the patients. That would create a slippery slope wherein the Physician could judge for themselves when and how lying to their patients would help them. Do you want your Physician lying to you? What if it would help you?

 

I recently heard of a study that suggested that the placebo effect was responsible for as much as 65% to 80% of the effectiveness of anti-depressant medication. However, it would be malpractice for a Physician to give a depressed person a placebo rather than a real anti-depressant medication. However, this is precisely what an “alternative medicine” practitioner is doing. The vast majority of pseudo-science treatments rely on the placebo effect as their only positive effect. To sell these treatments to the public is in fact selling a placebo treatment as a real one and is wrong. You may ask yourself; what does it hurt? If someone wants to believe that the electromagnetometer can heal them, and it does in fact help them due to the placebo effect, what is the harm? The harm is that first of all some people will not be able to discern for themselves what is a silly yet soothing treatment and those that think that they can forego their chemotherapy because this treatment will “cure” their cancer. If we allow snake-oil salesmen to claim anything they wish under the guise of “what’s the harm if we are lying to you if it helps you”, then where does it stop? Are we left trying to figure out whether our Doctor is lying to us every time we go to his/her office? A very slippery slope indeed!

 

There really is no such thing as “alternative medicine”. There is only experimental medicine and medicine. Once a medicine or treatment is verified as being legitimate through double-blind controlled clinical trials it simply becomes known as MEDICINE. Therefore, the term “alternative medicine” is misleading and unnecessary. If a Physician could treat a patient’s condition with an “E-Meter” or by “cupping” then why wouldn’t they? If cupping had significant support for its effectiveness as a treatment the Physician would simply whip out their cups and go to work!

 

Ethics is one of the most important values that a scientist has. Moreover, I believe that this carries over into all aspects of our lives. If someone lies to you it will be a long while before you can believe that person again (if ever). Ethics are so vital to the field of science because scientific findings build upon each other based on the veracity of previous findings. That is why once a scientist is caught lying their career is virtually over. It takes a special kind of person to be a Doctor or a Scientist and the vast majority are not liars.

anxiety

 

Anxiety is a psychological reaction to a perceived stimulus. And although it is a psychological state it is also a physiological state. A psychological state or feeling may create the physiological state which then feeds back to the psychological perception which exacerbates the feelings. This can become the vicious cycle of anxiety. The cycle can also be initiated by the physiological state. The feelings of anxiety can include dread and fear. However, anxiety is more than simply being afraid.

 

It is well known that the part of your brain that controls your emotions is the limbic system. The structure that is the most responsible for the experience of fear is the amygdala which is an almond shaped (amygdala means almond) group of nuclei in the front of your temporal lobe which is near your temple. When we are excited buy a stimuli we may experience emotions that are accompanied by what has been called the flight or fight response. This response is controlled by the limbic system and amygdala and prepares us to protect ourselves. This is accompanied by a cascade of neurotransmitter release that increases our vigilance and our readiness for battle. The primary physiological influence probably comes from our sympathetic nervous system which increases the activity of our major organs thereby causing our hearts to beat faster and our stomachs to stop digesting.

 

The pharmacological treatments for anxiety are the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines. These drugs are GABA agonists which is to say that they increase the action of this powerful inhibitory neurotransmitter called GABA in the brain. This works to alleviate anxiety because inhibition of the limbic system creates a physiological state that is the opposite of the state that is experienced during times of anxiety. The problem with anxiety is that although we experience this perceived threat which increases the activity of our limbic system we never have the opportunity to fight or run away from the stimulus. Therefore, we feel as though we don’t have control over the stimulus or over our own feelings of fear.

 

Anxiety occurs when we do not feel as though we have control over our lives and over the threats we face. Studies have shown that when animals are placed in dangerous situations they fair much better when they have some control over the outcome of the danger regardless of whether or not it alleviates the dangerous situation from occurring. The very same is true in our own lives. If we are able to adapt and overcome the problems we face in life we are no longer in fear of, or have anxiety over, these problems. It is when we perceive a lack of control over the outcome that we feel anxious.

 

You can trick the brain into believing that the danger has passed. You can do this with the use of pharmacological assistance, you can also do this through strenuous physical exercise, and through relaxation and guided imagery techniques (please see my blog on Guided Imagery for a description). All of these can be very effective in treating anxiety. However, taking benzodiazepines long term is not a good idea because they are very addicting and because they will lose their effectiveness after a while. Strenuous exercise is probably the most effective treatment for anxiety, but it can be difficult to exercise if you are too anxious and there is a limit to how much you can exercise. Guided Imagery and relaxation will also work very well for decreasing an anxious mood state. Although all of these are very effective they do not erase the stimulus or situation that is causing the anxiety in your life. You must do the work to make the changes that remove the offending stimulus from your life. This may be very difficult to do alone. A trained psychotherapist may be able to help you recognize the offending cause if you cannot see it for yourself.

Sometimes in life we cannot change the things the way that we would like, and sometimes it takes a long time to make these changes. Patience truly is a virtue.

I have lost my Qi! Can you help me find my Qi?

I have lost my Qi! Can you help me find my Qi?

Can you please help me look for my Qi (Chi)? I may have lost it at the beach or the gym. If you find it, could you send it to me as an e-mail attachment?

Actually, I am tricking you. Qi is impossible to find as you cannot see, hear, smell, or feel it. In fact, no one has ever been able to measure the existence of Qi. It is truly more elusive than a Leprechaun or a four-leaf clover. However, just because we cannot measure something doesn’t necessarily mean that it does not exist. After all, black holes probably exist as might anti-matter and no one has measured or seen either of these. So Qi may be like that.

You see Qi flows through my body in rivers called meridians. My body has 11, 12, or 13 meridians depending upon which school of thought you follow. There were originally 12 meridians because that is how many rivers there are in China. You see in the ancient times, roughly 5,000 years ago, it was considered a sacrilege to open the human body as we now commonly do in anatomy classes and in autopsies. So it makes perfect sense that there would be as many meridians as there are rivers in the world (it was thought that China was the whole world at this time [in China]). That is because the ancient teachings stated that the human body was arranged like the world (China). As water flows through the rivers and provides life to the lands, Qi flows through my meridians and provides life to all my tissues (please do not confuse this with my blood and arteries). When I die you are welcome to search for the meridians in my body. However, be aware that meridians have never been seen in the human body even though there have been millions of anatomy classes and autopsies in America alone. Are humans the only mammals that have meridians and Qi? That seems unfair to animals, and highly unlikely as we are just another type of mammal, and yet no one has ever been able to see or measure meridians or Qi in any animal.

You probably cannot measure or see my Qi because it is a very weak and mysterious force. We humans simply cannot measure something as weak a force as Qi. Hmmmm, it seems odd that something so powerful would be so weak that we cannot measure it. Moreover, how can something so weak have such a strong effect? Ahhhh, but I am digressing. Let’s leave that question for another time and ask one that is more germaine to my Qi.  What energy forces can we measure? Well, we can measure galvanic skin response (GSR) which is common in lie detector tests and is a measurement of the resistance of the skin which changes when the ion concentrations in your skin (dermis) change. We can also measure the electrical currents produced by the firing of groups of neurons in your brain which are know to produce different wave forms depending on your level of cortical excitability. This test is called an EEG or electroencephalogram. Well perhaps Qi is weaker than GSR, EEG, EMG (electromyogram), or EKG (electrocardiogram).

So what is the smallest form of energy we CAN measure? Well I am not sure, but I know that I can measure a single photon of light in my laboratory. That is a very small amount of energy! We can also measure the amount of energy that is absorbed by DNA when excited by a UV light source with a spectrophotometer. Well how about something smaller than DNA. The smallest form of energy that exists would have to be smaller than a photon or even an atom. I think that an electron would have to be the smallest amount of energy we know of. If we could only get a single atom to give up a single electron from its outer-most shell to another atom, perhaps we could measure THIS change in energy. This in fact is done all the time and this new atom is referred to as a radio-isotope. You can then measure the amount of energy gained by the atom by using autoradiography (that is to say that you expose film with the radioactive signal), or by a scintillation counter, or even a simple Geiger counter. Perhaps soon we will have measurements of the amount of energy consumed by anti-matter as the world’s largest Super-Collider begins measuring the collision of atomic particles. This will truly be the smallest measurement of energy ever measured by man. However, until we have this data the electron is the smallest form of measurable energy on the earth. Is the amount of energy in Qi smaller than the smallest form of energy known to be on the earth, the electron? Most likely it is not.

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The philosophical precept of Ockham’s Razor comes to mind here. This is the idea that; if all explanations of an argument are equal, the most simple explanation tends to be the truth. So, do you think that Meridians cannot be found, and that Qi is a life force that is very powerful and yet too weak to be measured, because???: A) they are too mysterious, magical, or infinitesimally small to be seen or measured in any way, or B) they don’t exist.

THE CURE FOR DEPRESSION!

How do we know when we are depressed? We know when we are depressed because we feel it!
Unipolar depression is a condition that apparently afflicts a large number of people around the world and affects as much as 50% of the American population at some point in their lives. Depression is characterized by a decrease in mood that is below “the norm”.
I would first like to point out that there is no way that we can know what “the norm” is, that is, how the rest of the population feels. For example, it is impossible to know how much pain or how much love another person feels. There is no medical test that can assess your emotions such as the response to pain. All a Doctor can do is to ask you how much pain you are in from a scale of 1-5. How does this perception of pain relate to the population at large? It is difficult if not impossible to say. Your pain scale cannot be related to other individuals. Likewise we cannot tell how depressed someone is in comparison to the general population. And more importantly, you cannot tell if you are depressed compared to others. Therefore, if you have no idea how the population feels, how can you be sure that you feel less happy than the population? Well, you can’t. It is your perception of how you feel and of how you think the population feels that leads you to the conclusion that you are depressed.
How accurate is your assessment of your own depression? Let me first state that we are terrible at assessing our own emotional states. This is clearly evident in the numbers of rock ballads that express the notion that “we don’t know what we had until its gone”. Our emotional evaluations are much better in retrospect. We can all think of times in our lives when we were clearly wrong about our emotional states. There have been periods of our lives when we thought that our lives were NOT going well, but when we look back on those times we realize that they were fairly happy and carefree times in comparison. It seems as though we need context to understand our emotions. The perceived context that we find ourselves using when we assess our own depressed emotion is often flawed. It is flawed because we cannot make accurate assessments as to how the rest of the population feels and so we incorrectly conclude that we are not as happy as the average person. [if the majority of the population is depressed, say 51%, then this cannot be depression, but instead the norm, right?].
It is difficult to believe that we are so terrible at assessing our own emotions. When we feel our emotions we “know” that they are correct, they just are! It is also difficult to believe that we have little control of our emotions. Our emotional states are largely linked to innate drives that have evolved over many years because they provide the motivational impetus to our drive states that keep us alive. In example, we can imagine that the hungrier we get the more emotional we would get about finding food and this emotional state would temporarily trump the other drive states so that we would focus on, and provide motivation for, finding food. Once we are fed this “emotion” would disappear.
Experiments have shown that we are easily tricked into feeling what the investigator wants us to feel. This is hard to believe for some of us so think of it in this context. We are also easily fooled with regards to visual illusions. These are well documented and these reveal that even when we are shown the answers to these visual illusions we sometimes still refuse to believe that we are in fact being tricked. Our visual perceptions seem very real to us and may in fact seem more real than our emotional perceptions. After all, seeing is believing, right? It is actually fairly easy to trick humans into having visual and emotional illusions, that is, into feeling whatever the researcher wants them to feel, that is contrary to their “normal” emotional response. This is hard to grasp so let me provide an example. Let’s say that we are going to assess how good a brand of vanilla ice cream is. We would start by randomly assigning members to groups and then in the first group we would have them watch a video on how the ice cream is made that is actually quite dull and boring, and have confederates (actors) in the viewing room that declare out loud how boring the video is and what a waste of time this whole study is. In the second group we would have the same video with the exception that during the video a scary ghost jumps out at you which greatly startles you. The confederates exclaim how scary the video is and how fun and exciting this whole experience is. Even though the bland vanilla ice cream is the same in both portions of the experiment which one do you think will be rated as being better? That’s right! Our emotions were easily manipulated! We perceive the rush of norepinephrine we received from being scared, and from the actors, as being attributed to the excitement we feel for the ice cream. This is how all advertising works. Moreover, Americans are probably the most marketed to population on earth and the most persuadable with regards to emotional manipulation in order to create emotions about consumable products. All of us fall prey to these emotional illusions. Similar to visual illusions, even when we know we are being tricked, we are influenced none the less. That is because our visual system and our emotional system (limbic system) operate under innate physiological rules. I think that we have been tricked into thinking that we are always supposed to be happy and that other people are indeed always happy. I think that neither assertion is true. It is attractive to think that we should always be happy but it just simply isn’t the truth. Moreover, it is likely that our mood states are balanced and controlled in part by our bio-rhythms which ebb and flow and that we must experience great sadness if we are to know great joy as Nietzsche postulated.

Can my chemical imbalance, and my depression, be cured by antidepressant medication?
I most likely don’t need to inform you that antidepressant medication is not a cure for depression. These medications are powerful and very effective, but mainly treat the symptoms of depression. I have no idea what is really meant by the term “chemical imbalance”. I think a Psychiatrist probably first coined this saying as a metaphor for explaining the actions of neurotransmitters at the synapse and that it became used in a much too literal sense. If you understand Psychopharmacology, or have read my chapter on Psychopharmacology, you know that the quantity of neurotransmitter at the synapse is in constant fluctuation. Once the neurotransmitter is released it is quickly removed from the synapse (around 1msec) either through enzymatic degradation, re-uptake, or diffusion. Moreover, the most important factor with regard to how the synapse relates to the release of neurotransmitters is the type and quantity of post-synaptic receptors on the receiving neuron and not the level of neurotransmitter present. If in fact you have too much (or too little) neurotransmitter at the synapse, the post-synaptic cell will down-regulate (or up-regulate) the number of post-synaptic receptors in order to maintain homeostasis at the synapse. This is why drug tolerance happens. Furthermore, the most important fact in the field of Neuroscience is that the brain is plastic, which is to say that the synapses within your brain are continually changing. Therefore, the term chemical imbalance really has no meaning. Medications such as Prozac are perhaps best thought of as a cast for your break in emotion and is similar to when you cast a broken bone, at some point the cast needs to come off (preferably when the fracture has healed). I concede that mental fractures seem to take a much longer time to heal than do your bones, but the point is that you will need to discontinue the medication eventually. The cast will need to come off.
Psychotherapy can be very effective at relieving the symptoms of depression. Studies have shown that therapy can be as effective as medication. The best treatment appears to be when the depressed individual is treated with medication and psychotherapy. Because the brain is plastic you will cause physical changes in your brain as a result of changing your thought processes as a result of psychotherapy. These physical changes in your synapses will cause you to think differently about different stimuli. This is the path to the alleviation of depression. It is an upward spiral that you could liken to building up a muscle. It will take both work and time to build up this mental muscle, but it will be much stronger in the end.

Whether we use medications or psychotherapy to help us to overcome our depression at some point we must cease treatment. We simply cannot continue antidepressant medication forever and the goal of psychotherapy is not life-long treatment. So, at the end of the day, what has really changed when you finally defeat your depression? Neither medication, nor therapy, is a cure for depression. In the end, when the depression is gone and you no longer are on therapy or medication, what you are left with is your new  interpretation of your own mood states that are created by the workings of your very own human brain.
A friend of mine once told me that one of the tenets of the Buddhist religion is that life is supposed to suck! Once I knew this life seemed much better for me! I thought yes, of course, life is a struggle, that way you learn and appreciate it much more. In fact, in some ways the more you struggle the more you learn. It is the hard times in your life and in your business that teaches you the most about yourself. When you expect life to suck you really appreciate it when things go well! If you always expect things to go perfectly, you will live your life in disappointment and depression.

Don’t be fooled into thinking you know your own feelings. What you experience is your interpretation of your feelings. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the majority of people feel better than you do. That is an illusion. When you change your beliefs about your expectations and your interpretations of your emotions you will truly cure your own depression. Medication and psychotherapy can speed you to this change in interpretation, but at the end of the day when you are no longer on medication or are undergoing therapy it is this change in interpretation that will light your way.

Can We Talk?

It is a very interesting time in our country. A time fraught with problems and yet full of opportunities. Perhaps the recent fall of our “systems” will now provide us with the impetus for change so that we can excel in the future. One of the changes that must occur for our country to excel in the future will be a focus on education. As America has fallen from the top position among intellectual powerhouse nations, nations such as China and India have excelled. This is most important with regards to math and science. We will quickly lose our dominance in the world if we lose our intellectual and scientific supremacy.

I heard recently that in Los Angeles, the city where I live, that only 58% of high school students graduate. The decline of our schools is directly related to the decline in intelligence in our cities. It is in this environment where snake oil salesmen like Trudeau and others are able to cheat you out of your hard earned money. Now is NOT the time to believe in magic medicine or fantastical health remedies. Now is the time to begin to develop a deeper understanding of the science around us. The greatest challenges for America’s future are steeped in scientific problems with regards to the environment, energy needs, health and health care, and economics.

It is no secret that our schools are failing and that the people who are breeding the fastest are those from less fortunate socio-economic backgrounds that have historically done poorly with regards to educating themselves. Unless we change this trend we may truly be headed for an “idiocracy”. Evidence of this may have already surfaced with regards to the choice we made for President in the early 2000s and of TV programming and entertainment choices as of late. However, there have been signs of hope such that we are graduating more people than ever before with advanced degrees, such as MD and PhD, and that the percentage of women in these categories has risen sharply. However, it seems that a greater divide, a greater disconnect, between the intellectual elite and the common masses is being created. This creates an environment of distrust and one in which conspiracy theories expound. Without the basic understanding of math, science, and economics, the masses can only blindly trust what their leaders tell them. This does not create the type of situation where democracy flourishes.

Two things must occur in order to avoid the ever-increasing intellectual and economic divide that is being created in our country and in the world. First, education must once again become a priority for the people. This must take shape in our politics, schools, and families. Most importantly, we as individuals must strive to become more intellectual about our environmental, energy, health care, and economic problems before they cripple us. Second, it is vital that Doctors and Scientists share with the lay public the research data that will impact our world and our lives in a way that is easy to understand. I believe that scientists feel that they do their part to relay information because they publish their findings in peer reviewed journals that are available to the public. It is partly the public’s responsibility to put down the tabloid magazine and to pick up the latest copy of Science, however the scientist must also seek other avenues to relay new findings in ways that are more easily consumed. Current scientific journals are hard to comprehend if you are not immersed daily in the specific field of the journal. Relaying scientific information to the public is also a difficult task because the popular media does a pretty poor job of relaying scientific findings to the public. Modern journalism seems to feel the need to sensationalize everything and to break down the findings into a form that is so simplistic it is no longer an accurate reflection of the finding. This can be quite exasperating to the scientist. For example, I recently read an article where the headline read” LSD Cures Cancer”. The article misrepresented a study that was performed with patients that were very near death and were given MDMA (not LSD) in order to help them to cope with the realization that death would soon be upon them. Some of these patients appeared to accept death with a more peaceful disposition. This is hardly a cure for cancer.

Scientists can do their part by relaying information themselves via this fantastic source of communication called the internet by writing blogs and by writing books on scientific themes that are written in real world English so that they are easy to understand.

We are certainly living in an interesting time that is full of rich opportunities. By increasing our intellectual acumen in the fields that plague us I believe we will overcome our problems and in the process a much better country and world will be created.