Photo taken yesterday.
Day: 05/26/2015
Gratitude and Creativity: No Room for Perfection
https://mysmallsurrenders.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/gratitude-and-creativity-no-room-for-perfection/
I was struck last night by the realization that I am still bringing my need for perfection to my art/gratitude journal. How ridiculous is that? I’m making space for my creativity, yet I’m trying to control what I produce. I’m leaving pages blank because I don’t have a perfect idea for what to doodle, draw or paint. In trying to open up my life I’m contributing to making it smaller with my deep-seated need to control…
“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” Salvador Dali 🙂
2 dead, several hurt in shooting at Grand Forks Wal-Mart
https://news.yahoo.com/2-dead-several-hurt-shooting-wal-mart-north-113539101.html
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) — A U.S. airman walked into a Wal-Mart Supercenter early Tuesday and opened fire with a handgun, killing one worker and injuring a second before turning the gun on himself, police said. Police said the shooting that occurred a few minutes after 1 a.m. may have been random, with no link yet found between Marcell Willis, 21, and either the store or the employees. Willis was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, about a dozen miles west of the city…
About 1,500 airmen are assigned to the Grand Forks Air Force Base, the military said. The base was home to air refueling tankers for 50 years until a round of military base closings and realignments took that away. The last tankers left in 2011 and the base has taken on an unmanned aircraft mission.
Gambling pays. Cops split $9.6 million
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/gambling-pays-cops-split-96-million-052615.html
Federal agents have shut down a network of gambling sites and seized nearly $10 million that is being distributed to federal and local law enforcement agencies…
Ten million is a lot of money, but I doubt any of that money will help those who suffer from a gambling addiction. And it’s rather hypocritical to shut down internet-based gambling when gambling has been legalized all over the U.S. — from the lotteries to casinos. I guess if part of the profits go to the government, then it’s all okay.
Treatment for Fear of Bugs
Photo credit: National Geographic (resin-dusted Blueberry Cheesecake bud)
https://painkills2.wordpress.com/2015/05/26/an-example-of-fight-or-flight/
I wonder, can bugs get high? If I ever get access to bud again, I’ll see if that’s true. Who knows, maybe the bugs are as afraid of me as I am of them. With some good bud, I could take care of both of our fears. 🙂
An example of fight-or-flight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
The fight-or-flight response (also called the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response [in PTSD], hyperarousal, or the acute stress response) is a physiological reaction that occurs in response to a perceived harmful event, attack, or threat to survival. It was first described by Walter Bradford Cannon. His theory states that animals react to threats with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, priming the animal for fighting or fleeing. More specifically, the adrenal medulla produces a hormonal cascade that results in the secretion of catecholamines, especially norepinephrine and epinephrine. Amit Sood, Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine discusses the classic fight or flight response and states that estrogen and testosterone are also hormones that affect how we react to stress, as are the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin.
As I was cleaning my kitchen this morning, I happened to glance to my left and saw a huge bug. Okay, maybe it wasn’t huge, but because I hate bugs (especially inside my apartment), it looked to be the size of a mouse. I did what most women do: I screamed, jumped, and bid a hasty retreat. This is the fight-or-flight response in action.
Pain is also an example of fight-or-flight, as it describes a threat. But when the pain is constant, like in many chronic pain conditions, this fight-or-flight response is also constant. This means your brain is producing the chemicals associated with fear, but there’s no imminent threat. And these brain chemicals are damaging to your body when they are on constant replay, often making the pain even worse.
We know that increased activation of the sympathetic nervous (fight or flight) system is present in fibromyalgia but is it contributing to the pain there? Martinez-Lavin (“When Stress Causes Distress”) has been hypothesizing that it’s been a key pain driver in FM for years.
He’s shown that levels of norepinephrine – the neurotransmitter that turns the SNS on – are positively correlated with pain in FM. The higher the NE levels – the higher the pain level. He’s also shown that FM patients in severe pain tend to have alterations in some genes that control sympathetic nervous system functioning. The authors of this paper suggest that these findings suggest fibromyalgia may be similar to several to types of chronic regional pain syndrome (CRPS).
Other studies have associated increased SNS activity with poor sleep and reduced cognitive functioning in chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). Increased SNS activity has also been associated with increased fatigue in cancer survivors…
Unfortunately, you can’t escape from chronic pain, so the battle is in how to manage it. Regarding the huge bug that dared to invade my home — since I live alone, I was forced to grab a shoe and smash that bugger as quickly as possible before it got away. But even after the threat was disposed of in the toilet, my heart was still racing a little and now I keep anxiously scanning the floor looking for this bug’s friends and relatives. My anxiety also makes me wonder how I’m going to sleep and scan the floor at the same time, along with fearing what my dreams (nightmares) may bring. Considering I took pictures of some humongous anthills yesterday, I’m also wondering if I’ll dream about ants or roaches.
Of course, if I wasn’t in constant pain and had the energy, I would be doing some heavy-duty cleaning right about now instead of blogging about it, which could help me get rid of some of this anxiety. The additional exercise might help me sleep better too. It also helps to laugh about it, because compared to bugs, I’m a really big giant.
Chronic pain conditions throw many obstacles in our paths, including anxiety and fear. I mean, who wants to wake up to more pain or a pain storm? But understanding how our brain works may help to ease some of that anxiety and allow us to focus on accepting and managing the pain instead of fearing it.
Sweet dreams. 🙂
If low serotonin levels aren’t responsible for depression, what is?
http://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/sep/28/depression-serotonin-neurogenesis
If low serotonin levels were responsible for depressed mood, then we should be able to induce depression in people by decreasing serotonin, and we should find low levels of serotonin in patients with depression. But neither of those things exist. Decreasing serotonin in humans can lower your mood, but it doesn’t always work. And studies looking for low serotonin in depressed patients have been inconclusive. It appears that even though antidepressants increase serotonin, a lack of serotonin doesn’t cause depression (kind of like aspirin treats a headache, but headaches are not caused by a lack of aspirin)…
http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/02/18/low-serotonin-depression-theory-challenged/81396.html
A new paper challenges the prevailing opinion that depression is related to low levels of serotonin in the gaps between nerve cells in the brain. This theory has predominated for nearly 50 years and has led to the development of the commonly prescribed anti-depressant medications called selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. But it has never been proven…
“It’s time we rethink what we are doing,” Andrews says. “We are taking people who are suffering from the most common forms of depression, and instead of helping them, it appears we are putting an obstacle in their path to recovery.”
When depressed patients on SSRI medication do show improvement, it appears that their brains are actually overcoming the effects of antidepressant medications, rather than being assisted directly by them. Instead of helping, the medications appear to be interfering with the brain’s own mechanisms of recovery…
Andrews, an evolutionary psychologist, has argued in previous research that antidepressants leave patients in worse shape after they stop using them, and that most forms of depression, though painful, are natural and beneficial adaptations to stress.
Treating postoperative pain with antidepressants
8/19/2014, Studies promoting use of antidepressants for postoperative pain may be premature, review finds
A first-of-its-kind literature review published in the September issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), suggests although a majority of studies report positive outcomes, there is currently insufficient evidence to support the clinical use of antidepressants for the treatment of postoperative pain.
“There is a need for improved treatment options in the management of postoperative pain, and antidepressants could potentially be a valuable addition,” said Ian Gilron, M.D., lead author, professor and director of clinical pain research at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. “Our review of the literature showed several positive trial results, but we also found important research limitations in the studies, indicating a need for higher quality, more definitive trials on antidepressant use for postsurgical pain.” …
Okay, if I ever need to have surgery again and a doctor wants to prescribe an antidepressant for pain, things could get ugly.
More than 40 million surgical procedures are performed in North America alone each year and the majority of these are associated with moderate to severe acute pain in the days to weeks immediately following surgery. Additionally, a substantial proportion of surgical patients experience chronic postoperative pain many months or even years after their original surgery.
Perhaps Americans need to cut back on surgical procedures.
(1/6/2014) “Drugs Aren’t the Problem”
Neuroscientist Carl Hart on Brain Science & Myths About Addiction
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/6/drugs_arent_the_problem_neuroscientist_carl
As we continue our conversation on the nationwide shift toward liberalizing drug laws, we are joined by the groundbreaking neuropsychopharmacologist Dr. Carl Hart. He is the first tenured African-American professor in the sciences at Columbia University, where he is an associate professor in the psychology and psychiatry departments. He is also a member of the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and a research scientist in the Division of Substance Abuse at the New York State Psychiatric Institute…
But when I started to look more carefully, started looking at the evidence more carefully, it became clear to me that drugs weren’t the problem. The problem was poverty, drug policy, lack of jobs—a wide range of things. And drugs were just one sort of component that didn’t contribute as much as we had said they have…
So, one of the things that shocked me when I first started to understand what was going on, when I discovered that 80 to 90 percent of the people who actually use drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana—80 to 90 percent of those people were not addicted…
And so, we are not anywhere near being able to explain drug addiction with our brain science yet…
So, when I think about what Patrick Kennedy says, if he was really concerned about the minority community, one thing that he would be talking about is this fact: Today, if we continue the same sort of drug enforcement policies, one in three African-American males born today will spend some time in jail…
How to Sleep in a Sensory Deprivation Tank
Their use has seen resurgence in popularity owning to their proclaimed abilities to promote relaxation, physical recovery, and pain relief…
As I became more accustomed to the physical nothingness I was within, the state began to seep into my brain. I was relaxed and at times felt nothing…
How Brain Science Can Help Explain Discrepancies in a Sexual Assault Survivor’s Story
This kind of misunderstanding of an individual’s experience of sexual assault is heartbreakingly common. A high school student’s report of sexual assault was viewed skeptically by an elected lawmaker, who stated on the public record that “some girls, they rape so easy.” More recently, a fan base made it clear that it did not believe a woman accusing a sports hero of rape, and that she was making the story up for attention.
Why are victims so often not believed? A large amount of this disbelief may be linked to the behavioral patterns of victims themselves, which can vary widely from case to case and often include behaviors of which the average police detective would be skeptical. To understand these patterns, it is helpful to look at how the brain and body respond to stress and trauma, such as that experienced during sexual violence.
A relatively new area of the literature on human response to trauma, particularly the trauma experienced during sexual violence, is that of “tonic immobility.” Defined as self-paralysis, or as the inability to move even when not forcibly restrained, tonic immobility has long been studied in non-human animals as the “freeze” response to extreme stress. Recently, it has been observed in the laboratory as a stress response in humans, as well. This finding explains the reaction of many victims of sexual violence, who report that they felt like they could not escape, even when no weapon was present.
Additionally, due to an entire cascade of hormonal changes, which includes oxytocin and opiates, associated with pain management, adrenaline, commonly associated with “fight or flight,” and cortisol, functional connectivity between different areas of the brain is affected. In particular, this situation affects pathways important for memory formation, which means that an individual can fail to correctly encode and store memories experienced during trauma. While an individual generally will remember the traumatic event itself (unless alcohol or drugs are present in the system), these memories will feel fragmented, and may take time to piece together in a way that makes narrative sense…
Overall, it is estimated that nearly one-third of all victims of sexual assault will develop PTSD at some point in their lives…
Artist Jim Bachor Fixes Chicago Potholes With Ice Cream Mosaics
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/25/pothole-mosaics_n_7407438.html
Many street artists work in ephemera — graffiti that will soon be removed, murals that will eventually be painted over — but Bachor is intrigued by the possibility of longevity offered by these street mosaics. “Ancient mosaic art — its durability astounded me,” he says. “2,000-year-old mosaics look exactly like the artist intended today!”
Man Asks City To Ban Fart Smells
Last week, the City of Pendleton updated its nuisance ordinances to cover the smell of marijuana, NBC reported at the time. That means that even though recreational marijuana will be legal in Oregon starting in July, a person can be fined up to $500 if someone complains they smell marijuana coming from that person’s property.
In a letter published in the East Oregonian on Thursday, someone who signed his name as Peter Walters merely asked that council members take the next logical step and start regulating a far more noxious scent:
It was with great relief Thursday when I read in the East Oregonian that Pendleton’s city council took the time to pass an amendment to the city’s nuisance ordinance banning marijuana odor. Clearly, there has been no issue of greater importance facing the city. Now that this important work has been completed I hope that the council will move on to restricting the other offensive smell that plagues our community: farts.
Walters, who is pretty clearly mocking the marijuana ordinance, notes, “Some habitual farters argue that they need to fart for medical reasons but that doesn’t mean my kids should have to smell their farts.”
All Things Chronic 