What is the first thing that you think about when you hear the word schizophrenia? Well when I first heard about schizophrenia I pictured a man going wild attempting to choke and kill everyone that walked beside him. Well, that is not schizophrenia. According with one of my professors, people with schizophrenia are probably the people that you should fear the least. Actually they are more likely to harm themselves than others.*
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that makes it hard to:
Tell the difference between what is real and not real
Think clearly
Have normal emotional responses
Act normally in social situations
People with schizophrenia often suffer terrifying symptoms such as hearing
internal voices not heard by others, or believing that other people are reading
their minds, controlling their thoughts, or plotting to harm them. These
symptoms may leave them fearful and withdrawn. We know very little of what causes schizophrenia and more research is still necessary to come to a firm conclusion.
There are three main types of schizophrenia
Paranoid schizophrenia symptoms may include:
Anxiety
Anger or arguing
False beliefs that others are trying to harm you or your loved ones
Disorganized schizophrenia symptoms may include:
Childlike behavior
Problems thinking and explaining your ideas clearly
Showing little emotion
Catatonic schizophrenia symptoms may include:
Grimacing or other odd expressions on the face
Lack of activity
Rigid muscles and posture
Not responding much to other people
Undifferentiated schizophrenia may include symptoms of more than one other type of schizophrenia.
Here is a video explaining one of the hypothesis of schizophrenia. (Dopamine)
The Other Side of Antidepressants
Antidepressants are drugs that are suppose to help a person feel better. We have become a nation of quick fixes beginning with our economy all the way to our medical field. I am very concerned of where we are going as a nation when it comes to prescribing pills to help people deal with the stresses of life. Most of us probably know someone that has been depressed and has been given medication to "cure" the "illness". I, for example, have my mother in law that is going through grief as she lost her 19 year old son in a terrible accident. Doctors have told her that is she takes medication for depression she will feel better. I have spoken with her and warned her about the consequences of antidepressants. One thing that I have learned is that psychotherapy is more effective and with no side effects.
Antidepressants have been known to cause suicidal thoughts and even the FDA has made the pharmaceutical companies put a warning label on the box. Many of the antidepressants are used to target different diseases and the dosage is the same. We know very little about what causes depression and yet we are willing to fill our brain with substances that who knows the long term effect. What bothers me the most is that many of this powerful antidepressants are given to children. Many of this drugs were never meant to be given to children, they were meant for adults. Yet we continue prescribing this medications more than ever.
I can spend hours with you telling you why antidepressants should be reconsidered but who am I? I am an undergraduate student with no experience in this field that is why I am directing you to a very reputable magazine and psychologist to explain this better. Click Here
*** Also here is a video from ABC also talking about the negative effects of the use of antidepressants.***
Amygdala According to the Merriam Webster dictionary the amygdala is one of the four basal ganglia in each cerebral hemisphere that is
part of the limbic system and consists of an almond-shaped mass of gray
matter in the anterior extremity of the temporal lobe. It has long been
linked with a person's mental and emotional state. But recently
scientific advances, researchers have grasped how important
this 1-inch-long structure really is. Associated with a range of mental
conditions from normalcy to depression to even autism, the amygdala has
become the focal point of numerous research projects. To this day, we have learned that the amygdala is one of the main areas in our brain responsible for agression, alcoholism, sexual orientation, post traumatic brain disorder, social interaction just to name a few. Or maybe a better way to say it is that there is plenty of electrical activity in that area of the brain that leads us to believe that the amygdala is responsible for the disorders mentioned. So what happens if a person has damage to the amygdala? Well there was a case where a woman had damage to the amygdala and she was fearless. At one point she was held at gunpoint and with a knife and she reported no fear. She has been the subject of many tests and conclusions are that the damage to the amygdala is what makes her fearless. Now they are linking combat veterans without PTSD with damage to the amygdala. There are still no evidence that that proves that all of this is responsible due to the amygdala but maybe later in the future we will have the answer. I have included a video that talks about the link of PTSD and the amygdala. Enjoy!
Sleep Apnea
Im pretty sure you have heard about sleep apnea sometime in your life. However many people have a misconception of it. In one of my classes at UTPA the teacher asked us to define sleep apnea. Many people believed that sleep apnea was a condition in which a person falls asleep without notice. To be honest with you I was one of the many who had that misconception
According to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, sleep apnea is a common disorder in which you have one or
more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths while you sleep.Breathing
pauses can last from a few seconds to minutes. They may occur 30 times
or more an hour. Typically, normal breathing then starts again,
sometimes with a loud snort or choking sound.Sleep apnea usually
is a chronic (ongoing) condition that disrupts your sleep. When your
breathing pauses or becomes shallow, you’ll often move out of deep sleep
and into light sleep.As a result, the quality of your sleep is
poor, which makes you tired during the day. Sleep apnea is a leading
cause of excessive daytime sleepiness.
A sleep test, called polysomnography
is usually done to diagnose sleep apnea. There are two kinds of
polysomnograms. An overnight polysomnography test involves monitoring
brain waves, muscle tension, eye movement, respiration, oxygen level in
the blood and audio monitoring. (for snoring, gasping, etc.) The second
kind of polysomnography test is a home monitoring test. A Sleep
Technologist hooks you up to all the electrodes and instructs you on how
to record your sleep with a computerized polysomnograph that you take
home and return in the morning. They are painless tests that are usually
covered by insurance.
There are many treatments for sleep apnea. One of the most used is CPAP which is a mask that fits snugly over the nose and delivers pressured air just enough to keep your breathing passages open.
People with sleep apnea are constantly having to wake to be able to breathe. This could happen several hundred times during the night. When this interruption happens, the person is not able to go into REM sleep. They are not able to go through the stages of sleeping that most of us take for granted.That is why during the day they fall asleep almost everywhere. That was where my misconception was. I thought that sleep apnea was when a person fell asleep without any control but they fall asleep because they did not sleep in the night. I included a video that shows how a person with sleep apnea battles through the night to get some rest.
More information on sleep apnea click here.
Here is another story of a "doctor" that used an innocent family to conduct his experiments. You might remember my previous post about the crazy doctor that performed the pre frontal lobotomies. You probably also remember how upset I was about it. Well as you have probably read the title of my blog you might understand why I am upset at this "doctor". We all have heard the debate of nature vs nurture and probably have our own belief about it. In this case psychologist, John Money, went to far to prove that nurture is the source of who we are. David Reimer was his victim. He was born an identical (non-intersex) twin boy in 1965. At
the age of 8 months, David and his brother each had a minor medical
problem involving his penis, and a doctor decided to treat the problem
with circumcision. The doctor botched the circumcision on David, using
an inappropriate method and accidentally burning off virtually all of
David’s penis. At the advice of psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins University,
David’s parents agreed to have him “sex reassigned” and made into a girl
via surgical, hormonal, and psychological treatments.
For many years, John Money claimed that David (known in the interim
as “Brenda”) turned out to be a “real” girl with a female gender
identity. Money used this case to bolster his approach to intersex —the approach that is still used throughout much of the U.S. and
developed world—one that relies on the assumption that gender identity
is all about nurture (upbringing), not nature (inborn traits), and that
gender assignment is the key to treating all children with atypical sex
anatomies.
As it turns out, Money was lying. He knew Brenda was never happy as a
girl, and he knew that as soon as David found out what happened to him,
David reassumed the social identity of a boy. By age 14 she insisted that she wanted to live as a boy and that is when his father told her the horrible story. David decided to marry an older woman with children and adopted them as his own. However the damage was already done to him. David tried living a normal life after this but it was impossible because he ended his life a few years later.
We see history repeating itself in science. In the name of science doctors commit unethical acts that ruin and sometimes end an individuals life.
I have included a 3 minute clip on the documentary of David Reimer. Feel free to see the full documentary on youtube.
Short 3 minute clip
Part 1 10 minutes
If you are interested in more clips please watch them on youtube
Many of us have heard of the placebo effect. Placebo effect occurs when a treatment or medication with no known
therapeutic value (a placebo) is administered to a patient, and the
patient's symptoms improve. The patient believes and expects that the
treatment is going to work, so it does. The placebo effect is also a
factor to some degree in clinically-effective therapies, and explains
why patients respond better than others to treatment despite similar
symptoms and illnesses. It has been no secret that many of the drugs that we currently take today have to be measured or tested against a placebo. The biggest enemy for the drug companies in many cases is the simple placebo pill because the majority of the times the placebos outperform the drug that is being tested. Placebos can be administered in many different ways such as in pill form, injection, liquid form orally, etc.
There have been many different experiments that test this phenomenon. One of the most famous one was done in a university where a group of college students were given non-alcoholic beer and another group was given regular beer. The setting was in a bar and to everyone's surprise the students with the non-alcoholic beer were acting drunk after a while. At the end of the experiment the students were told what the purpose of the experiment and the were shocked and embarrassed of their actions. This proves the power of the mind and the placebo effect. There have been many other experiments done to test the placebo effect and the majority of them are successful in proving it.
There is another effect and that is the antiplacebo effect. In this, the contrary happens. For example, if there is a drug that has been proven to cure a certain illness and the person believes that the pill will not cure him/her they will not be cure. There has been cases that a person is told that they have a certain illness and they end up dying of it even though they never had it. We are just beginning to understand our brain and the power it has.
You have probably heard of the word faith. It is mainly used in the religious world and it is defined on google as complete trust or confidence in someone or something. I sometimes think about the placebo effect as faith. Is it possible that science might be discovering how miracles work as they look into the placebo effect? I think they will. I have included a video that might help you understand the placebo effect and how big pharma's deal with it.
Korsakoff’s syndrome also
known as Wernicke-Korsakoff’s syndrome is a brain damage caused by
prolonged thiamine deficiency (Vitamin B). People with the condition
experience loss of short-term memory. This vitamin is needed to metabolize
glucose which is the fuel that or brain needs to function. A person with
deficiency of vitamin B looses neurons because they shrink and then die. A
majority of the people with this brain disorder are alcoholics that go for
weeks drinking alcohol without food or water in their system.Other people prone to
this disorder are people with AIDS, cancers, eating disorders, people
treated with diuretic therapy, long-term dialysis and others. Most
symptoms can be reversed if detected and treated promptly. However,
improvement in memory function is slow and, usually, incomplete. Without
treatment, these disorders can be disabling and life-threatening. The treatment
involves replacement of thiamine and providing the person with proper
nutrition and hydration. In some cases, drug therapy is also recommended. Again I was reminded of how perfect we were created when I see the complexity and how tuned our body needs to be in order to function normally. Our body does all of this complicated tasks automatically without us having to do much. I
have included an informative video created by a group of students that I believe do a good job informing us about the syndrome. If you would like more detailed information on this syndrome I have also a web link that gives you more
information on Kosakoff’s Syndrome.
According to the A.D.A.M. Encyclopedia epilepsy is defined as a brain disorder in which a person has repeated seizures
(convulsions) over time. Seizures are episodes of disturbed brain
activity that cause changes in attention or behavior. There are many causes for epilepsy. Some of the main causes are stroke, traumatic brain injury and infections like meningitis, AIDS and some more. Many of the individuals with epilepsy have the disease and you will never even notice unless they are having a seizure in front of you. As I saw different stories on youtube about people with this disorder it made me more aware of how I should act if someone were to have a seizure in front of me. Would you know what to do? Well let me tell you. According to Dr. Karen Parko, M.D from San Francisco Veterans Administration Medical Center, you help them get on the ground to protect them from injuring their head due to a fall. If the person is not wearing a tag that identifies them as a person with epilepsy dial 911. Whenever in doubt dial 911 to have the person checked by a medical professional. Currently there is no cure for epilepsy. However there is medication or special diets that one can follow to reduce the seizures. In some cases people have had surgery on the brain to remove the area that is suspected to be causing the seizures.I have included an informative video on epilepsy. If you would like more information on this topic click here.
Lobotomies
were surgical procedures where they would disconnect or damage your prefrontal
cortex from the rest of your brain. It was Walter Freeman, a medical doctor, and untrained surgeon that performed this cruel procedure. What this doctor did just tells us how desperate some people can get in an attempt to "advance science" for fame. This individual used kitchen utensils to perform his procedures and in a matter of 5 minutes he will pick your brain with an ice pick through your eyes and will credit himself of having cured your sickness. He did this procedures to thousands of people who believed that they would be cured from schizophrenia. Unfortunately that never happened they actually ended up worse. Consequences of this procedure were apathy,
loss of the ability to plan or take initiative, memory disorders,
distractibility and loss emotional expressions. I do not have enough words to express my feelings of disgust for the procedure that "Dr. Freeman" did on the thousands of people. In that late 1940's to 1950's more doctors joined on the prefrontal lobotomies and had about 40,000 procedures here in the United States of America. I have added a video to the blog to help you understand my disgust to this doctor. warning this video is graphic .
The Human Endocrine System consists of glands throughout the body that secrete hormones whenever they are commanded to do.They are all tuned in to the hypothalamus and whenever the hypothalamus secretes hormones it activates certain glands throughout the body.
Some of the major glands throughout our body are the following:
Pineal Gland
Pituitary Gland
Parathyroid Glands
Thyroid Glands
Thymus
Liver
Adrenal Gland
Kidney
Pancreas
Ovary ( in female)
Placenta( in female during pregnancy)
Testis
The following video is a visual aid for the human endocrine system
If you ask the average American if they can explain to you how neurons work they will probably give you a blank stare. Much of what we know about neurons has been just discovered in the past 100 years. We have just scratched the surface on how our brain works. First lets define what a neuron is. A neuron is a cell that receives information and transmits it to other cells by conducting electrochemical impulses. The parts of a neuron are the dendrites, cell body (soma), axon, and in some myelin sheath.
Dendrites are branching fibers that get narrower near their ends. The dendrite is shaped like a tree and it is lined with synaptic receptors that make it possible to receive information from other neurons.
Cell body of the neuron is like any other cell in the body. It contains the nucleus, ribosomes, mitochondria, and more.
Axon is the main road through where the information being send is traveling through.
Myelin sheath is an insulating material that most axons have.
I hope that this blog will spark an interest in neuroscience. The following is a video that will give you a visual aid to what I have just explained.
Animal testing has been receiving a lot of bad publicity in
the past years. In the past century some of the most important discoveries have
been found using animal testing. For example, in the 1880’s Emil von Behring
found a vaccine testing on guinea pigs. The immunization was for diphtheria
which is an upper respiratory. Behring received a Nobel Prize in 1901 for his
discovery. Another person that used animal testing that you might be more
familiar with is Jonas Salk. He was also a Nobel Prize winner and he used
Rhesus monkey cross contamination studies to isolate three forms of polio which
affected hundreds of thousands of people each year. It is said that each monkey
that was killed saved 65 lives. Millions of lives have been saved because there
was an immunization that was found through animal testing. These are just a few
examples of what we can accomplish. Ethically we want to save human lives. What
is the cost? I do agree though that there is times when animal testing could
wait. But if we decide to abolish animal testing, what would happen to human
kind? We have not had a major plague in a long time. Abolitionist would like to
stop any kind of animal research no matter the consequence and that scares me.
I consider myself a minimalist, if at the end of the day your testing is doing
more good than harm to humanity I am ok with that.
