"Trust Your Gut!": The Gut-Brain Connection

Communication between the gastrointestinal tract, most commonly called the gut, and the human brain has fascinated scientists for centuries. Fortunately, the direct effect the brain has on the gut and vice versa was found less than a century ago, around the 1960s. The connection between the two is called the gut-brain taxis which generates information through the vagus nerve, allowing the food that we eat to be tethered to how we feel.

How does this work? The food we eat is broken down by our digestive system. It begins with mechanical and chemical break down from chewing and our saliva to chemical breakdown by the acids in our stomach. Once the food particles enter our small intestine, the small particles communicate with specific cells known as the gut sensor which relays messages onto the vagus nerve. The message is created by how they sense and react to the small particle environment through chemical, mechanical and thermal stimuli. 

Now that may have been a mouthful to read and understand. What this basically means is that nutrients or even bacterial byproducts, as we have gut bacteria, from the food we eat sends a signal to the nerve that sends information to the brain and influences the way the brain functions. So, think of it as “good food sending good messages to positively affect the brain and bad food negatively affecting the brain”. If you agitated the bacteria in your gut, it’ll cause a certain environment that relays information to the brain that negatively affects brain function. As the control center of your entire body, how we feel throughout our body affects our feelings and moods. A few obvious bowel conditions that may change mood is Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), constipation, diarrhea, bloat.

Have you ever felt that “gut-wrenching” feeling? Has an event made you “feel nauseous” or has someone given you “butterflies”? Just as the gut affects the brain, the brain can affect the gut. Those feelings are linked due to the gut-brain connection. In Psychology, certain physical or social conditions cause physical dilemmas affecting the function of the gut and this can cause inflammation or increase infection susceptibility. 

To keep your healthy GI tract and avoid loss of sufficient brain function and bad moods, there are a few things you can do. Research has shown that high levels of stress takes a toll on your body, thus lowering your stress levels will allow your body to function more smoothly, helping you to relax and leaving you in an overall good mood. Of course, that is easier said than done. Insufficient sleep impacts your brain so an individual should try to attain seven to eight hours of sleep every night. A few other methods are to eat slowly and stay hydrated to obtain full digestion and absorption of nutrients. Taking probiotics will provide “good bacteria” in your gut to provide a better-quality environment in your gut. Keeping a healthy lifestyle is crucial to the way we feel so it is important to pay attention to what we put in our body, how it is reacting to moments in our life and to always think about ways to constantly improve our alertness and mood.

Pain Assessment: The WILDA process

A patient’s knowledge and beliefs about pain can play a role in their perception of pain and how it affects them. Many are very reluctant to go to their doctor; some to save money and others just look at it as a hassle. They tell themselves that “the pain will go away eventually.” But there are others who run to their doctors at an inkling of a strange feeling. When you do go to your doctor’s office, you might have noticed that their first protocol is to ask questions to decipher and diagnose the issue. When it comes to pain, a pain assessments are crucial for pain management and finding the most optimum way of curing it. Pain is very subjective and can be very broad but the WILDA approach provides a concise template for assessment. It focuses on words for pain description, its intensity, location, duration and aggravation.

Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience from tissue damage by the International Association of the Study of Pain. It can be thought of as a part of life; it can occur to anyone at any age. There are two types of pains. The first is acute pain which can last anywhere between hours to weeks. It is caused from tissue damage, inflammation, during a surgical recovery process, or temporary disease. Chronic pain, on the other hand, intensifies over time and can last for months or even a lifetime. They are even types of pain that are side effects to diseases like cancer, arthritis, fibromyalgia, diabetes or unresolved injuries.

The physician usually starts off by asking you to tell them about your pain. This starts off the WILDA process as you describe the pain. Then the doctors go on to ask how much it hurts, where it hurts, how long it’s hurting and if there is anything that intensifies or alleviates the pain. They may also ask how it feels to gain more description. Some common pains that patients tend to describe are neuropathic pain which feels like a burning or shooting pain, somatic pain which achy throbbing pain or visceral pain which feels like pressure or cramping.

Doctors also use a pain scales from numbers 0 for no pain to 10 being severe pain to describe intensities of pain. For children, they tend to use a visual pain scale like The Wong/Baker face rating scale which contains corresponding face expressions with each number to aid them with identifying their pain. Doctors may also ask patients the intensity of pain over a period of 24 hours, when it hurts the most and when the least and if the pain continues, patients are provided with pain medication.

There are many approaches to alleviating pain. Doctors will ask if you have noticed how or when the pain better or worsens. From there, the doctor can decide what approach to take. There are pharmaceutical and no pharmaceutical approaches. Pharmaceutical is using drugs like Advil to alleviate the pain, and no pharmaceutical are massage or therapy approaches. The doctor will also ask about previous health issues like depression, constipation, insomnia or nausea which can also be a factor in intense pain.

Whether you are familiar with medical terms and symptoms, the WILDA approach can be used at home to provide you, the patient, a checklist that will help you gain more information about your pain that you may have overlooked and potentially save more time at hospitals when consulting your doctor.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1317046/

Color Therapy & Mood

Ever wonder why you can automatically associate a color to a certain feeling from just looking at it? This is because colors do actually give off a certain “feeling”. They are associated with different mental, physical, and emotional effects on people. Red, for example, can increase heart rate and adrenaline. While some colors have been psychologically proven to influence a change in affect, some may be subjective and can be opened to interpretation and perception between different populations or cultures.  

There are three categories of colors: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary colors are basic hues that cannot be mixed together to form and all other colors are created from them like red, blue, and yellow. Secondary colors are mixtures of two primary colors such as green, orange, and violet. Tertiary colors are mixtures of both primary and secondary colors, sometimes resulting in two word names like blue-green.

Color symbolism is the use of color as a representation  of something specific to a particular culture or society. While there is a general meaning behind every color, some colors can represent something totally different from its general meaning based on a culture. For example, the color white gives a sense of purity, innocence, cleanliness, neutrality and space. However in some cultures, like in hinduism, white also means mourning and is typically worn during cremation and mourning period of a loved one. The color black gives a sense of power, authority, strength and intelligence. But again, it can also mean evil or death and is also worn during a funeral. Yellow provides a positive energy representing happiness and optimism. Sometimes  it can also represent hunger and frustration. Green is a natural color that symbolizes growth, prosperity, good health, fertility and harmony but it can also represent envy. The color grey is a neutral color that means practicality and timeless. The color red gives off many emotions. It represents love and roman, but also energy, excitement, intensity and agitation. Orange always gives off an energetic feeling with excitement, warmth, change and prosperity. Blue gives of a calm and serene feeling whose color usually represents cold, wisdom, truth, and focus.

In color therapy, colors are associated with a person’s emotions. It is a holistic healing method that uses light and color to alter a person’s mood or health usually for people with brain disorders or emotional troubles. For example, since the color blue has a calming effect, looking at it can help reduce blood pressure; opposite of the color red. Our auras are represented by different color and intensity, and presenting colors to our environment can help with cleansing and balancing. It is believed that it is the specific frequency and vibration of colors that affect our bodily energies. We know that light enters through our eyes to create images of our physical environment, but it also gets absorbed through our skin. Certain wavelength absorption of light can activate hormones or enzymes in our body to make us feel a certain way. For example, shades of red give off a loving sexual vibration which may activate parasympathetic nervous system and result in increased state of arousal.

The psychological effects of colors are separated into two categories: warm colors which spark emotions ranging from comfort to hostility, and cool colors that spark emotions ranging from calmness to sadness. Some companies even take into consideration color schemes for their interior decoration to give off a sense that will make people need their product. For example, McDonald’s uses yellow because the color yellow increases hunger, making people buy their food.

So maybe next time you decide to repaint your home, it may be of importance to you to consider the mood you want to provide. If you want to create a state of two different moods, you can use secondary colors. For example, purple is a mix of red and blue and can provide a steady balance between stimulation and serenity. Intensity of colors should also be taken into consideration. A light purple, which includes the mixture of color white, can create a more peaceful surrounding, reducing the tension or intensity that can be created by mixing two prominent primary colors.

Straining your Eyes

Growing up, we’ve heard our parents tell us not to watch TV for too long because it’s “bad” for our eyes. But what does that mean? Does prolonged screen viewing cause damage to our eyes? Or is there no effect at all? In this generation, technology has increasingly become a part of our everyday lives, making us more reliant on it. In fact, 97% of classrooms in the United States have at least one computer for children to use, and smart devices are becoming readily available and given to kids less than five years old. As screen time rises, parents worry about the harmful effects of increased screen exposure and indeed, extensive electronic use can cause eye strain when looking at the screen for too long.

Eye strain is a repetitive strain injury caused by insufficient rest to the muscles. Glare from the amount of light that shines into your eyes and the position of the computer can also lead to muscle fatigue. Dry Eye syndrome, a condition where a person’s eye doesn’t produce enough tears to keep the eye lubricated, is often mistaken as an effect to screen exposure. Tears are necessary for the eye to maintain a healthy front surface to provide clear vision. Those with Dry Eye Syndrome tend to experience a burning sensation of the eye, irritation, sensitivity to light, redness, watery eyes, and blurry vision. Common causes of this syndrome are aging, medical problems like diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, thyroid disorder, Vitamin A deficiency and more. Studies have shown that our eyes blink on average 12 times per minute. So the dry eyes, irritation, tears, and all symptoms similar to Dry Eye Syndrome, do not equate to the syndrome itself, but rather, it is us as humans forgetting to blink a sufficient amount when looking at a screen. Similar effects can also develop when straining your eyes to read a book.

In today’s generation, studies have shown that increased screen exposure to children at young ages result in higher frequency of myopia, or nearsightedness, due to a child’s habit of holding electronics very close to his or her face and the lack of outdoor activities to allow the eyes to exercise short and long distance vision.

The most important thing in alleviating eye strain is to rest your eyes. It is crucial to deliberately blink frequently if you are at your computer for extended periods of time so that the tears used to lubricate your eyes do not evaporate. Positioning your computer correctly, about 18-30 inches away from your face in a 10 to 15 degree slant can aide with minimizing eye strain. Lowering the glare will help with excessive use of your eye muscles as well. You can also use the “20-20-20 rule” to rest your muscles. Stop looking at your screen every 20 minutes and focus on something 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Closing your eyes for a few minutes every 30 minutes also provides the same effects.

For adolescents, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has revised their recommendation for childhood screen time. They recommend little to no screen exposure to kids 18 months or younger. For children between 18 months to 2 years old, screen time should be limited and supervised, and topics of screen time should be educational since children learn at an accelerated rate in the first few years. For children between the ages of 2 to 5 years old, screen time should be limited to one hour a day, and the same limits should still be in place for children 6 years and older. It is crucial to make sure that electronics do not inhibit a child’s every day activity.

Can we fix a broken heart?

What happens to your body when you fall in love and what happens when you lose that love? Humans are known to be a deeply social species. Our most gratified state arises when we feel belonged in our environment and with those around us. Hence, we tend to form relationships. Our motivation to maintain stable and meaningful social relationships is a common pattern that is rooted in our evolutionary history.

Love in the brain was examined by functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, in 2003 in order to map the neural activity of the brain when looking at a loved one. The scan showed vibrant fireworks of green, yellow and blue in an image of grey matter, confirming that love is activated by an influx of dopamine. Dopamine is one of the main neurotransmitters that are responsible for the feeling of pleasure and satisfaction, like a reward system. Love isn’t the only thing that wires an increase in dopamine. Nicotine based drugs and cocaine follow the same pattern of increased dopamine activity within the brain to provide a pleasurable feeling. The more dopamine that is released, the better you feel, the more you want it, and the easier it is to become addicted. From parallel conclusions, you can say that love is a drug.

So then what happens when the love is taken away? If you compare it to taking away a drug from a drug addict, it results in withdrawal. The extremity of the withdrawal is then determined by how addicted they were to the drug. Similar to how our body and mind hurt, heartbreak causes our body and mind to also hurt. The brain regions involved in anticipating pain and regulating negative emotions are the right anterior insula, which regulates motor control and cognitive function, and the superior frontal gyrus, which links the nervous system to the endocrine system for hormone production. Thus, in response to physical pain, the brain activates the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as an alarm for distress.

When in the mire of heartbreak, chances are that you feel pain somewhere in your body. Maybe you feel it in your heart, stomach or maybe even in the palm of your hand. The pain can be temporary, or it can be chronic, depleting you and hanging over a crushing sensation. So if an fMRI of a heartbroken patient were to be taken, if he/she is feeling pain and anger, the fMRI will show color development in the three areas due to increase in the hormone progesterone. Progesterone can be linked to anger and anxiety, which causes an overall depressing effect. In the midst of a heartbreak, the panic and denial of losing a loved one, we tend to show “signs of lack of emotional control” for weeks or months after initial heartbreak. This may result in unsuitable phone calls, writing letters, pleading for reconciliation, crying sessions, uncontrollable drinking, or dramatic encounters in the wake of passion.

If it hurts so much and makes us do crazy things, how can a broken heart be fixed? Unfortunately, there is no yet physical cure for heartbreak. There is no pill to cure it. The closest may be that recent studies have shown that Acetaminophen, the main ingredient in Tylenol, provides a placebo effect on patients resulting in significantly low activity in their brain’s ACC. This means that there is lower sense of distress in the patients.

Although this might not be a solid answer, other studies have shown that sensitive social support is one of the greatest source of relief for emotional distress. Hanging out with your friends or focusing on other things to keep yourself busy are beneficial for a smoother healing process. As much as we’d like to grow a new fresh heart every time we get our hearts broken, that is still not feasible. A heartbreak can distort your sense of self, and although it is a popular feeling that a lot of us can relate on, it is a topic still in research. On the bright side, just like the nerves on a broken bone grow, change and connect with new nerves over time to heal, your heart also heals.

DNA for Data Storage: Storing all the World’s Information

When you want to store away physical objects for the future, the attic tends to be the go-to place for this. However, at some point, it becomes cramped, crowded and unorganized. What can be even messier than your attic is your computer and all other electrical devices with a storage component. A one page paper is small and easy to manage, but imagine all those files, documents, pictures, videos, and applications that pile up until your computer’s memory is full. Then, the computer starts running slow and you need a USB, external memory disk, or an online storage unit like cloud to back-up and save everything. But with approximately 7.7 million people currently on earth, and almost 2 centuries since the first built computer, how are we supposed to manage ALL of it?

Scientists have proclaimed DNA as being a potential source of storage for long periods of time. Its dense, easy to replicate and stable property makes it a highly desired candidate for an easier method of storage and retrieval. Current storage uses magnetic tape to store zettabytes of data but with the extensive amount of data production made every day, the current infrastructure is expected to consume all the world’s microchip-grade silicon by the year 2040 and therefore does not seem like an efficient method. Researchers can use the DNA base pairs Adenine (A), Thymine (T), Cytosine (C) and Guanine (G) to make a script to encode information. Attaching non-binary numbers, 0s and 1s, to transcribe the nucleotides into a coding sequence can allow the ability to simplify the computational language in the writing and reading process.

Encoding data in DNA initially started as a joke in 2011, but it was soon seen as a potential idea for long time archiving. Shakespeare's Sonnet, snippets of Martin Luther King’s speech “I Have a Dream” and even parts of Beethoven have been successfully encoded into a strand of DNA. Unfortunately, the biggest worry is that DNA tends to make 1 mistake in the nucleotide sequence for every 100 bases. While reading the transcript, the desired file may not be able to be retrieved properly without being damaged. DNA uses one of the five types of DNA polymerases for proofreading and repairing for DNA sequences, so a mathematical computation needs to be made that performs the same function. The economics of writing DNA still remains problematic since DNA-synthesis companies charge 0.07-0.09 dollars per base. This means that a minute of stereo can be stored for $100,000. For such high expenses, an alternative source of processing needs to be found that is more cost effective.

Based on bacterial genetics, digital DNA can maybe one day rival or exceed storage technology. The read-write speed of a hard disk is between 3,000 to 5,000 microseconds per bit with a retention span of just over 10 years, using 0.04 watts per gigabytes. In contrast, bacterial DNA’s reading-writing speed is less than 100 microseconds per bit, with over 100 years retention period and uses less than 1*10^11 watts per gigabyte. To conclude, this means that even though the translation of memory is slower in DNA, DNA storage still stores for 10 times longer than a regular hard disk, and uses an exponential amount of less energy with 1*10^6 times more data storage density. This means that we need only 1 kg of DNA storage to store the world’s information. Once the design is successful and the economics of its production resolved, we will be able to put all the internet’s information, books, and more with terabytes of information in something as small as a strand of hair.