SCHADENFREUDE-Richard.h.Smith

Schadenfreude Monthly

Schaden” meaning “harm” and “freude” meaning “joy,” and it indeed refers to the pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune.A large part of our emotional life depends on us comparing ourselves with others.Their failures boost our worth and esteem.Envy in a competitive world can lead to this joyous feeling.

”the desire for justice merges with a desire for revenge against someone we dislike, even hate”

Tabloids and other bestselling magazines are based on the breakups and tragedies of other people.Humilitainment where people are entertained in the name of humiliating other people, and shows like American Idol propagates laughing at others failures.We are so threatened by this feeling that we want to suppress it at all costs.”When we feel envy, strong envy especially, we not only hope for misfortunes to befall those whom we envy; we may sometimes find ways to bring the misfortune about”The envy could lead to resentment which could give way to acts of violence “fundamental attribution error” when we see someone’s failures or misfortunes we tend to blame their personality and their character which makes it harder to empathize with them.

Our self interested nature and our keen preference for superiority over inferiority gives way to schadenfreude.If we “fail” because most people are performing better than we are, we infer low ability; if we “succeed” because most people do worse than we do, we infer high ability”But Can social comparison define our own abilities. Each began to look at the others and to want to be looked at himself; and public esteem came to be prized. He who sang or danced the best;and this was the first step toward inequality“(Rousseau from the book “Discourse on Inequality )“If we had no faults of our own, we would not take so much pleasure in noticing those of others.”life comes down to the quest for status.The whole mating game lies in the premise that we must mate and mate with those who gave our offspring the genetic superiority so we choose our mates very carefully.Desire to mate with the most attractive person and we are competing with others for that as well.

David Buss suggests that the anticipated pleasure of seeing higher status people fail serves an adaptive goal as well: to bring about these misfortunes, the relative gain that results, and the experience of this pleasure.The “better-than-average effect” is very easily demonstrated in the saying of a social psychologist Mark Alicke “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”We think we are superior to others in whatever we do and the universe revolves around us.We might start looking at people who are inferior to us or start exaggerating other people’s inferiority to lend credence to our alleged superiority.Look at instant youtube sensations like Tahir shah,Dhinchak Pooja etc why do we want to see people doing dumb shit?what if it makes us feel superior?makes us believe in our intellectual prowess.

Sport Killings which young men commit to people who are inferior mostly the vulnerable homeless Men which serves as an easy target to get “cheap thrills” Psychologist Tom wills put this theory forward that downward comparisons give us a sense of self esteem.

If we have suffered or have low self esteem or our self esteem has taken a hit we might benefit from downwarrd comparisons such as gossip or tabloid stories.One of the reasons why people laugh is in relation to knowing that they are superior.In the 17 the century, Thomas hobs said ,”Laughter comes from a sudden sense of superiority ” We are also more likely to laugher over our insecurities,” such as sexual inadequacies, uneasy relationships with one’s boss, ethnic inferiority,but we laugh often  at another person’s expense which is mostly the foolish behavior of others .We are more likely to laugh at jokes about outgroups,people different from us or our group rather than our own ingroup.Laughter can also be brought about by incongruous inconcistent information too that have the capacity to shock people.Us vs Them.The successes and failures of the groups to which we belong affect us perhaps as much as do our individual ups and downs.“minimal group paradigm,”human beings have this innate tendency to categorize themselves and others into in and outgroups but why?clarity? certainty when it comes to evaluating out own group we cannot objectively evaluate it.Research shows that the average fan is quite capable of being pleased over injuries to players on opposing teams.“individual-group discontinuity effect”Groups are more competitive than individuals.People in mobs always have a tendency to act brutally as being a part of a group diffuses responsibility and also we can even take pride in our goal of ”serving” our group even at the cost of harming others which we see people in mobs are quite capable of doing.”feeling pleasure because of a friend’s troubles leads us into disturbing psychological and moral terrain.Two directions, one empathy and the other schandenfreude and this ambivalence fully captures human nature.“two souls,” as Faust says, “dwell with-in his breast,” the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism(William James) we are neither born to be “good” nor born to be “bad”; we are born to be “good or bad.”(Howard Gradner) Who enters into a competition with a desire for the other side to win?Dale Carnegie also talks about self interest as the prime motivation in humans. No matter how evil our actions are we can always have an accuse,We are late because of that traffic jam but when others are late or fail to reply we immediately assume a deep flaw in their personality or their character while we are innocent angels.Criticism is more likely to inspire defensiveness and retaliatory ill will because it “wounds a person’s precious pride, hurts his sense of importance.”Social psychologist Robert Cialdini,in his book, Influence talks about Self interest as a motivational given The child is unashamed about what he needs and wants most. But it is too all-absorbing and relentless to be an aberration, it expresses the heart of the creature: the desire to stand out, to be the one in creation.

IT Is not that children are vicious, selfish, or domineering. It is that they so openly express man’s tragic destiny: he must desperately justify himself as an object of primary value in the universe”It’s easier to feel sad when we have failed and it’s hard to feel happy for someone when we ourselves have failed.Psychologists Roy Baumeister and Brad Bushman, in their widely used textbook Social Psychology and Human Nature talks of the duality of human nature that is empathy and self interest.When our basic nature is selfish and rightly so for the sake of survival and propagation of our species while the culture imposes restraints and restrictions in the form of moral code which helps us to take control of our inner selfish side.Shame and guilt underlies our wanting to not deviate from culture as our self-interested and selfish might come out in public and will lead to embarrassment.We wait for our turn,respect for the property of others etc etc competition in sports and politics could intensify our schandenfreude for For sport enthusiasts and die hard political party fans bad things happening to rival teams’s members is a good thing.

Is there a Connection between revenge and schandenfreude.Deserved misfortune?We believe that bad behavior deserves bad fate.Lol it’s funny how schandenfreude is considered bad but under the disguise of a bad thing happening to a bad person it’s justified lol by saying “it’s deserved”All these  moral preachers out there are quick to point out other people’s moral failings yet they themselves fail.”Preachers are easy targets. Their job requires that they encourage moral behavior in others—even though they are surely flawed themselves, just like their congregations”

We have this desire or we construct our world in such a way  that we think we  live in a just world.A just world makes us believe that we live in a world where there is order and predictablility.The chaos of the alternative viewpoint causes a lot of anxiety.The 1980 book, The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion, Lerner.This is the viewpoint that culminates in people calling the rape of the women on the highway justified or deserved or any rape or any harassment deserved because the women choose to dress in a certain way which prompted the action.It’s as if we want to justify other people’s misfortunes by assassinating their character in one way or the other or by saying they “deserved” it.Yes there are times when people deserve something but there are still times when they don’t.”Culpable control” We tend to think that others have more control over their bad outcomes than they actually have.When people treat us badly or we seem to dislike someone we might think that they deserve their misfortune. Evolutionary psychologists conclude that vengeance is instinctual emotional reaction to a wrong.Justice and even our religion is predicated upon the belief that we should not take revenge.People often overestimate how satisfying revenge will be because they are unaware that their vengeful actions can cause them “to continue to think about (rather than forget) those whom they have punished.”Social psychologist Sung hee Kim talks about revenge in restoring our self esteem as we seem to think that the wrongdooers has so little respect for us that they harmed us.Indirect revenge the witnessing of a bad event happening to a person . Humiliation is very pleasing to watch.The whole genre of reality shows are predecated upon this humiliation packaged as entertainment.

Media researchers Steven Reiss and James Wiltz correlated self importance and the need for prestige and vengeance with reality TV show viewing and there was a positive correlation.“ Viewers feel good about their status and their self importance.Koreans have a phrase, “When my cousin buys a rice paddy, my stomach twists.” This captures well the pain of envy andEnvy is a universal human emotion. It is natural to feel envy when we lose out to someone else and must continue to gaze upon the envied people. Amygdala judges if someone is superior to us or not.Anterior Cingulate cortex is a “discrepancy detector”mPFC activated when we try to understand what other is thinking.There ‘s a complex brain activatuon involved in envy. Is there a link between envy and pleasure? Japanese researchers did brain scanning to establish a link in which envy caused ACC activation which is associated with experiencing physical pain while hearing about a misfortune to the envied caused the activation of the striatum the pleasure centre.Hostility can be linked to envy .”People feeling envy are willing to take a loss themselves, as long as it also means that the envied person will suffer to the same or greater relative degree” the pain produced by the envious person is so great that could override any sense of loss that they might experience.We envy people who are like us but they have something that we lack.The similarity allows us to think that we can have the thing that we longed for.You don’t envy celebrities because we know they are not like us.We envy our friends, our relatives, people close to us.The frustration can quickly turn into anger and there’s a certain _^fascination that we have towards disasters, crimes and any calamity that we might hate to admit but the appeal of Tabloids and the heavy coverage of crimes,natural disasters etc gives credence to the validity of these claims.The unprecedented coverage of divorce , weight gain/loss ,scandal,health problem etc and the kind of attention that such news garner may give credence to the likelihood of us getting some pleasure out of other people ‘s misfortunes.A lot of people suffer as a result of this schandenfreude”.As much as people might admire competence in other people, when it comes to actually liking them, too much competence becomes a handicap.A touch of weakness and vulnerability goes a long way toward taking the edge off the negative effects of superiority”“[T]he fat rich man stepping out of the Cadillac and into the mud puddle” will always be funny”A bright yellow, $250,000 Lamborghini spun out of control but the driver was safe but the car got damaged.That video collected 3.8 million views in about 24 hours based on YouTube statistics.“Likability, therefore, may be no sure antidote for defusing another person’s envy”Even though you might be nice or likable people who are envious of you will still find a reason to be envious as they will somehow find reasons to justify it.Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns so soon to hatred.—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE3

When we deny envy we actually take more pleasure in seeing them fail and we might also act in order to make other people suffer.Admitting envy is akin to admitting inferiority.”why most of us can believe that we are better than average despite this being a mathematical impossibility—everyone cannot be better than average” Envy is a hostile and repellent emotion.We also have strong social norms against feeling envy.Envy caused the first murder.Even Satan is envious of Christ.People feeling envy look at advantaged others with malice, casting an “evil eye” upon them—and look with pleasure when misfortune strikes” When we look at people’s advantages be it beauty,wealth talents,smartness etc etc and we realize that advantage is undeserved.The pioneering social psychologist Fritz Heider saw envy as emerging from a strong tendency toward the equalisation of lots.So many things creates envy that we can’t change or control like wealth,beauty etc which are insurmountable differences. Such inequalities are undeniably important contributors to success in work and mating game.Envy is a paradox and two things comes with this, both craving for justice  and there’s this self assertive thing that constant desire to rise above others,to stand out.

From evolutionary psychology,natural selection is inherently brutal,competitive, selecting for individual phenotypes—and the genes that code for them—based on their ability to outperform existing alternate forms in domains that affect fitness.”

Nietzsche ressentiment originated in envy which caused painful frustration.You become bitter because you can’t do anything about this envy and so you start thinking that you don’t actually value the things so it creates a conflict inside our brain which can lead to violence.

Vulnerable narcissists are particularly susceptible to envy.We might start blaming god for other people’s talents.It’s a painful ordeal and it can be frustrating due to the helplessness of the situation.It is the difference between laughing over the seemingly benign joke and the willingness to stand happily by while another person suffers—or worse, to be responsible for perpetrating the harm.Envy is a powerful and righteous emotion and accepting it means accepting your own inferiority it could easily change into resentment.The evil eye of envying that is feared in almost all cultures is the result of resentment turned into action.But why?because the transmutation can be to revenge against injustice and why not? Look at the world around you there’s a randomness to the world which could naturally lead to envy.Most schandenfreude is harmless mostly light gossip.In his book Envy: The Seven Deadly Sins, Joseph Epstein suggests the strong links between envy and Nazi anti-Semitism.Only 9 percent Jewish in Germany but Jews accounted for 60 percent of the city’s lawyers, more than half its physicians, more than 90 percent of its advertising executives, and 123 of its 174 newspaper editors. And this is not to mention the prominent places Jews held in banking, retailing, and intellectual and artistic life.I cannot help but wonder the Sindhi muhajir fueds that we have in our country in which Urdu speaking might say ohhh they are sindhis occupying this position that position while Sindhis might also say this.I mean I am not denying nepotism in this country but the point I am trying to make is this that even though we might be justified in saying that now when we look at almost every government hospital in Karachi we see sindhis so does nepotism have it’s role?yes it might be true and I have seen instances where sindhis might be favoured but the problem with this injustice is that it might quickly escalate into resentment against the whole community and could lead to acts of violence that might as well be ”justified” all due to the inherent injustice in the system.When Albert Speer, Hitler’s top architect, was asked why Hitler was anti-Semitic,one of the reasons that he gave was ““secretly admired and envied the Jews.”Wealth,power and influence are not the only things that can create envy.Stereotype Content Model, an innovative theory of prejudice proposed by psychologists Susan Fiske and Amy Cuddy.Traditional theories based on prejudice defines it as a general negative feeling against the other group but not all groups are same in competence and high status hence the treatment and the level of prejudice might also be different or whether they are a threat or not?like if they are in competition with us?All this propaganda against the Nazi Jews were also fueled by the fact that the Jews have all the leadership positions.Nazis saw group identity in blood hence their deadly racism “When economic conditions are poor, it is not surprising that people, in their collective frustration, will search for plausible causes for the hardships they are suffering. Blaming these hardships on another group—one perceived to be different, as well as competent, manipulative, and out for themselves—has a certain plausibility to it”Jewish property was destroyed Jewish shops were damaged their synagogue (praying places) were burned” Germans took a kind of pleasure in the suffering of Jews, such as gathering to watch Jews scrubbing streets with toothbrushes or soldiers pulling the beards of old Jewish men”They also sent news to live in segregated places called ”the ghettos” Once schadenfreude becomes the normative response to the mistreatment of a group of people, worse behaviors, even genocide, might enter the imagination of the envious person”Envy feel like “resentment” and the misfortune feel like “deserved”. On jan20 1942 ,The SS held a meeting to bring about the systemic genocide of the Jewish people.”Envy inspires a hatred in which the most important goal is to bring the envied person down, even if it is costly to the self in other ways”” The dog was in every man, a beast that could be unleashed”What if we start looking for circumstances beyond our control that made it possible for us to fail “our dual tendencies to overattribute the causes of other people’s behavior to their internal qualities along with overlooking the possible role of situational causes gives way to Schandenfruede.

We see a man get angry with a nurse and our quick inference is that he must be a hostile person. This “explains” his behavior.We tend to infer dispositional, internal causes for other people’s behavior—so much so that it can require focus and effort to correct this initial, automatic inference even when situational factors warrant.”The man gets angry with the nurse, he is a hostile person; the man continues to shock the learner, he is a sadistic person; the woman is behaving nervously, she is a nervous person, and so on”We also have a lot of personality labels such as jerk,neurotic etc”It is certainly easy to find fun in the humiliation of people when we can enjoy self-righteous superiority over them “Competition itself is a kind of social comparison process.Social comparisons are important building blocks for self-assessments, self-evaluations, and emotions.To be human is to be unpleasant as well as pleasant. … Anger, dislike, weariness, schadenfreude: Those are all, for me, parts of human experience. That does not mean those emotions rule people, but it does mean they are there sometimes.When the desired misfortunes fail to happen, we simply feel secret disappointment. A recently coined word for this feeling is glückschmerz

BRAIN RULES-JOHN MEDINA

Is there a factor that promotes early aging in the brain? Is that the factor that predicts how well you will age?some people live productive lives in their old age and  others are battered and broken by life but why the disparity?The benefit bestowed upon by exercise can be traced back to the  improved cardiovascular status which reduces the incidence of heartattacks and Strokes but how can that support the brain benefits of exercise?

People who do regular exercise do better at tests testing long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluid-intelligence tasks but not on short term memory but an association doesn’t necessarily mean a cause so what the researchers do?So what they did was they recruited people who didn’t exercise and tested them and when these couch potatoes enrolled in some kind of aerobic exercise routines all their mental capabilities as seen via tests improved.In one recent study, children jogged for 30 minutes two or three times a week. After 12 weeks, their cognitive performance had improved significantly compared with pre-jogging levels.The Gold standard aerobic exercise is 2/3 times a week.Your liftime risk of dementia is also cut in half by aerobic exercise lowers your risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%.20-minute walk each day, and you can cut your risk of having a stroke by 57%!

Exercise causes the release of serotonin,dopamine and norepinephrine.In one experiment, exercise was equally beneficial to an antidepressant.Experiments have proven that for both anxiety and depression exercise is effective in the long run.A recent study recruiting over 10,000 British civil servants between the ages of 35 and 55, examining exercise habits and grading them as low, medium, or high. Those with low levels of physical activity were more likely to have poor cognitive performance. Fluid intelligence, which measures problem solving ability was particularly affected.Dr. Antronette Yancey has done a lot of research on children’s academic success and their ability to focus is increased by exercise.Food has glucose that is absorbed in the intestines and then the glucose is converted into energy.This process also generates electrons taken from the glucose molecule those excessive electrons can bump into other molecules in our cell and transform them to noxious harmful substances and not just that also can cause mutations in our DNA.Oxygen act as a sponge sucking these free radicals. Brain uses 20% of the body’s cardiac output.Brain is highly metabolic!It uses a lot of oxygen and glucose and produces a lot of waste.

“You can do the same for your brain by increasing the roads in your body, namely your blood vessels, through exercise. Exercise does not provide the oxygen and the food. It provides your body greater  access to the oxygen and the food”

Exercise promotes the release of NO causing vessels to dilate causing improved blood flow! As flow improves new blood vessels are formed which penetrate deeper and exercise improves blood flow to DENTATE GYRUS(A PART IN HIPPOCAMPUS) INVOLVED IN MEMORY .Also stimulates BDNF!it encourages neurons to form connections and also neurogenesis.It promotes new neuron formation.12 miles per day!John Medina also suggests that schools should have a 20-30 minutes session of aerobic exercise followed by 20-30 minutes of strength trainin

What if students are not sitting on desks but walking on treadmills?

“Students might listen to a math lecture while walking 1 to 2 miles per hour, or study English on treadmills fashioned to accommodate a desktop”

Companies could implement it as well. Boeing is integrating exercise in its leadership training programs

Dual Representation :Our mind can give meanings to things that actually don’t possess any meaning before.We can fantasize.The capacity of language is derived from symbols.Not only that but Mathematics geometry circles and squares Dots music all depends on our ability for symbolism.Symbolic reasoning takes about 3 years to be fully functional.Through words and language we can derive information about situation.

Our improvisation instinct in which we are using new information that we have learned to a new or different situation.Rote learning is memorization which is equally important to learning.Both conceptual or our ability to apply our learning to different scenerios and rote learning is integral to learning.

In 1848, Phineas gage who was a railroad worker ,a responsible and hard-working guy ,a rod went under his eye destroying most of his prefrontal cortex changing his behavior from responsible to impulsive.So it was thought that prefrontal cortex is responsible for our executive functions namely attention, solving problems, and inhibiting emotional impulses.

Triune Brain theory.lizard/Reptilian controls breathing, heart rate, sleeping and waking mammalian fighting fleeting feeding and reproduction .The claw of the scorpion, called the amygdale, allows you to feel rage Or fear.The leg attaching the claw to the body of the scorpion is called the hippocampus.

We learned to cooperate, which means creating a shared goal that takes into account your allies’ interests as well as your own.

Our birth canal and pelvis was not proportionate to the baby’s fully developed brain as the head could not have passed the birth canal so as a result the baby had an undeveloped brain and head and it needs many years to be fully mature in comparison to other animals that are fully functional as soon as they come out.Children needs support and love as they are highly vulnerable.In animals,the alpha male is the one who’s more stronger And bigger which dominates while we humans started forming communities we learn to cooperate because if you can establish connections your power increases more as compared to when you are alone but physically strong.In order to work with someone you need to be working towards some shared goal.Theory of Mind:The ability to see other people’s mindset and their motivation.To predict our neighbors mental motives.If a teacher cannot hold student’s interest she will not be able to teach them.

“The surface of your skin, for example—all 9 pounds of it—literally is deceased.It is accurate to say that nearly every inch of your outer physical presentation to the world is dead.”Eggs and cells are not much different The white of the egg is the cytoplasm while the yolk is the nucleus.Nucleus has DNA which has genes which has information to make our cells.6 feet of space occupying stuff is squuezed into a micron.DNA folded a certain way to form either liver cell or nerve cell.Electricity crackles through these moving neurons at a blinding 250 miles per hour.

Eric kandel got a nobel prize in 2000 for learning.When you learn you brain wiring changes.”As neurons learn, they swell, sway, and split. They break connections in one spot, glide over to a nearby region, and form connections with their new neighbors”.At the beginning babies have the same number of connections that adults have and then these connections are doubled or tripled and then pruned when a child is 8 years old. And then this heightened activity starts again at puberty along with pruning.

At birth we have preset neurons for breathing and heart rate which are not affected by our experience. Visual and language needs experience to fully develop.Even identical twins don’t have the same wiring.Wiring are those “road,” from interstate freeways, turnpikes, and state highways to residential streets, one-lane alleys, and dirt roads.Howard Gardner developed multiple intelligence not really an IQ thing but has atleast 7 verbal/linguistic, musical/ rhythmic, logical/mathemati-cal, spatial, bodily/ kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. George orjmann electrically stimulated and mapped their functions according to their stimulation.Epileptic tissues are adjacent to language areas (mostly)Ojemann can’t predict the function of very precise areas in advance of the surgery because no two brains are wired identically not in terms of established early and remained stable.why does school treat everyone in the same manner why expect them to learn together ? Even students of the same age has learning variability.Smaller classrooms teachers should know and have access to the child’s inner motivations they can better track an individual’s progress .Carol Conor developing a software which will detect the reading deficiencies and will cater to show exercises to match the gap

Memory plays an important role in what we pay attention to.We use our previous experiences to discern what we pay attention to

Culture also plays an important role in perception.Asians pay more attention to context and background while urban Americans donot so that might be a useful tool to remember.If something is Important /interesting = attention.novel,unusual unpredictable captures attention.The left side of our brain has a small area to focus or pay attention to on the right side of our vision while the right brain has a global sort of spotlight or things to pay attention to.We also are attentive to what goes on the inside as well.

Trinity model:setting priorities shifting attention to detect turn and do what needs to be done a/c to the stimulus. Emotionally charged persists much longer and can be recalled much more accurately.Emotionally charged memory causes dopamine to be released at the amygdala a ”chemical post it note” to cause the memory to be stored.Emotions are the “gist” of the experience not a literal record of the experience.Memory enhanced by creating associations b/w concepts.If things are organized and hierarchal it can be memorized better.Meaning before details.Same as Definitions before details.John Bransford ” how people learn” Experts work on core ideas and big concepts and then they go into details.Don’t start with big thick books start with simple IM like short books to get your basic concepts right and then delve deep into the topic.Myth of multitasking walk and talk?same time?brain’s ability to pay attention is limited.Anterior PFC shifts attention first find neurons and then activate them then disengagement.Our different brain parts for different activities cannot be activated all at once when we do two or more things together we are switching attention from one brain part to another which causes a longer finishing time and more errors so it reduces our productivity.Several 10 of a seconds is required to switch our attention to find the designated neurons.

Kim peek has no corpus callosum.He can read two pages at the same time one eye on one page. Declarative memory steps encoding, storage, retrieval, and forgetting.So far we can only measure memory by retrieval”People usually forget 90 percent of what they learn in a class within 30 days”Hermann Ebbinghaus” majority of forgetting within the first few hrs of lectures.memories have different lifespans.Repetition in cycles can actually increase the life span.Spaced learning where “space” is AF important.Learning something and retrieving it is not “memory” as there are other steps to memory.HM suffered severe head injury that culminated in him having epileptic seizures.Doc excised both of his temporal loves.He can not convert his short term memory to long term.Brenda milner a psychologist spent 40 years studying him.Cerbral cortex has 6 layers.Hippocampus converts short to long term memory.Declarative based upon hippocampus while non declarative not in hippocampus.Non declarative memory is something that you know but if you are asked about that you find it difficult to say like riding a bike but when asked to explain it would be so ”implicit” that we wouldn’t be able to talk about that “learning is something akin to pushing the “record” button (and remembering is simply pushing “playback”)is Wrong” color motion everything extracted and stored in different places.One woman suffered a stroke in a specific region of her brain and lost the ability to use written vowels”.

Semantic memory is factual memory like what’s the capital of Pakistan?While episodic memory is about me?what I had for dinner etc etc. Engram balint’s syndrome : Parietal lobe can see but cannot tell where we are.There’s no spatial awareness.The more elaborate and detailed the information is the stronger the memory .Use music and pictures to personalize it”More complexity means greater learning” initial pathways to process new information becomes permanent.Memories are distributed all over the cortex.Retrieval improved by replication of the situation in which the learning took place.

If you are trying to get information across to someone, your ability to create a compelling introduction is going to set the stage for the rest of your presentation.

“Most of the events that predict whether something learned also will be remembered occur in the first few seconds of learning.

Converting short term memories to long term memories is consolidation.Everytime we are retrieving a memory we are changing the memory or reconsolidating it.Early learning period is hrs to days in which it can be easily retrieved but as the time goes by it becomes more reconstructive. “Memory may not be fixed at the moment of learning, but repetition, doled out in specifically timed intervals, is the fixative”” only 7 pieces of info for 30 secs can be kept in our working memory.Elaborative rehearsal is thinking and talking about an event immediately after the event keeps it alive.”The probability of confusion is increased when content is delivered in unstoppable, unrepeated waves, poured into students as if they were wooden forms”An activated Left inferior prefrontal cortex on fmri shows us that a vivid memory is being recalled rHarvard psychology professor Dan Schacter to say: “If you have only one week to study for a final, and only 10 times when you can hit the subject, it is better to space out the 10 repetitions during the week than to squeeze them all together.”

Long term potentiation.Someone’s perfume can turn you on?like increase ur heart rate your sweaty palms aur make your stomach queasy.Neurons learn things two hippocampal neurons one excites the other electrically while the other get excited and start firing. Early LTP lasts only for an hour.When there’s no new information no firing happens. Information repeatedly pulsed at intervals causes late LTP in which smaller and smaller inputs triggers excitation. Fast consolidation is within minutes to hours.Sensory information comes from the cortex to the hippocampus. Even when we are asleep there’s a continuous chit chat between hippocampus and cortex and hippocampal will let go of that chit chat until a memory becomes durable and stable which may take YEARS. Anterograde amnesia no long term memories no consolidation.

Declarative memory finally rests in cortex .Long term memory causes synaptic changes in the brain. 25 mins subject A is taught then 90 minutes later it’s taught again and then a third time.Every third or fourth day you will repeat what you learned earlier .Eradicate homework.You need to know things by this grade or class information should be repeated in an yearly or semi yearly basis.You need to review the information even when you enter the workplace.

Sleep occupies one third of our time.Non REM is the real resting period. Otherwise the brain is very much active.Only 20% of the sleep cycle is allocated to Non-Rem sleep. Suprachiasmatic nucleus of hypothalamus controls our Circadian rthym.Lark Chrono type wake up before 6 am and are most productive during lunch and sleep around 9.Late or owls have a lot of ” sleep debt” early childhood decides what chronotype we are .Mostly we all are hummingbirds.how much sleep do we actually need ?we don’t know. Our sleep requirements change with age, gender. Too much or too little sleep both are bad for our health.William dement a sleep researcher talked about a post lunch dip in which we need to take a nap you will be tired if you push through that like it reduces your productivity so that seista is much needed

26 min nap improves pilot efficiency by 35%.Mendeleyev came up with the periodic table idea in his sleep.When you learn a new procedure sleep over it.One night loss of sleep causes a 30% reduction in cognitive performance.

The ability to use glucose is also impaired.A healthy 30 year old after being sleep deprived for 6 days his body’s chemistry revert back to 60 year old.Sleep loss hurts attention, executive function, immediate memory, working memory, mood, quantitative skills, logical reasoning ability, general math knowledge.fine motor control (except,.Rat when asleep hook up electrodes to his brain and record his electrical activity and when he is learning how to navigate through a maze his electrons fire in a specific way which is replicated when he’s asleep. So when you wake him up during his slow wave sleep you can interrupt the whole consolidation process.

As teens grow up their sleep schedule changes to more owlish type so schools should be after 9 am the sleep hormones maximum in these kids so they have a tendency to sleep more especially in the morning.We adopt a different schedule as we grow older.Sleep pods are portable recliners which has light-canceling visors, noise-canceling earphones, heat-canceling circulation.In Japan they have “nap salons”.Companies would create a designated space for employees to take one half-hour nap each workday!”The relationship between stress and learning.Stress is subjective everyone’s experience with stress is different like everyone is scared of different things.No standard physiological that can make a scientist understand that you are experiencing stress as it could also be used in sex.An aroused physiological state also happens in pleasure and pain. Part 1 physiological response 2 aversiv like if you could avoid it would you?3 loss of control and predictablility .Your pulses and BP goes up due to adrenaline. When you sense stress the hypothalamus signals our adrenal glands to activate the “fight and flight” response. “cortisol” erotic goal lol to preserve our species.Most of our threats were immediate like the tiger that only lasted for seconds.Addison’s disease you wouldn’t be able to increase ur bp and will go into shock.Our stress is more chronic hectic lifes money problems etc moderate amounts in long term.Acute stress boost CVS performance. Long term more BP dysregulation cause blood vessel rough spots that changes into scars and those scars attract sticky substances to get deposited and cause clogging. Chronic stress leads to chronic MIs and chronic strokes.Stress also decreases our immune response.Acute stress is better while chronic stress is bad.People who experience chronic stress are more likely to be sick.A Transylvanian research conducted in UCLA drama department one group had happy uplifting scripts the others depressing and there blood was also tested for immune responses Hippocampus has a lot of cortisol receptors.Stressful events memories are formed instantly and they stay for a longer duration.Stressed people can’t do maths or process language that efficiently.Stressed cannot use memories to new situations.They can’t concentrate.Stress hurts declarative memory and executive (problem solving) Stress can stop neurogenesis .BDNF can be overwhelmed by a glucocorticoid surge.Turn off the genes involved in BDNF forgetfulness when you encounter severe trauma.Stress leads to depression.Some people’s genetics makes them less suceptible to stress.Blood test could also look at those genes.Stress is damaging due to the interplay between our body and unresolved marital conflict disturbing for children even kids as young as 6 months it causes more stress hormones in their urine.Powerless or cannot control.Physical health deteriorates; absenteeism and truancy increase.Burnout because of cortisol can also cause depressionFluid intelligence, problem-solving abilities (including quantitative reasoning), and memory formation are deeply affected by depression.Stress 1 high expectations 2 no control. Free family counseling at 26 at the peak of their productive years they are also forming their families which makes these years the most stressful years of their lives so families also needs counseling especially parents.Most parents don’t know how to rear their kids.

Synthesia: short circuting b/w two sensory inputs.Stimulate more senses at the same time to learn better.

Sensation capture information into electrical activity. Thalamus shuttles sense perceptions and sends it to different cortical areas. How does information from different senses gets merged in the brain? Association cortices parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes not really sensory or motor areas but bridges between them bottom up and top down.Visual system bottom up which means every word letter is analyzed the lines and everything to make a sense of the meaning of the lines and Everything and then top down start perceiving info is added or subtracted to the data stream can even alter the data stream synthesia some people see a word and then taste visual inputs influence auditory input even if there’s no sound multimodal reinforcement touch boosted visual multimedia exposure and learning. Short term memory allows the person to hold info for a short time period.People with synthesia has a photographic memory.Students learn better from words and pictures.Temporal contiguity principle: Students learn better when words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively Spatial contiguity principle: words and pictures near and simultaneously.We learn from animation and narration better than onscreen text.Smell can evoke memory.Proust effect.Odors are not so good at retrieving declarative memories.Between the eyes we have a postage stamp like olfactory lobe.Outer surface of olfactory epithelium is sensitive to the air odor molecules enter the snotty nose and brush on the protein coming out of the epithelium stimulating the nerves.Smell stimulates amygdala so it stimulates emotions.Orbitofrontal cortex above and behind your eyes involved in decision making.

Power of emotion to incite action is motivation.Vanilla smell produces positive emotions.Pair a smell with each lesson!

Visual processing dominates the perception of our world.”We actually experience our visual environment as a fully analyzed opinion about what the brain thinks is out there.”A photon shocks the retinal neurons and electrical signal is generated too wrong and simplistic ok so retina perceives information before and it sends it off through different tracks to different locations in the brain one is for movement one is for color. Thalamus is an egg shaped structure in the middle of the head.Occipital lobe put your hand on the back of your head and there you got it!After a stroke Gerte saw a sequence of static, strobe-like snapshots of the objects.ventral stream color what an object is.Dorsal stream where it’s moving.Our brain loves to make things up.Charles bonnet syndrome people sees chariots, policemen,cartoons etc .Previous experiences mould the way we see the world retina is two dimensional while world is 3D .We also have two visual fields which are upside down and backwards.Phantom limbs pain stopped a divider with two portals one for the stump and other for the functional arm divider is the mirror so when you moved your functional arm your stump moved too and your pain healed.Vision and learning and recognition memory .Pictorial superiority effect: You remember pictures rather than words it boosts memory up to 65 percent. We see words as art pieces.We try to visualize the text as we read.“Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap,” George Bernard Shaw. Babies have Preloaded software for visual processing”Donald in Mathmagic Land” Donald introduced medina to maths which caters to the power of moving image in delivering information.More efficient transfer of information.It captures attention.Powerpoint focuses too much on words” Professionals everywhere need to know about the incredible inefficiency of text-based information and the incredible effects of images”

Chromosomes are snake like forms of DNA which contains information to make you YOU! 23 from dad 23 from mom.Two are sex chromosomes.An XX makes you female While a XY makes you male and only males can determine which sex the baby will have.Males and females are different with regard to genetic, neuroanatomical and behavioral differences. On Y chromosome only SRY determines the sex of the baby.The basic default system of an embryo is to be a female. Female deactivate one of their X chromosomes in their cells as they have two X.Cells in female embryo some activate mom’s x genes and some dad’s. BUT All boys are Mamma’s boys with respect to their X chromosome. 1500 genes are on the X chromosome. Women’s PFC fatter than men’s. PFC is for decision making.Amygdala is much larger in men.males secrete serotonin about 52%faster than females .Does size or neurotransmitters means anything? We don’t know.“Invoking planet metaphors like Venus and Mars, some purport to expand perceived differences into prescriptions for relationships”

Female have a backup X if one X is defected she can ignore that. Schizophrenia more in males both hemispheres are not equal however right remembers the gist left remembers the details.In acute stress women fire up their the left amygdala.The magic elixir of forgetting is propranolol inhibits amygdala in emotional response .Women recall more emotional memories.Deborah tannen the leading researcher on men and women differences. Language and reading disorders are more common in males .Women use both of their hemispheres when they are speaking and visual processing. Women have thicker corpus collosum which is the string that binds your two hemispheres together. Women lean in, maintain eye contact when talking while boys make little eye contact but they do things physically together Higher order males push others and give orders.Hierchay is evident in males and Independent behavior highly prized.

Girls tend to decide by concensus while in boys it’s what the most dominant male said.We don’t really know if it’s the nurture or society which is causing these differences or is it nature?genes? it’s a very complex issue and we don’t really know the answer so it’s safe to say that it’s an interplay of both factors. When it comes to women being more emotional they simply have more information available to them.

“We could have environments where gender differences are both noted and celebrated, as opposed to ignored and marginalized”

We are born with an Exploratory drive.Children explores the world around them by kicking it licking it.Children are scientists as they make an observation infer a hypothesis and then test the hypothesis by running experiments.In 1979, Andy Meltzoff rocked the world of infant psychology by sticking out his tongue to a 40 mins born infant which goes on to say that babies at birth have fully functional imitational system and our brains are not blank slates.Object permanenece:when we remove an object from a child’s visual field or hide it he knows its still there.Children below 2 years of age don’t have this ability for them if something disappears it disappears forever.Between 14 and 18 Months babies develop this sense that if they like something all others would not necessarily like it. But before that babies say

“”If I want it, it is mine.
If I give it to you and change my mind later, it is mine.
If I can take it away from you, it is mine.
If we are building something together,If it looks just like mine, it is mine.
If it is mine, it will never belong to anybody else, no matter what.
If it is yours, it is mine””

After 2 years of age,babies push boundaries and then see how others react.Mirror neurons are the brain cells whose activity reflect their surrounding.For example if you see someone picking up a glass certain parts of your brain will light up or get activated when you yourself pick up that glass so these neurons mirror others behavior.

“That’s because our learning abilities don’t have to change as we age. We can remain lifelong learners”

“I firmly believe that if children are allowed to remain curious, they will continue to deploy their natural tendencies to discover and explore until they are 101.” Learning brings joy and mastery”By first grade, for example, children learn that education means an A. They begin to understand that they can acquire knowledge not because it is interesting, but because it can get them something”let’s learn to not get a good grade or GPA but for the countless benefits that comes along with it!!!

CONFESSIONS-LEO TOLSTOY

Hundreds of us wrote, printed, and taught, and all the while confuted and abused each other. Quite unconscious that we ourselves knew nothing, that to the simplest of all problems in life – what is right, and what is wrong – we had no answer.

This week i will be reviewing Leo tolstoy’s confessions.Leo tolstoy was regarded as the greatest russian novelist of all times.He rose to fame chiefly because of his War and peace (1867)and Anna karenina(1877).In this work,Leo is describing how meaningless life was for him and how suicidal he was during the peak of his career which made me realize that the value we attribute to money and fame needs to be reevaluated because life is not just about being a billionare or that person who has the most followers on instagram,it’s more complex than that.Even the yardstick of success in terms of money or how much net worth you have, would not give you the kind of satisfaction that you think it would.

It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; as soon as we are sober again we see that it is all a delusion, and a stupid one!

Tolstoy writes by saying that as he went to university he started realizing that all that trust and authority that he ascribed to faith or his religion is meaningless for him now.He don’t undersatnd it anymore.So he decided to chase after perfection in his intellect and his physical strength.He read and read and didn’t restricted his reading to a particular genre,he also started endurance and strength training to be physically strong.He confesses that what he was chasing after was power in the eyes of other men which could be seen as his hunger for social distinction.

To stop, to go back, was impossible; nor could I shut my eyes so as not to see the suffering that alone awaited me, the death of all in me, even to annihilation.

He said that through his writings whatever he was saying was not something he believed in neither it was something that he practised.He thought that as a thinker and a poet he had to teach mankind through his works unconciously yet he himself didn’t understand.He says that as a writer he was indifferent to right or wrong yet he wanted to teach and the small intellectual class to which he himself belonged lead immoral lives and have drowned themselves in the pleasure made possible by the wealth of their social class.According to him and other authors at the time the measure of civilization or how practical or useful or impactful a work is judged upon the number of people it reaches.Echoes of the idea that the number of people is propotional to the success of a work is still seen in today’s world where the success of something is reduced to the number of views it gets on Youtube or how many subscribers this or that channel have.I am not saying in any way that views or followers are not important what i am saying is let’s not reduce success or the intrinsic value of a work by just seeing the number of people who have seen it.I have seen so many self- help bestselling books so pointless and impractical that now if something is on the bestselling charts i just regard that as a statistic and nothing else.Best selling doesn’t necessarily translates into worth reading.

“Is there any meaning in my life which can overcome the inevitable death awaiting me?”

He continued on living his life even though the meaning of life still eluded him.He was on the quest for improving his material life as much as he can.He also got married and all the object of his life was aimed at providing happiness and comfort to his family.At 50,he was at the peak of his mental and physical strength but still he was dissatisfied by his life,thoughts of death started to plague him.He started recognizing that someday he or someone close to him will die and he couldn’t understand why he is living when everything will just crumble to dust.Why?

If a man lives, he believes in something. If he did not believe that there was something to live for, he would not live.

Why am I hiding it from my loved ones that inevitable truth that is death.Art and poetry even these things wasn’t so charming anymore.He wanted to know that life had meaning so that he can live it and enjoy it because when life has no meaning nothing feels worth doing.All the artificial and conventional answers as to the meaning of life didnot filled the void in his heart.

Again and again, however, the conviction came back to me that I could not have appeared on earth without any motive or meaning,

When you come face to face with life you are met with contradictions as what you are and what you are doing is not what you actually believe.

Faith springs, like man and his reason, from the mysterious first cause. That cause is God,

How am I to live in this life.He thought that if he studied other people’s life then he might be able to extract out the gist of their experience and can apply that experience in his own life.

You are what you call life.The scientific definition that we are just the conglomerate of particles and it will decompose doesn’t suffice to bring peace to him. He states science categorizes and put things into boxes.Science and rationality fails to answer the fundamental dilemma of life which is what is the meaning of our existence if any?Life is evil and absurdity but people have developed mechanisms to escape that.1.The very young donot perceive the harsh realities of life 2.People drown themselves into luxuries and pleasures 3.people commit suicide 4.The people that Tolstoy fits under are weak so they don’t commit suicide but they wan’t to.

He says that not just reason but consciousness of life power brought him to the meaning of life.He had a small wealthy circle ⭕ and outside that the working class people were looked down upon but he saw in them something that he wanted to learn that despite all their suffering they consider life worth living.They cope with life with hope.Rationality and reason denies the meaning of life which makes us question life itself so much so that we want to end it.Why does these people survive ?it’s faith that enables them to do that which his small rich intellectual circle lacked.

He says that he has strayed from the real question which is not why I should live?but how should I live?If I look at the universe I am looking at infinity and who am i?I am finite that created a lot of confusion because he cannot grasp the relationship between the finite and the infinite.

He turned to experimental science in which he found that our life had nothing of value and then he turned to philosphy even that cannot fully answer his life conundrum.

We compare ourselves to the universe.How can we do that?finite equal infinite and we subject it to logical analysis?life is evil and suffering but we still live it so realized that life is not lived for himself alone it’s for others.He calls us to abandon our reasoning when thinking about the meaning of life Because according to him truth doesn’t come from idle reasoning but from living it.He was searching for god for which he started spending his time with the poor working class people.He realized that the meaning of life comes from your heart.

Causation is not the same as time and space. If I am there’s a cause of my being and the cause of all causes God is the cause of all things.When he became conscious of a power over him.Everything started feeling more worth it.He started praying but still his prayers were not being answered which caused his alienation from religion.But religion allowed him to see that all truth is revealed in love.He started going to the church regularly he was participating in the rituals and everything.And he quite enjoyed it yet he couldn’t understand the purpose of so many rituals and that made him uneasy but he continued those rituals because he feared the loss of meaning which threatened him.

He started seeing a pattern around him that the religious followers of one religion had animosity against the religious followers of another religion.Love that was an objective of religion was turning to hatred against the ”other people” of another religion.One believed the moral supremacy of one religion over the other.In the end ,he started realizing the pitfalls of religion but he continued to believe in god because that gave his life meaning .

I would highly recommend this book especially if you are struggling in finding a meaning in your own life.I don’t know if it could solve your problem but it will resonate with you on so many different levels.

WAHL’S PROTOCOL

The doctor of the future will give no medicine,but will interest his (or her) patients in the care of the human frame,in a proper diet,and in the care and prevention of disease

Thomas edison

HER LIFE STORY

In medical school, she first started having these acute,short lasting attacks of stabbing pain(trigeminal neuralgia) which she ignored then she started having her visual changes like her perception of blue was different in her eyes.Then when she started having mobility issues she sought a doctor and after an infinite number of tests she was finally diagnosed as a patient of Multiple sclerosis.She didn’t let that bring her down,she started the Paleo diet by Dr Loren Cordian but it didn’t helped her that much so she started taking carnithine and coenzyme Q supplements along with that as she cannot exercise she started on a regime of electrically stimulating her muscles which is tantamount to exercising them so that she can built up her strength.Gradually and slowly she was back on her feet from being wheelchair bound now she was able to ride her bicycle again.

I still lose my balance and fall sometimes,I still get fatigued but it’s all 10,000 times better

Terry wahl

MITOCHONDRIAL DAMAGE–_{A COMMMON FACTOR IN ALMOST ALL AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES}

What is mitochondria?Mitochondria is the powerhouse of our cells meaning that they not only produce energy via ATP but they also get rid of waste products.Heart,brain,retina and liver are dense in mitochondria as they are more metabolically active then other cells in our body.Our mitochondria cannot function without certain vitamins and minerals it needs all these nutrients especially coenzyme Q to function effectively otherwise the mitochondria will be excessively strained and instead of eliminating toxins it will signal the cell to undergo premature apoptosis.Free radicals are the molecules which has free electrons which means they have the capacity to react with the DNA or any proteins in the cells so as to render their physical structure or chemical structure abnormal which makes them ‘foreign” to our own white blood cells,the patrolling police which are constantly searching for proteins which has different receptors,receptors can be understood by the analogy of a doorkey which has a specific shape to fit a specific lock likewise when these free radicals change the shape of these door locks in such a way that the WBCS now recognize these proteins as ”non-self” and so they start attacking these non-self proteins.The definition of autoimmunity is the attack of your own cells by your own cells.Dr Wahl claims that at a cellular level all autoimmune diseases has mitochondrial damage as the root cause which increases inflammation(the immune response) which also increases our stress hormone(cortisol) levels.What are the symptoms of mitochondrial damage? Fatigue/exhaustion, brain fog (when your thinking becomes confused,your mood becomes irritable.

DRUGS CAUSING COENZYME Q DEPLETION

1)TRICYCLIC ANTIDEPRESSANTS 2) BENZODIAZEPINES 3) SULFONYLUREA 4) THIAZIDE 5)BETA BLOCKER 6) ACETAMIDE

DRUGS CAUSING VIT B ABSORPTION ISSUES

1. DIURETICS 2.METFORMIN 3.BIRTH CONTROL PILLS 3.PPIS 4. ANTIBIOTICS 5.BENZODIAZEPINES 6.TCAS 7.NSAIDS 8.ASPIRIN

Vitamin A, retinol (animal form of vitamin A)

Involved in synthesis of visual pigments in the retina

Cod-liver oil, liver

Vitamin B1 (thiamine)

Facilitates use of glucose,

generation of myelin

Organ meat, seeds, nuts

Vitamin B2 (riboflavin)

Helps produce mitochondrial energy

Liver, greens

Vitamin B3 (niacin)

Helps produce mitochondrial energy

Liver, chicken

Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)

Aids in neurotransmitter production

Fish, greens

Vitamin B9 (folic acid)

Facilitates myelin generation

Liver, greens, asparagus

Vitamin B12 (cobalamin)

Facilitates myelin generation

Liver, shellfish

Vitamin C

Fights infection, supplies intracellular antioxidants

Greens, citrus

Vitamin D

Aids in proper reading of the DNA, protects cells in the brain

Cod-liver oil, sunlight

Vitamin E

Promotes cell signaling; protects cholesterol-carrying molecules from oxidation; reduces brain cell death, which protects against aging

Nuts, seeds, avocado

Iron

Helps supply oxygen to the brain

Organ meat, greens, molasses

Copper

Promotes iron/copper balance involved in higher brain functions

Organ meat, shellfish, nuts, seeds

Zinc

Aids in perception

Liver, shellfish, nuts, seeds

Iodine

Involved with intelligence and myelin production

Seaweed, seafood, iodized sea salt

Magnesium

Stabilizes cells against excess glutamate (too much stimulation)

Greens, raw soaked nuts, seaweed

Selenium

Protects against oxidative stress

Brazil nuts, sunflower seeds, seafood, seaweed

Lycopene, lutein, zeaxanthin, alpha- and beta-carotene, beta-cryptoxanthin

Antioxidants, which protect cell membranes and mitochondria

Brightly colored vegetables and berries

Carnitine

Assists with energy production in mitochondria

Heart, kidney, liver, beef, and all other meats, including poultry

Lipoic acid

Assists with ^{energy production in mitochondria}

Heart, kidney, liver

Coenzyme Q

Assists with ^{energy production in mitochondria}

Heart, kidney, liver

Creatine

Assists with energy production in mitochondria

Organ meat, wild game

Pantothenic acid (vitamin B5)

Assists with energy production in mitochondria

Liver, mushrooms, avocado

Vitamin K

Helps strengthen myelin and blood vessels

Greens

CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

Our conventional medicine is not really concerned with what happens at the cellular level which manifest as a disease.It looks at the symptoms and the treatment that works in ameilorating those symptoms.Our conventional medicine doesnot really believe even in the role of nutrition in halting the progression of a disease.Dr wahl is not saying in any way that we should all stop our multiple sclerosis medications instead we should use this diet and the wahl’s protocol in addition to your medications and slowly and gradually you will see that your thinking will become more clear,your fatigue and muscle weakness will also improve considerably.The importance of nutrition cannot and should never be denied.

WHAT IS MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS?

Multiple means different sites and sclerosis means collagen deposition or scar formation so upto a certain extent the word explains some pathophysiology of this disease.In multiple sclerosis,our immune cells attacks our brain and spinal cord which can be seen via an MRI in the form of plaques which is basically the scar tissue formed by the excessive inflammation or the chronic inflammation.But then what is the cause?unfortunately we don’t really know what causes MS,there are lot of theories like the Cerebrospinal venous insufficency theory states that due to chronic inflammation there is a narrowing of vessels which causes oxidative stress and ultimately result in MS.Vit D deficiency is also implicated in this.There are so many theories around the cause of MS.There are four types of MS.Relapsing-Remitting is the most common types which has acute episodes followed by improvement which eveentually in a decade may progress to secondary progressive.In primary progressive,there are no acute episodes but the symptoms gradually decline.In progressive relapsing there is a steady decline with some acute attacks.If the nerves taking sensation from your body like face,hands etc are attacked you might have poor vision,balance,pain,if the nerves that carry information to your muscles are attacked, weakness and poor coordination may occur depending upon the site of scar formation.

Why FOLLOW WAHL?

Before commiting to this protocol you need to make sure that you really want to do this?do you really want to be better?what is the reason?what is your motivation for doing this?what do you expect to happen?is it your fatigue?your immobility?be specific about what you actually want?start writing a wahl’s diary in which you write about what is your purpose?what are your goals?what do you eat in breakfast,lunch and dinner what snacks?exercise?how do you feel everyday and then at the end of 30 days evaluate that is this protocol even working for you?Gauge your progress by

1.nintendo brain age games 2. biological age calculator 3.brain grade scale

WESTERN DIET

The western diet is mostly carbohydrate and sugar based.While the diet that our hunting gatherer ancestors consumed was Paleo meaning it didnot consists of legumes and starch that we consume nowadays.Sugar doesnot only cause diabetes but it oxidizes the proteins and changes its structure hence promoting oxidative stress.Sugar causes the growth of sugar loving bacteria in our gut,pseudomonas and the candida species which produces toxins those toxins causes holes in our gut meaning they causes our gut to becomes leaky,the interface between the blood vessel and the gut lining becomes disrupted which causes gluten and caesin to reach our blood directly.The zonulin and the other proteins that hold this barrier together becomes disrupted.Not just the gut lining but also the blood vessels becomes leaky as well causing immune cells to attack and and deposit cholesterol hence clogging our vessels.Bread,cheese,pizza,cupcakes,pasta etc are comfort foods which means that they increase dopamine in our brain hence making us want to crave them and not only that they also stimulate our opiod receptors so we can also get addicted to them.

POLYPHENOLS

Polyphenols are plant based antioxidants that helps protect our cells from oxidative damage and inflammation.There are different types of polyphenols.

9 CUPS OF VEGETABLES A DAY KEEPS THE DOCTOR AWAY

The three stages of this protocol is 1.wahls diet 2. wahls paleo 3.wahls paleo plus

3 CUPS OF GREENS

The list of greens are written in this image.GREENS =BACK B For b-complex vitamins A for vit A which not only helps in forming retinal pigments but also recalibrates our immune system and makes our skin more elastic.VITAMIN C is a powerful antioxidant which reduces the oxidative damage brought about by the Free radicals.Vit k also decreases our blood pressure by maintaining the elasticity of our blood vessels.If you are taking warfarin make sure you ask your doctor to have your dose adjusted accordingly.

3 CUPS OF COLORED VEGETABLES

The more colored a vegetable is the more packed it is with antioxidants.It increases nitric oxide which is a vasodilator which increases blood flow and it maintains our vascular health.

3 cups of sulfur rich vegetables

Sulfur is necessary for collagen production,toxin removal,it’s also beneficial for joints,hair,nails and skin.MSM,METHLYSULFONYMETHANE is also a suuplement used in arthritis.The cruciferous veggetables like the brassica/cabbage family are rich in dindonylmethane,indole 3 carbinol and sulforaphane which reduces oxidative stress and increases gluthathione.Rotate your vegetables as they themselves have toxins so don’t consume the same vegetables everyday.Onions,garlic,chives,leeks,shallots, all contain sulfides which decreases atherosclerosis.Aged garlic extract contains arginine.Donot throw the leaves of radishes,beetrot and turnips,make vegetable soup out of them.If you are on a FODMAP diet meaning that you have IBS(irritable bowel syndrome)or you have bloating,gas issues,diarrhea or any other gastric issues after consuming vegetables you can make vegetable soup in this way you will not experience any gastric issues as vegetables might contain certain compounds that are not fully digested or fiber that causes gas formation as the bacteria in our gut digests those compounds leading to blaoting,diarhea and other GI issues.

GIVE UP DAIRY AND GLUTEN

LIMIT YOUR LEGUMES AND STARCHY VEGETABLES LIKE POTATOES TO TWICE A WEEK

All your nuts or legumes which are your lentils or beans etc as they contain phytins and lectins which will aggravate your leaky gut issues,they are antinutrients meaning that they prevent absorption of nutrients,they are also implicated in causing excessive inflammation thus causing autoimmune conditions.If you are eating them soak them for atleast 6 to 24 hours which will start germination and increase the production of phytase an enzyme that will break down these harmful compounds and it will also decrease your cooking time.Phytate in these legumes also lock and bind to zinc,iron,calcium and magnesium inhibiting their absorption.Lectin is a sugar protein molecule causing inflammation.

GRASS-FED MEAT

If the meat you consume is coming from a grain fed animal meaning from someone fed on corn that meat will have an increase amount of omega 6 fatty acids which will increase excessive inflammation.Organic animals are those who are raised without any hormone injections or any chemicals even the quality of their meat contains omege 6 so it’s way better to have a grass fed animal’s meat otherwise meat consumption of animals raised on conventional farms are very dangerous to consume as we have to detoxify the harmful injections they have been given.Even fish and chicken raised in farm are harmful.

VEGETARIAN AND ESSENTIAL AMINO ACIDS

ESSENNTIAL AMINOACIDS are the aminoacids that we take in our diet failure to do so might promote muscle wasting and weakness.Legumes donot have methionine.Furthermore,the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids is also unbalanced as plant sources of omega 3 fatty acids is ALPHA LINOLEIC ACID through walnuts,flax and hemp seeds which needs to be converted to omega 3 fatty acids only 5% is converted.

VEGETABLE OIL AND INFLAMMATION

VEGETABLE OIL Like sunflower,rapeseed,canola etc are polyunsaturated fatty acids which are converted to transfats.Their double bonds are oxidized which caused oxidative stress and promote atherosclerosis by causing excessive inflammation.It should also be non GMO which is not genetically modified for the production of this plant and animals.Olive oil when heated loses alot of its polyphenols and its antioxidants so using even olive oil in cooking is useless.Cold pressed or extra virgin coconut oil which is a medium chain oil is not converted nor oxidized can be used.Clarified butter i.e ghee and butter are superior when it comes to cooking.Vegetable oils is high in omega 6 fatty acids which is a precursor to lipoic acids whhich is converted to arachidonic acids causing inflamamtion because all the inflammatory effects like fever,muscle pain etc can be reduced to interleukins which are produced by these arachidonic acid derivatives.It’s imperative to have a 1:1 ratio of omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids.

CHICKENS SOUP SECRET

The bones,the sinews the whitish layer covering the chicken and the white cartilagenous part the gristle is rich in glucosamine and glycans.When you have a flu you have myalgias which is this generalized pain but why?it’s because of intestinal cells using or pulling glutamine from the muscles.Glutamine is the most abundant non-essential amino acid found in skeletal muscles.Glutamine is used by the intestinal cells as a fuel as opposed to glucose in the case of any illness gut cells are pulling due to increased intestinal permeability and activated immune responses.Chicken soup can also rectify the leaky gut syndrome.

NEW CHOLESTEROL THEORY

Previously,it was believed that we should include more polyunsaturated or vegetable oil in our diet but now it’s widely believed that transfats are inserted into our membranes and they make cell membranes more stiff,interfering between the messages between the cells,causing excessive inflammation.It’s also a risk factor in obesity,atherosclerosis,brain atrophy etc

SOY PROBLEM

Soy that is normally used in your veggie burgers and hotdogs are genetically modified leads to oxidative stress and also contains phytoestrogen which might be responsible to precoccious puberty.

ANIMAL PRODUCTS TRUE SOURCES OF READY MADE VITAMIN A AND D

Plant products only have beta carotene a precursor to vitamin A which needs to be converted to vit A which is an inefficient process.

SEAWEED/KELP POWDER A DENSE NUTRIENT

KETOGENIC DIET?

A diet rich in fats where we are reducing carbohydrates to only 50 grams like only 5-10% of your calorie requirement is coming from your carbohydrates.Wahls paleo plus is a modified form of ketogenic diet.But when to progress when you are still having brain fog or your symptoms are not resolving despite the wahl’s diet and wahl’s paleo.Intermittent fasting from 12 to 16 hours is also in wahl’s paleo plus.

GAMMA LINOLEIC ACID

Gamma linoleic acid is found in borage oil,primrose oil,black currant oila nd hemp oil which is a form of animal omega 6 fatty acid which decreases excessive inflammation.

Natural detox?

Pollution is everywhere around us even the microwave ovens we use also emit harmful radiation.Sweat is a way through which we are excreting our waste products so sauna can be a way to excrete out toxins from our body.Clays and mud masks also pulls toxins from our skin.Algae/kelp are also good in detoxification.Cayenne pepper,ginger,dill,horseradish,saffron,rosemary,turmeric,milk thistle,pcynogenol(pine bark) are all good detox agents.All creams,soups everything that you are putting on your skin needs to be excreted out so be aware of the products you are putting on your skin especially if they contain ammonia.Do you know that deodrants,plastics,perfues,solvents contains estrogen and the increasing rate of precocious puberty might be attributed to it.Algae particularly the chlorella and spirulina type of algae needs to be consumed.

REPLACE YOUR TOOTHPASTE WITH COCONUT OIL

Your toothpaste contains flouride which is toxic to body and brain replace it.

STRETCH AND EXERCISE

When it comes to exercise,you can do yoga,pilates(a core based strengthening program or taichi.You can dance too but it’s all about doing an exercise program that you enjoy.AFter working out stretching is essential.Exercise not only provides muscle strengthenining and coordination but it also releases BNDF the fertilizer of our brain which is needed for neuroplasticity which means that it allows brain cells to make new connections/synapses.In MS feet turn blue and swollen as the veins that carry blood to the heart are not being compressed by the muscles due to muscle atrophy causing the pooling of blood in the veins of the feet.

if you cannot exercise you can buy an e-stimulation device 5 minutes of e-stimulation can prevent muscle atrophy.Make sure you rest or take a recovery day depending on what your physiotherapist may suggest.E-stimulation is for muscle spasms and to prevent disuse atrophy.FES IS timed electrical stimulation to create a movement but it is not FDA approved.

OMEGA 3

Salmon is rich in omega 3 but you can also supplement it make sure to take vitamin E becaused omega 3 without vitamin E can be oxidized. Omega 3

TURMERIC

Turmeric our haldi balances phase 1 and phase 2 detoxification enzymes.Turmeric also contains curmin a polyphenol.

RESTLESS LEG SYNDROME

Magnesium can be taken for this syndrome in which you have this crawling sensation on your leg which makes you want to itch it to relieve it which causes lack of sleep.The greens in your list of vegetables can also help in restoring magnesium levels.You can also put menthol and camphor like vicks which serves as a mild topical anesthesia.

REVESTEROL

REVESTEROL is the most potent antiaging product in cranberries,grape juice,cocoa,peanuts etc the skin of red grapes is the most important source of revesterol.They are a part of compounds called the polyphenols which works as antioxidants.

GREEN TEA

Green tea is packed in quercitin,epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) which are antioxidants.

At the end of the book Dr wahl’s enlists and categorizes every alternative medicine therapy on the basis of risks and benefits like do these treatment’s risks outweights their benefits.Dr wahl also speaks of how should we evaluate any alternative therapy by knowing its benefits and then seeing if the risks are greater than their benefits but how do we decide?by doining research by goining on Pubmed to find out the articles pertaining to the specific alternative therapy.

ORGAN MEAT

Organ meat like heart,kidneys,liver etc are rich sources of coenzyme Q,carnithine and lipoic acid which helps in mitochondrial energy production and statins decreases the levels of coenzyme Q and after 50, our coenzyme Q levels decreases so we need to be taking organ meats atleast twice weekly.

MAN AND HIS SYMBOLS

PSYCHE

”Man has developed consciousness slowly and laboriously, in a process that took untold ages to reach the civilised state (which is arbitrarily date from the invention of script in about 4000 B.C.). And this evolution is far from complete, for large areas of the human mind are still shrouded in darkness. What we call the ‘psyche’ is by no means identical with our consciousness and its contents.’‘

According to Carl Jung, our psyche is composed of the ego,the collective unconscious and the unconscious.Ego has all our conscious memories,emotions and thoughts while the unconscious has all our repressed memories,emotions and thoughts which we are incapable of knowing consciously.Our Ego self thinks rationally which is influenced by our prejudices,fantasies and infantile wishes.Consciousness is reason and knowledge while Unconsciousness has instincts and archetypes.The “loss of soul” – a modern man’s fundamental predicament is fundamentally the split between the conscious and the unconscious component of our psyche.We think that we know everything yet we don’t even have the capacity to fully comprehend ourselves.

”Our psyche is part of nature, and its enigma is limitless.’

COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

Collective unconcious holds all our primitive instincts and desires.It’s a universal occurence.The contents of the collective unconcious is not influenced by our personal experiences.In the collective unconcious, we have archetypes.All the religious doctrines arise from this collective unconcious.This collective unconcious reveals itself in the form of images in dreams,myths,fairytales etc.All the cultural remnants of an individual is contained in the collective unconscious.

ARCHETYPES

Archetypes are our urges,our instincts,our dreams and our visions.For example we have the famous hero myth.It is marked by 5 stages 1.early success 2.rise to power 3. running against evil 4. failing due to pride 5. sacrifice..This myth is common to all cultures which sums up the entire idea of the archetypes which are the archaic remnants of our ancestors irrespective of our race,creed or culture.The hero myth has deep psychological significance,it symbolizes on a deepeer level the capacity of each one of us to be our own heroes in our life in the sense that we are able to combat our fear and anxieties with courage like a hero and go deep into our psyche into the underworld of our unconciousness to explore all the things that we do without reflection. We should be the heroes in our life combating social conventions and doing ”our thing” instead of following the herd.In a way the hero myth empowers us in the sense that now we can conciously decide to face our problems and not run away from them.Archetypes comes to life when we reflect why are they meaningful to us?if we are sufferring we can choose to look at ourselves as the hero of our own story so we confront chaos and slay the dragons or the snakes except in this case most of the dragons and snakes are in ourselves :p

”We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other that good will overcome evil,or joy defeat pain.Life is a battleground,it always has been,and always will be and if we were not so existence would come to an end”

LOTUS

The lotus comes out of murky waters and the analogy of new ideas coming out from the unconcious is akin to that.In 1861,August Kekule discovered the structure of benzene by dreaming about a closed snake.So many breakthoroughs in the field of science have come out of the unconcious.

SHADOW

Shadow is all those parts of our psyche that we have repressed.For example,people especially women have a tendency to repress their anger and their aggression.All the hidden parts of us which the society and the culture asks us to let go.Projection is a phenomena that things that are reprehensible to us in others is actually within us.We might argue for the goodness of men but before that we need to understand that humans are perfectly capable of being evil.It’s naive to assume that humans are all sunshine and goodness.We are our own worst enemy.

”For we have not even learned to control our own nature.Slowly but,it appears inevitably we are courting disaster”

People have a tendency to commit acts of violence in groups that group is all our collective shadows speaking through the herd.Carl jung warns us against losing ourselves in the herd and advises us to differentiate ourselves into individuals through a process called individuation.Did you find yourself in a rage in which ‘you just loose it?’ or others saying that” i don’t know what came over you?”that happens and that is our shadow self.You can see people cutting each other off in traffic lines and even in checkout lines.Shadow can also have our creativity which we have repressed due to social conditioning.But the problem is how can we integrate it into our personality and the solution lies in confronting it rather than denying it.But bringing it to our awareness is the first step towards psychic health.

GOLDEN AGE

”Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory,which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself”

Carl states that in this modern world where we have denied the existence of god and by god he meant the transcendent,the ideal, making the whole point of existence and sufferring meaningless why suffer?when we have nothing to work towards?what’s the point of morality anyways?Science and rationality is just one sided or a one dimensional part of our perception.There’s so much inside our minds that we cannot fully comprehend.

DREAMS AND THEIR UTMOST VALUE

Dreams are not something that is random or meaningless or useless.According to Carl jung,dreams are the primary source to tap into the inner workings of our unconcious mind.In psychoanalysis,dreams are also used as guidance as dreams in the form of symbols and mythological motifs harbour truths of our psyche like for example if someone dreams of flying too high or falling,their unconcious are warning them in their dreams of their ambitions which are too lofty to be fulfilled.Every person’s dream is unique so one thing in one dream can mean different things for different people.

Such messages from the unconscious are of greater importance that most people realize. In our conscious life, we are exposed to all kinds of influences. Other people stimulate or depress us, events at the office or in our social life distract us. Such things seduce us into following ways that are unsuitable to our individuality. Whether or not we are aware of the effect they have on our consciousness, it is disturbed by and exposed to them almost without defence.’

SYMBOLISM

What is a symbol and how is it different from a sign?symbols have multiple levels of analysis while a sign is particular for an object or thing.Unconcious speaks chiefly through symbols for example a house in dream may imply your own body.The number of people that you encounter in your dreams are actually the different aspects of your own psyche.What we cannot comprehend is made a symbol.

The familiar dream in which the dreamer is pursued by an animal nearly always indicates that an instinct has been split off from the consciousness and ought to be (or is trying to be) readmitted and integrated into life. The more dangerous the behaviour of the animal in the dream, the more unconscious is the primitive and instinctual soul of the dreamer, and the more imperative is its integration into his life if some irreparable evil is to be forestalled.’

Crystal symbolizes the union of the opposites(the male and the female) and also the integration of the unconcious contents into the consciousness.The rock also symbolizes the essence of integration.

DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY

Human personality evolves in 4 stages,namely,the trickster,the hare,the red horn and the twins but what is this evolution towards?it is towards the civilization of our impulses and our instincts into something that can also recognize the antagonism of life,the opposites,that tug of war that life is in which one side of our psyche wants one thing while one side wants the other.Its’s tantamount to freeing yourself from your parental expectations and pressures.The full totality of our being,our dreams and our desires are threatened by our need to conform to our society and our culture.

SYMBOLS OF TRANSCENDENCE

The self is a concept introduced by carl jung which speaks of the nucleus or the centre of an individual as that which has the full potential of the psychic makeup of that individual which when comes in your dreams could be symbolized by a snake or a bird or a fish.Caduceus is a symbol with a short staff entwined by two serpents.It’s a symbol for pharmacy,this was the staff of the roman god hermes.The snake represents healing,wisdom,transformation and rebirth.But how can we transcend?jung asks us to surrender to the self as it works through the process of gradual awakening.

ANIMA/ANIMUS

The anima are the female qualities in a male while the animus is the male qualities in a female.Both anima and animus can be evil as well as good,jung wanted us to recognize these traits in ourselves so that we can assimilate them into our psyche.

In its individual manifestation the character of a man’s anima is as a rule shaped by his mother. If he feels that his mother had a negative influence on him, his anima will often express itself in irritable, depressed moods, uncertainty, insecurity, and touchiness.

SYNCHRONICITY

According to Jung, a synchronicity is a meaningful coincidence.For example he talks about Charles darwin coming up with the theory of evolution like a flash likewise at the same time when he came up with this theory ,a young biologist A.RWALLACE ,also wrote to Darwin of the same theory thus in a way jung proposes that evolution could have been a slower process but that is fueled by something else an intervention,it might be nature itself intervening out of necessity.He links a physical event to a psychic state.

ABSTRACTION IN ARTS AND SYMBOLISM

Modern men in the face of the ugliness of human nature has become more and more abstract in theirr art forms.Circle/sphere is the symbol for the self or the totality of our psyche.It stands for enlightement.The circle and the square represents our thoughts and feelings.It’s again the concept of the ‘split’ between out heart and the mind or the union of the opposites.

In the end,Jung talks about how our unconcious orders itself before getting into the consciousness but in order to discover our unconciousness we need the help of our consciousness.It’s a great book that i would highly recommend especially to those of you interested in the inner workings of your mind as well as the those of you who are interested in symbolism and mythology.

Life of a Eunuch

FOR NORMAL PEOPLE,WE ARE NOT HUMAN BEINGS BUT ANIMALS SUFFERRING FROM SOME CONTAGIOUS DISEASE WHICH NEED TO BE ISOLATED

What if you are a boy but always wanted to dress up as a girl,didn’t like playing the rough and tumble boy’s play,had always felt out of place in his body,had always been beaten and abused at home and mocked by strangers and relatives alike and then you ran away from your home to be trapped into this guru bondage,what would be life like for you?HELL.The most hated of all people,THE EUNUCH or HIJRAS(The most discriminating word) as we call them are like us the same blood,the same emotions,the same body the only thing that they lack is their ability to reproduce,don’t we have acceptance and sympathy for people who can’t hear or see but why not for them?why can’t we open up to them?so let’s look at the core concepts from the book so that we can bust some myths about them.This is a book written by Piyush Saxena.

WHAT IS AN EUNUCH?

According to the merriam webster dictionary,eunuchs are the males who are castrated(cutting off of their testes) to render them infertile to look after the imperial harem.But it’s contrary to the fact that an eunuch is at birth,they are not made into it.then what is transsexual or transgender?when a person has normal genitalia but psychologically he identify with another gender.But that’s not the case with eunuchs their genitalia can be ambiguous that is cannotbe identified as male or female or they have predominant female genitalia but doesnot have a uterus so they cannot conceive or have male genitalia but they cannot produce any sperms or any erection which renders them infertile.There are alot of metabolic conditions which can give rise to an intersex state but Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia is one of the major causes of this condition.In most conditions,the family does’t know until puberty when the secondary sexual characteristcs like pubic hair, breast development,ability to menstruate fail to show up.

Eunuchs celebrate all festivals of every religion whatever their religion is.

It’s people like you who discriminate between fellow human beings,not us,for us everyone is equal only the sisterhood can bring out this feeling”

In USA they have legal rights, the right to undergo gender reassignment surgery, they can also work to pay the price for the surgery.in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh their legal status is not of an equal gender and as a result of that they cannot opt for a job because of which they can only beg,be prostitutes or  dance. .Thailand is the only country in Asia where eunuchs are rarely discriminated against.Japan is intensely conformist. The inner part of kabaa which is ^mataaf have 50 eunuchs called the aghas which removes women involved in any incident or addresses any issues involving women.Iran provides help for gender transitions and recognize them.Eunuchs can choose to emigrate into countries where they can transition their gender easily and cost effectively and find less discrimination in those countries like Thailand where these treatments are cheaper.

.Eunuch have three types neutral. male who resemble males but genitalia deformed female looks like female but deformed genitalia.In Mughal era they were used to keep a watch on queens and for entertainment like dancing and singing.They had great respect during those times.In British India,the british popularized this disdainful attitude and discrimination against the eunuchs because of the strict and repressive victorian era in England during those times.The 1871 criminal tribal acts and 1897 registration of criminal tribe and eunuchs” basically these two acts established eunuchs as criminals and also deemed crossdressing illegal.

Census doesnot display the real status as parents choose to register them as males and majority of them don’t discover it until puberty.

HOW DO THEY ENTER INTO THIS?

How they enter?when they flew from their parents house as they have nowhere to go so for food and shelter they accost some local hijras through which they are assigned gurus and each gurus have many hijras living under their roof. Hijras pay for the food and shelter they also associate with some khandan within them and in these khandans some are superior than others and there’s inter group animosity as well.As they enter into this hijra fold they have to take up a new name which is secret and is never revealed even to the author .They also have a secret language. A strict hierarchical structure based on seniority where there’s Nayak and then there’s guru and then there are the hijras under the tutleage of the gurus.Why do they prefer to live outside of towns? because of the difficulty in getting homes.They have a very small home with tv, some utensils and kerosene stove for cooking.As for their religion majority of them are Muslims because in Muslims circumcision is the norm and as God sent them without a part of their genitalia they believe this is a sign from God but they celebrate all other religious festivals as well and they rarely fight because of religion.59% of them are illiterate.Hajjis are the ones among eunuchs who don’t wear makeup anf they wear simple clothes mostly shalwar during festivals nayaks and gurus demands jewelry from their disciples.Cutting of hair is prohibited and they are fined if they do so.They are a great fan of qawaalis. Their distinctive claps need to be learned by the gurus.

GURU BONDAGE
Gurus have to be massaged ,the chelas have to cook food for them, serve them,even though they curse them but they still have to live with these gurus out of fear. Dholaki are the ones who earn their livelihood by dancing at weddings or the birth of a child or the opening of a new shop. mangti are the ones who beg and gande are the ones who do prostituition. bahrupias are the ones who are not actually eunuchs .

EMPOWERMENT

What is empowerment?food, shelter, education and health to people. They have No economic advantage as they have no Id card why?first, there is no other gender category on the Id card secondly, they don’t have the necessary documents for registration such as the birth or death certificates as they adopt different names after leaving their homes and also adopt the names of their gurus as the third name. Thirdly, they are also pressed for time because they are daily workers and also they have to give a fixed money to their gurus so they don’t get the time.

LAWS TO SAFEGUARD EUNUCHS

.The birth of eunuchs cannot be prevented but the law should punish those who give up their children under 12 years of age.  All dais, midwifes and doctors should report the case of eunuchs or children born with ambiguous genitalia to medical authorities.Our states should sponsor homes for these eunuchs so that they can be freed from gurus.In the academics, the anthropology, anatomy and physiology of the eunuch should be included to dispel any myths regarding them.Special schools for these eunuch children We can also give them jobs as baby sitters, maids/cleaning ladies or security guards. Govt can reserve seats in every profession or jobs for eunuchs. In cases of harassment and molestation, civil laws should be reformed and implemented.There should be the legislation of nirvana. Awareness campaigns launched for them.In parliament and state assemblies there seats should be reserved.

NIRWANA

It’s extremely important as it gives them a good social status. Two methods .In the first, dai the other is through a quack not a surgeon. In the first method a knife is used with no anesthesia more blood loss more chances of dying the other is through a quack pretending to be a surgeon but mortality rate is lower.

Neha nai bik payee a documentary chronicling a real life story of a eunuch. Neha an eunuch, beaten and harassed by her dad, decides to run away from her home, welcomed in the eunch community, had to give 200 RS every day to his guru Mai begging never generated that much amount of money that lead to her getting beaten by her gurumai and then she got into prostitution,because of all the beatiings, she wanted to leave her guru Mai but for that she had to give 50000 which she could never give.

EUNUCH AND BIOLOGY

All human beings have 46 chromosomes which has the famous DNA THE BLUEPRINT OF LIFE which means everything from as small as our the enzymes in our gut which digest to the color of our eyes our skin or our bodily anatomy is brought about by this genetic material.From these 46 chromosomes,we have 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosome.Males have an XY constitution while females have an XX.Every 2 out of 1000 donot have this constitution, they might have an XXY so they cannot be assigned a normal ‘male’or ‘female’.TRANSSEXUALITY or GENDER DYSPHORIA is different from being an eunch,these people don’t have deformed genitalia while transvestitision is dressing up as females for pleasure.

ANDROGEN INSENSITIVITY SYNDROME

Intersex condition refers to the misalignment between the genitalia,sex chromosomes and the gonads.What are gonads?gonads are the indifferentiated sex organs which can either differentiate as ovaries in females to produce eggs or testes in males to produce testosterone which brings about the proper development of male reproductive system.In androgen insenstivity,the genitalia appears as female yet the genotype is of XY,the external appearing female has testes which cannot either produce testosterone or has a insensitivity towards it as the organs don’t respond to it so no effects of testosterone are shown.Uterus,fallopian tubes and the upper vagina cannot form neither does the male reproductive system.AIS have 7 grades to it,the grading is dependent upon the genitalia,namely,clitoris and labia majora.Akaryotype which is a blood test is the first initial step in making the diagnosis of an intersex condition.However,there are further steps in the workup of the intersex condition like urine steroid metabolism tests or blood tests like 17 hydroxy progesterone in the case of congenital adrenal hyperplasia.Then there are tests like ultrasound to look for the presence of uterus,gonads etc.What is the cause of Androgen insensitivity?two-thirds caused by female carriers while the rest is caused by a spontaneous mutation.

GENDER REASSIGNMENT SURGERY

There are two types of gender reassignment male to female and female to male.Gender reassignment surgery has certain criteria for it and before this surgery you need to consult an endocrinologist and need to take hormone therapy for atleast 6 months.There should be no sign of any psychiatric illness to qualify for a gender reassignment surgery.For male to female,penile inversion vaginoplasty or colon vaginoplasty is performed,while for female to male hysterectomy and bilateral salphingo-oophorectomy and metoidioplasty{ which is elongation of clitoris} is performed.

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

FGM is female circumcision which is still practicised predominatly in Africa but also in oman,UAE,Pakistan,egypt,India,Indonesia and Malaysia.Three types.In the first type,only the prepuce or tip of clitoris.In the 2nd type,all the clitoris and lastly in the third type,the whole labia majora,clitoris and parts of labia minora is removed.The practice of FGM,not only causes menstruating abnormalities but also increases the chances of an obstructed labor causing an increase in the mortality rate of both mother and the child.No anesthesia is used while undergoing circumcision.

In the end,i would highly encourage anyone who wants to go into the details of the eunchs and their life to read this book.I hope after reading this, people might treat these humans as humans not as dogs or in some or most cases worst then that.

THE HELP

EVER MORNING,UNTILL YOU DEAD IN THE GROUND,YOU GONE HAVE TO MAKE THIS DECISION…YOU GONE HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF,AM I GONE BELIEVE WHAT THEM FOOLS SAY ABOUT ME TODAY?”

This book was written by Kathyrnn sockett which belongs to the realistic fiction category.This was published in 2009 and was adapted into a movie in 2011.The story is set in Jackson,Mississippi in the 1960s which involves around 3 central characters,Skeeter Phalen,who defied social norm by refusing to get married and chosing to pursue her career as a writer.She was raised by a black women,constantine.Aibleen,the motherly,kind maid who lost her son to racial killings,raised 17 children of her white employees.Minnie,the big mouthed,who has 5 children of her own and was being abused at home by her own husband,from which she eventually got separated.The help is basically the term which refers to the colored people or blacks who cook,clean and take care of the children of their white employees.

ETHNOCENTRISM

Ethnocentrism in culture refers to the belief that one culture is superior to another culture.Just by virtue of being colored makes you susceptible to all sorts of prejudice,discrimination,killings and unequality.Although,I will admit that this movie has a fairy- tale like touch to it as it doesnot truly depict the true oppression of the racial discrimination of the 1960s.There’s this scene in the novel where Hilly brook, the racial queen bee of the movie pushes for a colored help initiative which entails every white home to have a separate washroom for the colored help as according to her ” they carry different diseases”.Although,we might just shrug it off and say that all this racial discrimination is a thing of the past and we have moved past that era.But have we really moved passed this?Black lives mattter is testimony to the fact that even in 2020 we still have to deal with this menace.In my own country,Pakistan,we have this racial discrimination in the name of stereotypes in which we make out a person’s personality all based on their race or ethnicity.We have jokes on the apparent stupidity of the pathan ethnic community.Race is different culture like Americans or Asians while ethnicity is the differences within the same racial group.If we say for example that oh,he is an asian,he ought to be ——–blank we are being biased for attempting to understand someone’s complex personality by our one dimensional understanding of a particular race.

RACIAL SEGREGATION

Racial segregation was the norm in the 1960s,colored and white people cannot interact with each other and if they did they were imprisioned for that.Ross Barnett,the governor of Mississipi at that time supported this segregation and ordered arrest of the freedom riders.

COURAGE

What is courage?we all know that it is listening to your inner conscience,standing up for what you believe in even if it means alienating those who are close to us.But this is a cliche because when it actually comes to standing up we don’t really stand up because who wants to? especially when you have a heavy price to pay for that but refusing to listen to that inner voice and just being silent can also with time make us more and more resentful.When it comes to these dilemmas it is always best to stand up,speak up, don’t be careless about it, carefully articulate what bothers you and chances are things might get better.You never know what a single person can do in the face of corruption.That’s what Skeeter,Aibleen and Minnie does.Courage is also breaking rules sometimes when you know the benefits outweights the risks involved.

CRITIQUE

RACIAL ROLES

”plenty of black men leave their families behind like trash in a dump,but it’s not something the colored women do.We have got kids to think about”

Although,this novel seeks to dispel racial stereotypes,by showing all black men as violent,alcoholic and abusive towards their wives and children,they are actually adhering to racial stereotypes.

WHITE SUPREMACY

By showing Skeeter as this white mesiah they are actually trying to put forth this whole idea that a black person needs to have this white person who suddenly realizes the plight of these downtrodden people and seeks to help them.

BLACK WOMEN

Another critique of this novel is that black women are barely shown outside of their uniforms,while Skeeter’s professional and personal life is being shown the other two characters are shown in relation to their white employees and the children they cares for.

Wasn’t that the point of the book?for women to realize,we are just 2 people not that much separates us.Not nearly as much as i thought”

NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND MAN

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a russian novelist,short story writer,essayist,philospher,militiary engineer and a journalist.Notes from undeground is considered one of the first existentialist novels which was published in 1864.Existentialism is based on the premise that existence precedes meaning that is to say that our values in life and our meaning of life comes from us and we as independent beings. Dostoevsky’s work primarily focuses on human psychology that’s one of the main reasons that i got attracted to reading him in the first place.Although it’s hard to say that dostoevsky wanted this to be an existential work because this existentialism term was coined after Dostoevsky’s death.I am not going to summarize the narrative of this novella but I will be looking at the philosphical undertones in this novella.

THE CRYSTAL PALACE

It
The Crystal Palace was built during the Enlightement era to celebrate rationality establishing rationality as the highest virtue that one could aspire for.It claims to eradicate human suffering if only we know more about what is good or bad for us we would surely act in our rational best interest. Dosttoevsky writes

life can be perfected if everyone uses reason and knows what is in their best interest.Reason satisfies our rational faculty but there’s much more to us.

Furthermore,he talks about man actually choosing the things that are destructive for him.If he’s rational how can he consciously choose to sabotage himself?Isn’t smoking,procrastination or addictions and many more vices a form of self- sabotage?why even knowing the harm associated with these vices people still choose to commit them?The whole 19th century has been the century of destruction and chaos.

SLAVERY GENOCIDE OF INDIANS REVOLUTIONARY WAR CIVIL WAR WORLD WAR 1 WORLD WAR 2 GULF WAR GULF WAR 2 KOREAN WAR VIETNAM WAR AFGHAN WAR

SUFFERING AND MAN

Do we actually want a pain free life?is life just lived for happiness?isn’t the whole purpose of our life revolves around facing challenges and growing from them?Dostoevsky’s writes

Shower upon him every earthly blessing,drown him in a sea of happiness,so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface,give him economic prosperity such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep,eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species and even then out of sheer ingratitude,sheer spite,men would play you some nasty trick’

ROMANTICISM

Romanticism is not just a literary but also a philosphical movement in which man,his independence and emotions assumed supreme importance.Imagination was considered superior to rationality but is feeling really as crucial as romantics claims it to be?the underground man mocks the german and french romantics by saying they just focuses on one ideal whereas a russian romantic is broad minded and intelligent.He’s romantic enough to have his lofty ideals but practical enough to understand the disparity between his ideals of sublime beauty,truth,honor and faith and concrete truth.

^{SOCIAL ANXIETY}

DOSTOEVSKY’S WRITES

I HAVE ALL MY LIFE,AS IT WERE,TURNED MY EYES AWAY AND NEVER COULD LOOK PEOPLE STRAIGHT IN THE FACE

The resistance to human contact,the perspiration,the shame,the excessive rumination ,constant overreflection of what you said or did in front of the other person,the inferiority complex is eloquently expressed in the words of the protoganist.The aversion of eyes due to fear of being judged is according to me a perfect description of someone with a social anxiety disorder.

PSYCHOANALYSIS

This novella can also be seen as a work of psychoanalysis.The reader can be the psychoanalyst while the protoganist can be the patient.First resistance to accepting the underlying psychological condition then denial then finally acceptance.I don’t really know much about psychoanalysis but this is actuaaly what i can make out.So i will leave you guys with the thought of the week

are we actually rational?what do you do which is purely irrational?

G

Net-oholic!

Hey guys!! I am back! Sorry i was unable to post anything as i was busy doing my research for my medschool. It was very hectic and tiresome 😦 Btw, I am back again with another neuroluscious episode of my blog! I am so happy to be back!!

Today, we will be talking about internet addiction in the light of neuroscience. How we are being exploited by using our addictive behavior in order to keep us hooked to social media. How they are hacking our brain’s motivation system.

The deadly deadly Fear!

Hey guys!! How are you guys?I hope you are doing good ❤ Let’s dissect fear through the lens of Neuroscience!

Everyone gets scared. Fear is an inevitable part of human existence.

Some people try hard to suppress it while others try hard to get it like by watching scary movies or doing things that scare them.

Why do we get scared??

From an evolutionary point of view fear is essential for our survival.Any creature which doesn’t run and hide will be killed by the bigger or stronger animals

What happens in our body?

Fight and flight response happens.

Heartbeat start fluttering

Peripheral blood vessels constrict and your hand or feet might get cold

Central blood vessels will dilate to supply nutrients to the vital organs

Tiny muscles attached to the hair shaft also contracts causing Goosebumps

Levels of glucose,calcium and white blood cells also increases!!

Trigger of fear!

Amygdala an almond shaped bunch of neurons is responsible for triggering fear.

Our Adrenal Gland

Amygdala triggers-Hypothalamus which ultimately triggers pituitary gland which secretes ACTH

Sympathetic nervous system becomes activated which nudges Adrenal gland to secrete Epinephrine

The body also releases cortisol which brings about a rise in blood pressure, glucose and calcium

Epinephrine and Norepinephrine causes the muscle for violent action.

Butterflies in the stomach

It can reduce the activity in the stomach

It also inhibits salivation and lacrimation which causes dry eyes and dry mouth

Hippocampus and Prefrontal cortex assess threats and fears

They help us understand whether our fear response is real and justified, or whether we might have overreacted somewhat.

Why do we freeze when we are afraid?

This is modulated by preaqueductal gray and cerebellum.Cerebellum deals with motor activity so in fear preaqueductal region inhibits the activity of cerebellum.

A 2014 study

The researchers found a bundle of fibers that connect one region of the cerebellum, called the pyramis, directly to the PAG. Messages that run along these paths cause an animal to freeze with fright.

Phobias

Irrational fear that is out of proportion which can definitely do no harm

Both genes and environment plays a part in phobia formation.
One study also discovered that there was a disconnect between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex, which normally helps an individual override or minimize the fear response.

Precuneus

In another study it is seen that precuneus,lateral Prefrontal cortex and visual activity was lower in phobic people as compared to non-phobic people

These are the brain regions involved in regulating fearful emotions.

Fear response is primal so we should respect it.It can be unpleasant and can interfere with people.It is a multifaceted and fascinating human emotion.

Bye Bye!I hope you have a happy and healthy day ❤