(Dad should especially read this, and maybe take my advice, or I’ll smack him)
Today, in General Psychology, we were discussing a little bit of brain chemistry. We went over the anatomy of a neuron (old knowledge—booooooring), and we went over several neurotransmitters in the brain.
Now, it just so happens that we went over dopamine and serotonin, and I learned some interesting things about them.
One of the more obviously facts about both would be that a shortage in dopamine and/or serotonin results in various problems, one of them being depression. There are difference with each of them, of course; serotonin regulates sleep and mood (insomnia is a result of a shortage in serotonin). Dopamine regulates motivation, the reward system (‘If I do this, I get this for it’), movement, and cognition. Since a shortage in either results in depression, would it be possible to have a educated guess as to which neurotransmitter is being under-produced by looking at the symptoms that come along with depression? For example, for a depressed person who has extra trouble sleeping might have low levels of serotonin in their brain.
That’s not the only thing I’ve pondered. I also learned today that a decrease in serotonin leads to sadness, anxiety, food cravings, aggression and depresson.
You’re probably wondering why I emphasized the food cravings in that last paragraph. During discussion, my professor told us that the body will crave foods that contain nutrients which will increase the level of serotonin in the brain. I looked up those foods—both for serotonin and dopamine—and here’s what I found.
Foods that can increase serotonin levels: chicken, turkey, tuna, salmon, kidney beans, rolled oats, lentils, chicken peas, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, baked potatoes (with the skin), tahini (sesame butter), walnuts, avocados, almond butter, complex carbs (meaning fibers, not starches) a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, and a ton of water.
Foods that can increase dopamine levels: almonds, avocados, bananas, dairy products, lima beans, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, and ESPECIALLY fruits and vegetables (because it turns out that dopamine is very easily oxidized, and fruits and veggies, which are high in antioxidants, protect the dopamine from those nasty free radicals that roam the body and try to mess with your system).
I also read that eating simple sugars, like candies, processed foods, etc, saturated fats (animal fats), cholesterol, and refined foods interfere with brain function. Another thing to avoid would be caffeine. In a sense, it’s kind of not surprising, because all of those things mess with the rest of our bodies, so why not the brain too?
Can anyone raise their hand and tell me what those foods have in common?
Vitamins, antioxidants, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, along with a smaller “dosage” of saturated fats (because it’s a fact that poultry, such as chicken and turkey, are in fact healthier than beef and pig). Good job to those of you that actually tried to guess without looking at the answers.
This brings me to a theory… a hypothesis (because I’ve yet to hear if this has been tested). If clinical depression, or even depression, is caused by a low level of serotonin and/or dopamine, would it be entirely possibly to reverse the effects, and possibly even cure it, by doing something as simple as changing one’s diet, instead of prescribing to them drugs that enhance the brain’s chemistry?
Let’s use my dad as an example, because he is conveniently at the forefront of my mind, and the only person I can think of who is clinically depressed. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone in as bad a funk as my dad. He’ll deny it to you, he’ll say “Oh I’m doing fine.” In reality he’s not. For a while, he was taking Zoloft, and all was good and well.
But, for a while, he’s been off Zoloft, because we haven’t been able to afford the prescriptions (there were like, $80 per refill or something ridiculous like that). And he’s back down in that horrific funk (and then, don’t let him fool you—he may act like everything’s fine and dandy, but before he got this bad, he wasn’t living in his office save for the few moments he’d emerged to go to the bathroom or get food, and the few hours he’d go to his room to go sleep).
There are reasons why his serotonin levels are low; for the sake of his privacy, I won’t go into specifics. But his lifestyle habits contributed very nicely.
Now, let’s look at my dad’s habits;
– he smokes, which in itself is horrible (and he has yet to do
ANYTHING about quitting, ahem ahem).
– He drinks a
TON of caffeine. I’ve honestly never seen him drink an actual glass of water. When he’s not drinking coffee, he’s drinking Coca Cola, and when he’s not drinking Coca Cola, he’s drinking coffee. In between this is the occasional (more like rare) glass of milk, and every now and then a shot or two of liquor.
– He eats like crap. When he actually eats, he eats more meat than plants, and he eats a lot of pasta (which is actually a simple carb, which means it’s a starch instead of a fiber). I don’t really see him eat a lot of fruits, and he does eat veggies, but again, the majority of what you see on his plate is meat. He has an affinity for beef, too, I might add, and when he’s giving a choice of meat, will usually pick that. He’s tried to get me off of his back about his eating habits by buying these boxes turnovers, but upon looking at the ingredients, I found that they were more processed than anything, and had more
trans fats (trans fats = cholesterol) than anything I’ve yet to see (5g to be exact).
– He has a bad habit of bottling up his emotions and problems (though I’m not too much better), and is usually always tense with stress. I’ve never
ever seen him do anything to try and relax, and no, Dad, watching anime and reading manga does
NOT calm the mind. I’m talking about meditation, exercise, things related to that.
– He isn’t anywhere as social as he needs to be, and believe or not, but social relationships can impact a person’s health, physical mental or emotional. He’s barely social; he doesn’t even really interact with us, his family. As I said before, he’s hiding in his world, his office.
While I have no idea if he’d be willing to actually do this, because he’s said that he’d try something, tried it for about a week and then went back to his old ways, but if he changed his lifestyle around—changed his little, went out a little more, engaged his mind more, and talked to people—chances are, his condition would get better.
But here’s the thing, and this is the problem with EVERYBODY. They will usually only keep these lifestyle changes until they feel that “everything’s better” and then revert back to their old habits.
Unfortunately, folks, this isn’t that case. These changes are PERMANENT. If you ate more serotonin-rich foods and got rid of your depression by increasing you serotonin levels, chances are that when you stop eating those foods, your serotonin levels won’t be sustained and therefore will decline.
So, Dad, this is how it goes. You want to stop being depressed, no? If you don’t, you have a LOT of things to change. Start off by ceasing with the waste of your money to buy soda that really isn’t necessary. Honestly, I don’t care if it’s a “treat”. It isn’t even a treat. You always have Coca Cola. Treats are occasionally, not every day. Drink more water. Go on more walks. STOP READING SO MUCH MANGA AND WATCHING SO MUCH ANIME. Come out of your office every once in a while, and talk to us, and I mean talk as in having intelligent conversations (like talking seriously about hyper-extending knees instead of talking about aliens). Stimulating your brain will help too. Stop eating such crappy food, and eat more healthy, organic foods. For example, replace those shit apple turnovers with real apples. And if you’re worried about the kids eating them, then keep the apples in your office. Simple as that.
If you need to go someplace not all that far away, then walk, or bike, instead of using the car. QUIT SMOKING. And you absolutely have to continue drinking water, eating more greens, walking instead of driving, and etc. Even after you feel better (if you feel better… this is still only an experiment). Going back to your old habits will only pull you back down in to depression, because your serotonin transmitters are so fucked up, they can’t continue to maintain those levels of serotonin without help.
So, questions, comments, thought? Leave a comment. Let’s start a second intelligent discussion. And for the record, that one before it, about the knees, is still open fr discussion of anyone has a thought to add.
I’m sure most, if not all of you who read my blog, know that I have a bad knee; a knee which I injure too many damn times, and therefore must have something wrong with it. It’s my right one, specifically, you know. The one I strain my tendons and ligaments in all the time? One wonders why I haven’t blown it yet, like destroyed my ACL or something.
Anyway, this morning I had Kinesiology lab and were were doing Manual Muscle Tests (testing a specific muscle group for strength and to see if there’s any pain, if there’s any at all) and goniometric measurements of the lower extremities (lower body, feet to hips, basically). Anyway, setting aside my minorly sprained ankle (which I may tell you about in a minute), I made a discovery about my knees.
Goniometry is the measurement of angles, basically. In kinesiology’s case, the angles are our joints, thus we’re measuring the range of motion of that joint. When measuring the knee, the start value is our knee extended, straightened, but not fully extended. When we measure the full extension of the knee, we’re measuring how much it hyper-extends. Sooooo, I got my knees’ ranges of motion measured.
When you measure the degree of extension when it comes to the knee, you prop the foot up on something—a sweatshirt, a book, something similar—and allow gravity to pull your knee “backwards” until it locks. My left knee was relatively normal, it’s extension range of motion was 3°, a relatively normal range. My right knee, on the other hand, was a completely different story.
When we propped it on the sweatshirt, it didn’t lock. This meant that it wasn’t fully extended. So, I tried to adjust my foot’s position, but by the time she actually took the measurement, it still wasn’t fully extended. But even with it not being fully extended, the measurement we got was 19°. So, I’m saying that my estimated ROM for my right knee is at least 20°. One of these days, I want to get a more accurate measure.
So, it totally threw me off when I found out my right knee was about 16° more extensible than my left knee. When I thought about it, I figured hey, maybe that’s why I’m having ligament and tendon problems with my right knee, and maybe that’s why I always hyper-extend my left.
So, anyone else have any thoughts to add to this? Any questions you might want to ask? I’ll answer what I can. So be sure to check your comments, because I don’t think I have a plug-in that notifies commenters if/when their comment is replied to.
Oh, before I go, I said I was gonna tell you about my ankle, right? Well, if I didn’t who cares? I’m telling you anyway!
Okay, so, last Friday, some of the female members of the track team met up to play Ultimate Frisbee (I’m not running track this year, unfortunately, so Coach probably hates me…). It was really fun and all.
So the field we were playing on, one of our endzones was actually sloped a little. You can sort of see where this is going. Well, towards the end of our scrimmage, I was on offense cherry picking the end zone. Kris… Kristen (?) threw me the frisbee, and I turned to try and catch it. When I missed, I turned back around and rolled my ankle REALLY bad. I felt a small pop, and it hurt like a BITCH for a while. I walked back over to our end (because we eventually scored), rubbed it a few times, and then shrugged it off and continued playing. While it didn’t hurt all that much (or maybe it did and I was too focused on the game to actually notice) during the game, when I finished eating and went back to my room, it was killing me. Later that night, it was swollen. With the advice of my good friend Steve (yes folks, he’s still very much alive), I propped it up on my desk and the swelling did go down.
I’m checking my ankle right now and… it looks like… there’s no swelling. But occasionally, when I walk, there’s a shooting pain that goes down my talus, and sometimes on the underside of my foot too. It’s not a crippling pain, but it’s noticeable enough to be annoying and slightly painful.
There you have it. Okay, leave comments with theories and questions if you have any. I’ll reply and answer what I can.
That’s what I’m feeling right about now, though Mom told me over AIM about 10 minutes ago to “not panic”. I’m not panicking right now; I’m just feeling doubtful that I won’t be able to do what I want to do.
‘Well, what is it that you want to do?’ you might ask. Maybe too much.
I want to graduate with a B.S. in Athletic Training (maybe I might try to get a M.S. too, if I have the money), and use that background in sports medicine when (if) I go to med school and specialize in Orthopedic medicine. I want to be an orthopedist who can competently and specifically help athletes with injuries.
Of course, at this point, I’m behind in the AT program; I started out here at IC a HPPE (Health Promotion and Physical Education) major, and a ton of the things I took for that program don’t carry over in the requirements for this one. In the AT program, you immediately start out in your freshman year with the specific curriculum. And for the pre-med program, I still need to take a year of biology, a year of physics, and two years of chemistry, both general and organic.
It’s already certain that I won’t have the time for these pre-med courses, since I’m barely going to have the time for the AT requirements; in order to graduate on time I need to take two required courses this winter, and since the cost of doing just that is near $4,500, it looks like I’m going to graduate a semester late (and that’s if we can afford it… if I recall, they stop financially aiding you once your 4 years are up).
Not just that, but in order for me to become an ATC (Athletic Trainer Certified), I need to take the national exam to get my license… and will a B.S. be enough? Or will I need to go to graduate school and get my M.S. too?
In between doing that, getting a job, and then preparing for the MCAT, I need to get those pre-med required courses, which I’ll have to take either during the summers between now and when I graduate or after I graduate and get a job. Will I get a good enough job to afford those credits? Not to mention paying for practically everything when taking the MCAT, applying under the AMCAS and then twice more under the individual med schools, along with going to interviews should I get accepted…
And this isn’t half of what I’m a little worried about. Specifically, grades. What if I don’t do good enough and then get rejected from med school?
All of this is probably unnecessary stress and all, but, looking at what appears to be the odds (academic performance, money, and time, specifically) that are stacked against me and my goal, it kind of looks like it won’t happen in the end.
I was just reading through the syllabus and looking over the computer terms. A lot, well actually, most of it I know. All of it I’ve seen before, but I don’t exactly know what it is. There are other things too that I haven’t seen before (amazingly enough, considering who my dad is).
So, to sum it all up; Yo, Dad, you’ll eventually get to help me with my homework.
Maybe this’ll encourage him to use AIM more. Who knows?
By the way, I don’t need to define the terms right now, but soon, and I’ll get in touch with you (Dad) when I need you. Feel happy; it’s something you enjoy doing, and you might actually learn a thing or do (But knowing just how geeky he is, I doubt it).
I still encourage readers to check out my previous post because I’m still looking for opinions. The score is still vertical 2 – horizontal 0 (because Dad’s opinion is more neutral than anything…), and I still want to hear from the rest of you! So please, you’re more than welcome to leave a comment.
(Something tells me that I don’t really have any readers at all… Maybe I should start working on making the world more aware of my website…)
FINALLY I DON’T HAVE TO SIT IN THE LAB ANYMORE!
This actually happened, like, the other day, but I was so lame I didn’t update and tell you all about it until now.
So what’s my excuse, you ask? Well, I’ve been running around all over the place, mainly job hunting, because… well… I need a job, obviously. So far, Target’s turned me down because I won’t be in Ithaca over the holidays… stupid Target, and I have other people I need to get in touch with, which I will do tonight and tomorrow. I just need a steady source of income and I’ll feel much better.
That’s about it for now. I’m going to go mess with my Twitter and eat ice cream. Byes~!
Okay, at 8am, some asshole called my cell phone and woke me up.
In reality, it was the guy who will be coming to my room tomorrow at 2pm to fix my cable jack.
So hopefully, if this all works out, I won’t have to spend my college year in the computer lab, yay
I honestly don’t think the problem is anything else; I mean, my cable itself along with my network was working perfectly fine before, and my cable’s in good condition. So, if the jack can’t get fixed, i don’t know what to tell you all.
Anyway, I have to stop now, because Computer Info and Tech is over (it’s going to be a very easy A), and I have to run to my next class, Psychology. I’ll try to be on AIM tonight, so whoever wants to chat can chat with me then!
Okay, I have about 15 minutes before I have to run for my class—psych—(only one of the day YAY!), so I’ll tell you all how I’ve been doing.
Things are okay I suppose. There are ups and downs. Like, for example, I’m using the computer in the computer lab, and it’s not because it just so happens to be close to the classroom (though it is). As a matter of fact, I don’t have any internet. In my single, I have a phone jack and two computer jacks. I tried all three in my quest to activate my internet account, but none of them worked. Dad thinks I messed up my cable, but I didn’t do anything to it, and it’s perfectly fine. I think Apogee’s screwing with something (Apogee, btw, is the internet provider here on campus). Dad called them a couple of days ago, and they said they would get in touch with me.
Well, they have YET TO DO THAT!
So Dad’s going to give them a call sometime today and find out what the hell’s going on.
Anyway, other news. I’m still job hunting, but today I’m going to go fill out an application for office assistant. I’m still looking, and hoping, so I can only keep doing that until I actually get a job, because there’s a lot of crap that I need, like, really bad.
Let’s see… this Saturday is club soccer tryouts. Guess what I’m doing this weekend :grin:? And track has a meeting tomorrow. I decided I’m only going to run outdoor, because I hate running indoor (it probably would have been different if I had ran indoor track throughout my high school career instead of just starting to run it my freshman year in college).
Hopefully I make the club team; that would make me really, really happy. I tried giving up soccer last year, and I just couldn’t do it, so I’m not going to 
So, I won’t be online as much as I want to, and you won’t be able to find me online playing games, YET. Hopefully, this crap with Apogee with right itself so I can actually use my OWN computer instead of using the ones in the freezer known as a computer lab. Till next time, folks.
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