Into the Void

The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve, a honking big nerve that runs from your skull, down your chest and into your abdomen. The punch-in-the-gut feeling of a jolt of adrenalin/the start of an anxiety attack is carried on the vagus nerve.

The usual paradigm for emotions is they start in the brain. Most of the body’s hormones have a dual purpose as a neurotransmitter. The vagus nerve helps coordinate the physical feeling with the emotional feeling – they are one and the same. The mind-body connection.

Most of the body’s serotonin is in the gut. A squirt of serotonin doesn’t just happen in the brain, it happens in the whole body. Ditto adrenaline. The vagus nerve conducts information in both directions. I don’t think it’s entirely accurate to blame anxiety on a brain malfunction.

An interesting treatment for anxiety is “Vagus Nerve Stimulation.” In VNS, a device is implanted that applies current to the vagus nerve is to overwhelm it. It’s kind of like a TENS unit for pain. VNS is a last resort for intractible anxiety.

One implication of this is that if you can control the physical aspects of anxiety – relax your muscles, slow down your breathing & heart rate – then the emotional component will follow. Once the emotions are managed you can work out whatever brought on the anxiety.
Candace Pert, Ph.D. discovered opium (endorphin) receptors in the brain. She wrote an enlightening book Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine.

Also check out Timothy Leary. One of his more interesting ideas is that we have receptor sites for chemicals that haven’t been invented yet. Alexander Shulgin was a chemist who formulated a lot of them, but I don’t recommend you try it.

Self-Righteousness stems from mental illness, from boundary issues. If you don’t own it, stop trying to control it.

By now you’ve probably heard of the health benefits of eating raw foods. The nutrients in fruits and vegetables are largely destroyed by cooking, thus rendering them only marginally more nutritious than straw. Shipping produce long distances is another factor in vitamin loss. Unless you eat local food with the seasons, there are times when vegetables from California or oranges from Brazil aren’t as nutritious.

I’ve been looking at juicers off and on for the last year, ever since trying the “cold-fighter” drink at the local Juice Zone Healthy Cafe. The drink, by the way, is a mixture of carrot, orange and ginger juices and whether it really helps fight colds I cannot say. However, it’s juiced to order and tastes like the nectar of the Gods.

According to ConsumerSearch, Inc., a service of About.com, there are two types of juicer extractors that are of interest to users who wish to juice hard vegetables such as carrots. They are the centrifugal juice extractor and the single-auger masticating juice extractor.

A centrifugal juice extractor is similar to a home blender. It has sharp blades to pulverize the raw food. The difference is that it also rotates the collector to squeeze the juice out of the pulp, sort of like the washing machine spin cycle. A higher quality centrifugal juice extractor will extract a larger percentage of the juice, leaving drier pulp for your compost pile.

A single-auger masticating juice extractor is similar to a wood chipper and is better at chewing up fiberous leafy greens. The auger crushes the raw food before squeezing out the juice. The single-auger juice extractor may come with attachments for making fruit spreads and nut butters. It is quieter than centrifugal juicers.

In general, unless you plan on extracting wheat grass, the centrifugal juice extractor is adequate.

Juice extractor power is measured in Watts. A high-powered juicer will be able to handle harder vegetables in larger chunks and will extract the juice more quickly. However, the higher the power, the more expensive. Restaurant-quality extractors are 2000W or higher.

For reference, 1000W is about a horsepower. Compare a juicer to typical non-self-propelled lawn mower, about 6 hp. This is not at all what you want in a countertop unit.

In a centrifugal juicer, the spin speed helps determine the yield. A faster spin extracts a higher percentage of juice. Though a faster spin is more expensive, a more expensive model may produce up to 35% more juice. Depending upon how much fresh juice you drink, the savings may be significant over the life of a more durable model.

Durability is desirable. Less expensive juicers have more breakable plastic parts. An all-metal juicer will last longer but will be more expensive.

If using a masticating juicer, the available attachments enable grinding nut butters, pureeing homemade baby food, etc.

Another feature to take into account is the size of the feeder. A wider feeder saves time because the veggies don’t have to be cut up first.

Dishwasher-safe parts are desirable for ease of cleaning.

I have chosen the Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite 1000-Watt Juice Extractor based on the consumer reviews on ConsumerSearch.com and on Amazon.com.

If you usually traipse over to your local Rite Aid to get medications, you can easily save money.

Number one is to get generics where available.

Number two is that your drugstore probably sells drugs online for at
least 10% lower than at your neighborhood store.

Number three is to buy larger pills and split them. If you took 100mg doses:

Number four is to save by buying in bulk. Check before you order as it’s not a given.

Number five is to buy from overseas pharmacies, and remember they are NOT TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.

Plastics… and other unusual explanations for the obesity epidemic

Weather.com just noticed years of research suggesting that some plastics contain estrogen-like chemicals which can leech out into the contents. Welcome to the REAL world.

If estrogen-like compounds really do leech into your soda, not only could it make you fat, it could also cause breast cancer, precocious puberty and even a class of birth defects known in developmental biology and teratology as Mullerian duct anomalies. The latter are defects in the reproductive organs that can lead to sterility or intersex states.

Until it is disproved, it might be a good idea to avoid drinking acidic substances from plastic bottles. Look for your favorites in glass bottles, and if you can’t find them write to the company. Switch to filtered tap water while you wait for an answer.

The Bipolar Planet has made it to the 21st century. Social Networking is all the rage, and though The Bipolar Planet has provided a private email list for over ten years and a web page for 15 years as of May 2009, I’ve resisted wandering. Ok, here we go… Become a fan at the official Bipolar Planet Facebook page.

Gun Sales: Will The “Loophole” Close?

In an interview with Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes on April 12, 2009, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D) firmly equated mental illness with criminal insanity by repeatedly using the phrase “criminals and the mentally ill.”

If it wasn’t bad enough that she did irreparable damage to the reputations of hundreds of thousands of folks, Sen. Feinstein stated that the AK-47 is the weapon of choice for the mentally ill.

Does the mentally ill community have an official gun? Perhaps they have an endorsement deal with Kalashnikov… “AK-47, The Official Assault Weapon of the Mentally Ill.” Or “Just Do Them.”

AKs [rifles] and other firearms, once forbidden under the ban, now fill entire tables at gun shows; you can buy them from private sellers without a background check.

“These assault weapons are essentially designed and made to kill numbers of people in close combat,” Senator Dianne Feinstein of California told Stahl.

Sen. Feinstein was the author and champion of the assault weapons ban in 1994. “They become the guns of choice of drug cartels, of gangs, of people who are mentally incompetent.”

– 60 Minutes, April 12, 2009
“Gun Sales: Will The “Loophole” Close?”

Et tu, Sen. Feinstein?

Please fill out the complaint form on the CBS site.

The Maudsley Bipolar Disorder Project: the effect of medication, family history, and duration of illness on IQ and memory in bipolar I disorder.

This article presents evidence that psych meds make us sicker.

“Patients on treatment with antipsychotic drugs had a lower current full scale IQ, lower general memory scores, and lower working memory scores. A family history of affective disorders was associated with a higher full scale IQ, but not with either general or working memory measures. Duration of illness was negatively associated with general memory scores, but had no effect on either IQ or working memory measures.”

You don’t make sense « Life-changing things that don’t matter

Came across this while researching PlumpyNut.

The United States are inhabited by about 300 million people with an unemployment rate of about 5 percent. If you’re interested in the rest of the world, look up Kwashiorkor.

According to Medline, Kwashiorkor is a form of malnutrition characterized by thinning hair, edema, and of course weight loss. You’ve seen the photos of emaciated babies with swollen bellies – that’s Kwashiokor. The swollen belly can be due to edema, but it often is a sign of an overtaxed liver. Death is generally from liver failure.

According to the World Health Organization, the cause of Kwashiorkor is not fully understood. However, one of the main factors is a high carbohydrate, low protein diet. Carbs are cheaper than proteins, so poor people around the world are at risk for kwashiorkor.

The World Health Organziation points to a diet of corn or maize as a contributing factor. Corn is cheap and plentiful, but it is nutritionally incomplete. Complete-protein grains such as quinoa are preferable. They are also prohibitively expensive.

As an aside, I’ve eliminated corn breakfast cereals from my diet. I’ve already stated that corn contains incomplete proteins. There are 9 essential amino acids – protein building blocks that humans can’t synthesize and so must get from food. Two of them, lysine and tryptophan, are missing from corn.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), combining corn with beans makes complete protein. This is not an option for literally billions of the world’s population. It is estimated that 800 million children around the world suffer from Kwashiokor.

This rather chilling video demonstrates through video clips and interviews that children’s programming can have a profound effect on them, from predisposing them to subliminal messages to changing their entire worldview. The depth of dark manipulation by Disney is a definite must-see for parents and professionals alike.