Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain. Show all posts

Why Am I Still Sick? Mental Illness, Faith, and the Love of God

Rumor has it, I'm going to start preaching again. My brain functions a lot better than it used to. But it still functions slowly. So to give myself plenty of time, I have been looking ahead to the scriptures that are coming up in the lectionary.

[In the Episcopal Church, among others, we preachers don't pick and choose our favorite bits of the Bible. We get confronted by and have to deal with what is assigned.]

That's how I came across Matthew 9:18-26, one of the texts for early June. Jesus is on his way to heal a young girl when a woman with an issue of blood reaches out surreptitiously to touch him. He feels the power go out of him and turns to confront her. Then he says:

Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well.

Ah, here it comes -- the faith question of every person with a chronic or fatal illness, every person who prays and has people praying for us.

Don't I have faith? Don't I have enough faith to get my healing?

Many years ago in one of my darkest times, I met a young woman. She was part of a mission group who had come from Mexico to Costa Rica. On behalf of a local church, she and others would be going door to door, sharing their witness.

She asked me what I was doing in Costa Rica. So I told her that I had depression and was writing a book about it.

Without missing a beat, she answered, If you give your life to Jesus, he will heal you, and you won't have depression anymore.

She described her life in her teens, a life of indulgence, as she put it. She was a smoker. But then she gave her life to Jesus and he turned her around. He took away her addiction to cigarettes

Oh, honey.

She and I had met at the church that was sponsoring the mission. The worship service had gone long. I was tired. And I didn't have enough Spanish to get into it with her.

So I didn't tell her that 

  • I fell in love with Jesus when I was eight and was baptized
  • I took Jesus as my Lord and Savior when I was eighteen at college
  • I gave my life to Jesus when I entered seminary at twenty-five
  • I vowed to . . . pattern my life in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that I may be a wholesome example to my people when I was ordained a priest at twenty-nine
  • I . . . well, you get the idea.

The thing is, I have a brain that works differently, and sometimes not very well. Living a life in Christ has not protected me from the symptoms of bipolar disorder, nor even from feeling suicidal at its worst.

Bipolar disorder has been around for millennia. People had it before the coming of Christ. And people have had it since. Faith in Jesus really has nothing to do with it.

I am glad that Jesus took away her addiction to cigarettes. I am glad that Jesus healed the woman with an issue of blood, that he freed the Gerasene man who had been possessed, that he raised Lazarus from the dead.

But he hasn't healed me. At least, he hasn't taken away my bipolar.

Why not?

No, don't answer that question. I don't want an explanation. I especially don't want God to explain to me how He -- and I use that pronoun on purpose -- how He is using my suffering to some greater end. To help you, I suppose.

I don't want a God who manipulates people who are suffering, moves us around on some chessboard as part of His grand design.

For God's sake, don't tell me to have faith.

What a cruel notion that if you just believe hard enough you will be healed.

The first preaching I will do after an absence of a few years will be for a man who was one of the most faith-filled people I know. He died after waiting for years for a lung transplant, while people around the world prayed for him. As people have prayed for me.

Why am I still sick? I think that's the wrong question to address to God. I think that question posits the existence of the kind of God that we want, a God who will answer our questions and give us certainty and make us feel good.

A God that exists only in our desires and our imaginations.

Whoa! Did the preacher say that God doesn't exist? No, the preacher said that the God that does exist is not small enough to fit inside the box of our desires.

Who is the God who does exist? I am a very smart person. Nevertheless, that question is beyond my bandwidth. I have my own desires about God. But I no longer expect that God will satisfy them.

However, reading all those stories of healings year after year, over forty years of preaching on them, there is something that I have noticed. In almost every one of them, part of the healing is a return to community.

The woman who had had an issue of blood for fifteen years (endometriosis?) would have been unclean on that account. Nobody would have touched her. For fifteen years. Now she could take a neighbor's hand.

The Gerasene man who was possessed (schizophrenia?) lived in chains outside the city of Gerasa. When he was restored to his right mind, Jesus sent him home.

Lazarus -- dead and in the tomb. Jesus returned him to his sisters.

And me with my bipolar -- that is the kind of healing I have experienced. When I was newly disabled and not leaving my second floor condo except to go to the doctor, I joined NAMI -- National Alliance on Mental Illness. I went a Peer to Peer class, where people with mental illness teach other people with mental illness how to navigate our lives.

I discovered people who didn't care whether I had faith or not. They didn't need for me to be healed to confirm their own faith. They expected I wouldn't be. And they loved me. They invited me in. They were my new community.

Romans 8 -- that's what I believe. When I don't believe in God -- I really don't believe in the God who withholds healing based on my puny wounded capacity for faith -- I do believe this:

I am sure that neither death, nor life, [nor feeling suicidal], nor angels, nor principalities, [nor health insurance companies], nor height, nor depth, [nor the personal hell of side effects], nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am not healed. But I am loved.

That's a kind of healing. And it is enough.


photo by Nevit Dilman, used under the creative commons license.

World Bipolar Day: What the Heck Happened to my Brain?

Prozac Monologues is a book within a book. Its original form was a series of monologues written in an unrecognized hypomanic state. The rest of the story is what I learned about bipolar disorder after I learned that I have it.

In Balancing Act -- The Science Chapter, I answer the question, How did I get into this mess anyway? I compare it to another question, Why did the roof collapse? Both answers are to be found in a process that begins with something a little wonky and develops into a systemic mess.


The following excerpt skips the charming roof collapse explanation (inspired by true events during one Central Oregon snowmaggedon in 2017). Buy the book for that story! It goes straight to the science part. Let me know in the comments what you think.

Anxiety My Old Friend - Will I Let It Kill Me?

Anxiety and stress are not the same thing.

Stress is a physiological experience in the face of a change in the internal or external system. It has its plusses and minuses. A little bit of stress over something you can do something about [I need to make that doctor's appointment] provides motivation to get it done and satisfaction (a nice hit of dopamine) once you do it.

via GIPHY

On the other hand, chronic stress that cannot be resolved [I never knew when he would explode] exhausts every resource the body has to maintain homeostasis/balance. And that's not good.

Anxiety describes the negative thoughts and feelings that accompany stress.

via GIPHY

It's not the only feeling that could accompany stress. When faced with changes like a new job, a challenging ski slope, or a date with the person of your dreams, you might also feel excitement.

via GIPHY

Or maybe not. "Good" change and "bad" change are labels we apply from our own perspective. As far as the body goes, they don't really figure in. The physiological response is the same.

Consider a winding mountain road in a snowstorm. Some people default to excitement. [That would be Colorado-raised me.] Some people default to anxiety. [That would be my California-born wife.] The people who can't help but default to it have an anxiety disorder. These are my people.

Anxiety Defined

Anxiety is the intense, excessive, persistent worry, fear, or dread about everyday situations, present, future, and imagined future. It's a normal enough experience. It becomes a disorder when "intense" tilts over into "excessive" to the point of interfering with daily activities.

Insert side comment here: People who have a mental illness, whether social anxiety disorder, depression, or schizophrenia, are not a different kind of people. Almost every symptom of a mental illness is a "normal" experience - shared by people who do not have a mental illness. These experiences do not need to be diagnosed or treated, until they pile up and become so intrusive that they become unmanageable, until they interfere with daily activities.

The physical manifestations of anxiety include fast heart rate, heavy breathing, sweating, and fatigue. How do we get from a thought to a heart rate? The brain - that's how.

Anxiety in the brain


Anxiety involves an interaction of three different parts of the brain in particular.

It begins when the amygdala senses a threat. The job of the amygdala is to leap into action at the sign of a threat. The amygdala initiates a sequence that releases adrenaline and cortisol to gear the body up to address the threat. As with the body's response to other stress, these hormones cause the faster heart rate and heavy breathing. Blood flow increases to the limbs to prepare it for action, and away from the digestive system - when your life is in danger, lunch can wait.

The prefrontal cortex, the "thinking" part of the brain, provides information and interpretation that mitigate or support the threat. [That's a garter snake, not a rattler. It's harmless.]

The anterior cingulate cortex sorts through the sense of threat and the additional information to find patterns and determine whether the current situation is a big deal or not. It tells the amygdala whether to calm down or GET MORE EXCITED!

The difference between anxiety and anxiety disorder

When there is a threat, the amygdala goes into action. When the threat goes away, what is supposed to happen is that the amygdala and all its downstream partners stand down. The body returns to its pre-threat state.

When the threat is chronic or, even worse, unpredictable, then these systems do not stand down. They just keep pumping out that cortisol.

In the brain, the amygdala increases in size.

Under constant assault from cortisol, the hippocampus (memory and emotion) and prefrontal cortex shrink. The hippocampus gets stuck on negative memories and emotions. [I call this the little time machine inside my brain. It plays the worst of my past on an unending loop.]

The connection between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex that could moderate the fear goes down.

In other words, the brain changes. It changes in a way that reinforces the the problematic pattern, raising the risk for depression and dementia. Yuk!

Everybody gets anxious is not a helpful thing to say to a person with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or Social Anxiety Disorder. These are real things. They have tipped past the experiences of everybody. And a warm bath or deep breathing do not fix them.

Healing the problematic pattern may take many forms: distancing from the chronic stressors, medication, a variety of modalities in psychotherapy, even therapy dogs.

At ProzacMonologues.com I like to focus on what is happening inside the brain, to help me remember that my issues are not mere thoughts. They are experienced in my body. Here's an article with much more detail about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerve systems and how they function.

A physical therapist friend, encouraging me to take a leave of absence to deal with my tattered brain, once told me, It's just like a broken bone. It takes time to heal.

I do wish it healed as easily as that broken foot is healing. But these issues do respond to treatment. If your anxiety interferes with your life, you don't have to suffer alone!


photo by author
Red Green Show meme from imgur on Pinterest

Is Stress Good or Will My Brain Explode?

What if I told you that stress is not a bad thing?

What if I even told you that stress is good?

Okay, you have to understand what I'm talkin' about. Modern lives are so driven by stress that we're all walking around like ticking time bombs. Except for those meditators out there. (But are they even for real?)

via GIPHY

It turns out that a little bit of stress is just the ticket to feel good and accomplish a lot of good things.

I'm talking about challenge. I'm talking about excitement. Yes, I'm even talking about...


Deadlines

Getting My Brain Back -- I'm Still Excited by BDNF

Learning has been fundamental to my mental health recovery. It started with this blog itself. I wanted to know What the hell happened to my brain?!!! So I read the research and used ProzacMonologues.com to keep track of my notes.

For a while I added piano to my recovery regimen. Not for music therapy, but for brain development. Okay, I didn't keep at it. I can sort of play Desperado. But it did get me a few more miles down the road.

Lately I am learning a new language. Five minutes a day of Irish on Duolingo -- I don't expect to be fluent any time this decade. I don't need to be fluent. For those five minutes a day, I am building my brain.

Which is always a good thing.

I did a search in my blog for BDNF. And found something I wrote in 2011, right after I wrote that review of Ellen Frank's Treating Bipolar Disorder. Now you, kind reader, have no idea the struggle it took back then to write these paragraphs. I am proud of it both for the accomplishment and for the content itself. I present it to you again:

Getting My Brain Back -- In Praise of BDNF


Questions Work Magic: How They Change the Brain

Quick - What does a lemon taste like?

I know what a lemon tastes like. Tell me something else instead:

What just happened inside your mouth?

David Hoffeld asks another one: Want to know what your brain does when it hears a question?

His article from the website FastCompany.com explores the neurological consequences of hearing a question. Questions temporarily hijack the brain. Did you immediately think about lemons? First, serotonin is released, causing the brain to relax. Next you get a hit of dopamine. The question takes over your thought processes while you think about the answer. The technical term is instinctive elaboration.

The hijacking doesn't last forever. The person who was asked the question can choose to ignore it, can argue against it, can go off on a tangent - though for people with ADHD or bipolar disorder, a question that interrupts our train of thought may cause us to derail.

But Hoffeld cites a number of research studies that document when you ask somebody whether they are going to do something, you increase the probability that they will do it - buy a car, vote in an upcoming election, even donate blood.

Questions not only alter your perception. They can even alter your chemistry. Chances are, when you read the lemon question, you started to salivate.

Why Writing Bar Tales of Costa Rica is Good for my Mental Health

Mindfulness


Mayo Clinic describes mindfulness as a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you are sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Practicing mindfulness involves breathing methods, guided imagery, and other practices to relax the body and mind and help reduce stress.

For some of us, these meditation exercises, "close your eyes, focus on your breath..." are difficult, frustrating, and stress inducing. Particularly for people with a trauma history or ADHD, mindfulness can be a land mine.

For others, the whole enterprise sounds like woo-woo mental health. Add some essential oils and affirmations - who needs therapy or, God forbid, medication?

But there's more to mindfulness than nonsense.

The same Mayo Clinic article identifies several mindfulness practices. Three could be taken as basic concepts:

  • Pay attention
  • Live in the moment
  • Accept yourself

How does that work out irl - in real life?

Let me tell you about my recent five week stay in Costa Rica. First, the back story:


Prozac Monologues

My first book, Prozac Monologues, began with a hypomanic episode during an earlier trip to Costa Rica. I wrote a series of comedic monologues in an effort to not be mindful. The monologues danced around the memory of a recent Prozac-induced traumatic experience. It began with a bizarre thought, and moved on to some other weird stuff: dissociation, thought broadcasting, paranoia, and the like. 

Years later, once I was correctly diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I added edgy essays about that experience and everything I learned about bipolar disorder while trying to figure out what the hell happened to my brain. Like many memoirs, Prozac Monologues is a hybrid of my story and my issue. Sheila Hamilton's podcast, Beyond Well, captures it. Here's the linkIt's also a great read and now available on audio.

Bar Tales of Costa Rica

So what about Bar Tales of Costa Rica? My second book is exactly what the title promises: the stories I heard while sitting in bars in Costa Rica. That sounds like a very different book. Am I a genre hopper?

Yes and no.

via GIPHY


Bar Tales is about a milieu, a place and the people in it. It is not about mental illness. There are passing references to my own. But that's not the point. No references to research. No descriptions of recovery strategies. Stories heard in bars - it's a very different book.

Still, it is a sequel. It picks up where the monologues left off. In the first book, my wife Helen and I thought about moving to Costa Rica. Several months later, we did buy a little house in Playas del Coco. Didn't quite move there, but we spend several weeks there every year.


That's where I continued to work on Prozac Monologues. It's also where I gathered my bar tales, most of them at my sister's hotel and restaurant, the Pato Loco, which means "crazy duck." Other sites included El Bohío (referenced in the first book), Pacifico Beach Club, Coco Palms, and Soda Navidad.

You could call the second book a segue to the first. I turn a corner. That would be a right turn that leads me out of my neighborhood Los Canales, on to the Boulevard de Iguanas, and over to a whole new cast of characters: Patricia, Bruce, Andy, Sydney, Monique and André. Bar Tales is about their stories.



So why is this book good for my mental health?

As I am polishing these tales for publication in the spring of 2024, I spent several weeks in Coco for research. Research.

I wasn't sitting in bars, gathering tales - though inevitably a couple got added to the collection. This time I was gathering sensations. Physical sensations.

Trauma and Sensations

Sensations - these are at the heart of my mindfulness technique.

  • The person who has experienced trauma sometimes gets stuck in the past, reliving a loop of troublesome sensations. And let me tell you - being suicidal, as I was, is traumatic.
  • Or, in the face of current strife and stress, that person might dissociate - disconnect from present anxiety by going numb.
  • Or, based on deeply rooted thought patterns about bad things that happened in the past, the person faces the future with dread, anticipating - and pre-experiencing - a repeat of negative experiences.

Each of these are ways that we lose or escape the here and now. I think of here and now as my worst subject.

The thing is - here and now is where joy lives.

Let me repeat that.

Here and now is where joy lives.

So my research, gathering sensations, experiences in the present, kept me anchored in here and now.

And it filled me with joy.

What color are the rooster's feathers? - bronze head and breast, black legs, wings of teal and red.

What sound do the geckos make? - chk, chk, chk. How about the howler monkey? muffler dragging on concrete!

What do mangoes smell like when they are sitting in the field near my house in the hot sun? - like a fortified sweet wine.

What does carne en salsa taste like? Beef stewed in a rich vegetable sauce with hints of smoke when Juan cooks it all day in an iron pot over a wood fire under the mango tree.

What does it feel like to walk in the surf? Caressing waves, then grit in my sandals.

I walked around town with my phone in my hand, making voice memos, describing these sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations. My mind fixed on the present, there was no room there for regrets about the past or anxiety about the future.

Health Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindful meditation has been demonstrated to reduce anxiety, depression, stress, pain, insomnia, and high blood pressure.

There are many ways to do mindfulness. A review of literature published in Clinical Psychology Review, Effects of Mindfulness on Psychological Health, summarizes the context of mindfulness practice in its Eastern and Western versions and its application in a variety of psychological treatments.

What I offer here is one simplified self-help practice for addressing panic and anxiety, a disciplined version of what I called my research:

Focus on your environment.

  • Name five things that you see right now
  • Name four sounds that you hear
  • Name three things that you feel
  • Name two things that you smell
  • Name one thing that you taste
Yeah, don't get hung up on remembering whether it's three feelings or three smells. I don't remember the order of the sensations and made it up.

The point is to redirect the catastrophizing brain, to pull it into the here and now. Remember - here and now is where joy lives.

This practice isn't the cure all to my mental health issues. And I doubt it will cure yours. But it gives our poor brains, exhausted by the three alarm fires that usually occupy them, a break. It turns down the temperature and lets a different input in.

And that's a good thing.

Beyond the DSM: Three Ways to Manage Other Issues of Bipolar Disorder

Medication is approved for a mental illness if it reduces symptoms, the symptoms listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

Did you know that there is more to bipolar disorder than: 

an episode of depression 

elevated or irritated mood, inflated self-esteem, decreased need for sleep, pressure to keep talking, flight of ideas, distractibility, increase in goal-directed activity, psychomotor agitation, and excessive involvement in pleasurable or risky activities?

These are merely the outward and visible signs of what is happening inside the brain. These are how the doctor can tell that you have bipolar disorder.

But even after you suppress these symptoms, you still have a variety of neurological dysfunctions that affect your thinking, your energy metabolism, and your health.

Psych meds do not address all these other issues. They are a piece of treatment, an important piece. But suppressing symptoms, while it relieves the anxieties of those around you, does not fix your life.

Resisting COVID Depression, One Song at a Time

Who knew COVID would last this long? Did you, like me, feel a bit of hope last spring? We had the tools; we got the jab; the numbers started falling.

But . . . not everybody got the jab.

Then . . .


Now? Children are thrown into a virus laden cauldron while state legislatures pass laws prohibiting measures that would reduce the spread of a pandemic. Nurses are dropping like flies. A guy died in an emergency waiting room this week because there was no room for him in ICU.

And people with a high school diploma and an internet connection know better than the medical community. Instead of heeding the pleas of their doctors, they are taking horse-deworming medicine. Our local feed store has run out of it.

I guess next up--the horses start dying.

So, it looks like this thing is going to be with us for a while.

Does Music Therapy Help People with Bipolar Disorder? Maybe Not

Non-pharmaceutical approaches to mental illnesses are great. I mean, who wouldn't like to pop a pill without the side effects?

I eagerly clicked on the link: Music therapy for bipolar disorder: Can it help? from the newsletter, Medical News Today, hoping to find the playlist that would soothe the savage beast. The article reported on two studies, both pretty small, N<30. I guess music therapy doesn't attract the big bucks in research land. Spoiler alert: I did not find the magic playlist.

The first study compared people with bipolar in a euthymic state (stable, not depressed, not manic) with healthy controls. They listened to music that typically produces wonder and joy. The healthy controls felt wonder and joy. The bipolar participants felt... tense. The researchers surmised that the negative emotions in bipolar participants has to do with difficulties in emotional regulation, part of the executive dysfunction.

The music disrupted an equilibrium, perhaps, which healthy controls found exhilarating, but bipolar people found simply disruptive? -- That's my conjecture.

What Happened to My Bipolar Brain and How Do I Fix It?

The most troublesome statement in Goodwin and Jamison's Manic Depressive Illness may be this: "Complete symptomatic remission does not ensure functional recovery." This is no small problem. For some 30% to 60% of patients with bipolar disorder, simply treating their mood symptoms is not enough to help them return to a full life.

There’s a third pole that needs to be addressed for that to happen: cognitive symptoms. These often persist even when patients are euthymic, and they range from problems with memory and attention to more subtle deficits such as picking up on social cues and making wise decisions. 

Chris Aiken's article, Eight Ways to Improve Cognition in Bipolar Disorder, opens with these paragraphs. Ironically, what Aiken calls troublesome, I find immensely reassuring. My experiences are real!

Neuroscientifically Challenged - Check it out

Yay! When I found a new (to me) website, Neuroscientifically Challenged, I rewrote the resource section of the book. Given that Prozac Monologues is in proofreading stage, my project manager was not as pleased as I was. But it's now a better book.

Mark Dingman started blogging in 2008 as a way to explore his interest in neuroscience. That interest morphed into a PhD program, then a new career, and now his continued work on a website where he can learn, draw, teach, and talk about his favorite topic, the brain. Take my eclectic blog, focus on the brain part, turn it into a genuine resource, call it Neuroscientifically Challenged.

The website features two-minute videos each with a bite of information. Okay, Dingman has to talk kind of fast to get it done in two-minutes, but really, what do you want? Here is a sample:

Six Ways to Heal the Holes in Your Head


Do you ever feel like you have holes in your head? Actually, you do. Ventricles are the spaces between the grey matter (brain cells) and white matter (wiring that connects the brain cells) in your brain. Depressive episodes, manic episodes, and psychosis all burn up brain tissue, leading to bigger ventricles. (Image: Effects of Western diet on the brain. See companion image, Effects of Mediterranean diet below.)

This loss of brain cells hits the hippocampus (in charge of memory and emotion regulation) particularly hard. In the early years after my last mental health crisis, I talked about my “Swiss cheese brain.” At my worst, I lost bills, I lost words, I lost everything my wife said to me on the way out the door in the morning. She took to writing down what I said I would do before she got home, never more than two items.

I lost the list.

The Brain Science of Caffeine

It's Pumpkin Spice Latte Season -- what better time to pour a cup of Caffeine: Neurological and Psychiatric Implications? It's the next up in my PsychiatricTimes.com Appreciation Month.

Sergi Ferré, MD, PhD offers this continuing education course for doctors and other health care providers. The goal of this activity is to provide an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the innervating effects of caffeine and the impact that caffeine may have on psychiatric disorders.

So settle in to learn about your favorite beverage.

Disclaimer: Though I have read the thing many times and looked up many big words, I cannot honestly say that I have satisfied all of the learning goals. Specifically, I cannot:
  • Explain the adenosine-dependent modulation of striatal dopamine and glutamate neurotransmission
nor
  • Describe the adenosine-dependent modulation of glutamate neurotransmission in the amygdala.
Good thing I don't need the grade.

Nevertheless, I gleaned a few fun facts which I will share with you.

Caffeine is the most commonly consumed psychotropic drug in the world, used primarily for its psychostimulant properties on the central nervous system. Yes, I think we already knew that, but it's nice to begin with a softball.

Making Music to Build Your Brain

Manic episodes burn up brain cells. So do depressive episodes. So do panic attacks. Cortisol run amuck leaves you with potholes in your head. Not to worry -- the brain has a built-in repair system, Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor, BDNF.

They've been trying forever to reverse engineer antidepressants. If they can figure out how they work, they figure they will know what causes depression in the first place. At first they thought it was low serotonin levels, the proverbial "chemical imbalance." A more recent thought is that a low serotonin level is not the cause, after all; it's the effect. Fix the problem farther upstream by stimulating BDNF to repair the brain damage, and the serotonin level sorts itself out.

But the natural thing that gets this hormone humming to patch your potholes is learning! There's this big deal about seniors doing Sudoku to ward off dementia. But it only works until you get good at it. You have to keep doing new stuff that you don't already know how to do.

And what better than learning to play a musical instrument? You have no talent? You tried it as a kid and you were lousy? Hear me out. If you were good at it, it wouldn't build your brain. Seriously, it's like exercise. If you don't feel the struggle, you're not building the muscle. Making music turns out to be a full body/brain workout.


So go get yourself a ukelele! Your brain will be glad you did.
photo of pothole in public doman
photo of road repair taken by US Air Force and in public domain

Loneliness is Lethal -- Ayn Rand is Wrong

This I've got mine; screw you thing we have going on in the US today is bad for our health.  John Cacioppo tells the story at a recent TED event in Des Moines, Iowa.



Here is the short version, with direct quotes in italics:

The human species is social.  We are just wired that way.

Thomas Insel - Toward a New Understanding of Mental Illness




Cutting this guy's budget is like telling Orville and Wilbur Wright to take the month off.

Jill Bolte Taylor's Stroke of Insight



Dr. Bolte Taylor's story is told in greater detail, both her stroke and her recovery in her book.  You can link to it in the column to the left under Fabulous Books.

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