After a tumultuous election year and the results it has now created, the one common factor that influenced many people into their choices was fear. Fear of what the world would be like under the other candidate. Fear of what the future will hold if that person becomes president. This fear of the unknown has long been tapped by both politicians and businesses to drive our decision making into what they are selling. However, prior to a decision, we often overrate the negative impact that decision will have us. This negative thinking is often not how we actually feel after the decision has been made.

Why is fear so important? Because it is an emotion that protects us from negative events. Fear exists in various aspects of our lives. Everytime we get in the car, a part of us is scared to get in an accident and be seriously hurt or killed. This emotion than dictates how we drive. Do we recognize it, stare it in the face and say “oh, well. You only live once.” Or do we drive so cautiously that the other drivers around us become angry and frustrated with our lack of risk taking. For most, it is a balance between these extremes. The emotion of fear brings about the attention to be cautious and observant prior to any decision making. Once all the risks are analyzed, we then move forward with a decision. Sometimes that process is quick and sometimes it’s antagonizing. When we don’t know the risks, our fear can often lead us away from rational thought. It’s this pathway that leads us to make decisions from a purely emotional perspective.

Now that we’ve gotten worked up about the decision and we’ve made a conclusion, how do we feel about the choice later? For most people, the level of negative emotion they felt about an outcome of a decision, drops dramatically when compared to how they felt about it before. This is the same for positive emotions as well. Prior to a decision, our expected emotions are more exaggerated than what they end up being afterwards. Why is that? Because when predicting our emotions, we don’t take into account our coping mechanisms. This is the factor that advertisers try to exploit. If we were able to take into account that we can handle a negative outcome better than we think, then we would be less prone to reacting on emotion alone.

How do we combat this? By understanding that this is part of our decision process. Our emotions are an important part of our decision making process and should not be negated. However, that doesn’t mean we have to rely strictly on them. This election cycle has shown how much emotion plays into our decisions. Fear and anger drove the entire rhetoric of both presidential candidates. Now we have to live with the consequences.

Going to Mars has become the goal of our modern day Space Program. President Obama recently stated the we, as a country, should be able to reach Mars by 2030. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation recently passed a bipartisan bill that would fund $19.7 billion dollars next year with the key component of putting a man on Mars. The bill still needs to be passed by the full Senate but it’s clear that continuing our space program is still a priority.

There is one hitch to sending humans to Mars: potential memory loss, anxiety, and long term brain damage. Charles Limoli of the University of California, Irvine, is a professor of radiation oncology and is concerned with whether we should be sending people to Mars. His team found that “exposure to highly energetic charged particles, like the ones in the galactic cosmic rays that spaceships are bombarded with once they leave the protection of Earth’s magnetosphere, caused significant long-term brain damage in test rodents causing cognitive impairment and dementia.” Even the astronauts of the Apollo missions were exposed to these particles. The difference: the Apollo astronauts missions only lasted days instead of the years that Mars astronauts would be doing. The longer the exposure to cosmic rays, the more damaging they are and have longer lasting effects.

Limoli’s study used rodents that had been blasted with charged particles at the NASA radiation lab and then sent to UCI for study. Even 6 months after exposure to the particles, the rodents still showed signs of brain inflammation and neuron damage that caused poor results on memory tests and learning. They also discovered that the particles affected a part of the brain involved in “fear extinction,” which allows the brain to repair itself after a traumatic event like drowning to no longer be afraid of the activity. Damage to this part of the brain can cause anxiety and thus difficulty in being trapped in a small space for a long period of time. Effects of charged particles are well known and NASA is working on ways to limit their effects by providing extra shielding on spacecraft and potential medication.

Understanding the risks of space travel is a key component to developing safer ways of protecting crew members. Exploration of the universe is a driving force of human advancement. The need to explore beyond our world is high because of the depletion of the planet by overpopulation and pollution. However, the explorers need to be able to make decisions while they are in space with their full cognitive functions.

Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

@futurism. “It’s Official: We’re Going to Mars.” Futurism Its Official Were Going to Mars Comments. N.p., 2016. Web. 16 Oct. 2016.

Parihar, Vipan K., Barrett D. Allen, Chongshan Caressi, Stephanie Kwok, Esther Chu, Katherine K. Tran, Nicole N. Chmielewski, Erich Giedzinski, Munjal M. Acharya, Richard A. Britten, Janet E. Baulch, and Charles L. Limoli. “Cosmic Radiation Exposure and Persistent Cognitive Dysfunction.” Scientific Reports 6 (2016): 34774. Web.

One of the topics I have found most interesting thus far is the concept of perception and how our perception of pain can influence how we experience it. I have been in the healthcare field for more than a decade and spent most of it in Orthopedics. Pain is something that I see people deal with on a daily basis because that is usually what brings you to our office, something hurts. For most people, they still understand pain in the way that it was understood in the 50s and 60s, as a signal from the area to the brain or bottom-up processing. It has become more apparent over the last several years that this is not the only way we experience pain. Our expectations of pain, how we focus on pain, and how we can take our mind away from pain all influence our eventual pain response.

If we expect something to hurt, then it usually will for at least the first split second while our brain tries to understand what is going on. This aversion to upcoming pain drives much of our fears about medical procedures. Fears of needles and post-surgical pain will cause many people to avoid getting the care they need. And if they do seek care, it can cause anxiety for them that is difficult to overcome.

Our society has created an environment where we believe we shouldn’t have to deal with pain of any kind and seek ways of getting rid of that pain. When we focus on pain, it magnifies it. And because of the ready availability of pain relievers, many people never learn how to handle minor pain. They take Tylenol or Ibuprofen at the first sign of discomfort. This causes a distorted sense of pain intensity. I often ask the famous question of, “on a scale of 1 to 10, how bad is your pain?” This is the called the VAS pain scale and has been used since the 70s. Some people have a hard time quantifying their pain because they’ve learned to handle it. But most people over-exaggerate their pain to unrealistic levels. It doesn’t help healthcare providers adequately judge who needs help and how much they need. This can also cause patients to receive stronger medication that they do not necessarily need leading to addiction. The McGill Pain Questionnaire allows for a more detailed exam with the use of over 80 adjectives to describe pain. This scale gives more information but is unrealistic in a fast paced clinical setting. (Cervero, 2012, 26)

The best way to combat the perception of pain is to distract someone from it. One of the most common times of day for pain to be at it’s worst, is bedtime. During the day, we are usually up and moving around which puts the pain at the back of our mind. Once we lie down for bed and begin to relax our mind, the pain returns and intensifies. This causes issues sleeping and the most likely time that patients are to abuse their prescription narcotics. Sleep disturbance is one of the most common concerns for patients after surgery. Pain is usually the reason why they can’t sleep. Focused breathing and meditation can help calm the mind and distract from pain.

Pain is a mixture of external signals being sent to the brain and our perception of how we should feel. There is only so much you can do to reduce the external forces but by understanding how our expectations of pain, how we focus on pain, and ways to distract ourselves from pain plans on our pain experience, we can decrease pain’s effect on our life.

Works Cited

Cervero, F. (2012). Understanding Pain : Exploring the Perception of Pain. Cumberland, US: MIT Press. Retrieved from http://www.ebrary.com