After a great holiday, and an even better meal, what better way is there to show your thanks than to hop right up and do the dishes.  But an overwhelming feeling of sleepiness stands in your way.  It’s not something in the water, it’s something in the turkey.

The amino acid L-tryptophan breaks down into the sleep-inducing neurotransmitters melatonin and serotonin.  However, L-tryptophan is far more effective on an empty stomach, and nobody at my table has any room left over.  Instead, it is likely just the effect of eating so much that blood is diverted to the stomach do help digest these mass quantities.  The original idea of L-tryptophan is a false-positive because the amino acids would be absorbed into the fatty foods and thus be rendered ineffective.  There goes the classic excuse of why you can’t help clean up.

Anyone who has suffered from a migraine before understands the need to understand what goes on inside your head that is causing you so much pain and discomfort.  Compounding the head pain are a number of other crippling symptoms that leave your body at the mercy of your mind.  Leaving you out of commission for any period of time, not only as a result of pain but nausea and light sensitivity.  Bury yourself in darkness and roll with the punches.

A study published by Rami Burstein and a couple other doctors on the National Center for Biotechnology Information stated: “We found that if the pain is not stopped within 10–20 minutes after it starts, the first set of neurons in the network, those located in the trigeminal ganglion, undergo molecular changes that make them hypersensitive to the changing pressure inside the head…”  The part of this that really jumped out at me was the molecular changes in parts of the brain.  Obviously, I’m not great at science (exhibit a: taking this class) but the molecular changes sounds like something that should be in the script of the Incredible Hulk not something going on in my brain.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke website makes a mention to auras, so if anyone reading this, has any insight to that I would be extremely interested to hear about your experience so feel free to comment.

 

I’m sitting here wondering how much sleep on which the human body is able to function.  Not only function, but perform at and maintain a high level.  In order to understand how much the body and more importantly, the mind can withstand, first understand the purpose and necessity of sleep.

Sleeping is more than just a passive activity to kill time until morning, it is a regenerative process in which your brain waves and neurotransmitters change making a person feel tired or awake.  According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke “scientists are still trying to learn exactly why people need sleep” in some animal studies conducted, rats which normally live 3 to 5 years that are prevented from any stage of sleep live for 3 weeks.  It is believed that sleep is essential for a properly functioning nervous system.  Without sleep, nerves that usually are rested during sleep work improperly and result in a sensory overload.  This is usually manifested in hallucinations and mood swings.

Additionally, after yesterday’s class I’m confident in saying that many of the side effects of lack of sleep are in congruency with the behavior of the zombie ants that are poisoned by fungus.  Human behavior becomes erratic, people become extremely forgetful, similar to the ants inability to find their way home.

Bipolar disorder is a brain disorder that causes a rapid or sudden fluctuation in mood.  While we all experience varying degrees of moodiness, bipolar disorder is much more dramatic that the normal ups and downs.  It is known to be a hereditary gene, or is passed on through a family.  Children with a direct family member with bipolar disorder are more likely to develop than those who do not have family with the disorder, but most do not develop the illness.

In a study done by a group of doctors led by Dr. Stephen Strakowski for a peer review, the doctors identified prefrontal activation in bipolar subjects which was not present in healthy subjects.  The study concluded that due to the activation in bipolar subjects was a result of different “functional neuroanatomic approaches,” or simply a different way of thinking.  The figure below is the results of the manic bipolar subjects, the orange indicates increased activation, blue indicates decreased.

 

Numbers and figures can give rise to suspicious circumstances that seem so unlikely that they are only explicable through conspiracy, curse, or legend.  Often times the most unlikely of probabilities is easily explained, but somehow it still seems fishy.  There are a plethora of examples, most easily referenced are those in music; whether it is the curse of the 9th symphony, or Tupac foreshadowing his death something always seemed off.  However, the most interesting of all, the 27 Club.  With multiple members, all with ominous deaths, the headlining members are Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse.

With illustrious careers, and life in the limelight, death could only follow suit for these iconic performers.  I had hoped to crunch some numbers in the Poisson Distribution to see if it truly was randomness or if there is something to this theory.  Unfortunately, Poisson deserves his status as a mathematical genius because I couldn’t figure it out at all.

There are plenty of articles claiming that there is more here than just chance, but they lack scientific evidence and instead citing wild conjecture: “Saturn returns, in astrological terms, every 28 years, marking a life transition. Saturn’s return marks the end of youth and the beginning of maturity”(Astrological Lodge of London).

Fortunately, the CDC keeps meticulous records of all things to satisfy anyone’s morbid curiosity.  To avoid sorting through the 71 pages, flip directly to Table 10 – drug and alcohol induced deaths as well as deaths by firearms, which covers all the big names except Brain Jones’ official cause of death: “death by misadventure.”

Of course musicians, especially those who live the rock lifestyle, dramatically shorten their lifespan through drug and alcohol abuse.  This could also be a reason for the statistical spike among musicians dying at 27.  They were in there prime, the prime of their career, the prime of the party, and died young.  The cluster of fame is simply randomness.

The study shows that there is no statistical anomaly in the deaths of 27 year olds.  However, Charles Cross said it best: “There is, however, no statistical increase of death at 27 among the general population, just famous musicians.”

 

Can you put a price on mental health? The NFL tried to put a $765 million price tag on its players, but has since been overruled.  The league has since instituted a rigorous concussion protocol, but perhaps this is insufficient.  The rudimentary definition and explanation of a concussion is a bruise on the brain caused by a blow to the head.  An easy way to think of it is when you hit your head.  This new concussion protocol prevents players who sustain a concussion from being cleared to play until passing.  However, the issue the league now faces is the long term side effects from concussions specifically those found in retired players suffering from depression and more specifically Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).

 

 

It seems that attention for the topic is only focused and change is called for when tragedy headlines the league news, this was certainly the case for Dave Duerson and Junior Seau.  The league’s new policy unfortunately only protects athletes for as long as they are active in the league, but does not address players’ needs after retirement.  This is precisely the issue with CTE, as it takes years and sometimes even decades to develop.  Furthermore, CTE renders the league’s concussion protocol useless against sub-concussive, asymptomatic hits.  As the NFL uses on-the-spot, test as you go kind of treatment instead of a more comprehensive overview of players’ over their career.  The concussion protocol relies on “the rapid onset of transient impairment of neurologic function that resolves spontaneously … in some cases, symptoms and signs may evolve over a number of minutes to hours.”  However, CTE deals with the repetitive head trauma over the course of a career, not a couple games, or even a season.  To clarify, that is seven or eight years of head injury-worthy football before entrance into the NFL.

The officially published Boston University study on CTE cites “a progressive tauopathy that occurs as a consequence of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury.”  For defensive players that probably equates to a decent 5 tackle game, an offensive player that’s getting tackled 5 times, let’s say only one of which was led with the head or neck, or in the NFL’s own words “elsewhere on the body with an ‘impulsive’ force transmitted to the head” (NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee’s Protocol’s Regarding Diagnosis and Management of a Concussion).  We’ll venture an average 7 year NFL career for our player having a decent game every outing.  Now our average player is not sustaining concussions per NFL standards, these are sub-concussive hits, and our player misses a game a year, and never makes the playoffs.  That’s 105 sub-concussive hits in our player’s average NFL career.  But of course he had to play in high school, and a minimum of 3 years in college, so his football career is double his NFL career.  In the 2014 season there were 202 concussions diagnosed by the NFL, down from 261 in 2012.  We were only accounting for skill players so we’ll knock off about 20 to account for offensive and defensive linemen.  We’ll call it 190 skill players per year suffer concussions in the NFL.  There are 7 defensive skill players, and 6 offensive on 32 different NFL teams for a grand total of 416 skill players in the NFL who start for their given teams.  Our average player, according to these numbers, will suffer 3 NFL diagnosed concussions in his 7 NFL seasons, but of course it’s not just starters so we’ll bump that down to 2 NFL concussion protocol diagnosed concussions over 7 years.  Up against 105 sub-concussive hits.  A slight discrepancy.  Here is where we find our tragic flaw.

While announcers will praise the league and its officials incessantly for every time a player is examined after a hit that qualifies on the Head, Neck, and Spine Committee’s list the underlying issue of the progressive cognitive degeneration of the players is disregarded.  This is not an issue the NFL front office can just throw money at, it is an issue that needs responsibility and accountability.  With Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in the picture, players who live for football can die for it too.

 

 

 

Hi, my name is John Reilly and I am from Villanova, PA.  I am taking this course because it was suggested by my academic advisor to fulfill my science general education requirement.  I am not planning to be a science major because I am not good at science classes, nor do I like them.

Andrew said he wanted songs. You asked for it.