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Do-It-Yourself Brain Stimulation Has Scientists Worried
Freshly Exhumed writes "Dave Siever always fancied himself as something of a musician, but also realized he did not necessarily sing or play in perfect key. Then he strapped on the electrodes of a device made by his Edmonton company, and zapped his brain's auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself. 'Now I tune everything and I practise my singing over and over and over again, because I'm more sensitive to it.' Mr. Siever was not under the supervision of a doctor or psychologist, and nor is he one himself. He is part of an extraordinary trend that has amateur enthusiasts excited, and some scientists deeply nervous: do-it-yourself brain stimulation." With studies suggesting that small doses of electricity can: increase your memory, help you learn new tasks, make you better at math, turn you into a sniper in minutes, and most importantly make the ugly seem attractive, we can expect a lot of brain zapping in the next few years.
Trust me, you can't get any stupider...
experience an orgasm?
-Luis Wu
Help you get first posts?
An increase in vegetables in the next few years as well.
I guess people here do a different kind of stimulation, and not just of the brain either, if you know what I mean. ;-)
This is great so long as everything is published as they go. Waveforms, Impulse frequency or duration, Pulse train frequency, electrode placements, signal voltage and current. Don't let this get taken over by the industrialists. :)
Also, publish your data BEFORE you use the signal. If you die, we need to know what did it.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
not to mention growing hairy palms.
Next step for an Edmontonian would generally be, "Is there a way I can program myself to only see white people?"
Oh boy, I can hardly wait for what's coming. Fantastic investing opportunity. Long drugs to fix the problems, and the extended care industry. Go to it boys. With any luck, we'll have more patients entering those homes just when the death of baby boomer Alzheimer's patients causes business to slack off.
Where can I get one??
Three days from now?? Thats tomorrow!! ~Peter Griffin
Zap your brain with beer instead to improve your singing.
This subject Zapped his brain with 2 beers mid song. Notice the results.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACgJhE2L7Ms
Even if your singing doesn't improve, it is definitely more fun to sing this way.
zapped his brain's auditory cortex with a mild dose of electricity. The result, he claims, was a dramatic improvement in his ability to hear pitch, including the sour notes he produced himself.
How the hell would he know if it didn't? Can we get testimonials of his friends? Otherwise, I'm claiming placebo effect.
The great thing is, no more one-handed typing!
Forget the war on drugs. Wireheads, a la Larry Niven, are on the way.
It is by now an old trope in science fiction: the idea that people will have electrodes installed to directly stimulate the pleasure center of their brains. It's kind of a frightening idea: on the one hand, it would be a "high" that shouldn't damage you, but on the other hand it is likely to be so intensely pleasurable that it's fiendishly addictive. Larry Niven wrote stories where "wireheads" routinely would starve to death, feeling such intense pleasure that they forgot to do anything else including eat. He furthermore imagined that the "dealers" who sold wirehead gear had an "induction" helmet that could provide a taste of the experience without implanting the electrodes, and his protagonist narrator commented that this really wasn't fair.
This seems like a possible technology, and possible things tend to happen eventually. But I haven't heard of it happening in the real world yet. I'm wondering if it's coming.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Click here to find out how this 47-year-old local patriot discovered one "weird" old trick to stimulate the brain and end slavery to Obama's mind control.
It's hard enough to keep those damn mind control waves away from my skull, and they want me to trust some device made by a megacorp hooked up to my *brain*? Riiight. Listen: you keep your military-industrial-complex-approved reptilian gizmo and I'll "do" my own noggin' with the open-sauce tech from cousin Moe whom I trust. For now.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
U need 15 month old article from a paysite?
http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/2012/03/zap-your-brain-into-zone-fast-track-to.html
It was http://news.cnet.com/The-Compex-Sport-Shock-therapy-for-workout-warriors/2100-1041_3-6226516.htmlall the rage forty years ago, albeit the zapping was not done in the brain directly, but Bruce Lee did it quite frequently.
>> increase your memory, help you learn new tasks, make you better at math, turn you into a sniper in minutes, and most importantly make the ugly seem attractive
So basically, it's beer.
They have started work on all sorts of electric weapons. Now, we are going to create super villins.
Here is the company referenced in the article.
About $200 - $300, depending on the product and functionality. And best of all - it's completely [medical device] unregulated!
I worked for a company the built medical diagnostic (EEG & ECG) and treatment (TENS) equipment. We had a few prototype stimulation units that one salesman had the bright idea of connecting up to his brain. It's output was really limited (on the order of a few micro amps) using electrodes attached to his ear-lobes. Turn it on with a low frequency sine wave (1 - 2 Hz) and watch the fun. It was interesting to watch his eyes scan back and forth like a Cylon. The sign wave was super-imposed on the normal impulses, so he could still direct his eyes, but really funny if he was trying to keep his eyes focused on one thing.
I have no doubt that he was doing damage along the way (but hell, he was only a salesman). He claimed that it made him feel high. The stupid bastard was even driving his car with the thing hooked up.
However, you can have all manor of fun with a good TENS unit.
Wow.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
The wikipedia entry explains tDCS a lot better than TFA:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_stimulation
Those who are are good at it will get better, those who aren't we won't be concerned with long.
At least is a bit more targetted than doing it in the feets. It have risks, but doing it right could have its potential. Regarding the people that want to try it as the new fad without knowing what they are doing, shouldnt be much worse than getting addicted to Krokodil.
... are anxiously waiting to put their hands on such devices to give a daily zap on their kids' brains so they would have an egde over other kids!
The Asian market is completely cornered.
They think they're super smart, beyond that of the average guitar player. What if brain zapping turns everyone into super geniuses? Suddenly scientists will have very few job prospects, everyone can be a scientist. THAT's the real reason they're worried. Get zappin'!
The amount of stimulation is over two orders of magnitude lower than the amount needed to cause damage, as interpolated from studies in rats. This has scientists and medical professionals worried about potential dangers, as the effects of low-level stimulation have not been adequately studied.
Backscatter X-ray machines are estimated to cause 1 death by cancer every 200 million scans. The government has repeatedly assured us that these are safe, and were deployed with no regulation, no testing, and no quality control (as, for example, the dose-per-scan claims by the manufacturer).
It's getting to the point where crowd-sourced information is more accurate than the experts.
Imagine a world of scientific research guided by crowd-sourced anecdotal evidence: after masses of people try something and report positive effects, the research community gets onboard and tests the evidence.
If the medical community doesn't clean up its act, they'll find themselves marginalized into obscurity. Like buggy-whip manufacturers or the MPAA/RIAA, when you stand in the way of progress, progress will leave you behind.
I know that these scientists are nervous now that they can make women find them attractive by zapping their brains, so my advise to them is to play it cool. If they blow it with one girl, they can always just zap another to start all over again.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Niven was probably inspired by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Happiness_Cage
If you get a chance to watch this, it's really intense and Christopher Walken gives a great performance.
It might be relevant that he's trying to sell something: www.mindalive.com
I mean, people altering their brains with drugs has never had any adverse medical or legal consequences, right?
Dr. Emilio Lizardo.
Medicine helped AGAINST natural selection (a little bit - mostly through helping babies survive, no need to overvalue its contribution though since its relevant mostly during lower ages (though not exclusively due to indirect effects when grandparents help raise children).
Such movements may help increasing natural selection.
So I'm all for it, since I'll sit at the sidelines at let other people be the lab rats to find the 0.0001% of stuff that actually works and is useful (longterm).
article reminds me of shock therapy in the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Nothing like taking the most complex misunderstood piece of machinery and just throwing wattage up in there willy-nilly! Next thing i'll try is stabbing myself to hopefully become more pain resistant. Then eat some metal because I hear iron's good for you.
-Ultimate Stickman Game Developer Infinite World Puzzler
I had my brain connected once to a pulse generator via a surface grid of electrodes. (This was before epilepsy surgery at Stanford, and most of the grid was on the right occipital cortex.) During this procedure they would send an increasing series of pulses of 5, 10, 20 mA etc. down to each grid position and ask if I saw anything after each one.
About 80% of the electrodes were actually kind of boring. They would produce a characteristic speckling somewhere in the leftward field of view at a certain radius and angle. Other electrodes made very weird stuff appear. One caused everything on the left side of the room to suddenly look extremely brightly hued. It looked like a grocery aisle with cheap fruit drinks. The colors got more intense with additional current.
There was a problem near the end with a bunch of uncomfortable hallucinations. Every tiny little point from the pulse generator had this upsetting weird look to it, like a kitten with its head crushed. They somehow weren't going away, and I started bitching about something seeming to accumulate in my field of vision.
They told me at this point that my brain wasn't correctly grounded to the bed frame. I wasn't able to ground it myself since all I could reach on the bed was plastic. As soon as they regrounded it, for a split second I saw some sort of bright thunderbolt approach from the left and sweep all the stuff away. It felt like a relief somehow but I'm not sure WTF I was seeing.
the article says everything from potentially dangerous effects short term and long term, all the way to maybe it's not at all effective for anything. bottom line is that smart people don't know. and that's fair. but when it comes to stuff like this, it seems like one of the fastest ways towards knowledge is diving in. most of eastern medicine comes from thousands of years of on the ground experience... trying shit till something sticks. i'm sure people got sick and died along the way but all data is useful and as long as nobody is under the notion that there is a guarantee of safety and engaged in out of free will... why not? alcohol has clear deleterious effects but we're all for it. it seems safe enough at least physically - the amount of amps involved is certainly not strong enough to fry anything. and it seems like whatever effect it generates (if any) is readily perceptible ... so that if something bad is going down, you can shut it off.
i think that this subculture can be very useful in letting us skip some steps and getting data in ways we would otherwise not get for years.
let gamblers gamble and reap the rewards of their risk.
could it not have been a dramatic deterioration of his ability to hear his off-key notes?
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. -Gandhi
When I was younger I would take the Carbon rod out of a size C battery and sharpen one end.
Cut an extension cord and put a rod on both ends; put the Carbon points close and plug it in: tada an arc furnace.
I see a potential of this being much more productive now by keeping the points farther apart. :}
of course a small warning will be included.
http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
" Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
"In Larry Niven's Known Space stories, a wirehead is someone who has been fitted with an electronic brain implant (called a "droud" in the stories) to stimulate the pleasure centres of their brain. In the Known Space universe, wireheading is the most addictive habit known (Louis Wu is the only given example of a recovered addict), and wireheads usually die from neglecting themselves in favour of the ceaseless pleasure. Wireheading is so powerful and easy that it becomes an evolutionary pressure, selecting against that portion of Known Space humanity without self-control. Wireheading need not use an actual brain implant; the pleasure centre can be remotely activated by a small device called a "tasp" (important in the Ringworld novels)."
Also related about "Supernormal Stimuli":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
"Our instincts -- for food, sex, or territorial protection -- evolved for life on the savannahs 10,000 years ago, not in today's world of densely populated cities, technological innovations, and pollution. We now have access to a glut of larger-than-life objects, from candy to pornography to atomic weapons -- that gratify these gut instincts with often-dangerous results. Animal biologists coined the term "supernormal stimuli" to describe imitations that appeal to primitive instincts and exert a stronger pull than real things, such as soccer balls that geese prefer over eggs. Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett applies this concept to the alarming disconnect between human instinct and our created environment, demonstrating how supernormal stimuli are a major cause of today's most pressing problems, including obesity and war. However, Barrett does more than show how unfettered instincts fuel dangerous excesses. She also reminds us that by exercising self-control we can rein them in, potentially saving ourselves and civilization."
And on overcoming "The Pleasure Trap":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
Like moths to the flame... Just because we can do something, does not mean we should. That said, people will do this. Not sure what the outcome will ultimately be, but the "natural selection" point above, to select for people who do not do this, may well come into play. And that may also be part of the adaptive evolutionary value of religion, to scare us away from some unhealthy things and attract us to some healthy things (whatever else one can say about specific dogmas):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origin_of_religions
So, maybe the only people who will survive being overstimulated by electrical thunderbolts will be those with a deep abiding religious feeling that such a life is wrongly lived?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Sarah Palin's do-it-yourself lobotomy kit made her a celebrity with half the country.
-5 political troll
Table-ized A.I.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TekWar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droud
But there are probably other stories, as this technology has been used in various ways for decades. Although this is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure_center
"More recent research has shown that the so-called pleasure electrodes lead only a form of wanting or motivation to obtain the stimulation, rather than pleasure."
See also my comment below:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3862853&cid=44004193
In a book reference there, "The Pleasure Trap", the authors talk about multiple brain systems for pleasure that work in different ways to different ends (dopamine vs. serotonin).
http://www.livestrong.com/article/175158-dopamine-vs-serotonin/
There are so many situations human need to navigate where you could start down a slippery slope... Part of the problem is that it takes time for society to adjust as people learn about each new one technology is making possible...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Not too sure about all this electricity stuff. Goold old Retro-Phrenology seems to work the best.
Especially if I am practising it on someone else :)
"Which part of the brain do you need to zap to" ...
...make you think it's a really good idea to zap vague areas of your brain with electricity based on the hilariously incomplete field of neuroscience?
Several answers:
* The part that makes someone an experimental neuroscientist of the type which are currently conducting this research?
* The part that allow Marie Curie to kill herself with radiation poisoning before it was known radiation was dangerous?
* The part that caused Thomas Edison to do shotgun testing of materials for a lightbulb filament?
* The part that caused Johnny Knoxville to make the Jackass series?
* The part that caused Geoffrey Robson to kill himself while working to improve wingsuits?
* The part that caused Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee to allow themselves to be bolted into Apollo 1?
* The part that caused Vijay Pande to believe crowd-sourcing science was a good idea?
* etc.
Pick your part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotronics
Psychotronics was a term coined to describe research in para-normal X-files stuff. I used to go to meetings of a Los Angeles group in the mid 1970's and 1980's. Yes, most of you would think was hogwash. But there were people making 'neurophones' and other other were small electronic devices to stimulate the brain way back when. This overlapped into some bio-feedback therapy.
Patrick Flannigan invented the neurphone when he was 14. I saw him on The Steve Allen show about 1961-3 demonstrating it. It looked like a transistor radio (image a fat cell phone, if you were born post 1995) . A couple of electrode pads were stuff on your back. If you played music or sound through it, you could hear it. On The Steven Allen Show, he demonstrated on a deaf person. I'm not deaf, but I can attest that I could hear music when it was plugged , well, pasted onto my back. Meanwhile, if you look up Patrick Flannigan and read more of what he's done or said, most /,-ers will role their eyes up in their head and speed dial The Amazing Randy to "take him down."
If you google neurophone you can buy one, or make one.
Sorting out the real from the simply ineffective from the scam, oh, and from the dangeous...buyer beware. The FDA? You mean from the people that brought us the NSA?
Caution: possible paranoid rant. Flannigan says the Military after his Steven Allen appearance, and he was in Life Magazine too, declared the technology classified. Years later it was unclassifed, but the military had a 10-15 year head start on using the technology and the patent had expired (See how Bayer invested in TENS technology, for the purpose of keeping it out of the market as much as possible).
Other possibly real or possibly not technology: in the 1980's supposed electronic technology coming out of Germany was floating around the US. The general idea was that the bio-electric status of an animal may be normal or abnormal, that an animal (that means you) with a disease or injury would have a different bio-electric state, that work was being done to use this to diagnose by looking for patterns or states consistent with different diseases, and, bwala! it could be possible to treat disease by putting in corrective electric input. And the US government and the FDA at best couldn't handle this (get their minds around it) or suppressed it. It didn't help that some machines, cost around $2,000, were being promoted by some as cancer cures.
But, the general idea does not, to me, seem to violate any laws of the universe, and if scientifically investigated may prove to have some value. Or not.
Probably an independently arrived technology, read about a year ago. An Israeli company was working on a device to use tuned electric stimulation to kill cancer cells.
Caution: Logical spoof ahead.
Unless you are using a brain stimulation device, any retort you may give to this post is rejected on the basis that you are lacking in first hand the experience, and hence are ignorant of what they do.
As someone who uses a TENS to manage chronic pain, I would like to know these fun things.
Probably this.
Basically, our brains readjust to higher levels of stimulation and then we feel about the same, except we may be ruining our health; see: http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
So, people may not be getting as much happiness in the long term out of drugs or junk food as they think they might. It's just the way the brain seems to be wired.
That said, you are mixing in some other interesting ideas like:
* "sexual selection" (a technical term in evolutionary biology) like for the otherwise disadvantageous and wasteful peacock's tail (or profligate showy spending) because it appeals for whatever reason to the opposite sex,,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection
* the potential problems of following other people's rules written to their own benefit, and
* time sense -- see Phillip Zimbardo's "The Time Paradox" RSA Animate video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3oIiH7BLmg
BTW, if you feel you normally have a consistent low level of mood otherwise, look hard at what you eat (artificial colors, sugar, refined starch, caffeine?) and what you don't eat (vegetables, omega 3s and other healthy fats, B complex, vitamin D, etc.). See Dr. Andrew Weil and Dr. Joel Fuhrman as places to start with that.
See also my other comments here on "Supernormal Stimuli" and "The Acceleration of Addiction".
But ultimately, as you suggest, we all make choices based on our preferences, ability, history, situation, and priorities etc..So, from a metaphysical point of view, it can be hard to argue with assumptions about the meaning of life to different people -- even if some approaches to life may seem to some to be less adaptive. And certainly those who are too abstentious, and leave no progeny as a result, are evolutionary problems on the other side of (excessive) moderation. Thus "Moderation in all things, including moderation".
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
40 years ago, sci-fi author Larry Niven called them 'wireheads'.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
Wait, didn't Stanley Stupid figure this all out years ago, when he shorted out his automobile?
But then he -- uh, insight fading, insight fading...
What were talking about?
rgb
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
DIY Stimulation has been around for years. Nothing new.
As a long term zapper, I can attest that the fears are overblown. It will help you develop your brain in unimaginable ways. Don't let "big science" control what you can do with your own body. Microsoft keeps trying to add value to this Office365 proposition but they're going to wind up dropping it eventually the same way they did with Office Live. I've always preferred Red Hat to Debian anyway, so can't say I care, but the issue of orphaned websites hosting malware is a serious and growing one. Upvoted.
So to sum up, I've been doing brain-stim for years and it's amazing.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Something milding amusing and disturbing about a man going Viral electrocuting himself piece by piece on YouTube.
You know you get the same effect from thinking really hard on problems, right? Treat your won thinking like a muscle and watch it change- a lot.
ON the same topic, there machines that do electrostimulation of muscles. When they first came out, because they can cause nearly 100% of the muscle to contract at once, (typically only 30% does on most people) people thought they'd be great for wieghtlifting and bodybuilding. We'd all just zap ourselves and get unimaginable results . Turns out, not so much.
This has the same smell to it. People get *some* effect (as opposed to the *no effect* diet they've been on most of their careers...) and then start projecting wildly and beyond any evidence about what could be done....
I'll stick to this thinking hard thing I do.
most importantly make the ugly seem attractive
So someone has found a high tech solution for the paper bag?
You got it wrong, I say, and it is because of this:
The benefits of this stuff are IMMEDIATE. You are talking genes, but the article (and I) are talking METHODS used by individuals. Genes: Only those having the gene benefit. Methods: EVERYONE using those methods benefit.
This contradicts both your points, which are valid only for genes. For example, there is next to ZERO "opportunity-cost" of waiting: Since, as usual in this world, only 1% of the exact methods attempted will end up being beneficial, the other 99% will not be. On the other hand, if something turns out to be truly beneficial, I can implement those methods IMMEDIATELY, without delay.
Or, trying to understand what/how you think, do you think this is about "brain zapping" turning into genetic advantages? This would be strange, since
- this is not what we've been talking about AFAICS
- the only thing natural selection can do *here* on genes is to let you SURVIVE those electric charges. Anyone who already survives or would survive will get any benefits immediately by just doing the same thing.
I hook the resistor up to the battery I got at the corner store and hook it up to my brain and then I'm smarter? Easy. There we go. Wait I feel funny. Was that 4700 ohms or 47? Hmmm maybe 47 I forget how to read the color - yucka yucka yucka yucka yucka
It's true that a stressful environment can indeed contribute to the risk of depression, and also that for most people, modern life is indeed stressful in a lot of new ways. To support your point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
""Nothing that we tried," Alexander wrote, "... produced anything that looked like addiction in rats that were housed in a reasonably normal environment.""
I'd agree there are many factors involved in depression, including all the factors that may stand in the way of eating better (including lack of money for healthier food, misinformation, initial lack of motivation, peers, time, negative self-talk, misinformed professionals, chemical dependencies, bad relationships, difficult working or living conditions, no access to nature, social status, etc.). So, yes, even when you know you should eat better, there can still be a lot of hurdles in the way. A related film including a truck driver trying to get out of a downward spiral:
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
You could think of nutrition as like your car's tires, which are the interface between the car and the reality of the road. If your tires are bald, you are most likely going to have an accident on slippery roads, no matter how good the rest of the car is. But if your tires are bald, maybe you spend so much time paying for car repairs that you don't have money or time to go to the tire shop for new ones? And it is hard to think about investing in new tires when all the mechanics at car repair places that you go to (which don't sell tires for some reason) are telling you (based on years of their own training) that the reason you are having so many accidents is because you need an oil change, or a new transmission, or need to install all wheel drive, or remove the roof to make the car into a convertible. Still, it is true you'd probably have less accidents even with bald tires if, say, the roads were not so windy or made of slippery glass due to bad public policy... So, yes, depression is multi-factored in that sort of way (and more, since, following the analogy, how grippy your bald tires are might still be some function of exactly how you turn the steering wheel perhaps to make the most of some remaining patches of tread near the edges perhaps).
Still, please do your own research on diet and mood and you may be surprised. A starting point: https://www.google.com/search?q=diet+and+mood
From the first result:
http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/food-to-balance-your-mood
"In a study of 200 people done in England for the mental health group known as Mind, participants were told to cut down on mood "stressors" they ate, while increasing the amount of mood "supporters." Stressors included sugar, caffeine, alcohol, and chocolate (more of that coming up). Supporters were water, vegetables, fruit, and oil-rich fish. Eighty-eight percent of the people who tried this reported improved mental health. Specifically, 26% said they had fewer mood swings, 26% had fewer panic attacks and anxiety, and 24% said they experienced less depression."
I know, one can quibble about whether they had a control group, whether that was "double blind" experiment, and so on.
Or another:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/01/28/healthy-diet-can-improve-mood/50908.html
"The results showed a strong day-to-day relationship between more positive mood and higher fruit and vegetable consumption, but not other foods."
Consider, if someone cruel were to take a rat and feed it nothing but sugar water, the poor abused rat is going to sicken and die, and probably be pretty cranky throughout the process of dying. Rats need a variety of nutrients. Why expect anything different
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Just to give an idea of what's possible beneath the surface:
Deep brain stimulation at TED Talks
Probably should go more with the "Brain Pacemaker Helps Treat Alzheimer's Disease" story, but it's too cool not to share. This involves implants performed by neurosurgeons because the positioning and amount of electricity is critical to the success of the procedure.
Although it would be interesting to see what a trickle charge does for these burnt-out frontal lobes...
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
"Society has been pretty much unbearable since more than one person has been in a group. Before that, loneliness was unbearable. And yet, most people aren't clinically depressed."
While this is true, and a good point, there can be positive forms of stress, too, called "eustress": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustress
"Eustress was originally explored in a stress model by Richard Lazarus, it is the positive cognitive response to stress that is healthy, or gives one a feeling of fulfillment or other positive feelings."
Stresses can be distress or eustress depending on how we are prepared to deal with them. The average person may smartly run from a house fire, whereas a trained and experienced fire fighter is expected to approach one calmly and deliberately (and may even feel some excitement and camaraderie putting his or her extensive training into use). There is also the notion of "flow" when the challenge matches our current level of skill. Game designers understand this -- so levels start off easy and get harder as your skills increase. And you would not expect someone who is an expert at playing a video game like, say, Halo, to be able to immediately win at face-to-face poker games, because they require different skill sets and interests (or vice versa).
Humans are adapted to a certain type of environment, which includes certain types of average stressors. Historically,
* humans lived in tribal groups that included extended families,
* they walked several miles a day,
* they got plenty of sunlight,
* they had regular exposure to the sights and sounds of nature,
* they ate organic food with lots of phytonutrients and fiber,
* they did a variety of hands-on tasks involving both the mind and body working together, and
* the stories and songs of every-day life were told by relatives for the purposes of education.
There may have been downsides to that life (high infant mortality, lack of antibiotics or trauma surgery for accidents, etc.) but there were many good things about it too in the sense that we were adapted to that mix (even if we have also partially adapted some to changes since). Humans need sunlight for health. We need exercise. We need a certain level of dirt to challenge the immune system. We need phytonutrients to build a healthy body. We need daily mental stimulation to some degree. And so on. The same sunlight might kill certain bacteria, and the same phytonutrients may poison certain insects, the same physical exercise might not be possible for a slug, and the same social challenges might drive a bear crazy, but for humans, we have adapted to make the best of those challenges -- and to be stronger as individuals and groups because of them.
Nowadays, humans in developed societies live a very differnt life in many ways:
* humans tend to live in isolated houses or apartments as singles or couples (and when they leave that home physically or virtually have experiences around a lot of strangers in cities or on the internet),
* they usually drive or take mass transit instead of walk,
* they spend much of their time indoors with no direct sunlight,
* they mainly hear synthetic sounds and see synthetic ("supernormal") images,
* they eat processed foods low in phytonutrients and fiber and high in chemical additives,
* they do tasks that are either very abstract or very physically repetitive but rarely use the mind and body together (see "The Case For Working with Your Hands" by Crawford), and
* the stories and songs of every day life are told by strangers who often want to convince someone to do something so the stranger can profit from it (often something unhealthy for the person or the planet in the long term, though it may feel good in the short term, like drinking sugar water).
A movie like "The Emerald Forest" explores a bit of this contrast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emerald_Forest
Nonetheless, very
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
"Or you keep throwing things at it until it gets better by itself and the psychiatrist takes credit for it."
Yeah, it is ironic how homeopaths are villified but psychiatrists are celebrated, when the placebo effect is strong in both... Must have a better PR firm?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
Quoting Marcia Angell:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/
"The problems I've discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. (Marcia Angell)
Bruce Levine's book goes into detail on this:
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
Also:
"Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why."
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all
"Now, after 15 years of experimentation, he has succeeded in mapping many of the biochemical reactions responsible for the placebo effect, uncovering a broad repertoire of self-healing responses. Placebo-activated opioids, for example, not only relieve pain; they also modulate heart rate and respiration. The neurotransmitter dopamine, when released by placebo treatment, helps improve motor function in Parkinson's patients. Mechanisms like these can elevate mood, sharpen cognitive ability, alleviate digestive disorders, relieve insomnia, and limit the secretion of stress-related hormones like insulin and cortisol."
The mind/brain/body/spirit/etc. indeed is amazing...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Some undeniable truths and meta-truths mixed with some (probably) speculation and mysticism on reincarnation. Love it! :-)
And I loved "What Dreams May Come".too, which I quote here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
And I wonder what spin the "simulation argument" idea would put on your suggestions?
http://www.simulation-argument.com/
Ultimately, what you are pointing towards is the mystery of consciousness...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
If you are dealing with cancer recovery, some ideas:
"Ketogenic Diet May Be Key to Cancer Recovery"
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/10/ketogenic-diet.aspx
"The premise is that since cancer cells need glucose to thrive, and carbohydrates turn into glucose in your body, then cutting out carbs literally starves the cancer cells."
People who live in traditional societies eating a traditional vegetable heavy diet and getting lots of sunlight and exercise also seem to have less lung cancer even when they smoke.
"Eat For Health - The Anti-Cancer Diet"
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx
Also look into vitamin D:
http://www.naturalnews.com/036597_vitamin_D_anti-cancer_drug.html
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/
And iodine:
http://theiodineproject.webs.com/cancerandiodine.htm
Making these sorts of changes is not quite the same as an Android body btw, mentioned in Star Trek episode "I, Mudd" as something Uhura wants), but at least it might help get to the point where you could have one if you wanted -- related to out other conversation:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3892785&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=44082521
I can see you project an optimistic sense of humor about it all, which can be a healthful thing:
http://www.humorproject.com/bookstore/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10116744
"Laughter has many clinical benefits, promoting beneficial physiological changes and an overall sense of well-being. Humor even has long-term effects that strengthen the effectiveness of the immune system."
So, laughing is probably better healthwise than a buzz from a "droud"? :-)
http://laughteryoga.org/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEfjVnYkqM
For nerve damage, vitamin B12 and omegas 3s. See also my comments here on mercury and herbs:
http://aaronwinborn.com/blogs/aaron/monday-was-my-46th-birthday-and-likely-my-last-anything-awesome-i-should-try-after-i-die
Yeah, stairs can be a real life-saver for many -- to get some regular exercise, which moves the lymph around, which boosts the immune system and the body's natural self-cleaning mechanisms. Walking outside in the sunshine helps, too (although of course how you need to manage your DVT and clot risks however competent doctors recommend):
http://www.bluezones.com/
For some inspiration, a movie that is up for free on YouTube for a while for the two year anniversary (again, adjusted for DVT):
http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/
http://www.rebootwithjoe.com/
And also, here is a movie (and book) on how clogged arteries can limit blood flow to the body's cells, creating a huge variety of health issues from that common cause (perhaps the root cause of most chronic illnesses in the US today as "diseases of affluence" such as you may be experiencing):
http://www.ravediet.com/
Also ask, "What Color is Your Diet?"
http://www.amazon.com/W
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.