Wonderful lecture, about 50 minutes, with Robert Sapolsky. Ties stress (glucocorticoids) in with depression.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Speaking of stress...
Found this at Respectful Insolence blog. Pretty clever. It certainly stirred my own noradrenalin pathways, but the dopamine and serotonin (now that I have some of each built back up again) were not far behind.
Take a ride in a Toyota.
Take a ride in a Toyota.
Friday, March 19, 2010
Stress
Fabulous set of free access articles with a focus on stress, from Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Another anniversary, 10 years ago
Another memory about this time of year which I didn't sift through to, until this morning, is that 10 years ago yesterday, my dad died. He would be 87 now, were he still alive. I must be pretty much over that, because I didn't even consciously remember until now.
These days I live near where he was buried. If it's a nice day I might hike the few miles out along the highway to his spot, and visit, re-member.
These days I live near where he was buried. If it's a nice day I might hike the few miles out along the highway to his spot, and visit, re-member.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Anniversary reactions
So, I thought back to where my life was at a year ago, which in some ways feels like just yesterday; I reminded myself that only a year ago I was dismantling a lifetime, not just a practice from which I have been detached - still responsible for but emotionally detached from - for about 9 months.
I was faced with jettisoning a lot of belongings, books, purging and cleaning and scraping and painting and scouring and selling and usually fell into bed at night exhausted.
I realize that some part of my brain still feels open raw places from having undergone that experience, even while other bits are ecstatic to be back under big bright empty sky. When another stressor comes along, I realize that the reverberation of a year ago is like an echo chamber. I realize that as a brain ripens and ages through a life span the echo chamber doesn't go away, in fact it just gets bigger and bigger as years and anniversary reactions accumulate. If would be lovely if there were a delete key on stress, something easy to simply click and make the anxious stuff disappear. That isn't the case. So I go for long walks instead. It helps.
As I walk I think about how I'm helping my brain produce the millions of different kinds of neurotransmitters it needs to remain healthy and help me, its "I" illusion, to remain calm and content. I think about how lucky I am that I'm on the eve of 60 years old and am in a body, with a brain, and feet, that don't hurt me, that let me walk pretty far (3 or 4 km) without getting the least bit tired or sore. Bored a little, maybe, sometimes, but not in any pain. I think about how nice my nerves feel, sliding around in my body, first one side, then the other, how my spinal cord is slightly rotating within its canal, how blood flow is being engaged to feed it generously through mechanical stimulation. Yeah, mechanical stimulation is a stressor, but it's the right kind of stressor, and I remember that all this slidey motion will spur it to stay juicy and healthy and functional.
As I relax into the rhythm of walking I try out different things to challenge my brain, just a little, try a bit more novelty, explore my body adapting to it. I see how tall I can be as I walk along. I feel the difference between using abs and not using abs while walking. I notice what happens to my breathing. I work with breathing. I place my feet on a narrower trail with out breaking stride. I play with stride length without breaking stride. I experiment with which edge of my feet I'm walking on. I run a little. I play. I stride. On the outside, I am just a woman walking, but on the inside, I'm engaged in a process of discovery and comparison and full body sensing.
I think about how lucky I am to not have to carry a little roof all the time, called an umbrella, shutting out the sky, bumping other umbrellas, being bumped by other umbrellas, or, the alternative, rain on the top of the head - ceaseless remorseless rain. Seventy-five different kinds and sizes of rain.
I note the lack of other people and feel grateful to be in a place where there are no drug dealers being obvious or their customers reeling around or shouting at each other or at nothing at all or thick knots of tourists standing and gawking everywhere or beggars asking me for money or trying to sell me something - people crowding me, people who represent huge obstacles, both physical and psychological, to navigate through and around. I am alone with my own thoughts, and all around is just empty space I can relax into, nobody nearby I have to worry may knock me down and steal my wallet, or knock me down because it's a gang initiation ritual, or knock me down because they are bigger and taller and didn't even know I was there.
I always see a little something I never noticed before, even on familiar routes. I am free to gaze around at sharp contrast of light bouncing off surfaces, at the brightness of snow (well, not lately - it has developed that cavitated, dulldarkgrey look as spring arrives..) at the brightness and blueness of the sky, and think, this is all very good for my brain. I tell myself, it will synchronize and neuroplasticize itself in a positive direction. I tell myself that its emotional buffers will continue to improve every day in direct proportion to increasing clarity of thought and access to cognition and sharpness of logic. I realize these are beliefs, but I also know they are beliefs based on science. Science is my comfort and strength. It always changes but its changes are always for the better, provide ever more solidity.
I go home, look at the pedometer and how many steps I took. I think, OK, I can do better than that. Tomorrow I'll go again. Life is a series of small steps, physical and metaphorical, that accumulate over time, will add up to something, positive or not. Every step should be consciously chosen or result from a habit consciously chosen and feel like the right step to have made, no matter how tiny it may have been. With each step I take, I'm putting distance between myself and what I've left behind; with each step I'm coming closer to whatever it is I want out of life, whoever it is that I am becoming.
Every walk I take is a victory, my pitting of my own life against everything that would do my life harm. I have synchronized myself with me, as best I can, and after, I feel ready to read a paper and make a few slides and write a few thoughts down on a file card. My new life.
I'll deal with that recent workquake in Vancouver as I can, when I can. It's not my life. Not really. Not anymore. I'm not there, not anymore. I'm Here. And this is Now. Things could be much worse.
I was faced with jettisoning a lot of belongings, books, purging and cleaning and scraping and painting and scouring and selling and usually fell into bed at night exhausted.
I realize that some part of my brain still feels open raw places from having undergone that experience, even while other bits are ecstatic to be back under big bright empty sky. When another stressor comes along, I realize that the reverberation of a year ago is like an echo chamber. I realize that as a brain ripens and ages through a life span the echo chamber doesn't go away, in fact it just gets bigger and bigger as years and anniversary reactions accumulate. If would be lovely if there were a delete key on stress, something easy to simply click and make the anxious stuff disappear. That isn't the case. So I go for long walks instead. It helps.
As I walk I think about how I'm helping my brain produce the millions of different kinds of neurotransmitters it needs to remain healthy and help me, its "I" illusion, to remain calm and content. I think about how lucky I am that I'm on the eve of 60 years old and am in a body, with a brain, and feet, that don't hurt me, that let me walk pretty far (3 or 4 km) without getting the least bit tired or sore. Bored a little, maybe, sometimes, but not in any pain. I think about how nice my nerves feel, sliding around in my body, first one side, then the other, how my spinal cord is slightly rotating within its canal, how blood flow is being engaged to feed it generously through mechanical stimulation. Yeah, mechanical stimulation is a stressor, but it's the right kind of stressor, and I remember that all this slidey motion will spur it to stay juicy and healthy and functional.
As I relax into the rhythm of walking I try out different things to challenge my brain, just a little, try a bit more novelty, explore my body adapting to it. I see how tall I can be as I walk along. I feel the difference between using abs and not using abs while walking. I notice what happens to my breathing. I work with breathing. I place my feet on a narrower trail with out breaking stride. I play with stride length without breaking stride. I experiment with which edge of my feet I'm walking on. I run a little. I play. I stride. On the outside, I am just a woman walking, but on the inside, I'm engaged in a process of discovery and comparison and full body sensing.
I think about how lucky I am to not have to carry a little roof all the time, called an umbrella, shutting out the sky, bumping other umbrellas, being bumped by other umbrellas, or, the alternative, rain on the top of the head - ceaseless remorseless rain. Seventy-five different kinds and sizes of rain.
I note the lack of other people and feel grateful to be in a place where there are no drug dealers being obvious or their customers reeling around or shouting at each other or at nothing at all or thick knots of tourists standing and gawking everywhere or beggars asking me for money or trying to sell me something - people crowding me, people who represent huge obstacles, both physical and psychological, to navigate through and around. I am alone with my own thoughts, and all around is just empty space I can relax into, nobody nearby I have to worry may knock me down and steal my wallet, or knock me down because it's a gang initiation ritual, or knock me down because they are bigger and taller and didn't even know I was there.
I always see a little something I never noticed before, even on familiar routes. I am free to gaze around at sharp contrast of light bouncing off surfaces, at the brightness of snow (well, not lately - it has developed that cavitated, dulldarkgrey look as spring arrives..) at the brightness and blueness of the sky, and think, this is all very good for my brain. I tell myself, it will synchronize and neuroplasticize itself in a positive direction. I tell myself that its emotional buffers will continue to improve every day in direct proportion to increasing clarity of thought and access to cognition and sharpness of logic. I realize these are beliefs, but I also know they are beliefs based on science. Science is my comfort and strength. It always changes but its changes are always for the better, provide ever more solidity.
I go home, look at the pedometer and how many steps I took. I think, OK, I can do better than that. Tomorrow I'll go again. Life is a series of small steps, physical and metaphorical, that accumulate over time, will add up to something, positive or not. Every step should be consciously chosen or result from a habit consciously chosen and feel like the right step to have made, no matter how tiny it may have been. With each step I take, I'm putting distance between myself and what I've left behind; with each step I'm coming closer to whatever it is I want out of life, whoever it is that I am becoming.
Every walk I take is a victory, my pitting of my own life against everything that would do my life harm. I have synchronized myself with me, as best I can, and after, I feel ready to read a paper and make a few slides and write a few thoughts down on a file card. My new life.
I'll deal with that recent workquake in Vancouver as I can, when I can. It's not my life. Not really. Not anymore. I'm not there, not anymore. I'm Here. And this is Now. Things could be much worse.
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Upheavalment and unravelment
It's strange how stuff seems to arrive in bunches, after long periods of time of relative smoothness. Like, first Haiti, then Chile, out in the geographic world.
The private world seems like that too, these days. I received news on Sunday that the receptionist (in Vancouver) would be resigning, then the very next day (yesterday) I received word that my locum replacement was resigning as of June. That's pretty much my old life in Vancouver finally down for the count. I shall have to dismantle the practice officially, sign papers etc, I suppose. Kill the legal entity. It's not a rumination I really need right now, yet at the same time some little part inside of me feels slightly more free, so that's good, I guess.
The third thing was that this morning I sat down to work on my presentation for Brazil, and discovered the mouse was dead. Very very dead. At times like this, with three big whammies in a row, it's hard not to feel a tad superstitious about life. Superstitious, as in, "what is this all supposed to mean?" The rational part of my brain says, weird coincidence. We move on. We deal. The emotional part of my brain is reeling around in shock and dismay and wants to clutch at straws - "How do I have to live my life differently to avoid experiencing all this stress?"
Long walks help. I've been out doing that quite a bit these days.
Postscript: I started to get ready to go out to buy a new mouse. The more I thought about it the more I thought I should check to see if the problem was to do with the keyboard, not the mouse. I had a spare (new) keyboard anyway, what could it hurt to test it? I did, and taDAH! the mouse isn't dead - it works fine with the new keyboard. Just a bump, not a huge slam into the boards. All is well. Back to business.
The private world seems like that too, these days. I received news on Sunday that the receptionist (in Vancouver) would be resigning, then the very next day (yesterday) I received word that my locum replacement was resigning as of June. That's pretty much my old life in Vancouver finally down for the count. I shall have to dismantle the practice officially, sign papers etc, I suppose. Kill the legal entity. It's not a rumination I really need right now, yet at the same time some little part inside of me feels slightly more free, so that's good, I guess.
The third thing was that this morning I sat down to work on my presentation for Brazil, and discovered the mouse was dead. Very very dead. At times like this, with three big whammies in a row, it's hard not to feel a tad superstitious about life. Superstitious, as in, "what is this all supposed to mean?" The rational part of my brain says, weird coincidence. We move on. We deal. The emotional part of my brain is reeling around in shock and dismay and wants to clutch at straws - "How do I have to live my life differently to avoid experiencing all this stress?"
Long walks help. I've been out doing that quite a bit these days.
Postscript: I started to get ready to go out to buy a new mouse. The more I thought about it the more I thought I should check to see if the problem was to do with the keyboard, not the mouse. I had a spare (new) keyboard anyway, what could it hurt to test it? I did, and taDAH! the mouse isn't dead - it works fine with the new keyboard. Just a bump, not a huge slam into the boards. All is well. Back to business.
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