What's Going On...

Bad Blogger! Oops, my bad!

Hey guys! Sorry about my erratic posting behavior. I haven't really figured out my new schedule. There are lots of reasons behind my current state of affairs and since I do like to keep Potspoon! more science related, if you wish to know what is going on, please read my current ramblings at Roogoodoo. To better understand what that post is all about, click on the tab above marked Bipolar Disorder. As many of you know, mental health is not something I take for granted and I hope my ramblings and sporadic posts about it help people... or in the very least, let them know they are not alone!

Keep learning!

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Local Science

Here in the VI, science based articles seem to be in the news a lot lately. It makes me feel especially nice as a lot of them are (while technically political news) pertaining to the environment.

• The first one I want to talk about is the fact that our current governor is trying to tackle the problem of fossil fuel usage in the VI. As laughable as it may seem, we still burn oil for electricity here. The governor laid out a plan that has the VI reducing usage and using different sources of energy within the next 14 years. While to some of my readers, this may seem like a long time, most of you know that this doesn't seem like enough at all in the Virgin Islands. Some of the renewable energy sources he mentions include solar, waste-to-energy, wind, and landfill gas. 
• Some of the members of the 29th legislature of the Virgin Islands are stalling a measure that would make an Emission Control Area around the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. The people stalling are claiming that they knew nothing of this proposal and haven't carefully thought out how it could affect tourism to the VI. Again, this is about their bottom line, and forget the health and safety of the islanders. They have had sufficient time to consider this. I wonder why they are stalling....
• The Caribbean Fishery Management council approved cuts in the amount of parrotfish local fishermen are allowed to take from federal waters. The measure came after preliminary biological opinion showed that parrotfish are vital to a healthy reef ecosystem.
• One of the local hospitals had an open forum and the CEO heard quite the community outcry on how the facility handles dialysis and mental healthcare. Not only does the facility not have any staff psychiatrists, but many of their patients cannot even get dialysis there and have to move to private facilities. The mental healthcare on these islands is deplorable at best. This is something that is near and dear to me and I hate the struggle. It's sad, really.

In the very least, well, for the moment... The VI seems to be incorporating more science related things! Woohoo!

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Early Diagnosis of Mental Disorder Closer Than We Think

A certain John Csernansky, M.D., has found that mapping certain areas of the brain and determining where the peaks and dips are located can aid in the early determination of certain mental disorders. This is very important because, like other diseases, it is in the earliest phases that they are most treatable. However, due to the nature of the disorders, they are sometimes hard to properly diagnose and treat until much later on in life. Treatment usually comes when a person is no longer functioning properly and the disorder disrupts his or her everyday life.

Unlike diabetes, for example, you cannot just do blood work and determine things. Psychiatrists only have what the patient gives as symptoms to determine things. It would be like determining lymphatic cancer by you describing a sore neck. Needless to say, this is a substantial finding for the many of us who suffer from mental illness and know what they entail.

According to the article at ScienceDaily:

Current treatments are evaluated on whether the patients' symptoms improve over several months. Csernansky, however, wants to take a longer and broader view.

"What we want to know is whether a few years later are you more able to work, are you better able to return to school?" he said. "If you take these medicines for years at a time, is your life better than if you had not taken them? We want to understand the effects of the medicines we give on the biological progression of the disease. We think that's what ultimately determines how well someone does."

Psychotic and mood disorders are life-long illnesses and require management throughout a person's life.

The implications that this could possibly allow people to get an early diagnosis and live out successful lives with complete functionality is very important to me. You can read more here.


Photo of brain from National Institutes of Health and is in Public Domain.

On a lighter note, don't forget to vote in my poll. I need all the help I can get.

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Smell the Music

I called and dear Wendy over at COPD- Caregiving is NOT for Whimps! answered. Yesterday I mentioned that if there was a topic of interest you had, or any suggestions, let me know. Well, our friend Wendy said she wanted to know more about people who hear colors, smell touches, see music, etc., so here goes. This is a great topic!

The name of this condition is actually called Synesthesia. According to Dorland's Medical Dictionary, the definition is as follows:

synesthesia (sin″es-the´zhә) a secondary sensation accompanying an actual perception; the experiencing of a sensation in one place, due to stimulation applied to another place; also, the condition in which a stimulus of one sense is perceived as sensation of a different sense, as when a sound produces a sensation of color.

This is a really technical definition so I will sum it up with a bit of inspiration from Ratatouille. This is a condition in which people cross their senses. In Ratatouille, Remy describes the flavors of food like sounds, bass notes and jazz influences. This is how people with synesthesia experience everything. If someone touches them, there may be a color associated with it. A sound may smell like something.

While many of us can perceive things in this manner, we are actively drawing comparisons between known senses and experiences. A true synesthetic has this happen involuntarily. If you had synesthesia and I told you my name, you may instantly think orange. Next time you saw me you would think orange before thinking Mimi.

fig. 1 A visual representation of how a certain synesthetic may see numbers or hear words.

This even goes as far as visuals and tastes. Imagine looking at a palm tree and tasting marshmallows. That is how crossed the senses are. It is estimated that most of the people with this condition are women and studies have it anywhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 100,000. Not a lot of information is out there, but scientists are being forced to realize that this is real and it is not just "crazy" people who have it.

There is an older article on LiveScience about it. In it, they discuss how different people perceive things with this condition. Surprisingly, there is a Neuroscience For Kids (really?) site that has a lot of information as well. This kids' site has an experiment you can do to determine if you or any of your friends have synesthesia. It is really neat! I think I may try it at my next party. The experiment is as follows:

1. Read a list of random numbers, days of the week, words, etc.
2. Have everyone write down what color they associate with these.
3. Collect and save answers and label "answers #1" or "trial A" or whatever.
4. 2-3 weeks later, read off the same numbers, words, etc in a different order.
5. Have everyone again write down what color they associate with it.
   
6. Compare answers from first trial to these. People who have the same answers for things regardless of the order are synesthetics. Cool, huh?

There are many books on synesthesia if you want to find out more. Synesthesia is slowly becoming less of a novel idea and more of an accepted fact. Like anything, the more we talk about it, the more we find out about it.



Again, if anyone has any questions or suggestions, feel free to email me: moya [dot] marizela {at} gmail [dot] com.

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Overcoming My Mind

We all have our ups and downs. It is an inevitable part of being human (or any animal really, I KNOW Floyd is moody). Sometimes the ups don't last as long as we would like and it seems at times that the downs last forever. It's hard to do, but remembering the good is even more important during the downs than we realize. For some of us, however, the ups and downs spin out of control. They are not just situational highs and lows, they are emotional highs and lows so extreme we cannot control them. At all. I know many people think: 'they are YOUR emotions, how could you not control them?' but we can't at all.

The point I am trying to get to is a topic that is near and dear to me. This is a topic that requires me to admit something about my self I have only ever even mentioned (sort of) once on this blog before. I am bipolar. It's true. I have medical records dating back more than 13 years and covering various professionals that all agree. I'm stuck. There is no way around it. Well, there is LOTS of medication, but lithium almost killed my kidneys.

Why, all of a sudden, am I telling you this? Mostly, it is a way for me to teach something else science related while breaking down certain stigmas attached to this topic. Partially, it is to give myself a pep talk and to let me know that it is okay and not my fault. Weird, I know.

First and foremost, a definition:

According to One Look, bipolar means having two poles, like Earth. Throw on the word "disorder" to that (I really hate that word) and you get

▸ noun: a mental disorder characterized by episodes of mania and depression

Now what this means is I am mental and manic and depressed. Okay, not QUITE that mean, but really it just means I go from high to low in periods. Seasonally and daily in my case. Instead of a perfect seasonal sine wave going down for fall and spring and up for summer and winter, the overall trend is up and down but with little "mini" ups and downs in between. To illustrate this, I, well, made an illustration (hehe).

fig. 1 episodes

Sounds like fun, right? Well my husband says it keeps things interesting, like sleeping with a different woman everynight! *sheesh* As you can see, he is actually very supportive and through the years, I have developed a sense of humor about this.

What causes this?

I don't really want to rewrite everything I see today so you get a quote from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI for short):

While the exact cause of bipolar disorder is not known, most scientists believe that bipolar disorder is likely caused by multiple factors that interact with each other to produce a chemical imbalance affecting certain parts of the brain. Bipolar disorder often runs in families, and studies suggest a genetic component to the illness. A stressful environment or negative life events may interact with an underlying genetic or biological vulnerability to produce the disorder. There are other possible "triggers" of bipolar episodes: the treatment of depression with an antidepressant medication may trigger a switch into mania, sleep deprivation may trigger mania, or hypothyroidism may produce depression or mood instability. It is important to note that bipolar episodes can and often do occur without any obvious trigger.

This, in a nutshell, states that we really have NO CLUE! Somewhere, though, I have faulty wiring. How to fix faulty wiring? Well, we don't have little nanobot electricians (yet) but we can load up on chemicals.

How does it affect a person's life?

Severely.
I don't mean to sound morose, but it affects everything... especially school. Some days I am super gung-ho and can't wait to learn and research and learn and talk talk talk. These are usually my manias. This is great except my papers sound like my thought process: a tornado flinging thoughts at you. Other days I can't even get myself to think about doing my homework or even getting out of bed. At times I go to school just to argue with people. Other times I am there, but my notes are more sketchbook pages.
The worst part is I know the stuff but since I don't go to a Big State U, I can't just rely on my test scores to float me. Homework = FAIL. The advantage is I am a discussion based learner so the small classes accomodate that. That is why I am still an undergrad at my age with an okay grade point average even though I am super passionate about science. I can't stay focused and I can't really learn the way I KNOW I can. This could be due to a really horrible standardized education system, but that is a topic for one of my soon-to-return Debate!s.

Back to the topic, bipolar disorder can so severely affect people, they can be considered disabled. I, however, am stubborn, and even though my case is severe I force myself to be a "normal" functioning member of society. It may lead to me having odd jobs (painting ornaments, working with butterflies, barking) and having a hard time with authority at times, but I make it work. I know what my triggers are and I have an amazing support network (the hubs and my best friend/mother). There may be many people you know who are bipolar as well and you may not notice or simply think they are nutty and silly.
A book I read when I was younger made me realize I was not alone. It's called An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness and it was the first time I saw on paper what I had been trying to describe all along. I read it when I was about 14 years old and is one of the books that has deeply impacted me over the years. I began to talk more freely about my condition and found other people who thought they were alone as well. Until you know what you have, you feel as if everyone and everything is going crazy and you can't grasp why what you are doing and feeling is wrong. When you know, you can (occasionally) step back and say, "it's okay, it's just a swing." It is a bit hard to overcome, but I am driven and know that even if it takes me 10 years to finish my degree (I hope not) I will do it because this is what I love and I am not going to let my malfunctioning neuropathways stop me!

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