Anti-antibiotics

What does natural selection have to do with antibiotics?  Bacteria are becoming more and more resistant to antibiotics.  This is a global problem that is becoming more of a concern.  When antibiotics are not taken for their appropriate use, bacteria are much more likely to become resistant because of natural selection.  Within a large population of bacteria, there will be a few “stronger” bacteria that have natural mutations that keep them alive against an antibiotic.  These become “resistant” to antibiotics.  These more resistant bacteria multiply, setting the bar higher. 

This natural selection, as stated by the name, is a naturally occurring process.  Life is always finding ways to live.  Unfortunately, there are things that we have been doing that increase the rate of resistance

Antibiotics in our food.  The food industry in the United States uses antibiotics to promote growth and prevent infections.  According to some estimates, the food industry uses 5 ½ times more antibiotics on animals than the amount humans take (about 85%).  This overuse is causing more and more bacteria strains to become resistant to these drugs.  You know the milk cartons and meat packages that say it is not treated with antibiotics?  This is because more and more people are becoming concerned about having all these antibiotics in our food.  It has been found that farms that don’t use antibiotics have no incidents of infection by very dangerous and resistant strains of bacteria.  To most people, it is common sense to not give antibiotics to healthy animals. So how does overuse lead to stronger bacteria?  Think of it like this, if an antibiotic comes in and kills a large population of bacteria once every 10 years, there will be a strain of bacteria that survives and multiplies, making that kind of bacteria a little more resistant.  If that same thing happens every few months, the bacteria evolve much more quickly because each time, a new mutation is found to survive.   

Antibiotics in the medical world.  People are not taking antibiotics for their intended use either.  In the past, medical professionals have been pretty casual in their prescriptions.  Sometimes they gave antibiotics to fix a viral infection like a cold or flu.  This has no use and just allows bacteria to learn to fight those drugs.  In the recent years, this problem has gotten better; doctors are becoming more careful with prescribing.  It is also prudent to take combinations of antibiotics to make sure that all bacteria are killed.  On the patient side, we need to take the drugs exactly as prescribed until all the pills are gone.  If a patient feels better but are not done with their medication, many stop taking them.  This allows the few remaining bacteria (the stronger ones) to live and reproduce forming more bacteria that are resistant to the antibiotic.

So as a general rule of thumb; try to buy products that say they are not treated with antibiotics and be sure to finish all your pills when you do have a bacterial infection

Wellness at Mines... Check out the ORC!!

Since the weather is getting warm, go check it out!!

Wellness at Mines

Sometimes Mines makes us feel so overwhelmed that we just can’t handle it anymore.  Our piles of homework is a full time job, not to mention those of us who work part time, are active in clubs or volunteering, have family and friends to tend to, and just want some time to relax.  

Having a well-balanced life isn’t just working out or eating healthy, it is balancing everything in life.  This wheel is VERY overwhelming for us students.  We seem to completely neglect many of these pieces of the pie.  There are many ways that Mines tries to help us find balance in our lives.  Our Wellness director here, Becca Pike offered to help me with my video blog and let me interview her.  However, despite all our planning weeks ahead, our planned times ended up having conflicts last minute.  So instead, I have compiled a list of things to do to keep our sanity here.

At the Student Recreation Center

·      Personal training

·      Basic Nutrition Classes

·      Intro to fitness floor classes

·      Create your own exercise program classes

·      Create a healthy lifestyle classes

·      17 group exercise classes every week, usually taught by your fellow students

·      Body fat testing

·      Blood pressure screening

·      MANY bulletin boards

·      Handouts with wellness tips and healthy recipes

·      Semester long challenges like BODYFUSION

·      Brand new workout equipment

·      Indoor Track

·      Basketball courts, volleyball, swimming, diving, climbing wall, ping pong tables, pool table, foosball table

On campus

·      Outdoor Recreation Center

·      Intermural fields and Kafadar for all your fun activities (rugby, lacrosse, ultimate frisbee, flag football)

·      And of course, hiking South or North Table Mountain, biking, kayaking, skiing or riding, camping etc.

The "Science" behind Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer’s is a brain disorder.  It damages and kills brain cells.  Ultimately, Alzheimer’s is fatal, and currently there is no cure.  Alzheimer’s is the most common type of dementia.  Dementia is used to describe various diseases and conditions that damage brain cells.

So far, scientists have been able to identify several steps along the progression of Alzheimer’s .  Hopefully, knowing what happens will eventually lead to ways to prevent or cure these complications.  First, plaques form.  Plaques are microscopic clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid peptide.  Another problem that occurs is that tangles form.  These tangles are twisted microscopic strands of the protein tau.  Then a loss of connections among brain cells occurs.  These connections are the ones responsible for memory, learning, and communication.  Inflammation results from the brain’s effort to fend off the lethal effects of the other problems.  Eventually, the brain cells begin to die and the brain mass shrinks. To see an interactive presentation of how the brain is affected, click here.

As Michael brought up in his comment on the last post, a lot of the risk of Alzheimer’s runs in the genes.  There is tons of research going on that looks at the proteins, genes that code for the proteins, and the processes that are supposed to remove these proteins.  In one study, neuropathologist Lea T.  Grinberg studies the physical biology of brains collected in a brain bank.  She helped establish the Brain Bank in Brazil and has legally acquired more then 2500 brain samples from residents that have died with and without dementia symptoms.  The goal is to determine why some people have the same pathology levels associated with Alzheimers but never showed symptoms of the disease.  They also hope to find whether there is a connection between ethnic background and the disease. 

The National Institute of Aging suggests that the problem of buildup of the beta-amyloid protein is not that it is being produced at an abnormally fast rate, but that it is just not being cleared out of the brain effectively.

Although the process of diagnosing Alzheimer's continues to change, there is growing hope that we will soon be able to identify the processes that cause the problem and find cures for them.  

I say "science" in the title because I think the general public only likes to call it science if it works.  Currently, we don't know what causes Alzheimer's, who is at risk, how to fix it, or even what to do to prevent it.  As I stated in the last post, we are doing extensive research on each of those topics, and we have some good ideas of how to diagnosis it, but this disease has stumped many brilliant minds. 

Alzheimer's Disease, Are we at risk?

I recently visited an Alzheimer’s care home.  I volunteer at the annual Memory Walk in Denver City Park but I have never really had any personal experience with an Alzheimer’s patient until a few weeks ago.  It was very sad to see all those people just sitting around wasting the day away.  One lady kept saying her husband was coming to pick her up and take her out for dinner.  It was only after about 15 minutes of her repeating that, that I was told that her husband died several years ago, and she just didn’t remember.  She spent her entire day wondering when he was going to show up; not know that he won't.  I decided I wanted to look know more about if we are getting close to a cure and what could cause this terrible disease.  

 

I have heard a lot about certain things that were thought to cause Alzheimer’s.  I decided to look into those first.  The Alzheimer’s Association has a list of common myths about the causes of Alzheimer’s.  The bathroom stalls in Brown says the flu shot increases your risk, deodorant is advertised as being “aluminum free”, crossword puzzles are supposed to help.  Which of these are true?  The common ones are listed below:

Alzheimer Myths

1)  Memory loss is a natural part of aging

Reality: Experts say severe memory loss is a symptom of a serious illness.  Whether your memory starts to go when you get older is still up to debate.

2)  Alzheimer’s disease is not fatal

            Reality: Alzheimer's disease has no survivors. It destroys brain cells and causes memory changes, erratic behaviors and loss of body functions. It slowly and painfully takes away a person's identity, ability to connect with others, think, eat, talk, walk and find his or her way home. L

3)  Only older people get Alzheimer’s

            Reality: Alzheimer’s can strike people as young as 30s.  This is called younger-onset Alzheimer’s.  It is rare but still affects 200,000 people in the US that are under 65.

4)  Drinking out of aluminum cans or using aluminum pots (or antiperspirants) can lead to Alzheimer’s

            Reality:  Studies have failed to confirm that aluminum has any role in causing Alzheimer’s.

5)  Aspartame causes memory loss

            Reality:  The FDA has done more than 100 laboratory and clinical studies and have found that aspartame has no evidence that it is dangerous.

6)  Flu shots increase the risk

            Reality:  Several studies (1 & 2) link flu shots and other vaccinations to a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s and overall better health

So far there is no cure.  I will discuss some treatments that are meant to slow or ease the symptoms in a later post.

I hope that these myths have helped to debunk some other those rumors I’m sure everyone has heard.  Why is it that we have heard more about these myths than we have about the actual disease?  I didn’t even know what anatomically happens to Alzheimer’s patients until I started researching but I have heard almost all of these myths.  How do we communicate facts that will have just as much media hype as the myths?  Well my guess is that we can’t. 

Let's Get Juicing

I’ll try to make this my last post for a while about foods and what we should eat and not eat.  Alex, my other half, found out that he is suffering from an ulcer.  I did a presentation on ulcers back in high school anatomy so I felt like I knew a decent amount about them.  Considering his diet, it is not surprising that he has an ulcer.  Our bodies have mechanisms that regulate our blood PH to be between 7.35 and 7.45.  But most of what we eat and what we consider to be filling is either mildly or highly acidic.  Most grains, meats, dairy, favorite beverages, sweets, and condiments are acidic.  Fruits, vegetables, and some nuts are basic.  A family friend suggested trying juicing vegetables and fruits to add quantity to his daily diet.  

What is “juicing”?  It is essentially blending up vegetables and fruits to make a drink.  You can do this with a blender and then strain most of the pulp out if you like, or buy a juicer.  They range from $30 to $300.  The difference?  I don’t know.  There is another blog that I read, Health Blogger, that also did a post on juicing.  I thought I would look more into it.

It has been shown that making up to 75% of your diet “raw” will improve overall health significantly; from mental, physical, and emotional.  People have written books on how it has saved their lives: Raw Energy by Leslie and Susannah Kenton, Juicing for Life by Cherie Calbom, and etc.

There are also books that give juicing recipes that will help prevent or alleviate the symptoms of almost any illness that you have (acne, alzheimers, ulcers, depression).  A good start to your research of this topic is juicingbook.com.  There are recipes to try and precautions to be aware of.  The author of the Juicing Book, teaches responsible juicing.  Vegetables are powerful and cause upset stomachs and headaches if too much of certain vegetables are eaten in excess.  To start, make juices using common vegetables that you already eat.  “Start slow.  Don’t start out juicing like a kamikaze.” 

Alex and I are going to start experimenting with a borrowed juicer.  I look forward to hearing if anyone else has done this before. 

Self Evaluation 2

I have worked hard to improve my blog.  I was unaware of how many blog post were expected of me.  Initially I thought we only needed 1 per week but now I am striving for at least 2 and have done so since I found that out.  I have been striving to make my post interesting with titles that will make people want to read them.  My goal is to make my blog enjoyable to read.  We all read technical research everyday for school.  I try to incorporate science into a topic, making a common topic interesting to us knowledge-yearning folk. 

I like to read blogs that are similar to mine.  I am interested in Biotechnology so I like blogs that incorporate it.  I like hearing what people think about my articles and I like to comment on other's posts.  I am not a very controversial person so I have struggled in posting controversial things.  I do have some topics in mind that will almost for sure change that. 

I have posted 33 comments on other blogs since the last grading period (yes I keep track or I will have no idea).  I try to comment on all the posts of the blogs I follow.  Sometimes I cannot relate to them so I will not comment but I probably make about 6 comments a week but read about half the class's posts that are posted that week.

I hope to have more stimulating posts in the remaining few weeks.

Dairy is good... No its bad!!

I attended Wellness Day last Friday.  It was interesting to see things there that counted as wellness, like Planned Parenthood.  I don’t know how Planned Parenthood can help your wellness.  Apparently babies aren’t good for your health or well-being.  But that is beside the point.

I picked up a bunch of fliers from most of the booths.  One flier, from Natural Grocers, taught how to “build a healthy meal”.  It states that a healthy meal means that you need HALF your plate to be vegetables; the second half of the meal is split up into approximately equal sections including whole grains, protein, fruit, and healthy fats.  What happened to the food pyramid that we learned in school? 

Healthy Meal Wheel

  vs

The Food Pyramid

This brings up the question again, how do we know what is good for us?  As you will notice, dairy products are not even shown on the first diagram as its own food group.  People live many different lifestyles and I think that is the root cause of these differences.  After attending yoga classes for a few semesters, I have gotten to see the lifestyles and beliefs that a lot of these, I will call them "yoga people" share.  I think people that don’t eat meat are crazy; it is one of my favorite things.  I think this Healthy Meal Wheel is skewed towards those who live the ‘yoga lifestyle’ and don’t see animal products as being a necessity in the diet. 

The realization that I am beginning to have its this: choose what you think is important in your diet.  Vegetables are proven to be very beneficial to your health.  Some fats are better for you than others.  Calories are what give you energy to make it through the day.  From there, choose your proportions as you wish.  These are all just guidelines from various government agencies and health food stores.  If you would die if you had to give up eating ice cream or drinking wine every day, then don't give it up.  Wellness is balancing things that make you happy with things that are good for your body.  The latter is obviously still up to debate.  So take your best guess and do what makes you happy.

Bananas: The cure-all or just another tasty fruit?

I received an email not too long ago claiming that bananas could cure everything from hangovers and depression to PMS and morning sickness.  I wanted to look more into the scientific benefits of bananas and see if these were based on fact or just speculations.  You can read the email for yourself on the Truth or Fiction website.  The website editors checked with a spokesperson for Chiquita Banana Company.  She/he commented that although bananas have a lot of nutritional benefits, a lot of the claims in the email are merely assumptions and have not been proven.  

So are bananas more than just a tasty fruit?  Here are some of the nutritional benefits of 1 large banana:

140 calories

2 g protein

4 g fiber

602 mg of potassium

About 10% of daily value for the following (rough estimate so I wouldn’t have to put down the mg of each for all of them):  Vitamin A, Full range of B vitamins, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, and Magnesium

 For actual data, visit here.

Is ~10% a lot?  It is more than other fruits.  The banana is ranked one of the healthiest fruits (after cooked plantains) when nutritional figures such as protein, vitamins and minerals, fiber and calories are compared. 

Proven benefits:

Bananas are a great source of instant energy because they have natural sugars.  The potassium helps muscles contract properly during exercise and prevent cramping after exercise.  And since your heart is your hardest working muscle, bananas are good for your heart too!!

Ripe bananas contain serotonin and tryptophan; they boost your happiness and can help you sleep. 

Less ripe bananas help relieve constipation; riper bananas help relieve diarrhea.  They are easy to digest and the fructooligosaccharide nourishes the probiotic bacteria in the colon that help us absorb nutrients. 

Bananas act as an antacid and help protect against stomach ulcers.  They activate cells that compose the stomach lining and protease inhibitors in bananas help to eliminate bacteria that cause stomach ulcers. 

For more fun facts go to Chiquita.

So although the email was not completely true, I don’t think there was any negative impact on the general public by advertising the healing power of bananas.  To my knowledge, you cannot overdose on any of the vitamins and minerals by eating too many bananas.  People who read the email are now filling their bodies with potassium, lots of B vitamins, and natural sugars.  Sounds pretty healthy to me.  No harm done. 

Train your brain: Toolbox Project

Mark A. Collin created a method of implementing Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into elementary schools.  What is SEL?  It is a group of skills to help children manage their own attention to become powerful learners.  The skills help them to manage emotions, care for others, establish positive relationships, make responsible decisions, control their focus and solve problems.

Collin’s method is called “Toolbox”.  It is a set of 12 tools that give children a concrete way to solve problems and interact with others in a positive way.  The kids learn that their brain is resilient; they can train it to react to situations in certain ways.  This video is from a 3^rd grader that gives a brief description of the 12 tools and tells (in a very powerful way) how it has affected him.   

The 12 tools are the following: breathing tool, quiet/safe place tool, listening tool, empathy tool, personal space tool, using our words tool, garbage can tool, taking time tool, please and thank you tool, apology and forgiveness tool, patience tool, and courage tool.  They are very easy language and the kids can use and implement them on a daily basis.  Backed by Richard Davidson's neuroscience research, these types of methods for teaching SEL will bring kids up to be able to control their anger, have better relationships, and lead to happier future adolescents and adults.

I think this is a good idea, mostly the part that lets kids know in the very beginning that they can control their emotions.  Their brains adapt and they are the ones in charge of making themselves happier.  Here at Mines, I see a lot of people that just sit around wallowing in their sorrows.  They like to feel sorry for themselves and let others know how unhappy they are.  WE control our happiness.  If you aren't happy right now, change it.  If you are surrounded by people who are also unhappy, find some friends that love life.  School is hard but there are plenty of ways to train your brain to have a better outlook on life. 

Train your brain part 2

I began to look deeper into social and emotional learning to follow up on my earlier post.  Traditionally, school was for the 3 Rs: Reading, Rriting, and Rithmetic.  Now, school systems are trying to implement a more well-rounded program for children.  This includes social and emotional learning (SEL).  Social emotional learning’s goal is to give children the tools necessary to control their emotions and use that power to be successful in the educational, social, and emotional environments.

As I mentioned in the last post on this topic, Richard Davidson is well known for doing the ‘science’ of this topic.  He is a neuroscientist that has conducted many studies including the benefits of SEL on the brain.  In his talk given in the last post, he studied children’s brain activity to identify the differences in their response to various situations.

Here is a summary of his 20-minute presentation (He presented it very well so hopefully this does justice to it).

·      Take home message: SEL changes the brain; even down to the gene level

·      Neuroplasticity- our brain is built to change with experiences, it is very dynamic and resilient

·      Children are constantly having their brains molded by experiences; we want to mold them in positive directions; we can do this using SEL

·      Behavioral changes are biological (physically change the brain)

·      Behavioral changes can create more specific changes than medications have been able to achieve (could SEL potentially sure ADD in children??)

·      The reactions of a child to a negative event vary from child to child; neuroscientists study what brings about these differences and how children can learn to recover more quickly to these incidents

·      One example of a study to measure these differences of reactions: show a very sad picture and monitor the brain activity with respect to time (pictures at one period of time are similar to the image shown above).  The individuals that recover quicker from this negative event have a greater ability to regulate their emotions

·      Regulating one’s emotions is good for not only the emotions, but for one’s health.  Cortisol is released in response to stress.  With quicker recovery to negative events, adolescents with greater emotion control have lower cortisol levels in the evening

·      With large amounts of stress and anxiety, the memory and learning ability is greatly impaired

·      Conclusion: we can positively change the brain through SEL

So how is this “Social Emotional Learning” implemented?  Stay tuned for next post

Chocolate Milk after working out

In response to Briana’s comment, I decided to look into chocolate milk.  It was a lot harder to find any articles that talked negatively about chocolate milk.  This might be because of the amount of coaches and fitness magazines that promote chocolate milk.  I found articles from WebMD, chocolatemilk.com, a Healthy Lifestyle blog, and Fitness magazine.  They all suggested pretty much the same thing: chocolate milk is a great way to restore fatigued muscles. 

Apparently, Michael Phelps was seen drinking chocolate milk after his Olympic swims.  So it must be good for you if Michael Phelps drinks it.  Another drink that he uses is called Pure Sport, created at the University of Texas.  It has the “right” ratio of carbohydrates to whey protein (2.67).  But guess what? 1% chocolate milk has that same carb to whey protein ratio. 

When compared with other sports drinks and water, chocolate milk has less sugar and artificial colorings and more vitamins and nutrients.  The only bad things I could find on chocolate milk is that it has more calories than most energy drinks.  For athletes like Michael Phelps, a large amount of calories are needed, however for those people who are working out to lose weight, chocolate milk might not be the best option.  Also, you need to be careful about what chocolate milk you choose.  Some milk has antibiotics or hormones added, as seen in my last post. 

So from what I have gathered, choose a pre-made organic chocolate milk or just make your own mix from your milk at home.  I was not able to find anything on brands of chocolate milk so you will have to look at the labels for yourself.  I hope this helps. 

Since there are so many other athletes out there, has anyone else had a suggestion from a doctor or coach to drink or not drink chocolate milk?  I have never played anything competitively enough to get that advice I guess.

got milk?

I love milk. My family went through about 4 gallons a week before we all went off to college.  But when I got to college, I realized that not everyone loved it as much as we did. I am the only one of my roommates that keeps milk in our refrigerator.  I have heard claims that it isn’t good for you; this breaks my heart and so this post was a little difficult for me to write. 

I found 2 articles on the subject: Milk: Good or Bad? and Does Milk Really Do a Body Good?.  There have been large efforts by doctors and industry to campaign for people to drink more milk.  The "got milk?" campaign was a huge media effort that everyone has seen.

The first article suggests that raw, organic milk from grass-fed cows is good milk.  Because of the business and economic demands, the milk industry has become more unhealthy.  First, as everyone has probably heard, rBGH (Bovine Growth Hormone) is given to many cows to make them produce more milk than they normally would.  This seems unhealthy but there have been studies that show that there is not effect on humans.  Believe what you want.

Second, pasteurization is said to destroy the good (probiotics) and bad bacteria in the milk.  It also destroys the key enzymes that help us digest milk properly.  It changes the calcium quantity and solubility.  The body is thought to absorb less calcium when processed milk is consumed.

Next, homogenization is the process that breaks fats up into smaller sizes so that it does not collect at the top of the milk.  This is thought to allow the enzyme xanthine oxidase to pass into the blood stream intact.  It causes buildup of cholesterol in the arteries.

Grain-fed cows (as opposed to grass-fed) have an imbalance in fat and fatty acid ratios.  Grass-fed cows have much more omega-3, which is good for your health.

The second article references Cornell University’s study that shows that high animal calcium and animal protein intake is the primary cause of degenerative disease!!  This seems exactly opposite from what we have been hearing all along from our doctors and the media. 

I’m not sure how I feel about this topic yet.  I haven’t found any good articles that are pro-milk that address all these concerns.  However, I have found several sources that tell different reasons for not believing milk is healthy.  This stirs me up a little bit.  Let me know if any of you have heard these anti-milk (if you will) arguments before or if I have just been in my own little world full of milk.

Trans Fats

Did the title scare you?  Did your arteries tense up a little?  Or did you imagine a delicious fried chicken meal? 

The media has done a good job at creating a fear of trans fats.  Every label on vending machine chips has “zero trans fat” on it.  So that must be really bad stuff if it takes up so much space on the front of the bag.  But is that all the public knows about it?  That it’s bad?  And what about the other fats?

There are several types of fats including monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, saturated, and trans.  These names are given based on their chemical structure.  The two unsaturated fats are considered to be the “good” fats.  These are found in fish, nuts, etc.  They don’t have a hydrogen atom to fill every carbon atom.  This allows the carbon to form a double bond, which creates a kink in the structure.  

Saturated fats are molecules in which the carbon atoms all are saturated with hydrogen atoms.  Trans fats are “hydrogenated”, artificially made fats that are similar to saturated fats; the difference is in the orientation of the hydrogen atoms in the middle of the molecule.  

Trans fats are found in fried food and also in foods like piecrusts that have a long shelf life (the reason trans fats are added).  The saturated fats are nice and full of hydrogen atoms and happy.  They easily stack and pack together.  Saturated fats are solid at room temperature while unsaturated fats are like liquid oils.  This is because of the chemical structure.  Think of paper.  Regular sheets (saturated and flat molecules) are easy to stack together.  When the paper is kinked or crumpled (molecules of unsaturated fats), you can fit a lot less into a certain space.  Solids are more ordered structures than liquids.  The disorder in the mono and polyunsaturated fats make them the “good” fats because they can’t stack up (like the saturated and trans fats) in your arteries to form clots and block blood flow. 

So saturated fats are bad; trans fats are worse.  They have similar structure to the saturated fats but the main difference is that they are artificially made.  Our bodies don’t need them.  Our bodies know how to break down and “deal with” small amounts of saturated fats.  Trans fats interrupt the absorption of essential hormones, vitamins and nutrients.  They lower our “good” cholesterol and raise our bad.  They interrupt bodily chemical reactions.

The FDA has begun taking steps to reduce the trans fat in food.  Companies are required to put it on the labels, but if it is less than .5 grams per serving, they can say there is zero trans fat.  There are a lot of people that think the FDA needs to protect the public from very harmful ingredients like trans fats.  The following video is from a website called Ban Trans Fats.   

After watching this 2 min video, do you believe the FDA is slacking in helping keep our country safe from ingesting harmful foods?

Self Evaluation

I couldn’t find anything that said what this needed to include.  I remember you said you wanted us to tell you about all our activity.

As you can easily find, I have posted 6 articles so far.  The first one was my welcome article; my second one was my first subject related post on money and happiness.  My third post that I wrote, but didn’t post until later, was the reading reflection.  I talked about how the reading would help me to write better posts in the future.  Then came my self-interview that we did in class.  My fifth post was about our daily commute.  I tried to frame this article to our class of seniors that are about to graduate (I’m assuming).  I wanted to give them a little heads up that commuting can really reflect how your day starts and ends.  My final post for this period was about the brain.  At one point in my college career I became really interested in the brain.  I did a few projects on it and so I hope to continue to post articles pertaining to the brain’s relation to health and happiness. 

As for the commenting that I’ve done.  So far I have really liked the following blogs and I have tried to comment on them when applicable: ScanMein, Gene Cuisine, and Culinary Chemistry.  This week was the first time I have commented on Technology Complicated and Its not just fun and Games but I plan to follow those more in the future too. 

I have posted about 10 comments, mostly on these that are my favorite so far.  I have also responded to comments on my own blog when needed.  I have begun to look for other blogs that have similar topics, specifically the ones that were suggested to me by our prof.  I am becoming more familiar with what they post and I hope to start commenting on them as well.

Please see my self-interview to get my views on how I think I am doing and what I am working towards in my future blogs.  

Train your brain

I wanted to post these two videos because it is easy to see that there is a distinct difference in the way it is framed for the audience that it is addressed to.  The first one that features Sam Wang is a 3-minute talk about the resilience of the brain; or how fast the brain can get back to a normal happiness state after a tragic event.  It is a talk that is very easy to understand and doesn’t get too in depth about how’s or why’s of the topic, just a little bit to spark the interest of the audience (something discussed in section 4.1 of the book!!).  

The movie would not import into my blog directly so here is the link.

Sam Wang on Happiness and the Brain

The second video features Richard Davidson.  He is apparently very well known in the neuroscience community because when I typed in ‘neuroscience and happiness’ into Google, he came up on most of the articles and videos.  His talk is framed very differently, it is directed to an audience with a much higher level of education because it was harder for him to keep my attention for this significantly longer video.  I would suggest just watching the first 30 seconds or 1 minute of his talk to see that although he uses a lot of higher-level jargon, he is very animated and makes you want to understand what he is talking about.  I want to look more into the “social and emotional education” that he is talking about and do a post about it later.  I also thought it was cool that he starts off by mentioning the brain’s ‘plasticity’ (aka resilience) just like Sam Wang.

The Daily Commute

 “The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting.”  Although most of us don’t ever drive more than 10 minutes everyday to campus, almost all of us probably have had the pleasure of commuting much longer distances to work over the summers.  The article Commuting from Science Blogs takes a look at how much unhappiness driving causes.  

More than 3.5 million Americans drive over 3 hours everyday to work!!  The daily commute is greatly underestimated when people are choosing a location to live.  Many will choose a larger suburban house with an hour drive vs. a smaller house with a 10-minute drive.  Is that extra 1.5 hours in the car everyday really worth the extra square footage?  This is definitely something to think about for all of us who will be house hunting within the next few months to a year.

Another similar article was written in 2008 for the LA Times.  Psychologists are hearing more and more complaints about traffic.  We live in an age of instant text messages and 4G phones, but we have to wait for hours in traffic.  This is not what we are used to dealing with.

This article suggests that the best way to limit the psychic toll that road rage takes is to think about sitting in traffic differently.  Listen to an audio book or just put on some music that helps you relax.  This is the buffer time between work and home.  Both can be crazy in their own respects so an hour to relax and listen to your favorite talk show could be just what you need.

2/2 Reflection on readings

My last post was a summary of a study that was published in Science.  From the readings, I am beginning to gain a better understanding of how to create a more ‘informal’ setting of learning, as explained by Sarah Davies in section 2.2 of Investigating Science Communication in the Information Age.  The traditional ‘formal’ dialogue is defined to be politically driven in a sense.  My last post isn’t necessarily formal, but it does almost fall into the ‘deficit’ model of SC.  I summarized the study, and it ended up being a long post still.  In my future posts, I plan to try and write shorter posts, ask some open-ended questions, especially for the more controversial topics, to try and engage the audience more.

Blog Self Interview

I have 2 blog posts that are still a work in progress so I will assess myself based on the only two that are actually posted.

My first main goal is to make my posts shorter. I will talk about how and why I will do this in my next post (my reflection on the readings post). I realized that my Money CAN buy happiness article was too long while I was writing it but I couldn’t stop myself or make it shorter.

The purpose of this blog is to fulfill an assignment (obviously); however my personal purpose while completing this assignment is to find interesting little tid-bits of information that most people will never research but will hopefully remember in the future. For our first assignment, we had to find an interesting blog and recommend it to CommForge. The one I liked, Dean’s Corner, was written by a PhD educator and academic scholar that used to work in the pharmaceutical industry. He writes several short and interesting articles everyday to just give people a little bit of news on science topics. My goal was to format my blog a little like his but with a slightly smaller focus of the topic.

Money CAN Buy Happiness

This article is from 2008 but I thought it was an appropriate start to my ‘how to find happiness’ blog.  This article from Science magazine is a study on the relationship of how people spend money and how happy they are because of it.  There has been a lot of previous research that examines the effect of income on happiness.  The research indicated that income has a reliable but weak effect on happiness, especially after the basic needs are met.  However, even though real incomes have increased in the US over the last few decades, Americans are not reporting to be any happier. 

But why?

This study performed experiments on different groups of people to determine whether spending money on themselves or on others gave them a greater feeling of happiness.