A Journey.

As I was getting ready to eat something in the kitchen, I turned the T.V on and the TLC channel was on. They were talking about a girl, Jani, who has schizophrenia and how she constantly talked about numbers as imaginary perhaps, animals. I was sort of confused since I had turned on the T.V after the program had already started. As I tried to keep up with the documentary I could not seem to understand how such a young and beautiful child can have such disorder. I looked at her and it was hard for me to understand that at that age her thoughts are distorted and in her eyes she shows a blank stare with a lot of confusion and indifference.
Schizophrenia- Disorder characterized by hallucinations, delusions, thought disorder therefore deteriorating the ability to function in everyday life. It affects their ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality.
I always wondered what schizophrenia really consists of, and what does a person with schizophrenia see and hear. For a minute I try to imagine it. First of all, I am those kind of people that can only do one thing at a time. I cannot seem to work as efficiently with noise around me than when there is no noise at all. I guess we can say I do not concentrate the same way. Now, someone with schizophrenia constantly has loud voices telling them what to do or just talking all at the same time, and the worst part is that these voices constantly put the person's and other people's lives in danger. Let's also imagine always feeling like someone is out there to get you. We can say that we never feel safe; therefore it is hard for us to function normally because we believe someone is always trying to hurt us. What should a parent do when they find out that their son/daughter suffers from schizophrenia disorder? Get help, get informed, and start treatment. This disorder can be noticeable in the early 20s of their lives. But what happens in the case of childhood onset disorder? Parents have to look for help, and they shall never feel alone for there is a lot of information out there to help and other people going through the same situation. I have never met someone who is schizophrenic, but I went ahead and uploaded a video of Briana. Jani Schofield's case is one of the most heard out cases of childhood onset schizophrenia, but there are also other children, like Briana.

This video gives us a clearer example of schizophrenia, and explains to us how the child's thoughts are distorted. I am trying to learn the most I can so I can be educated enough to help others once I work in my profession.
**In Jani's Journey (link), her story is told in videos, and a book. Check it out if you are interested in learning more about Jani and her story. Briana is Jani's closest friend, so she comes up in a clip. Her story is very interesting.**

You will always have me...

I grew up with two very special people in my life. We would do everything together, from going to the stores, celebrating holidays, and going out to Six Flags in San Antonio every summer was a must. When we were young life was way easier. No commitments and no worries. When my friend was 16 she had her first real boyfriend, who she fell deeply in love with. I remember it was hard on her sister and me, since she would dedicate all her time to him, and rarely pay attention to us. They were together for two years, until she got sick which made things complicated on them, since she would spend most of her time in the hospital. A little after she was finally home and out of the hospital, she found out he had cheated with one of her best friends. It broke her. I couldn't be with her every day to feel her pain but I knew how she felt because her sister would tell me. When I did go to visit her sometimes she didn't even want to see me! Of course, selfish me would think "what did I do, why is she mad at me?" I guess I didn't understand how she felt since it had never happened to me. Still, sometimes I didn’t care and managed to make her smile, I just wanted her to see that she didn’t need him, and that she had us: all of us. I remember seeing her in bed all day, sometimes not wanting to talk to anyone, and with a very low appetite. She even mentioned how she would want to sleep all day not to feel the pain, and at the same time she woke up every morning earlier than usual to try to think of answers to her situation, not to mention all the tears she would shed daily.  I would try to cheer her up, but must of the time I failed. She would laugh at some moments, only to go back to her sadness. I can never forget she once asked me, "why me? Sickness and cheating at the same time. Why?" She really felt betrayed because at one point she even blamed her sickness to be the reason for his cheating, making it all about her fault. She never really went to the doctor to get help since she was already dealing with doctors for other reasons, but she did suffer from depression for about 1 month, well according to the symptoms which she went through. Eventually her good mood came back, and slowly she let go of those feelings, after she finally decided to let him go as well. Surprisingly enough, she told me that her father has suffered from depression for about 7 years now. On the contrary, he did get help and takes medication as well as other medications for an anxiety disorder he recently developed. Can we say genes are involved in depression? Going back to my friend, I have to admit seeing her in that stage broke me and I promised to always be there for her. The same way she was always there for me, when something similar happened to me in my adolescent years, but that is another story...

In this video they explain to us the difference between regular feelings of sadness compared to a a clinical depressive state.

1,2,3 Smile!

We always take smiling and all other facial emotions for granted. When we see someone sad we can almost respond immediately "turn that frown upside down". Has it ever happened to you that you are smiling or laughing too much that your face cheeks start to feel sore? The outcomes to a smile are beneficial to all of us because in this way we form close friendships, relationships and social response. Imagine when someone tells you, “You have a beautiful smile” we respond in happiness because they are complimenting us. When we smile we can show what emotion we are feeling, but what about those who can't show their emotions for other viewers? I had never heard of the rare condition; Mobius syndrome. Someone who has Mobius syndrome is unable to move their facial muscles to make a smile. Since two of his/her cranial nerves are either missing or they are not fully formed this causes facial muscles to be paralyzed. As I was saying, unable to smile actually makes it hard on people to understand what the other person is feeling because of their lack of emotions. Let’s imagine for a second that we smile at a person with Mobius syndrome while shopping at a store and as a response we always expect a smile back as a social smile. Now, when we encounter someone with this condition they would not able to respond to us even if they did want to smile we can only see their lack of facial expression. Having Mobius syndrome does not mean that they don’t experience happiness it just means they are unable to show it. This condition is present at birth. Perhaps inability to suck, crossed eyes and excessive drooling in a newborn aside from difficulty nursing are all possible characteristics to look at in a newborn baby.  There is no prenatal test or cure for Mobius syndrome but there is a Facial Reanimation Program that treats all aspects of facial nerve paralysis and partial paralysis. Speech or psychical therapies are useful to improve their gross motor skills and coordination, also plastic surgery helps to provide artificial smiles.
Let's look to this Elisa's story which is another example that rare conditions can't stop us from going on in life and being happy. After surgery, Elisa now feels a more "natural" way of smiling and showing her emotions.


Everyone smile! Let's be thankful that we are very blessed for being able to show our emotions. We can never take anything for granted.

Wakefulness and Sleepiness

I remember during summer I decided not to attend school so I could get a job and start working. I applied to several different places and unfortunately I did not get a job in all summer! Can you imagine being at home for three months with no homework to do, no school to attend, and no job? For three months I was stuck at home with nothing much to do, the most I would do was take care of my niece who is 3 years old. She would be the one to keep me active during the day, because she needed attention and someone to play with her. Aside from playing with her and nothing else really, I would go to sleep really late and wake up really late as well.  The usual day was for me to sleep at around 2am and wake up at 12 noon. That is about 10 hours of sleep! And that is not counting other days I would oversleep. Point is I’ve always known that I am not a “morning person”. Ever since I was little, I can remember the constant struggle between me and my mom because I wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning. My mom always told me that I would get used to this waking and sleeping pattern since I would be doing it for the next 10 years or so (elementary, middle and maybe high school). Surprisingly, I never got used to it. Every single morning it was harder and harder for me to wake up, not only for school but for special activities for instance a family trip to San Antonio. Still, it was hard for me to wake up. Then I came up with the conclusion that I was an “evening person” or “owl”. The thing is that it is hard for me to wake up but once I am actually awake I am pretty active and I do not have a hard time staying awake, unless I am really tired. The difference between morning and evening people are related to our circadian rhythms.

Circadian rhythms control wakefulness and sleepiness. This principle suggests that our urge to sleep depends largely on the time of the day rather than how recently we have slept.  I guess that during summer I did not feel the urge to wake up in the morning because my room is actually pretty dark. During the night it is so dark it is scary at times, and during the day if the curtains are not open then no light goes into my room. Now that I am back in school and working also, I follow a better sleep pattern. At times, when homework has to be done I will be until 2 or 3am revising and editing and then the next morning I will be up by 8am which is when my classes start. It is hard to wake up, but I always think ‘as soon as I am back I will take a nap,’ that almost never happens because I will lose my sleep but as soon as the sun goes down and it gets dark outside, I get sleepy, forcing me to go to bed by 9pm or so.  I wonder if I’ll ever get used to waking up early, since soon I will graduate and hopefully work a full time job from 8am-5pm.

In this video Dr. Winkelman explains how our circadian rhythms influence our sleep. This video is very informative and also gives some examples of sleep patterns.

Shall this baby be a boy or girl?

Whenever a baby is born he/she brings life into this world. Many are excited to be in the stage of finding out the sex of the baby and buying everything blue or pink. What happens when humans are intersexed? When someone is born and they apparently don’t fit the typical definitions of a boy or girl, they are referred to as intersexed. One of the most interesting aspects of this topic is that many won’t show intersex anatomy until puberty or even adulthood. They can have either an ovary and a testis or two testes. Can you believe that back in the 1950’s intersexed people were all to be reared as females by doctor’s recommendations and even used surgery to make them more feminine? Some might grow up and feel more feminine or masculine and feel that their ‘chosen gender’ is not who they really are.  Presently, intersexed people are given the opportunity to decide whether they want to be a male or female. Even though a lot of these cases have kept private due to confidentiality between doctors, parents and patients, I have read about several cases in which parents decide to raise them as males and when the individual grows they feel more as a female and when raised as females they report their behaviors to be more ‘tomboyish’.

I want to talk about J and her story. Her parents decided to raise her as a male after doing surgery on her to look more on the masculine side. Since she was a little boy, she always knew she was different because she felt drawn to females as friends and as she grew older she felt attracted to males but not so much as “friends” she would say. When her puberty stage kicked in she developed breasts and widening of the hips. Her parents immediately took action and took her to a doctor to get a “special vitamin” to stop all the feminine actions of her body. The relationship with her parents was bad since the beginning specially after she identified more feminine and her parents would not approve. At the age of seventeen she left her house. Years later and after trying to have a better communication with her parents, she asks her mother with a sense of embarrassment about a scar she has on her private area. Finally, 40 years later her mother tells her the truth. Can you imagine all the mixed emotions?! Forty years without knowing the truth and finally understanding all those feelings as a young individual, must have been tough on her.  This story is so amazing because after finding out the truth she could not hate her parents but only feel a little upset about her parents lying to her and deciding for her without giving her an option.
 * Judy/Max another story worth reading. This story talks about the struggles about determining to behave as a female or a male, not to mention his own curiosity and his parents confusion. Imagine a life trying to find out who you really are and visiting the doctor constantly to find the answers. Clearly, this story has a happy ending with the person finding his true self from within.

Unable to Feel Pain...

I can never forget the first time I flat ironed my hair. I was around 12 years old, and I saw my sister flat iron her hair every day. How can I forget my first experience with the iron if I burned my ear?! I felt a sting at the top of my ear therefore making my arm respond in pulling away the iron from my ear. It is stingy at first, and it started to sting even more until it suddenly began to itch, after a while the pain started to fade away. Then comes the scab which is also a little itchy. Anyways, so pain huh?  Let me discuss CIPA. What does CIPA mean? First of all, it stands for: Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis. Basically what this means is that a person is unable to feel pain, temperature, and decreased or absent sweating. The person can feel touch but the brain doesn’t receive signals of experiencing pain. Now, we ALL need pain to survive in this world. With an inability to feel pain, we are not able to avoid dangers and life-threatening situations.
Gabby is around 10 years old now, and since she was a baby her parents could tell she was different. At a very young stage in her life she started chewing her fingers, biting through the skin and almost reaching her bone, if it hadn’t been thanks to her mother’s intervention. By age 2 she had to have her teeth removed since it was a danger to her tongue and body. Another incidence was when she scratched her cornea. The doctor could only recommend gel eye at the time. Eventually, Gabby scratched her eyes so badly, one of them had to be replaced with a non-functional prosthesis, and was given safety goggles to protect her and the poor sight from her other eye. At the same time, she constantly would burn the inside of her mouth since she couldn’t feel the hotness of the food she would eat.  Not only did she not feel pain, but she also suffered from anhidrosis which means that she cannot sweat therefore making it extremely difficult for her to maintain her body temperature stable. The link shows a video about Gabby and her rare disorder. Gabby will struggle with this disorder all her life; even though she has learned to be a little more careful, she still is innocent and numb when it comes to painful stimuli.
With this said, even though most of us don’t enjoy feeling pain, it is necessary for survival. Many of us probably feel like it is better to not feel pain at all not only physically but emotionally too, but the truth is we need to experience pain.

Memories and Alzheimer's Disease

It’s weird and magnificent at the same time how the brain works and how it lets us form long term memories while at times we only form short term memories. It was my seventh birthday party and all my family was in my house celebrating. Then someone really special to me comes up to me sort of repeating some things and then looking kind of confused and at the same time with that very loving stare. Later I would find out as I grew older and was able to understand the concept of life better, that [she] was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. From there on, she would repeat her sentences more and would sometimes forget what she was saying. My family told me, ‘one day she will even forget how to eat’. I was still not sure what that meant, and I always thought well how can someone forget how to eat?! Then, how will they live? When I was little I would hear my family say that she would get really sentimental and cry for no apparent reason. Clearly she was experiencing a change in her mood. It’s been 14 years since those memories and even though I do not remember the place where I was exactly and word by word of what happened, I can still remember the big picture and the most important aspect of those days. I am so thankful that today she is still here. She does not talk, does not move, she’s in a bed all day in the same position sort of sleeping all day, she is thin and every time thinner, but she has all the love in the world from all of us and constant care from the person that loves her most: her husband.  Her sons and daughters as well as nurses constantly go to check up on her and see how she’s doing. For others it is hard to see her in that condition, therefore deciding to stay away to avoid the pain.

From being able to say complete sentences to just blurting out words and letting us complete her sentences to getting after her husband so we could laugh as she used to do it when we were little, are all memories I can certainly not forget.  Alzheimer’s made her forget us, her memories, and her ability to do daily things, but what is most important is that she is here today. I know that for some people Alzheimer’s can complicate their health issues therefore making it harder to get to stage 7 of Alzheimer’s disease. In the future, I really have hope in someone finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.

This video shows step by step how the brain is damaged by Alzheimer's and how plaques and tangles play a significant role in his disease. It also explains how the disease progresses until a last stage. Very informative and easy to understand.

Visual Connections

 

Have you ever tried closing one eye at a time? Like, first you close your right eye with your left eye open and sort of move your mouth towards the direction of the eye you are closing. Then you try it on the other eye, you close your left eye with your right eye open. Every person that I have met is able to do this. Weird because for some reason: I CAN'T!! Since I was a little girl my sister and brother would tease me because I couldn't close my right eye while having my left eye open. I close both of them! It is so strange because my siblings would tell me to practice, practice and more practice until I was able to do it. Strangely enough until this day I still can't close my left eye. So this leads me to think about left and right hemisphere and their visual connections. I am right handed so I would think that I would be able to close my right eye with no difficulty but the only eye I can close is my left eye. Any explanations? I've always wondered if it might have something to do with the left hemisphere controlling my right side, while my right hemisphere controls my left side. Why can others do it and not me?

I now know that yes my left hemisphere controls my right side, and vice versa. When it comes to my vision, I came to realize that the visual information from each of the optic nerves, gets processed by both hemispheres, but the process of visual input comes from the opposite half of the visual field! What is that? Well, the visual field is the physical environment that can be perceived by a stable eye. Basically, as I've heard before: The left hemisphere sees the right side of the world and the right hemisphere sees the left side of the world. It appears to me as if the visual connection to the hemispheres in the brain tends to be a little more complicated than other parts of the body.

In this picture we can see how the information is processed through both hemispheres, while...

This picture shows what I mean when I talk about the visual field  (this link gives an short description about visual field testing) being processed by the opposite left visual cortex and the right visual cortex.

Brain Damaging

Every year about 1.5 million people in the United States have some type of brain injury. There are two types of brain injury:
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) ex. blow to the head

and Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) ex. stroke

 Let's take Natasha Richardson for example. She was a known actress of movies such as “The Parent Trap” co staring with Lindsay Lohan, “Maid in Manhattan,” “The White Countess” and a number of more movies. She was married to actor Liam Neeson and was mother of two. It happens that Natasha Richardson was at a Canadian ski resort where she was taking a skiing lesson without wearing a helmet.  The accident happened while she was on a beginners’ slope at the Mont Tremblant resort where she “tumbled’ down a hill. At first she claimed she was doing okay and said she didn’t need to be seen by a doctor when approached by ski patrol.  Approximately a few hours after her fall she started having severe headaches that lead her to seeking help. Shortly after being taken into a local hospital she fell into critical condition therefore translating her to a Hospital in Montreal where she was put on life support. She didn’t regain consciousness so she was taken to her home town, New York, so friends and family could say their goodbyes.  She died two days after the accident, she was 45. Her cause of death was an epidural haematoma due to blunt impact to her head. At that time wearing a helmet was up to the people if they wanted to wear it or not. After Ms. Richardson’s accident it became official that the sales of ski safety helmets in UK increased significantly. It was argued whether a safety helmet could have saved Ms. Richardson and in my opinion it could have saved her. Safety helmets reduce head injuries by a 35% in adults and 59% in children.

This story is important so that we can all know that brain injury can happen to anyone. We should always be careful when doing activities that are dangerous since injuries of this type can be avoided. On the other hand, situations like being a victim of assault or having a car accident are not foreseen so it is more difficult to avoid or predict brain injuries.  Bottom line is always seeking help if you fall and hit your head for example or if your head collides with an object harshly even if you might feel okay. Brain injuries can develop bleeding, bruising and swelling even after a few hours of the initial impact.  

The following video is about how the brain is damaged after a collision. (it doesn't have any sound, but it is not long and it explains it with little notes quite well.)

 

Alcoholism and Nicotine

It is not the first time that I've heard that one drink of alcohol per day can actually help prevent heart attacks in older people. It was hard for me to believe that because I thought "well, alcohol is bad and a lot of people become alcoholics that may lose everything in this world just as long as they have an alcoholic drink in their hands." I thought they just meant whichever form of alcohol instead in the book I read that 'a glass of certain wines can help prevent heart attacks in older people.' This made more sense for me, of course. Alcohol is known to be the most abused drug by many people. Alcohol in very big quantities impairs judgment leading to unwanted pregnancies, STD's, problems with the law, car accidents, loosing of homes, families and even jobs. I never knew my grandfather but my grandmother always told me stories of how much he drank and smoked on a regular basis. This of course lead to a very unsuccessful marriage for my grandmother and hard times for my mom and her brother, since my grandfather wouldn't stop his drinking, smoking. He drank day and night. When he was less than 50 years old he died because of lung cancer. According to my grandmother, he had begun smoking since he was 11 years old and began drinking at 12 years old because of problems he had at home with his family (or so, I've been told). He was diagnosed with cancer and died just 3 months after that. My grandmother always told me how his lungs were extremely dark and how much agony he went through for 3 months. She also told me, that even when he was diagnosed he still managed to hide a cigarette box in his truck and would still smoke even after he knew he was going to die. I guess this relates to what a drug can do. No matter how much pain and problems one may encounter, their drug is always the solution. Going back to alcohol, even though my grandfather didn't die because he drank too much, I still know that his body probably showed some signs of alcoholism. I also want to point out that his father was a heavy drinker as well. So this leads me to genetics, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that he began drinking at such a young age. It must have been pretty hard to have a dad as a heavy drinker and how random it was that they drank together since he was the only boy in the family. Anyways, I still think that each person decides if they want to follow other people's footsteps or not. My mother witnessed my grandfather's heavy drinking and smoking, and I can say that my mother has never smoked before and has never liked to drink alcohol. She did not inherit my grandfather's tolerance for drinks because when she drinks one glass of wine that is more than enough for her. My uncle on the other side doesn't smoke at all either, but drinks at family events at times without getting drunk or anything. With this said, drug abuse varies from person to person, bottom-line it never has good outcomes, especially when abused.

The following video is pretty straight forward about the effects of alcohol and smoking on the human body:

 

Glia Cells

After Marian Diamond became fascinated with the term of another type of brain cell known as the glia cell or neuroglia, she tried to explain it more into detail rather than just being known as ‘the glue that holds the neurons of the brain together.’ It is now known that glia is greater in number than neuron cells. I am really interested in knowing more about glia cells, since I’ve been reading that a large amount of glia cells were found in Albert Einstein’s brain. Diamond and colleagues found a significant amount of glia cells in the cerebral cortex, which deal with reasoning, mathematics and imagery. A great scientist known as a genius had been the reason to explore glia cells more into depth. Glia cells are known to communicate with each other without electricity! The biggest question has always been, what made Albert Einstein so smart? so genius? What was in his brain different that other people’s that distinguished it from being a genius?

In the video below, Dr. Fields talks about the importance of glia and the new discoveries made. With all the research it is true that glia are a very essential part of our brain. This video explains how they use laser and video microscopes and other technologies to test the importance of glial cells in our brain.

Supportive Cells: Astrocytes (star shaped), whose functions are the nutrition and structure of neurotransmitters serve to clean up, transport nutrients to neurons, hold them in place and digest dead neurons. As for oligodendocytes, they produce fatty proteins known as myelin. The third known as, microglia are the active immune cells. As for these types of glia cells, they all play an important role in the brain, still it is known that these cells cannot transmit information over long distances compared to neurons.

I became fascinated with this topic because it has always caught my attention to know how someone can be as smart and be known as a genius by the population. Some of these terms seem very difficult to me and I have to read the same information a couple of times in order to understand the concept. Wouldn’t we all want to know how the brain of a genius differs from that of a regular human being? I know I would. As I saw in a video, many scientists try to explain this possible new theory of finding ‘genius cells’ in the brain. Others disapprove of such new findings. Not everything can be explained by science, and maybe environmental factors as well as hereditary traits shape our brain.

Use of animals for research

Is animal testing good or bad?

I am a strong believer in that no animal should be treated badly, they have feelings and they should be respected, loved and well taken care of. Even with this in my head, I can't help but still be thankful for all the accomplishments medicine has undergone with the help of animal testing. I have seen the effects of Alzheimer’s in a member of my family. It is devastating to see someone slowly forget things until getting to the point where they are not self-sufficient anymore. With this said, I would really be thankful if one day the cure for Alzheimer’s existed. It may be too late for the member of my family, but there will be hope for others in the future. It is so interesting that there are activists that are willing to go to the extreme to fight in what they believe is right. As I had previously seen on a video, some scientists even had to give up on animal testing because they felt threatened by activists as well as felt they were putting their families in possible danger. I am not 100% agreeing that animal testing is good, I have seen many documentaries that are very eye opening and it makes me reconsider my opinion on animal testing.  As I mentioned before no one wants to see an animal suffer, and of course I do not like the idea of them being injected such things to come up with a possible cure or to sutdy the evolution of behavior on animals, but we have to realize we have come a long way with animal testing (in my opinion, of course).

 Would it be better and more acceptable if it was done on humans?

 I am not too sure of my feelings to this question. Animals have feelings as well as humans, but who would dare to volunteer to be tested in order to find a possible cure?

The responses to the questions made sense to me, but there are some answers that I do not fully agree with. Clearly, Dr. Simon Festing is in favor of animal testing since he believes it is used to help humans. I liked that he answered everything without hesitating and sincerely even if I do not agree with some things he said. This video answers questions such as "why do we use animals for research purposes?"