Insane in the Brain

I enjoyed learning more about how the brain and drugs interact. Since people are driven by more impulsive parts of the brain until about 25 when it is fully developed, it made more sense to me why phrases like “Yolo” or “full send” become so popular with my age group since people’s brains are still developing and they’re more prone to do those risky behaviors. Those phrases can lead to people doing reckless things like excessive drug use or dangerous acts that could lead to brain injuries. I currently work at Chrysalis so I know how serious those brain injuries can be. Two of the individuals that I work with closely have experienced traumatic brain injuries, but they affect the individuals in completely different ways. One client is not very physically impaired, but he experiences extreme mood swings and gets angry easily. The other client is always very happy and does not have mood swings, but he is paralyzed on his left side, so he is physically impaired. I also have a cousin that experienced a brain injury about three years ago and she still experiences some migraines and trouble concentrating but her moods have been unaffected. This just shows how individualized each brain injury is and how they affect each person differently. The clients I work with will have frequent doctor visits and sometimes changes to their medication since their conditions are very fluid and shift often. I think that it is good that treatment for brain injuries is very personalized because sometimes that gets lost in modern medicine. I appreciate that the treatments for brain injuries are similar to concepts in Ayurveda in that way with individualized treatments.

            I found the reading about drugs to be very interesting because it listed the top four reasons college students use drugs as reducing stress, getting high, social pressure, and experimentation. Some of the adults in their 30s or 40s that I have talked to have said they experimented with drugs in college, so I was surprised that reason was not higher on the list. I also learned that prescription drugs are usually given orally due to the difference in how they are processed by the body compared to other ways like injecting or inhaling. The oral administration of drugs leads to longer effects and less of a harsh high and come down compared to inhaling or injecting which have a quick high and drastic come down. The combination of how different drugs affect the body and the ways that they are administered can lead to very different experiences making them unpredictable. The media also shows a lot of recreational drug use but does not show the risks that can come with that use which is dangerous because they downplay the danger or consequences that can come with prolonged drug use or mixing drugs. Because of that, I was not very surprised to learn that many of the hospital visits associated with drugs are when they are used in combination with another drug, often alcohol. I had not known that drug tolerance is a survival mechanism. It makes sense to me that the basic needs for survival such as getting food would produce a reward response in the brain in order to encourage that behavior. Drugs just mimic that response in the brain. Over time that would lead to more of a desire to obtain that reward feeling from the drugs instead of from those necessities for life which would lead to possible negative consequences like decreased appetite or malnutrition because they get a stronger brain response from the drug than from those survival tasks. The extended use of drugs also leads to a decrease in the number of dopamine receptors due to the excess of dopamine from drug use. I found it interesting that the body has ways of regulating that imbalance of neurotransmitters.

            Learning about diseases that directly affect the brain was interesting because many of those diseases affect other parts of the body as well which shows the interconnectedness of the body and that when one system gets altered it leads to problems in other systems. I recently took genetics, so it was cool to apply some of that knowledge since some of those diseases discussed such as Huntington’s or Tay Sachs are caused by duplications or insertions in the organism’s genetic code. Many of the diseases that were discussed have some genetic component which made me wonder why some people may be diagnosed earlier than others if they have the same mutation that causes the disease. The difference in when Tay Sachs is diagnosed could have a big impact on the life expectancy of the person which made me wonder why that is since it’s the same enzyme that gets affected in people with the disease. Could it be environmental meaning that people that did not require the enzyme as much in their younger years are less affected by the disease and have a better chance of living?

            The article that discussed Ayurveda and drug discovery was insightful because I had not realized how many of our modern medicines and medications had come from more natural and older ayurvedic practices. I appreciate that Ayurveda focuses on each individual and their needs since each drug can have different effects on people. My Grandma goes to a woman who has studied different ancient ayurvedic type medicines, so all of my Grandma’s medications are individual to her. I’m glad to know that some of those more ancient practices are adapting to modern-day and still being used since we have derived so much of modern medicine from those practices it would be harmful to get rid of them completely. 

Brain and Drugs

 

The brain truly does affect our entire body. There are so many connections that most would never think of. Some of my favorite examples are hearing stories about people that have multiple personality syndrome and in one personality they have a certain disease and in another they don’t. I think it is both facinating and a bit of folklore. But I do think that there is at least some truth with the connection between the brain and illness that are not directly found in the brain.

The complexity of the brain astounds me. It is so vast and all inclusive. Sometimes I cannot believe how intense the neurochemical functions are that make up the everyday functions of the human body. Espically topics like memory, learning and acquiring skills fascinate me. How is it that biochemical reactions can allow us to remember an event that happened several years ago? Or how is it that neurochemical pathways can be used so much that it allows our muscles to remember motion that we may not cognitively remember ourselves. It is truly facinating the ammount the brain does for the individual. I find it facinating that the more creases in the brain correlates to more intelegence. It makes total sence that they are increasing surface area and allowing for more neurons. If you are able to somehow increase your surface area intentionally, I would make sure to do that to maximize potential brain power.

With all the complexities that the brain encompasses it is no wonder that there is a host of issues that are associated with the brain. I think its facinating that there is predominate clusters that suggest that MS can have environmental influences. This is a great example of Ayurveda and how even the environment can affect neurological pathways.  There is much more avenues than degenerate diseases that can affect the brain and the Ayurveda of the entire individual. The fact that traumatic brain injuries are permanent and there is little that can be done about them is a testament to the complexity of the brain. When thoes neuropathways are lost they are gone forever. This is facinating to me because it is almost as though we spend our whole lives growing thoes pathways and integrating them into our lives that when they are destroyed, they may take another lifetime to work through them again.

Outcomes from TBI accidents can occur from as soon a minute to weeks after the primary injury, the goal of treatment is to ameliorate progression of secondary injury. I find it facinating that TBI's tent to change the personality of the individual. This to me just further demonstrates that the brain really is the central organ of our entire body, soul and mind.

The article we read in class I found absolutely facinating. It looked into what happens if after a concussion you spend some time to recover. It states that 99.3% of athletes used a symptom free waiting period after a concussion and that 72.7% of them saw system recover after 1 week. It says that 93.7% saw system recovery after 1 month. This to me shows the pliability of the brain. Yes, concussions can be very detrimental but if you "take it easy" after a concussion than 94% of the population will recover within a month. And 70% do it faster in just a week. This shows that the brain is able to repair "minor" damages like bruising and swelling, it’s when the brain starts to rupture that there are significant problems. These problems can affect Ayurveda of the individual so drastically as explained above. Beacsue the brain is all encompassing its important to look at it from a holistic point of view.

The brain is associated with more of the biological side of the brain, and the mind is associated with the more psychological and environmental influences. But in reality, there should not be a dichotomy. They are the same organ and are influenced biochemically just as much as they are from the environment. When dealing with personality disorders it’s important that we look the brain from both the mind and brain perspective because they are one in the same.  When the healthcare professional can combine both these to a more holistic approach then we are better able to treat the individual. It talks about bridging the mind and the brain, I think this is a very important crutial step to allow us to treat this so important organ. Treatment is key though and one of the best ways to treat the brain is by chemical warfare.

I find it facinating how drugs work so similarly and so differently from eachother. Some drugs mimic natural chemicals that the brain uses and some allow thoes chemicals to be released. This brings up a great concern that most are forced to face with when they spend their wholes lives consuming these drugs. That is do we really understand the long-term effects of altering the balance of the brain over long periods of time? I really don’t think that we do understand just what happens to the brain long term of taking these drugs. I think that long term exposure of just about any drug does have a negative effect eventually. But then that brings up the question of how long it takes to see an adverse affect? If it takes more than a lifetime to see the negative effects then it is defiantly not a problem to be taking them for a life time because the "consequence" is out of reach and we will be long gone before it gets here anyways. If these time intensive consequences are somewhat avoidable than what about the ones that are not?

I think it’s a strong point that most if not all people don’t understand what a drug is doing in our bodies. I think that we should educate this better so that people are understanding just what we are taking and how it works in our bodies. Yes, it is hard to teach complex subjects like neurochemistry and neurophysiology but I believe that it is crutial to fix our societal problem of drug addiction. That is if we even understand the addictions our selves.

 I really think that if we were able to understand what drugs do in our bodies then we will be able to teach it better. I think that because there is so much regulation on human based research studies it really dosent allow us to help people to the best of our abilities. I don’t condone illegal testing like you would see a mad scientest do in a movie but I do think that there is not much learning we can do by beating arround the bush. One must jump in and make sacrifices for the betterment of the general populations. If only we knew how, that would deserve all the prizes that could ever be given.

I think htat it is one of the social tragedies of this world is that the adolescent brain is more often exposed to addictive drugs than the fully developed brain. Talk about kicking them while they are down. I think that if we were able to teach kids to distinguish between their own confusion and the confusion of the adult word and to learn how to separate thoes then maybe they would be able to avoid such debilitating things like addictive and illegal drugs. These addictions affect so much of the individual, not just the brain and basic chemistry but it even affects others outside the normal scope of personal Ayurveda.

The paper we read in class talked about how Ayurveda and other holistic and native practices has produced natural drugs over several generations. These can be anything from plant materials to minerals, but all have a pharmacological effect. Some of them have even helped people to discover the main source of an illness because they already knew the solution. It also talks about how you can combine Ayurveda and traditional pharmacology to get better drugs faster and more safely by applying the native knowledge and expanding from there. I think this last point is espically important. It’s great that we have people working together on these kinds of things. It makes totally sence as well why would you start from scratch if a partial solution has already been discovered. It really allows for a better product and it is a great opportunity to allow people to grow and learn from eachother instead of fighting over differences you can find a common goal and work towards a better solution.