Archive | August 2019

QUOTE FOR THE WEEKEND:

“Gastroparesis is caused by nerve injury, including damage to the vagus nerve. In its normal state, the vagus nerve contracts (tightens) the stomach muscles to help move food through the digestive tract. In cases of gastroparesis, the vagus nerve commonly damaged by people with diabetes. This prevents the muscles of the stomach and intestine from working properly, which keeps food from moving from the stomach to the intestines.”

Cleveland Clinic

 

QUOTE FOR FRIDAY:

“Alzheimer’s disease tends to develop slowly and gradually worsens over several years. Eventually, Alzheimer’s disease affects most areas of your brain.  The Alzheimer’s stages can help you understand what might happen, but it’s important to know that these stages are only rough generalizations. The disease is a continuous process. Each person has a different experience with Alzheimer’s and its symptoms.”

MAYO CLINIC

QUOTE FOR THURSDAY:

“What you can do other than diagnosing and Rx Alzheimer’s.  If your family member or friend has a serious memory problem, you can help the person live as normal a life as possible. You can help the person stay active, go places, and keep up everyday routines; if they allow you. You can remind the person of the time of day, where he or she lives, and what is happening at home and in the world. You also can help the person remember to take medicine or visit the doctor.”

National Institute of Aging

 

QUOTE FOR WEDNESDAY:

“Researchers believe there is not a single cause of Alzheimer’s disease. The disease likely develops from multiple factors, such as genetics, lifestyle and environment. Scientists have identified factors that increase the risk of Alzheimer’s. While some risk factors — age, family history and heredity — can’t be changed, emerging evidence suggests there may be other factors we can influence.”

Alzheimer’s Association

 

QUOTE FOR TUESDAY:

“Alzheimer’s disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills and, eventually, the ability to carry out the simplest tasks.”

MAYO CLINIC

QUOTE FOR MONDAY:

“Our violence operates far outside the bounds of any other species. Human beings kill anything. Slaughter is a defining behavior of our species. We kill all other creatures, and we kill our own. Read today’s paper. Read yesterday’s, or read tomorrow’s. The enormous industry of print and broadcast journalism serves predominantly to document our killing. Violence exists in the animal world, of course, but on a far different scale. Carnivores kill for food; we kill our family. We kill strangers. We kill people who are different from us, in appearance, beliefs, race, and social status.”
 
Psychology Today/R. Douglas Fields Ph.D.

Part 2 What makes one person kill another?

 WHy the human kills another 2    why one human kills another1
When we study the history of humanity we realize that the intensity and severity of human violence and aggression has increased over the centuries. Only in the 20th century millions of humans have been killed by other humans by pre-meditated murder, including the use of nuclear weapons. If we review human murders we can classify them into the following seven groups based on emotional, social, religious, economic or political motivation.
1. PERSONAL REVENGE
There are many people in every community who have difficulties controlling their anger. If someone hurts them, rather than forgiving or reporting the matter to the authorities, they take the law into their own hands and kill their enemy. As a psychotherapist I am fascinated by the number of murders that happen within families; people kill those they had loved at one time. Their sense of betrayal transforms their love into hate, and lovers become enemies. Spouses who once vowed eternal love can kill each other because of jealousy. It is sad to see domestic and family violence killing so many people every year, especially children and women.
2. SERIAL KILLERS
While some people kill people that they know intimately, there are others who kill strangers. We call them serial killers and mass murderers. I interviewed Javed Iqbal Mughal who had confessed to killing one hundred children in Pakistan, and reviewing the research on serial killers, I was shocked to discover that the United States had the highest numbers of serial killings in the world. These serial killers, who were usually physically, emotionally and sexually abused as children, became revengeful against a particular group, be they blacks or women, gays or Hispanics, whom they killed indiscriminately until they were caught by police. Many such serial killers have psychopathic and sociopathic personalities.
3. SOCIAL VIOLENCE OF GANGS
As more and more people move from villages to cities and adopt an urban lifestyle, they face the pains of migration, social alienation and unemployment and some of them become involved in violent gangs to sell drugs to make quick money. Unfortunately, once they enter the drug and gang culture it is difficult for them to leave. It is fascinating how these gangs provide a sense of identity and belonging to young men and women who feel lost, confused and isolated in big cities. When there are violent confrontations between gangs, we see many murders. In some cases the local police themselves become involved in these violent crimes.
4. MENTAL ILLNESS
While the majority of murders are committed by psychopaths who do not suffer from mental illness, there are some murders committed by people who suffer from schizophrenia, manic depressive illness and paranoid psychosis. When these emotionally disturbed people feel threatened and attacked, they may think they need to kill before they are killed. Such people, rather than going to prison, are sent to hospitals for psychiatric treatment.
5. POLITICAL / NATIONAL VIOLENCE
As the concept of nationalism became popular in the West, states created national armies. Over the centuries, soldiers in the uniform of one country killed only the soldiers of the enemy army. As guerrilla war became popular, both sides have been killing innocent men, women and children. Some call it using human shields while others call it collateral damage. Innocent citizens are being killed with no twinge of conscience on either side.
Human beings can be executed by their own governments, under capital punishment laws ordered by the courts. These are murders committed by legalized state violence.
6. VIOLENCE OF RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISTS
Over the centuries believers have killed each other in the name of God. In the last few decades there have been a large number of killings between Sunnis and Shiites, Catholics and Protestants, Hindus and Muslims, and Muslims and Jews in different parts of the world. Ironically these violent murders were committed in the name of a merciful God. Some of those killings are done to create theocratic states. Many such murders are ordered by religious leaders who have charismatic and cultish personalities.
7. INTERNATIONAL VIOLENCE
In the recent past, Western governments have been sending their armies to other countries and invading sovereign states in order to topple their governments; they have killed innocent civilians and then rationalized their murders in the name of democracy, human rights and freedom. We are all aware that they are economic wars aimed at establishing the aggressor’s military presence all over the world, selling weapons and ensuring access to the conquered countries’ resources.
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
It is sad to realize that violent consciousness is on the rise and that the borders between just and unjust wars have blurred. Even in the 21st century we have not risen above a tribal mentality. I am afraid that if we do not develop peace consciousness and do not feel compassion for all of humanity, we might commit collective suicide and may not evolve to the next stage of human evolution.
It is ironic that in the contemporary world, leaders of religious, spiritual and secular traditions claim that their ideologies and philosophies promote peace, but we see their followers continue to kill each other. Whether they are followers of Christianity or Islam, Judaism or Hinduism, Communism or Capitalism, they kill innocent human beings and justify their murders.
I think time has come for all of us to learn to communicate better and find ways to resolve our personal, social, religious and political conflicts peacefully and respectfully, and accept that killing one human is like killing all of humanity with wrong.

Neuroscience uncovered why people behave so violently looking into the Virginia Tech Massacre in 2007 with many other like incidents also which were still a small percentage of people. What happens in these individuals is that their cognitive control mechanisms are deranged. Mind you, these individuals are not out-of-control, enraged people. They just use their cognitive control mechanisms in the service of a disturbed goal. There are probably a multitude of factors at play here. The subject is exposed to influences that lead him or her to violent acts—including, unfortunately, not only the violent political rhetoric but also the media coverage of similar acts, as we are doing here. A variety of issues, especially mental health problems that lead to social isolation, lead the subject to a mental state that alters his or her ability to exercise cognitive control in a healthy manner. Again also childhood plays a big role.   The cognitive control capacities of the subject get somewhat redirected—we don’t quite understand how—toward goals and activities that are violent in a very specific way. Not the violent outburst of somebody who has “lost it” in a bar, punching people right and left. The violence is channeled in a very specific plan, with a very specific target—generally fed by the media (like take the protesting that has gone on from Missouri to New York for a month or more with media showing every news flash each day)through some sort of rhetoric, political or otherwise—with very specific tools, in the Giffords case, a 9-millimeter Glock.

Now lets look at what are the signs of a person who is disturbed enough to take some form of action to killing.   The signs are quite visible, although difficult to interpret without a context—and unfortunately they unfold very quickly , and people can rarely witness them before the action is taken (which happened with Brinsley in New York killing officers in Brooklyn on duty just doing their job), . The action itself is a sign, a desperate form of communication from a disturbed individual (Brinsley did put on the internet a warning the day it was going to be done, Sat 12/20/14. Unfortunately, nobody was chatting with the guy when he left his final messages on Internet before getting into action. But I bet that if somebody was communicating with him before the act and saw those signs and read those messages on social network he was using, that person could have done something, could have engaged him in a sort of conversation that might have redirected his deranged plans. Indeed, by connecting with the subject, that person might have redirected some of the activity of mirror neurons toward a truly empathic behavior, rather than in the service of the deranged imitative violence leading to action.

My readers I could go on with more examples of people killing but I am sure you listen to the news or read it somehow but I tell you this information not to persecute a person, not even a race or politician but to LEARN HOW THE BRAIN WORKS.   Most importantly to PARENTS bring your children up AS A CHILD not as an adult until they reach adulthood with giving good direction and guidance as their primary mentor. You the parents make our next generation who are now children and even for future parents learn so they will have a more productive working society. For now the society in America works as a   nonproductive unit of people to all races, creeds, genders, sex preferences, & nationalities of all kinds. Especially in being compared to the 1980’s; yes they had their problems but not like today’s with people treating each other with more respect even if things didn’t go their way. Our nation went off the deep end in allowing us to have freedom of everything without limitations or better rules/regulations legally in place not followed which we are paying a good price for and will take a very long time to fix. Remember when someone or now a group of people get hurt you can forgive but healing is like a wound it takes time to heal. Example: Look at Hitler, people still haven’t forgiven him, those that did have not forgotten it and they shouldn’t. Protesting can be effective where its peaceful, quiet, and not bothering other people in the area who aren’t involved. Look at El Paso and Ohio this past week, MUCH DAMAGE due to not thinking first but acting first on emotion and mental illness with fanatical thinking by one individual in both circumstances.

Part 1 What makes one person kill another?

WHy the human kills another 2         why one human kills another1

People are often confronted with feelings of disappointment, frustration and anger as they interact with government officials, co-workers, family and even fellow commuters to people just in society. Most can control their actions to the extent that relatively few of these interactions end in a radical action like being racist to violence.

What help build a individuals feelings to turn out in a negative result (like bullying someone to protesting to worse rioting to violence or killing) is factors.

Factors being:

  1. YOUR CHILDHOOD UPBRINGING. Your childhood builds the foundation of how you turn out as an adult. If you have good upbringing where there are good morals, values, ethics with limitations or rules and regulations in what you can and cannot do with mommy and daddy overlooking from a distance in watching the child’s actions/interests/who they play with/what they’re doing on the computer or watching on T.V or even listening to music will help give direction for their child to be effective in society. Including, as the child shows good choices than more independence in getting older with still guidance and direction as needed. Remember your a young adult at 17 and a full fledged adult at 21 years of age to make all decisions in your life.
  2. BEING AN ADULT.   This includes accepting the turn outs of how a situation finally results; before the final result if you did everything you could legally try to reach your hope of a turn out and did reach it great, it makes you a stronger person. Now let’s say you didn’t than acceptance is necessary of what the result turned out as which also makes you a stronger person with being an asset in the community. Than your next step whether it be alone or in society overall move on without being an insult to the community where it effects the society in a negative way (like killing 2 innocent police officers just for wearing the color blue in uniform, prejudice=a radical action).   Being able to allow acceptance in your life which doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to helps you move on in life making you less out to be radical in your behavior. Take the riots (which they call protesting a radical approach from Missouri to New York) and see what their results turned out to be. Stopping people from getting to a destination point who had nothing to do with what the protestors were protesting about, to damage of property of innocent people’s business to the worse DEATH. Like this radical move did anything productive for humans in society. It obviously didn’t.

First let’s look at what turns anger into action? The answer to this is mostly cognitive control or to use a less technical term, self-control.   University of Michigan professor of social psychology, Richard Nisbett, the world’s greatest authority on intelligence, plainly said that he’d rather have his son being high in self-control than intelligence, one year ago. Self-control is the key to a well-functioning life, because our brain makes us easily [susceptible] to all sorts of influences. Watching a movie showing violent acts predisposes us to act violently. Even just listening to violent rhetoric makes us prone or more inclined to be violent. Ironically, the same mirror neurons that make us empathic make us also very vulnerable to all sorts of influences. This is why control mechanisms are so important. If you think about it, there must be control mechanisms for mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are cells that fire when you grab a cup of coffee (to give you an example) as well as when you see someone else grabbing a cup of coffee. So, how come you don’t imitate all the time? The idea is that there are systems in the brain that help us by imitating only “internally”—they dampen the activity of mirror neurons when we simply watch, so that we can still have the sort of “inner imitation” that allows us to empathize with others, without any overt imitation. The key issue is the balance of power between these control mechanisms that we call top-down—because they are all like executives that control from the top down to the employees—and bottom-up mechanisms, in the opposite direction, like mirror neurons. This is whereby perception—watching somebody making an action—influences decisions—making the same action ourselves.

 When angry human beings act violently and aggressively, other caring and compassionate human beings sometimes tell them that they are acting like animals. Given the level of violence in the contemporary world, I would not be surprised to hear of some kind animals saying to other cruel animals that they were acting like humans. Eric Fromm in his famous book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness shares his insight that animals express benign violence—they kill only in self defense or when they are hungry. Even a lion is peaceful when he is not hungry and does not feel threatened. On the other hand, humans are worse than animals as they exhibit malignant violence—they add a series of meanings to their violence. They justify their violent crimes and rationalize their aggressive acts. Such justifications are also presented by social groups, political institutions and religious organizations. In communities, cultures and countries where capital punishment is allowed, when one human kills another human, the entire society commits the same crime by killing the killer. “Do human beings individually or collectively have the right to kill other human beings?” is a vital question for the evolution of humanity. Such killings are usually justified by the age old saying “an eye for an eye”. Over the centuries many wise men and women have observed that if we act on this belief, within a short time half of the village will be blind.

QUOTE FOR FRIDAY:

“Muscle atrophy is when muscles waste away. The main reason for muscle wasting is a lack of physical activity. This can happen when a disease or injury makes it difficult or impossible for you to move an arm or leg. A symptom of atrophied muscles is an arm that appears smaller, but not shorter, than the other arm.”

Healthline