Category Archives: Mind Building

Build a strong character

Stroke: When the system fails for the second time

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After a stroke, there is an increased risk of suffering a second one. If areas in the left hemisphere were affected during the first attack, language is often impaired. In order to maintain this capability, the brain usually briefly drives up the counterparts on the right side. But what happens after a second attack? Medical researchers have now found an answer by using virtual lesions.

It is now widely known that the brain is much more malleable than once thought. Even after stroke or brain injury the brain often succeeds finding a new balance between the failed regions and the functions they serve. Commonly, neighbouring regions are activated as well as homologues on the other side of the brain side. During language processing, the homologues of the left-dominant language areas are usually less active and are kept in check by the dominant half — until the emergency case occurs.

Until now, it was unclear whether these mechanisms also apply in the event of a second attack. Does the brain retain its capacity to adapt? This is important as up to 15 percent of those affected will have a second stroke. In addition, there was disagreement about whether an activated right brain is generally good for healing. Some studies suggest that involvement of the right hemisphere helps recovery, at least in the short term. Others had shown, however, that a loss of language areas in the left half can literally inhibit the right half. In that case the contribution of the right hemisphere has nothing to do with language and can cause confusion. The brain gets out of step. Further, studies had also found that the patients are better off if the overactive half is restrained by inhibitory magnetic stimulation. The activity is more and more shifting back to the left hemisphere. It wins the upper hand again.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, Germany, have now found that the brain areas on the right side also become more active when there is a second injury in the left language areas. “In the recovered brain, the right side’s contribution was still little after the first impairment. After the second event, in which large parts of the left hemisphere are not working anymore, its role becomes much more important,” explains Gesa Hartwigsen, research group leader at the MPI CBS and first author of the article, which has been published in the high-ranking, open access journal elife. “The second lesion increased the contribution of the right brain,” Hartwigsen said.

The scientists examined these relationships using 12 patients in whom the regions for processing properties of sound in the left hemisphere were injured. The incident had happened to them at least six months prior. Their brain had the opportunity to regenerate and adapt to the new situation. The researchers simulated the second disruption using so-called transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can be used to briefly halt certain areas of the brain through electrical stimuli. It can be used to simulate how the brain would react if certain areas actually fail due to a stroke or other events — and how this affects the ability to recognize sounds, for example. To do this, Hartwigsen and her team used a simple decision task. The participants heard the word “cat” and had to decide whether it consisted of one or two syllables. The individual impairment predicted the activation on the right side.The researchers also found that the stronger the fibre connection between the sister areas on the right side, the less the patient was affected by the interruption on the left.

“These results show that after large-scale disturbances, in which large parts of the left hemisphere no longer function as they should, the right hemisphere probably plays a beneficial role. Often, there is a lot of tissue in the left half of the brain that only works to a limited extent and needs support from the right side. “Other studies show that recovery is helped when the activated right side later down regulates itself and thus contributes to normalization on the left side,” said Hartwigsen. On the other hand, if the right half remains permanently up-regulated, healing is delayed.

Findings on how the damaged brain adapts to repeated injury could help to improve the therapy of stroke patients in the long term. “This may make it possible, at some point, to assess whether it would be more helpful to regulate specific areas up or down,” says Hartwigsen, confidently.

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Concrete solutions that lower both emissions and air pollution

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Sometimes, fixing one problem can create another.

Concrete production contributes 8 percent of global greenhouse gases, and demand continues to rise as populations and incomes grow. Yet some commonly discussed strategies to reduce the sector’s global GHG emissions could, under some scenarios, increase local air pollution and related health damages, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

For the study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists quantified the costs of climate change impacts and of death and illness from air pollution. They found that concrete production causes about $335 billion per year in damages, a large fraction of the industry value.

The scientists also compared several GHG-reduction strategies to determine which are most likely to lower both global emissions and local air pollution related to concrete production. They found that a variety of available methods could, together, reduce climate and health damage costs by 44 percent.

“There is a high emissions burden associated with the production of concrete because there is so much demand for it,” said lead author Sabbie Miller, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “We clearly care a great deal about greenhouse gas emissions. But we haven’t paid as much attention to health burdens, which are also are driven in large part by this demand.”

ASSESSING THE DAMAGES

Among the most effective strategies include using cleaner-burning kiln fuel, more renewable energy and replacing a portion of the cement used in production with lower-carbon alternative materials.

While carbon capture and storage technologies could reduce GHG emissions from concrete production by up to 28 percent, the study found it could actually increase human health impacts from air pollutants unless the technology itself is powered by clean energy. It’s also not currently widely implementable.

“Air pollution and climate change problems are really intertwined when we talk about solutions,” said co-author Frances Moore, an assistant professor with the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy. “This paper takes these two problems and their joint nature seriously. It shows how different solutions have different effects for global climate change and local air pollution, which may matter a lot for policymakers.”

Cement production is responsible for about half of the total climate (32 percent) and health (18 percent) damages of making concrete. That is followed by aggregate production, which is responsible for 34 percent of health damages and 4 percent in climate damages.

Mixing concrete, or batching, contributes little to climate damages but represents 11 percent of health damages.

To reduce these impacts, the authors evaluated eight GHG reduction strategies and presented the options in ways policymakers can consider for feasibility.

REDUCING GHGS

Methods that can be readily implemented to reduce climate damages include:

  • Cleaner combusting kiln fuel
  • Increase use of limestone filler or other low-impact mineral additions to partially replace cement
  • Clean energy, such as wind power

Amine scrubbing and calcium looping, which are forms of carbon capture storage, could reduce climate damage costs over 50 percent and 65 percent, respectively. They are not yet readily implementable but may become so in the future.

REDUCING AIR POLLUTION

Cleaner combusting kiln fuel shows the greatest co-benefit, with a 14 percent reduction in health damages — four times as large as any other mitigation strategy for air quality benefits.

The authors note that additional strategies and policies that reduce particulate matter emissions may reduce air pollution impacts more directly.

Major concrete-producing communities include parts of the U.S., China, Brazil, India, Russia and other regions. While effectiveness of strategies varies by region, the study says that overall, a mixture of the strategies could reduce climate and health damages by 85 percent and 19 percent, respectively.

“As the cement and concrete industries make large efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is critical that they remain mindful of the impacts decisions have on other environmental burdens to avoid undesired side effects,” Miller said.

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Coronavirus: Hancock admits ‘challenges’ over NHS equipment

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It comes after some NHS staff complained of shortages and said they were being treated as “cannon fodder”.

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Health24.com | New coronavirus wasn’t made in a lab, genomic study shows

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Despite internet rumours to the contrary, the new coronavirus arose from natural causes and was not concocted in a lab, according to scientists who conducted a detailed genomic examination of the virus.

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19 illness, shows zero evidence of being artificially engineered, reported a team who published their findings in Nature Medicine.

“By comparing the available genome sequence data for known coronavirus strains, we can firmly determine that SARS-CoV-2 originated through natural processes,” study co-author Kristian Andersen, an associate professor of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research, said in an institute news release.

The research was a collaborative, international effort: Andersen was joined by scientists from Columbia University in New York City, the University of Sydney in Australia, and Tulane University in New Orleans.

Coronaviruses have long existed

As of Tuesday, the World Health Organization reports almost 185 000 known cases of Covid-19 worldwide, including 7 529 deaths.

As the pandemic spreads, rumours of nefarious plots of scientists creating SARS-CoV-2 in a lab have proliferated.

But Andersen’s team believes their investigation proves otherwise. They pointed out that coronaviruses have long existed, causing illnesses of varying severity.

The first severe coronavirus-linked illness – severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) – emerged in China in 2003, while another – Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) – arose in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

While both of those epidemics died out, Covid-19 continues to spread worldwide. Early on in the pandemic, Chinese scientists mapped the genome of SARS-CoV-2 and made that data freely available to scientists worldwide.

Using that genome map, Andersen and colleagues examined the genetic template for proteins on the outside of the virus, called spike proteins. SARS-CoV-2 uses these proteins to latch onto the host cell.

Supporting a natural origin

Digging deeper, the researchers looked at the evolution of key components of the spike protein.

One component, called the receptor-binding domain (RBD), is a kind of “grappling hook” that SARS-CoV-2 uses to grip human cells. The RBD of the new virus is incredibly effective at binding to the cell – so effective, in fact, that the scientists believe it could only have evolved through natural selection.

Another piece of evidence supporting a natural origin for the virus comes from what the researchers called the “backbone” of SARS-CoV-2 – its basic molecular structure.

The team reasoned that if scientists were going to synthetically create a new virus in a lab, they’d need to borrow its molecular underpinnings from a virus already known to make people sick.

But the molecular backbone of SARS-CoV-2 bears no resemblance to any known coronavirus that already infects humans. Instead, it closely resembles coronaviruses found in bats and armadillo-like mammals called pangolins – adding weight to the theory that the new virus made a recent jump in China from animals to people.

“These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for SARS-CoV-2,” Andersen said.

Product of natural evolution

Josie Golding directs epidemics research at the UK-based Wellcome Trust. Commenting on the new findings, she said they are “crucially important to bring an evidence-based view to the rumours that have been circulating about the origins of the virus (SARS-CoV-2) causing Covid-19.”

The researchers “conclude that the virus is the product of natural evolution, ending any speculation about deliberate genetic engineering,” Golding added in the news release.

So how did the virus now sweeping the globe emerge?

According to Andersen’s team, like SARS and MERS, SARS-CoV-2 probably evolved in another animal and mutated along the way to make the jump into people.

The virus is extremely similar to coronaviruses observed in bats, but probably moved into another mammalian host (for example, pangolins), before moving to humans.

The genetic key, according to the scientists, would have been an evolutionary modification in the RBD cellular “hook” while the virus was still in another species. Once that happened, SARS-CoV-2 became instantly infectious once it jumped to infect people.

Leap from animals to people

However, in another scenario, the evolution of the illness-triggering RBD mechanism may have occurred only after SARS-CoV-2 infected humans.

These first infections – perhaps jumping from a pangolin to people – would have gone undetected because at this stage the virus did not trigger illness. Only later did the virus evolve to become capable of causing Covid-19, the researchers theorised.

Right now, it’s tough to confirm which of the two scenarios is the correct one, Andersen’s team said. But if the first example is true – a virus that’s ready to cause disease making the leap from animals to people – then it’s possible that future outbreaks, involving new strains of coronavirus, might still be ahead, the scientists warn.

Image credit: Getty Images

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Coronavirus: ‘Bin lipstick testers’ chemists told

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Leading chains say they’re acting immediately to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

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Health24.com | Blood flow in heart differs in men and women

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How your blood flows through your heart may depend on whether you are a man or a woman, new research suggests.

For the study, researchers used a sophisticated imaging technique called 4D flow MRI to examine blood flow and to assess how it influences cardiac performance.

Scans of the heart’s main pumping chamber, the left ventricle, were analysed from 20 men and 19 women.

The analysis revealed that kinetic energy, an indicator of energy use, was significantly higher in men. For women, vorticity (a measure of local rotation of fluid) and strain (a measure of left ventricular function) were higher, the investigators found.

Shedding light on cardiac function

“Using the MRI data, we found differences in how the heart contracts in men and women,” explained study lead author David Rutkowski. He’s a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

“There was greater strain in the left ventricle wall of women and a higher vorticity in the blood volume. We hypothesise that these two things are related,” he said.

The findings shed light on cardiac function and may improve researchers’ understanding of why the hearts of men and women respond differently to stress and disease, Rutkowski suggested in a news release from the Radiological Society of North America.

In addition, Rutkowski said, “These blood flow metrics would be useful as reference standards because they are derived from healthy people, so we could use these to compare with someone who is unhealthy.”

The study was published in the journal Radiology: Cardiothoracic Imaging.

Image credit: iStock

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Machine ‘could quadruple’ heart and lung transplants

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The device managed to pump oxygenated blood into both organs in a world-first procedure.

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Coronavirus to be tracked using its genetic code

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Scientists are to track the spread of the coronavirus in the UK by using clues in its genetic code.

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Coronavirus: Blood donors needed after 15% drop, says NHS

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Officials urge blood donors to stick to their appointments if they are well enough.

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Trusting the Virus

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In November when I did four days of ayahuasca ceremonies in Costa Rica, the first night was really rough. About an hour after drinking the tea, I started feeling very strange, and this feeling continued to intensify. My body began to feel really heavy, and after a while I felt like I was mostly paralyzed and could hardly move. I couldn’t sit or stand up. All I could do was lie down.

It was reasonably cool in the room, but I was sweating profusely. Soon I started feeling like it was hard to breathe… like I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I began to feel concerned. This was my first ever experience of this nature, and I hadn’t heard of anyone having breathing issues, so I didn’t feel prepared for that. I had the sensation like something was pushing down on my chest. So I started pushing myself to breathe harder and faster, which made me sweat even more.

The shaman’s helpers came over to check on me, probably because they could hear me struggling, encouraging me to try to relax and slow my breathing. But it was like listening to them through a fog. Mentally I was telling myself that I’d be okay, but my physical sensations were very confusing and unpleasant.

Meanwhile my mind was flooding with vivid, brilliantly colored fractal imagery at the same time I was trying to get my breathing under control. The feeling of discomfort kept increasing. I started wondering if I was going to pass out from not being able to breathe. What if no one realized what had happened in time? What if I died right there?

The worst was feeling so physically paralyzed, not 100% but maybe 90%, while trying harder and harder to get more air in. I was breathing really loudly and forcibly, almost like a woman in labor, yet I still felt like I wasn’t getting enough air.

But then when I feel really uncomfortable, disturbed, and concerned, I reminded myself to seek out my primary source of grounding, which is my relationship with reality. Despite the labored breathing and the psychedelic imagery, I found immediate comfort in remembering that relationship. And I reminded myself of the importance of trust in reality.

I didn’t know if I’d be physically okay. I hoped so, but it didn’t feel like things were okay in that moment. So I decided to trust on a different level that the experience was spiritually okay. In my mind I just began repeating: I trust you. I trust you. I trust you. I did my best to let go and surrender to my commitment to always trust reality. This included trusting that if it was my time to die, then it was my time to die, and fighting that wasn’t going to help.

This effort to lean towards trust started making me cry, not from desperation though. It was a feeling like I was linking up and opening a communication channel to some aspect of life that runs deeper than what I normally experience on a day to day basis. It felt like the tears were just my body’s reaction to what felt like an energetic response from reality. In some ways it felt like I was really just remembering that this channel is always there. It’s a similar channel to what I often experience while writing, but the frequency range was a bit difference.

Never in my life have I had to lean so far in the direction of trust before. Intellectually I can trust reality because I’ve reasoned out that it makes sense to do so. But it was something else entirely to lean into trusting reality when I wasn’t sure which way my body was going to go in the next hour. I didn’t have much control over my body in that situation, and even the contents of my mind were a bit out of control too, but I still had the ability to acknowledge this relationship with reality and to commit to trusting it no matter what happened.

Somehow when I leaned into trust, my body began to follow. My breathing started to ease up. My heart rate came down. It was still uncomfortable, but I began to relax into internal rhythms that felt safer to me. Soon I could tell that I was out of the woods and would be okay physically.

Afterwards I still had several hours of deep imagery and intense emotional processing to go through, including a storm of tears, but that was the easy part relative to the physical sensations. I still spent hours feeling semi-paralyzed and super dizzy like the room was spinning, so I needed help just to walk to the bathroom at one point.

And then I went through three more ceremonies in the next three nights. As you might guess, it took a lot of trust to drink the tea again after knowing what happened the first night. But I also felt that since I’d gone through it once and learned that trusting reality helped a lot, I was perhaps better prepared if I had to go through something similar again.

It turned out that each night was a different experience. I only had the labored breathing, profuse sweating, and semi-paralysis on the first night. The other nights were so different, with some of the worse nausea and dry heaving I’ve ever experienced, including retching over a bucket for more than an hour – quite the ab workout.

Overall that week was a physically difficult experience but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually beautiful. I may even go back again this November, but we’ll have to see if that’s possible.

For some time after that experience, I’ve been wondering about that night where I felt like I could barely breathe. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. I understand the purging aspect, which most people experienced during that week, some more than others. But I didn’t hear of anyone else struggling to breathe like I did, at least not among our group of about 40 people. And why did I have to endure that only on the first night? I saw so much evidence of rich meaning in other parts of the experience, but this part stood out to me as a piece that didn’t seem to fit.

At the time I decided to just trust that reality was giving me that experience for a reason, but I didn’t know why. It did help me appreciate life afterwards, and it also shifted my relationship with death. It reminded me that if death is approaching, it’s best to relax and do my best to trust reality rather than tensing up all over.

What I didn’t know or expect about ayahuasca is that it seems to leave a permanent trace effect behind. I feel like it opened up some kind of communication channel has never fully switched off or closed since November. Most of the time it’s muted, but it’s still present, and I can tune into some threads of information or energy currents that remain accessible.

As the virus situation has been escalating this month, I’ve been feeling this channel open up more, as if the ayahuasca energy signature is tapping me on the shoulder and trying to get my attention. I also keep hearing music looping in my mind that I heard during the ceremonies.

When I learn about people being on ventilators and struggling to breathe, this channel opens up more clearly, and it reconnects me back to the vivid memories of when I felt that I could barely breathe. I even feel some of the sensations in my body, like I’m acting it out again. Sometimes it becomes so uncomfortable that I have to pull my attention away for a while and allow my body to relax.

Meanwhile the reason why this is happening comes through clearly as well – empathy.

Whenever I think about the people who are struggling to breathe – and the many more who will soon be joining them – I can’t help but feel some of those physical sensations myself. I’m reminded of how terrifying that can be, and all sorts of emotions come up. And I have to keep surrendering to those feelings and reminding myself to relax into trust again.

Even though a virus isn’t a plant, this open ayahuasca channel is somehow showing me that plant intelligence and viral intelligence are connected. Maybe they’re linked via the energy patterns or intelligence of nature. I can’t really explain it. I just sense that this viral situation isn’t some random or chaotic event but rather that there is an intelligence behind it, and it’s part of the same intelligence that I danced with during the ayahuasca ceremonies.

These realizations have been guiding my behavior in recent days. On the one hand, I’m strongly motivated to encourage people to practice good social distancing, and I want us to move towards stronger measures faster and sooner, partly because I don’t want anyone to have to go through the experience of feeling like they can’t breathe. Knowing that more and more people will soon be gasping for breath brings up a flood of emotion, especially this feeling of connection to the fear and stress they’ll experience as they go through it. Putting my attention on this creates strong sympathetic sensations in my body.

And yet there’s this other aspect of trust as well, which has multiple layers to it. One part tells me that if people have to go through this experience, then it’s best for them to lean into trusting reality as much as possible, even going so far as to trust that it may be time to die. Mentally and emotionally resisting and tensing doesn’t seem like it would help, but letting go and allowing the body to respond with its own intelligence just might help.

Another layer, which might sound odd to many people, includes trusting the virus itself. This doesn’t mean trusting that it won’t infect me and running around risking people’s lives.

By trusting the virus, I mean trusting that it’s part of nature and part of reality, and so if I lean into trusting reality, that includes trusting the purpose of whatever this virus is doing. I can’t say exactly why, but I do sense that this virus has a purpose, both for us as individuals and for the world.

So while one part of me empathizes with seeing it as a threat and wanting to prevent harm, another part of me trusts that it’s not really here to vanquish us. When I look at it this way, even death doesn’t look like a form of harm per se, just a type of transition.

Because of this perspective, I feel that if I got infected, one part of me might want to frame the virus as an invader that I have to defeat in order to survive. But another part of me somehow knows that this level of perception isn’t accurate and that it would only fuel more tension and make the experience worse. It makes me consider that perhaps I should welcome the virus as a form of intelligence, to let it do its dance with my body and trust my body to respond appropriately. Maybe its purpose is to teach me something or to give me an experience that might actually be a precious gift.

So presently I don’t feel aligned with the “war on virus” frame that I’ve been hearing lately. To me that sounds about as ludicrous as declaring a war on kale. I don’t think the virus is declaring war on us. I sense no hostility or belligerence in its intention.

I do think the virus has a positive purpose to serve, and I don’t think that going to war with it acknowledges that purpose. I’m not 100% sure what it’s purpose is, but I’m pretty sure that it isn’t here to make everyone stock up on toilet paper.

I sense that this new virus is here to teach us something. I see its presence in the world as an invitation – a complex invitation with many layers to it, both individually and collectively. I know that I’m not the only one who’s considering this perspective right now.

Whenever I write a new blog post, I pick a frame and write from within that frame. This virus situation has many layers to it, which makes this an especially big challenge because no single frame can address the entirety of the situation. One day I may write from a frame that encourages social distancing, which may be a rational course of action within that frame. Another day I may write from a frame that suggests the rationality of acceptance and surrender. Some people may see these as being in conflict. I don’t. They’re just different lenses for viewing the same reality, and when we consider multiple lenses, we discover deeper levels of rationality that make sense across multiple frames.

Recognizing the value of surrender doesn’t make me want to abandon social distancing, for instance. I can and do practice both. I can do what I can to reduce suffering, even while feeling intense sympathetic emotion. And I can simultaneously accept and align with where this story wants to go without feeling like I’m fighting reality. What binds these together is trust. When we trust, life plays us like instruments.

I think a common objection to trusting reality is that it will make you passive, complacent, or foolish. I think that’s an irrational objection though.

If you consider this virus situation as an invitation for you, what kind of invitation do you think it is?

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