Gender Identity Crisis

This is something that you hear about all the time nowadays. Someone is transitioning from being a man to being a woman. 

Let’s break this down for a minute. There are two possibilities if you’ve gotten to this point: what I see in the mirror is true. Or my thoughts are true.

To swap genders, you must believe that your thoughts are truer than your body. They are in obvious conflict, and something has to give. Either the mind or the body.

But our minds have a history of deceiving us. How often have you thought something and been wrong? What if everyone who had suicidal thoughts valued those over their own bodies? 

I think we can agree that our thoughts are not necessarily true. I can worry about things that may or may not happen tomorrow, or in the next year. The fact that I think them does not make them true.

But my organs are something that I cannot deny. They are, as surely as I am.

So the question is only what should I believe, my mind or my eyes?  One has a history of misleading me, the other is undeniable.

But if there is no good reason to believe that these thoughts could be false, and culture tells us that they are true or good or natural, we may start to believe them. They may become part of us. And we may value those thoughts over whatever we see in the mirror.

Jesus Didn’t Wear Glasses

And he won’t wear them when he comes back. It may sound trivial, but a guy named William Bates proved that eyesight was correctable without glasses. That’s important because it means you and I have a natural path to better sight.

More importantly, vision is closely tied to memory in the elderly. So if you can save your vision, you may can save your mind.

In my book, we take this concept use it to develop a working brain model, and apply it to some mysteries of science and medicine. We journey into psychology and psychiatry, theorize about mental illnesses, and expose some major shortcomings in the science of the mind. Get your copy today.

The Greatest Commandment

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Jesus replied: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. Matthew 22:36-37

To love God better, we need to first understand three abstract concepts.

• Heart- where we feel emotions and intuition. We’ve discussed emotions before as something we create based on our perspective.
• Soul-  the part of us that never dies. Where our logic resides. Where our memories reside. So if our logic does not match God’s logic, we can not love God with all of our minds, because that logic produces the thoughts that govern the mind.
• Mind- what produces thoughts based on our logic

So the heart feels, soul interprets, and mind produces thoughts.

We love better God by using the proper perspective to govern our emotions. Writing logic based in the Truth to govern our souls. And using better logic to produce wholesome thoughts. And using those thoughts to do good in the world.

 

If I Can See – Free eBook

So, I’m pretty excited to let y’all know that I finally put everything together in book format. This is the best place to start. Feel free to share with your friends and family. If you like it, be sure to sign up to follow my blog, so you can read the latest theories before anyone else. Read Now or buy on Amazon.

If I Can See – Now on Amazon

So, I’m pretty excited to let y’all know that I finally put everything together in book format. This is the best place to start. Feel free to share with your friends and family. If you like it, be sure to sign up to follow my blog, so you can read the latest theories before anyone else.

Rethinking the 100-meter dash

What’s the smallest unit of time that you can perceive. How much does it change throughout the day? At what points does time fly? 

I’ve noticed is that as I relax my mind and see better, my “now” becomes longer. I think it’s why if you focus on a single point when you’re running or working out, you perform better. Because the more “nows” between me and my destination, the worse I’m going to run. Counter-intuitively, the choppier the curves of now, the smoother the time feels. So the fewer points that time stops, the faster time flies. 

Is there any math behind this theory? Yes. Simple calculus.

Calculus is the math behind finding the exact area of the curve. Take a look at this curve. For a moment, I want you to imagine the curve as time it takes you to run 10 meters. The chops of the curve are your instantaneous now. As you stress your mind and body, these shorten. And you run slower, and you use more energy. The key to your fastest race is the thickest bars under the graph [after you get going]. 

Think about the 100-meter dash. Let’s assume that everyone has perfect running form, and a perfect start. Usain Bolt takes 41 strides, Justin Gatlin takes 42.5, Johan Blake takes 46. Why does that matter? The person that wins the 100-meter dash is the person that slows down the least. Everyone slows down. And if everyone has the same top speed, and gets to that speed in the same amount of time, the only difference between Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin is that Gatlin slows down a little more over the course of the race. His relative “now” is slightly shorter than Bolts, meaning that he’ll need more strides to complete the race. And more energy. And more time. 

There’s one more important thing to discuss about the 100-meter dash. The acceleration phase. The portion of the race where the runner accelerates to top speed. This portion rewards those that compress time the most. The harder you push, the shorter the amount of time between strides, the faster you accelerate. 

So before you write off the 100-meter dash as a simple display of athleticism, remember the delicate balance of rest and relaxation. The race pits runners against each other, and against themselves. Push too hard, and you’ll come up short. Don’t push hard enough, and you lose. Transitioning two opposing mindsets is key as the runners changing their perception of time throughout the race. 

Sources:

1. https://news.ncsu.edu/2011/06/wms-dogs/
2. https://animalogic.ca/wild/7-near-psychic-animals-that-might-just-be-able-to-predict-disasters-before-they-happen

Design Your Own Placebo

That pill that does nothing…does something. It’s clearly proof of mind over matter. The million dollar question is why. 

We know that the mind controls the body. So if the introduction of this pill into your system solves your problem, what does that say about the nature of your problem?

I’d say that it was that these problems were our own doing from the start. There was some logical loop frying our system that changed the output of our brain. By putting this pill into the system, and convincing us that it’s going to help us, our brains sidestep the loop due to no help of the pill. We just needed a reason to doubt the logic in the first place.

Placebos seem to be most effective on pain, nausea, chronic fatigue, and depression. What does that say about the nature of those diseases? We need a pill to tell us that these diseases are all in our heads. 

Sham surgeries are also apparently a thing. Doctors will cut you open, do nothing, and stitch you back up. The craziest part of all, they seem to work as well as traditional procedures in some areas. You read that right. Even fake surgeries seem to work. How can that possibly be?

Something to try at home: If the placebo effect is all in your mind anyways, can you convince yourself that you just took a pill to help your ailment? It sounds ridiculous, but if the nature of the problem is all in your mind, design your own Trojan Horse to retake your throne. 

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sham_surgery
2. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34572482
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
4. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-the-placebo-effect
5. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/just-sugar-pill-placebo-effect-real/
6. https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/7/7/15792188/placebo-effect-explained
7. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/placebo-effect-depression-treatment

Entropy and the Brain

So here’s an article about the entropy in the brain and how it increases with age. This fits my model of aging, “brainbeats”, and personal time perception. There are mixed studies on whether more or less entropy in the brain is better. But we already know the answer to that.

• Less entropy the better.
• Caffeine creates brain entropy. And so do a bunch of other things. 
• Stress is entropy.
• Entropy alters personal relativity. May want to check out this article on that. 

Entropy always increases in a closed system, but we are not closed systems. It’s the second law of thermodynamics.

So, let’s assume the brain is a cylinder filled with gas. It should adhere to the following equation: PV=nRT, where P is pressure, V is volume, and T is temperature. n and R are constants the won’t apply since this calculation is more a correlation. We haven’t figured out those constants for the brain yet. 

As the temperature rises, the entropy rises. And either pressure or volume rises. So, in the closed system of your body, entropy always increases. But, if we allow your brain to expand, we can decrease the pressure and temperature.

So our brains shrink over time. And if they shrink, the pressure of our ideal gas, and temperature will rise accordingly. Entropy rises. But we know that all of this is just further from our ground state, where we sleep, recover, and learn best. Our perceptions of time will shorten, and hasten our aging process.

What is associated with elevated brain pressure?

One of the most damaging aspects of brain trauma and other conditions, directly correlated with poor outcome, is an elevated intracranial pressure. ICP is very likely to cause severe harm if it rises too high. Very high intracranial pressures are usually fatal if prolonged, but children can tolerate higher pressures for longer periods. An increase in pressure, most commonly due to head injury leading to intracranial hematoma or cerebral edema, can crush brain tissue, shift brain structures, contribute to hydrocephalus, cause brain herniation, and restrict blood supply to the brain. It is a cause of reflex bradycardia. [Source]

Can our brains grow? Yes. That should not surprise you. As the volume increases, brain pressure in the model would go down. But later in life, they start shrinking, and so do we. They grow until you start trying to lose weight. They go until you start aging. They grow until you throw in the towel. Here’s a chart of brain weight over time. See for yourself. The decrease in brain weight corresponds with aging.

What, if anything are the takeaways here? The brain follows the second law of thermodynamics. Entropy causes aging. I’m adding this to my brain model. What’s next? Apply this model to the Bends and altitude sickness. 

Sources

1. https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/dev.html
2. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21008-6
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/srep02853
4. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128311-800-a-brief-history-of-the-brain/amp/
5. http://healthland.time.com/2011/08/03/study-4-factors-that-may-shrink-your-brain/

Tourette’s is reversible

We’ll get there in a second. But first, is Tourette’s genetic? The majority of cases are inherited. Kinda. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

A person with Tourette’s has about a 50% chance of passing the gene(s) to one of his or her children, but Tourette’s is a condition of variable expression and incomplete penetrance. Thus, not everyone who inherits the genetic vulnerability will show symptoms; even close family members may show different severities of symptoms, or no symptoms at all. The gene(s) may express as Tourette’s, as a milder tic disorder (provisional or chronic tics), or as obsessive–compulsive symptoms without tics. Only a minority of the children who inherit the gene(s) have symptoms severe enough to require medical attention. Gender appears to have a role in the expression of the genetic vulnerability: males are more likely than females to express tics.

I have a science background, and looking at this type of explanation makes me cringe. Read it for yourself, but it seems like we’re trying to make a genetic model fit when it’s really something we just can’t explain. 

It’s associated with OCD, ADD, ADHD, and sleep disorders. This shouldn’t surprise you at this point. We’ve discussed the nature of these diseases and how they are more related than anyone knows. In my opinion, the brain is binary. It’s either working properly or it’s not. And if it’s not, there’s a host of different functions that will be impaired. [see There is only one brain disease]

It’s 3-4 times more likely in guys than girls. It’s the same reason that men are more likely to get skin cancer and on average live about six years less. Why? Because of their brain activity. They are further from their ground state, so time feels slower. Recovery takes longer.

White kids are twice as likely as black and Hispanic kids to get Tourette’s.  Why is that? Resting brain activity. It’s the same reason that black kids are more likely to play in the NFL. The closer their brains are to the delta state the faster they recover and better they operate.

Tics may remit with age. This is from Wikipedia. But it’s huge. Why? Because using my model of the human brain, this means that Tourette’s is a reversible condition. How do we reverse it? Same way we reverse other brain dysfunctions:

1. Identify the loop. This is the repeated behavior. It should be pretty obvious.
2. Identify the fears causing the loop. What are they afraid of? What makes them act like this?
3. Identify the logic causing the fears. Why are they scared of this?
4. Doubt the logic. Question their reasoning. If you can change their mind, you can change their brain.

 

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourette_syndrome
2. https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/tourette/data.html

Is Running the Key to Aging?

As always, let’s start somewhere completely unrelated: adolescence. 

Think about this for a moment: if our brains control our bodies, do we control our own adolescence? We always talk about puberty like it’s some event that “happens when it happens.” Consider for a moment that we play at least some role in our own development. I think it’s more than that, but I want you to keep reading.

We do not know why some people go through puberty before others. We just don’t. There’s a nice age range and we know that girls typically go before guys, but that’s about it.

So let’s make our typical assumptions. If time does not exist, what is the difference between our subject when she’s 10 and when she’s 15? Her mind. So if her mind is the only thing to change, and we know that age of puberty onset is not genetic, how do we control when we hit puberty?

There are disparities in puberty onset of different races. Take a look at this. There’s a significant average onset age difference between different races and cultures. Surely you know by now that I don’t buy into the fact that genetics controls everything we don’t understand. There are other factors at play here, and we should look at them with an open mind.

Puberty begins earlier in African American girls. We’ve looked into black culture a good bit over the past month. You know what else we know about black girls, generally speaking? They don’t workout. 

Think about this for a moment: Female track athletes almost always look like they’re fifteen, or younger. You pick your definition of the development of women, and you will not find it in these girls.

See what I mean?

Running is known to help longevity.  This article goes a lot further than that. It’s basically saying that running is the fountain of youth. So I’ve already written about how aging starts in the brain, so if that is true, what does running do to the brain? I found an article about that too, but then I got to thinking: if we don’t know how the brain works, how can we say what running does that will benefit it? Here’s what you should take away from this: aging is not what you want to do. People get ugly and less productive, and less functional as they age. Cancer and most all diseases develop later in life, as we age. So if running is what we say keeps you from aging, you should run. Or pick your cardio of choice.

So if we know that you today is the same as you tomorrow, and is the same as you in five years, what does running to do slow down the aging process? We know now that aging starts in the brain. As the brain ages, the body ages.

Running can change your brain.  This is a great post that explores the mental benefits from running at several different angles. I think it’s simple: running is a stress reliever and the right amount of cardio helps alter our perception of time.

Think about the sports where the athletes look the best. In my opinion, basketball, soccer, and tennis. Three of the most run-intense sports. I prefer to look at the professional athletes, because you’ll get a larger percentage of days and time on court. The NBA players are in a league of their own.

So find your venue of choice, and go running.