nsfw.

These are pretty tame images that I have collected from Sandy Kim's website, my new favourite photographer. To all voyeurs, please check out http://www.sandykim.com/xxx.html. Art should make one uncomfortable. I like honest art.

More sexy facts because I love them so!
- In Medieval times, breast milk was considered to be diverted menstrual fluid. Milk does not not equal blood, otherwise I am grateful for choosing soy milk over skim milk in my coffee. This is what you get for being a vampire obsessed culture.
- Men, your penis is actually one third longer than you think. What you see is just the "root" and the rest is covered by the skin. Tell your lady about your 10 inch erection today!
- Thanks to MRI scanners, scientists now know that your male friend takes on the "shape of a boomerang" during intercourse. How do we know this? Stick two people in an MRI and watch them have sex. You can see why, initially, only extremely flexible (dancers) were used in such studies. It's tight in the MRI tube (no pun intended, though the MRI machine is, in retrospect, quite a funny looking machine).
- Israel Meizner of The Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine witnessed a 7 month old fetus "grasping his penis in a fashion resembling masturbation movements". You're in the womb for 9 months. You've got to pass time some how, I guess.
- The earliest orgasm on record (a Kinsey observation) was seen in a three year old girl. I wonder if the 7 month old fetus had a "happy ending".
- Evolutionists reckon that a man evolved a penis with a ridged flans so that he could scoop up competitors' semen before thrusting in and leaving his own sperm. The last portion of the ejaculate also contains a natural spermicide. What an intelligent creature the penis is! (let's face it, the penis and the man are not one)
- Masturbation is bad. Jk, lol but the that's what peeps thought in the 1850s when they manufactured the Penile Prickling Ring. This ingenious devise was engineering to be placed around the sleeping penis. If, God forbid, the creature expanded during sleep, the ring would expose metal spikes and prevent the wet dream/erection from continuing on. Using negative reinforcement, it was believed that you would be able to contain your arousal. I wonder if these poor men, like Albert and the white rabbit, had any long term complications with arousal and getting it up. Or like Little Albert, shriek and shiver at the sight of their engorged cock. Roy Levin (a sex physiologist) reckons that masturbation evolved because if you jerk off, more fresh sperm is made, keeping you more fertile and thus more evolutionarily advantageous. Too much wanking though can actually deplete your sperm counts but Lewin encourages that you (for medical purposes, clearly) autofellatio every 5 days. I had a friend in school that never busted a nut, but then again, he was getting it on with so many women I could never count on my fingers.
- In 16th and 17th Century France, impotence was legal grounds for divorce. A team of "experts" and examiners (sometimes 15 physicians, surgeons and legal functionaries) would visit the husband up to 2-4 times in some cases, and the man would have to prove that he could get and maintain an erection. If he failed on all accounts, the man would be fined and forbidden to remarry. He would also have to return the dowry received from his wife's family. This is a horrible story. I mean, I'm sure a lot of men out there would not want to touch themselves in front of a group of strangers and the pressure of this entire ordeal could be too much for your little, flaccid twinkle. Isn't it easier to get an erection in a whore house than in the company of 15, what I assume were, geriatric and Sigmund Freud looking (in my head, at least with big Harry Potter glasses and bushy, white beards) males? So many issues! What if the husband is gay, clearly 15 watchful males would be a turn on unlike the loving gaze of his missus. What if he has prostate cancer? This is too much! this may be the beginning of masturbatory webcams!
- The harem obstetrician to Kamil Pasha (an Ottoman Empire statesman), Skevos Zervos, was always really intrigued by Pasha's enthusiastic relations with all 64 of his wives and the feminising effects of testicle removal on eunuchs. What was his response to all of this? Why, clearly it was a good idea to graft testicular tissue from rabbits/dogs onto geriatric gonads. This was 1909 and there is an even more morbid story from Quentin Chief Scientist, Stanley (I've forgotten his first name), which I heard about in an Ethan Bloom lecture at the SymbioticA symposium. Stanley grafted dead prisoners' gonads onto prisoners. According to Stanley, asthmatics reported improvement, as did diabetics (3/4), and epileptics (3/5). His test subjects apparently saw better and their acne cleared up. Odd how nowadays we don't accept such "inhumane" and "brutal" human experimentation. Science can only progress if you prove that something isn't due to A and B. But that's for another blog post, I guess. Makes you wonder if we really should be looking so deeply into the beauty of the human body (coming from the Medical student :s ). The Chinese did experiments on genitals as well. Instead of grafting tissue, though, they dried it and made it into pills or potions. The Chinese journal Materia Medica (1597) recommends the penises of dogs, wild cats and otters for impotence treatment.

Even recently Earthtrust found a restaurant in Taichung, Taiwan, which sold penis soup to male diners (at $320 a serving!) though I'm not too sure if it's since then been shut down. I assume it has. Interestingly, one penis makes soup for 8. Time to start poaching tigerzzzzz.

i am beethoven (no).

"time is always new; cannot possibly be anything but new. Heard as a succession of acoustic events, music will soon become boring; heard as the manifestation of time eventuating, it can never bore." - Zuckerkandl, from his book Sound and Symbol

Is this not the most perfect quote? I think it quite accurately depicts how I feel about music. When I was doing TEE, I used to always watch the hands of the clock tick lazily across the face, calculating how much practise I still needed to get done for the week. I didn't appreciate that time was slowly seeping through my fingers and that instead of fighting it, I should simply appreciate and be with 'the moment'. I once heard on ABC radio a professional French Hornist talk about her relationship with her instrument. She mentioned how sometimes you pick up an instrument and it just feels like your skin. You know it is 'the one'. I never had that feeling with trumpet but I did, and continue, to have that for my first love: my piano, Violetta. A sexy minx dressed in black.

I've decided to learn as many of Bach's Preludes and Fugues as possible starting with Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C minor, BVW 847. Bach clears my head. I don't think about anything other than the music. I feel more in the moment than I have ever felt with Violetta but it wasn't long before I encountered my first obstacle: to metronome or not to metronome? If I used the ticking device, I would be stripping the music of its unique quality, turning it into a succession of musical notes and rendering it pathetic. After all, the metronome wasn't even around when Bach composed this piece. What's good enough for Bach, is good enough for me.

Beethoven was the first composer to include metronome markings in his pieces and he was criticised by his colleagues who considered him senile and eccentric. His marked metronome markings are, in general, quicker than how the music should be played. Rhythm is a touchy subject! Apparently Galileo used to hum to himself as he observed the descent of objects. This enabled him to more accurately estimate the time in which things fell, as opposed to using other (unreliable) indicators. Clearly, we have a natural sense of rhythm which may be destroyed by the use of my pathetic, electronic metronome. Metronome, I am above you. (On a side note, some people tend to be rhythm deaf, like Che Guevara who apparently couldn't tell a mambo from a tango. Didn't stop him from causing political upheaval, though).

Evolutionists argue that rhythm is necessary for survival (see 'ear worms') and even in modern society you can see its importance in work songs. I know that I much rather listen to music with an awesome beat when I'm working out; it makes me get into a rhythm and makes strenuous exercise much more enjoyable and, simultaneously, easier. Some broken legged patients also find that certain rhythmic songs can help them regain their original 'body image' map, encoding the intricate wirings of the brain. Rhythm is represented through the entire brain - in the cerebellum, brain stem and the frontal lobe. I use mnemonic devises with a memorable rhythm when I'm trying to remember something in my study. There are bizarre cases of people with frontal lobe damage, that only respond to commands if they're said in a singsong sort of way and I guess poetry owes part of its success to people's fondness for repetition. When the clock ticks, ever tick is the same mechanical sound, but instead of "tick tick" we hear "tick tock." We seem to impose a rhythm even when there are identical sounds. How odd. The evolutionists alwayz have a wanky explanation for such thingz.

In the end, I gave in. I'm no Galileo or Johannes Sebastian Bach. Just a silly 20 year old which philosophises too much about the importance of music. When you're learning a new piece, especially something by Bach, you need a solid beat, an acoustic event. If time is going to pass in its lethargic pace, completely disregarding my insipid and pointless need to relive and stay in the past, I'd rather be spending it with you, Violetta.

I'll finish by quoting Agnes de Mille (who choreography Copland's Rodeo - I seriously want to see this in concert one day), "the truest expression of people is its dance and music." Perhaps Paderewski's spider could differentiate between Chopin's etudes played in thirds from those played in sixths but music seems to be something uniquely human. I like spending time with others by dancing in my underwear and listening to Ravel.





Ps, Glenn Gould is a mega babe. Bach is supposed to be played on the harpsichord so it makes sense to play in staccato. On youtube, many were complaining that Gould played too slowly. I say fuck 'em and their stupid rhythmic expectations. Music should be an expression of yourself anyway.

the music bug.

'Unravelling Bolero' by Anne Adams. Ironically painted at the onset of frontotemporal demential which also plagued Ravel when he composed 'Bolero'

Someone once told me that my very existence proves that Murphy's Law exists. In the space of about a week, four horrible things happened and I crashed. I still don't know if the way I handled things was the best way of doing so, but I find my life hysterically amusing. Things from my past keep re-surfacing, like the bowler hat for Sabina, each time with a different but significant meaning. I can't help but laugh - I'm 20 in two days, why must things always take the most complicated route! :)

For a while, I felt numb. I was so removed from everything; I said hurtful things and placed myself in compromising positions and watched the action take place without even the sliver of emotion coursing through my veins. And then I heard Philip Glass's 'Opening' and the world beneath my feet, trembled. For about six weeks, I'd felt nothing. And now I felt everything. (Koko is a wankerrrrr)

Music can make you feel alive in ways that words cannot. Before L-dopa was brought in to manage Parkinson's, music therapy managed to temporarily inhibit the jerky stutter in motion that characterises the disease. People with Tourette's often find that playing an instrument harnesses and focuses their compulsion to touch and feel. In fact renown pianists Nick van Bloss and Tobias Picker both suffer from Tourette's. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that music can bring out the best in you. It stopped me from becoming a callous bitch. It can help those not only suffering from motor disorders, but also from emotional turmoil. When I felt like nothing mattered, no words could make me feel whole again. I heard 'Opening' and all this changed. I feel like it's woken me up from this dreamlike three years. Yes, I know I'm exaggerating.

The association of music with emotion and memory has been long established. I associate certain time periods and people with certain pieces of music. Everytime I hear Sonic Youth, I think of one of my dearest friends and I still can't listen to Metric's 'Help Me' because of the memories iand emotions t brings up but sometimes my connections between people and emotion and music become very convoluted. Sometimes, when I visit one of my friends I actually hear Kronos Quartet and feel as I did when I was 18 and whenever I see one of my closest friends' girlfriends, I hear 'Debaser' by the Pixies. I can't help it. I used to think that it was weird that I occassionally hear songs vividly in my mind when I simply am near someone. Perhaps this is a form of synaesthesia? Am I cross activating my auditory and visual cortices?

I think synaesthesia is more common than we recognise. I always associate the number three with yellow and seven with pale pink and feminine qualities. Nine is masculine and rude and mean. I read in a book that this is a "higher" order of synaesthesia which basically means that instead of mixing up the senses, ideas become cross-activated. Nabokov also saw different colours for each letter of the alphabet. In fact, when he was younger his mother gave him a box of coloured letters which distressed the poor kid who saw the letters coloured incorrectly. Luckily, I'm not this extreme. I've side tracked again, but synaesthesia is really facinating. Researchers reckon that in childhood, many of our senses are cross linked but that with time, "pruning" of unimportant/less used connections wires the brain in a different way. Begs you to ask the question, why are some people more susceptible to synaesthesia? Is there perhaps some sort of gene that makes some people less susceptible to pruning?

It makes me sad to think that some people can't react to music. Those with Asperger's can sometimes appreciate music, but not feel its full weight. Apparently Darwin lost his appreciation for music the more deeply he explored his theories on evolution. I read recently about frontotemporal dementia which really facinates me. Apparently this dementia can result in the disinibition of certain areas of the cortex asssociated with control and can unravel talents and a greater appreciation for the arts. One of my favourite composers, Ravel composed 'Bolero' at the onset of this dementia and artist Anne Adams, who had originally been a biology/math teacher, became enthralled by music and took up art. There's hope for everyone, even those with Asperger's! I find comfort in knowing that we all have some sort of musical prowess that we're not aware of. I don't want to wait around for dementia to hit, though. Man alive, music is wonderful.

Extra tid-bits:
- Williams Syndrome is a syndrome associated with heart and blood defects and mental retardation. Apparently those with this chromosomal aberration have a strong love and desire to play music for themselves and others (unlike savants which are highly robotic in their preoccupation with music).
- damage to the anterior temporal lobe of the dominant hemisphere (stroke etc) can lead to disinhibition of the parietal and temporal sections of the non dominant hemisphere. This can potentially lead to greater powers of perception.

ear worms.

drinking red wine, listening to Ella and pondering. I wonder when it was that people started to get songs stuck in their heads - ear worms, if you will. I guess now with iPods, CDs and television, we're constantly being exposed to tunes and the potential that a horrible tune sung by a whiney and anorexic American with a good beat, will get stuck in our minds - play on and on preventing us from being productive. Evolutionists hypothesise that our brains have evolved in such a way that we are prone to remembering repetitions in rhythms and in melodies. In hunter-gatherer societies such a trait could have been advantageous - if you remember the sounds of the birds and wind in a location known for good vegetation or scrumptious meat (lol) you could continually return to the same place and increase the survival of yourself and your offspring by bringing back enough to feed the fam etc. This evolutionary adaption has perhaps become a burden in an environment inflitrated by doof doof rhythms and banal melodies!

It's similar to the obesity problem. Once upon a time, having a sugar tooth meant that you would be more likely to consume high energy foods (because they are indeed tasty and delicious!) which were difficult to find. The Aztecs must have gone CRAAZZZzzzZZZZZyyyy when they found the cocoa bean! Now, a sugar tooth where delicious cupcakes and carrot cakes are just around the corner leads to unhealthy weight gain. (I read an interesting article today about how thigh circumference is correlated to premature death - the smaller the thigh, the more likely you are to die early or suffer from heart disease. Thank you Body Pump and thyroid disorder for rendering my thighs MASSIVE. Clearly, I am never dying). Our hunter-gatherer brains start to think that simply because you hear the latest Rhiana song 219346234750 times in shopping centres, clothing stores that this is something that should be stored in our minds. Oh, faulty brain! Why, why do you torment me so! Mark Twain wrote about this ear worm phenomena in one of his short stories - but were humans before this time also afflicted by the burrowing worm? Perhaps, but I doubt it was in the same way.

I read about epileptic/temporal lobe tumour patients that often hear music right before seizing. In a world that didn't hear music, did this exist? Did you hear bird calls or rhythms? How can one hear music if you're not exposed to it? Or is it perhaps your own invention? But if you don't know what music is, how can you construct a song in your mind? Are we just inately predisposed to melodies? I haven't felt so strongly for music in a long time. I wish I could hear music in my dreams and compose based on these melodies upon waking like my friend can. I used to think that I was somewhat less musical than my perfect pitch friends. I don't think so anymore. Music is much more than that.

Oh Ella, I've missed you so. As much as I miss NYC and more so than past memories.

"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky, stormy weather. Since my man and I ain't together. keeps rainin' all the time."

Dear God, I love how I feel right now.

bonk me #1.

Argh! I love this book so so much! Mary Roach is a hilarious woman. When I grow up I want to be just like her (with Shaun Micallef or Don Draper as my husband - oh listen to the girl that never considers marriage). Some interesting points that I need to research further/find facinating:

- There are 11,250 sex related sudden deaths in the US annually, on par with Hep C, brain cancer and food poisoning
- sudden death during sex is more common with a prostitute
- Kinsey used a tootbrush (bristle end) for masturbatory purposes
- sex has the power to stop stutters temporarily, and enables you to lose peripheral vision. It can also relieve leg stiffness and muscle spasms in cerebral palsy sufferers for an average of eight hours using a rectal probe electroejaculator.
- 70% of women fail to orgasm through intercourse without clitoral stimulation
- 1 in 5000 women are born without a vagina so some doctors fashion va-jay-jays out of intestines or rectums (why would a man NOT want to sleep with you if you have a rectina?)
- the clitoris is in the va-jay-jay of a domestic sow (how unfair!)
- if the distance between your clitoris and urethra is less than the width of your thumb you are more likely to come
- shorter women and women with smaller breasts have been shown to orgasm more easily
- neoclitoris = transgendered clitoris made up from a stitched-in-place nub of penile glans tissue
- G spot comes from Ernst Grafenberg who first wrote about this "erotic zone"
- Denmark's National Committee for Pig Production recommends sexually stimulating the pig during artificial insemination since there is a 6% higher success rate in such pigs. There is a Five-Point Stimulation Plan which details how this should be done. Some inseminators even jump onto the back of the pigs to stimulate the real life experience of copulation. There is even a vibrator known as the The Reflexor that can bring about orgasm in the sow though few farmers use it (only 1%). The Government has issued an explanatory dvd showing exactly how the sows should be stimulated. The movie itself sounds majorly amusing - the man in the dvd gets the sow off whilst the cameraman focuses on a ring on the farmer's left hand. I mean, sure, he's married so there's nothing suss. CLEARLY.
- 26-28% college age rural males have had "some animal experience to the point of orgasm" according to Kinsey, ps, I love Kinsey
- one study came out that said that women who use condoms are more depressed than those who don't. They suggested that the ejaculate may have some happy effect on women. The pill, however, does quench sexual urges forcing women into a "permanent menopause". How bizarre-o. Perhaps if you're on the pill, you don't feel so mightily disappointed because your libido is quietened? Thus why the 'no condom' women are happy people? Too many weird factors come into play. I rule this study RIDICULOUS.
- masturbation can be a way of medicating menstrual pains and backache. Perhaps you're simply taking your mind off the pain/disturbance? I find masturbation helps when you feel like crapola. POINT: everyone should masturbate more for health reasons.
- Apparently marijuana and Ritalin can increase your chances of reaching orgasm. Few studies have been done on this, however. I can imagine it would be difficult to get funding for an "illegal" substance.
- Women who cheat have sex more with their boy toy in the middle of their cycle.
- A study in Chicago discovered that the smell of cologne, cherry and barbeque meat actually decreased vaginal blood flow. Cucumber and candy smeels increased blood flow by 13%.

to be continued brudderzzzzz...

the end of an era.

It was the stuff you read about in science fiction novels. 63-year-old William Sheridan from New York, whilst waiting for a compatible heart donor, drew pictures as a way of killing time. His 2D stick figures bore no semblance to the world around him and mirrored those that you might find in a kindergarten. A heart transplant later, this all changed. Sheridan’s childlike drawings transformed into creative and artistic depictions of landscape and wildlife; of billowing brooks and wild imagination. You see, the transplanted organ had belonged to 24-year-old Keith Neville, a stock broker with a passion for art and once it was relocated into Sheridan’s body, the New Yorker had indeed, a change of heart.

Sheridan isn’t alone in this phenomenon. Over 70 personality change cases have been recorded following heart transplants, unlike any other organ. James Clark in the United Kingdom, never one for romance, all of a sudden started to write passionate poetry for his wife after receiving a transplant from an amateur poet. You have to ask the question, does a life threatening operation simply put things into perspective, making one more open to trying new things and experiencing life to the fullest or does the heart have some sort of mysterious connection to emotion and our personality?

Aristotle and the ancient Greeks 2500 years ago saw the heart as the seat of the spirit and the rational soul. When you feel bad after a sudden loss in your life there’s this tightness in your chest and it feels as though your heart is beating irregularly. It’s little wonder that so many years ago, it was seen as the centre of love and emotion. By the late 19^th Century with advancements in medicine and technology, the important relationship of the brain to intelligence and emotion became established. Despite the growing evidence that the heart is merely a responder to stimulation by the brain, there is a growing movement among scientists that is trying to reverse this understanding. Some scientists are now convinced that the heart is so much more than just a biological pump; it may have memory and emotional intelligence.

You make me so lonely baby,
I get so lonely,
I get so lonely I could die.

Losing someone that you love is difficult. It’s hard to sleep, concentrate and find happiness in the things that you once loved doing. You can lose a ridiculous amount of weight and feel hopeless and nauseous all the time. The blood flow to your brain, changes. The anterior cingulate cortex associated with physical pain and distress in depression, becomes active and your immune response is weakened. Although it seems infantile and silly, evidence now suggests that you can die from a broken heart.

Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Jim Callaghan, who died 11 days after his wife of 67 years, is one person who is believed to have died from a broken heart. A study conducted in 1996, examined 1.5 million cases between the ages of 34 and 84. It was discovered that the risk of dying from something that resembles a heart attack 6 months after the loss of a loved one, increased from the norm by 20 to 35%.

Broken heart syndrome, also known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is a recognised medical condition that is caused by extreme stress often after the loss of a loved one and is more commonly found in older people. Fear and grief leads to a greater secretion of noradrenalin and adrenalin, hormones associated with the fight-and-flight response. These hormones lower the pumping ability of the heart and can cause chest pain and symptoms that closely mirror a heart attack. It differs from a heart attack, though. The heart undergoes a transformation; it takes up an atypical shape that compromises its pumping function. Its base squeezes normally but the middle and tip do not. This is not an ordinary heart attack. It doesn’t kill the heart muscle, just renders it helpless and can affect perfectly healthy people that don’t have any blood clots. Sufferers often recover within two to three weeks. It is a reaction to emotion.

Dr Ilan Wittsen of Johns Hopkins University has examined this remarkable condition. Blood samples from patients believed to be suffering from Broken Heart Syndrome contain high levels of adrenalin and noradrenalin which are more elevated than in normal heart attack patients. The heart responds to emotion like no other organ, but does it have a brain of its own?

Is your heart filled with pain?

Shall I come back again?

Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

In 1967, Dr Christian Barnard performed the first heart to heart transplant. Although the patient survived only 18 days, it was clear that the heart was a secularised organ, capable of beating on its own without the help of the brain. A person can remain heartless for about 15 minutes and even after a transplant, the connections linking the heart to the brain can remain severed. It continues to beat autonomously because of the Intrinsic Cardiac Ganglia.

The Intrinsic Cardiac Ganglia, affectionately known as the “little brain in the heart” is integral to the heart’s maintenance and performance. It is a collection of cells dispersed throughout the heart that strongly resemble neurons, the cells of the brain. In addition to this, it has brain-like supporting cells, proteins and messengers. There are about 40,000 neurons that sense and control your heart rate and communicate with the brain. If the heart contains neurons, why can’t it behave like a brain and remember and associate?

Dr Garry Schwartz, professor of psychology at the University of Arizona considers the heart to be a “bio, psycho, socio, spiritual organ” and is convinced that it has independent intelligence and paranormal abilities. He argues that there is circular communication between the heart and the brain and that memory can be transferred to the heart. In the case of James Clark, Schwartz believes that the donor’s heart had cells associated with poetry prowess. Clark’s change in personality from a masculine English brute into a sensitive, and ‘in touch’ gentleman also convinced Schwartz, that the heart affects emotion and love. It’s probably important to note that all this is coming from someone who believes that psychic Allison DuBois, the inspiration of television’s Medium, can indeed contact the dead with 77% accuracy and that none of this research has been published in a peer reviewed journal.

Schwartz calls this theory cellular memory and believes that memory exists in every cell of the body but most strongly with the heart. Cellular memory has been the topic of many books and films. In the 1924 book inspired, silent film, Les Mains d’Orlac (translated, “The Hands or Orlac”), concert pianist Paul Orlac loses his hands in a tragic railway accident only to have them replaced by the hands of a murderer. Orlac becomes consumed with murderous thoughts and develops a thirst to kill, like something off an episode of Passions. It would be terrifying to think that now in the golden age of science and medicine we may transform transplant patients into living Frankensteins.

A Californian research organisation known as the Institute of HeartMath (IHM) has developed an entire discipline on heart training and meditation. Crazy haired Research Director, Dr Rollin McCarty is convinced that our high stress, anxiety saturated, socially awkward society may be the result of negative emotions being transferred from one person to the next by a magnetic field that radiates from the heart and through the skin.

In one study, McCarty got subjects to look at a series of photographs, both pleasant and unpleasant ranging from disfigured persons to large, fulsome boobs and recorded response times of the heart and brain. He found that the heart responded correctly to the image, at a rate greater than predicted by chance, before the brain did and before the repulsive picture, for example, was even viewed. McCarty suggests that it’s not the brain that perceives negative stimuli and then signals the heart to beat faster but that the heart intuitively reacts, then the brain and then the rest of the body.

Starting today I’m teaching my heart

Not to ache anymore

Just because we’re apart.

Reversing common scientific notions especially to a more primitive, 2500 year old idea is a difficult task. UWA’s own Nobel Prize winner, Barry Marshall had to face decades of dissent and publication rejections until he deliberately infected himself with a bacterium and had a severe inflammatory reaction. He proved that stomach ulcers could be treated with an antibiotic and were the cause of bacteria, not stress, lifestyle or diet but it was a long and arduous process of acceptance.

Science, as it stands, is reductionist and not holistic. It concentrates on each organ as a single entity, not the overall picture in order to get to the heart of the matter. One thing is for sure, you feel something in your chest when you lose something or someone that was important. Perhaps that’s the heart thinking and feeling for itself, but according to current scientific though, it’s the brain that’s holding the reigns.

Although his ideas may be a little farfetched, Dr Rollin McCarty has developed an effective way of coping with heartbreak. Pick something that hurts you, but don’t think about it, just feel it. Visualise the transfer of energy from your breath into your heart and activate feelings of positivity. It sounds wanky, but meditation really doesn’t get the credit that it deserves.

Find it in your heart to do the things that you love and make you happy. Give yourself time, talk and reflect. In order to transcend pain, you must first experience it; pain is your body’s way of motivating recovery. A broken heart can be repaired and strengthened, just think of William Sheridan and the artistic flare he never knew he possessed. I cross my heart.

***

Not entirely sure why so many people liked this article more than all my others. It really is the end of an era. Who knew one silly office could mean so much to you. A sad, but healthy day.

depression is a fever.

I am now HOOKED on blogging. Came across a really interesting article a few minutes ago. According to a research team led by Paul Andrews (Virginia Commonwealth University), there might be a bright side to depression.

Depression is perhaps not a mental illness, but rather an evolutionary adaption to problematic social circumstances. Similar to the way that a fever directs the body's immune reaction to the place of infection/disease, depression may also play a role in redirecting the brain's resources to solving social dilemmas.

For years, doctors have diagnosed me with depression/anxiety and now statistics are coming out suggesting that 30-50% of all people will suffer from depression at some point in their lives. I wrote an article once about one research team that sees this increase in depression as the product of a deprived pleasure pathway. Life has become simpler. We don't need to plough fields in order to get wheat, we can just stick a mi goreng packet into the microwave and voila, din din is served. There's no sense of achievement (though perhaps getting off your butt and turning off Modern Family for the first time in the day can be seen as a big highlight). We all feel depressed at some points, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have a disorder. In fact, only about 1% of the general population has the actual disorder. It's a hot topic and Andrews' team now sees depression not as a liability, but rather, something that can potentially bring real benefits

I obsess over things; mainly to do with what's actually bugging me. Some people think about their next meal or advertisement slogans or well thought out puns. I think about why I feel the way I do. What I did wrong, what I could have done better, how I can improve, why didn't I say the things that were actually going through my mind and so on and so on. It's frustrating! Once upon a time, I thought that because I couldn't switch off my mind, it meant that I was lacking in maturity, common sense or intelligent thought but that's not the case at all. I sit my exams, I get depressed over them, I can't sleep at night and without fail, I always end up getting over 90%. My mind is highly analytical. Although I mainly analyse and re-analyse the causes for my depressive cycles, I can apply that sort of mind frame to anything, perfect my understanding and ask well thought out questions.

Andrews' team came across this conclusion in their research also. They found that sufferers of depression scored lower on cognitive tests but did better on complex problems that required deep thought. There's this one protein, SHT1A that binds serotonin (responsible for happy feelings!) and higher levels of the protein have been observed in depressed patients. The team suggests it's this protein that helps supply energy to neurons involved in the ventrolatral prefrontal cortex (VLPC) which are integral to keeping us focused on a task. In the happy, non-depressed individual, the VLPC runs out of energy and we lose focus. The depressed VLPC has a constant supply of nutrients and doesn't turn off.

The depressed mind thinks less of food and sex, as these just interrupt flow of thought. The depressed mind hasn't been phased out as we've evolved perhaps because it has the ability to solve social dilemmas that non depressed minds can't. Our analytical minds go into overdrive, we consider the costs and benefits of a given situation, such as a marriage or break up and come up with the best resolution. Oh how I hate seeing gray in a world that sees black and white! :(

I think the ideas are pretty rad and could potentially change the way depression is treated. They do however put into question the effectiveness of cognitive based therapy. Maybe simply talking about the way you feel (i.e. Freudian psychoanalysis) is the best way to go! There's no doubt that depression can be XTREMEly detrimental, though. Is that benefiting anyone or are we just wired to think that depression equals bad and hence conform to that ideal?

It's odd, because even this blog, is just an extension of my obsessively analytical mind. I don't know if I have depression, but I think like most people, I could relate to what was discussed in the article. We all have our own depressive tendencies.

like voles in love.

Once upon a time (all great love stories start this way), there was a beautiful prairie vole; the most beautiful prairie in all the research pens. Let’s call her Sally. Sally wanted love, the type that makes your tail curl up and sets off butterflies in your stomach, but none of the prairies in her pen had ‘it’. One day, a new prairie entered the pen, let’s call him Harry. Harry was everything that Sally had been looking for. The sex was unbelievable and they couldn’t keep their paws off each other in the first few days of meeting. Over the next few months, the raw, physical passion that they had felt upon meeting subsided, but it was replaced with a feeling of contentment, safety and love. Sally had found her soul mate.

In nature, few animals are capable of maintaining monogamous relationships. Unlike their close cousin, the montane vole, prairie voles, can mate for life and remain with their furry love until the very end. A research team led by Sue Carter explored this difference in vain hope of perhaps discovering some of the clues to long lasting love and relationship satisfaction. Little did they realise that what they’d find would be applicable not only to the voles, but all animals including humans.

Love is like snorting cocaine. It lights up our pleasure centres and makes us crave for more. It releases powerful “good feel” hormones and like cocaine, it can isolate us from other people, hobbies and things and keep us returning over and over to the same person. When Sally was ‘in love’, the “cuddle hormone” oxytocin was released. It’s this hormone that lowers anxiety, lets us trust people and steal babies from strangers. Merely being close to someone that you care about is enough to increase oxytocin levels. When the research team blocked female prairies’ oxytocin output, their relationships became fleeting like the montane voles. Upon injection of the hormone, however, bonding pairs were reformed and female prairies would bitch slap any hoe-bag prairies that tried to steal their men.

Male brains don’t have as many receptors for oxytocin as females do, perhaps explaining why they, like dogs, need excessive pampering, rubbing and touching to stay happy. Instead, partner preference seems to be reinforced through the actions of another chemical, vasopressin. Stimulated by testosterone and orgasms, this hormone provides men with a laser-like focus that keeps them tracking their mate. It was the length of this chemical’s gene that Sue Carter found different among the prairie and montane voles. Free lovin’ montane voles have a shorter gene variant than the love crazy prairie voles but this difference in gene length isn’t just restricted to voles. Frivolous and promiscuous chimpanzees have a short variant of the gene whilst their bonobo brothers, which use oral sex and genital rubbing to resolve group tensions, have one that’s longer.

Ladies care more about the size of your man’s vasopressin gene than anything else. Even among humans, there are 17 different vasopressin lengths. The partners of males with short vasopressin genes are more likely to experience greater relationship dissatisfaction, problems in the bedroom, bad communication and marriages are twice as likely to end in divorce.

With divorce rates climbing up to 40% and over in Australia, one has to ask, what are we doing wrong? It would be easy just to run down to the chemist, get a vasopressin test and figure out the length of your date’s vasopressin gene, but surely that’s not the only factor here. What helps us find the person, or prairie vole, that’s right for us?

Let me tell you ‘bout the birds and the bees and the flowers and the trees

Birds do it, cats do it, and ferrets do it. Most mammals have a gland on the top of their nasal cavity, called the vomeronasal organ that detects sex pheromones and gets the little creatures excited and rowdy. These chemicals can alert potential mates as to when females are most fertile. A single Bombay moth releases enough pheromones to attract one billion males into her warm cocoon whilst silkworms can detect pheromones up to 11km away. So far, the existence of this organ in humans has been disputed but recent research suggests that pheromones may play a role in human attraction.

Ovulating lap dancers earn almost two times more than when they’re on their periods. During a 5 hour shift, dancers earn, on average, US$335 if they’re at their most fertile (during ovulation), US$185 when menstruating and US$260 when in between ovulation and menstruation. By contrast, dancers on the pill show no such discrepancies. Perhaps not as obvious as the silkworm that slithered through dirt for 11km to get some suga, but evidence is now coming in to suggest that pheromones and scents do play a role in the human world of love and attraction.

Our sweat and bodily secretions contain proteins of the immune system which bacteria on the surface of the skin break down to produce a perfume that is uniquely our own. This signature scent may play a role in helping us find ‘the one’. Late last year on his ABC program, Race Relations, John Safran panty sniffed for the sake of science. In his quest to determine whether he had a biologic predisposition towards Eurasian women, Safran collected ten dirty underwear samples and smelled each pair whilst blindfolded. The experiment showed that John Safran did indeed favour the Eurasian knickers over those that were Jewish.

The test performed by Safran was a modification of the Undergarment Test which showed that we tend to prefer the scents of others that are genetically dissimilar to ourselves. In terms of reproduction and evolution, this makes sense. If you do the dirty with someone who is more genetically different than yourself, your offspring will have a wider range of resistances since immune system genes are co-expressed. The kids get immune system genes from both the mother and the father. If you impregnate your sister, your children and future generations, are more likely to be mentally retarded and have genetic disorders.

The Human Leukocyte Antigen system (HLA) contains a large number of genes related to immunity and has been linked to relationship success and attraction. Cheating increases with the more HLA genes that you have in common with your partner. Couples with similar HLA genes are also more likely to have unsuccessful embryo transfers and in vitro fertilisations. It’s almost as though the body is trying to tell you that the person you’re with isn’t your prairie vole.

The Science behind homosexuality

Pheromones play a role in homosexuality as well as heterosexuality. Evidence for homosexuality has been provided through undergarment studies. It has been shown that homosexual males prefer the undergarment smells of other homosexuals and the smells of heterosexual women over heterosexual males. Lesbians also rather the smell of other lesbians, and heterosexual males over homosexual males. We seem to be more attracted to the smells of one sex over another and these attractions can increase the fitness of a population.

Evolutionists have been puzzled by the fact that homosexuality hasn’t yet been wiped out by natural selection since there is no way that the human race can propagate through same sex relationships. Two theories for this conundrum have been proposed.

If you look around you homosexuality is everywhere in the animal kingdom. Even on our beautiful Swan River, realise that one in every four black swan couples that you see is a homosexual one. In fact, homosexual black swan couples are infamous for stealing eggs or sometimes even being part of threesomes only to drive their female egg incubator away to raise the children themselves. Surprisingly, the children taken under wing by the homosexual couples have a great chance of surviving, perhaps revealing the importance of homosexual relationships to the survival of the fittest.

A strong correlation has also been recently found between homosexuality, bisexuality and increased fertility in female relatives. One study suggested that there may be a gene on the X chromosome which when expressed in women, allows for greater reproductive success but, when expressed in men, manifests itself in homosexuality. So, despite taking one male out of the mating field, the increased fecundity of the aunts, sisters and cousins of this homosexual male acts as a sort of reproductive compensation.

Am I with a prairie vole or a montane vole?

Our attraction and ability to form loving relationships to certain people makes sure that future generations are viable and healthy. In the case of Sally and Harry, the loving, monogamous bond between the voles ensured that their babies were brought into a caring and nurturing environment thus allowing for greater fitness. In humans, as in voles, children raised up by a single parent tend to have higher rates of mortality. In Australia, 83% of psychiatric hospitalisations and 75% of teens that commit suicide come from single parent backgrounds.

Pheromones seem to play an important role in attraction but with the overuse of perfumes, deodorants and chewing gums, perhaps we are masking the scents that can draw the right, prairie vole in. The pill, as well, has the ability to affect our sense of smell and perhaps affect our natural mate choice. No doubt, there are many different theories for why divorce rates are on the rise and unless you’re prepared to stop shaving your arm pits and quit using deodorants, you may always be attracting montane voles. Love is a mystery and attraction is a multifaceted pull that I don’t I think will ever be completely understood. Just ride on that wave because some of us might be lucky enough to know what it felt like when Harry met Sally.