The Genie and the Mind - Part II

The Genie and the Mind - Part II: continued from previous post.

"It is a long story, do you really want to hear the details?" the visitor exclaimed. The old man offered him a comfortable chair in the den and the children were asked to play outside while the two men talked. The room was dark, the darkness punctuated by a table lamp that lit up a desk that was covered with assorted books and papers. The wall behind them had a large bookshelf adorned with ancient looking books, some of which had etched gold lettering that was hard to discern in the dark. The visitor asked the old man what he had done for a living and if he read a lot. The old man said that his life was generally made easy by all the things that the Genie brought him. His professional life as a  salesman was overshadowed by an easy and rich material life the Genie had brought him. Now, what little spare time the Genie left him with was spent looking back at his life and pondering the 'what ifs'.

The Genie and the Mind

A young boy and his parents moved into a house that they bought from an old couple who had lived there for many years. The little boy was very curious and right away set out to explore the house. He stumbled upon a hidden spiral stairwell that appeared to have been unused for a long time. The boy climbed the narrow steps that led to a small attic. Once his eyes got accustomed to the darkness in the musty attic, he came upon a pile of old and dusty toys. As the boy combed through the collection of metallic objects that may have entertained children a couple of generations back, there was a loud clatter caused by an ornate lamp that rolled off one of the creaky wooden rafters. The boy was enchanted by the glitter of the metal and the ornate stone inlay work. The lamp seemed to emanate an other worldly glow beckoning him to pick it up. As he picked up the lamp, everything around him blurred as if the attic was suddenly covered in smoke. 

The Aspirin Controversy

Based on a talk at Dr. Purser’s wellness group, Bradenton, FL

Aspirin, a widely used and easily available drug is as ubiquitous as Jell-O, both products got their present name around the same time in the year 1897. Ever since its formulation, aspirin has courted its share of controversy. Aspirin contains salicylate, which is derived from the Willow plant. Hippocrates, regarded as the father of Western Medicine first described the pain killing properties of Willow bark. These observations were also made by other civilizations down the ages until they were scientifically proven with modern day methods. The active pain killing ingredient in the Willow plant was isolated in 1826, which was then modified over the course of the next several decades. In 1897, Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist working for Bayer formulated aspirin in its present form. It almost did not make it to the market. A competing drug, heroin, was about to be launched by Bayer as a cough remedy. Luckily, someone important at Bayer was convinced of its healing properties having tried it on himself. Aspirin then made it to the market as a pain reliever. Several decades later, scientists discovered that the chemical innovations that led to the formulation of aspirin from salicylic acid were instrumental in aspirin’s role in preventing strokes and heart attacks. 

Know your VEINS

Talk given at Heart to Heart: A Women’s Health Forum on February 4, 2012, Lakewood Ranch FL.

February is Heart Month. You will likely hear a lot about cardiovascular diseases with a special emphasis on risk factors such as smoking, high cholesterol, sedentary lifestyle, and diabetes. One or more of these risk factors may contribute to blood vessel blockage that can have catastrophic consequences such as heart attacks and strokes. However, this is only part of the story. 

Digging Deep

Geologists have a fairly accurate idea about the structure and composition of the earth’s interior. It is several thousand miles to the actual center of the earth. In comparison to the deeper layers inside the earth’s interior, namely, the mantle and the outer and inner core which extend a few thousand miles in depth, the outermost layer or the earth’s crust is not more than 30 miles in depth. Sending a man made object to the center of the earth is in the realm of science fiction. No man made object has ever penetrated beyond the earth’s crust. An ambitious drilling project several decades ago by the Soviets was stopped after reaching just over 7 miles into the earth’s crust. An inhospitable climate of heat and pressure may deter future attempts to get even deeper.

A classic science fiction novel written in the 1800s by Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth, is an adventurous story of a professor and his nephew who find an ancient map that guides them to the center of the earth through a volcanic tube. The obstacles, difficulties and the unexpected wonders the two adventurers face could be construed as allegorical references to our own mental journey to the core of our being. Just as we have not made it, as yet, to the center of the earth, there are no scientifically proven first person accounts of people finding the soul, which could be thought of as the fundamental basis for human life. 

Stress and the heart

Stress is commonplace, especially in these challenging times. Repeated bouts of stress can have lasting effects on the body. Brief interludes of relaxation help the body recover from stress. The human heart, the seat of emotion, is Ever in MOTION. Due to this perpetual motion of the heart day and night, the effects of repeated bouts of stress on the heart may impact our longevity. The heart has spare capacity to increase its workload in times of stress. This happens through certain chemical messengers, such as adrenaline, that signal the heart muscle to work harder. The heart has plenty of receptors, or parking bays, for these messengers. Just as a factory may increase its production in response to a demand by increasing its workforce and by expanding the assembly line, the human heart is a factory that has the ability to increase production of a vital product, oxygen rich blood. Chemical messengers like adrenaline are the workforce that drive the heart to pump more blood to meet the higher metabolic demands placed on the body by stress. An easily quantifiable measure of this increased workload is a higher heart rate and a higher blood pressure. Just like an earthquake that starts deep underground and damages buildings on the surface many miles from its epicenter, this higher blood pressure that originates in the heart may cause damage in other organs such as the brain potentially resulting in a stroke. 

Time, Money and Fulfillment

Since the dawn of civilization, exchange of goods and services has been a tool for growth. Prior to the advent of money, the value of this exchange of resources was informally set in the barter system. At some point, the concept of money then took over, attaching a certain monetary value to our daily economic transactions. Over the last several thousand years, the material form of money has evolved from cattle, grain, shells, metal coins, leather notes, gold, paper notes to the present day electronic money.

Although the bartering system is for all practical purposes non existent in the modern day world, this concept is a recurring theme in our mind and thoughts. At the level of the mind, we are constantly trying to barter for happiness by jumping from thought to thought in the hopes of finding one that fulfills this need. We also “barter” our time for money that we earn by working and in turn “barter” this money for happiness in the form of physical comforts. The sense of happiness relative to time and money is a moving target. Money may buy an object that brings happiness today, that same object may become a source of misery in the the future. Just as wishing for money does not make one rich, wishing for happiness does not necessarily make one happy.