Mithridates VI, the King of Pontus (ancient Greek/Persian state located in modern day Turkey), had a paranoia that there were people who wanted to assassinate him through poison. This likely stemmed from his father being poisoned by his mother (reportedly), who favoured his brother over Mithridates as the heir to the throne. He noticed in his youth that the meals brought to him induced stomach pains. He connected the dots and deduced that his mother was trying to poison him slowly so that his brother would become the next king. He fled to the wilderness and devised a plan to protect himself. It is said that he began taking a concoction of various poisons in non-lethal doses every day, to develop an immunity to the most common poisons available during his time. This led to the idea of mithridatism – the gradual self-administration of non-lethal doses of poison to develop immunity. Ironically, Mithridates’ plan backfired eventually when he attempted suicide by poison after a massive defeat against Rome. He found that the poison had no effect on him and had to request his bodyguard to kill him by sword.
Mithridatism has been recorded or suspected in various times of history. Indian epics tell the story of the king Chandragupta Maurya – the first king to unite India – who selected a group of beautiful girls and raised them in the palace. He gave the order to administer small amounts of poison to these girls as they grew up, making them invulnerable to toxins. He called these girls vishakanyas(poison maiden) and believed that they could be used as assassins who could kill men through the act of sex. There are suggestions that Rasputin was also a practitioner of mithridatism and that this was why he survived an assassination attempt involving poison, but there is not much evidence for this. The practice of mithridatism is also mentioned in various fictions, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Princess Bride.
The concept of taking small doses of something to build up an immunity is still used in modern medicine. Desensitisation therapy is used to treat certain allergies, by exposing the body to small doses of the allergen. It is well-known that alcoholics and drug addicts required more substance to achieve the same effect as most people because they develop tolerance to it. There is some evidence that mithridatism is an effective way to build immunity to venomous snake bites. However, not all poisonings can be avoided with mithridatism. Poisons such as cyanide pass through the system too quickly to create any tolerance, while heavy metals simply build up in the body to create a toxic effect after a history of exposure.
Although sex was devised by Mother Nature to promote procreation, humans have been trying to separate the baby-making aspect of sex from the pure carnal pleasure it gives for a very long time. The Romans are known to have used a fennel-like herb called the silphium as a form of birth control. They discovered that the leaves of this plant could be ground up and made into a resin pill, which seemed to reduce the likelihood of women becoming pregnant. The Roman scholar Pliny the Elder recorded that one could use the resin as a pill or pessary to promote menstrual discharge, suggesting pregnancy has not occurred.
News of this medicine spread throughout the empire and there was massive demand for it. The plant grew exclusively on a narrow coastal area in present-day Libya and was impossible to cultivate. This meant settlements in this area could trade the plant at a very high price. It is said silphium was “worth its weight in denarii (silver coins)”. Its economic importance is signified in coins from Cyrene (an ancient North African city where silphium was produced) depict the silphium plant or seed. In fact, one theory of the origin of the heart symbol is the shape of the silphium seed pod. Overharvesting of the plant, the fact that it could not be cultivated and other factors such as changing environments and overgrazing ultimately led to the extinction of this plant and scholars still debate the exact identity of the plant.
Although there are records that indicate silphium was used as a contraceptive and abortifacent (substance that induces abortion), it is unclear as to how effective it was. Related plants such as wild carrots have shown to have abortifacent properties in some studies and there certainly are a vast list of plants that could potentially harm or terminate a pregnancy. Regardless of the potency, the heavy trade of the plant and its intended use points towards the fact that the concept of contraception is not new to human civilisations. It is interesting to think that we are the only species to actively want to reduce the risk of making a baby during sex, which is the original purpose of sex.
When you remember a scene from the past, you are not remembering the past. You are remembering a memory of the past. Your brain works in a very funny way where it does not record memories like film. Instead, it seems to remember things as a collage. Everytime you recall a memory – whether it be a happy memory of your first love, or a sad memory of lost love – your brain recalls your last recollection of the event. Simply put, every time you “remember” something, you are merely remembering the latest memory of the event. Each time you replay an event in your mind, it is rewriting a version of the memory over itself.
This means that the more you dwell on a memory, the more it is distorted. You romanticise the good parts and dramaticise the bad parts. The memory is ultimately warped beyond the point of telling the true story. Instead, it becomes something akin to a movie script or a fairy tale. But if it truly is a memory you deem special and hold dear, then maybe it isn’t too bad keeping a romanticised, “perfect” version of it somewhere in your heart to look back on every now and then.
From a very young age, goals are set for us by others. As babies we are encouraged to walk and talk, as children we are encouraged to do well in school, as teenagers we are encouraged to get a good degree and as adults, we are encouraged to be a model member of society. Advertisements put forward money, fame and power as models of success. Motivational speakers give speeches telling us paths we should follow to succeed. Parents tell children that they should listen to their advice if they wish to lead a comfortable life in the future. Amongst all of this external pressure, sometimes it seems difficult to have a say in what direction your life should go in.
The word autotelic is derived from the Greek words auto, meaning “self”, and telos, meaning “goal”. An autotelic is one who does not need external reminders to tell them who they are. They have a purpose in and not apart from themselves. They are driven by their own goals, curiosities and motivation. An autotelic does not live life like a connect-the-dots puzzle drawn by society, but chooses to paint their own life on a blank canvas.
The defining feature of autotelic personalities is that they are not driven by the want to be successful, but by the desire to seek challenges and be in flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who coined the term flow, defined the mark of the autotelic personality as “the ability to manage a rewarding balance between the “play” of challenge finding and the “work” of skill building“. They are far less interested in external rewards, such as a gold star from a teacher or a raise from a employer. Their reward is the flow state they enter while they work on their goal and the satisfaction that comes with knowing that they completed a challenge.
Some of the greatest achievers in history were autotelics. They did not achieve amazing feats because of the promise of money and fame, but because they were internally driven by the thirst for flow. When questioned why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, famous mountaineer George Mallory replied: ”Because it’s there“. An autotelic personality is not necessarily something you have to be born with. All you need is to constantly challenge yourself, discover whatever brings you to flow state and not let outside forces sway you from your own goals. For the only judge of your life that matters is you.
(If you don’t get the reference, go watch some How I Met Your Mother, coz it’s awesome Barney Stinson always sets new challenges for himself, always pushing himself to the limits of awesomeness. Examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iOi_iPNC50)
The belladonna flower has a name that means “beautiful lady” in Italian. However, its other common name has a completely different meaning – the deadly nightshade. Both names can be explained by the uses of the flower throughout history. The deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) is a small shrub with purple bell-shaped flowers and shiny black berries. All parts of the plant contain various toxins such as atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine. These alkaloid toxins are included in a group of chemicals called anticholinergics, because they act on cholinergic receptors on neurons, which are involved in activating the parasympathetic nervous system. As cholinergic receptors are widely utilised throughout the body, anticholinergic toxicity causes a wide range of symptoms.
The main symptoms of anticholinergic toxicity are best remembered using the following mnemonic:
Hot as a hare (increased temperature – reduced temperature regulation)
Blind as a bat (blurred vision – dilated pupils)
Dry as a bone (dry skin, eyes and mouth – decreased secretions)
Red as a beet (flushing – dilation of blood vessels)
The name deadly nightshade is obvious as severe toxicity leads to seizures, coma and death. The reason why the deadly nightshade is also called belladonna is that the diluted extract from the plant was used as an eye drop to dilate women’s pupils – a look considered beautiful then (nowadays the effect is used to examine the eye). The toxins extracted are used in other fields of medicine too. Although not used now, anticholinergics were used as an anaesthetic for surgery due to its neuropsychiatric effects. However, atropine is still used in the emergency setting to reverse bradycardia (excessively slow heart rate), as anticholinergics speed up the heart rate. This highlights the fundamental principle of medicine that “the dose makes the poison”. For the only difference between medicine and poison is the dose… and intent (Oscar G. Hernandez, MD).
August 23, 1973 – Stockholm, Sweden. Two men entered a bank and took four bank workers hostage by gunpoint. The police quickly responded by surrounding the bank but could not act due to concern for the safety of the hostages. The stand-off lasted six days until the police finally negotiated the release of the hostages. During this ordeal, a very strange phenomenon was observed. The hostages had grown emotionally attached to their captors, rejecting rescue attempts and even defending their captors after their freedom. It was clear in subsequent interviews that the hostages had bonded with the criminals, supporting their cause and not minding the fact that they were threatened, abused and were made to fear for their lives. In fact, one woman later became engaged to one of the criminals, while another funded the legal fee for their trials.
Psychiatrist and criminologist Nils Bejerot studied this case and coined the phrase Stockholm syndrome to describe the phenomenon of hostages expressing empathy and sympathy to their captors, leading to bonding with and having positive feelings for them. This seems irrational as bonding is perceived as the product of a positive relationship where two people are loving and caring for each other, not threatening their life. This phenomenon has been well-documented throughout history in hostages, domestic abuse victims, prisoners of war and cult members. One study showed that up to 27% of hostage victims showed evidence of Stockholm syndrome in the U.S.
There are a few explanations for the Stockholm syndrome. The Freudian explanation is that the bonding is an individual’s response to the trauma of being threatened. By rationalising that they are in fact on the same side as the captors, the effect of the trauma is reduced as the victim feels less victimised. Evolutionarily speaking, human beings have always been under the threat of being invaded by a neighbouring tribe or country. This often involved the raping and abduction of women by the aggressors. Victims who would resist and fight back would have more likely been killed (along with their children), while those who responded as per the Stockholm syndrome would have been more likely to survive. It has been observed that the Stockholm syndrome is found more commonly in women.
Stockholm syndrome is a very common feature of human society, found in households in the form of battered-wife syndrome, in groups in the form of hazing and basic military training and in the bedroom in the form of bondage and masochism.
Why do we feel sleepy after we eat? There are two components to the so-called “food coma”: neurological and hormonal. When we eat, the food mashed up by your teeth is swallowed down the oesophagus and into the stomach, where it is churned in a vat of very strong hydrochloric acid. The acid dissolves the food into liquid form, which is then sent to the small intestines. Here, the chemical components of the food such as carbohydrates is broken into simpler blocks, such as glucose. This is then absorbed into the bloodstream.
The body can actually sense when you have swallowed food, as your stomach stretches and sends signals to the brain. This triggers the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (opposite of the sympathetic nervous system, which is the “fight or flight” system). The parasympathetic nervous system is involved in digesting and rest. It stimulates stomach acid production, gut movement and even reduces your energy level so that digestion can happen smoothly. In old people, it can even decrease blood pressure enough to a point that they feel dizzy (much like head rush). This is the neurological component.
The hormonal component is linked with the absorption phase of digestion. To deal with the increasing level of glucose in your blood, the pancreas secretes insulin. Insulin rounds up the glucose in the blood and stores it away in cells to normalise the blood glucose level. In this process, it also stimulates the uptake of certain amino acids (building blocks of protein) into cells. However, it leaves out one type of amino acids called tryptophan. Because there is more tryptophan in the blood compared to the other amino acids, your brain decides to use this to build more proteins. Tryptophan is converted in the brain into a very important neurotransmitter called serotonin, which is then converted into melatonin. Melatonin is a neurotransmitter involved in triggering sleep. Therefore, through this extremely complicated pathway, food causes sleepiness.
At face value, this makes it look like increasing intake of tryptophan may help induce sleep. It is commonly said that turkey meat and bananas help you sleep because of tryptophan. But this is an urban myth as neither of these foods are particularly high in tryptophan and there is no evidence to suggest that tryptophan itself helps you sleep. Then again, melatonin supplements have some evidence supporting it as a sleep aide. This shows just how complicated the human body can be.
Perspective is everything. By changing your perspective, you may discover an innovative solution to a problem, or understand the actions of someone else. But more importantly, your perspectives have direct implications in your life and health.
For example, let us consider pain. Pain is a sensation – an electrical signal in response to a noxious stimuli that is causing damage to your body. It is a warning system that screams to the brain that something is wrong. To boil down the complex physiology of neurotransmission, essentially imagine the system as an electrical circuit. If something damages tissue, like a knife slicing through flesh or a clot blocking off oxygen supply to the heart, the pain “switch” is activated, a signal is sent to the brain, and it is interpreted and “felt” by the brain as pain. Because your brain needs to interpret the signal, pain is essentially subjective. If you are distracted or in a good mood, you will feel less pain compared to when you are distressed and focussing on it. The same stimuli can be handled completely different by every person, making pain extremely complicated and difficult to assess in a medical setting. Pain scales may be used to try objectify the level of pain, but this is still very crude.
One way or another, pain is technically all in your head. That is not to say that pain is not real – that would be an insult to sufferers of chronic pain. But your perspective, way of thinking and frame of mind can make a significant difference to the amount of suffering the pain causes. This is not just an overly-optimistic view of the world that everything can be fixed with optimism. There are real physiological systems in place to alleviate pain when you are happy. These chemicals are called endorphins– so named because they are so potent that they match the effect of morphine (endo(inside) + morphine). This natural painkiller is released in response to pain, but can also be stimulated by having fun and being happy. Laughter is literally medicine.
Not only that, but by being in a good mood, you become more resilient and “distracted from the pain”, allowing you to bear the pain more easily. A woman going through childbirth suffers quite possibly the most extreme level of pain a human being can experience, but the prospect of seeing their newborn child (and probably finally ending their pregnancy) and the loving support of their spouse, family and friends keep them pushing onwards. Even though the noxious stimuli of stretching is real, the brain can choose to downplay how much pain it thinks it should feel with these positive factors.
Although it may not be able to make your pain magically disappear, never underestimate the power of positivity, laughter and happiness. Perhaps that is why the emotion of happiness was evolved – to alleviate the misery and pains of living in this world. To survive.
Yawning is a reflex that we usually associate with tiredness or boredom. When we feel quite sleepy or feel that it is bedtime, we will involuntarily take a deep breath in and stretch our muscles. It used to be believed that yawning is the brain’s response to lack of oxygen, which seems logical as we take a deep breath in during a yawn. However, studies have shown that yawning actually decreases the level of oxygen in the brain. The reason for yawning is still a mystery, but there are many theories suggesting that it cools the brain or to keep the muscles stretched and ready. It may even be a primitive reflex designed to display dominance and signal that they are not threatened by an incoming danger.
An interesting thing about yawning is that it is extremely contagious. It is thought that yawn contagiousness serves a social purpose. Our brains contain certain types of neurons called mirror neurons, that are responsible for copying an action that we see (hence the proverb “monkey see, monkey do”). It has been suggested that by copying the yawn of another member in the group, a sense of camaraderie is established, acting as a social lubricant (much like mirroring to build rapport). The contagiousness is surprisingly strong, even working when you see a video of a person yawning or even reading about yawning. It spreads to animals as well, such as other primates (e.g. monkeys, apes) and dogs. Interestingly, autistic children are less likely to yawn when someone nearby yawns, suggesting that there is indeed a social element to yawning.
(NB: I have written MANY ARK posts about the brain and all the delightful ways it screws up. Some of them are probably the most interesting posts on my blog. Please click the hyperlinks to check out the various related articles! Alternatively, here’s a convenient list: https://jineralknowledge.com/tag/brain/?order=asc)
Among the many organs of the human body, no organ comes close to the magnificent complexity that is the brain. The brain acts as the command centre of the body. It receives massive amounts of information through the various senses, processes it and sends out electrical signals to control how the body operates. Not only does it control “basic” functions such as movement of muscles, controlling organ functions and regulating homeostasis, it is also responsible for the so-called “higher functions” such as consciousness, emotions and cognition. It is the true seat of the mind and soul.
The brain is the only major visceral organ not located in the trunk (body). It is enclosed in the cranium of the skull, which acts as a protective casing. Because it is a closed box, even a small increase in volume (such as due to a bleed or a tumour) can cause extreme pressures to build, causing severe problems. The entire brain and spinal cord are bathed in a fluid called cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), all enclosed by a sheath made of three layers (dura, arachnoid and pia maters). The brain sends out nerves to the rest of the body, which act as electrical wiring transmitting signals. These include the cranial nerves and the spinal cord, which leaves the bottom of the skull down the spine. The spinal cord branches off into many nerves that supply every nook and cranny of the body. The brain itself is made up of two large hemispheres, which are connected by a bridge called the corpus callosum. Despite popular belief, the actions of the two hemispheres are much more complicated than “analytical vs. creative”. The brain also encompasses the cerebellum (the small stripey structure at the back), which controls coordination and speech articulation, and the brainstem, which is involved in autonomic control of life-sustaining functions such as breathing, and also the source of the cranial nerves.
In the last century, scientists have learned that specific parts of the brain play a specific role. This thought started with the field of phrenology, where small areas of the brain were mapped to a certain mental faculty, such as love, wit or destructiveness. Although this turned out to be complete hokum, the idea stayed and we now know the actual functions of each part of the brain. The brain is broadly divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital. The frontal lobe is the domain of thought, personality, motor function and other higher functions. The parietal lobe is related to spatial awareness and sensory functions (such as touch). The temporal lobe is linked to hearing, comprehension of language and storing new memories. The occipital lobe is primarily associated with vision. The brain can then be subdivided into more focussed areas, such as Broca’s area that governs speech and Wernicke’s area that governs listening. It should be noted that the four lobes only describe areas on the surface of the brain (cerebral cortex) where the higher functions belong. The inside of the brain is just as complicated and has many different parts, such as the hypothalamus that is involved in homeostasis, and the hippocampus that converts short-term memories into long-term memories.
How does a lump of cells weighing around 1.5kg produce such wondrous abilities such as philosophical thought, deduction, emotions and calculation? The truth is that we still do not know how the brain functions exactly. However, we know that the brain is composed of a large number of neurons (nerve cells) – about 100 billion of them. These neurons connect to one another via a synapse, which is a gap between two nerve cells where neurotransmitters travel to and fro (allowing electrical impulses to jump from one neuron to another). Using these connections, neurons form an unbelievably intricate and complex network of electrical activity. Because one neuron can connect to many more others, the number of synapses is estimated to be around 100~1000 trillion – significantly more powerful compared to any computer in the world. The number of synapses directly correlates to intelligence and it seems intellectual activities such as reading a book increases the number of synapses in the brain. We have yet to understand exactly how the brain uses this incredible computational power to produce cognition and self-awareness.
(Video of neuronal activities in a zebrafish brain)
Because the brain uses electrical impulses for most of its functions, a common abnormality that is seen with the brain is when the electrical activity becomes disorganised and out of control – a seizure. This abnormal electrical activity may be due to a focal problem such as a tumour, or a generalised misfiring of neurons or altered regulation of electrical activity. When a seizure happens, the disorganised activity results in the brain not being able to function normally. For example, the most common consequence is a fit (tonic-clonic seizure) where every muscle spasms out of control, because the muscles are overloaded with chaotic signals. Focal seizures can cause fascinating symptoms depending on the location, such as temporal lobe seizures causing religious visions (hallucination). This also disrupts consciousness, which is why most epilepsy patients do not remember the event.
Barney Stinson always sets new challenges for himself, always pushing himself to the limits of awesomeness. Examples: 
Alternatively, here’s a convenient list: 
