Posted in Life & Happiness

Forgetting

“Blessed are the forgetful for they get the better even of their blunders.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If you could forget a horrible memory or experience forever, would you? Although some traumatic experiences are best forgotten, something like a break up may leave painful yet bittersweet memories. Does the cost of heartbreak outweigh all the precious memories you had with that person? There may be doubt that you may miss the lovely memories and regret your decision, but ultimately without the memory you will have no regret either. Is ignorance bliss?

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Weltschmerz

There is a German word called weltschmerz, which translates into “world pain” or “weariness against the world”. This word describes sad emotions felt after realising that the material world cannot satisfy the mind and that the ideal, hypothetic utopia in your mind cannot exist. It also describes the sadness felt after realising that your weaknesses arose from physical and social conditions of the world. Weltschmerz was widely used by poets such as Lord Byron, mainly as a way of viewing the world. It is a very pessimistic view of the world that often leads to or associated with depression, resignation and escapism. In severe cases it may lead to mental disorders such as hikikomori (a social disorder where the person does not and cannot leave their room due to fear and disgust of the world, also known as agoraphobia).

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Phantom Limb Pain

In up to 80% cases of amputations, a strange phenomenon occurs where the amputee reports sensation or even severe pain where the limb has been amputated. It was noticed in field hospitals during wars when a soldier would wake up and ask someone to scratch his leg – which was no longer attached to his body. The sensation can be so powerful that victims actively believe that their phantom limb can interact with real objects. For example, there have been case reports of patients trying to pick up a cup with an amputated arm and becoming frustrated with their inability to.

Phantom limb pain may persist even after the amputee realises the limb is no longer there. The basis for phantom limb pain is a neurological system called the cortical homunculus. The cortical homunculus is a concept that the part of the brain responsible for sensation and movement is mapped out so that each part corresponds to a part of the body (see picture). For example, the top of the primary somatosensory and motor cortices (said parts of the brain) is responsible for foot sensation and movement while the side receives information from and sends signals to the face. It lets the brain construct an image of what the body looks like from sensory information it collates from various body parts. It is suggested that phantom limb pain is caused by a remapping of the cortical homunculus, fooling the brain to think that the limb is there even if it has been physically cut off. This also explains a similar condition called supernumerary phantom limb, where the brain believes there is an extra limb (e.g. a third arm).

As the homunculus concept is a recent idea, treatment options had not advanced much until the late 1990s. In 1998, a neuroscientist called Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran devised a method called the mirror box treatment. He noticed that victims of phantom limb pain (PLP) had paralysis or pain in the limb just before the amputation (such as tightly gripping something before the arm got blown up by a mine), suggesting that PLP may be a form of learned paralysis. This means that the brain believes that the arm is still paralysed and any movement causes an uncomfortable sensation as the brain thinks the limb is contorted into a painful position. To fix this problem, Dr. Ramachandran invented a box with two holes, each going into a separate compartment. One compartment is for the good arm while the other has a mirror positioned on an angle to reflect the other arm (instead of seeing the stub they put in the hole). He would then instruct the patient to perform symmetric movements with both hands while looking at the reflected arm. For example, he would tell the patient to squeeze their “fists” tightly as possible and then let go. Through this procedure, the brain is retrained to let go of the perceived paralysis and pain as it is tricked in to thinking that the arm is healthy again. The mirror box therapy drastically improved the outcome and quality of life of PLP patients through the power of illusions.

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Posted in Science & Nature

Piquance

When the word taste is mentioned, people often think of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, savoury and spicy. But among these, only the first five are officially “tastes”. Spiciness is technically not a taste; it is rather a type of pain.
Due to the confusion between the words hot (which could mean temperature) and spicy (suggesting there are spice, but not specifying what type), scientists devised a new word called piquance to correctly name the sensation.
Piquance is caused by chemicals such as capsaicin stimulating the densely packed nerve fibres in mucous membranes in the mouth, causing pain. This sensation can be sensed anywhere covered by thin skin or membrane such as the eye. Tear gas and pepper spray exploit this by attacking the eyes, disabling sight, and the respiratory system, crippling breathing by inducing cough reflexes, to nullify the target.

Being a sensation, piquance can be seen as a subjective measure. Is there an objective way of measuring the piquance of a food?
In 1912, an American pharmacist called Wilbur Scoville utilised the fact that piquance is due to capsaicin to create something called the Scoville Scale. This scale’s unit is 1 Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) and is proportionate to the level of capsaicin.
The following is a list of many types of chilli and their SHU:

  • Paprika: 0
  • Peperoncini: 100-150
  • Jalapeño pepper/Tabasco sauce: 2,500-8,000
  • Chungyang red pepper: 10,000-23,000
  • Habanero chilli: 100,000-350,000
  • Red Savina habanero: 350,000-58,0000
  • Naga Jolokia: 1,067,286
  • Naga Viper: 1,382,118
  • Trinidad Scorpion Butch T pepper: 1,463,700 (currently the world’s hottest pepper)
  • Tear gas/pepper spray: 5,300,000
  • Pure capsaicin: 16,000,000

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Diagnosis

A man comes in to a clinic and tells the doctor that he is in great pain.
It hurts if he prods his arm with a finger. The same applies to his leg and his torso.
He says that after looking on the internet, he is sure that he has fibromyalgia syndrome, and asks to be prescribed some painkillers. Also, he is worried that it could be necrotising fasciitis and demands a biopsy and antibiotics.

The doctor, without saying a word, gently grabs his hand, then squeezes his index finger. The man feels a shooting pain and screams in agony.

The diagnosis? A broken finger.

Posted in Psychology & Medicine

Brain Freeze

When you quickly eat or drink something cold, you experience a sudden onset of a painful headache. This is commonly known as brain freeze, or medically, a sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Although the cause is not perfectly understood, it is believed to be due to the coldness on the palate (roof of mouth) causing a sudden cooling and rewarming of the sinus capillaries, which causes them to suddenly constrict and then rapidly dilate. Dilation of blood vessels in this area causes pain due to receptors in the vessels. This phenomenon is similar to the cause of a flushed face when exposed to cold wind, and why it sometimes causes headaches.

The only way to prevent a brain freeze is to slowly let the mouth get used to the cold, warming the food or beverage in the mouth instead of quickly swallowing it. Warming the palate with your tongue is another effective way to shorten the duration of a brain freeze.

Posted in Life & Happiness

A Little

There’s always a little truth behind every “just kidding”

A little knowledge behind every “I don’t know”

A little emotion behind every “I don’t care”

And a little pain behind every “It’s okay”