Hunger and lack of sleep

Due to some recent changes in my life, I am working more than usual, which isn't that much! I notice that in sleeping less, I've been eating more. Sometimes I wonder if what I read / learn also affect how I am.

There's a growing corpus of literature that shows that appetite inducing hormone, ghrelin, is not only fluctuating throughout a 24h period, but it also increased due to lack of sleep. This was reported awhile back and my recent lack of sleep has also increased my appetite. Is this real or am I buying into the hype?

Another line of evidence that shows the importance of ghrelin is in patients who have undergone Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. Not only do these patients have decrease ghrelin, but they also have increased release of GLP-1. Although not a direct antagonist to ghrelin, GLP-1 increases insulin secretion and thus, lowering blood sugar while suppressing appetite. Intriguing eh?!

Originality & creativity

Most IQ tests measure how many factoids someone knows or at best, some reasoning skills, such as manipulating 3D objects, solving an abstract puzzle, etc. and then, normalizing those results with the overall general population. IQ tests measure skills that serve some useful purposes in life, and many of them are essential for doing well in schools. IQ tests don't really test for the comprehensive intelligence that we all imagine, but rather, they provide some predictive values in how well someone would do in schools.

I, personally, value people who have mastery over facts AND also have the ability to use those facts to apply, to reason, and to create something new. In almost every field I have stumbled into, people tend to just regurgitate the same old bullshit. One, they don't see how to apply the bullshit. Two, they don't even test if that long held dogma is true. Three, assuming that dogma is true, how else and where else can we apply that and just perhaps, expand it. Finally, using our existing knowledge, what can we come up with that's new, it might be evolutionary (similar to previous point) or revolutionary.

This seems to occur mostly in groups of ignorant egotistical people. Someone first dishes out some bullshit, everyone else chimes in and conflates it with other irrelevant bullshit; thus, muddying the issue and making it more difficult for everyone else to understand. An intelligent person with a good grasp of the knowledge base tends to simplify all that is complex and difficult to understand into a clear and concise concept.

I see knowledge workers are no different than professional athletes. Most toil in silence and obscurity and 99% of them never succeed. Of the few that made it out, had their breakthroughs, I am willing to bet that they have created something new. They have mastered not only the existing corpus of knowledge but also have made insights that resolve difficulties that confounded the rest of the 99% of people who attempted.

The positive humanist in me would like to think that we all are creative and can contribute our original thoughts in one form or another. But the realist in me, that is tempered by experience, has learned to accept that most people are like rats in a cage, they keep spinning the wheel and rarely make anything of themselves, despite what they want, wish, claim, declare, and resolve to achieve. It's easy to blame that they are lazy, afraid to try because of fear of failure or success. But the sad truth is that they all lack that something to distinguish themselves among their peers: intelligence for creativity & originality.

Instead of keep fighting, keep beating one's head against the wall, I think people would be much happier if they just accept the world for what it is. They do their best to live within their means and limitations. Not everyone is meant to grow up to dunk that basketball, be that pro-surfer, make millions using his/her blog, have 3somes with midgets, even engage in anal sex, or manage multiple relationships that so many talk about but haven't a clue what that entails. If people would just be who they are, then they will achieve that inner peace, that mindful awakening to who they are and what they are capable of, that's when creativity will come about and hopefully, something original. But probably not!

The new infectious disease

Obesity and how it spreads among social networks. This reminds me of a joke that a friend told me a few weeks ago:

What has 4 arms, 4 legs, and never works out?
Marriage.

A generation gap

What's the deal with texting? Younger girls are so into texting and IM'ing, whereas girls a few years older, i.e. my age, don't care much for texting and we prefer to talk on the phone. Even worst is that some of the younger ones want my myspace/facebook profile. Whatever happened to just talking and getting to know people?! I spend so much of my time in front of the computer, but I don't ever see a good reason to have a myspace and/or facebook profile; okay, I did, just to look at pictures, but now that myspace AND facebook have implemented privacy settings for pictures, I just don't care enough to login to check. What's the point?!

Another is the ipod/iphone craze, as a friend told me, people are having iGasm over silly gadgets that serve no purpose other than more entertainment. How about reading a book? I was telling my friends in otolaryngology must love these devices (music, bluetooth headset,...), think of future patients with hearing loss. It's like my friends in medicine have job security due to McDonald's; myself included. So keep texting, listening to your ipods, eating crappy food. I will have iGasm as I laugh my way to the bank.

S/NSRI: emotional lobotomy

Prozac: Why feel when you can just function? (Thanks Chemist!) Someone just forwarded me an article that 48% of American population is on antidepressants now. As Chemist suggested, the other 52% probably can't afford it. I would say that taking antidepressant for unhappiness is akin to dosing opioid for pain. The pain/happiness is still there, you just don't care. Is this how we want to live?

Sure, life has its ups and downs, rather than getting at the core of how we go about managing and dealing with stressors in our lives. We have turned our backs and started to numb ourselves, essentially ablating our emotion centers/circuitries. I'm sure many of these patients are depressed, is our policy of dispensing medications whenever they feel sadness the only solution? Emotions are not necessarily good or bad. Love and loss, for example, gives the contrast, the wide range of emotions that we need to experience in order to appreciate each other. By dampening our emotional response, what kind of world will we create?

The best classical works, from literature, music, paintings to sculptures, were created by those who went through those emotional ups and downs. Most if not all of those artists were manic depressives. Their ability to express their emotions, and to lead us through their emotional roller coaster would never exist today. Instead, we just get to nod our collective heads and go thru the same spastic dance moves to the drum beats of doldrums, that we call hip hops, pop country, and whatever else that P.Diddy decides we should listen.

The silver lining though, I suspect is that most people don't and won't know what feeling love is about... to go through the longing, obsessive phase, the insatiable emotional craving, and peaceful contentment. Without these emotional travails, people are much more easily deceived, can definitely caught up in the moment, wrapped up in the temporary emotional escape, and thus, pickup techniques will be so much more effective. Hence, the secret of connecting with women is through emotions, add on the time distortion of multiple venue changes, and in the whirlwind of kino escalation combined with our intrinsic desire for companion to enter into the dark night. Thank you Prozac, Celexa, Lexapro,... who needs roofies?!