Tag: depression

BR#Eleven – Breath

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Let me tell you a little about breath. Not just any breath either, the perfect breath. It turns out my shallow two second inhale followed by two second exhale may just be doing both my mind and body the type of harm you wouldn’t immediately imagine something that brings life would. In truth two seconds may even be a little generous. It is a long way from the recommended five point five second inhale and five point five second exhale, which conveniently equates to the perfect amount of breaths per minute. Five point five for those who don’t fancy the maths. This is according to James Nestor whose new book Breath delves into the art of something which we all seem to be doing wrong.

Nestor explains the science and art of breathing. He uses anecdotes and scientific research to back up and prove his theories. He discusses thousands of years worth of knowledge like ancient Indian pranayamic breathing techniques and the Buddhist Tummo. Tummo has in the last ten years been sexed up, repackaged and proven to the western world by Wim Hof. He goes into his own experiments with Stanford University of only nasal breathing and only mouth breathing, all of which are backed up by the research results which show a dramatic and scary contrasting end result. Our mouths have shrunk and our teeth don’t have enough space to grow straight anymore, three hundred years of industrial processed food haven’t helped. Heart disease, anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, asthma – the list of diseases related to incorrect breathing seems endless. He doesn’t suggest breathing is going to cure a rampant disease of course but it can help with the preventative part, the bit western medicines ‘cut it out and cure it’ approach seems repeatedly limited in. It does turn out we’ve been breathing wrong all these years and he explains how and why.

What he shares is immediately relatable. This dissection of the consequences of a breathing I know I do and which I instinctively know and have known for a while to be wrong and dangerous. Nestor has managed to explain something which is hard to disagree with within our narrow prism of proved truth. We need things to be proven in certain ways that Eastern texts don’t do, Nestor manages to do this with language and information it is hard to disagree with. As I said I can relate to what he is saying though and I suspect that is probably what has led to this book being the success it has been. Good authors manage to give new information in a way that makes the author feel they’ve always known it and finally it has been confirmed. Genuinely, I want everyone, and especially everyone I care about to read this. Now then, it’s time to go practise my breathing.

Toxoplasma Gondii

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For anyone familiar with the bleak early days of this blog back in November / December last year when the drama of this 2020 was still a thing of science fiction, I mentioned I was reading a book called Gut by Giulia Enders. Well it turns out I’m still reading it. This longevity isn’t because it’s difficult, quite the opposite in fact or boring, also quite the opposite. I just get distracted and either read other things or am too busy, but keep dipping into it when I fancy reading some more. This morning I read a little on Toxoplasma gondii. For anyone Scottish it is simply unimaginable not to be familiar with the film Trainspotting, and for those who are, they will be aware of this bacteria from the character Tommy catching it from his cat before dying from it and heroin. Naturally then this little mini-chapter grabbed my attention.

It turns out it’s actually an incredibly interesting bacteria which considering it’s size can have an enormous affect on it’s host. Cats, not all of course, carry this bacteria and it is spread to humans usually through their faeces in cat litter trays. It can find it’s way onto raw vegetables in your garden if a cat has either done it’s business or died within, as well as through animals such as pigs or chickens when we eat them. The chances of humans contracting toxoplasma are, in percentage terms, about as high as your age and about a third of the global population have them. We’re talking a reasonably high probability and billions of people. They don’t have an overly negative immediate affect on the human body, sometimes creating flu-like symptoms, so not too dissimilar to this virus for many people. Pregnant women though have to be very careful as it can damage the unborn baby and lead to miscarriages. What is fascinating about it though is the affect it has on our behaviour.

A study at Oxford University discovered rats, who would ordinarily and instinctively avoid cats urine, would when infected with toxoplasma not only be fearless of the cats urine but actively stay near it. This bacteria removed certain inhibitors in the rats brain, the bacteria which wanted to exist within the cats gut was offering up the rat, it’s host, as dinner and sacrifice. This tiny bacteria was influencing and arguably controlling the actions of a far larger creature. The rats were indifferent to human, dog and other varieties of urine, the rats and their cat loving bacteria interested in cats piss alone.

Like anything of this ilk proved on rats it wasn’t long before it was tested out on humans. She refers to a large scale experiement in which 3,890 soldiers from the Czech army were tested for toxoplasma and then over the next year the numbers of accidents they were involved in was recorded and analysed. It turned out those with the bacteria, and particularly those with rhesus negative blood type, were involved in the highest number of accidents. It turns out, and I’m going to crudely paraphrase this, that when infected the immune system activates an enzyme called IDO which breaks down a substance the invaders like to eat, forcing them to become dormant. Unfortunately this substance is also vital in the creation of serotonin, a lack of which is linked to depression and various anxiety disorders, as well as lethargy and general indifference. IDO is also highly activated during pregnancy, hence the link, and this and the immune systems response can sometimes treat the baby as a semi-alien which leads to miscarriages.

To take this further, the toxoplasma bacteria hide away in a few places but predominantly the amygdala section of the brain. This is also the area in which our fear receptors exist. This is also seemingly the part of the brain responsible for the decision making process, if you’re a parasite attempting to promote self-destructive tendencies, this is probably the best place to exist. Humans with toxoplasma were also found to have a different response to cats urine than those without, men especially seemed to prefer it with women less so. Interestingly the proportion of carriers among schizophrenics is about twice that among non-schizophrenics.

Science and medicine move slowly, unless you’re creating vaccines for pandemics of course, so it’ll still be a long time before these factors are tested for regularly and this understanding of behaviour and bacteria become common practice. It does though make you think about certain behaviours in people that just seem illogical and insane. Why someone could be so reckless is now slightly less inexplicable. Or even perhaps why you yourself have done so many stupid things over the years. I’m not suggesting we all go out and sniff cats urine to check our response of course, but this does open possibilities for how we view and understand behavioural patterns. This is just one parasite and if it’s possible for this one to create these suicidal and reckless tendencies, how do we know other bacteria don’t also affect our behaviours. There is so much we just don’t understand about our bodies yet we behave as if we know it all. The gut and the varieties of little enzymes and bacteria within can change everything about us yet we give it next to no attention. I am barely even a layman in regards to these things but it is exciting that we are starting to really see some movement and understanding of things within us that could potentially change our lives for the better. Who knows, if we can positively change our own behaviours with this, maybe science could save the whole world in a most highly unexpected of ways too. Either that or the cats may just take over the world after all.

The Real Lord Of The Flies

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I awoke this morning to discover I had been sent the same link to an article by two different people. Interestingly enough they both share the same birthday just to add an extra layer of intrigue. This then is an article in the Guardian about ‘the real Lord Of The Flies‘; as they describe the story of six boys in the 1970s who found themselves stranded on a small island off Tonga for eighteen months. Incidentally I mentioned William Golding, the author of the dystopian novel that inspired the article, just the other day when I discussed one of his plays. The Lord Of The Flies is a great story, and like others I found his ability to get inside the psyche of these boys and explore the depths of human behaviour remarkable. It helped he was a Headmaster at a school, and according to this article a depressed alcoholic who sometimes beat his own kids. It suddenly becomes clearer why he had such little faith in the fictional children he created working together towards any kind of positive outcome. They really were the naughty little archetypal child of his time, this being the 1950s.

The article is quite interesting though because it raises the prospect that in fact the inevitable outcome of such a scenario is not death and destruction as these kids from the real version proved. Over the course of their eighteen stranded months they managed to exist in their own structured, disciplined and harmonious little world. They worked together and despite some serious incidents managed to all survive intact and healthy. The article is adapted from a new book by Rutger Bregman called Humankind, he previously wrote the relatively well known Utopia For Realists which I haven’t read but I hear is very good. He is attempting to change the narrative to one that shows “how much stronger we are if we can lean on each other” than the tired old one which convinces us we’re a destructive animal destined to ultimately destroy ourselves. There are and continue to be many stories out there of us working together when required, and the fact we have survived this far shows we must have been and still are capable of this cooperation.

It is important to mention though that clearly society is full of psychopaths and all it would take is for one person in the group to adopt that position for events to take another turn, as Lord Of The Flies demonstrates. In many cases then it turns out luck plays a defining role, the luck of who else you would find yourself stranded with. Perhaps if we knew a little more about how to handle such situations, to resolve a destructive element, we may be a little better prepared but how to do that is beyond my limited knowledge. Still narratives clearly can and need to be redrawn if we are ever to come together and survive as a species to benefit of all life on earth. Perhaps it’s time to see whether we can feasibly translate one of these micro examples onto the world at large.

Do We Plan Positively?

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There is something incredibly satisfying about making plans. I have never fully worked it out but I suspect like I mentioned a couple of days ago it is all about taking ourselves out of the present and into some dream fantasy land. Perhaps this could be a slight continuation of the other piece although I’m lazy to reread it to check, but I’m sure it mentioned not being in the present and I remember something about happiness just being around the corner. In a way this then is exactly a continuation piece because plans are nothing more than imagining a future event we would like to happen which surely, unless there is a specific reason, is going to be the best possible version that could happen. When we plan do we imagine ourselves happy, I would have always thought everyone does but then I know from conversations or more precisely; slightly argumentative debates, that I misunderstand depression for example. When people suffer from depression, or specific types of depression, do they imagine a future event happening with either a negative outcome or them being unhappy in that future moment. If so there must be no escape.

For me I have always imagined myself positively, or at least I assume I have. Do I imagine I’m imagining myself positively but relatively I’m actually imagining neutrally. Relative to what though. What if I am just imagining myself neutrally and that is what I base every present moment against, does that make my life nothing more than neutral. What is the base level, the fantasy or the present reality as our skewered eyes view it. There are no answers for that right now but I am planning on observing my own thoughts and how I place them on a scale of success. What is the outcome of that, am I imagining myself succeeding in these observations or am I left confused and clueless at the end. If I’m honest I imagine myself somewhere around seventy percent successful, which is a little miserable considering it’s my own fantasy, although probably realistic. The pragmatism of old age.

Is that better though. To have a plan for some future event which you are in your mind being realistic about. Perhaps this is just something we work out through experience but then that also means I only aim for seventy percent success. Should I aim for one hundred percent and potentially be disappointed, or will that higher aim actually result in me getting eighty or even ninety percent success, not what I aimed for but higher than my so called ‘realistic’ but which is now looking like a defeatist target. And if the depressed person expects to fail but has a little success higher than they expected does that bring them positivity or do they just view that through the prism of depression. Does that prism create a failure in observations. In truth I do not know. And also in truth it appears I am going off tangent from my follow up about being present and making plans to loads of nonsense questions and getting confused about depression.

I was going to tell you all about my lovely plans for the summer and how they’re probably going to change because everyone is going to be in quarantine soon and all flights will be grounded. It was going to be on the futility of planning and it ends up being nothing more than escapism from the present but all I can do is leave you with what this was going to be and try and digest some of those confusing questions I asked myself. I can’t even remember what I was supposed to be observing now. Something about success rate and being realistic I think, well there’s no harm in dreaming.

A Shinning Moon

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To carry on the misery, the deeply held pain myself and many others are feeling about this election gone bad, like milk but not the good stuff you can turn into something tasty if you know how, the bad stuff good for nothing, the stench so bad it goes straight in the bin, lumps floating on its surface like the boils of decay on putrid skin, the skin that covers up corruption and wanton self-serving betrayal. But I won’t, how about something more positive to mask the disappointment of hope smashed on the rocks of despair. What do we do when we want to forget pain, we stuff it deep within the folds of our soul, or we drink, we drink in search of the perpetual warmth of alcoholism or at the very least a nice whisky to take the edge off it.

If my phone hadn’t run out of battery and I hadn’t lost my charger now would be a great time to add a photo. In fact if you are reading this and there is a photo attached it means I went back to it and added one subsequently. To add photographic evidence of my successful attempt at creating the elixir of forgetfulness, the murky liquid gold, the self made man to the Etonian heir, the home-brew to the hipster microbrewery. You guessed it? Well understandable if not, but today I took my first step on a (continued) journey of suppression and made myself thirty-five pints of beer. This may be the start of something life changing, especially if my mate gets his way and we start producing enough to sell, but for now its just a combination of curiosity and pleasure. It is unclear whether it’ll be a success and I’m not necessarily excited as I’ve managed to convince myself that somehow I’ll mess it up, I just can’t quite believe its going to work somehow. All the same I’m pretty pleased with myself.

In about six days it should be suitably fermented to bottle and in a further two weeks after that it should be perfect to drink. Therefore in roughly twenty days from now I’ll be able to start on the road to suppressing my emotions and living in a world of denial and ruby ale drunkenness. In between then though we have three weeks together of me either twiddling my thumbs or feeling sorry myself. I could just get over it of course and get on with life but then where’s the wallowing, where’s the self-pity, what would be the point of making all that lovely beer.