health

12-01-2018 NLP and a personal journey

| Sophie

It’s a Friday afternoon, 6pm, pitch black outside, and I’m cosying up on my sofa with a couple of candles lit and gentle music in the background. I’m feeling quite sorry for myself today because a light cold that started just before New Years has recently turned into a horrible cough after a couple of nights drinking and subsequent poor sleep, and I’m on my period. So taking it pretty easy today. Drinking herbal tea and trying to eat healthily while craving nothing but sugar (in the form of chocolate and ice cream).

Despite all that, I’ve actually had a pretty good day. In the morning me and mum went to a fitness class (the first proper exercise I’ve done in about 4 months) and then I went for a coffee with a group of people I met last night at a Neuro-Linguistic-Programming seminar. It was led by a man named Paul Cosen (who is based in Canary Wharf) and was an introduction to NLP, organised by Sarah Brown, who is a holistic therapist (based on the Isle of Wight). I am, of course, really interested in all types of therapies and my dad is an NLP practitioner although he doesn’t actually run sessions, he completed a course more for his own emotional journey and to use the therapeutic tools in his own life.

I arrived at the seminar not knowing what to expect, and also not knowing much about what NLP is or has to offer and I’ve come away from it with a vaguely solid idea, and with the intention to book a session for myself at some point over the next couple of years. My impression is that it is a holistic amalgamation of many different (mainly) non-verbal, sensory therapies that aim to assist the mind in processing traumatic events in the past in order to move forward in a healthier, happier way. More of a mind map or toolkit with lots of techniques and exercises at a practitioners disposal, rather than a structured one-fits-all method.

The seminar started interactively with Paul getting a feel for what we wanted out of it. The general consensus was that we wanted tools for personal use, to help overcome obstacles in our lives. I didn’t speak too much as I’m not that comfortable speaking in a big group. I actually prefer one-on-one chat. Any more than a small group and I tend to sit back and stay quiet. It’s not a lack of confidence, it’s more about the fact that I do enjoy listening and learning, I don’t feel the need to share what I think with everyone (unless I have a burning question) and I really don’t like fighting to make myself heard, working to be the first and loudest when the conversation pauses in order to make my point. So consequently I don’t say much. If I had, I would have said that I wanted tools in order to get over some traumatic events in my past because I’m not over them and they affect my life on an almost daily basis. I think that a lot of issues that people have boil down to fear: fear of failure, lack of confidence, a phobia, fear of humiliation, fear of judgement etc. and I think that my main fears are of my own emotions and of people/vulnerability. I’m a very empathetic person and my emotions run strong and deep; and because I had quite a tough time growing up they just became absolutely unbearable. So for the last 3 or 4 years I’ve been slowly repressing as much angst and pain as I possibly can. I’m now so adept at it that I barely feel sad and depressed any more at all which is great, but it’s also made me slightly apathetic and unemotional, and it’s taken away my happiness too. I didn’t really notice this until I was asked by someone, when is the last time you felt real happiness? and I couldn’t remember. Not for years, I thought. I’ve just been numbly ticking along, getting shit done, sure, but not really enjoying my life. And I’m now at a point where I’m ready to move on, and have the strength to do that. For the first time in my life I have a network of people close to me that I can truly trust and rely on, and I feel safe and healthy. But that’s not something you can put into a couple of words in an interactive group session, so I mostly stayed quiet.

At the end of the seminar however I was selected to take part in an exercise called The Orgasmic Chair. Me and this other lady sat back to back and were asked to give three words that described what we wanted more of in life. My words were: happiness, love and self-acceptance. I thought they seemed pretty cliche but they were genuine and things that I’ve wanted more of for a long time now. The lady behind me said: confidence, self-belief and fun. Then we were told to close our eyes and the rest of the group walked around us in a circle saying really positive, beautiful messages using the words we had given them. Some of the women stroked our arms and our heads, and some just spoke, but the whole experience was uplifting, freeing and really quite soothing. Having been single for a long time and away from home, I don’t have much affection or intimacy in my life, so it was actually really nice to experience this brief but powerful deluge of warmth and tenderness. So rather than sexual pleasure, The Orgasmic Chair filled me with a sense of love and of being loved, which I really needed.

Then today during our coffee we had the chance to have more of an open conversation. I was able to share some of my story and receive some answers to the questions that I had which was really nice. Also Paul did a few exercises with me in order to work through particular traumatic memories: I hope it’s worked. So a really positive experience overall and I’m so glad I went! It takes a little to put yourself out there and go with an open mind, but I felt a real connection with the group and definitely plan on going to more events like these on the island, and off, in the future! I also met a women who’s going to put me in touch with her son who has studied indigenous communities in Ecuador, and is now studying fungi in Spain… very very strange coincidence! (To learn more about what I’m doing in Ecuador, read this post: Why We’re Here – The Research).

So in conclusion! Very successful day for my emotional journey. Feel like I’m actually getting somewhere I want to be and know how to keep going.

 

 

Writers Block

| Sophie
I’m a writer, I’m a poet,
It’s a gift, they say, I know it!
Helps me fine tune all the voices
All the questions all the choices
Running through my busy brain:
Sorting crazy from the sane.
Helping me to find a way
When I’ve had a rubbish day.

 

But today the words won’t come.
Through my fingertips and thumb.
Tapping out a steady rhythm
Forming words into a vision
Giving shape to my emotions
When they feel as vast as oceans,
But today I’ve got to say;
I don’t know what to write. 
Okay?!

Why We’re Here – The Research

| Sophie

For those of you who have got the impression that so far my time in Ecuador has mostly been exploring, lying in a hammock and swimming, you’re wrong. Well, half wrong. Okay, just a little bit wrong, we have been doing a lot of that. But there’s a much more serious side to our life here: the research.

To preface the bulk of this post, I’ll just explain why I’m here: I’m 2 and a bit years into a degree in Biomedical Sciences with Industrial Placement at Manchester, and this is my placement. Heather is also on placement with me, she studies Zoology at Manchester and is a passionate animal lover, even the grizzly, scary, creepy ones… especially the grizzly, scary, creepy ones. Our aim over the course of this year in the Jungle is to complete research in an area of our choosing and produce scientifically viable results. If we work hard, then getting published could be on the cards.

We’ve both spent a long time coming up with a plan for our research proposals which mainly involved a lot of emailing, scrolling through PubMed, reading papers and chatting to Javier, the Ecuadorian station manager, about what would be possible. Javier has a degree in Forestry Engineering and has been working at the station for 6 years now. He’s affectionately nicknamed Jungle Dad and is sociable, generous, and a real joker. Even though most of his jokes are in Spanish and fly straight over our heads, he still makes us laugh with his faux-stern expressions, dad dancing and inability to say slept. “Slepech. Slepecha. Slepch?”

Heather’s main project will be investigating the Arachnid biodiversity here at Payamino. She was given a fantastic opportunity to work closely with an Arachnid specialist during her time here; they’ll complete the field work and research when he arrives at the station in January next year. ‘Arachnid Biodiversity Study’ means capturing as many spiders as possible, bringing them back to the station and identifying what species they are. Heather’s hoping to gain a greater appreciation of an animal that’s normally shunned in society and has a huge fear stigma attached to them. In her opinion, they’re actually underappreciated, beautiful creatures that aren’t nearly as scary as they seem. Already we’ve seen lots of spiders, including a baby tarantula (that we caught in a soup bowl) and many jumping spiders. Heather uses the word adorable, not something synonymous with spiders in my personal opinion, but it’s her project not mine. It’s a good thing I’m not scared of spiders (which my mother proudly attributes all credit to herself as she always made me and my sister get rid of the spiders in the house so she didn’t have to, thanks mum). Also, Heather will be continuing with the research on Heliconias, a native flowering plant, which was started by a previous placement student. The project is looking at the effects of genetic variation in Heliconia species and the associated insect communities. It will involve cutting off roots from existing plants and growing her own little, genetically-identical garden, then measuring the species diversity found between the two plants. Interesting stuff, plus Heliconias are really pretty.

My projects, which I’m very excited about, will be Fungi Biodiversity and knowledge about ethno-medicine in indigenous communities. Fungi are a largely under-researched, under-appreciated group of organisms. They are neither a plant nor an animal, but a whole kingdom to themselves. My project will be on the different types of flowering fungi found in Payamino. It will be impossible to do an all-inclusive biodiversity survey as a lot of fungal species are microscopic and I just don’t have the equipment to find them, so the project will be limited to fungi I can see with my eyes. There has been absolutely zero research into fungi biodiversity here, so I’m in unchartered territory and hopefully my research will be valuable to the scientific community. Once I’ve collected data on each fungi I find, I will get in touch with a fungi specialist either in Quito or the UK who can help me identify each species. Hopefully I’ll develop a comprehensive list of species found in this area. My interest in fungi started to develop in first year of Uni when I came to appreciate how diverse, interesting and spectacular they can be. For example, did you know that some species of fungi create their own jets of air in order to spread their spores further; some species are carnivorous, capable of punching holes in the cell walls of passing nematode worms and insects for food; and some have even teamed up with plants they live on and kill the insects for them then feed them the corpses. I started to see them as the research underdog of the natural world, and love the idea of contributing to this hugely unfinished puzzle piece of nature.

My second research project is quite close to my heart. I’ve always been interested in alternative medicine and how they practice medicine in different parts of the world, inspired by my own battle with illness, and had the idea of looking into medicine used in the indigenous communities here before I even applied for the placement. When I arrived, I found a book on the book shelf entitled ‘Plantas de Medicinales en Payamino’. I’m sure you can crack that Spanish on your own. The book was a catalogue of all the different plants used medicinally by the Kichua community, what they’re used for and how they’re prepared. I got in touch with the author of the book, Dr Brian Doyle – a researcher in the States, asking if there was any further research he wanted to do here, and if not, whether his research bought up some interesting questions that I could research myself. He replied with 3 large bullet points, each detailing a possible research area I could pursue, and said he was planning on coming back to Payamino next year to continue his research. This was the best possible news I could have hoped for. Bullet point number 1 turned out to be not so relevant after chatting with Javier who knows the area and communities really well. Bullet point number 2 was simply monitoring all the plant species year round; collecting samples for the National Herbarium in Quito and collecting data and pictures about the life cycle of each plant. Bullet point number 3 was by far the most interesting and challenging suggestion. Brian had recently published a paper that analysed the distribution of knowledge about traditional medicine across the community near the station. His suggestion was that I do the same thing, with improvements and a few alterations, in a few other indigenous communities, and use the data to compare knowledge between communities. Imagine: travelling to various indigenous communities in the rainforest, staying for a week or so and in that time surveying a random sample of the population using images of plants and a basic questionnaire. Queue huge excitement and the stomach-dropping realisation that I’m going to have to be near fluent in Spanish to pull this off. So at the moment I am doing my best to learn Spanish, with a general plan to do this field work next Easter.

So my plan is to get a chunk of the Fungi project done by Christmas and send over the data to a specialist to see what results I get; and learn Spanish rapido. There’s only so far you can get with audio-tapes, books and Duolingo, so Heather and I spent an intense week in el Coca having Spanish lessons with an Ecuadorian-but-lived-in-Norway-for-18-years English teacher, Fernando, doing 4 hours of lessons a day. It was a pretty hard week but we learnt a lot. On the Friday, we went to a bar (Papa Dance, a salsa bar on the river) with Fernando and met some of his other students learning English and found we could actually have a simple conversation and swap basic information about our lives. It was a triumphant moment.

The pace of life is still quite slow here as we travel to and from various cities on a weekly basis to get all the relevant documentation needed for our contracts with UEA and our Ecuadorian work visa, and as we adjust to the living conditions in the Rainforest. We’ve only been here a month but it already feels like a lifetime. This little clearing on the bank of el Rio Payamino has become our home and we love it. We both have high hopes for our research here and can’t wait to see our ideas and plans come to fruition. Let’s hope that in a year’s time, Heather and I can look back at the blog post and have succeeded in meeting our aims. Buena suerte a nosotros. Good luck to us.

ChiroEurope 2017

| Sophie

ChiroEurope is a conference that occurs twice a year, spring and autumn, inclusively catering for Chiro’s, Chiropractic assistants, students, friends and family and anyone who’s interested in Chiropractic care. The long weekend consists of a series of speakers who aim to challenge, support, inspire, share their miracles, give advice and ultimately bring out the best in every single person in the room. Each speaker brings a touch of magic and positive energy which irrevocably infects each avid listener over the course of the weekend, leaving this feeling of elation and practical determination to start making positive changes in your own life, be it personally or professionally, or most probably both.

I had the fortune of attending ChiroEurope in April 2017 with my mum and her Chiropractic colleagues from the Cowes Chiropractic Clinic (CCC on the Isle of Wight). It was a four day event, held at the Hotel IPV Palace and Spa, situated in beautiful Malaga in southern Spain. The conference attracts students and professionals from all over the globe and was an amalgamation of some of the brightest and best minds of the chiropractic world, and I was honoured to be there as a guest. I was gifted this opportunity because, conveniently, my mum knows me pretty well and after having gone the year before, thought that I would really enjoy it and get a lot out of it so I was invited along by Rebecca and will be eternally grateful for the kindness they showed me.

Let me introduce myself. I’m a current student of Manchester Uni studying Biomedical Sciences, purely because I love learning about how the human body works and have a passion for health and making people better. I live by a holistic health philosophy and anything that promotes wellbeing and happiness. Before ChiroEurope, I had had a few chiropractic treatments and decided that I liked Chiropractic and that it matched my beliefs and outlook on life. I didn’t know too much about the science or the methods, but I let my curiosity guide me, and found something that I now truly love, and will be a consistent part of my health routine (just as important as eating right and exercising) for the rest of my life.

Those four days took me on a journey of self-reflection and reconnection, culminating in a love for the profession that I never thought I would have. ChiroEurope has taken me from a position of curious observation, to literally wanting to marry a Chiropractor so I can be a part of that world forever. My list of criteria for the love of my life has been drastically shortened and now contains just that one item. And for good reason. I think to become a Chiropractor, your main aim in life has to be to do good and to help people. For those of you reading who don’t know much about Chiropractic, don’t worry, neither did I, and I want to share with you everything that I learnt. I imagine that even a lot of Chiropractors and students have no idea what their own potential is until they experience ChiroEurope. It will open doors inside your mind you didn’t even know were there; introduce you to choices you didn’t know you had; and enable you to adjust in an inspired way in order to do the most good.

For you non-Chiro’s, an adjustment is just a manipulation of the spine in order to remove nerve interference. Let me explain that. Every second, thousands of messages are being sent around your body in order to communicate and work efficiently. Your body is a powerful, dynamic, miracle that is capable of self-regulation, self-renewal and self-repair. Your body can heal itself. Do your wounds gape open forever when you get cut, or do they close? You have a power within your body, a life force, whatever you want to call it, that is able to heal itself and grow. The power that made your body, can also heal your body. It’s unequivocal. Your body has an immune system that works tirelessly to fend off harmful invaders, or anything that threatens the overall health of the whole. Our digestive system turns what you eat, into you. It really is true, you are what you eat. You are that coffee you drank this morning and that chocolate you ate last night. It gets broken down, and turned into lots of little molecules and chemicals which get incorporated into your eyes, heart, skin, blood, everything. Our brain is a beautifully designed processor and communicator which can simultaneously coordinate millions of actions, with the ultimate goal of survival, health and love. We have evolved lots of clever ways of transmitting these messages around the body so that it all functions in harmony and in health. These messages include electrical and chemical impulses through our neurons which travel out of the brain, down the brain stem and then exit out into the body. And what Chiropractic does, is it removes the interference between your brain and your body by adjusting and aligning the spinal cord so it can protect the most important part of you: the brain and brain stem. Unfortunately as humans, we tend to get injured a lot, and our lives are built around habit; habits put strain on the body. A repeated movement can cause your skeleton to become misaligned, and put pressure on certain neurons, causing them to over and under fire, messing with the natural balance of the body. Chiropractic treatment removes these pressures, allowing the body to function at its optimal. A misconception is that Chiropractors only deal with posture, back pain, neck pain and headaches. Vitalistic Chiropractors unlock the body’s innate potential, and allow it to do what it does best.

This was ChiroEurope. Even as a non-Chiropractor, I still felt the awe and admiration for all that our bodies do, and the absolute dedication to healing that all of these chiropractors had; a complete faith in the brilliance of the human body, and a calling to help as many people as possible.

All the guests and speakers shared this passion for health, happiness and humanity. Some were more practical, and gave direct advice in successfully building your own practice, gaining new clients, managing, marketing, communicating etc. And some were there to plug you in, turn you on, and charge you up; sharing their enthusiasm, passion and love of life. There were lots of miracles shared on the ChiroEurope stage which left you tingling and breathless, but a lot of miracles in Chiropractic often happen beneath the surface, where you can’t always see what’s going on. The nature of our Western society is to need a quick fix for everything, and where sometimes Chiropractic is a quick fix, more often than not restoring the natural balance of the body holistically and sustainably actually takes a little while and requires a bit of perseverance.

So I can whole-heartedly say that the Chiropractic profession has a new advocate with a fairly loud voice (metaphorically of course, I won’t be wandering the streets shouting at everyone to go and see a Chiropractor, not often anyway), and I promise to pass on this knowledge to anyone who is open-minded enough to listen. So, on a final note, my last piece of advice, GO AND SEE YOUR CHIROPRACTOR.

#VEGCURIOUS ?

| Sophie

(A post written for the Mancunion – The Manchester Uni student newspaper).

Definition: someone who is interested in exploring veganism and experimenting with vegetables in new ways, but not quite ready to commit.

Been having some affectionate thoughts about vegetables lately? Perhaps you’ve been wondering about alternative sources of protein but you’re not quite ready to talk about it with your mates? You might be what experts are calling ‘vegcurious’.

In the UK, over half a million people are completely vegan, almost 2 million are vegetarian and new figures are showing that many more people are vegcurious and want to know more about this plant-based lifestyle. In the US, the figures are even higher, and a staggering 40% of the population in India follow a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle. Veganism is drifting into the mainstream as research is showing that going vegan is a win, win, win situation. Good for the animals, good for the planet, and good for us.

Animal welfare and ethicality is of course still a really important issue, however it’s no longer the most popular reason for going vegan. Veganism is becoming as much an environmental cause as it is an animal welfare cause. Agricultural studies show that rearing cattle for food is the main effector of deforestation and has the biggest impact on global warming. A common misconception is that soy bean plants are causing deforestation, however 85% of these plants are used as feed for cattle and not human consumption, and therefore are also a part of the animal-product industry. Many of you will have heard the devastating news about the Great Barrier Reef last year caused by overfishing and global warming; moreover, the planets rapidly decreasing biodiversity is being dubbed by experts as the 6th extinction crisis. I think it’s time humans took responsibility for the harm we’ve caused, take a long hard look at the evidence and realise that it is the production of animal products for food which is exerting the greatest damage in our environmental crises.

If you’re not much of an environmental activist, that’s fine. But surely you care about yourself? Your health? With the popularity of veganism growing, so has the demand for scientific studies identifying the effect of this diet on your body, and whether or not a plant-based diet is able to provide adequate nutrient acquisition. The results are astounding, and show that not only is a vegan diet adequate, but it also decreases your risks of getting various diseases including different forms of cancer, obesity, cardiovascular disease and even osteoporosis. However, the risk of certain deficiency’s are higher in vegans because most people were never taught how to eat a well-balanced, vegan diet and therefore miss out key macro and micronutrients, and it’s important to transition your body safely into this new lifestyle as it is quite a drastic change in diet if you’ve always been a meat eater.

So if you’re a transitioning vegan or a conscientious meat-eater, make sure you’re filling your plate with balanced, nutritious foods that are going to supply you with the complete repertoire of nutrients your body needs. And try and be a little friendlier to vegetables.

Are cocktails giving you brain damage?

| Sophie

Well yes, they are actually.

Do I still love them? Yes, they’re pretty and yummy.

This post is about increasing awareness rather than personally condemning everyone that drinks (myself included) and just hopefully inspiring people to ask a few more questions and take the issue a little bit more seriously.

One quick comment before I bombard you with scary facts: it can be really hard in life to get it all right and be healthy all the time, and I’m not saying you should be all at once, it’s a process. We’re all under so much pressure in this world already without feeling like we can’t enjoy simple pleasures and let loose every so often. It’s important to not feel deprived and to make fulfilling choices that feel good. I personally am working towards a mental state where I feel great about making the healthiest choice, and it’s a really exciting journey. I’m writing this post to inform you, and with some hope that the next time you face a choice about how much to drink, there will be a little voice in your head that thinks of your liver and says, ‘ooh maybe I shouldn’t have that 3rd shot of tequila’.

Alcohol is, unfortunately, one of the biggest killers in the world, sorry, but it’s true. Alcohol abuse is embedded into our society to such an extent that most people wouldn’t go to social occasions or music events etc. if they weren’t going to drink. Decreased inhibitions, questionable decisions and ‘hilarious’ displays of clumsiness (aka your brain shutting down) seem to be the only way that we can go out, enjoy ourselves and fit in.

I am by no means tee-total or have any desire to become so while I’m still at university, but it’s something I’d really like to be by the time I’m 30 – I figure/hope that most of the damage can be undone (or at least slightly repaired) while I’m still young. And yes, 30 is still young.

I’m writing a Lab Report on the ‘Effects of Ethanol on Performance’ and subsequently have done a lot of research to find out what exactly ethanol does when it enters our body. My research has included reading other lab reports, medical reviews and reports done by the World Health Organisation and Public Health England, and also stuff I learn at Uni.

The first thing that shocked me was the amount of evidence proving how bad alcohol is for you and the fact that it is a misconception that a little bit is good for you. No alcohol is good for you. Period. What’s good for you is the other nutrients in the drink e.g. antioxidants in wine, yeast in beer etc. When mainstream attitude to smoking changed around 2005/2006, the government ruled that all smoking products must have visual and written warnings of its harmful effects, but alcohol kills more people than cigarettes do! Where are the pictures showing brain damage and rotting livers on alcoholic drinks? The list of potential poor decisions and the consequences of emotional and psychological trauma. I know this has turned heavy pretty quick, but we all know someone who’s life has been ruined by alcohol.

Annually, alcohol abuse costs the total British economy £21bn and the NHS £3.5bn. If our nation was so desperate to improve the economy and save our NHS, we should have all stopped drinking, not quit one of the most successful Unions in the world. England and the USA are among the top 20 heaviest drinkers in the world and all of the top 10 countries are in Europe (Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health in 2014).

Alcohol is a Central Nervous System (CNS) depressant. Your CNS is made up of your brain and spinal cord and controls most functions in your body and mind. Ethanol (the alcoholic component of drinks) depresses the CNS; in other words, slows it down and stops it from working. Ethanol acts on various receptors in the brain in order to increase inhibitory signals and decrease excitatory signals: this results in decreased motor (movement) functions, confused thoughts, decreased awareness and poor coordination. It also interferes with your ability to lay down memories and to learn by blocking specific signalling pathways and decreasing the actions of neurotransmitters (Glutamate) in specific parts of the brain (hippocampus, amygdala and striatum). You’re all thinking, “well yes we know all that!” “I frequently wake up with no recollection of the night before.” “My friend was throwing up all night last week, it was hilarious.” Why? Why is it funny to see people poison themselves to the point where their body has to reject everything in their stomach so their organs don’t shut down?

Prolonged drinking causes irreparable damage in the brain, destroys your liver and diminishes your immune system. Short-term drinking decreases the effects of your immune system, making you much more likely to contract a virus or bacterial infection after a night out; and long-term drinking increases the immune system, causing inflammatory diseases and internal damage. Alcohol is commonly known to be bad for people with digestive disorders including IBS and interferes with a lot of medications.

Quick fact: the reason people with less body fat get drunk quicker is because alcohol is very soluble in water but not soluble in fat. So if you have more fat cells in your body, alcohol is less likely to pass out of your blood, and will head straight to the liver to get broken down. It also makes sense that if you’re a bigger/taller person, there’s more blood for alcohol to get absorbed into, thus the concentration of ethanol at any one point in your body will be less.

I understand that it is very important for people to belong in their society and to fit in with cultural norms, evolutionary speaking this was essential for our survival, and social drinking is a part of that. I’m not writing this to try and convince everybody to stop drinking and boycott all bars and nightclubs, I’m writing this just to draw your attention to it. The next time your friend chooses not to drink on a night out, respect that decision. If you see your friend about to cross the line between drunk and smashed, give them a glass of water. Value yourself sober. Your sober self is good enough, fun enough and happy enough. And if you turn to drink to escape life, have a good look at what you’re escaping from and try and fix that instead, rather than just forgetting it for a night.

img_5118
Albert Schloss Espresso Martini

I am a big believer in moderation, balance and self-awareness. Doing what works for you is the most important thing, and it’s vital that you pay attention to yourself and your body so that you can recognise if and when drinking becomes a real problem in your life. Drink to enjoy, not to forget.

My last message will be this:

Be safe, be aware, be kind to yourself and to others.

Learning To Learn

| Sophie

I feel like we’re living in an oxymoron, like this world doesn’t quite make sense anymore. Words are flying about in the media such as ‘post-fact era‘ and ‘post-truth era‘, highlighting the fact that social media has become a platform where opinions have become truth. Anyone can post anything online. Everything that we think is normal and true was sold to us as an idea at some point in order to achieve something for someone else.

Opinions

Think about this, everything that we read is an opinion. Even scientific hard facts are only taught to you or introduced to you in your life because it’s someone else’s opinion that you need to know that information.  The perspective you have of the world around you is an accumulation of your experiences and only exists in your head. That means that we all live in different worlds to each other. A perspective can make two identical situations seem completely different.

Just Think

Children are growing up in a world that their parents have never had to deal with. How are parents meant to teach their children how to deal with uncomfortable and tricky situations that they don’t even know exist, have never been through and have never been taught how to cope with themselves? So much of the world around us automatically gets stored in our subconscious and we have no idea that we’ve absorbed certain influences, that our actions are the results of tiny stimuli, external and internal, that we weren’t conscious of receiving. How do we know what’s right or wrong any more when we have thousands of opinions shoved down our throats on all levels of our consciousness? How do we sort through it all and make our own decisions about what we want?

Question

The old saying ‘ignorance is bliss’ is completely redundant now; knowledge and awareness is the key to taking control of our lives. It’s more important than ever to engage in the world around us and to question our own actions and motives as well as other peoples. Through the internet, we have access to almost anything, however there are software and algorithms that exist which monitor your online presence (interests, hobbies etc.) and tailor your online experience (adverts, search suggestions. newsfeed article suggestions) to what they think you’re most likely to read, click on, buy, advertise for them. This creates the illusion that you know more than you actually know because you think you’re being exposed to a variety of articles/adverts/newsfeeds, when it’s actually highly tailored to suit your online preferences. It also makes you think that everyone else is thinking the same thing as you. Well, it’s time to start questioning. The only way to reduce the amount of influence that external stimuli have on you is to be aware that they exist then question them, then you get to decide what will benefit you and what won’t.

Ask

Most information has a bias or an angle, a concept that someone is trying to sell. So now you’ve started to question the motives of what you read on Facebook, in newspapers, watch on the news, adverts in the street etc. you can take another step and start to dissect your own opinions and work out what you actually believe in and what was just fed to you passively. Ask yourself what’s important to you.

Learn

Now you’re aware of how influence-able you are as a human being, you can start to learn in a more efficient way, take information on board in a more analytical way and form opinions in a more well-rounded way. This has the potential to open so many doors. How many things in life have you written off because you have this belief that it’s not right for you, but when you dig a little deeper you realise you don’t have any good reasons for why it’s not right, you just believe it. This is your chance to shrug off old habits and thought patterns that aren’t serving you at all, and to embrace a more wholesome and healthy way of thinking that will provide you with the best opportunities you can give yourself.

Research

This is the fun part (because I’m a massive sponge and love to learn stuff). This is where you start looking outside your box and you realise that all the amazing, crazy, hilarious, thought-provoking stuff that other people have done can make a huge difference in your life. Stop accepting what you think is normal. Learn new things, question the status quo, make changes happen, get inspired.

I joined the Green Party a few weeks ago which is a huge step for me because I’ve never really been into politics, I was never taught it at school and my parents weren’t interested in it really. I never understood how it affected my life. But I do now, and even though it took a bit of effort learning about politics and economics as a beginner, I love that it’s opened up this door for me in terms of the potential direction of my life and what I want to do when I’m older.

Same with travel. It makes you reassess everything you thought was normal about behaviour and societal constructs. It makes you more adaptable and accepting of different versions of normal that you haven’t come across yet, which can seem strange to you at first, but you come to realise that strange isn’t a bad thing, it’s a chance to learn.

How

TED talks are a fantastic way to broaden your mind and appreciate how amazing our world is and the people that are in it

Documentaries (there are loads of great ones on Netflix)

Social skills in a Digital Age is a qualification to teach people emotional intelligence with regards to the digital world, an extremely useful tool for people of all ages and a great certification to prove social, online awareness

The New Scientist which is one of my favourite websites!

The National Geographic is another of my favourite websites 🙂

People. Talk to people, be interested. Listen to learn, not to reply. Ask questions, don’t be afraid of being wrong, the only way we’ll learn is to ask and it’s admirable to admit that you want to know more.

Why

My flatmate is doing her dissertation on the impact of being obese when pregnant and it’s more damaging for the health of the baby than most people realise. It hugely increases the chance of genetic diseases and for the child to develop health problems later on in life. The only way to combat this is to educate women before they get pregnant.

Coconut oil is so far the most effective treatment for Alzheimer’s. Why isn’t this common knowledge already!? Someone is diagnosed with Dementia every 3 minutes and it affects billions of people worldwide, yet pharmaceutical companies can’t sell coconut oil therefore it’s not seen as a viable treatment. Same as cannabis in treating cancer. Just because it’s not medically accepted doesn’t mean it won’t work for you, there has never been a death from cannabis, and it’s saved many lives. The use of cannabis to treat cancer is another dissertation topic which I was extremely excited about as I know people that have had success with it.

Did you know processed sugar is just as addictive as cocaine; and sugar is way, way worse for you than fat. New studies have shook up the nutrition and medical community showing that a high-fat low-carb diet decreases your chances of getting cardiovascular disease compared to a low-fat, high-carb diet.

Remember when everyone thought smoking wasn’t damaging to your health?

How meat and dairy is full of hormones, toxins and damaging chemicals, is the largest contributor to global warming, and leaves third world countries starving because massive amounts of deforestation and land use are occurring to rear cattle and not grow crops for its own people?

That the rise of mental illness is because our brains aren’t evolving quick enough to be able to cope with the changing world around us, and we’re neglecting our mental and spiritual health in favour of immediate satisfaction.

Be inspired to learn and question.

Power and responsibility – the CRISPR debate

| Sophie

To edit or not to edit? Science is making major advances by the second, and with all this new-found power and knowledge comes responsibility, but where do we draw the line? As with subjects like Law and Philosophy, science is having to answer a difficult question along a very thin line; and us black and white, right or wrong scientists are going to have a pretty hard time finding a universal, one-fits-all solution that we strive so hard to achieve in our research.

CRISPR, a gene-editing tool, has opened up many doors for scientists, inside and outside of the lab, and is a revolutionary new way to explore life, and change it. It’s a technique used by bacteria to edit DNA. Now that we have sequenced the human genome, we can edit in or out any gene that we want, thus enabling us to change life at its core. For those with little scientific knowledge: a gene codes for a protein. A gene is made up of DNA, which is transcribed into RNA, which is translated into a protein. Everything in our body is made up of proteins; our hair, skin, blood, heart.. everything. So with the power to alter genes, we can change anything in the human body.

The science bit

CRISPR was first discovered in the immune systems of bacteria to fight infections.

Surprisingly, bacteria get infections too by even smaller organisms called bacteriophages. Bacteriophages to Bacteria, are viruses to people.

Bacteriophage inject small sections of DNA into its host bacteria in order to recruit the mechanisms present in bacteria in order to make new proteins for the bacteriophage, eventually killing the bacteria, and enabling the bacteriophage to reproduce.

40% of bacteria (and 90% of archaea) have a specific defence mechanism against bacteriophage that allow them to target foreign DNA inside the bacterial cell and cut it so it’s unusable.

This is CRISPR.

The bacteria incorporate the foreign DNA (injected by the bacteriophage) into their own DNA, in between genes that code for enzymes and proteins that are used to target and kill foreign DNA.

This section of DNA is called Clusters of Regularly Interspaced Palindromic Repeats (hence CRISPR).

One of these genes codes for an enzyme called cas9 which is used to cut DNA.

The inserted foreign DNA is transcribed into RNA (which can be used as a complimentary code for DNA) which pairs up with cas9 to form an RNA-enzyme complex.

The RNA finds the DNA it codes for (the foreign, harmful DNA) and cas9 cuts it up. It’s the perfect team. So now scientists are able to extract the cas9 enzyme, and pair it with any RNA sequence they like, thus being able to target any gene they know the sequence of (most genes) and cut it.

The DNA will automatically try to fix itself by activating the repair pathway which will result in mistakes and ultimately silence or disrupt the gene, making it redundant.

Taking this one step further, if you inject the correct, functional sequence of a gene you want to replace it with (making sure it has complementary ends to the cut section of DNA) the repair pathway will incorporate this new gene into the DNA. 

Back to normal

The practical application of this with regards to people, is that we now have a relatively easy and cheap way of altering DNA. We can replace a faulty gene with a new gene of our choosing. Absolutely fantastic when it comes to hereditary diseases caused by the mutation of a single protein, such as Huntington’s Disease (a mutant version of the protein Huntingtin causes brain damage in the areas that control movement, thinking and motivation) and Cystic Fibrosis (a sufferer has to have inherited a faulty gene from both parents because the cause of symptoms is a lack of function of a particular protein that acts as an ion channel. If one normal gene is present, the functional protein is produced and symptoms are not seen, this person would be a carrier). The potential is incredible and is limited only by our knowledge of genes and their function.

At present, all of this is only possible in embryos as they are a single cell. Once the embryo starts dividing exponentially to become a whole organism, we no longer have the technology to insert CRISPR into every cell. So the only way this technology works is by changing the DNA of an embryo before its even a person. Making the choice on behalf of a potential human being. Having the technology to edit out or in ANY protein of your choosing. Choosing a gender. Choosing hair and eye colour. Curing a disease. Making a mistake and causing a new disease. Producing unknown and unwanted consequences.

Enter: the Medical Ethics society, Religious groups, Scientists, Feminists, Lawyers, Parents, Human Rights Activists, Politicians and anyone else who’s interested.

Go.

It’s an awfully big debate with a million right answers. And the scary thing is that every time an answer gets decided and a line drawn, it will become obsolete with every new discovery. In the future we may have the technology to edit genes in adults. Do we draw the line before mental illness and anxiety disorders? Do children decide their own fate? Do we use this technology to enhance normal people?

I’ll repeat a point I made at the start of this article: with great power, comes great responsibility. Who’s given scientists the right to play God? Food for thought.