A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Remember people telling you to just get over it when you got picked last for games, when you never got invited to the cool parties, when you were a wall-flower at dances, or when your best-friend canceled because he/she found something better to do at the last minute. Well, those rejections hurt. The problem though was that everyone said it was in your head that it didn’t really hurt — you were just pretending.

Well, according to this article in Telegraph.co.uk, that pain was real.

Psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles say the human body has a gene which connects physical pain sensitivity with social pain sensitivity…

Their study indicates that a variation in the mu-opioid receptor gene (OPRM1), often associated with physical pain, is related to how much social pain a person feels in response to social rejection.

I’ve often wondered why people think that psychological pain is somehow less painful than physical pain when the pain receptors are basically the same. Pain is pain no matter where it comes from — whether you fall down a flight of stairs or have your significant other walk out on you because s/he need to find him/herself (as if they got lost and can’t get dressed until they find their body — where ever it went off to) is painful. Some people react to social rejection as if it was physical.

I’d hope that this finding will get educators and other to be a bit more proactive in stopping bullies and intimidation in the schools. But, since not even having children go postal or committing suicide because of the painful torment they suffer every day seems to be helpful, I doubt that research that shows these children and adults (faced with the same bullying and intimidation) do suffer pain will cause anyone to actually change their behavior.

Those who have suffered the pain for social rejection however, should feel a bit of vindication to know that the pain they felt or feel was not imaginary, it was real. And while from social rather than physical stimulus it still takes a toll on a person’s immune system and stamina.

Now if only someone could come up with a cure for a broken heart. Any ideas? Personally, I like to spend time with Ben & Jerry when I’m feeling the pain of social rejection.

Okay, I admit it. I’m overweight. I’m working on adding a lot more exercise into my daily life, well as much as I can with chronic pain and fibromyalgia. I do between 15-45 minutes on the Wii Fit each day. Lately, I’ve been also walking down to the mailbox (1/4 miles from the house) and a few times a week, depending on the temperature, Hyperion and I have been taking about a 1.5 to 2 mile walk in the early evening. So, I’m not a slouch with the exercise and I eat healthy and lite — mostly.

But I’m fairly comfortable with myself though if I lose some weight my knees would probably throw a big party with carrots and celery. But then I get the confusing messages from the “world”. Airlines want to charge extra for heavy people to fly because it bothers people to sit next to a fat person. You know what bothers me — people who douse themselves with perfume and fly, people who put their seats all the way back without even thinking about the person behind them who just lost 1/3 of their space and most likely can’t read unless they rest the book on the reclining person’s head, people who feel they must tell you their life story even when you get your book our and open it. Heck, I’ve sat next to skinny people who spread themselves all out over half my seat and their own and half the one next to them as they take off their shoes and pull their legs up into their seat with their knees on my seat arm and in my lap. No, I don’t think overweight people are the problem — I think seats designed for a 1920’s butt that hasn’t been updated since is the problem, but then there would be fewer seats per plane, flying would be more relaxing, and flight attendants would have an easier time dealing with passengers — hmmm….

But mostly, people in the news and in advertising seem to think heavy people are lazy and don’t do anything. Most of the people I know are overweight. Of course they also work 12-14 hours per day and are on call the rest of the day doing IT work of one sort or another. Add the long days to long commutes and there’s not a lot of time to eat responsibly — you grab meals when you can and take what you can get. Most run on caffeine and sugar — that’s the problem for most Americans. We work long hours with long commutes and very little free time. Of course, I work at home but I still work long hours and have health issues so ….

But, I found this gem of an article in the New York Times, Excess Pounds, but Not Too Many, May Lead to Longer Life.  Evidently, skinny people and very heavy people may have health problems from weight issues but moderately heavy and normal (whatever that means) people live longer. There was a similar article about the study, Can A Little Extra Weight Protect People From Early Death? Underweight, Extremely Obese Die Earlier Than People Of Normal Weight in Science Daily. Yeah, for this new study.

I’ve known some skinny people with really bad health problems and some normal people and some heavy people. I may agree that carrying added weight can put some strain on the organs, but then so can a lot of other factors. You just can’t generalize about people on simply one factor and expect it to be taken seriously. I doubt if there is a single factor you could use that starts with “All whatever people are ____” and have it be true for every case. It isn’t true when you use race as that whatever and it certainly isn’t true when you use eye color, hair color, weight, or religion. People are too diverse and unique to use sweeping statements like that.

But I like this study because it found evidence that goes totally against what people have been saying for ages and seems to have some numbers to back it up. We need more studies to see just what being overweight does effect and these studies will hopefully be devoid of blame and accusations.

Time is finite. There’s 24 hours per day or 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds. Of course we’re supposed to sleep at least 8 of those hours. So basically each day we have 16 hours or 960 minutes or 57600 seconds to do stuff. That stuff includes making meals, cleaning the house, taking care of hygiene issues, work hours, and leisure time.

Now it sort of sounds like that’s plenty of time to get things done. But of those 16 hours 8 are spent working (plus the commute time for most people). Of course, I work at home so I tend to work more like 10 hours a day. Since I’m here in the house, a trip to the bathroom or to get a cup of coffee means I can toss in a load of wash or put it in the dryer when I pass, and then back to work. So some multi-tasking gets done.

Somehow, I always feel there isn’t enough time for all the things I want to do. Sometimes it’s just my subconscious making me feel like I’m not working that messes up my schedule. For example, I often feel that the time I spend sitting and reading is not working and I should get back to work. But reading books, to then write reviews of them, is working. It’s just that old New England work ethic that makes it feel that if it’s also enjoyable and fun, it can’t be work. Often, I have to keep reminding myself that reading IS work and it’s okay to just sit and read. But when I’m sitting by the window listening to the birds and enjoying a cuppa and taking notes on a book, it’s just too much fun — can that really be work? Well, when the reviews aren’t written because I didn’t finish the books — that’s definitely not fun. But how do you convince yourself that an enjoyable activity is also work?

Then I want to do some knitting. I’ve got lots of started projects and I’m trying to finish some of them off because I want to start new ones. So, I’ve been committing one hour or so a day to knitting on a project to finish it. Again I feel like I’m wasting time…I’m not. I know I’m not — but, it somehow feels like I am. So, since a lot of my time is spent online reading emails, answering questions, and adding stuff to the databases, I’ve taken to keeping my knitting handy so that if the response time is slow, I knit in order to keep myself from hitting random keys trying to make the thing move faster….. I know it doesn’t do anything but lock up the entire keyboard, but I’m the impatient sort. So I’m starting to keep knitting handy (I used to play games but that eats up time beyond what the delay takes so I’m off that now).

Some people just seem to get so much done in the same amount of time. I wonder how they do it. Some people think I do an amazing amount of stuff in the time available to me. Unfortunately, I feel like I waste an awful lot of my allotted time.

Is time management really just a perception problem? I don’t know, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How do people allocate their time to make sure the have a good mix of work, play, and sleep? Time for family. Time for fun. Time for themselves. Time for work. Time’s finite but we all use it differently. We all perceive it in a different manner. Time fleeting. Time dragging. Time passing us by. But is there a way to use it up wisely and to the best advantage without waste or regret?

Any tips on organizing your time that you want to share?

I’m not sure how we got on the topic but, while trapped in the car for some long driving as we ran errands today, Hyperion and I got to talking about positive thinking sort of as an off-shoot of wishful thinking being related to quantum physics (which is for another post).  Anyway, in kicking this topic around I began to crystallize some of my thoughts on it.

Most people have heard of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale’s book The Power of Positive Thinking. The basic premise is that if you feel good about yourself, good things will happen to you or come to you. This is also the basis behind The Secret by Rhoda Byrne where your positive thoughts are like magnets that cause good things to come to you. It’s also the basis for many of the books that instruct how to use your mind to concentrate on what you want and to have what you want come true.

But what I think is that by putting yourself into that place where you are concentrating on what you want, you begin to change yourself and your attitudes. From listening to some of the people who have read these books and dedicated themselves to following the various steps, there seem to be two types of outcomes. One is nothing much happens because they wish or think positively about what they want, but then they don’t do anything but wish or think.

However, the other group not only thinks positively, but they also begin to act in ways that cause the “good” thing/event to happen to them. They take a class in adult education, local technical school, junior college, or evening college courses, or go to the library and study up on what they’re hoping to gain — which is usually, better pay, a vacation, a promotion, or whatever. It’s the activities they are performing to aid them in gaining their goal that helps to change their attitude and gain them the abilities (concrete skills) that eventually gain them their positive outcome. It’s not just the positive thoughts beamed out in the universe; it’s the positive thoughts that are beamed inward that encourage the person to take their future into their own hands and make it better.

People don’t work in a vacuum.  They are worked upon by those around them. If others don’t think much of a person, that person internalizes that and acts accordingly, believing they aren’t worth much. If the other inflates a person’s ego, they also have problems when their expectations and their skills don’t match. However, if by focusing on a goal and then working to actually bring expectation and skills into alignment, their goals are often achieved. Usually not in the manner expected, but in a manner that, in retrospect, actually is what was wanted or needed.

On the other hand, people who simply sit and wish the good to come to them and never do anything to gain that change in their lives are bound to be disappointed and always looking for the next book that might have the key that actually will work for them — as long as they don’t actually have to do more than think about it.

My grandmother used to say, “If wishes were horses even beggars could ride.” This was usually whenever, I complained about wanting something but wasn’t actually planning to do any of the work to earn it. Yes, you need positive thinking but you also need good old fashioned work to reach the goals you set for yourself.

What’s your take on this?

Hyperion here:  I freely admit to being a total muggle; sometimes even Gayle despairs at my total disdain for the other-worldly.  For all the above post, there’s a fair bit of romance in her soul.  She may not depend on the magic to do job by itself, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s none out there.  She still has hope.   But, as for me?  “There’s no such thing as magic!”  That’s just the way I’m wired.   Well, there is one exception.  I think Gayle is pretty magical … but then I’m a bit biased, and the matter is not open to scientific inquiry.

Science Daily for April 7th had an article on how Caffeine Reduces Pain During Exercise. Professor of kenesiology and community health, Robert Motl has been studying the effects of caffeine on pain during exercise. He began by noticing that he always had a cup of coffee before going out to train and felt it helped him workout longer and perform better when he was a competitive cyclist.

Early in his research, Motl noticed:

“caffeine works on the adenosine neuromodulatory system in the brain and spinal cord, and this system is heavily involved in nociception and pain processing.” Since Motl knew caffeine blocks adenosine from working, he speculated that it could reduce pain.

Even more interesting to me is that the results were pretty much the same whether the test subject was a caffeine junkie or someone who barely ate or drank anything with caffeine in it. (Remember caffeine is in more than just coffee, it’s also in chocolate, soft drinks, and many other foods and beverages.) This particular study was only interested in pain and exercise and did coffee make a difference. For other activities or pain related problems caffeine might not work.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ll notice that the research about coffee/caffeine and its impact on people’s heath is very much dependent on what research you’re reading. It’s good for you. It’s bad for you. It’s okay in moderation. You should never touch the stuff. It might help reduce the pain during exercise.

What to believe?  I don’t know. I’ve never really paid attention to whether or not having coffee before I do my exercise routine helps me do more exercises or push on harder on the ones I do. I guess now I’ll have to keep that in the back of my mind.

Personally, as I’ve said before, I have a liking for a good cup of coffee but I reduce my intake for health reasons and so that when I have a migraine, drinking coffee will have more of an effect on alleviating the pain. Could it be that this pain blocking effect also works a bit with migraines or is it only the blood vessel dilation/contraction effects that are at work?  I don’t know but I will keep my eye out for more research on the effects of coffee/caffeine on health.

And I’ll also ponder whether the quality of that cup of coffee has any effect on the results of the research. After all if it’s a truly gross cup of coffee I might prefer the pain of the exercise. Would you?

An article reports that scientists have mapped a first draft of the Neanderthal genome.

Highlights of the article:

Researchers used DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian fossils to map out more than 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome by sequencing three billion bases of DNA.

The analysis showed it is highly unlikely that much interbreeding occurred as there was “very little, if any” Neanderthal contribution to the human gene pool, said lead researcher Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute.

But it also revealed that our Neanderthal cousins may have been closer to us than we thought: they share a gene which plays a key function in speech and language.

I notice that no matter what they find out about Neanderthals, that it is continually stressed that Homo Sapiens are somehow much much better. I’ll grant that we’re different. I’ll even grant that our genetic makeup is different enough that there may have been little interbreeding. But that only means that they differ from us, not that we’re better, or they’re less because of it.
After all, it’s believed that we shared a common ancestor about 300,000 years ago. And, lets face it, genetically we’re not really all that different.

Look at the picture. If we put a tanned modern man next to him in the same clothing and with the same spear — would they really be that much difference between them other than the forehead?

We, as a species, are reaching out to the stars hoping to meet other sentient species out there. But what would we do if we had a first contact with another species? I don’t think we’d do very well, personally. Here on earth every time we find that a species meets our criteria for sentience, we change the criteria rather than admit that the species just might be intelligent. If we met aliens and they didn’t look like us would we just figure they were the intelligent species equivalent of a bird in a mining cave and ignore it, or try to kill it? I don’t know.

Watching my species over the last few decades, I have my doubts about our ability to logically think, find solutions to problems without resorting to violence, or even to act together for the good of our planet rather than the bottom line of a corporate spreadsheet. So, my opinion of our ability to actually make first contact and to correctly assess the intent or intelligence of the alien species — is not very high at the moment.

However, I’m excited by the new information that geneticists are making in finding our how our and other species genomes are put together and how they work.

I think about things and wonder:

• what causes it, or
• how it works, or even
• why can’t I find anything about it.

Today I got to think about eyes and sleep.

Have you ever noticed that you’ll be asleep and it’s dark and some sound or something wakes. But, you come to consciousness but you don’t open your eyes and everything is dark. Then you open your eyes and it’s bright sunshine. Now here’s the part I wonder about. If you then close your eyes it’s not dark when you do — the light is filtering through your eyelids and its obviously light beyond your eyelids.

Why is that? If the same eyelids before and after you open your eyes. Is it like your eyes have to turn on and they don’t boot up until your open them then they recognize the light outside the lids? I mean what causes that difference in sensation.

It’s just something I’ve been pondering. Being me I Googled but didn’t find anything specifically about what I’m wondering about mostly I learned a lot about how the eyes perceive light and how color vision works — stuff I mostly knew from college. But the answer to why it’s dark until you open your eyes and then it isn’t anymore doesn’t seem to be one of the big questions scientist ponder. Guess it’s just me.

If you happen to know how/why this happens I’d like to hear about it.