Sugar in your blood = glucose
Your body prefers glucose over any other sugar out there.
-ose = sugar suffix
GlucOSE
FructOSE – fruit sugar
SucrOSE – table sugar
SucralOSE – Splenda
Your body can turn any of these other sugars in to glucose. It can actually turn other carbohydrates, and even non-sugar molecules into glucose if it really needs to. This all happens in your liver…
If you were in a long-term starvation or malnutrition situation, your body would circulate non-glucose energy sources to try to get energy, since the process of making glucose can be relatively slow. This is because your body would prefer to live than die.
The brain is a picky eater, and refuses to utilize non-glucose sources of energy. This is because your brain works A LOT! And it doesn’t have time to use inefficient sources of energy. Therefore, it will hog the glucose from the rest of your body.
Your skeletal muscles use glucose to do work. This is why people with diabetes have to be extra cautious when they exercise.
Extra glucose gets saved for those times when you’re not eating. It gets put in a really long chain called glycogen. But getting the glucose back from the glycogen can be relatively slow.
Recovering from an episode of low blood sugar takes time and requires rest (so you’re not burning through the fuel as fast as you replenish it). But it can also be emotionally stressful because you may be required to eat “unhealthy” amounts of sugary or carb-heavy foods to get back to normal.
Glucose has a very complex metabolism cycle – the Krebs cycle.
One intermediate is glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) – there is a genetic mutation where a protein for this step doesn’t do it’s job very well. If this step gets delayed or clogged up, then there is a detour metabolism step that leads to triglyceride production, when then leads to fat storage. *womp womp* (note: triglycerides are useful in the right amounts for cell repair) This is also why eating large amounts of sugary plus fatty foods can lead to quick weight gain.
The end result of this cycle is Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP). It is super energetic when a phosphate piece is removed. It’s like the body’s dynamite. This is how a sugar high works – all the sugar leads to all the dynamite exploding at once, but then it takes a while for it to get replenished, and that’s why you crash after a sugar-high.
To immediately recover from low blood sugar, you need simple sugar (orange juice, regular soda, sugar-full hard candy, glucose tabs or paste or gel). To continue to recover, you need carbs plus something that will help it not absorb so fast (i.e. protein, healthy fats).
If you ever look at the underside of your tongue, you can see the blood vessels really clearly because they’re really close to the surface. So if someone is unconscious due to low blood sugar, you can use a glucose tablet or gel under their tongue and it will absorb into the blood stream. This is also how you can absorb sugar quickly from sugar-full gum.
Low blood sugar can lead to emotional fluctuations (aka crabby and grouchy) and short-term memory loss (and not just because you passed out).
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Brain lesion = a group of brain cells that look different from surrounding cells on a brain scan
Dark lesions – an area where the brain cells are missing or an area where signal is not firing (damaged cells)
Light lesions – an area where the signals are firing at the wrong times (like a shorted out wire). Seizure – when the brain fires the electricity at the wrong time.
A lesion in the Parietal lobe could affect how the body translates sensations (i.e. pain). These lesions are usually caused by injury or stroke.
If there is a lesion in the optical lobe of the brain (the area that “sees” what your eyes are looking at), then the signals from the eyes may not come through, and therefore the parietal cannot help map what you were looking at once it’s not there anymore.
Sensory seizures – feeling things on you or touching you that aren’t really there. (unsure if this is related to the auras that come before migraines). No medication necessary.
Extinction phenomenon: thinking that a sensation stopped before it really did. You body can’t translate two messages of the same type at the same time. Like when you try to locate the same place on each side of your body (i.e. making pigtails even).
Dyslexia: can be related to written language, spoken language, or any other message being translated as language
Dysphasia or Aphasia: mixed up or missing words
Dyscalculia: it’s hard to math. Difficulty estimating distances, spacial mapping, and time passage. Dana White of A Slob Comes Clean talks about TPAD (Time Passage Awareness Disorder)
Apraxia: unable plan what you want your body to do in order to make your body do it. The deeper the path the more “natural” the action is. Muscle memory is just an extremely well-developed motor path, so that you can even not do that action for a while, and when you do it again, you don’t have to “relearn” it. If this is caused by a stroke, therapy can help try and re-route the information. Apraxia can affect gross motor movements (large movements with your body) – aka global apraxia, or it can affect speech motor planning.
Gerstmann Syndrome: no motor path to write, or math, or to feel and use your fingers as separate digits. Also involves a left-right mix up. In adults, it’s the results of a stroke. In kids, they have not a clue. Therapy can help kids get past the motor issues, but not the mathing issues.
Constructional apraxia: know how blocks should fit together, but the brain can’t make their body build it.
Dressing apraxia: know how clothes should be worn and where it goes, but the brain can’t make the body dress itself. This shows up in dementia and Alzheimer’s a lot.
Amorphosynthesis – your brain is not aware of some part of your body. Usually a symptom after as stroke.
Another symptom of a stroke is when a person is unaware of one-half of their visual field. So they will only write on one half of the paper (the half they can see) or read only one half of the page of a book.
Anosognosia – a person is not aware that they have a disorder, disease, or disability. This is not just denial. The area of their brain that would recognize “I’m sick” or “I’m hurt” doesn’t work.
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Talk to the people at the practice at which you are wanting to start receiving care. If the doctor is not available for a direct interview, the office manager may be able to answer questions regarding the practitioners and their style of communicating with patients and their approach to care.
You can contact Emily at WholeLifeWellness.co (CO not COM) – it is under construction.
You can find out information about the Whole Foods Nutrition Challenge on her Facebook page: facebook.com/wholelifewellness3.
Contact her at: https://www.facebook.com/wholelifewellness3
As promised – The 7-Day Whole Food Challenge – sign up for FREE!!!
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While science understands many of the aspects of diabetes, and it still continues to learn more, society as a whole doesn’t have a clue. If you have diabetes, I’m sure you’ve had some of the following statements said to you. If you don’t, read this as a list of things to never say to someone with diabetes.
(Answers provided by Ronei, but they are not representative of her knowledge and support of people with diabetes, this is for comic value only.)
“Oh, you have dyebabeetees? So your lungs don’t work, right? Well, at least you don’t have cancer. My sister has it and got it because she ate too much sushi. Last year, she had her legs cuff off! I hear you can cure it by drinking water? I feel joy for you because those fuzzy needles would make me cook. And I could never have someone skate one of those pump things in my eyeball. My cousin had juvenile diabetes but outgrew it when she turned 102. I was reading in National Enquirer that Meryl Streep had it but reversed it by eating only enchiladas. And Olivia Davis has it and she’s lived a long time with no problems. I also read where lots of people who have it bad travel to England because they have a cure for it there. Don’t be sad, Dr. Paschall said there will be a cure here in America in 9 years. Then you can start eating chocolate chip cookies again!”
It sits in the top of your head
When someone says “I can see it in my head” – it’s the area that can recall visual memories. Remembering the last place you saw your keys or visualizing driving directions based on the landmarks you pass (which is the only way we give directions in the South). So, when someone closes their eyes to try and remember something, they’re trying to deactivate their eyes and activate the parietal lobe.
Being able to identify a 3D object with your hands by touch only, and without your eyes. This is also how Braille works, the dot patterns created to represent letters.
Good info here and here about Braille activates the brain.
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The main chemical, or neurotransmitter, that functions in the frontal lobe is dopamine.
They’ve discovered a genetic component that affects the shape of the dopamine receptors.
These cells in your brain don’t actually touch each other. The terminals spit out dopamine, and it floats in the space and hopefully comes in contact with the next cell’s dendrites. The dendrites have dopamine-shaped keyholes, and the dopamine should fit in the keyholes perfectly. But they have discovered that a genetic component affects the keyhole shapes, and this make be a root cause for schizophrenia and attention deficits.
If you think about it, the classic symptoms of schizophrenia – paranoia, anxiety, hallucinations, split personalities – most things affected in your prefrontal cortex. So if the dopamine receptors are “broken” in this area of your frontal lobe, you can see how there could be a dysfunction. And this is produced at the genetic level. Science is still learning about this…
Strokes or brain injury in this area of your brain can affect personality. These parts of your brain don’t grow back! Some issues related to the speech motor area of the brain (Broca’s area). Stuttering (clinically diagnosed) is a misfire in the motor planning part of speech. Aphasia (loss of words) – part of you brain knows the word but you can’t seem to get it out of your mouth. Strokes in this area can cause some strange effects in the loss of words.
There is also a type of epilepsy (seizures). Seizures are a misfire or a short in the electrical signals of the brain. Seizures in the frontal lobe can possibly affect memory (epilepsy-related amnesia). Must be diagnosed by a neurologist.
Back in the day, there was a guy named Pheneas Gage who worked on the railroad. An accident involving dynamite and a railroad spike, led to a major head injury and an altered personality!
We rub our forehead when we’re trying to remember something because that’s where our short-term memory is.
Cynthia doesn’t have that many Facebook friends!
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**Many apologies for the screaming baby***
Frontal Lobe – in the front of the brain (behind your forehead)
This is the area that contains your personality. A stroke or brain injury or damage can alter someone’s personality drastically.
We take personality tests, but they are too basic to take such a complex part of you and put it in a quadrant or on a spectrum.
This area of the brain is also well-connected to the limbic system (emotional center), and if those connections are broken through stroke or injury, then that causes personality changes too.
* This area of the brain doesn’t reach full development until almost 30 years old —> Insert rant here!!
During the Heroic Era of medicine (not a well-named era) – they invented the Lobotomy – mainly trying to find a treatment for mental illnesses. Society was ok with doctors experimenting on criminals in prison and patients who were put in asylums by their families. It did cause changes in the people, thus they claimed the “cured” them.
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Disease like Alzheimer’s and dementia are grey matter issues – the creation and translation of messages are interrupted or dysfunctional. White matter is like the power cords that are responsible for sending the signals.
Migraines are not a white matter issue, they are a brain chemistry issue. Learn more on the Headache episode
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Grey matter – neuron cell bodies that create and translate messages
White matter – myelin-covered axons that transmits the messages across the brain
Your brain cells do not reproduce and replenish the way other cells (like your skin) do. We do know that the brain can create new cells, but it is a very slow process that requires very specific conditions to be present. But the new growth of brain cells is not fast enough to slow or reverse a disease.
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All brains are wrinkly. Wrinkles in your brain are a good thing. Wrinkles are biology’s way of maximizing surface area while conserving space.
The plateaus of the brain are called gyri (or a gyrus).
The smaller, sunken in wrinkles are called sulci (or a sulcus). Sunken in sulci – that’s how I remember it.
The larger canyons of the brain are called fissures. These are the groves that separate the hemispheres and the lobes of the brain.
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