Rejuvenation: Robbie Robertson and dopamine

Robbie Robertson with The Band, 1971. Image tSR - Nth Man

Rejuvenation has many faces. It can be a simple walk in park, reading a good book, meditation, yoga. It can result from a focused connection between the inner self and the outer world or between the inner self and the really inner self. Other mental activity fades into the background. 

A short burst can occur at any time. Last Saturday, I was driving to City Floral to get a new houseplant while listening to KBCO. A new song came on: Robbie Robertson’s He Don't Live Here No More (Radio Edit) and the rest was chemical. The “feel good” neurotransmitter dopamine was released.

According to at McGill University neuroscientist Valorie Salimpoor:

You're following these tunes and anticipating what's going to come next and whether it's going to confirm or surprise you, and all of these little cognitive nuances are what's giving you this amazing pleasure," said Valorie Salimpoor, a in Montreal. "The reinforcement or reward happens almost entirely because of dopamine."

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Numbers: Water and blue jeans

3,500
The number of liters of water a pair of jeans uses over its lifetime

180
The number of office coolers it takes to hold 3,500 liters of water

42
The number of liters of water an average pair of jeans uses for finishing

Source: Your pants are an eco-abomination—here’s how to lessen their impact
Related Entry: Jeans made with less water

Monthly Finds 1.2011

Broccoli Fights Cancer by Clearing Bad Tumor Suppressors - Scientific American, Jan. 27
The p53 gene codes for proteins that keep cancer cells in check. If p53 mutates, it codes ineffective proteins. Broccoli destroys mutant p53 genes so effective proteins can get their work done suppressing tumors.

Global Food System Needs Massive Overhaul - onearth, Jan. 26
One of several recent articles on the rising threat of food insecurity. 

Eating Wheat Gluten Causes Symptoms in Some People Who Don't Have Celiac Disease - Whole Health Source, Jan. 20
Suffering from unexplained fatigue or digestive problems? Try avoiding gluten.

Study: Strength Training Lowers Blood Pressure Equal to Medication or Aerobics - Primal Wisdom, Jan. 19

Bioactive compounds in berries can reduce high blood pressure - EurekAlert, Jan. 14
Another reason to love blueberries.

Does Dietary Saturated Fat Increase Blood Cholesterol? An Informal Review of Observational Studies - Whole Health Source, Jan. 13

Eat Greener, Look Better - Environmental News Network, Jan. 13
Healthy glowing skin: another reason to eat your fruits and vegetables.

Lice DNA Study Shows Humans First Wore Clothes 170,000 Years Ago - ScienceDaily, Jan. 7

Alpha-carotene from veggies linked to longer life - Scientific American, Dec. 30
You wont find it in your multivitamins or supplements: alpha-carotene, just one more reason to eat your vegetables.

Neanderthal diets included some grains - Hunt.Gather.Love, Dec. 27

Positive Well-Being to Higher Telomerase: Psychological Changes from Meditation Training Linked to Cellular Health - ScienceDaily, Nov. 4
Rebuilding and lengthening your telomeres through meditation protects your DNA?!

An "Insight of the Decade": Chronic inflammation kills

Macrophages are "hallmarks of inflammation" and provide important immunological defense. However, they can also promote disease.Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, describes the Four Horsemen of Aging in his book The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer. Although not a paleo book per se, the discussion of the Four Horsemen - Free radicals, Inflammation, Glycation and Stress - is mostly on target.

Bowden quotes a number of specialists in the field:

Inflammation is one of the things that keeps us alive in a hostile world. … Without inflammation we would be sitting ducks in a very hostile world, with no way to repair the damage constantly being inflicted on us. Our internal inflammatory responses let us attack invaders, surround, them, and ultimately kill them before they kill us. (Barry Sears, PhD)

However, while we need acute inflammation to repair damage done by a cut, an infection, or other insult, chronic inflammation is another matter altogether. While not necessarily the starter switch, “chronic inflammation may be the engine that drives many of the most feared illnesses of middle and old age.” (Christine Gorman)

SAD is largely to blame:

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Changes in brain architecture due to altered sleep/wake cycles

Our physiology is linked to the planet through circadian rhythms. Specifically, our sleep/wake cycle is synched to the 24-hour light/dark cycle of the Earth. What happens to the brain when the light/dark cycle is shortened from 24-hours to 20-hours?

Researchers at Rockefeller University studied this in mice. Mice exposed to a 20-hour light/dark cycle gained weight and some became obese. More bothersome and surprising was the development of alterations in brain architecture: dendrites (the projections that transmit information from other nerve cells to the body of the neuron) became shorter and the organization of nerve cells “in the prelimbic prefrontal cortex, a brain region important in executive function and emotional control” became less complex. The author's conclusion:

How our findings translate to humans living and working in chronic circadian disruption is unknown, but we believe that this model can provide a foundation to understand how environmental disruption of circadian rhythms impacts the brain, behavior, and physiology.

What is not known is whether these changes correct themselves after the mice are returned to the endogenous 24-hour cycle. Possibly this will be the subject of a subsequent study.

Related Entries
Dim lights at dusk for better sleep
Paleolithic & hunter-gatherer sleep
The end of night

Dim lights at dusk for better sleep

Sleep is fundamental to good health. Sleep impacts the quality of your day, and what happens during the day impacts the quality of your sleep. While many factors affect sleep, one we can control, yet often don’t, is the intensity of light we are exposed to before bedtime.

As we saw in The End of Night, the development of the light bulb and alternating current allowed us to effectively eliminate night at will. Since most of us prefer to get a good night's sleep, recall during the Paleolithic the slow decrease in light intensity at dusk prepared the brain for sleep, primarily by the secretion of melatonin. Today, we often keep the room lights on until bedtime and then, once turned off, expect to fall asleep effortlessly. For millions of Americans, the failure to adequately prepare the brain results in nonrestorative sleep.

According to EurekAlert, the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism will publish an article comparing normal room light versus dim light on the secretion of melatonin:

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More young adults staying home

Paleolithic hunter-gatherers organized in bands that included several families and consisted of 20-30 people, although some were larger. This closeness afforded protection and a survival advantage. When a couple married they usually lived in the band of one of the spouses. Bands included all generations from infants to the elderly. With the advent of civilization and the protection provided, living in nuclear families, or alone, became possible.

Modern life provides vastly greater opportunities for young adults than the Paleolithic era, yet the path to those opportunities is predictable. For the typical boomer it included high school, college or a job, marriage and having children. Moving out of the family home was a mark of adulthood. However, more recently, many young adults are staying home.

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Monthly Finds 12.2010

New Type of Ancient Human Found—Descendants Live Today? - National Geographic Daily News, Dec. 22
Fossil finger bone of a 5 to 7 year-old girl suggests a previously unknown ancient human group living in Asia. See also John Hawks’ post The Denisova genome FAQ

Deep Breathing: How and Why to Do It - Mark's Daily Apple, Dec. 16
The how-to on rebalancing your stress hormones through deep breathing.

The Blood Type Diet: A Primal Perspective - Primal Wisdom, Dec. 15
“The blood type diet does not have a solid leg on which to stand.”

The Paleolithic Toddler: Green & Healthy Eating For Kids - Greener Ideal, Dec. 14
Nudging your toddler to a more Paleolithic diet.

Wheeled Snow Shovel Is Potent Green Alternative To Belching Snow Blowers - Environmental News Network, Dec. 6
Human-powered snow shovel looks classy. If you have one, let me know how it works.

Qatar World Cup Stadiums Promise Eco-Friendly Soccer Utopia - Wired, Dec. 6
Plan a trip to Qatar in 2022 and enjoy the fruits your petrodollars.

'No Fish Left Behind' Approach Leaves Earth With Nowhere Left to Fish, Study Finds - Science Daily, Dec. 3
With fisheries expanding at a size roughly equivalent to an Amazon rain forest each year, where do you put new ones?

New York’s Largest Green Roof Has Major Impact - EcoGeek, Dec. 2
2.5 acres of green on a roof in midtown Manhattan. 

Ancient vs. Modern Fruits and Vegetables - Mark’s Daily Apple, Dec. 1
“What, you thought every non-explicitly hybridized fruit and vegetable can trace a pure lineage back to the Paleolithic?”

Loss of Species Large and Small Threatens Human Health, Study Finds - Science Daily, Dec 1
“The animals, plants, and microbes most likely to disappear as biodiversity is lost are often those that buffer infectious disease transmission.”

A Paleolithic diet is more satiating per calorie than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischemic heart disease - Nutrition & Metabolism, Nov. 30
Paleolithic diet beats Mediterranean diet in satisfaction, weight loss and decreased waist circumference.

Happy Holidays!

Edward Hicks - Peaceable KingdomWishing everyone a wonderful holiday season, which ever holiday you celebrate. One thing we share is respect for life on Earth as these passages, via Sustaining Life, show:

This is the token of the covenant which I make between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations . . . and the bow (rainbow) shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.

GENESIS 9:16

There is not an animal on the earth nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you.

KORAN (QUR’AN) 6:38

All this world is strung on me like jewels on a string. I am the taste in the waters, the radiance in the sun and moon, the sacred syllable Om that reverberates in space, the manliness in men. I am the pleasant fragrance in earth, the glowing brightness in fire, the life in all beings.

BHAGAVAD GITA VII:7-9

My love to the footless, my love to the two-footed, my love to the four-footed, my love for the many-footed . . . All sentient beings, all breathing things, creatures without exception, let them all see good things, may no evil befall them.

“GRADUAL SAYINGS” OF THE BUDDHA

Books: 5 Recent Selections

These 5 books occupied my leisure reading over the past few months (I did not work for 5 weeks following the cycling crash). Subjects include the coming population crash (yes, population crash), the story of a neuroscientist who lost part of her mind following a stroke and how she recovered, a primal cookbook, an extensive treatise on biodiversity and its impact on human health, and a synthesis of the origin of humankind. 

The Coming Population Crash and our Planet’s Surprising Future

Fred Pearce 
 

One may think the global human population will keep growing over the next century and bring the Earth to its knees. Well, it is still growing, and yes, we may not make it comfortably through the coming peak of about 9 billion inhabitants, but by mid-century, the Earth’s population is going down. Why? Not enough babies. “Mothers today have fewer than half as many offspring as their own mothers.” For some European countries the birth rate has declined so rapidly they are not replacing their indigenous population and will grow by immigration.

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Are mainstream nutritionists beginning to recognize the value of Paleolithic nutrition?

Steer clear. Image: KobakoYesterday the Los Angeles Times published an article by Marni Jameson that may nudge the mainstream a tiny step forward to primal nutrition. The article - A reversal on carbs: Fat was once the devil. Now more nutritionists are pointing accusingly at sugar and refined grains - begins thus:

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

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Cycling crash report

At the top of Squaw Pass. Author near center in blue jersey.Yesterday, I visited my orthopedic surgeon. My left hip fracture is healing well. On September 26, cycling down Squaw Pass in Colorado, I flew off my bike at a curve landing hard enough to fracture my left hip. Looking back, the question is why? Was I not adequately prepared? Was something missing in my training? Did I push above my limits? Was it a fluke? 

After initial healing following implantation of a dynamic pin (no need for a joint replacement!), my first response was to review my training. Besides working out at the gym a couple of times per week, I cycled in town 50 to 60 miles per week.

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