You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2009.
As I’ve mentioned here from time to time, I was raised in a housing project on welfare. Such beginnings provided their fair share of allostatic load resulting in a lot of less-than-best early brain conditioning. One area where me and my brain currently struggle mightily is in the area of food and nutrition.
Life on welfare was subsistence living. The welfare check came the first of the month, and after the rent was paid, groceries were ordered. Usually, by the second week of the month the groceries were all gone; but due to the kindness of Ralph, the greengrocer who owned the Fairview Market and provided us with a small mid-month grocery delivery on credit, it wasn’t until the final week of every month that things got more than a little dicey.
To supplement this situation, I took a job delivering the New Haven Register every afternoon after school and on Saturday and Sunday mornings. That provided me with pocket money to spend on things I would buy from Charlie. Charlie owned a big step van, a traveling, high-priced grocery store that visited the projects twice a day, selling high-markup items to folks without cars or bus money – shut-ins stuck in the projects and unable to get to the nearest First National Store miles away in Westville. With virtually no nutritional guidance and very little supervision, what I mostly bought with my paper route money was candy, cookies, soda and ice cream – things I am still addicted to, and struggle mightily with, some 50+ years later. Needless to say, this is a diet that is not optimal for heart, brain, mind or body, and I often feel like a junkie with head down and gaze averted in the grocery store when I score a box of Good and Plenty, Sugar Babies, Fudgecicles or Black Crows. One purpose eating high sugar foods serves now is the same one it served then: it works rapidly to help me regulate anxiety, lessen allostatic load. Something the prefrontal connections in my brain apparently aren’t able to easily accomplish on their own. I was apparently saved from an early life of struggling with weight issues due to a process researchers call “Banking” – being very active early as a kid. But my savings have been depleted and weight management has become difficult. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that I’m better off denying, rationalizing or simply accepting fat as my fate.
I Am Not Alone
I’m clearly not the only one struggling with diet and nutrition these days: the Center for Disease Control estimates health costs due to high weight have increased nearly 50% in a mere eight years. At the same time, revolving door manufacturers have had to widen their doors by two feet, coffin-manufacturers have begun offering the “Triple-Wide” and flying overweight people is estimated to cost the airlines more than a quarter billion extra dollars in jet fuel annually. The problem particularly affects overweight children between ages six and eleven, whose numbers have more than doubled in less than ten years.
There is more and more research appearing attempting to both explain and remedy this growing epidemic. My favorite is something I call the Big Brain Theory. Michael Power and Jay Schulkin at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists argue in The Evolution of Obesity that our 21st century brains are currently required to process more energy and information than ever before in human history. This makes them high calorie demanding organs – more than three times the size of our Australopithecus ancestors, whose growth was subsequently spurred during the last Ice Age. Since then, our body’s ability to process and not store the fuel required for the higher energy demands of our more complex, energy and information processing brains hasn’t kept pace for many of us. Not only that, but since the eighties, the cost of fattening foods has dropped by as much as 20 percent, making soft drinks the number one food consumed in the American Diet. If we only gave up soft drinks and substituted water for a year instead, supposedly we would each lose fifteen pounds.
But the problem for me is more than just soft drinks. Add in the fact that food scientists are hard at work fashioning foods known in the industry as “eatertainment,” using a lot of fat, sugar and salt to create “a lot of fun in my mouth,” resulting in “conditioned hypereating,” and my early conditioning makes me especially susceptible to things like Cinnebons or Strawberries and Crème Frappuccinos. Conditioned hypereating of food works in the brain, much like compulsive gambling or substance abuse. And what I appear to lack are circuits in my brain sufficiently connected to be able to readily and easily regulate the impulses and food cravings that mindlessly drive my behavior.
One Small Kind Step for Man
So, what are my options at this point. If I ask the Two Perilous Questions, what’s true for me is I don’t like being as heavy as I am, and I don’t like feeling helpless or the experience of being controlled by food cravings. I want to get my conditioning up and my weight down – to under 200 pounds. Unlike with drugs, alcohol or nicotine (which, thankfully, haven’t been challenges for me), I can’t simply quit food cold turkey. But I can identify one area of “food” I ingest and quit that. So, that’s what I’m doing. I’m electing to go cold turkey with soft drinks. I’m currently on Day Two. I’ll report here periodically on how it’s going. If you can believe that. 
The older I get, the more an inveterate, unrepentant liar I find myself becoming. The mechanism is essentially a simple one: the lies I tell tend to offer ready relief for whatever tension I’m feeling at the moment. Take just the other day – I was at the DMV and the examiner asked me how much I weighed. I lied. Last week, a student I like asked me what I thought of a paper I know he put a lot of time and energy into. I lied. Thursday, Valerie, the postal clerk here in Langley, asked me if the package I was sending contained anything other than books. Once again, I lied.
Lies often work much faster and easier than telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but. Truth is often complex, subjective and situational. And the truth, researchers are finding, turns out to be very plastic, indeed. People who know me and love me in all my pseudology, make it easy for me to often tell the truth spontaneously. As well as to “nuance” it. They, and I, have great admiration for creatively, well-crafted spin. When Big Money is involved – the kind that makes New Jersey rabbis and mayors take graft, and Dominican baseball prospects lie about their age to the New York Yankees (I’m a San Francisco Giant’s fan) – liars seem to be coming out of the woodwork.
Well Trained for the Role
Lying is something I was trained to do well as a kid, by parents, teachers and adults who didn’t really want to hear the truth, and who regularly punished anyone who unvarnished it. This has turned out to be a pretty big problem in world culture, as the current international economic crisis would seem to bear out. (Not surprisingly, Joe Cassano, the man who “crashed the world” was reportedly a great punisher of truth-tellers).
Getting yelled at or punished for truth-telling it turns out can’t compete with the relief from stress and tension that lying provides in the moment. I think it would have been better to have been offered an environment where it was safe to tell hard truths, and then also be taught how to manage the adrenaline and cortisol that is often triggered by people like Tom Cruise, in A Few Good Men, who can’t really handle them. This would require parents, teachers and such being skilled at managing their own emotional reactivity, of course.
The Hard Work of Lying
The recent technological ability to view blood flow in people’s brains as they lie, is causing great concern in the neurosciences. The ethics of being able to accurately read people’s minds and things like that. Such concerns might be needlessly misplaced – lying should be considered a given, since many of us lie … a lot. By omission and commission. Willfully and otherwise. Consciously and unconsciously, even though we might not readily tell the truth about it. Lying, like forgetting, might be an important and necessary neurophysiological regulatory mechanism. Recent research by Joshua Greene has come up with the “Will” and “Grace” theory of why people lie or don’t when it’s in their best interest to do so. Lying is hard work, and us natural born liars – or should I say early-conditioned liars – apparently really have to labor hard at telling the truth:
“When honest people leave money on the table, you don’t see anything special or extra going on in their brains at all,” says Greene. “Whereas, when dishonest people leave money on the table, that’s when you see the most robust control network activation.”
To Lie or Forget, That is the Question
But can simply not remembering things accurately be considered lying, or are intent and self-concern necessary additional criteria? In a study often cited in the Recovered Memory literature, after incidents of sexual abuse were publicly reported at an inner-city hospital, thirty-eight percent (!) of the women Linda Williams interviewed 17 years later, reported no recollection of the incident. What might be the brain mechanisms for this occurrence? Repression? Sublimation? Traumatic Dissociation? Whatever it is, to me it invites further study. Knowing what’s going on neurologically may help us more skillfully address it.
One of the most well-known longitudinal studies in modern psychology is George Vaillant’s Harvard happiness study. Formally known as the Grant Study, for nearly 72 years researchers have regularly checked in on 268 men through career, marriage, divorce, parenthood, grandparenthood and old age. Half of those alive are currently in their 80’s. What’s most interesting is how wrong many of them turned out to be in recalling significant events from their past, as distortion, denial and sublimation twisted memories into a pretzel of illusory personal history.
Mr. Mad Cow, Esq.
Take for example, Case No. 218 in the Grant Study, who in one interview expresses healthy regrets for roads not taken, yet subsequently neither has nor recalls any regrets at all. Or the person who at 30 yearned to become a doctor, but in later years completely denied any such desire. “As is well known,” Vaillant reminds us, “with the passage of years, old wars become more adventurous and less dangerous.” Forgetting? Or lying? It all looks like Mad Cow to me.
So, let’s see now. In this piece, as I count them up, I’ve managed to tell seven lies myself! Not too shabby.
Oh, and by the way, lastly, here’s some interesting research: if I share my birthday with you, you’re more likely to buy my book. Guess what! My birthday is tomorrow, July 27th! 
Last week, the story of Lt. Collette McLennan, a Seattle firefighter, played on our local news. She took herself to the hospital eleven days after finally realizing her brain might be damaged. She was operated on for a brain aneurysm and back at work full-time four short months later. Here’s the part of the story that caught my attention:
She credits her family of firefighters for playing a big part in her recovery. “That’s what we do, we’re a family,” said her Battalion Chief, Tom Richardson. “We made sure a firefighter was with her at the hospital, and after she went home, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
A Resounding “Yes!”
In my mind, this family of firefighters was clearly answering The Big Brain Question “Yes!” in a very big way. I can’t help but wonder what effect they may have had on her neurobiology as it functioned in her recovery. She seems to think it was considerable. I do as well. What would be really interesting is to find out just how answering that question “Yes” might work to effect such rapid healing. Having spent many years with grieving kids and adults, I have some ideas.
What I consider to be the “First Law” of Social Neuroscience is: “It takes a more organized brain to help organize a less organized brain.” It applies to young kids most obviously when they learn things from older kids that parents wish they didn’t. But I think this First Law might also apply to immune systems and body healing mechanisms as well. The bedside manner of a trusted authority figure might have more healing power than we imagine. It might also be at play in placebo efficacy, wirelessly reorganizing a less-than-optimally functioning healing mechanism. I once had a nearly severed toe healed virtually overnight after receiving a hands-on blessing from the controversial Indian guru Sri Chinmoy. And I’ve had many unmistakable, palpable experiences of receiving healing Reiki transmissions at a distance from skillful practitioners of that art. So, while there might not be a lot of rigorous, scientifically-controlled experiments to confirm such experiences, in my mind there are certainly more than enough anecdotal reports to continue creative inquiry and experimentation in this area.
Mastering the Healing Mystery
Leroy Hood wants to transform health care in America into a system that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory. Along the way, he will very likely be addressing some of what is currently of great mystery in healing. What, for example, might be the mechanisms at work for all these cases of cancer spontaneously remitting as reported by Brendan O’Regan (before he himself died of cancer!) in the research he performed for the Institute of Noetic Sciences? Or what of Norman Cousins, an adjunct professor at UCLA who researched the biochemistry of human emotions, and who purportedly laughed himself healed from the pain and fatigue of ankylosing spondylitis (a chronic inflammatory arthritis) using a daily dose of Marx brothers comedies. Laughter might not only be good for the soul, but good for the connections in the brain as well.
Finally, what energies or neurobiological processes might have also been at work in the life of Evy McDonald, a registered nurse who Dr. Bernie Siegel writes about in Peace, Love and Healing. Evy cured herself of Lou Gerhig’s Disease by devising her own unique (some might say “crazy” or “silly”) personal treatment plan.
Evy lists seven changes that she made in her life which she considers primarily responsible for her full recovery – changes which presumably significantly altered her brain:
I went from get to give – demanding from life to giving to life. (I’ve previously presented Stephen Post’s research on the great neurological benefits of altruism).
I went from resentment to forgiveness. (I’ve also mentioned the healing power of forgiveness in conjunction with Fred Luskin’s Stanford Forgiveness Project, surely an important aspect of peace, love and healing).
I went from self-hatred to self-acceptance and unconditional love. (Interestingly, she “faked it till she made it.” In other words, she practiced using repetition to gain an ability she didn’t possess, until at last she came to authentically possess it).
I went from wanting to escape from life to accepting life exactly as it is. (This forced her to ask and answer The Two Perilous questions for herself with ruthless compassion).
I went from expecting and preparing for death to celebrating life and living every moment. (There’s apparently great neurological benefit in learning to fully Be Here Now).
I went from denying painful emotions to sharing them and letting them go. (An important, often neglected exocrine function? One not much different from sweating, crying or urinating?).
I went from avoiding intimacy to opening myself to love.
The Soft Subtle Energies of Love
This last shift Evy identifies as actually a product of the other six – and perhaps the most important one. She cites a well-known, 30 year old experiment at Ohio State University by Nerem, Levesque and Cornhill where rabbits were given a “heart attack diet” to demonstrate atherosclerotic changes. One group of rabbits had 60 percent less atherosclerotic changes than the other groups. The only variable discovered was that the researcher for this group regularly took the rabbits from their cages and petted, stroked and talked to them, an experiment subjected to many confirmation studies. “Intimacy at every level – emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical – is the flowering of unconditional love.” Not to mention, a flowering that apparently restores neurological function and optimizes immune systems.
To me what this and other research shows is that generally positive emotions – much different than simply putting on a Pollyanna face, which is a response more like denial – tends to help build resilience. Resilience might turn out to be something like simply having more brain neurons, no longer overly devastated by past traumatic physical and emotional injury, making more and more immune-specific connections in the brain.
The result: a repaired brain that significantly improves health and human functioning.
Amanda’s mother and I were very fortunate to be able to send her to an alternative neighborhood school – the Peninsula School, founded by Josephine Duvenek in 1925 on the San Francisco peninsula. I was recently reminded that it’s a true Tinkering School by the presentation here at this year’s TED conference by Gever Tulley who teaches at a similar school. Peninsula was featured years ago as one of nine schools in Emmy-winning documentary film-maker, Dorothy Fadiman’s excellent account of early education in Why Do These Kids Love School?
The Benefits of Loving School
When kids go to a school they love, any number of important benefits for brain development takes place. Because there is little pressure to conform to national norms, it’s kids’ unique neurological wiring that tends to be prized and appreciated and validated. Being prized and appreciated and validated is one of many powerful ways of answering The Big Brain Question “Yes” for kids. And when that question is consistently answered “Yes,” some powerful benefits accrue for neural growth and connectivity. Here’s but ONE possible fun example: Superkids! (Seriously, click the link. You won’t be sorry!).
A Tinkering School for Grownup Kids
I am further fortunate to teach at a graduate school (The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology) where students enroll primarily because we offer classes in subjects they really want to learn. Most are not there just to get a degree. They tend to be highly engaged and motivated students unhindered by internal conflict, a state that allows them to go creatively and passionately into their studies, something we whole-heartedly embrace and encourage, not to mention, prize, appreciate and validate. (My own dissertation research – in part, how spiritual communities provide shelter for their members – was something I was deeply interested in at the time. I was caught completely unaware when the president of ProQuest – where all American doctoral dissertations go to rest – called me personally one day to tell me mine was one of the most interesting studies he had ever read! I attribute much of that result to the support and encouragement I received from the school community. It was lack of such personal and validating support that contributed to me transferring to ITP from UCLA way back when).
Learning as Art
Josh Waitzkin, a twenty-one time national martial arts champion and eight time national chess champion, was the subject of his father’s book and the subsequent movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer. In his own book, The Art of Learning, he speaks in detail about how much learning often requires risk-taking, the giving up of comfort and safety that ultimately results in the drive and ambition that allows “the freedom to create like a child under world championship pressure!” To get there, learners often have to return to Tinkering School, go through a rough patch where we are “soft, in flux, vulnerable, broken-down or in a period of growth.” This description would also seem to apply to Michael Jackson, whose life’s work was revisited in his memorial celebration this past week. It would also apply to Paul Simon, who was recently honored at the Library of Congress with the nation’s first George Gershwin prize.
Waitzkin further points out that “much of what separates the great from the good is deep presence, relaxation of the conscious mind, which allows the unconscious to flow unhindered. This is a nuanced and largely misunderstood state of mind that when refined involves a subtle reintegration of the conscious mind into a free-flowing unconscious process.” In other words, high level brain integration that results from strong intention and committed practice.
To Last For the Long Run, Make It Fun
When I think of the 30 years that Eric Kandel spent studying just two neurons in Aplysia, the California sea snail, I marvel and wonder at what I imagine was his own commitment and persistence. The fact that what he was doing was actually fun for him – something he really enjoyed getting out of bed and doing every day – I’m guessing played a big role as well. A fan of Freud, he originally set out to find the neural correlates of the ego, and Aplysia provided him with his own living Tinkering School. Stimulating the two neurons visible to the naked eye in Aplysia, allowed Kandel to devise countless creative experiments fueled by curiosity and wonder. The result: he discovered precisely how learning and memory operate in the human brain and won the Nobel Prize for that work.
That’s a pretty fine result from just playing around for 30 years. Would that we could relax and let all of our kids have so much fun for so much of their lives.
(To see a poem about Aplysia, hand-written by Kandel’s daughter Minouche, click here and scroll to the bottom of the screen).
