EnigmaticMemory

Sumus id quod eligimus esse

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 13:30:00 +1000

Sumus id quod eligimus esse

ewbanh: chubrubqueen: s0mmerspr0ssen: For his recently...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:11:41 +1000

chubrubqueen:

s0mmerspr0ssen:

For his recently published picture book Freckles (Splice Pictures Publishing), the Swiss photographer Reto Caduff has taken pictures of freckled women all over Europe. His pictures prove: freckles are beautiful. Don’t hide yourself in the shade! I think what I love about this the most is the vast diversity of people who are blessed with freckles. (x)

I have always wanted freckles, to the point that my junior high self used to fake them with eyeliner

I accidentally drew smut.

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:09:42 +1000

I accidentally drew smut.

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Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:07:51 +1000

the-absolute-funniest-posts: sweet-bitsy: I’M SOBBING

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:58:07 +1000

the-absolute-funniest-posts:

sweet-bitsy:

I’M SOBBING

the-absolute-funniest-posts: lolsofunny: (lol here!)

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 13:13:17 +1000

the-absolute-funniest-posts:

lolsofunny:

(lol here!)

the-absolute-funniest-posts: zferolie: An accurate depiction of...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:57:49 +1000

the-absolute-funniest-posts:

zferolie:

An accurate depiction of what happened at E3

peanutbutta: awklicious: Best post on tumblr i had to...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:55:20 +1000

peanutbutta:

awklicious:

Best post on tumblr

i had to reblog this

I’m crying

neuromorphogenesis: Mindfulness: Potent Medicine for Easing...

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:54:03 +1000

neuromorphogenesis:

Mindfulness: Potent Medicine for Easing Physical Suffering

We’d like to be forever free from physical discomfort, but we’re in bodies and they get injured, sick, and old. The good news is that the Buddha prescribed some medicine—mindfulness—to help ease that physical discomfort. Mindfulness is not a miracle pill, but it is a miracle practice, meaning that, over time, we can learn to respond skillfully to the inevitable physical suffering that comes with being in bodies.
Bodily discomfort has three components:

The unpleasant physical sensation itself (pain, aching muscles, fatigue).

Our emotional reaction to that discomfort (anger, frustration, fear).

The thoughts that are triggered by the discomfort (the stress-filled stories we spin that have little basis in reality, such as, “This pain will never go away,” “I’ll never be happy again,” “I’ve ruined my partner’s life”).

Note that two of the three components that make up our experience of bodily discomfort are mental in origin! These two mental components are often referred to as “mental suffering.” They can make our physical suffering worse because mental reactions are felt in the body.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is the practice of paying careful attention to what is happening in the present moment, whether it be a sight, a sound, a taste, a smell, a sensation in the body, or mental cognition (this latter includes emotions and thoughts). Mindfulness is called a practice because it takes practice: our minds tend to dwell in the past and the future.

You don’t need to be meditating to practice mindfulness. Right now, stop and take three or four conscious breaths, feeling the physical sensation of the breath as it comes in and goes out of your body. There. You’ve just practiced mindfulness!

Notice that while you were engaging in this conscious breathing, your mind wasn’t dwelling in the past or the future. You may have been aware of a sound, a smell, a bodily sensation other than the breath, an emotion, a thought. Meticulous attention to whatever is happening in the present moment is the essence of mindfulness. The sensation of the breath is often used as an anchor because breathing is always present in the moment.

How can mindfulness help ease physical suffering?

With practice, mindfulness calms and steadies the mind. This is beneficial because when we’re experiencing physical discomfort, our minds often churn with stressful emotions and thoughts, but they’re a muddy blur—we can’t sort them out. With mindfulness, the “mud” settles so we can see more clearly which allows us to identify what emotions and thoughts are present in our minds at the moment. “Ah, this is anger.” “This is fear.” “This is a worry-filled thought about the future.” With this clearer view, we can make skillful choices about how to respond to these emotions and thoughts—choices that will lessen our overall suffering.

Stressful emotions. Our habitual reaction to physical discomfort is some form of resistance and aversion, such as frustration or anger. By practicing mindfulness, we can counter that habitual response with one that’s more skillful.

Once we begin to treat ourselves with kindness, we can calmly and gently examine the actual physical sensation. It’s not a solid block of discomfort. We may feel waves of sensations, some of which may even be pleasant. We may notice some heat, some pulsating, some tingling. Using mindfulness to examine physical sensations reveals their ever-changing nature. This helps break up the sense that our whole being is only the discomfort.

Having noticed that the physical sensation keeps changing, we can reflect that our frustration is impermanent too. It arose but it will pass. This recognition alone weakens its grip on us.

Stressful thought patterns. At a meditation retreat in the 1990s, the Buddhist nun, Ayya Khema, told us, “Most thoughts are just rubbish, but we believe them anyway.” Becoming mindfully aware of the stories we spin about our physical discomfort quiets and steadies the mind so that the “mud” settles and we can see the thoughts more clearly. Then we have a choice. We can continue to blindly believe them or we can calmly assess their validity. Are you absolutely sure you’ll never be happy again or that you’ve ruined your partner’s life?

Letting go of stress-filled stories that have little or no basis in fact is a tremendous relief. A smile might even appear on your face as you acknowledge the convoluted stories the mind can spin. As Buddhist teacher, Jack Kornfield, likes to say, “The mind has no shame.”

Mindfulness calms and steadies the mind so we can respond more skillfully to stressful emotions and thoughts. This, in turn, eases our physical suffering because we’re not adding mental suffering to it. As the wonderfully blunt Zen teacher, Joko Beck, said: “What makes life so frightening is that we let ourselves be carried away in the garbage of our whirling minds. We don’t have to do that.”

Mindfulness is the best medicine for not doing that.

For example, if we’re in pain, aversion in the form of frustration may arise. We have two choices. We can let that habitual response brew and get stronger; this not only increases our mental suffering, but it often increases our physical pain because the muscles surrounding the pain tighten in response to our frustration. Or, we can respond to our frustration by mindfully acknowledging it and beginning to incline our minds toward kindness and compassion for ourselves. (After all, who doesn’t get frustrated at times?)

"When one has not had a good father, one must create one."

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 12:44:36 +1000

“When one has not had a good father, one must create one.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

Some nursing students sure do know what to do with the materials...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 14:53:20 +1000

Some nursing students sure do know what to do with the materials in the Fundamentals lab.

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Sat, 15 Jun 2013 04:38:21 +1000

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Sat, 15 Jun 2013 04:15:52 +1000

mochidesu:

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 04:14:08 +1000

mochidesu:

neurosciencestuff: Testing method promising for spinal cord...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:32:52 +1000

neurosciencestuff:

Testing method promising for spinal cord injuries, multiple sclerosis

A medical test previously developed to measure a toxin found in tobacco smokers has been adapted to measure the same toxin in people suffering from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, offering a potential tool to reduce symptoms.

The toxin, called acrolein, is produced in the body after nerve cells are injured, triggering a cascade of biochemical events thought to worsen the injury’s severity. Acrolein (pronounced a-KRO-le-an) also may play an important role in multiple sclerosis and other conditions.

Because drugs already exist to reduce the concentration of acrolein in the body, being able to detect and measure it non-invasively represents a potential treatment advance, said Riyi Shi (pronounced Ree Shee), a professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering in Purdue University’s Department of Basic Medical Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Paralysis Research and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering.

“If the acrolein level is high it needs to be reduced, and we already have effective acrolein removers to do so,” Shi said. “Reducing or removing acrolein may lessen the severity of symptoms in people who have nerve damage, but there has not been a practical way to monitor acrolein levels in nervous system trauma and diseases.”

The toxin is present in tobacco smoke and air pollutants. A method had been developed previously to detect and measure acrolein in the urine of smokers, but it has not been used in people suffering from conditions in which the body produces acrolein internally.

“Based on this method, it was revealed that acrolein is significantly elevated in smokers and decreases following the cessation of cigarette smoke,” Shi said. “However, such a method has not been widely used for conditions in which acrolein is elevated due to central nervous system damage or disease.”

The researchers tested the method in laboratory animals.

“We wanted to see if higher levels of acrolein corresponds to greater severity of spinal cord injury, and the answer is yes,” said Shi, who is working with Bruce Cooper, director of the Metabolite Profiling Facility in the Bindley Bioscience Center of Purdue’s Discovery Park. “This means reducing acrolein may help to control symptoms.”

New findings are detailed in a research paper that recently appeared online in the Journal of Neurotrauma. The paper, which also will appear in an upcoming print edition of the journal, was authored by doctoral students Lingxing Zheng, Jonghyuck Park, Michael Walls and Melissa Tully; Amber Jannasch, laboratory manager of the Metabolite Profiling Facility; and Cooper and Shi.

The method does not detect acrolein directly but determines the presence of a byproduct, or metabolite, of acrolein in the urine. The metabolite is a chemical compound called N-acetyl-S-3-Hydroxypropylcysteine, or 3-HPMA.

“Acrolein is very volatile, so it doesn’t remain stable long enough to monitor, but one molecule of acrolein will make one molecule of 3-HPMA, which is very stable in urine,” Shi said.

Laboratory rats were injected with different doses of acrolein, and findings showed that the detection technique is able to accurately measure these differences in acrolein concentration in the urine. The technique might one day be performed routinely in a doctor’s office.

“The non-invasive nature of measuring 3-HPMA concentrations in urine allows for long-term monitoring of acrolein in the same animal and ultimately in human clinical studies,” Shi said.

Two drugs have been shown to be effective in reducing acrolein levels in the body: hydralazine and phenelzine, which have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for hypertension and depression, respectively.

The testing method could be used in conjunction with other measures to test patients for the progress of spinal cord disease.

“Nervous system trauma and diseases are like many other illnesses: A disease-associated marker can be critical for making a diagnosis, a therapeutic selection and a treatment evaluation,” Shi said. “Therefore, determination of acrolein levels gives you more assurance that you have an intense biochemical imbalance and biochemical damage and that you should use an acrolein scavenger as a treatment. We used different levels of hydralazine to see if it causes a dose-dependent reduction of 3-HPMA and found that, in fact, it did. This shows that this method is capable of monitoring the decrease of acrolein through treatment with acrolein-removing medications.”

Acrolein damages mitochondria, which provide energy for cells, and in multiple sclerosis compromises the myelin sheath surrounding a nerve cell’s axon, preventing nerves from properly conducting electrical impulses. The toxin has a possible role in other diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease, cancer and atherosclerosis.

“Due to widespread involvement of acrolein in the body, the benefits of this study have the potential to significantly enhance human health,” Shi said. “For example, there is evidence that heightened levels of acrolein could diminish an individual’s ability to recover fully from stroke and cancer.”

In laboratory animals, hydralazine has been shown to delay onset of multiple sclerosis for several days, which could mean several years in humans. Tests with animals also suggests the drug could help to reduce the most severe symptoms once the disease has progressed.

Acrolein has been found to be elevated by about 60 percent in the spinal cord tissues of mice with a disease similar to multiple sclerosis. The toxin causes harm by reacting with the proteins and lipids that make up cells, including neurons.

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Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:25:05 +1000

kellyinacan: This is why Evanna is one of my favorite...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:19:09 +1000

kellyinacan:

This is why Evanna is one of my favorite Tweeters.

fuckyeahchristophwaltz: Christoph Waltz, Prada Menswear...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:06:58 +1000

fuckyeahchristophwaltz:

Christoph Waltz, Prada Menswear Fall/Winter 2013-2014 [x]

I will never not reblog Christoph for Prada related content.

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Sat, 15 Jun 2013 03:06:12 +1000

shirleytemplar: #mind the fourth wall

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 02:26:35 +1000

shirleytemplar:

#mind the fourth wall