Category: Miscellaneous

Why Do We Cry?

David Dempsey

Crying is the shedding of tears (or welling of tears in the eyes) in response to an emotional state, pain or a physical irritation of the eye. Emotions that can lead to crying include anger, happiness, or sadness. The act of crying has been defined as “a complex secretomotor phenomenon characterized by the shedding of tears from the lacrimal apparatus, without any irritation of the ocular structures”, instead, giving a relief which protects from conjunctivitis. A related medical term is lacrimation, which also refers to non-emotional shedding of tears. Various forms of crying are known as sobbing, weeping, wailing, whimpering, bawling, and blubbering.

So essentially, we cry in extreme emotional situations, whether that be anger, happiness or sadness. And extreme pain. Oh, and onions. 

Take a moment and stare and something. Hold your eyes open long enough so that tears come out. So there is a limit to how long you can hold your eyes open without blinking, right? And typically, at that point, your eyes will water. 

So if we take our view of time dilation as it relates to stress, the human perception of time contracts as the stress increases. So in your most emotional moments, your brain is so active, that seconds seem like minutes. Time literally freezes. And if time froze when your eyes were open, you know what would happen? Your eyes would dry out. So you produce tears. Crying is a symptom of high brain activity which drastically slows the individual’s perception of time.

Sources

  1. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-do-we-cry-the-science-of-tears-9741287.html
  2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-humans-the-only-prima/
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crying
  4. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/science/onions-crying-chemicals.html

Sneezing Solved

David Dempsey

There’s not a whole lot to debate here. Sneezing typically expels foreign objects from the nasal passages. Simple enough, but, as always, there are some cases that just don’t seem to fit:

  • The sun makes some people sneeze.
  • Some people sneeze after orgasm.
  • Most people sneeze when they’re sick.
  • Allergies make people sneeze.

So for allergies and colds, a sneeze is basically a reflex to the mucus or congestion that is there in the first place. So it makes sense that you would sneeze when your nose is irritated. But why is the mucus there in the first place? Well, the mucus and congestion restricts air flow, which would cause the pressure of the system [your brain] to rise. So is a cold just low brain pressure?

People do get sick when they go to high altitudes. Why does that matter? Because that’s the same as taking your brain to a lower pressure environment.

We also get sick most frequently when it’s cold outside. So if it gets cold suddenly, the brain pressure may be low. Think about your tires in cold weather. The only difference is that your tires can change volume, your brain can’t.

Why in the world would you sneeze after an orgasm? 

I think it’s safe to say that an orgasm is relaxed as you’ll be in any given day, aside from sleeping. We’ve correlated brain activity to stress, so the lack of brain activity would coincide with relaxation. And if stress means high brain pressure, relaxation means low brain pressure. If the change in pressure is too great, it could simulate a pressure event in your brain similar to a cold, so you would sneeze to expel air and normalize pressure.

Why would you sneeze during or after a workout? 

See previous answer.

If that’s true, why does the sun make some people sneeze? 

First off, this condition only affects 18-35% of the population. More interestingly, white people make up 94% of the sun sneezing population.

Let’s go back to Bates. Didn’t he say something about sunlight?

Sunlight relaxes the mind? Yes. That’s where is all started. Bates used to have people stare directly into the sun, and claimed that it helped their vision. I’m not saying that. Lets just say that the sunlight relaxes you. Find your own study here. Or read my article on how to improve your vision, and how staring off into a single point at a distance helps relax your mind. 

So pick your own reason why. The sun relaxes your mind. Period. And with that assumption:

If we can assume that sunlight relaxes the mind, a stressed mind would be considered high pressure. You’re stressed at school, and you walk outside. The sun, the outdoors, the distance-whatever- relaxes you. It lowers your stress, and decreases the temperature and pressure of your brain. Since your brain’s reflex is to normalize pressure, the fastest way to re-pressurize is to expel air. So you sneeze.

Sources:

  1. https://www.webmd.com/allergies/features/11-surprising-sneezing-facts#1
  2. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-sneeze
  3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneeze
  4. https://thepip.com/en-us/2016/06/improve-your-mood-reduce-stress-with-sunshine/
  5. https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/altitude-sickness#2
  6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method#Sunning

Why Do We Yawn?

David Dempsey

People yawn when they are getting tired typically, but why?

The restorative process of sleep lowers the brain entropy by lowering the biological processes and increasing airflow. As the day pushes on, you literally build pressure. For the same reason you get shorter over the course of the day.  You create more disorder in your brain as the day wears on. The yawn is essentially a deep breath that maximizes the airflow and decreases the brains temperature and pressure.

This is why breathing pure oxygen doesn’t eliminate yawning. It doesn’t address the problem.

People also yawn when they are bored. Can we explain this?

If we go back to William Bates’ book on eyesight, boredom actually creates mental strain. And we know that mental strain changes your vision. And we know that vision changes are just a symptom of brain entropy. And your yawn is just a way to counteract all that.

If that’s true, why are yawns contagious? Or are they?

It’s safe to say that they are contagious. But the jury is still out as to why. I was first going to say that it’s a reflex after seeing someone else yawn, but blind people do it too-when they hear someone yawn.

So just like when you see someone drinking, you consciously or subconsciously do a self check to see if you’re thirsty. When you see [or hear] someone yawn, you do a self check regarding the entropy or temperature of your brain. If it’s too hot or chaotic, you yawn.

People with Autism are less likely to yawn contagiously. 

Because that’s what makes them Autistic in the first place. They operate with higher levels of brain entropy. It’s the same reason they they die so much sooner. They are so far from their equilibrium point, that they experience time in a completely different manner. Well not completely,  just shorter. It’s also why they are so much more likely to drown. 

So no, they are probably not going to yawn contagiously. Because they have built an identity around the pressure that the yawn equalizes.

Sources: 

  1. https://kids.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/frym.2017.00052
  2. https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/yawn.html
  3. https://www.healthline.com/health/why-do-we-yawn#see-a-doctor
  4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3120687
  5. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201403/why-is-yawning-so-contagious
  6. https://www.factretriever.com/autism-facts

 

Height Is Not Genetic

David Dempsey1 Comment

historical-median-male-heightHeight is a confusing trait genetically. … The study identifies three or four regions in our DNA that may be important for height. But it doesn’t find any specific gene or DNA change responsible for men being taller than women. Or any gene to explain why height can run in families.

Let’s take a quick second and explore some strange facts about height.

What if any conclusions can we draw from these? 

  • Height is not entirely genetic.
  • The same mechanism that ages the body also shrinks your height.
  • This mechanism also shrinks you throughout the day.

The only difference between you growing an inch and six inches is time. But time doesn’t exist in the brain. It exists on your body. So the longer your perception of time during these growth periods [the happier you are] the taller you will be.

That’s absurd.

So we control the time. We control the rate of growth. Your final height at least in part depends on how peaceful you are during your growth spurts.

Sources:

  1. https://uamshealth.com/healthlibrary2/medicalmyths/dopeopleshrinkastheyage/
  2. http://www.berkeleywellness.com/self-care/preventive-care/article/why-you-shrink-you-age
  3. https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-the-body-shrink-in-height-throughout-the-day-Does-having-a-strong-core-reduce-or-eliminate-that-shrinkage
  4. https://www.menshealth.com/health/a19547705/do-tall-guys-die-younger/
  5. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/7-ways-heigh-affects-your-health_us_5783ad23e4b0344d51500c3d
  6. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of-human-height/
  7. https://genetics.thetech.org/original_news/news60
  8. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-shocking
  9. https://www.quora.com/How-can-you-increase-your-height/answers/15127039
  10. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/07/height_and_longevity_the_research_is_clear_being_tall_is_hazardous_to_your.html
  11. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/20-incredible-facts-about-the-philippines_us_58a80363e4b026a89a7a2b80
  12. https://www.quora.com/Can-identical-twins-have-a-big-difference-in-height
  13. https://www.unicef.org/philippines/health_nutrition.html
  14. https://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat
  15. https://traditionally.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/the-dutch-diet-and-lifestyle/
  16. https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/nutrition-medicine/bosnian-men-height-14042017/
  17. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/health/human-height-changes-century/index.html
  18. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/health/average-height-peaked.html

Baldness Prevents Strokes

David Dempsey

 

You read that right. Now let me try to prove it.

Look at these heat maps for the hairiness and baldness.  I think it’s safe to say that there is a correlation with the two.

Wonder if it has anything to do with the Mediterranean diet? Probably so. But balding is a much broader problem than that. It’s really only a matter of time. Two thirds of men are bald by 60. And we know the aging mechanism. So we can call balding and hairiness part of the that.

We know that stress can cause balding. And we know that aging can cause stress. Therefore, aging can cause balding. But we already knew that.

So why don’t women go bald? I think it may be because they don’t change as much. I’m guessing the average woman’s head changes much less than the average man’s [in volume]. Unrelated fun fact: women are also more likely to have strokes.

Asians don’t go bald as much. And they are more likely to have severe strokes. 

Chemo causes people to go bald. You know this. We even have cooling caps designed to help people on chemo lose less hair. Why in the world would this work?

So if baldness is about time spent out of equilibrium, does it serve a purpose? You would go bald at the same time you get hairy, theoretically. Your brain shrinks and your brain entropy rises. The hotter your head gets, the more brain entropy you have, and the more likely you are to die of a stroke or a heart attack.

Baldness is a mechanism to prevent strokes. If you think about it, even thinning hair would help lower the head temperature, just not to the same extreme. So balding is your body quite literally adapting to a more stressful environment.

Edit: Looking back, this may be too big a logical leap. So what causes strokes? It happens when your brain pressure gets too high. Think about the correlation between glaucoma and strokes. 

So how could people just suddenly go bald? Some sort of stress. It could be caused by emotional distress, physical stress, mental strain, or any number of things. The real problem comes when you don’t have the mechanism in your life to combat whatever stress there is. So instead of restarting every day, you begin dying little by little.

What if my head didn’t shrink? It doesn’t matter. If you have more energy in the same black box, it’s the same as it getting smaller. [Boyle’s Law]

Sources: 

  1. https://www.belgraviacentre.com/blog/hair-loss-facts-figures-and-statistics/
  2. https://www.creditdonkey.com/hair-loss-statistics.html
  3. https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/physical-side-effects/hair-loss/cold-caps.html
  4. https://www.forhims.com/blog/these-signs-of-balding-can-be-reversed-and-heres-how
  5. http://www.healthdata.org/sites/default/files/files/EMR%20Profile_final_4_0.pdf
  6. https://www.reddit.com/r/tressless/comments/8e057m/poor_diet_can_cause_hair_loss_but_what_does_it/
  7. https://newsroom.heart.org/news/asian-american-ethnicity-associated-with-severe-stroke-worse-outcomes

 

Rethinking DNA Acquittals

David Dempsey

So every year you hear about people that are freed from prison because of DNA evidence. So here’s the question, if we know that DNA changes over time, is it possible that we are letting guilty people off the hook?

So, I’m not saying that we need to stop using DNA evidence. A match is still a match. But the person that’s been on death row for 20 years, who already admitted to the crime, I would say let’s hold on a second before letting him go. Unless you’re letting him go based on the fact that he’s changed so much in prison that the new individual is actually innocent. If your intent is to keep the guilty man locked up, you need to think critically about this test. We know about epigenetics, and your DNA definitely changes over time. So who is to say that your DNA now would match that of you 20 years ago?

This astronaut’s DNA changed 7% while he was in space. The company that did the testing was quick to explain by saying that his DNA didn’t change, just his gene expression. Which obviously begs the question, what is gene expression? I don’t have a business model based on this being true, so I’m going to go ahead and call bullshit. Like it or not, your genes are changing.

We’ve already talked a bunch about epigenetics. Science knows that the environment effects people, it just really can’t explain why yet.

Here’s your smoking gun. Identical twins with different DNA. Why is that a big deal? Because we know that they start with the same DNA. Otherwise, why would they call them identical? On a cellular level, they start from the same cell.

So, if identical twins don’t have the same DNA, how could you expect me to have the same DNA as I did when I was 12. I don’t.

Logically following, the man that has been locked up for 20 years for a murder that he committed, likely changed a great deal in prison. So think twice before you set him free based solely on his new DNA test.

Sources:

  1. http://www.forensicsciencesimplified.org/dna/how.html
  2. https://mashable.com/2018/03/15/scott-kelly-dna-changed-nasa-year-space/#wUoe1WrIpgqw
  3. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-investigators-to-release-integrated-paper-in-2018
  4. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00496613
  5. https://www.l2law.com/blog/2017/03/4-ways-paternity-test-results-can-be-wrong.shtml
  6. https://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/shes-twin/story?id=2315693
  7. https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/dna-is-constantly-changing-through-the-process-6524898

ED is a Brain Disease

David Dempsey

You’ve heard the story of Viagra. It started out as a blood pressure drug, and doctors noticed that it was having consistent positive side effects in men.

The question is why. If high blood pressure starts in the brain, what did this drug do that helped men…perform?

If Viagra helps relax men and gets them closer to their ground state, why don’t we all just take it daily? Because it has side effects. And that is no way to function day in and day out.

Here are the causes of erectile dysfunction, according to the Mayo Clinic:

  • Heart disease
  • Clogged blood vessels (atherosclerosis)
  • High cholesterol
  • High blood pressure
  • Diabetes
  • Obesity
  • Metabolic syndrome — a condition involving increased blood pressure, high insulin levels, body fat around the waist and high cholesterol
  • Parkinson’s disease
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Certain prescription medications
  • Tobacco use
  • Peyronie’s disease — development of scar tissue inside the penis
  • Alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse
  • Sleep disorders
  • Treatments for prostate cancer or enlarged prostate
  • Surgeries or injuries that affect the pelvic area or spinal cord

Psychological causes of erectile dysfunction

  • Depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions
  • Stress
  • Relationship problems due to stress, poor communication or other concerns

Whoa. We’ve posted about almost all of these disorders. What does it all mean? It means that the only obstacle between you and a great sex life is you. 

Most of these disorders originate in the brain, whether or not we know it yet. You may need to take a look at my archived posts.

Remember: There was a time when everything worked properly, and it’s not too late to get back there again…without medication. Your health and sanity depends on it. 

So what is the next step? 

Identify the root of your problems. Identify your stresses, and confront them head on. The solution is different for everyone, but the condition is reversible. The fact that your penis doesn’t work is not your main problem. It’s a symptom of the stress in your life keeping you from reaching your ground state, where you were meant to be.