The Pros and Cons of Ranting and Stress in General

The Pros and Cons of Ranting and Stress in General

   February 02, 2016       Anonymous

---

I rant more often than many of my peers, which might not seem like a good thing. I might seem mentally unstable, but there is evidence that ranting may actually help let off steam when one is very stressed out. However, ranting should be limited to when felt as necessary or significantly helpful, as going overboard can increase your stress level as needed to empower your ranting. Short-term stress can be helpful, but in long-term, it

For one thing, chronic stress can shrink your brain size over time, as supported by TED-Ed video “How can chronic stress affect your brain?” 

In regards to your brain, stress can:

• increase activity in amygdala, creating positive feedback loop (which will be consistently alluded to during post): more stressed out you are, less control you have over stress, leading to more stress, and so it goes.
• disable a pivotal stress-controlling interaction between brain and adrenal glands (this connection is called hypothalamus pituitary adrenal [HPA] axis) by releasing cortisol: a chemical that is designed for instant action, which can interfere with many neural functions and brain structures, such as:
• It reduce size of your hippocampus, brain structure associated with storing short-term memory into long-term memory, as well as creating creation of new cells, causing memory loss. Since hippocampus is also involved in stress control and learning, being stressed due to pressure of academic endeavors or expectations set by your parents who yell at you for getting B can reduce your ability to meet these goals (makes sense, right?) AND its involvement in control of HPA axis means even less control and further anxiety.
• Cortisol can also cause your brain to shrink in size by contributing to loss of neural synaptic connections and shrinking of prefrontal cortex, which regulates concentration, desicions, judgment, and socialization. (This is another benefit to socialization, discussed in previous post.)
• Due to all of this brain damage, it can also lead to other serious mental conditions like depression and Alzheimer's disease, former to which I can relate; I have felt partially depressed every day since 6th grade, which, as you may remember, was my anti-social year.
• In fact, level of cortisol receptors developed along with and correlated to level of stress and other hormones, can even result in epigenetic changes, affecting which genes are expressed without mutations, which are inheritable.

Stress can also affect your body by:

• increased activity of chemicals such as epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (never called nor-adrenaline) in bloodstream results in:
• Epinephrine raises blood pressure, over time causing hypertension.
• Cortisol can alter function of inner lining of blood vessels, a prerequisite to atherosclerosis and buildup of cholesterol plaque.
• This combination increases chances of cardiac arrest and strokes.
• the brain turning on autonomic nervous system (ANS) to communicate with enteric/intestinal nervous system, which can disturb natural cyclical contractions of digestive system and therefore cause irritable bowel syndrome and increase acid sensitivity (which causes heartburn)
• possibly changing composition of natural digestive bacteria
• Cortisol can increase your appetite, as your fight-or-flight response includes burning more calories to fight or flee "danger" and gain more energy through energy-dense foods (junk food is usually craved).
• The fat made by this is stored as belly fat, which releases immune system chemicals called cytokines that can raise risk of chronic conditions (heart disease, insulin resistance/diabetes). These immune responders initially try to heal but in time will reduce immune capabilities.
• As far as appearance goes, stress can also cause acne and hair loss, as exemplified by my "first cousin once removed" (uncle).

So, back to my rant on ranting (or at least it was supposed to be)... TIP: Calm down; if you have mental capacity to achieve your goal, put it forth in installments. Do not try to do everything at once, as this will ruin your life. Also, positive emotions can decrease concentration of stress hormones --- it may be cliche to feel positive, but it is always a decent idea. Common remedies are exercise and meditation.

Therefore, I recommend ranting only when extremely stressed in order to:

• ward off mental anxiety and relieve minor grievances
• calm down and release a burst of stress hormones --- eustress hormones, to be precise
• make you think about issues that truly provoke you
• and simply to give you something to laugh about when you rant in front of your friends.

When done at right time, ranting can relieve stress and be a great humor device.

How stress affects your brain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuyPuH9ojCE&index=2&list=PLJicmE8fK0Ei7nZRhCz2zjNgt-NYPUk1a

How stress affects your body: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-t1Z5-oPtU&index=41&list=PLJicmE8fK0Ei7nZRhCz2zjNgt-NYPUk1a

Read More

Socialization/Human Interaction

Socialization/Human Interaction

   February 02, 2016       Anonymous

---

Warning: This is concentrated with <complicated> references from an evolutionary perspective. Our society is obsessed with people’s inter-relationships, especially romantic ones, which might irritate some people but makes sense from a scientific perspective. Every organism’s evolutionary perspective began as making more of its kind (which makes all life parasites in a way). However, as us animals evolved, we started to develop into the human beings we are today with values exceeding our once solely reproductive goal. The thing is that we are still animals and our primal lusts still rage on. Teenagers are the quintessential example of how hormones can influence the essential importance of human interaction. For one thing, if someone is forever isolated, how can they possibly fulfill their goal of being on one side of an impregnation? They need to be within a population in order to interbreed and pass on their genes. Therefore, it is in our best interest to socialize Moving past the <problematic> side to another evolutionary advantage, social structures in some animal populations can make it easier to stay alive; for example, dolphins use their power in numbers to gather food, escape predators, and (obviously) mate. Another scientifically supported reason that socialization is helpful is, according to a study, elderly people who interacted often were less likely to develop memory loss as well as depression and Alzheimer’s disease. Aside from all of the health benefits, regular social interaction is key to developing interpersonal skills, which are essential to get a job, regardless of the career you pursue. Every job requires being able to get past the interviews and meetings before you do your job, where you will still have to communicate with people on occasion. If you pursue a part-time job, you need to talk with the boss before you get a job of taking other people’s requests for the service you were hired to provide. If you want to play music/act/write/be a liberal artist, you need to talk to the agencies by which you will distribute your work and you are portraying your message to your audience and while they are not the most element of your career, it will be the direct(?) source of your prestige and income and is the object of the transfer of your ideas. If you want an office desk with a dull cubicle where you sit from 9 to 5, you have to meet with your employers and coworkers at some point. The independent clause in the last sentence applies to every single job Anyway, what is life without some fun? Answer: A very lonely existence. More specifically, it is a depressed dystopia where a bunch of weird doctors are the only people who travel between the divide of the two genders and help people reproduce through means which imply falsities about biology where women think babies start randomly growing somewhere during puberty, not realizing that males exist; men just know that people come from somewhere and otherwise live their lives like regular people..

Image/Video Links: http://www.dolphins-world.com/dolphin-social-structure/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOgAbKJGrTA&list=PLJicmE8fK0Ei7nZRhCz2zjNgt-NYPUk1a&index=3

Read More

Lost in Stereotyping^0

Lost in Stereotyping^0

   February 02, 2016       Anonymous

---

“Does my appearance reflect my personality?”

“What do [strangers] people think of me when they see me?”

What connotative difference do you notice between these two questions? The former one sounds like a healthier, more stably asked question of self-reflection whereas the latter sounds more anxious.

Now, it must be very easy to guess what the chick who said the second question. Maybe you think she looks a bit like the sought-after skinny teenage girl who is secretly totally insecure and all emo-depressed or maybe she is the little desperate witch who wants to be so popular she can say “We are the In Crowd”1 instead of “They are the in crowd and everyone loves them.” --- you know what? She probably has an eating disorder. What’s wrong with her?

Okay, this is an exaggeration. You probably were not thinking any of these things, but you were likely somewhat easily following my train of thought with “logical” backups. This is the problem. When it becomes so easy to make assumptions about people based on a statement without context --- especially based on someone’s else’s opinion --- down to someone’s mental or physical health state, you can tell that you are no better than this supposed “pop girl”.

However, stereotyping is not necessarily any one person’s fault. The problem lies in the plebeian interests that do not truly represent any one real human. After all, we are not all high on horny goat weed2.

The fact is that you probably thought I was a strange nerd-type until I made that joke --- unless you have been reading the subscripts, in which case you may have thought that I was obsessed with emo-punk music and therefore am also simultaneously a weird/depressed/emo cutter/troublemaker punk, which is a completely different kind of outcast. (News flash: the references I have listed are not hardcore. In fact, they are like a rotten apple core-soft. I could have listed some more hardcore references, but then you would really think I am crazy.)

The truth is that I like emo/punk/pop/alt/rock/electronica and my deviation: country. Yet I am (shock!) not currently a self-harmer. I want to make a change in the world rather than focusing on myself as I am simply a silent facet that not necessary yet existent and therefore potentially powerful. Even rounder characterization of me includes such “juxtaposed” personality elements as:

• liking to read and write and yet not regularly doing either for the last two years
• loving music yet wanting to learn sign language
• wanting to experience lots of things without
• PAST: becoming somewhat outgoing and social in the same year (2013) as gaining self-harming tendencies and getting anti-social

In reality, stereotypical people are much rarer than one may first presume. For example, I recently learned through a conversation that stereotypical nerds do exist --- but that their existence has to be a sheltered one in order to fit that terrible mold; however, these kinds of people may be book smart but are not truly intelligent because they have never been exposed to some of the constituents of life after that transition to adulthood. This is the danger not just of stereotypes but of stereotypical embodiments.

Therefore, harsh generalizing is problematic and hurtful not only to those wrongly categorized but to those who you will probably never meet who are aware of these degrading labels that describe them and make them realize that they will never be able to embed themselves into the society they must belong to in order to “succeed”.

Everyone is unique to approximately the same degree, but our degrees are also unique. We can rarely make an accurate generalization… so really, stop thinking people can be pigeonholed; if we are all perfectly grouped and same, we have finally arrived at the point in time where every purpose has been fulfilled and every goal of humanity that might have mattered has been obliterated. We have reached the end.

We do not want a useless universe, so why bother even pretending we are anywhere close to getting there?

(Ha ha ha… and I used a bit of a slippery slope fallacy; fallacies are very common when leading to stereotypes.)

0: I am referencing an All Time Low (emo/punk band) song “Lost in Stereo”.

1: This is the name of a pop-punk band; more on this and "punk" [music] stereotypes.

2: I promise that this a legitimate thing, regardless of how strange it may sound. However, it is an aphrodisiac (look it up; basic definition = turn-on drug) which diminishes the oddness of the name.

Read More