Motivation for Loving Your Brain and Body

Hello my dear friends! I am so happy that you are reading my post! Yay!

I had an amazing holiday season and now I am ready to share some fun information about brain with you :-)

I have been watching Behavioral Biology classes by Professor Robert Sapolsky. He is so awesome! Unfortunately I am not smart enough to understand everything, but I got some basic ideas of how brain regulates itself and body, how environment can affect genes or how cells communicate with each other.

Today I want to focus on regulation. But before I start I want to say that I am not a scientist and will never be one, I am just curious Dasha, who likes to learn new things and to share them with others. I might make some mistakes, so if you find my statements incorrect, please let me know.

Here is the link for today's post: Love Your Brain and Body.

You probably heard before that neurons talk to each other via electricity. One neuron can send electrical signal to another via chemicals which are called neurotransmitters. These chemicals have positively charged ions which can create action potential in neuron's axon hillock and make the neuron fire. There is a space between neural cells which is called synapsis.

Firing neuron is called presynaptic cell and the neuron which receives the signal is called postsynaptic neuron.

Both of them have receptors. Presynaptic cell has "bookkeeping" receptor which can track the amount of neurotransmitters in synapsis. It can help to collect neurotransmitters back in presynaptic cell if there are too many of them in synapse.

Postsynaptic cell have different receptors for different neurotransmitters. When neurotransmitter binds to postsynaptic cell, it opens ion channel and postsynaptic neuron fires if there are more positively charged ions in cell than outside of cell..

What I found extremely interesting was the fact how cells can regulate the number of receptors and their sensitivity. By the way it happens not only with neurons and neurotransmitters, but with other cells and hormones as well.

Here is an example. Let's say brain detects glucose in a blood stream. Hypothalamus (part of the brain which is responsible for hormone regulation) sends signal to pituitary gland which send signal to pancreas. Pancreas gets the signal and releases hormone which is called insulin. I am sure you know a lot about it. Insulin guys go to fat cells and tell them, "Hey, what's up?! Can you do us a favor and collect some glucose from the blood stream?" "Sure thing", reply fat cells and start working. This is a typical day of your hardworking cells. But what if there is too much of glucose? What if fat cells are so full that they just cannot take it anymore? Well, they kind of get annoyed by insulin. They don't even want to here about it anymore. You know how sometimes husband so got used to his wife screaming and complaining all the time that he just stop paying attention? Fat cells do almost the same thing. They either reduce the amount of insulin receptors or make them less sensitive. So when insulin comes over and start asking fat cells to collect some glucose, fat cells just ignore it. They are just like "Whatever, can care less. I am so done with your glucose, you can say anything you want, I am just not listening to you anymore!". At the same time pancreas keeps getting the signals from hypothalamus and pituitary gland that glucose is in the blood. And it freaks out and just releases more insulin and more, and more, and more... And at some point it works so hard that just gets burned out and stops releasing any insulin at all. So fat cells don't get the signal that glucose is in the blood anymore. They probably would be willing to collect it now because they are not so full, but they just don't know that they should. This is an example of Insulin resistance which can cause diabetes.

You brain and body has very powerful regulation mechanism. And it can balance out a lot of things. It has the capacity to solve most of your problems. But we like to use external thing, when we feel uncomfortable. We don't want to wait, don't want to give our brain opportunity to figure things out. And this is from my point of view is one of the biggest mistakes we can make. When you feel discomfort, please use it to train your brain. If you do it all the time, little by little you will create specific neuroconnections which will help you to handle difficult situation with less worries and just more efficiently.

I call it "sitting through the pain" practice. You can also call it "accepting suffering". I also like the term "art of suffering" which I heard on Plump Village YouTube channel. The point is that instead of numbing pain, trying to resist it, instead of keeping using external things to fight it, you just let it be and let your brain and body to regulate the process. It is the most powerful rule that I learned in life.

In my next post I will share the method that I find helpful in the moments of suffering.

For today I just ask you to remember how much work is done by your brain and body. A lot of actions are taken even without you being consciously aware of them. Isn't it amazing how great everything works? Please trust your brain and your body, they can be there for you, when you need some help. They can figure it out, if you just let them to do the work!

Be Strong And Love Yourself!

From Dasha with Love!

Love Wins!