Mindfulness Medication

  Hey team, today I’d like to write about self worth the feeling like you are enough. This is to show others that they are all worthy of unconditional love and have value beyond all labels and achievements. This is also for me, as I am a human, living in a human society, with a human ego which episodically fools me into feelings of “not enough”.  I know in my heart, not my mind/ brain, that I, like everyone else on this planet, am worthy of unconditional love and have unconditional value. I’m not just somebody, I’m somebody special, just as you are. However, I live life with a human mind which serves to discriminate between “this” and “ that”, “good” and “bad”, “self” and “other” and more of course. And for better or for worse, this discriminatory mind serves to guide my life through a lens of familiar “comfort”. This comfort is not the soft memory foam of the perfect mattress or the light humor of chatting with my close friends. It’s the default perspective (story I live my l...

  Hey team, I have been thinking a lot about disgust recently as that is the core feeling I align with when observing and reflecting on certain behaviors of others, and myself, that truly remind me of a striking lack of maturity and where I believe psychological stagnation lies. Though these traits are subjective to me, I also believe that they would be hard to defend as pillars of healthy, mindful, role-model behavior and often are the opposite types of behavior of the people we view as traditionally virtuous and well (healthy and happy). This is part of my own shadow. The shadow isn’t necessarily evil but rather the antithesis to the virtuous traits we attach to and present to the world, so if feeling that these traits are NOT me they indeed are, they are just the qualities that lay hidden from the surface, waiting for the everything to fall into place to blossom them (manifestation of disgust) to existence. This is likely why it is easier to see in others, or even my past self, ...

Hey team, Over the past 2 weeks or so I've been reading the book "Trees of the Brain, Roots of the Mind" by Giorgio A Ascoli. I always just refer to it as "brain trees" hence the name of today's post. The book is about 200 pages and for a book that short, I learned a lot about neurons (the cells of the brain and nervous tissue). I'd like to briefly go over some of the information I've come to understand and greatly appreciate.  The book serves to present some major principles of neuroscience and the mind-brain connection. One of the principles is that unique mental states correspond to the subjective experience going on in our heads, both what we are aware of (ex. talking, eating) and the kind of stuff going on in our heads that we aren't fully aware of (ex. short-term memories being transferred into longer-term storage). Any memory, any feeling, and any moment can all come down to a specific and unique mental state. But what is a mental state? A...

 Hey team, Today is Friday, March 8th and I have a pharmacology exam on antibiotics and some other antimicrobial agents in a few hours. Antibiotics are not something I have put much time into in the past or really seen much of. Of course I know what antibiotics are and vaguely how they work (as in before starting the lectures on the content) but not like my background on psychiatry drugs or even cardiovascular drugs. This was definitely something new and not something that was particularly easy.  First off there are a TON of antibiotics, some are super similar like all of the beta lactams (penicillins, cephalosporins, ect) but from there they are not. There really are only about 3 mechanisms overall though (cell wall inhibitors, DNA inhibitors and protein synthesis inhibitors)  however there are tons of differences between various agents that ultimately have the same target. Also some drugs have weird ass side effects or weird little quirks that really must be remembered....

Hey team, Recently been reading and learning from Stahl's Essential Psychopharmacology 5th edition, which I excitingly received for Christmas. So far in my learning I've mostly focused on affective disorders like depression but I decided to dive into learning about dementia as it seems to be a popular topic that I am not too informed on.  Dementia is a progressive neurologic/ psychiatric disorder that arrises in later life. Its signature symptoms are significant cognitive problems such as poor memory, poor problem solving, communication issues and often behavioral and psychotic symptoms which seem to be the hardest on the people surrounding the person with dementia. Of course, as we age in our later years things do slow down and we're not where we might of been in our youth, however dementia involves incredible and rapid slowing down of brain capacity/ function which is almost always debilitating and is by all means a disorder (cluster of symptoms that impair quality of lif...

Hey team, Over Thanksgiving break I read a book discussing findings of more modern psychiatry research with the use of brain scans and genetic studies. Although it was not the most modern anymore since it was written a few years ago, I still learned quite a bit that I’d like to share. The main takeaways I got pertain to neuroplasticity and activity in specific brain regions. Familial depression, as labeled in the book, is not a discreetly defined term but one that refers to more severe and heritable depression as the name implies. We all know that there is a genetic component to mental illness along with developmental/ environmental. We can never pin down what the exact cause is, and we probably never will, as many are required to intersect in order for symptoms to manifest and possibly persist in the case of chronic psychiatric disorders. Familial depression is depression that seems to have a dominant genetic component that is less determined by environment as shown by twin adoption/ ...

Hey team, I have been back into my understanding of authenticity and wrote this as a collection of different ideas I've taken in and conclusions I've come to. Accepting your authenticity, exactly as it is and nothing more, emerges as the remedy for suffering. This acceptance extends to acknowledging the limitations and randomness of your origin. Birth thrusts individuals into the privilege lottery, encompassing both known hardships associated with factors like skin color and family wealth, and more profoundly, the unique personalities of parents, siblings, teachers, and friends that significantly shape one's worldview and expectations. These expectations become ingrained, influencing the persona we construct and how strongly we identify with it. They often manifest as conditional love, implying acceptance only if certain criteria are met. While this might align with societal norms, it is not the true essence of love. True love is the acceptance of someone at every new momen...