Fish for Brains

A new study in Austria has shown that adolescents and young adults who are in danger of mental illness develop far fewer psychoses, and are less inclined towards psychotic breaks, when they take fish oil supplements. It makes sense. Omega-3 fatty acids are the building blocks of the brain and neural systems. We need lots of them in our diets for our nervous systems to function properly, and most peoples' modern diets don't include nearly enough of them. Most snack foods in general contain Omega-6 fatty acids, which are also important, but not used nearly as much in the brain. It's ironic, but in our fat-filled diets, we're not getting the fats we need.

Thr irony of the modern US is that we have so much food available, but so much of it is nutritionally unsound. It is entirely possible, in our world, to be both obese and malnourished. Who would have thought? And while we struggle with our waistlines, we're also screwing up our brains. I've discovered, over the past several years of pescatarian traveling, that food has a profound effect on mood and behavior. It's not just that hungry people are grumpy. That goes without saying. In Morocco, where my diet consisted mostly of overcooked-in-oil carrots and potatoes plus bread, I gained weight and felt listless much of the time. I generally got my energy and enthusiasm back in Essaouira, where I could at least, hamdulilah, get fish. While the presenece of variety in my diet was certainly exciting, I think that the effect of protein plus Omega-3's on my system was what really made a difference. In other countries I felt similar diet-based changes. Much as I loved the Czech Republic, the constant diet of fried cheese and potatoes nearly killed me.

Now, back in the US, I'm faced with the dilemma of being broke and needing to husband my resources as much as possible until I've acquired a steady income. Though there have been days when I've subsisted on cereal bars and bananas, I've discovered that it's much better to eat as well as I can afford to, because the health payoff is exponential. It's actually not that hard to do. Canned seafood has improved significantly from what I remember in childhood, and can be added to soups and sauces to provide those important proteins and Omega-3's. Lentils are ridiculously cheap, contain protein, and can be used to make soup. Kale and collard greens both hover around 99 cents a pound, and it takes a hell of a lot of them to make a pound, so you can have fresh vegetables regularly even on a budget (and they taste better than you think). The more I learn about diet and health, particilarly mental health, I realize that I can't afford not to eat well. As long as fresh veggies and some variety of seafood are available in some combination, I will eat them. It's important to feed your brain.

I Love Chiropractors

I finally went and got my back checked out, after several weeks of procrastination, and discovered that I had two pinched nerves in my vertebrae. After a realignment that involved the chiropractor turning me on my side and pretty much doing a jumping Heimlich maneuver to my hips, I felt a lot better. Sore, but better. My back is stiff now, but not painful, which is a marked improvement. Aerial has been good, largely because hanging upside down is therapeutic, but chiropractors are better. I need to start keeping one in my pocket when I travel.

I'm also incredibly happy that the problem has been fixed so easily. After reading up on all the many things that could be causing back pain, from hairline fractures to protruding discs to any number of other icky things, a pinched nerve sounds like a walk in the park. No scans, no surgery, nothing too expensive or time consuming or painful or annoying. Just a few clicks and done. Huzzah.

Ballet and body image

I've decided this week, now that I'm living near a dance studio, that I should start dancing again. So I took a ballet class on Wednesday, a barre workout yesterday, and another ballet class today.

Ouch.

There is nothing more humbling than going back to ballet when you've been away from it for over two years. I felt like an elephant, like a bull in a china shop, like all the most ungraceful metaphors in the world all at once. My body has lost all the nuanced movement that characterizes ballet. It felt so easy when I did it all the time, but now I feel like I'm as far from that level of nuance as I am from the moon or a six-figure paycheck. My brain still remembers it all, remembers that the hand goes here and the feet turn out like so and you lift and tuck and tendu and plie and make it all look beautiful and effortless. My brain remembers. But my body doesn't. And therein lies the problem. Because my brain remembers exactly what it all looks like, and how I should look in the mirror when I do each move. But the figure in the mirror looks nothing like how it should be.

In the mirror, I have no alignment. My toes point, but not as far as they should. My feet turn out, but not as far, my legs lift up, but not as high, I jump, I turn, I extend, I pose...but none of it looks like it should. Part of it is that I'm horrendously out of practice. And part of it is that I'm at least 25 pounds heavier than I was in high school, the last time I seriously did ballet. Now, I was never a stick figure, and I never cultivated my anorexic tendencies to a point where they were relevant, but still. I was relatively thin. In the mirror now, I see every inch of my added padding as larger-than-life, an exaggerated caricature of my actual shape. And I know, intellectually, that my weight is actually just fine and my proportions are fairly normal. But you can't say that to a ballet school mirror. They're designed to make you want to become thin.

The funny thing is, I never really paid that much attention to the mirror in high school. I knew what I looked like and that I looked good, so besides the occasional alignment check it was never really relevant. I only started to get self-conscious in college, when I started gaining weight and taking different dance techniques that I didn't know as well. I learned to ignore the mirrors then, because if I focused only on what I was doing and didn't look, I didn't have to fight myself or the movement nearly as hard. And when I got good enough, I didn't have to ignore the mirror. It became irrelevant again. I'll get to that point again here inshallah, probably just in time for me to start traveling again and lose it all. Which means I'll fight the same battle through again when I get back.

Even though it's a Sisyphus-ian effort, though, I'll still do it. I love dance too much to let myself stay out of shape, and I know that in another week or two the mirror gremlins won't seem as bad. You have to wonder what's in an art form to make people stay with it despite the fact that it tends to foster self-hatred. And the answer is this: once you get past that point of self-hatred and focus on the dance, it becomes magic. Once you truly focus on the dance and attain the technique to take you farther, you can suspend normal reality. You can experience total freedom in movement. You can fly.

Which means I'll deal with the mirror gremlins until I reach that point again.

The Future has Officially Arrived

I found this link today and was floored. Apparently a man who had both leukemia and HIV now has detectable levels of neither following a stem cell transplant. He was given the treatment largely for the leukemia, but the doctors, knowing that the man was HIV positive, derived the stem cells from a donor with the HIV-resistant gene found in 1-3% of people of European descent. As I understand it, no one had much idea of whether the resistant donor gene would have any effect, and since the transplant was for the leukemia, HIV wasn't the main concern. But apparently it worked. Two years post-op, and the man has no signs of disease. I'm impressed.

It's not a solution that will work for most people, because stem cell transplants are fairly drastic procedures in and of themselves. But I think gene therapy is on the way. Noninvasive types of gene therapy could probably be in their final rounds of testing in about five years' time (based on my understanding of where the technology is now and my knowledge of how long clinical trials take). Once it's all tested, gene therapy could be the hope that millions of people are looking for, an alternative to AZT and the drug cocktails that are the current treatments for HIV and AIDS.

Here's to positive uses of stem cells!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/11/health.hiv.stemcell/index.html