Optimal cognition

Let's all imagine that we did not know that sleep was important...

Right, well that was not so helpful in comparison to the information that I am ABOUT to share.

A study published in 2003 found that 14 days of restricted sleep, restricted being 6-8 hours or less per night with no other sleep permitted, day time naps, etc. was equivalent to 3 days of complete sleep restriction, that is, no sleep at all for 3 days on cognitive performance (I can't be bothered finding the full text of this article to discover what precise activities were done to measure cognitive performance, and therefore it will have to remain a mystery).

Therefore, due to the findings in this article, one is asked, in order to excel in all cognitive tasks, to maintain a consistent sleep duration every night, and that duration to be approximately 8.16 hours per night.

In conclusion, though no physiological reasoning was given in the abstract (don't judge me for just reading abstracts, I really should be investigating senescent chemosensory loss and the resultant effect on taste sensations and thus food intake and its relation to iron status in the elderly), I may get to it one day...

Now to senescent chemosensory loss...

:D

Reference - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469

Low Calcium AND Low Vegetable Intake...aka. "why are these vegetables not so nice?"

Research published last year examined a very interesting causal relationship

Given that,

In general, the population doesn't eat enough vegetables

AND

In general, the population is calcium deficient

COULD IT BE

That vegetable distaste, indeed bitterness, is a result of calcium's presence, or, does calcium content affect the bitterness of vegetables.

In conclusion, they found there was a correlation, however were cautious to establish causation, that because vegetables high in calcium were bitter, people don't eat them and are thus low in calcium. They investigated a rat model finding that rodents can indeed detect which foods are high in calcium and eat those foods when they are either calcium deficient, or genetically engineered to love eating calcium, and rather, when they are calcium-replete, choose to eat less of the calcium-full, i.e. bitter, foods.

Therefore, when choosing not to eat vegetables, or indeed when a client comes to you and says, my bones keep breaking, and bursting through my skin, and then I can't stop bleeding (Osteoporosis and haemophilia, the former obvious, the latter as calcium is a cofactor in the production of clotting factors), and I hate vegetables, maybe that would be the time to ask them, do you not like vegetables because of bitterness, if yes, then maybe they are deficient due to dietary choices.

Just a thought, but yeah, also if anyone ever asks you, "Hey, you should know, why is this collard so damn bitter?" You can reply "Why, my apprenticed friend, it is due to the calcium content."

WARNING - if they ask "Why is this radicchio so damn bitter" DO NOT reply with the above, instead reply "Due to, potentially excipient, or otherwise spirited, bitter compounds within it I believe, not calcium however."

There you go, a good ol' look at calcium and bitterness - I'm glad I know this now, the little angel of knowledge is hugging my heart :D

Reference - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2768385/

Um, really annoying smell to study too

I have finished working and I am sitting here, trying to write an assignment and all I can smell is my feet, maybe a little to much information for ones liking, but hey its a start, and I would love to explore pheromones, etc. so this is the pathway that I see coming

Foot odour -> Scent chemicals -> scent chemicals effect on the brain -> other scent chemicals effect on the brain -> pheromones -> could foot odour ever be a pheromone?

If these concepts are already studied, that doesn't matter because I am not intending to break new ground here, but rather explore what is known, and other people to say, hey, thats such a good point, oh Ive always wondered about that, I wonder why.

Well this is why

I am quite busy with my assignment so I cannot say too much here, but hey, anyway.

Apparently foot odour has to do with:
- short chain fatty acids found in the socks and on the feet,
- particularly iso-valeric acid, as this was found in those with foot odour, and not those without,
- and by incubating sweat and lipids from people with strong foot malodour, the smell can actually be reproduced, with gas chromatography/ mass spectrometry analysis revealing a similar short chain fatty acid profile

(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2369557 - I'll just give the link for now, so it can be found really fast for those who need rapid confirmation of things that they read :P


So there you go, now I will know that forever and whoever reads it will know it too...now to investigate iso-valeric acid, no, I shall study...but in time... :P

The Beginning of Knowledge - Though not as far back as the Greeks, or even the Amoeba's

This blog is created as sometimes I feel a need to relax my mind during study and ponder those questions to which I do not know the answer.

Through gaining knowledge on various topics one can then expect further interest to be spurred and deeper insight to be sought, corollaries to be made and the eventual endowment of personal satisfaction from being such a polymath.

Ok, that might be taking it a little far, but the overall picture is that this is a source of knowledge and understanding and contemplation of what is and what might be.

I invite not debates, nor arguments nor anything at all mean or cruel, but rather, hey, have you seen this recent paper, etc. etc.