#116 - pushing the limits

i love the discovery channel. there's a new series called "pushing the limits," basically it's a look at human anatomy, and more importantly physiology, and how we're engineered for survival and doing things that seem beyond human capabilities. the thing is, as amazing as some of the feats sound, it makes absolute complete sense. like how someone can survive being picked up and dropped by a tornado with just a few bruises (obviously you go unconscious and all your muscles go limp, then your bones become more flexible and you can survive horrific falls). the science of physiology that they use to explain everything i think is absolutely fascinating, but completely believable, like, how come you've never thought about it that way before. i mean, humans have been around for how many years now, obviously our bodies have figured out ways to survive in this world. one of my favorite examples was a man whose boat capsized and he was lost at sea alone. he survived for a week or so catching fish and eating the meat, but he wasn't getting a lot of the vitamins and minerals that he needed just from eating sushi. so his brain told him to start eating other parts of the fish, gross parts like the liver, scales, eyeballs, etc. and he said that those parts just started looking yummy to him. haha. but doesn't that make complete sense? like pregnancy cravings right? your body is telling you that you need something and it knows what it wants. how does it know that those essential vitamins are in fish eyeballs? who knows? that's the cool part.

but that all goes to support my theory that we're generally dumb because we don't listen to our bodies more often. there was a previous post that i talked about the "second brain," the one in your stomach... totally makes sense huh? so you gotta listen to "your gut," literally. we know what we want so listen to your body.

here's another cool thing, in terms of vision, our brain sees in snapshots, like at 30 frames per second, but in times of great stress that rate increases, which is why it feels like time slows down. makes total sense right? like when you play tennis, and there are those days when the ball looks as big as a basketball and you feel in control of everything? now just imagine if you could manipulate those stress chemicals to use when you needed them? well, maybe not "manipulate," but maybe the next time you're in a match or you're playing guitar hero, think about yourself in a stressful situation, and maybe you'll do a bit better.

another thing this series does is emphasize the importance of biological functions, like sleep. sleep is SO important! it's when you consolidate the memories of the day (filing in the important stuff and filtering out the unimportant), the theory is that when you're dreaming, that's your brain categorizing and filing away the memories of the day, the reason why you dream is because those memories are being refiltered through your brain without the aid of logic to hold everything in place, that's why they all run together and get wacky. cool huh?

i think i could talk about neurophysiology all day. such natural processes are so intriguing because it's completely universal... it relates to everyone, yet no one ever thinks about them. science is cool!