Prenatal and Neonatal Environment: Toxoplasma Gondii

 

 

It is well known that an unborn brain could be damaged by numerous neglected acts a pregnant woman do. For example when pregnant women drink or smoke that could damage the fetus in many ways they could be born with many physical and or mental defects. Using drugs is also a huge factoring that damage the fetus brain development, but what happens when pregnant women are not aware of illness that could be as close as on our pets. This happens with Toxoplasma gondii is a unicellular parasite belonging to the genus toxoplasma. This disease can only be produce on cats but it can affects human and other species as well. However if it infects a human it is called toxoplasmosis, and it could be very dangerous if someone’s immune system if not strong enough to fight it. This is related to schizophrenia because if this kind of parasite affects a child’s brain it could caused him or her to have hallucinations, visions, and delusions. More than 60 million people in the United States are said to be infected with toxoplasmosis but not everyone develops the disease because of their good immune system. People could get infected by eating undercooked meat, contaminated water or milk, and other ways such as mother to child while still pregnant. If pregnant women do not experienced a miscarriage then the baby could born with abnormalities as larger or smaller head size, and brain or eye damage.

 

This video and images show in more detailed the effects of toxoplasma gondii.  

 

 

 

 

Postpartum Depresssion

Postpartum Depression affects many women after giving birth to a child. This type of depression is more common among women; however, it could be detected among new male parents as well. Of course rate among men with postpartum depression is not as high as those on women, but they can still suffer from the new parent’s issues. I remember this happened to me with my first born. I was 21 thought that motherhood would be an easy experience, well I was way off, because it is very difficult to cope to a new life where all your time needs to be divided. I have heard that postpartum depression happen in a way that mothers reject their newborns, but in my particular case I was so concern about my baby’s needs that I couldn’t fall sleep because every single noise would woke me up instantly. I remember I cried every time my baby cried it, it was a feeling I could not help it I would just cry for everything. Sometimes I would just cry because I felt super tired and mentally and physically drained. I felt like I wasn’t a good mother because I was always crying with her instead of being strong and deal with it. I remember that I did not eat, because I knew she could woke up at any minute so I was not going to have enough time. It is a feeling you can’t control and even though I did not get any treatment it is much recommended to get professional help. Some finds shows that what causes postpartum depression is because of lack of vitamins, and some others found that it is because of a change on women hormones during pregnancy. The truth is that there is not a well known cause for this type of depression.   

Panic Disoder

Panic disorder could be caused by an anxiety to uncomfortable places or situations to an individual. They are spontaneous so no one knows when a victim of panic attacks will have one. For some people not knowing when they are having the next panic attack can be very stressful; therefore, they prefer to stay home and not going out to do normal things. That can really get on the way of their normal life, because they can become isolated and lose friends and family members. A lot of the cases start with people who are under a lot of stress, and that could lead to panic disorders because they do not know how to let all that stress out so they react by panic attacks. The weird part of this disorder is that these victims get panic for no apparent of logical reason they are just scared with something. This can also happen with some physical symptoms such as Fast heartbeat, chest pain, breathing difficulty, shaking, sweating, nausea, and dizziness. Panic attacks are also more common on women than on men. This disorder affects young adults in the late adolescence and it affects about 2.4 million adults Americans. Even though this disorder is not predictable if there is no physical symptoms then patients maybe referred to a mental specialist. Anxiety up to a point it’s good, but not to where you can not control it to the point of having a panic attack.

 

This video shows some issues with panic attacks.

Sleep Apnea

 

 Sleep Apnea is one type of insomnia, this sleep disorder do not allow affected people to breath well while they sleep. Some of the people with this disorder are not aware of the times they wake up in the middle of the night because of lack of breath. On the other hand they might be experiences some consequences such as depression, heart problems, sleepiness, and lack of attention. This disorder could be genetic or by age deterioration, of the brain. Another obvious reason for this disorder is obesity, because people who are obese could have or are more than likely to have breathing problems. In these cases the best way to get back on track with sleep is to have a surgery that would remove a tissue that does not let the breathing function well. Of course another good recommendation is to lose weight and people with sleep apnea are asking to do so. This is very interesting because I think I might have this sleep disorder, but I since I remember I have been having problems breathing. When I was a year old I was diagnose with Asthma which supposedly was treated on time so I did not need any help with it, but I have always have problems breathing in clubs or places with smoke in it, and problem sleeping too. I do not know if there is some connection with Sleep Apnea but sounds very familiar.

 

This video shows some issues of sleep apnea and how to treat it.

Intersexes

Intersexes are individuals who born with both female and male genital parts. It seems to be a mixture of a woman and a man. Intersex is define as, in humans and other animals, is the presence of intermediate or atypical combinations of physical features that usually distinguish female from male. This is usually understood to be congenial, involving chromosomal, morphologic, genital and/or gonadal anomalies, such as diversion from typical XX-female or XY-male presentations, genital ambiguity, or sex developmental differences. This means that a boy can look like it from the outside but not from the inside and vise versa with girls as well. It also be the case of a person with both genitals parts, or someone with deform genital part that could look like the opposite genital part. There are a lot of different ways someone could be considered an intersexes, for example Hermaphrodites, which are individuals who born as a mixture of both a female and a male. In the United States there is an approximation of 1 of every 100 children have some sort of genital mal function, which could be lead to be considered an intersex person. The most weird part is that a lot of these people regardless of the fact that they born with this condition, intersex anatomy it’s discover until they reach puberty or later in their lives, in some cases even after death. Sometimes even intersexes do not realized they have this problem and die with out knowing it.

OLFACTION

Olfaction is one of our senses, which are very useful to live a proper life. olfaction , the sense of smell, and I believe this is the most important sense, because it helps us in so many ways to smell unwanted things and be aware of some dangerous substances. For example, let's say there is a past due milk in the refrigerator and you want to drink some without knowing it is bad, but you do not have the sense of smell and drink it. That could be dangerous because if you do not smell it is bad you would most likely just drink it and get sick. You might be able to taste it is bad, but maybe by that time it’s too late and you drink part of it. It could also affect your daily normal life issues such if you smell good or if someone smells good, and a person with lack of sense of smell is not able to smell a good perfume. Something that could be very dangerous as well is not being aware when your house or any place is on fire or have a strong smell of gas. That could be dangerous because if a person is not able to smell the house on fire she/he could burn alive.  These are some of the simple things that could change someone’s life, because it makes that person to be in so much danger and not be able to smell the greatest things this world has such as the smell of earth and fresh air.

This is a very interesting video where you can see people who have lack of olfaction and how does that affect their lives.

Severe Impairment of Episodic Memory.

 

 

Episodic memory is very important for all human beings that want to remember a good memory. These memories are the ones that we keep on storing through out our lifetime, and that is why they are very important to be able to remember episodic memories because it give us the opportunity to remember good and bad times of our life. Some Patients with severe impairment of episodic memory are not able to remember their past memories, and they are not able to stored new events that they will not remember in the future. Imagine not be able to remember your first kiss, the time you graduate from elementary, or any simple event as one of your birthdays. These are just some of the hundred of things a person could not remember after damage in the brain to the hippocampus and episodic memory. I can only imagine how hard if not impossible to someone with this disorder to get marry, but I believe that having an impairment of the episodic memory would allow a patient to remember who they want to marry. Even worse than that I think they can not even fall in love, because how can they fall for someone they do not remember? It is just sad to see brain damages such as impairment of the episodic memory, because everyday its like a new day I mean patients with this brain damage do no have the ability to storage new information and some of the old memories are no longer there it is almost imagining an empty pumpkin.

 

This video explains some of the issues paintients with some kinds of dementia experience or face everyday.

Language Acquisition Device

 

It is amazing how humans are able to learn language as something that is meant to be learned. We are able to understand something that should confuse us because of the fact that we never hear any of those sounds before birth. Language is a subject that has scientists interested, and even after many researches they have not found any specific answer that would clarify this mystery for us. Noam Chomsky believe that humans have what he called the language acquisition device (LAD), basically what this means is that it is a mechanism that allows children to acquire language quickly almost instantly from their native language speakers or adults. Researchers have found that genes do help on language matters, but it takes more than one gene that affects language and it is not easy to know for sure. Some of the factors that help a lot with language development are family interaction, and intelligence. I believe that intelligence its not that important to language evolution I mea maybe it is been prove that it does have an effect, but I do know a lot of people who have a large vocabulary, and they are not that smart. For example both of my children learn how to speak at different ages, and my daughter still have problems pronouncing some of the words, but intelligence wise they are both very smart. But as I said I might be wrong because genes are very powerful on every human’s evolution and transformation aspects, but I just believe that any one could become a very intellectual person no matter from where they came from as long as they try hard and their best.

 

I found this video in which explains in more detail about language acquisition device and how it works.

 

Strokes

Strokes can be very dangerous, but not all strokes are fatal which means a person can still survive a stroke. Strokes are caused when there is not enough blood supply to the brain or by a bleeding inside the brain. Strokes can be fatal depending of which part of the brain it damages. A stroke can damage a person’s ability to talk, vision, and mobility just to mention some of the harms it could cause. There are several diseases or illness that could be the causes or help develop a stroke, for example; diabetes, high cholesterol, or hypertension, etc. Smoking is strongly related to people who have a risk of having a stroke. Some of the symptoms of a stroke include weakness, numbness, headaches, loss of balance, trouble speaking, inability of movement, etc. Obesity, especially abdominal fat is related to the causes of strokes; therefore, exercise is much recommended to get a better quality and healthier life.

My Grandmother passed away three years ago because she couldn't recovered from a stroke. She was a very healthy person until one day she suffered a stroke that left her in bed for almost two years suffering, because she was never able to talk, or move again after been so healthy.

Opiates Drugs

Opiates Drugs can be as addictive as morphine, but at the same time it can be a very good way of controling harmful pains. In some cases opiates drugs are very necesary to survive because people need to deal with some diseases that can be super painful: therefore, for those people these drugs are eesential to take in order to have a normal life. Even though brain does produce endorphins which helps to control pain among human's body, sometimes it is not powerful enough. These endorphins are good to decrease some of pains caused by injuries or diseases and they are necessary for survival, but Opiates do help a lot because they are much more powerful than endorphins.

It is very dangerous to take these drugs without supervision but as I understood this video even when a person is given these drugs by a doctor they will develop addiction towards this drugs eventually. .

Glia Cells

Biology has been by fartest the hardest subject I have ever studied, I have had a really hard time trying to understand all the concepts and terms. It is a very complex subject in my opinion so I might not have much understanding or knowledge of it, but something that did get my attention are Glia cells. There are so many of them and with different functions it is amazing how such a little cells are able to do so many fuctions of the brain, which in my opinion is the most important part of our body.

This video explains the importance of glia cells which I believe are more important or at least more interesting than neurons cells.

Animal Research

Psychology have always been a subject that interested me in so many ways, and one of the topics that got my attention of all the three sections is definitly animal research. I do believe it is a cruelty what scientist do to all animal species just to get the results they are looking for, but when I see all those people specially children dieying of cancer for example, because there is no cure for them it tear my heart apart as well. I think is it a very complicated subject to touch and talk about and even more to make a decision of which side do you support well at least for me it is a hard decision to make. I have so many reasons of why animal research should not be perform at any circustances, but I have as many to believe that scientist should do everything as possible to save a human's life.

This video clearly show how animals are being torture for no reason. Supposedly scientist are looking for answers to help cure or treat human's diseases, but there has to be a limit and it is obvious that some scientists do not see the cruelty they are commiting against innocent non-human species. There are millions of animals that get killed every year from animal testing.

On the other hand, hundreds of children die from so many diseases every year. I mentioned children because my goal is to work for child protective services and I would do what ever it takes to save our little angle's lives. Not forgeting that not only children die from diseases but adults as well, and it is frustating to see our love ones get killed and not be able to do anything to save thier lives.