Cobbers on the Brain

At Concordia, it is always emphasized that we BREW, become responsibly engaged in the world.  Neurochemistry, as a capstone course is a class in which one could BREW quite a bit, maybe in the way of just having a different perspective about certain things in today’s society, like bulimia, obesity, autism and other disorders or diseases that can affect the brain.  After taking this capstone, I feel I know a little bit more about these diseases or disorders than I did previously, and have a new view of regarding certain aspects of them, like how the brain works differently when it encounters high fat r high sugar diets, or how much can happen to the brain during development in the womb.
My capstone experience has also given me skills in being able to figure out how to read difficult articles with a lot of unknown topics in them and still get something out of what the article was trying to say.  It is a skill that will be useful in the future, as I am a student that wishes to continue on in my education in science and being able to tackle these articles will assist me further down the road.  It will enable me to learn on my own no longer needing to rely on teachers and assignments to learn.
This capstone course was very outside of the box for a science class, involving many other topics of discussion that were all interrelated to science, like debates in the sports world about concussions or legalization of cannabinoids for either medical or recreational use.  We covered topics that are prevalent to topics in the new.  Instead of covering some material and then there will be a test to regurgitate it all, we learned science gradually and hand in hand with the real consequences of this science if it is not working properly.
Neurochemistry was a class where the students taught each other a lot of the times, which was helpful to my learning it better if I was teaching it, or my understanding it better if it was being explained to me in terms that most all of my peers could understand. By learning in this way, we were all accountable for doing our work on time, for if not then others would not get the information they needed, thus it was an effective way to ensure that work was being done in the course without the necessity of turning in a worksheet every day.
Concordia has truly helped instill a love of learning within me, I enjoy going to classes in my majors and am excited to see what more I can learn before I leave.  While neurochemistry was not the subject that I am most interested in within chemistry, I still found that it helped grow my love of learning.  It gave me the tools that I need to keep learning on my own past college, as I now feel more confident in researching online and learning about science through methods other than a textbook or a lecture.

If you actually know me, you would know I can come across as a “health nut” and I am proud of that. I wasn’t always this way though.. Up until about my junior year of high school I was always that kid other kids called “fatty” or “chunky”, and it’s true.. I was, in fact, overweight.
I remember getting the call from my mother on the way to school. My grandpa had passed. I was still pretty young at this time, and I never got to see him much, and unfortunately, what I do recall of this man was that he was always suffering from his diabetes. He wasn’t necessarily the most self-conscious about his health and I remembered that I didn’t want my future grandchildren to remember me in the same way, so I changed my habits and started being conscious about what I was putting into my body. The summer following my junior year I started exercising and subsequently went from weighing about 210 lbs to about 165 lbs. Words cannot describe how proud I was of myself for turning my life around like that; which gave me a new reason to remember my grandpa by. In my case, getting in shape was a choice, and I encourage others to be active each and every day, because turns out: once obesity is onset, it becomes harder to “cure” it.
In a study we read for neurochemistry, hypertensive rats were given the choice between a high-fat diet and a “regular chow”. Not only did they increase their body weight in choosing the high-fat diet over the other, but they also displayed leptin and insulin resistance and further increased blood pressure. We don’t know why, but it is hypothesized that with an increase in obesity, there is a biological mechanism saying “eat more” of these fatty consumables.
Individually, I looked into the role the circadian rhythm has on obesity. Turns out, everyone is right in saying that YOU NEED SLEEP. Altering the circadian rhythm by not getting enough sleep is one of many side-effects of not eating or exercising healthily. This then starts a vicious cycle of negatively impacting your sleep schedule. You eat unhealthy, you maybe get a worse night’s sleep, then you throw off your circadian rhythm, altering your eating habits for the worse the next day, then you sleep worse the next day and so on… It seems as if our bodies are constantly combating the ability to stay fit, and you WILL have to put in a lot of effort if you are already facing obesity, but I am here to say from experience that it WILL be worth it.
I firmly believe in fighting obesity before it becomes an actual debilitating disease. Because of the biology behind it, some refer to it as a “biological trap” which becomes increasingly more difficult as it progresses. Kick it in the butt now, before you can’t.