Cobbers on the Brain

The implications of obesity have a rather large impact on our health system, as currently ≈40% of all Americans are obese, that results in 93 million people. This is brought about by our diets in America, as this results in a high fat diet and our sedentary habits only further make the problem worse. This results in a major cost issue for our medical system, as the current cost is estimated at around 147 billion dollars, and is estimated to increase another $48-$66 billion over the next two decades.

With the seen changes above, over the course of 16 years, a nearly 10% increase in obesity has occurred. There are many ideas as to why our body maintains an obese weight, however it is still dependent on your personal control of what you choose to ingest. As genetics plays a role in maintaining a set weight, but measures can be taken to adjust that weight. If done incorrectly, this results in a cycling of weight on and off around the set weight for an individual. The further implications of obesity can result in other serious health conditions, such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension.

As seen on the heat map above, the south eastern portion of the US is at major risk for the obesity epidemic. There are several solutions to this, the first and easiest would be to change the dietary intake of processed foods, and try to eat foods that are lower in fats, sugars, and salts. The approach to this problem should be a personal one, if you can keep track of weight, and attempt to maintain or reduce your weight to a healthier weight by making your own food from healthy ingredients and trying to include more physical activity in your daily schedule.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-obesity-2030-americans-obese_n_1893578

No path in life is straight and perfect. Not all answers are found in books or on the internet. The liberal arts education at Concordia College -Moorhead has allowed my shape of learning as “out of the box.” Various angles and approaches need to be taken when presented with a complex situation.

For all students grades create a very competitive and stressful environment. Grades are a very important part of any class because that is what is placed on the transcript. This class allowed for a non-stressful but well respected class. A majority of this class was participation, with two unique tests that challenged your thinking process and finally a project that took your own knowledge and present it in a form for others. Knowing that participation and willingness to learn allowed for less stress but with more want to become educated on these topics.

Articles that promoted learning

All the topics we had covered in Neurochemistry were more complex than I ever knew. We would start each week with an article that Dr. Mach had picked out. Each article was read by Monday along with a worksheet that asked for: main point in the article, a question to help explain a pathway or something super important that the article focused on, and finally, any questions you had. These papers all presented information that was new to all of us. Discussing the paper led to more questions than answers.

On Wednesday, we took all these questions and have posted our answers to the wiki page. Many times, I found that there was no new information. The question we had was said to be discovered but with an unknown function or was still being researched. We would either talk about our topic to the class or do this through “speed dating.” When conversing with classmates you started to see the connection between your topic and theirs.

Finally, on Friday all additional questions or comments that were talked about on Wednesday were discussed in groups. This day allowed for an open, no judgement discussion. Opinions were expressed and counter arguments peacefully.

Concordia’s five goals for liberal learning:

1. Instill a love for learning
   • Wednesday allowed students to address topics that they were interested in. The freedom of learning while being centered around the main topic allowed for me, as a student, to want to participate and research something that was of interest. Each Monday, I was left with the want to learn more about the topic to be able to put the picture together and be able to explain it to someone else. Many of these topics in the articles are presented in many individual’s lives that allowed for a better understanding of life.
2. Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
   • A foundational skill that can be used in all situations is the ability to form an opinion, express it, and still be able to hear other’s points of views peacefully. Creating an effective form of communication through each variation of difficulty of science and to various groups was very helpful in the CAP project. Taking complex science information and being able to portray the important information to people with different backgrounds of knowledge was critical.
3. Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections
   • Neurochemistry and Social Work came together to tackle a Community Action Project. This project allowed collaboration between two different fields that are very much interconnected. Autism, is the group I was placed in. In this group we held a workshop targeting individuals who are wanting to learn the complexity of the disease as well as a unique perspective from a mother. Both groups were able to bring their strengths that was later presented to various students who attended.
4. Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding
   • Our gathering time on Friday’s allowed for everyone to self-reflect. Reflection on how each topic was related to the community and various cultures. After discussing each topic I was able to contribute personal experiences. Drug addiction has hit my family hard due to my cousin being a methamphetamine addict. Understanding how everything within me and the world around me connects to each other.
5. Encourage responsible participation in the world  ***BREW
   • Not only did this class allow for a unique interaction with the public but it gave me information that I can use towards voting. Many things such as drug addiction, obesity, and endocannabinoids are a few topics that impacting the community. Knowing the complexity of marijuana and its affects on various pathways in the body allows for a more informed voting. Marijuana is just one topic that has made it big on the ballot and community. Obesity is seen in the community that may have to be voted on for improved/healthier school lunches. Drug addiction is a disease that multiple laws affect these people. These laws are made by politicians that need to understand more of the chemistry of this disease.
   • This is a class that has allowed me to think more about my habits and the way it influences the world I live in as well as myself. I loved my time in this class and wish more people had the opportunity to have such a great experience in college.

The implications of ALS rase a lot of questions for many Americans about the ethics of physician assisted suicide. As there is currently a lack of any sort of treatment for ALS, so this usually results in methods to reduce the discomfort during the last few months to years of someone’s life.

The development of ALS result in procedural loss of function of motor neurons, this results from a lack of available energy for the cells to stimulate muscle cells. During my portion of research for the class, I looked at the energy consumption in motor neurons. This energy deficit can result from a lack of glucose uptake in motor neurons, and as someone with ALS gets older, the ability for cells to replenish their internal energy storage diminishes. This results in the inability to control those muscles because of the motor neurons.

having known someone who has suffered from ALS, it is a rather difficult process to see as a bystander, the slow loss of control that occurs over time. from seeing the individual that was once able to walk was wheelchair bound, after a couple years. The thought of slowly and conscientiously  being aware of these changes results in a rather depressing ending for one’s life. This raises many questions about the aforementioned physician assisted suicide, as with the current cellular changes that are undergoing in motor neurons, this results in a currently untreatable diagnosis.

It seems that most colleges only test obedience. Students are presented information that they are supposed to obediently memorize, and then write it down on a piece of paper, which is graded. I do not find this to be helpful in preparing students for the world. Luckily, I attend a college where they have broken out of this mold. Concordia College encourages liberal learning from the very first day you step foot on campus as a student. As freshmen are standing there wide-eyed in their bright yellow beanies, they are constantly reminded to “BREW.” If you are not from Concordia, I am assuming you are thinking of a different kind of brew. However, at Concordia, we understand BREW in a different context. To BREW means to become responsible engaged in the world. This concept is reinforced with Concordia’s five goals of liberal learning.

Concordia has five goals for liberal learning:

1. Instill a love for learning
2. Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities
3. Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections
4. Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding
5. Encourage responsible participation in the world 

As I am wrapping up my capstone experience in Neurochemistry, I truly believe this course encompassed Concordia’s goals for liberal learning and what it means to BREW. But, before I tell you how these goals were met, I have to describe to you how this class worked because it was like no other class I have previously taken. Every week, we examined a specific article that dealt with a disease or condition that affected the brain, specifically the chemistry or signaling pathways, which was the underlying effect that caused the symptoms we superficially see.

Monday: we came to class with a general understanding of the research article of the week. Everyone read the given article over the previous weekend, and prepared answers to provided questions about the article. We were also asked to come with questions about the article. It was not hard to come up with questions, as most of these articles were very intricate and detailed. At the end of ever Monday, after discussing the article and gaining a better understanding of the literature, we, as a class, came up with questions that we wanted to explore to further better our understanding of the current article. We assigned ourselves to each question to answer for Wednesday.

Wednesday: we came to class after researching our question from Monday. Wednesdays were known as “speed dating.” There was an outer circle and an inner circle. The inner circle rotated after about five minutes of discussing your findings with the partner.

Friday: we had group discussions. The class was split into halves on and each half was led by a few of our fellow classmates. Fridays were always enjoyable because the group discussions were laid back and we talked about the article of the week in light of the actual world.

Every week, we incorporated what liberal learning is all about-

1. Instill a love for learning.

Neurochemistry was all about self-learning. There was no textbook, no powepoints, nothing. The material you learned was through your own love and desire to learn. This is one thing that I loved about Neurochemistry. I would spend hours reading and vetting articles about the topics we covered, learning as much as I could.

2. Develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities.

Neurochemistry developed skills that I will use for many courses down the road, hopefully in medical school. For example, reading scientific literature takes practice to fully understand. The learning in this course, from my experience, was from scientific literature because the diseases and conditions we discussed are all topics of intense current scientific research. The second half of this goal references “transferable intellectual capacities.” I perceive this as not only using the information in the course in other intellectual capacities, but also transferring your own knowledge in a manner in which other people can understand. This was a major topic in neurochemistry. We spent a lot of time trying to effectively communicate our findings to the rest of a class. This is a challenge because most people get bored or tune out scientific talk/jargon. Therefore, this class was very beneficial in ways that I can use to talk about science with people who do not have a scientific background.

3. Develop an understanding of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives and their connections

Neurochemistry can be applied to many other areas of science and the world. One of my favorite sayings, which comes from a Time magazine I read back from when I was around 5^th grade, is “you are your brain.” This phrase has stuck with me and it seemed extremely relevant in neurochemistry. So, because we are our brains, and this course was learning about the chemistry and signaling of the brain, I believe this course touched on nearly every scholarly disciplinary. There is not one subject in school that I can think of that does not have a neurochemistry undertone.

4. Cultivate an examined cultural, ethical, physical and spiritual self-understanding

During our group discussions on Fridays, which were my favorite, we often discussed how our western lifestyle seemed to be an underlying factor for how our brains were altering. We examined ethics of certain medications, or one Friday we discussed the implications of physician-assisted suicide for patients with terminal illnesses such as ALS. This was a somber and heavy discussion, but it is a real-world issue nonetheless. We talked about death, and sometimes our own religions compared to others and what that does for our belief-system.

5. Encourage responsible participation in the world

Lastly, our capstone project allowed us to reach out to the Fargo/Moorhead community. Personally, I was apart of the autism group. Our group decided to offer a student workshop that was geared toward education majors and working with students with autism as well as their parents. Although we had challenging times trying find a speaker, it all worked out as we found a fantastic person who fit our project perfectly. We worked with a mother who has a child with autism, and the experience was very humbling. The rest of the groups of our class had their own projects that acted with or for the community. Our projects actually helped people, they were not just presenting information to other students who are probably not paying attention anyway.

Ultimately, neurochemistry encompasses what it means to be a Cobber. As a Cobber who is graduated in the spring, we are constantly reminded to BREW- become responsibly engaged in the world. This is exactly what we did during my capstone experience. At Concordia College, and through this capstone experience, we are taught a much larger aspect than just grades. I know that as I leave Concordia with my diploma, I will be ready to BREW.

Throughout my experience in Neurochemistry this semester, I have had the opportunity to witness many of the topics that I have learned over the course of my college career at
Concordia come together and be applied to real-world situations and experiences.
Concepts from biochemistry, cell biology, human anatomy and physiology, and psychology intersected in many ways throughout the topics that we covered in Neurochemistry. Additionally, this course provided us the opportunity to work with students from the social work department, and also community members from various disciplines.

A Liberal Learning Experience

            This capstone course was the perfect culmination of applying the goals of liberal learning and using the knowledge and experiences I have gained over the past three years to discuss and analyze real-world issues. The first goal of liberal learning is to ‘instill a love for learning.’ I experienced this through the unique format in which Neurochemistry was taught. Instead of being a lecture-based class, obtaining knowledge came from collaboration of the whole class. For each week’s topic, our class read a research paper that discussed a given illness, disorder or disease we were focusing on. These papers were often challenging to understand completely because they are written at such a high level and included concepts, terms or topics that we may not have learned about. Each week, our class compiled a list of topics that we wanted to learn more about, and each of us researched a specific area. The following class period, we were responsible for teaching the others about the research we did and information we found. Prior to this course, I already did have a love of learning but the format of this course definitely taught me that there’s always something new that you can learn. Especially in the sciences, research is continuously developing and new discoveries are constantly being made.

The second goal of liberal learning is to ‘develop foundational skills and transferable intellectual capacities.’ This was achieved through our class discussions and blog posts. After covering each topic, the discussions that our class held at the end of every week helped us put everything together that we had learned throughout the week. This allowed us to wrap up any loose ends or questions that we encountered throughout the week while also discussing possible controversies and other perspectives on the topic of the week. Our weekly blog posts allowed us to share our knowledge and research from the week with the outside world. These blogs allowed us to include our own viewpoints on the topics as well as sharing our knowledge of the chemistry going on in the brain for these various topics.

Through the work completed in this course, I was able to understand disciplinary, interdisciplinary and intercultural perspectives which is the third goal of liberal learning.
During the community action project, we collaborated with social work students to benefit a group in the community. We educated direct-support professionals at Fraser on anxiety and PTSD, the neuroscience behind it, and methods to treat and cope with
these disorders. This experience allowed me to hear perspectives from other people besides my science-major classmates. I think when looking at the science behind illnesses and diseases, the fact that this is happening to real people can be sometimes be forgotten. It is important to recognize and address that there are social and emotional components when talking about neurological diseases, both for the patient and their family or caretaker. In this project, we were able to come together, each person bringing unique strengths, to come up with an effective project to educate professionals that work with individuals suffering from anxiety and PTSD.

The fourth goal of liberal learning was also accomplished through our class discussions and blog posts. This was done by conversing and debating different cultural and ethical perspectives in a respectful environment where everyone could share their personal views on the topic without judgement or criticism. The topics we discussed often had to do with differing morals and determining what was right or most fair for an individual. Additionally, the future of our country and world was also discussed with topics like obesity and addiction. We talked about changes that should be made to both the health care system and the role of the government to prevent these tragic health issues that are plaguing our country and the world’s population. If nothing is done to combat health issues such as these, there will be many detrimental health complications and likely a shorter life-span in generations to come.

BREW-ing!

            In summary of my experience in this course, I believe gained knowledge not only in the subject of neurochemistry, but how to actually use this knowledge along with everything else I have learned from my time at Concordia to be a valuable citizen to my communities. In today’s culture, knowledge is power; the more you know, the decisions you make are more informed and you are able to share that knowledge with others to create a more knowledgable community. This course provided me with the experience of being able to take things that I learned from the research papers and our class discussions and share that information with others in an easy-to-understand manner through the blog posts and also our community action project. I believe I have also achieved the last goal of liberal learning and truly ‘Become Responsibly Engaged in the World’ (BREW-ed) through this course and the past three and a half years at Concordia. I feel that I am ready to go out into the world and share my knowledge and perspective with others to make a difference in the lives of others.

Understanding Obesity: What Happens in Our Brain

One of the more common disorders that faces the public today is one that tends not to be thought of: obesity. Obesity involves having an excess amount of body fat but is much deeper than initially realized. There are many risk factors that are associated with being obese such as higher blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes, increased risk of heart disease, and many more. There is a way to reverse some of the changes that are coupled with obesity by losing weight but doing so may be much harder than you think.

Image 1: A small schematic that shows the way that weight can be gained in association with insulin and leptin receptors in the brain and throughout the body. Although very simplified, it portrays the message.

Source: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/307/5708/375

Often not thought of when dealing with obesity, the brain plays a large role in the disorder. Certain diets influence brain structure, causing hypothalamic swelling and changes in receptors. Two receptors play a pivotal role in obesity: leptin and insulin. These two receptors, also found throughout the body, are known to be apart of appetite suppression pathways. The dysregulation and inhibition of these receptors can lead to overeating, as there are no signal being sent or received that an individual is full. Eventually the energy that is being consumed isn’t needed by the body and is stored in fat, leading to weight gain and eventual obesity. Obesity is a complex disorder that researchers are still trying to understand. Right now, we know that a way that aids individuals is losing weight, but there are difficulties associated with that as well.

What is Weight Cycling?

Weight cycling is the repeated cycles of weight loss and eventual gain back. Many people who are attempting to lose weight end up falling into this cycle. In a normal brain, leptin is released from adaposity and acts as a signal to stop eating, binding the in brain. As well know, that doesn’t happen in obesity making it hard to lose weight by stopping eating so much.

Image 2: The infographic shows the problem that just American’s have with weight cycling and how many people truly have issues losing weight.

Source:https://medium.com/@chris.tsai/why-weight-cycling-is-the-pivotal-problem-of-obesity-e294006d2e54

One of the ways that people are encouraged to lose weight is by exercising and of course dieting. There is an issue with dieting however, it is very easy to gain the weight back one lost. When this becomes a pattern is when it’s issue and can lead to many problems in an individual’s health. Another term for this is the yo-yo diet and is a bigger issue than you might think.

“Yo-yo” diet

One of the biggest causes of yo-yo diets, or weight cycling, is binging. Once an individual has lost weight, this restriction of enjoyable food often higher the reward, they are susceptible to binge. Often the regaining of weight when dieting can be due to:

• The food they are surrounded by
• Response to new food supply
• Adaptive thermogenesis (the amount of calories that are burned lowers with weight loss and often is paired with an increased drive to eat food)

Image 3: A depiction of how the yo-yo diet can happen. 

Source: https://slideplayer.com/slide/8926242/

This being said, there are adverse side effects that can occur when weight cycling. These include:

• Gut dysfunction
• Psychological frustration
• Muscle loss
• Fatty liver
• Many of the symptoms that are associated with obesity

Overall, it comes down to this; some suggest that losing weight but not being able to keep it off may be worse than being overweight. Although, yes, weight loss can reverse many of these effects, unless it stays off your body is just under constant stress because of changes in major systems.

Where do we go from here?

There is evidence that the yo-yo diet, or weight cycle is bad for an individual’s health. But should that stop someone from attempting to lose weight? That depends on many intrinsic factors that I can’t tell you about. All information considered, it is important to know the risks that are associated with weight cycling when attempting to lose weight, no matter what your size is. That is the only way that you can make an informed decision for yourself to eventually be the best you that you can be.

Sources:

https://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/0517p18.shtml

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7741844

https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/yo-yo-dieting-what-it-and-how-it-can-wreck-your-body/

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/yo-yo-dieting

The abuse of marijuana is a highly prevalent in the US society, as there is a major push for legalization for recreational usage. This results in a high potential for abuse to obtain the “high” and euphoric effects from THC. This results in a major stigma for doing research and attempting to utilize endocannabinoids for medical applications. One solution to this would be to completely change the form of administering THC, by changing the face of it from smoking something to another means. This would reduce the seemingly abusive nature of the drug. This would give more control to the pharmaceutical industry to better control dosage and administration of THC and CBD.

The glamorization of smoking marijuana is glamorized in our culture, by stripping away the abusive nature and controlling THC content, this may result in a more acceptable means of legalization of THC for medical applications. As the usage of CBD offers many of the positive effects of THC, however without the euphoria. This would potentially limit people from abusing the medically administered CBD and THC, as the content of THC could be controlled to meet the minimum dosage for treating a patient, thus by decreasing THC, the euphoria and abusive nature of the drug is severely hampered.

Another question that seems to be irrelevant to many Americans is the  double sided outlook on smoking. Many young adults seem to discourage usage of cigarettes, however the concept of smoking marijuana and vaping further socialize our culture. Many Americans utilize the argument that smoking marijuana isn’t bad, and their claims are there’s no research as to it causing harmful effects. However, it has been shown to cause serious issues with the developing adolescent brain. Unfortunately many see the euphoria of the drug, rather than the potential future outcomes of its abuse.

With the current schedule system, marijuana is ranked I, this prevents research of it, this could be due to the wide range of other drugs that are synthetic cannabinoids that feature a more abusive and dangerous implications upon their usage. By potentially reclassifying THC to a schedule II drug, this would allow for more research to better understand the underlying benefits and harms that its usage entails.