Circadian Rhythms

In humans, circadian rhythms are set to about 24.5 hours. The circadian rhythm is the internal clock that regulates the body's metabolism. If some people are left in a completely dark basement for a week, they will wake up each morning about half an hour later. (For some people this is what happens during the week end).

How does the circadian rhythm work?

In a very simplified schema, this is what happens:

The biological clock is reset every morning at dawn by having sunlight excite a system of cells responsive to light: the photosensitive ganglion cells. These cells are different from the rodes or cones used in vision, as with them you wouldn't be able to see anything. (image)

Once the photosensitive ganglion cells are activated they send electrical impulses via the use of melanopsin, to a part of the brain, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (in the hyppothalamus), who's role is to regulate hormone secretions in the body.

Now, at a genetic level, in the morning a set of genes are expressed, forming diamers (two molecules working together) in the cytoplasm. At night, those same diamers go back in the nucleus and turn off the transcription process. (For a more scientific article on a sleep disorder related to gene transcription look here).

I believe that more research on circadian rhtythms in humans might lead to a big improvements of health (by restoring healthy metabolism) and mood disorders.

There is another very interesting blog on the subject: look here.

UCLA Circadian Rhythm Research

Today I listened to a presentation given by Professor Colwell of UCLA about his research on circadian rhythms.

Circadian rhythms are really interesting as they affect every cell of the body. They affect your metabolism, general health, mood.....

What I found particularly interesting was the fact that disruption of circadian rhythms, in mice for example, can induce type II diabetes, mood disorders, cardiovascular diseases, memory loss (on humans, the subjects can learn, but not remember afterwards), and cancers (predominantly breast cancer).

When looking at mood disorders or neurological disorders, one of the first symptom that bothers patients is the inability to sleep regularly. In the case of Parkinson's disease for example, sleep disorders occur up to 15 years before other symptoms. One of Dr. Coldwell theories relates to whether treating circadian rhythms could offset the appearance of other symptoms of Parkinson's.

As a side note, other labs are conducting research on how night shifts affect nurses, and the prevalence of cancers.

Dr. Coldwell is a faculty at the UCLA school of medicine in the department of psychiatry.

he is currently conducting research on circadian rhythms.

Hobbies and Past Time

This is an exert from the book "A Meaningful Life" by Nikkyo Niwano.

For someone who cannot find fulfillment in his/her job, if the hobby is not well chosen his/her life might be insipid.

He (she) must choose his hobby or leisure past time carefully with the following criteria in mind. First, it must be something worthy of his total devotion, something to give meaning to his life. Second, it must be something with appeal to last a lifetime. Third, it must be something that, while elevating his own personality, makes a contribution, even a small one, to the world at large.

If you are like me, you will probably find these statement very eloquent, but not really answering your questions. I think anyone would like to find meaning and fulfillment in what he/she does.

But it seems that to me and the people around me it its the first part, that "meaningful" something, that is hard to find; be it as work or past time.

While I don't know if it is "meaningful" , or "makes a contribution to the world" to me Kendo seems to be an answer that matches most points. It is meaningful in the sense that it provides for physical exercise that I don't get anywhere else. It offers a "mental education/strengthening" in that particular way Japanese martial arts do. Also, providing I have a Kendo club close to where I live, I can pursue Kendo for as long as my body lets me. Finally, if I do get better at at Kendo, I suppose I could make my "small contribution" by helping new people at Kendo. (Image taken from this website.)

Lotto

What would you do if your dream depended on winning the lotto? Would you keep on playing against all odds?

If I was asked this question, I would probably reason that playing the lotto is the most unreasonable idea, and probably the best way to waste your life waiting for something that may never come (and possibly loosing a lot of money in the meantime).

However, this is what I am doing. Really, the only way for me to get into Med school is if I get the Green Card (diversity visa). The only way for me to get the Green Card is through the annual (once a year) "lottery" administered by the US government. That is, out of 13.6 million qualified entries 50 000 will be randomly picked and receive a green card (see results for 2010 applicants.)

The reason why I need this Green Card is because only 50 medical school in the US would even consider the application of an International student. Furthermore, for visa purposes, I need to show that I have enough money to pay for all expenses prior to receiving my visa, and without any loans... I just don't have that money....

So, what do I do? If I don't "win" this year (the results will be out in July), I will have to either leave the country (if I "win" I will receive the visa one year later) or be employed (and work visas are really hard to get...)

1. Do I keep on expending time and energy on the MCAT and med schools, hoping that somehow I will win the Lotto? (And if I don't leave the country with nothing much to show.)
2. Or do I put med school in the background, and focus on a different career path (research?) keeping an open mind in case I do get the Green Card.

Option #2 seems the most reasonable, but I just don't know what else to do... The reason I went back to school after my architectural license was to become a doctor. I want to be there, directly helping someone.

Kaplan Free Medical School Insider Event

I received an e-mail from about a Kaplan Free Medical School Insider Event live event online on how to get into med school. Apparently it is a one time only thing on Tuesday, May 11th at 7:30 pm Eastern time. (That makes 4:30 pm on the west coast :-)

According to the website, the live event will cover the following topics:

Medical school admissions officers, alumni, and students will discuss:

• The most important medical school admissions factors
• Strategies for creating a successful medical school application
• Which medical schools you should apply to
• Evaluating career options while you're in medical school

While the purpose of this event is to get prospective MCAT applicants to enroll in the Kaplan prep courses, I believe it is a good opportunity to get some information.

I also think it is a really good opportunity for international students living outside of the US right but planing to attend a US medical school to get some insight on the whole process.

So if you are interested, join for free: Kaplan Free Medical School Insider Event

For More information, also visit this forum from studentdoctor.net

From the Creator of Wikipremed Himself

It can be a difficult choice to choose between MCAT prep-courses. That is specially true when you decide to study on your own.

Now, in a previous post, I talked about Wikipremed. Some people might wonder if a free website is all that reliable when it comes to a big money market such as the MCAT. Being a student myself, I am not the best person to answer that question, so I decided to copy some words from the creator of Wikipremed himself. (The original post can be found here.)

Before I do that, I would like to comment that since 2009 when the original post was written, the videos have been added, and they a great way to catch up on the basic concepts. In them he also goes over some problems and solves then step-by-step.

So here it is:

/-------------

Hi Everyone,

This is John Wetzel. I'm the creator of WikiPremed. I noticed some visitors inbound from this post, so I thought I'd drop in and give my point of view on the progress of the site.

How you prepare for the MCAT is a big choice. Whether Kaplan, Princeton Review, a website like mine, the creators of your method for MCAT are like guides you hire on a long journey. A family heading out on the Oregon trail in the 19th century had a big choice in choosing their guide to get them across the continent. Would the guide be able to get them across the Plains? Across the Sierras? Do they really know the way? There is a lot of fear in the decision.

A big problem in MCAT review is that, for the most part, everything is private and proprietary. There is no peer review. A big reason why I decided to spend over a decade on this project is that the general lack of accountability in the field has led to poor quality in my opinion. I don't feel that current offerings come close to helping students realize their true potential. My feeling is that preparing for the MCAT gives a student the opportunity in comprehensive review to get further in understanding, to go deeper, not just to recapitulate the 101 curriculum, but to unify your scientific understanding within a structured knowledge base, where your chemistry comes out of your physics, and your biological sciences stand solidly on your physical sciences, so I have my opinion of the quality of the standard fare, the courses, the books, and all that, and for the most part (with a few exceptions), I feel like it's not all that ambitious or effective.

What are my credentials? I made a 38 on the MCAT in 1994. I am a Stanford graduate. As an MCAT instructor, I taught small groups of students about a course I created in a small company in Atlanta called MCAT Academy from 1994 to 1998, about fifty teaching cycles. Since 1998, I have gotten up in the wee hours every morning and worked to build WikiPremed. For phases of the project, I have said, this will take me two years, that will take me three years. I am a real live crank in the basement.

Is Wikipremed reliable? No! It's not finished. It's not all there yet. Next year . . .

This is not to say you could not structure your program based on the site. Plan a study cycle through the topics in their order on the site, the 'All Sciences' order, and read the coaching discussions that go along with that (about 900 discussions), and you will understand your physical and biological sciences more deeply.

At least make it through the Physics Learning System (500 concept and question flash cards). These took me 3 years to create. I am certain that this work represents the best preparation for the physics on the exam.

The organic mechanisms and explanations are also very good, and also the crossword puzzles, the physical science problem sets, and the question server (for building conceptual vocabulary). But things are a bit undercooked. With the organic mechanisms, for example, I need to add a function to highlight the 25 mechanisms that you NEED TO KNOW backwards and forwards (free radical halogenation, electrophilic addition of X2 to alkenes, SN2 substitution, aldol condensation, etc), so that you can relax a bit about the other 50, which you need to be familiar with. Right now there isn't any guidance to save a student from the feeling that they need to memorize Hoffman rearrangement. So there's a great deal of work to do.

Also, an entire free video course is coming soon. Hopefully within the the next couple of weeks these will start rolling out. For the viewer of the video course, it will be as if you are participating in a small group course. About half of the raw recordings are done. Now I need to do editing and rendering. Hopefully the whole course will be online by mid summer.

Next year, I hope to be able to say, yes, you can completely rely on WikiPremed as the best preparation for the MCAT. At WikiPremed, nothing is for sale at the site now, but to be straightforward, the business model will depend on students purchasing a couple of printed items while participating in the course, but almost everything for sale will be in a free form on the site in digital form, so we'll see how that goes! For the Physics System, for example, having the actual cards seems to allow for a different kind of attention than the online view, so I'm hopeful at least of the site becoming a decent business. Purchases will not serve as barriers though. It is a central mission of mine that anyone anywhere in the world will be able to go to WikiPremed and receive a solid education in the concepts of undergraduate physical and biological sciences without paying any money. I'm going to try to keep advertising very minimal.

In summary, while WikiPremed is not complete, for now, I think you can help yourself by using the site as a supplementary study vehicle and as a guide for your overall strategy. If you take the time with the syllabus (which isn't finished) and study the topics in the main cycle sequence of WikiPremed, you will find yourself making the connections in your scientific knowledge base corresponding to the superior understanding that goes with a great MCAT score.

Good luck everybody! Write to me some time.

John Wetzel

/--------------------

(Again, the original post can be found here.)

Personally, I think it really is a great website, and you can complement your self-study with the Examkrackers Mcat Complete Study Package

so I think it's really comprehensive.

MCAT self-study

In a previous post I wrote that one of my goals for this year was to study for the MCAT. For monetary reasons, I plan to self-study for the MCAT.

The following is the main tool I plan to use for this purpose:

I found a really useful website for people like me who want to study on their own for a minimum price: Wikipremed.

Wikipremed is completely free and open to all. It contains video tutorials, a step-by-step "module" approach, and practice problems meant to guide you through every step of your review.

Studying for the MCAT alone can seem like a daunting task. "Where do I start?" "What books should I use?" "What is the best timetable to review everything?".

Using a system like wikipremed can help you save time (from making the schedule yourself) and energy (you don't have to worry about whether or not you are on the right track, ...)

The video tutorials are meant to not only offer a basic review of the important concepts for the MCAT, but they also try to connect the different concepts (physics, chemistry, ...) together.

The "homework" consists of word puzzles, practice problems, and practice problem from the Examkrackers series.

My Three Goals

I've decided to focus my life around 3 things:

1. Keep my grades high and improve my GPA - Having good grades reflects who I am, boosts my self-confidence and keeps many doors open for the future.
2. Study for the MCAT - Good MCAT scores open the door to med school.
3. Practice Kendo - I really enjoy it, it keeps my stamina up, relieves stress, and builds my character.

I would like to do this by spending as much free time as I have on one of these three topics.

What is meaningful?

While talking with a friend, I realized that the word "meaningful," when referring to life, could mean very different things to different people.

Here are a number of possible "meaningful lives":

• To acquire a skill that has the capacity of influencing a large number of people.
• Saving/helping many people.
• Doing something so incredible that your name is remembered by history.
• To be able to sustain one's family.
• ...

When I wrote down the title of this blog, my idea of a meaningful life was somewhat different. In order to explain this feeling, I need to regress a little into the chain of events leading to the creation of this blog.

I am a "successful" student. I study well and get good grades. I do what I am supposed to do (as a student) when the time is right. I can set goals, make plans, and follow them. But somehow it does not make me happy. It is true that achieving a goal, or finishing a project makes me feel good about myself (for sure much better than if I had failed). But it does not make me happy.

During the whole process I know how to "make myself" interested and find reasons why what I am doing is so cool. The problem is, ... I feel empty inside.

For sure this is not the feeling one would expect from a fulfilled, meaningful life.

I realized that, from a very subjective point of view, it is not what I do that makes me feel fulfilled, but how I feel while doing something.

Helping a handicapped person open a door, is more fulfilling to me than sitting down the whole day in front of a computer in a stable, well paid job (I am an architect too).

So I ask myself this question, " In life, what do I have but my feelings? What do I carry around with me, what follows me everywhere, around every corner, every moment? It's the way I feel. Day or night, awake or asleep, feelings are living at the same speed as I am. For as far as I am concerned, I cannot distinguish my conscious experience of life from the way I feel. My feelings are who I am. They are the ink telling the story.

Those feelings are influenced by my actions, by what I do and how I choose to live my life.

So to me a meaningful life is not an evaluation of what I've done, but how fulfilled I've felt.

The Beginning

Living is magical... but it doesn't always feel this way.

I decided to go back to college because I wanted to learn a skill, or something that would answer my need to live a fulfilling life.

However, after the first year of great interest in my classes, fatigue kicked in and the interest got lost under the weight and pressure of studying for a grade (an A, and nothing else).

Boredom filled the space outside of study hours and I erred completely oblivious to that filling of awe and fulfillment that I was aiming for.

Almost two years later, it feels like I am on the verge of waking up from this wandering.

Somehow, recently, I remembered that there was a time when "being the best", "making the most money as I can in life" were not my main preoccupations. I remembered that there was a time when I did what I wanted because it felt that that was ME. This feeling of authenticity with myself was so strong that I thought nothing would prevent me from being happy.

Shortly after this episode, I stumbled upon a book, "The Meaningful Life" by Nikkyo Niwano.

This is The Beginning of this blog. While I am still a student, and while I am still aiming for As, I want to spend some time, regularly, to focus on the things that somehow "resonate" in me and drive my passion for Life.

If you are reading this post, I'd be happy to read about your thoughts. Just drop a comment :-)