Technological progress: better hearing than normal hearing

[HH scientist]

We are not victims to our DNA nor to our genetic predispositions. Most definately, psychological factors can influence genetics. Inf act, psychological factors can create actual biological changes in the brain. They also have a huge effect on immune systems.

I am following what you are saying. The psychological state of mind of a person most certainly has an effect on various parts of the body, the immune system being one of them.

DNA is very conservative and barely changes throughout lifetime (except in cancer cells). It is the gene regulation thing that is relevant here. I remember being depressed, about 10 years perhaps. After being 'cured', I remember that heavy fog in my mind just vanishing and it was a great thing. That must have been due to a changed protein production in my cells, thus gene regulation.

I also have diabetes type 1, but there is no change in DNA, only gene regulation, because my pancreas could produce insulin normally during the first 13 years of my life.

 

[deafskeptic]

Children who are raised in poverty has a higher risk for alll kinds of diseases. A sick child does not create the poverty. It was there before they got sick.

Children raised in poverty most often become adults stuck in poverty. They are more susceptible to disease by virtue of their poverty ridden childhood. Not only are they more susceptible, due to the innadequate conditions under which they were raised, they are more at risk for developing life threatening consequence.

Speaking of poverty, many of the poor in this country have no access to some emergency services for things like dental emergenices or health insurance.

 

[jillio]

I am following what you are saying. The psychological state of mind of a person most certainly has an effect on various parts of the body, the immune system being one of them.

DNA is very conservative and barely changes throughout lifetime (except in cancer cells). It is the gene regulation thing that is relevant here. I remember being depressed, about 10 years perhaps. After being 'cured', I remember that heavy fog in my mind just vanishing and it was a great thing. That must have been due to a changed protein production in my cells, thus gene regulation.

I also have diabetes type 1, but there is no change in DNA, only gene regulation, because my pancreas could produce insulin normally during the first 13 years of my life.

Ah, but it does change in cancer cells, and there have been some remarkable recoveries from cancer. The mind body connection is an important facet in any treatment for any chronic disease. Research has shown over and over that the most effective treatments occur in patients with proper psychological factors in place. While it may not reverse your diabetes, it most certainly can affect the overall impact it has on you by influencing your system's response.

 

[jillio]

Speaking of poverty, many of the poor in this country have no access to some emergency services for things like dental emergenices or health insurance.

Exactly.

 

[HH scientist]

Ah, but it does change in cancer cells, and there have been some remarkable recoveries from cancer.

The immune system does not properly detect cancer cells to kill them because they are not 'foreign'. It can detect bacteria and cells infected by viruses and kill those cells (not always, that is why HIV endures).

Cancer cells have all kinds of weird mutations everywhere. Mutations occur regularly and naturally in the body, but cancer cells have a tendency to lose their DNA repair system so things go awry after a while.

Check my post 85 if you want to see the cost of DNA sequencing falling. Lower costs mean that it becomes affordable to see what kind of mutations have occurred in cancer cells. That is useful for getting the right treatment. This cannot be done today (only in experiments). And notice that I not a doctor or pharmacologist for giving advice to patients. I am just an observer of things happening in society.

The mind body connection is an important facet in any treatment for any chronic disease. Research has shown over and over that the most effective treatments occur in patients with proper psychological factors in place. While it may not reverse your diabetes, it most certainly can affect the overall impact it has on you by influencing your system's response.

No, thoughts alone cannot cure diabetes, but it surely helps delaying damage that occurs over long time, decades, provided that you get proper treatment too. Good self esteem helps you to get organized and get things done.

 

[jillio]

The immune system does not properly detect cancer cells to kill them because they are not 'foreign'. It can detect bacteria and cells infected by viruses and kill those cells (not always, that is why HIV endures).

Cancer cells have all kinds of weird mutations everywhere. Mutations occur regularly and naturally in the body, but cancer cells have a tendency to lose their DNA repair system so things go awry after a while.

Check my post 85 if you want to see the cost of DNA sequencing falling. Lower costs mean that it becomes affordable to see what kind of mutations have occurred in cancer cells. That is useful for getting the right treatment. This cannot be done today (only in experiments). And notice that I not a doctor or pharmacologist for giving advice to patients. I am just an observer of things happening in society.



No, thoughts alone cannot cure diabetes, but it surely helps delaying damage that occurs over long time, decades, provided that you get proper treatment too. Good self esteem helps you to get organized and get things done.

And once they loose their DNA, they are detected as foreign bodies by a healthy immune system. A malfunctioning immune system is very much a part of someone with a predisposition to developing cancer. That immune system can be malfunctioning for any number of reasons, but one of the most common is chronic stress that increases cortisol levels and decreases immune system response.

I am actually referring to more than just thoughts when I speak of psychological constructs that have been shown to be protective against disease. Although thoughts regarding how we view our disease are certainly an important factor.

That being said, I will ask this: does liviing in poverty increase chronic stress?

 

[HH scientist]

And once they loose their DNA, they are detected as foreign bodies by a healthy immune system. A malfunctioning immune system is very much a part of someone with a predisposition to developing cancer. That immune system can be malfunctioning for any number of reasons, but one of the most common is chronic stress that increases cortisol levels and decreases immune system response.

To correct my previous post, cancer cells are detected by the immune system but ineffectively in some cases. Otherwise, cancer would not exist.

That being said, I will ask this: does liviing in poverty increase chronic stress?

I can only imagine what it is like having a stressful job with lots of talk with colleagues and/or customers. I am not in that position now, luckily.

But for a while I had that type of job and spent a long time being unemployed while applying for jobs. As a diabetic, I have to think about my blood sugar level 24/7, and trying to write job applications as a diabetic is a short cut to disaster. I had to be constantly worried: is there something wrong with me? Why am not getting a job? Basically, I was trying to avoid jobs to do that require verbal communication (not good if you are deaf or HOH) or a lot of shifting attention (not good if you are a diabetic).

Stressful thinking makes it difficult to get a job, particularly a 'good' job for which you compete with lots of other people who have no diseases. I cannot say that I am poor, but I am sure that it causes stress because you are not in control of your life. That is my experience.

I managed to find this article about how stress affects memory: Neuroscience and social deprivation: I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told | The Economist. It is interesting.

Stress is not the only thing affected by poverty. Another thing is the telomeres. They protect the ends of the chromosomes and when they are gone, they die. If your cells die, you age, so shortening telemores affect aging. Check this paper: Stress can shorten telomeres in childhood : Nature News. Conversely, if cells somehow maintain and repair their telomeres too much, they might keep living too long. This can cause cancer.

And, oh, if stress and shorter telomeres are the result of living in poverty, then the next generation will be affected too. But that is no secret.

 

[jillio]

To correct my previous post, cancer cells are detected by the immune system but ineffectively in some cases. Otherwise, cancer would not exist.



I can only imagine what it is like having a stressful job with lots of talk with colleagues and/or customers. I am not in that position now, luckily.

But for a while I had that type of job and spent a long time being unemployed while applying for jobs. As a diabetic, I have to think about my blood sugar level 24/7, and trying to write job applications as a diabetic is a short cut to disaster. I had to be constantly worried: is there something wrong with me? Why am not getting a job? Basically, I was trying to avoid jobs to do that require verbal communication (not good if you are deaf or HOH) or a lot of shifting attention (not good if you are a diabetic).

Stressful thinking makes it difficult to get a job, particularly a 'good' job for which you compete with lots of other people who have diseases. I cannot say that I am poor, but I am sure that it causes stress because you are not in control of your life. That is my experience.

I managed to find this article about how stress affects memory: Neuroscience and social deprivation: I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told | The Economist. It is interesting.

Stress is not the only thing affected by poverty. Another thing is the telomeres. They protect the ends of the chromosomes and when they are gone, they die. If your cells die, you age, so shortening telemores affect aging. Check this paper: Stress can shorten telomeres in childhood : Nature News. Conversely, if cells somehow maintain and repair their telomeres too much, they might keep living too long. This can cause cancer.

And, oh, if stress and shorter telomeres are the result of living in poverty, then the next generation will be affected too. But that is no secret.

Thanks for the links. I tend to stick to the neuroscience journals rather than the economic journals when reading articles about neuroscience.

 

[deafdyke]

Thanks for pointing that out and I respect your opinion. I started with the idea that both deaf and HOH are quite similar.

As for myself, I hear nothing in public at all when people speak. I never pick up what someone standing next to me is saying in a store for example. I can speak with a few people at most standing nearby me and they sometimes have to repeat themselves. And it must be silent in the background.

I must admit that I have never known any other deaf or HOH person before apart from an old grandmother, so I do not know anything about other people's experience and opinions.

I suppose that deaf people have a simpler relationship to their condition. They do not have to pretend to act like a hearing person. But I have always lived in the world of hearing people. Tell me if I am wrong.

And there is sunshine, football, pubbing, etc in this world to look forward to. So much more than merely discussing deafness and hearing disability.

Hmmmm......maybe your attitude is due to being "auditory verbalized" Believe me, I know how it is. I used to HATE being HOH. I remember I thought I was the ONLY hoh kid in the universe, and really wanted to be hearing. Even underwent surgery (atresia repair...born without eardrums) But very luckily it did not work, and then I disocvered Deaf culture and Deaf Schools and ASL....Maybe you should get involved in the ISL world and embrace your Deaf side.

 

[HH scientist]

Thanks for the links. I tend to stick to the neuroscience journals rather than the economic journals when reading articles about neuroscience.

The Economist is an all-purpose paper. They write about all sorts of things, but mainly politics and economics.

Another positive thing is that the editorial has the guts (not shy) to criticize people in the right wing camp if need be, although the political profile is right wing itself. I like this magazine.

 

[HH scientist]

We are not victims to our DNA nor to our genetic predispositions. Most definately, psychological factors can influence genetics. Inf act, psychological factors can create actual biological changes in the brain. They also have a huge effect on immune systems.

I did not know that. Thanks a lot for telling me. Fewer colds if my psychological state mind is positive and stable.

 

[VacationGuy234]

I am not an audiologist or anything. I think that we have to understand how the nervous system works properly before making cochlear implants useful. As far as I understand, no cochlear implant has ever been better than two normal ears

I tend to agree with this, not because the cochlear is superior(although it is truly amazing), but because of the way the brain interacts with it. The brain filters out sound based on need for information and there is a lot more to that than just sound selection. This is why even though your brain is filtering out background noise, it detects and processes it so you can pick up something in the background, a daunting task.

 

[HH scientist]

I tend to agree with this, not because the cochlear is superior(although it is truly amazing), but because of the way the brain interacts with it. The brain filters out sound based on need for information and there is a lot more to that than just sound selection. This is why even though your brain is filtering out background noise, it detects and processes it so you can pick up something in the background, a daunting task.

A few years ago in a psychological experience, there was some example of people watching a video of a basketball game and then there was a guy dressed up as a monkey walking across the screen. But the audience did not notice him. The reason was that they were too busy watching the game and some cognitive process filtered out everything else. That is how the brain works generally, by choosing a particular input amongst lots of signals.

I can imagine that the next generation CIs will be much better than the current generation. And at some stage it will feature precise communication with brain cells. What generation do we have now: 1, 2, 3, ... ?

The way that today's CI electrodes communicate with cells is probably something like analog TV and analog mobile phones in the past. Once you make something digital, you get the increasing performance of Moore's law and better products every six months rather than once a decade. CIs contain microprocessors and electronics and that is digital. But the way that they transmit signals to cells is by definition analog and this is messy, not particularly effective.

 

[HH scientist]

Speaking of poverty, many of the poor in this country have no access to some emergency services for things like dental emergenices or health insurance.

It is a shame. The world ought to do better than that.

 

[jillio]

The Economist is an all-purpose paper. They write about all sorts of things, but mainly politics and economics.

Another positive thing is that the editorial has the guts (not shy) to criticize people in the right wing camp if need be, although the political profile is right wing itself. I like this magazine.

I will have to check it out more often. But I still think I will stick to my professional journals for research reports.

 

[jillio]

I tend to agree with this, not because the cochlear is superior(although it is truly amazing), but because of the way the brain interacts with it. The brain filters out sound based on need for information and there is a lot more to that than just sound selection. This is why even though your brain is filtering out background noise, it detects and processes it so you can pick up something in the background, a daunting task.

MMMMM...not quite accurate.

 

[jillio]

A few years ago in a psychological experience, there was some example of people watching a video of a basketball game and then there was a guy dressed up as a monkey walking across the screen. But the audience did not notice him. The reason was that they were too busy watching the game and some cognitive process filtered out everything else. That is how the brain works generally, by choosing a particular input amongst lots of signals.

I can imagine that the next generation CIs will be much better than the current generation. And at some stage it will feature precise communication with brain cells. What generation do we have now: 1, 2, 3, ... ?

The way that today's CI electrodes communicate with cells is probably something like analog TV and analog mobile phones in the past. Once you make something digital, you get the increasing performance of Moore's law and better products every six months rather than once a decade. CIs contain microprocessors and electronics and that is digital. But the way that they transmit signals to cells is by definition analog and this is messy, not particularly effective.

You are referring to split attention tasks.

And you are also correct in your comparison to early analog T.V.

 

[HH scientist]

I will have to check it out more often. But I still think I will stick to my professional journals for research reports.

I would not call The Economist, or any other social sciences magazine, authoritative. It serves the role of an amplifier for highlighting some piece of news. It is a good complement sometimes, but not a substitute. And they are good at clarifying things for a general audience which is lacking in science magazines.

BTW, I just found out that I could not read the article to which my link refers. Instead, I see a request on my screen to pay for reading the article. There is a quick fix for this: remove the cookie from the Economist in your browser, and refresh the browser by pressing F5.

 

[DeafBadger]

How does disease cause poverty? I am interested in your train of thought here.

Prosperity is linked to productivity. If people produce things, they can trade them to others for the things they want. Today, we trade our productivity for money, which we use to trade for the things we want.

Disease affects prosperity in that it exacts a cost in productivity. A sick person cannot produce as much and contribute as much to their own prosperity. A dead person also cannot.

Some diseases are so vicious, that it requires the productive output of a whole family (or more) to treat. If it is a disease that afflicts a lot of people, then it affects the productive output of whole regions, even countries. This means there is less to spend on necessities and lifestyle.

The treatment of disease redirects the productive output to things that don't pull people out of poverty.

For example, if a family spends most of their productive output (or money) on treating disease in their family, that means that they might not be able to buy an air conditioner, a car, their own house instead of renting, better clothes, better food, etc. In this sense, disease takes away from their productive wealth and contributes to poverty.

This is how disease is a cause poverty (not the only cause). If people spend all their production on disease, there's little to nothing left to spend on the things they need or want that are markers of prosperity.

If cancer was suddenly and totally cured, forever, all those billions (trillions?) of dollars in research right now would go somewhere else. We would all experience greater prosperity because of it. There would be that much less poverty.

Part of the solution to poverty is in reducing the costs of living relative to our productivity. We don't need as much to live a good life on, if the costs are lower. Diseases are extremely expensive. Thus their impact on the lives of people in poverty is greater because they are working with a much smaller margin. But what if diseases were largely eradicated? Even people with a smaller margin could live a relatively comfortable and prosperous life, which is largely a question of lifestyle than actual numbers in the bank. Numbers in the bank matter only in proportion to what the costs of living are.

That's how I understand it anyway....

 

[deafskeptic]

I would not call The Economist, or any other social sciences magazine, authoritative. It serves the role of an amplifier for highlighting some piece of news. It is a good complement sometimes, but not a substitute. And they are good at clarifying things for a general audience which is lacking in science magazines.

BTW, I just found out that I could not read the article to which my link refers. Instead, I see a request on my screen to pay for reading the article. There is a quick fix for this: remove the cookie from the Economist in your browser, and refresh the browser by pressing F5.

I'll have to keep this one in mind.