The Learning Blog

From Medscape Medical News

A study presented at the Society of Behavioral Medicine meeting reported that women’s blood pressure lowers faster after an apology from an insult than men.

The study tries to investigate the physiological effects of forgiveness in real-time situation as opposed in some previous studies where transgressions were imagined.

79 participants (29 men and 50 women) were tested for levels of forgiving using the Forgiving Personality Inventory. The participants were tasked to perform a mathematical problem and were subjected to multiple interruptions interjecting with insulting remarks.

The Forgiving Personality Inventory assesses a person’s forgiving personality.

40 of the participants received an apology from the experimenter.

Those who had higher forgiveness score showed faster recovery of the diastolic blood pressure (DBP = 4.88 mm Hg) and mean arterial pressure (MAP = 3.96 mm Hg) after the apology.

Additionally, women who scored high in forgiveness had lower DBP when compared with lower scores.  Women who received an apology recover faster than those who did not. In men, the effect was reversed – those who receive an apology had higher DBP and MAP than those who did not.

In short, the study gives as a real-time view of what happens in individuals who were provoked and were either apologized or not. With this, an individual who was insulted or harmed and received an apology experienced greater reduction of stress on the heart but the health benefits of this is however sex-dependent.

Comment:

Forgiveness, as McCullough and Witvliet observed, has one common denominator: When one forgives, their responses (what they feel, think, do and behave) towards the people who have offended or harmed them becomes less negative and more positive or prosocial over time.

I’m sure all of us, in one way, were put in a situation where we were insulted or harmed and were either apologized to or not. We can immediately feel the sense of having a “heavy weight taken off our chest” when we sincerely forgive or were forgiven or reparations were done.

Christians have very good examples of forgiveness in the Bible as I’m sure other religions have as well. The story of the Prodigal Son comes to mind. Catholics have a sacrament called Reconciliation where forgiveness is the aim in people who take part in this.

Psychologists measure forgiveness as either by state or trait. The state of forgiveness looks at how an individual remembers a specific betrayal situation. The trait of forgiveness looks at how forgiving the individual is.

In October 2003, researchers from the University of Kentucky reported in the Journal of Behavioral Medicine said that people who are forgiving by nature and are able to forgive after an interpersonal conflict have lower blood pressure and better cardiovascular status. There was also faster recovery of the diastolic blood pressure in people who has the forgiveness trait.

An average adult human body at rest generates around 81 watts.

A human cell generates 1 picowatt of power (1/1,000,000,000,000 watt)

A human brain generates around 14 watts.

A human liver generates around 17 watts.

A human intestine generates around 13 watts.

The entire human skin generates around 1.5 watts.

A heart generates 7 watts.

A person standing still can generate around 128 watts.

A person walking can generate around 163 watts.

Brisk walking can generate around 407 watts.

Our body is in a way a mobile portable microelectric generator. If you wanted to see a graphical representation of electricity in action within the body, just take a look at an electrocardiograph. Every wave is an actual voltage of electricity from the heart, the higher the wave the higher the voltage. For every 10 small boxes upwards or downwards is equal to 1 millivolt. Therefore, 1 small box is equal to 0.1 millivolt.

One trend in the fields of Medicine and Bioelectronics is to harness this electricity within the body as efficiently as possible for the diagnosis, treatment, and monitoring of illnesses. If bioengineers would be able to design nanodevices that can power itself using the human cell as its battery, then we won’t have to worry about batteries. Furthermore, it can practically stay within an individual for many years.

Resources:

1. People Power: Capturing the Body’s Energy for Work On and Off the Earth.
2. Futures in Biotech Podcast Episode 55:  Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics Part 2.

The American Journal of Addictions has reported a case of a 29-year old female patient becoming addicted to Brazilian diet pills which resulted to depression, sleep problems, and hallucinations.

Analysis of the amphetamine-based diet pills revealed the following:

• fenproprex (a stimulant and is a precursor to amphetamine),
• chlordiazepoxide (a drug used for severe anxiety disorder and alcohol withdrawal) and
• fluoxetine (a drug marketed as Prozac and is used for depression among other indications).

Individuals with weight problems must be very careful in choosing which diet pills they take. They ought to scrutinize the “pills” and be able to be aware of the effects of these on their body and daily activities. Before diving into the diet pills I suggest that the patient be examined first by a healthcare professional before taking any medication.

If you are already taking a diet pill which you’re not sure of their ingredients I suggest going to a healthcare professional and have the drug checked out.

In my area, I don’t see much of Brazilian pills — but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist here. What I usually see are Chinese slimming tablets and teas. People should be cautioned taking these especially if you’re not familiar with Chinese characters because most, if not all of them, are in Chinese. On the other hand, if there are English words on the labels, there might be spelling mistakes in their ingredients parts. So be careful and read first the label and ask if you’re not sure.

If we, adults, always remind children not to entertain strangers, shouldn’t we also consider not to entertain medicines or supplements inside our body that we hardly even know?

Source: Adulterated Diet Pills Could Be Addictive

A study from the German Institute of Human Nutrition in Nuthetal, Germany reported that those who ate the most chocolate—around 7.5 g per day—had a lower risk of myocardial infarctions or heart attacks and stroke as compared with individuals who does not or eats less chocolate. The study is considered as the largest observational study to look into the association of chocolate with heart disease.

This shows that habitual consumption of chocolate is related to a lower risk of heart disease and stroke that is partly explained by blood-pressure reduction. The risk reduction is stronger for stroke than for MI, which is logical because it appears that chocolate and cocoa have a pronounced effect on BP, and BP is a higher risk factor for stroke than for MI. – Dr. Brian Buijsse, lead author

But hold on a minute, people however are still warned that chocolates also contain lots of sugar and calories. What does that mean? Too much caloric intake means putting more weight and being overweight or even obese is already considered an epidemic in some developed and probably developing countries. So we still need to be careful of how much and what we eat.

Other Salient Points:

• A healthy chocolate means those dark bitter ones. They contain a significant amount of cocoa  which contains flavanols and give the health benefits of chocolate. “Dark chocolate” means to have at least 70% cocoa content.
• It is thought that flavanols release nitric oxide which dilates the blood vessels and subsequently lowering the blood pressure and improve platelet function.
• The study followed around 19,000 people for eight years.

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