Friday, December 28, 2007

Seven Myths from Medicine

In a recent article, Vreeman and Carroll expose seven medical myths:
  • You should drink eight glasses of water a day.
  • You only use 10% of your brain.
  • Your hair and fingernails grow on after you die.
  • Shaving your hair causes it to grow back darker and coarser.
  • If you read in dim light, you will ruin your eyes.
  • Eating turkey makes you sleepy.
  • Using a mobile phone in a hospital can affect other equipment
They go on to debunk each of the myths above. Interestingly, these myths persist despite evidence to the contrary. I wonder if similar myths exist in psychology.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

SAD?

As we approach the Winter Solstice here in the northern hemisphere, it's a good time to talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD.

SAD is a real condition caused by increased levels of melatonin. That increase is apparently caused by the longer periods of dark in the winter. Decreased levels of serototin also contribute to SAD. Winter's longer dark periods cause a drop in serotonin production. Light, delivered in high intensities and at the right time of the day, can reverse the rise in melatonin production and the decrease in serotonin, thus, combating SAD. An article in today's New York Times discusses how light, and other therapies, can alleviate SAD.

Another way to fight SAD is to eat complex carbohydrates. Those, in turn, are metabolized into serotonin. Unfortunately, they also add body weight and overeating them is not good therapy for SAD. Sorry.

So, if you are feeling a little blue and hungrier right about now and don't know why, you may have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Here is a link to some self-assessments for diagnosing SAD, circadian rhythm, and depression. Click on their link "Self-assessments" on the top of that page.

Monday, December 10, 2007

Girls and Science

I was pleased to see the news report of how three teen-aged girls recently won the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology. (click here to see article) Science should not be the exclusive domain of one gender.

As the father of a ten-year-old girl I was especially heartened. Last year she announced how she hated science. But, this year she has changed her mind and now considers science as worthy of her attention.

Mostly, she likes zoology. While driving home from a visit to her grandparents one night recently, she started talking about the insects she saw clustering around the streetlights. Some streetlights hosted swarms of insects while others seemed to have none. As we talked, I gently led her into discussing why that might be. Eventually, we planned a putative science project. My main contribution being the use of a digital camera to photograph the clouds of insects so that we could get a rough count later.

I went to PsycINFO later and found one old article that seemed spot-on:

Porter, L. C. (1941). What kinds of light attract night-flying insects?
, General Electric Review, 44, 310-314. I have not secured a copy yet, but will soon.

Some Spring night, she and I will go out and conduct a pilot study, select an independent variable or two, and collect some data, hopefully for the FUN of it.