Hippocampus Difficulties?

Tris Hussey writes: “Forget tools and technology, it’s your brain that really makes you pimp out your work. You can have tons of cool tools and still not be effective if your mind isn’t up to snuff.”

Mind not up to snuff? Let’s see – from page 23;

“Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body. If you ask him why he started on that last bender, the chances are that he will offer you any one of a hundred alibis. Sometimes these excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really make sense in the light of the havoc an alcoholic’s drinking bout creates. They sound like the philosophy of the man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he can’t feel the ache.”

Tris references “22 Ways To Overclock Your Brain” where we find;

“It’s simple, your brain is at the center of everything you do, all you feel and think, and every nuance of how you relate to people. It’s both the supercomputer that runs your complex life and the tender organ that houses your soul. And while you may run, lift weights, or do yoga to keep your body in good condition, chances are you ignore your brain and trust it to do its job.”

Uh Huh…

On page 36, speaking of “all reasons for not drinking easily pushed aside in favor of the foolish idea” we read “whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?”

Well, if you go back to the article, it explains, in very clear terms, that we’ve put a world of hurt on our hippocampus regions!

“11. Be A Thinker, Not A Drinker

The idea that alcohol kills brain cells is an old one, but the reality is a bit more complicated. In fact, a study of 3,500 Japanese men found that those who drank moderately (in this case, about one drink per day) had better cognitive functioning when they got older than those who didn’t drink at all. Unfortunately, as soon as you get beyond that ‘moderate’ amount, your memory, reaction time is all likely to decline. In the same study, men who had four or more drinks a day fared worst of all.

Just as bad is the now common practice of ‘binge drinking,’ otherwise known as getting hammered on the weekend. Research on rats found that those who consumed large amounts of alcohol had fewer new cells in their brains’ hippocampus region immediately after the binge, and virtually none a month later. This suggests that the alcohol not only damaged the rats’ brains, but kept them from repairing themselves later on – in human terms, that means you shouldn’t expect to pass the Mensa entrance exam any time soon.”

Moderately? Yeah, right. Four or more/day? Amateurs… (and, no, for those of you who’ll say “but I’m not Japanese”)

Now, if you follow the hippocampus link at Wikipedia through just a bit you’ll find;

Cerebrum: “the largest part of the brain and is the seat of motor and sensory functions, and the higher mental functions such as consciousness, thought, reason, emotion, and memory.”

Which really clarifies and confirms “Our behavior is as absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jay-walking.” (page 37)

Yep! Yep! and Yep!