Pygmalion Effect

Hi everyone! I write tonight because I want to share with you a personal discovery  I had made this weekend. In my opinion I think that It can be useful for this course that is full of difficulties.

 I am going to talk about the Pygmalion effect (maybe you have you heard something about it before) or also known "the self-fulfilling prophesy" . It is the process by which the beliefs and expectations of a person with respect to another affect in such a manner to its conduct that tends to confirm, that is to say that when we have a firm belief with regard to someone, it is finally fulfilled.

Magic? NO, it's about attitude and be positive! 
In the field of psychology, economics, medicine and sociology, several researchers have conducted very interesting experiments on the Pygmalion effect. The most relevant was one made by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson in 1968, the study concluded that the intellectual development of students is largely a response to the expectations of their teachers and how these expectations are transmitted (If you want more information about I leave here a link where explains better the experiment http://www.energiacreadora.es/ec-4/el-efecto-pigmalion-en-la-educacion/ )

I would also highlight if you look at the biographies of great geniuses, men and women who throughout history have made enormous contributions to humanity, we can see that in many cases there was a person who had a strong hope placed in them. So, that Pygmalion has a scientific explanation: we now know that when someone relies on us and transmits this trust, our limbic system accelerates our thinking increases our clarity and our energy, and therefore our attention, effectiveness and efficiency .

The prophecies tend to take place when there is a strong desire that drives. In the same way that fear tends to occur to cause what is feared, confidence in oneself, even infected by a third party, can give us wings.

So guys, cheer up! WE CAN WITH THIRD COURSE AND MORE!

What Happened When They Treated Autistic Children With Medical Cannabis

http://www.collective-evolution.com/2015/02/17/what-happened-when-they-treated-autistic-children-with-medical-cannabis/

The big unknown, the depression.

The big unknown, the depression.

A week in a consultation was all I needed to notice that depression is a very common disease in our society. 

I specially remember the case of a men who had a grateful life. He and his wife were going to be grandparents soon but he was very depressed. His life was happy because he had done many improvements so I was shocked because I couldn't imagine how was him when he was bad. He was trying to talk without crying, even talking about happy things. He also made a joke but he was not laughing.  His wife explained that he seemed to be happy with everybody but when he arrived at home, he couldn't even move from a small sofa, he was deeply sad because of no known reason. In fact their friends were shocked when he finally told them that he was depressed, he had everything in life....

What I try to say with this is that you don't need to have big problems like break-up a relationship, do not find a job that really motivates you neither to loose someone. What you feel in these cases is sadness, which is a normal reaction of the human being. But the depression is more than that...

Kevin Breel explains in his video his own personal experience about having depression: (http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_breel_confessions_of_a_depressed_comic#t-592349) 

Depression is something that takes you apart of your normal life, is a continual worry about things, is the inability to be happy but, as he states, the problem is that there is still an stigma in our society 

"if someone breaks his arm, you ask how is him and you sign his/her plaster, but what are you supposed to do when someone tells you that he/she has a mental illness and has depression?"

Depression is not well seen, people do not know how to act so they prefer to be apart of the situation living you more alone trying to solve your problem. 

With this post I try you to to be concern about the necessity of understanding better this disease which is the first world cause of disability according to the OMS and which many people suffer without being recognized such it.

Here I attach you a link to the webpage of the OMS were you can read some useful information about what is depression and types of it: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs369/es/

To end this, here you have another link of an "poetry" explanation of depression. I really get impressed the first time I show it. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqu4ezLQEUA

Visit to the offices of Bayer in Berlin at the ESC-Charité

Last week I took part at the European Student Conference orginized by the University of Charité at Berlin.

As part of the workshops I had the chance to visit the offices of Bayer, one of the most important pharmaceuticals in the world , known for the production of the Aspirin among others.

They told us in an interesting conference about the time that takes to develop a drug and the different processes that have to take place by different teams. In this pdf you can found all the information in a way very well explained.

https://pharma.bayer.com/html/pdf/forschung_und_entwicklung/110713_BayerPharma_Bros

ch_en_web.pdf

I recommend to everybody to attend the Conference in the future as Active or Passive participant.

Doctors with ‘angel’

Long ago I read this article and I was amazed by the sweet and grateful words that Tatiana Sisquella conferred to a particular type of physician. For me, it describes perfectly the doctor that I would like to become.

“A doctor, in general, is an expert in any part of your body. So far, so normal. What is more surprising is already meet a doctor who has an angel. These also have a medical career, wear white coat and make bad handwriting, but, unlike others, are defined by how they speak you, how they look you and how they touch you.

A doctor with ‘Angel’ is a person who cures even before starting treatment, a doctor who listens and is surprised by your questions. When they talk to you, they do it imagining that they are the patient and not taken for granted or overlooked anything that can disturb you. They do not get tired of answering the same questions and always find a moment to talk about something that is not the reason for the visit. Angel physicians do not tell lies, but they know how to promote good truths. They have an exquisite criterion when considering treatments and always find a chair somewhere to seat all the passengers. If you have to do a scan, they worry about whether they have cold hands and if you have to read a diagnosis is always accompanied by a drawing or an easy metaphor, so that everyone understands. They are doctors who remember your name before looking at the record and not watch the clock despite working in Social Security. They tend to know not only the names of the nurses, but also how many children they have, if the husband is unemployed or has gone to Venice on holidays. Some even, if necessary, they give their personal phone number in case of anything, be it for a question or a comfort.

I am a long-term patient and I can recognize the difference from just putting one foot in the consult. With a few minutes I know if I found a doctor or an angel. I congratulate all of them. And for my angels I also send them a kiss.

Tatiana Sisquella

Written recovered from the newspaper ARA, 2011”

I don’t know if one day I’ll be one of those doctors but from here I promise you to put a lot of effort and love to get it.

A prescription drug for treat arthitis may be able to help in the fight against Alzheimer's

  In Spain there are some 700,000 people with Alzheimer's for up to 200,000 may be undiagnosed. Worldwide, this figure rises to 47.5 million, according to the World Health Organization. Now, American researchers have shown that a drug already used to treat rheumatoid arthritis can reverse dysfunctions observed in this neurodegenerative disease in mice.

  Salsalate, a drug commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, could in the future be part of the therapeutic arsenal for treating Alzheimer's disease. According to a study published in "Nature Medicine", this available drug reversed dysfunction related to the tau protein, one of the related neurodegenerative disorder, in an animal model of frontotemporal dementia.

Researchers at the Gladstone Institute (USA) have found that the drug prevents accumulation of tau protein in the brain and cognitive impairment protects the characteristic of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia. Specifically inhibit tau acetylation, a chemical process by which the function and properties of a protein is altered. Researchers have found that tau protein is an especially toxic acetylated form of the protein, leading to neurodegeneration and cognitive deficits.

  In their work they found that salsalate reversed successfully these effects in a mouse model of frontotemporal dementia by reducing tau levels in the brain, recovering memory connections and protecting against atrophy of the hippocampus, an important region of training memory that is affected by dementia. Although it is known for some time that the tau protein is one of the processes responsible for dementia, so far had found no treatment to avoid its effects.

  The application of this new drug to treat Alzheimer's could take place very soon. So says Eric Verdin, a researcher of the team, said that "considering that salsalate is a drug already approved a long history of a reasonable safety profile, we believe that may have immediate clinical applications."

It is obviously a good new and I hope this is of great help to treat Alzheimer's. We have to keep waiting...