letsstudyphysics

[letsstudyphysics]

[letsstudyphysics]

[letsstudyphysics]

I look at this one uh from time to time -

[letsstudyphysics]

STUDENTS! RESEARCHERS!

I got a lil tricky trick for you;

You can use chatgpt to write highly specific database/library search strings. I realise not everyone is good at this skill so having a tool do it for you can be really beneficial for big literature reviews et cetera.

Try it sometime!

[letsstudyphysics]

[letsstudyphysics]

Had my car fixed by a quantum mechanic. Now whenever I look at my speedometer my GPS stops working.

[letsstudyphysics]

[letsstudyphysics]

rb this with ur opinion on this shade of pink:

[letsstudyphysics]

November is all about sunsetting at 4PM and you have to cook dinner for yourself. It's freezing outside but you still have 5 different deadlines due at 12AM and mostly it's all dark.

[letsstudyphysics]

Pre-exam mess. For all the physics students out there! Good luck to you!

[letsstudyphysics]

The sun sets illuminating the cloud tops and Earth’s atmosphere by NASA Johnson https://flic.kr/p/2nD77YX

[letsstudyphysics]

The Effects of Alcohol: How Bad Are They?

Notes from The Huberman Lab Podcast episode #86: What Alcohol Does to Your Body, Brain & Health.

Low Amount of Alcohol?

12–24 drinks per week, on average, or more causes neurodegeneration (a slow and progressive loss of neuronal cells). The “On average” is important. It means that if you have1–2 drinks a day, or 3 each day of the weekend, you’ll have the negative effects either way.

Study: Associations between alcohol consumption and gray and white matter volumes Results: People who drank 1–2 drinks on average per day (considered “low amounts”) experienced a thinning of the neocortex.

Alcohol Metabolism

Alcohol is water soluble and fat-soluble. In other words, it can pass through all the cells and tissues of the body. This is what explains its damaging effects. When you ingest ethanol (alcohol), which is a toxic substance, the body has to convert it. How? NAD converts ethanol into acetaldehyde. Acetaldehyde is poison to the body, it kills cells.

Then, the body converts acetaldehyde into acetate, which is something that the body can use as fuel. If the body can’t do this conversion fast enough, acetaldehyde will build up in the body and cause a lot more damage. This conversion happens in the liver. This process is metabolically costly. And there’s no real nutritive value in the calories. That’s why alcohol is “empty calories”.

Alcohol Effects

The acetaldehyde is what leads to the effect of being drunk, which is a poison-induced disruption. Regular drinkers, when they drink, feel very energized and feel very good. Occasional drinkers have a briefer period of feeling good.

So, what happens when we drink alcohol?

Some amounts of acetaldehyde and acetate cross the blood-brain barrier, so they pass into the brain. Disruption in top-down inhibition. There’s a suppression in the activity of neurons in the prefrontal cortex (involved in thinking, planning, and suppression of impulsive behavior). Alcohol suppresses the neural networks that are involved in memory formation and storage. There are also long-term neural circuit changes…

The more often people drink, there are changes in the circuits that underlie habitual and impulsive behavior in ways that make those people more impulsive outside the times in which they are drinking. And when they drink, impulsive behavior is even stronger.

This aspect is fortunately reversible.

If there’s a period of abstinence these neural circuits can return to normal, except in cases where the amount of alcohol was massive and was ingested throughout a huge number of years.

Food and Alcoholic Absorption

If you eat something prior to or while drinking alcohol, it will slow the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream, particularly if it includes all major macronutrients (carbs, fats, and protein). If you are already drunk and eat something, it won’t diminish your drunkenness.

Serotonin

Alcohol disrupts the mood circuits, by first making them hyperactive. Then serotonin levels drop (that’s why people feel less good, and go for another drink). But as people drink more and more, there’s a depression of alertness and arousal. That’s why people pass out, get sleepy, etc. Chronic drinkers (and people with a genetic predisposition for alcoholism), as they ingest more and more, they feel great.

Propensity for Alcoholism

Factors that might explain the propensity for alcoholism:

Energy: If you see someone who is energized by alcohol all night drink after drink, that’s someone who is more likely to have problems with alcoholism.

Blackouts: if you are someone who suffers blackouts, then the likelihood of having problems with alcohol increases.

Age: People who start drinking at younger ages, are more predisposed to developing alcohol dependence, regardless of family history.

Alcohol and Stress

Alcohol changes the relationship between the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenals → The HPA axis. People who drink regularly have elevated baseline levels of cortisol (not just when drinking, but always). As a consequence, these people have more anxiety and stress.

Gut-Liver-Brain Axis

People who ingest alcohol are inducing a disruption in the gut microbiome, which is extremely important for overall health. Alcohol kills the healthy gut microbiota. The disruption of the gut microbiome and the inflammatory features of alcohol impairs the neural circuits that control the regulation of alcohol intake, which in consequence causes more drinking. How to replenish the gut microbiota? 2-4 servings of fermented foods per day.

Pro-inflammatory effect: Alcohol also induces a release of inflammatory cytokines. The lining of the gut is disrupted, so you can develop a leaky gut (bad bacteria can pass into the bloodstream).

Hangover

Sleep after alcohol is not as good, so even if you think you are “sleeping like a baby”, the architecture of sleep is disrupted. The sleep is not high quality.

Tool: get those gut microbiota healthy again, as alcohol killed many of those healthy bacteria.

Headaches: occur due to vasoconstriction. Tool: Deliberate cold exposure: increasing levels of epinephrine helps with alcohol clearance. However, be careful: Alcohols lower core body temperature. If you do cold exposure with alcohol in your system, there’s the possibility of experiencing hypothermia, because alcohol disrupts how your body regulates temperature.

Tool: Ingest Electrolytes

Alcohol is a diuretic. It causes dehydration. Make sure you ingest enough electrolytes (sodium, potassium, and magnesium) to replenish the proper levels, and drink two glasses of water for every alcoholic drink. Types of Alcohol That Induce The Worse Hangover. List, in order:

Brandy

Wine

Rum

Vodka

Beer

It’s not true that sugary drinks induce a deeper hangover.

Alcohol Tolerance

Tolerance refers to the reduced effects of alcohol with repeated exposure. When you start drinking, there’s an increase in dopaminergic and serotonergic transmission. After that, there is a long and slow reduction in dopamine and serotonin. As you have more tolerance, you get less of the “good” stuff and more of the bad stuff. If you abstain from drinking, these systems can reset.

Resveratrol

Resveratrol can be very good for your health and increase longevity. Wine has resveratrol. However, the amount of red wine that you’d need to drink to get the resveratrol needed is too high, so it is detrimental.

Alcohol and Cancer

Alcohol changes gene expression, which therefore causes cancer, particularly breast cancer. Alcohol accelerates the proliferation of the wrong types of cells. Breast cancer in women: there’s a 4–13% increase in the risk of breast cancer for every 10grams of alcohol consumed. 1 glass of wine is around 10grams.

Mitigating cancer risk: Folate and vitamin B12: decrease the risk of cancer, but it does not offset it.

Alcohol and Pregnancy

You should never drink alcohol when pregnant. That’s it. Fetal alcohol syndrome is a condition in a child that results from alcohol exposure during the mother’s pregnancy. Consequences include: Diminished brain, organ, and limb development.

Alcohol and Hormones

Alcohol increases the conversion of testosterone into estrogen.

Source: Medium (by Juan Pablo Aranovich). Image: Krisanapong Detraphiphat/Getty.

[letsstudyphysics]

LOL

"If you want to be a physicist, you must do three things -first , study mathematics, second, study more mathematics, and third, do the same."

Arnold Sommerfeld

[letsstudyphysics]

[letsstudyphysics]

Saw this on Twitter. What 3 potions would you drink?

I would take brown, white, and yellow!

[letsstudyphysics]

What Are Boundaries and How to Identify Your Own

Boundaries are important and tell others how we wish to be treated. Without them, we risk falling into people-pleasing tendencies that leave us resentful and dissatisfied with our lives. Saying this, despite the importance of being able to identify and set boundaries with those around us, most of us absolutely suck at 1), knowing what our boundaries are and 2), communicating them to those around us.

And it’s not entirely our fault we’re boundary(less); maybe you were used to placing your thoughts/feelings aside to evade your caregiver’s wrath as a child, maybe you’ve resorted to people-pleasing out of a fear of being yourself, or maybe you hold love on such an inexplicable high pedestal that you fear setting boundaries will scare people away.

In all cases, we lose sense of our worth in-process and consequently abandon our own authentic voice. Becoming acquainted with our standards and being able to voice them to the people we care about is therefore imperative.

How exactly do we do this, though? And what does a boundary even mean?

Mark Manson’s Description Of Boundaries

Mark Manson, author of the “subtle art of not giving a f*ck* and self-help blogger describes boundaries as the following,

Healthy Personal Boundaries = Taking responsibility for your own actions and emotions, while NOT taking responsibility for the actions or emotions of others.

All this simply means is that it is my job to take care of me, and your job to take care of you. Issues arise with us when we confuse these roles.

For example, you’re dating someone who tells you not to go out on a Friday night because it makes them feel insecure. This would be them assuming you need to act a certain way to make them feel comfortable.

In contrast, you self-abandoning and not going out with friends to appease your partner would be you taking responsibility for their emotions in favor of your own. In this case, you’re not doing right by yourself, you’re doing right by them.

Both of these are bad as 1), you self-abandon and become resentful when you let go of parts of your personal life in order to appease your partner, and 2), your partner doesn’t learn to manage their own emotions. Boundaries are standards we set that are for us; they nourish our wellbeing and ensure others know how to treat us.

Can you think of any more examples where you don’t take accountability for your own emotions or take too much responsibility for others? I’ve listed a few below.

Saying yes when you want to say no to make someone feel better (people-pleasing).

Being overtly caring and nice and getting frustrated when you don’t get something in return (covert contracts).

Telling your partner they need to reply quicker as it’s making you feel insecure and anxious (despite no red flags).

Figuring Out What Your Boundaries Are

Brené Brown, the American researcher, writer, and teacher, describes boundaries as simply being “What’s okay, and what’s not”. It’s knowing what standards need to be met in order to keep you physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy, and communicating that effectively to the people around you.

This can be difficult as many of us don’t even know what is good for us, and what is not. This means developing our self-awareness in order to move forward setting boundaries that nourish our wellbeing. Let’s look closer at how we can do this.

Knowing What Is Good For Us and What Is Not

A great way to figure out what is good for you and what is not is simply looking into the past at things that went wrong and discerning what you needed in those moments.

For example, maybe you dated someone who was emotionally unavailable and you allowed them to walk all over you. In hindsight, you can see that emotional availability is very important to you, and therefore, dating someone emotionally available is a boundary you need to set in the future.

Is this person avoidant with me, or are they open? You can ask yourself. If open, great, you can allow them in. If not, they’re not allowed to cross the boundary. Your boundary here is only moving forward with people who show they are willing to be emotionally available with you.

Back to the previous point and Mark Manson’s definition. Someone with poor boundaries would likely stay in a toxic environment with someone unavailable. Someone with proper boundaries would walk away I.E taking responsibility for their own actions and emotions. They wouldn’t try to force availability out of someone — that would be taking responsibility for someone else’s actions and emotions.

People have a right to do what they want. It only becomes a problem for you when you tolerate it and then get angry at being disrespected. You don’t have to stay in anything that is uncomfortable for you. Part of having healthy boundaries is accepting people have a right to do and feel as they like, but that you can express your disagreement and walk away if nothing changes.

Boundaries Are FLUID

Boundaries come in three forms; porous, rigid, and healthy.

Porous Boundaries

Porous boundaries are those we start implementing but don’t maintain. For example, you tell your partner you won’t tolerate mistreatment but in light of similar behaviors, you fail to follow through on any real consequences. Likewise, you may tell yourself you won’t keep saying yes when you really mean no, yet continue to people-please.

Porous boundaries arise when we fail to nurture our long-term wellbeing in favor of short-term relief. They’re also a result of a lack of trust in our own capabilities to stand in our worth.

Rigid Boundaries

Rigid boundaries are too strong and don’t allow for any compromise. This can look like an avoidantly attached individual being unwilling to open up to their partner despite conversations and concerns around their emotional unavailability. It may also look like someone refusing to ask for help out of fear of appearing weak, or “needy”.

Rigid boundaries, like porous ones, are rooted in fear. Whereas individuals with porous boundaries fear the repercussions of having solid boundaries, individuals with rigid ones fear the consequences of not having theirs upheld.

Healthy Boundaries

Individuals with healthy boundaries have a strong sense of self and are able to stand their ground when challenged. They’re the people who won’t stand mistreatment after expressing their needs and won’t compromise their values for the sake of others. They’re also the individuals who are fluid and are understanding that not all boundaries are fixed; they can be changed depending on the context.

Furthermore, people with healthy boundaries aren’t ruled by fear. They see their experiences for what they are and are able to adjust or reinforce their boundaries when necessary.

Final Thoughts

Beginning to set boundaries is a challenge but as far as challenges go, it’s worthwhile to invest your time in this one. Healthy boundaries will not only ensure you are taking care of your own relationship, but also the relationships of those around you.

By Joe Gibson - Above The Middle (Medium). Photograph by Juan Mendez On Pexels.