The Weekly Dose - Episode 31

The Weekly Dose...

... the latest from Dr Karan

  Here is your weekly dose...  

Hi all!Here is your weekly dose of the Sunday Six! A few things I found interesting this week. If you enjoy this please feel free to forward this to friends. families and enemies alike!**You'll find more in depth analysis of some of these subjects on my social platforms in the links just below, including Dr Karan Investigates! for deep dives into interesting topics on my YouTube channel.**

The Anti-library...

Is this you? You buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on your shelf. This isn't an intellectual failing on your part, rather the opposite.Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes that surrounding yourself with unread books enriches your life as they remind you of all you don't know and what you have yet to discover.Take prolific author Umberto Eco, whose personal library housed 30,000 books. If he were to read one book a day, every day, between the ages of 10 years old to 80 years it would only add up to 25,200 books that could possibly be read in that lifetime. Well short of the 30,000 he owned and a fraction of the millions available in libraries.Taleb called this phenomena of buying books and not reading them the antilibrary but the Japanese call this practice tsundoku.

In fact studies have shown that book ownership and reading go hand in hand. One such study found that children who grew up in homes with between 80 and 350 books showed improved literacy, numeracy, and information communication technology skills as adults.Maybe having an unread book(s) on your shelf is the antidote to the Dunning Kruger effect (the cognitive bias that means people who know very little assume they know more than they actually do). It's good to be reminded (by means of unread books) of how little you know and how much you could yet learn. Perhaps in some ways, the power of an unread book is greater than a read one.

Your Eye Colour & Seasonal Affective Disorder...

If you have light coloured eyes (blue, grey etc) are less likely to develop seasonal affective disorder than those with dark or brown eyes according to research.The reason for this variance might be due to the amount of light an individual’s eyes can process. The light processing first occurs in the retina, which contains cells that are sensitive to light. Although most of the retinal cells simply relay information about colour to the brain, some retinal cells send information about the *intensity* of the light. This information eventually hits the hypothalamus, an important part of the brain which releases hormones like melatonin that can influence sleep cycles.Eyes with lower pigment (blue or grey eyes) are more sensitive to light, meaning they don’t need to absorb as much light as brown or dark eyes before this information reaches the retinal cells. More light that goes through = less melatonin. So people with lighter eyes release less melatonin during  winter. This mechanism might provide light-eyed people with some resilience to seasonal affective disorder.  

The Missing Radioactive Capsule...

How do you lose a dangerous radioactive substance? Broken packages apparently.Authorities in Western Australia have warned the general population that a radioactive capsule used as a gauge in a mining operation has been lost on a stretch of road that is about 870 miles long.Don't worry, it's easy to spot though because its the whopping great size of 0.31 inches by 0.24 inches....roughly the size of two hearing aid batteries stuck together. On a population level it's unlikely to cause any great harm but if it's stuck in someone's car wheel or if someone is exposed to it for prolonged periods of time it could cause radiation burns or radiation sickness.In fact Marie Curie who passed away from radiation sickness due to life long exposure to it through her work, has all her books sealed in lead lined containers because they still produce radiation. If you wish to see these books you have to sign a waiver to say you accept radiation risk for a glance of history at your own peril!

  When Words Lose All Meaning... 

Consider the word flower. F-l-o-w-e-r. Flowers. The flower in the field. The flower in the grass. Flower. Flower. Flower.

… F-l-o-w-e-r?!

Did the word flower just kind of disintegrate into nonsense before your eyes? Did it become unintelligible, strange, incomprehensible, or a meaningless string of letters? This is semantic satiation. Your brain is literally full..too full from the same thing.t’s a kind of a fatigue called reactive inhibition. When a brain cell fires, it takes more energy to fire the second time, and increasingly more energy each time thereafter until finally with enough repetition of the same stimulus it won’t respond unless you wait a few seconds. This idea of reactive inhibition that was known as an effect on brain cells is suggested as a theory of the effect that occurs when you repeat a word so much it loses meaning. The brain is weird as is language in its entirety. Particularly the english language...that's a whole can of worms. Consider for a moment that this is a real grammatically correct sentence: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” Just say it before the semantic satiation kicks in..

YouTube Health...

I had lunch at the Google canteen this week and it was incredible. Well, compared to my usual NHS canteen fare anyway. Funny what happens when you pump money into a system..Anyway, politics and moaning aside, I was invited by YouTube as part of a group of doctors to improve their health content strategy and how to make health/medical content on YouTube more engaging, accessible and importantly devoid of misinformation.I'll be honest, the content you see from the NHS or any other healthcare institution is boring as hell. Its didactic, scripted and I'd rather wipe my arse with sandpaper than take information from these sources. If that's how I feel imagine how a patient or a person seeking health information online feels.One of my aims for 2023 and beyond will be to ramp up my activity and presence on YouTube with longer videos. I enjoy making short videos, as thats predominantly what my time allows for anyway, but making more in depth, longer videos, with more nuance is my aim for this year.If you haven't already make sure you head over to my YouTube page and watch that space!

What I'm Watching...

If you're feeling low in mood, anxious or a bit lost - give this video a watch. A reason to stop worryingIt may or may not do anything for you but I stumbled on this video after a long day operating when I felt I had enough. There is a certain calm feeling that you get when you realize that you’re just a small spec in the whole universe.If you're reading this, consider yourself lucky to be alive during the time of the internet. In the palm of your hand you have all the facts, stories, and history of mankind in a little device. At any point you can feed your brain new thoughts and ideas. A life well lived, in my opinion, is one where you listen to as much as you can and to notice as much as you can. 

As always, please give me feedback on Twitter. Which of this weeks Sunday six is your favourite? Is there something you want more, or less of? I'm open to any suggestions so please let me know! Just send a  tweet to @drkaranrajan and use the hashtag #theweeklydose at the end so I can find it!

Have a wonderful week, all.

Much love,

Karan