[Paleopsych] when the body runs riot

[Christian Rauh]

Robust and stable dynamic systems need control mechanisms for up and 
down regulation to avoid positive feedback loops that spiral out of the 
safety margins.

Christian

HowlBloom at aol.com wrote:
> The body has good reasons for giving us inflammations, or so we’ve been 
> told by evolutionary biology.  Inflammation can quarantine 
> micro-attackers and help heal our wounds.  But if the swollen redness of 
> inflammation is so useful, why does the body have built in mechanisms to 
> keep it under control?
> 
>  
> 
> Those mechanisms are, according to the article below, 
> “epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs)”.  These acids keep a good thing from 
> happening.  They rein in inflammation.
> 
>  
> 
> Could the answer be something that the work of paleopsych member Neil 
> Greenberg taught me a long time ago?  In moderate doses things the 
> body’s own internally-concocted remedies are good.  In overdoses they 
> can be poisons.  Stress hormones are examples.  In swift, sharp jolts, 
> they are pick-me-ups, attention, strength, and energy boosters extremely 
> useful in fast but vicious fights or when it’s time to turn tail and 
> skedaddle, escape.  But in chronic doses, doses that go on and on and on 
> and on from day to day and week to week, those same stress hormones, 
> those quick-hit tonics, are poisons.
> 
>  
> 
> Does the body need inflammation inhibitors like epoxyeicosatrienoic 
> acids to make sure that it doesn’t get too much of a good thing?  Are 
> these inhibitors part of the same sort of checks and balances that 
> Sherringtonian nerves use when they are finely tuned by an excitatory 
> signals and a counterbalance of inhibitory signals?  Are they like the 
> extensor and tensor muscles, the upper bicep balanced against the muscle 
> that faces it on the underside, the muscle below your arm from your 
> shoulder to your elbow?  Snip the bottom muscle and your hand will fly 
> up to your shoulder and stay there, stuck in place by the unchecked 
> enthusiasm of the muscle on top.  Cut the top muscle, and your arm will 
> look like an unbending stick.  Your elbow and forearm will be 
> permanently locked in position.
> 
>  
> 
> And are the acids that inhibit inflammation a bit like the part of the 
> brain that does the most to civilize us, the most to make us “human’—the 
> pre-frontal cortex?  You’d think that the human part of the brain would 
> be there to throw us into hyper-gear and turbocharge, giving us the 
> mental warp engines we need to break the consciousness barrier and 
> rocket into thought.  But, no.  The prefrontal cortex does the 
> opposite.  It’s a brake, a drag-chute, an inhibitor.  Without the 
> “human” part of the brain, that three pound lump of pink stuff in our 
> head would apparently do too much, not too little.  It takes restraint 
> to make us human.
> 
>  
> 
> When Aristotle said that life is really a balancing act between 
> extremes, he may have gotten it far more right than he ever imagined.  
> Howard
> 
>  
> 
> Retrieved July 3, 2005, from the World Wide Web
> 
> http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050702/fob2.asp
> 
>  
> 
> Running Interference: Fresh approach to fighting inflammation
> 
>  
> 
> Nathan Seppa
> 
>  
> 
> The more scientists learn about inflammation, the less they like it. 
> Although this bodily process speeds wound healing and corrals microbes, 
> it can also do plenty of harm, as seen in people with arthritis, asthma, 
> and a host of other ailments. Unfortunately, today's anti-inflammatory 
> drugs pose their own problems. They cause stomach distress in many 
> people, and some drugs seem to hike the risk of heart attacks. So, the 
> search for a safe inflammation fighter goes on.
> 
>  
> 
> Bruce D. Hammock, a biochemist at the University of California, Davis, 
> and his colleagues now report that two experimental drugs shield lab 
> mice from extreme inflammation. The findings appear in an upcoming 
> Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
> 
>  
> 
> Earlier research had suggested that a troublesome enzyme, called soluble 
> epoxide hydrolase, degrades natural inflammation inhibitors known as 
> epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs).
> 
>  
> ----------
> Howard Bloom
> Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces 
> of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big 
> Bang to the 21st Century
> Recent Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York 
> University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute
> www.howardbloom.net
> www.bigbangtango.net
> Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: 
> Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; 
> founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of 
> Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American 
> Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and 
> Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory 
> board member: Institute for Accelerating Change ; executive editor -- 
> New Paradigm book series.
> For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: 
> www.paleopsych.org
> for two chapters from
> The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of 
> History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer
> For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big 
> Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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-- 

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                        ~ I G N O R A N C E ~

              The trouble with ignorance is precisely that
              if a person lacks virtue and knowledge,
              he's perfectly satisfied with the way he is.
              If a person isn't aware of a lack,
              he can not desire the thing
              which he isn't aware of lacking.

              Symposium (204a), Plato
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