Casa 166 ½

Calzada Fray Antonio de San Miguel, Morelia

Zempoala

The Happiness Theory

With this review I will try to convince you that there is no better place to live other than a Tropical country. Three scientific-based arguments are enough to explain why some surveys consider developing countries as the ones with the highest levels of happiness [1] such as Nigeria, Mexico, Venezuela and El Salvador.

My first argument is the easiest to explain and by the moment is based only in one paper published on October, 2010 in the Journal of Psychopharmacology by Dr. Christopher Lowry, an expert in the area of behavior-associated molecular biology. In his article [2] he found a subpopulation of serotonergic neurons that are thermosensitive and form part of a pathway regulating behaviour. He proposed that the dysregulation of these neurons plays a role in stress-related neuropsychiatric disorders, including anxiety and affective disorders. That would be, actually, the explanation why a hot bath in the evening, a sauna, a common sunny day or a sweater at the right moment and other sensations of warmth may alter neural circuits controlling mood and even serotonergic circuits.

The second observation is the well known "Hygiene hypothesis", which says that the increasing prevalence in several chronic inflammatory disorders in developed countries are a consequence of the new life-style people have. Living far away of harmless organisms associated with soil, untreated water and fermenting vegetable matter, the immune system generates an aggressive immune response when people are exposed to those organisms once they are adults [3]. Looking to the evolution, these non-pathogenic organisms need to be tolerated because they are harmless and were present in food and water throughout human evolution.

Other observation we have to take into account is the widespread presence of helminths in developing countries but almost absent from developed countries [4]. The helminth parasites need to be tolerated because, although not always harmless, once they are established in the host any effort by the immune system to eliminate them is likely to cause tissue damage.

With these ideas in mind it is time to remember that some stress-related psychiatric disorders,

particularly depression and anxiety, are associated with markers of ongoing inflammation. Moreover, proinflammatory cytokines can induce depression. Therefore, some psychiatric disorders in developed countries might be attributable to failure of immunoregulatory circuits to terminate ongoing inflammatory responses. That correlates perfectly with data from the WHO where most of the cases were reported from Europeans and north-Asian countries and no Tropical countries [5].

My last argument is harder to follow but I will try to do my best. A very recent article published in PNAS last February explains that mice with no contact with any kind of bacteria during their whole life showed different behaviors compared to controls (mice with a standardized microbiota) [6] they showed, indirectly, that the contact with bacteria not only contributes with the correct development of intestinal cells (as it was already known) but also has implications in the host psychology and promotes drastic changes in expression levels of many genes in specific brain regions.

Now, it is time to think how different could be the environmental bacteria we around us in our first week of life. Only in developing countries like Mexico we have to deal with all sort of solid residues in the streets (here is a photo) and the 'fecalismo'. But apart from the harming microorganisms other kind of bacteria enter very often into our body and could help us to learn better and to make us happier: Mycobacterium vaccae.

The same man, C. Lowry, found 4 years ago that M. vaccae stimulated growth of some neurons that resulted in elevated levels of serotonin when injected to mice. Last year, in the 110th Annual Meeting of the American for Microbiology, Dorothy Matthews showed that M. vaccae ingested improved learning in mice [7]. The question is, where does M. vaccae is naturally present? In the soil. And where do people live close to soil instead of roadways or concrete? In Tropical Countries!

To sum up, Tropical countries have the perfect weather to activate thermosensitive neurons serotonin-producers (and the optimal temperature to growth M. vaccae, 21-26°C), it is less frequent to get inflammatory disorders like allergies, autoimmunity or inflammatory bowel disease and it is frequent to get in contact with certain soil-associated bacteria/fungi with learning-improvement capabilities.

This is a writing with NO academic purposes.

1. Asking 'how happy they are' or 'how satisfied they are' here.

2. That warm fuzzy feeling: brain serotonergic neurons and the regulation of emotion, here.

3. The hygiene hypothesis and psychiatric disorders, here.

4. How to Cure 1 Billion People? -- Defeat Neglected Tropical Diseases, here.

5. From Wikipedia with collected information from the WHO, here.

6. Normal gut microbiota modulates brain development and behavior, here.

7. The video, here.

de homine natura

Desde hace como un año he estado meditando sobre cómo sería el primer ciclo de cine que me animara a armar. Desde luego, el titulo ya lo tiene que decir todo. Así que recordé lo que pensaba Törless en esa novela tan buena de Müsil, quedé igualmente convencido de que no hay otro mejor nombre para empezar que 'de homine natura'.

Y luego a escoger las películas. He pensado que ayuda tener una correlación cronológica entre la película y la cita al cine. Y cómo para cada fecha se puede encontrar un buen título, creo que seguiré ese prejuicio.

Finalmente quiero compartirles mi ciclo:

i. Les quatre cents coups de François Truffaut
ii. Der Junge Törless de Volker Schlondorff
iii. Amantes de Vicente Aranda
iiii. Tacones lejanos de Pedro Almodóvar
v. Pandora'nin kutusu de Yesim Ustaoglu

Que cuándo y dónde será? Ah, eso ya no lo sé...

The Graph Theory's Breakdown

By definition: "a Tree is a set of straight line segments connected at their ends containing no closed loops (cycles)".

Soy bajo-peso

Durante años he sufrido por este mundo que pareciera diseñado para la gente obesa, no hay ropa de mi tamaño, siempre pago lo mismo por un asiento que no aprovecho en su totalidad y así entre muchos otros ejemplos.

Una vez ya había hablado de cómo en sistemas naturales se presenta la obesofobia pero pareciera que eso nunca aplicará dentro de las sociedades humanas. Pero tampoco estoy aquí para iniciar un régimen Neo-Nazi con una nueva sociedad-víctima... no no no, yo sólo quiero quejarme con el mundo de que numerosas técnicas/dietas/costumbres que he intentado jamás me funcionan. Yo pienso que la condición de 'bajo-peso' debería ser considerada una nueva discapacidad y poner un nuevo iconito en el metro y demás colectivos:

Además hice estas gráficas de cómo no subo de peso:

Radish and Tomoxtle

A radish-made man cultivating radishes VS A maize-made man cultivating maize

Noche de Rábanos

This year, and just to continue with the tradition of celebrate Christmas in a different city (2008, 2009), I went to Oaxaca!!

Each year on December 23rd they celebrate the Radish Night, that was one of the weirdest festivals I've ever been. See what they make:

This night is also a contest with 6 categories: Radish, Totomoxtle (the dried leafs of an ear of corn) and dried flowers and each material in Traditional or Free style

On Christmas I visited Hierve el Agua, a petrified fall, and its saline lakes

I really loved Oaxaca for the second time...

And sorry for the very low-resolution pictures, but my previous camera has died [or someone killed it? ... ]

Morelia Film Festival

After two long weeks of work at my lab, I finally had time enough to write about the last trip I did. I went, with other three friends, to Morelia for only four days to see as many movies as possible. All of them were totally recommendable (the order of the movies tells about how much I like them):

Sound of Noise

Ola Simonsson, Johannes Stjärne Nilsson, Sweden, France, 2010

Le fil

Mehdi Ben Attia, France, Belgium, Tunisia, 2009

Somewhere

Sofia Coppola, USA, 2010

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Edgar Wright, USA, UK, Canada, 2010

The American

Anton Corbijn, USA, 2010

El Baile de San Juan

Francisco Athié, Mexico, France, Germany, Spain, 2010

Agnosia

Eugenio Mira, Spain, 2010

Revolución, 10 Shortfilms

Mariana Chenillo, Fernando Eimbcke, Amat Escalante, Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo García, Diego Luna, Gerardo Narnjo, Rodrigo Plá, Carlos Reygadas, Patricia Riggen, México, 2010

Juntos

Nicolás Pereda, Mexico, 2009

El Hijo de la 40, shortfilm

Érica Bagnarello, Costa Rica, 2009

Hugo's Film Collection

In this month, just when cine is The Trending Topic, I finally organized a still reduced collection [more than 50] of hard findable movies from different countries, genres and languages.

The reason I will share in my blog that list follows the suggestion made by some friends, and also has the goal to spread some valuable but almost unknown works, in most of the cases, from splendid directors and producers.

The list is located in the right bar under the "Month's Book" and over the Counters. Each one has a link to its IMDB description.

Please, feel free to ask me for any of the listed titles, 'cause the last aim I'd like to reach is to know that more and more people is watching very good films.

Black Eyed Peas

In the Azteca Stadium, México City, October 2nd

All the photos, by courtesy of Analy