9 replies to this topic

[addx]

My theory is that ALL of body is regulated via nervous system, including response to pathogens and damage. Aging happens as the nervous system memory schemas suffer numerous adaptations in response to external and internal stimuli and modifies itself and its output. The modifications address an acute or chronic situation and often store a more or thorougly permanent maladaptation. Accumulating maladaptive strategies of coping with situations that are no longer needed or are needed because the problems persisted but the adaptation enabled ignoring them(learned helplessness adaptation) cause the entire nervous system to drop in performance.

A person is initially loaded with a zest for life(mu opioid). The zest for life creates a drive to create more life-well-being(integrateing new objects or rather creating/validating control methods(dopaminergic) of pleasuring objects/territories/persons).
This drive causes the person to either experience success or disappointment(in achieving a dopamine-projected state) when acting out on it.

Success creates a new level of well-being(increase in serotonin due to confirmation of a dopaminergic method being efficient in reality which causes a decrease in dopamine for the repetition of the method, it is now learned and this knowledge integrated us with an object via a dopaminergic guidance control) which is quickly normalized by an upregulation of opposing action of dynorphins and kappa opioid(tolerance, fear of death, fear of losing the new found well being linked to the root fear of death). The "opposing tolerance" normalizes mood from success and facilitates a persisting "shadow fear". Accumulated tolerance is turned into dyshporia when threat of losing the absorbed/accustomed level of well being appears and is infact what is called withdrawal.

To sum it up, all life experience creates either a "shadow fear"(tolerance) or an active fear. Accumulation of fears in the nervous system and maladaptive processes around them create aging. Fears regulate even the immune response and memories of pathogens and damage are infact fear schema memories.

For instance, you eat food. The immune response would attack it in the bowels. Cannabinoids in response to taste inhibit kappa opioid regulation of immune response during gestation of food in order to stop it from attacking food particles. IBS is infact caused by the nervous system that wrongly learned to fear certain food particles. And continues to overreact indefinitely in the same maladaptive pattern.

Tangent: cannabinoids also mess with time dilation and relaxation in order to provide a resting window for proper gestation - this fact alone invalidates theories of multiple snacks during the day being a healthy idea. A person should simply rest to gestate as all animals do judging by the way the body handles food. This can not be done 5-6 times a day. This cannabinoid response lasts up to 2 hours. Cannabinoids disable or rather bypass/delay memory formation during the response. If the body detects signals of being sick(chemical senses) after opening the "doors of the bowels to food" (dampening the immune response) it will map the taste of food to a fear and subsequent ingestion of the same food will not cause a cannabinoid gestation period but aversion, You can notice that if you make your body feel sick in other ways during this time it will still be mapped to the food you ate! In order to accomplish this "piggy back" repression effect on the fear system the cannabinoids have to modulate kappa opioids and fear memory formation. The brain would not be able to pair the bad food response after 2 hours with the taste of it experienced 2 hours before if it werent for cannabinoids regulating the gestation response.

Unlearning fears also seems like the most difficult thing to accomplish as is undoing aging itself. It does not seem the nervous system has much mechanisms that enable this and from an evolutionary perspective this makes sense. Unlearning conscious fears is mostly done by learning of a new context that acts inhibiting on the original fear when present. I trust that any unconscious mechanisms that use the fear response to facilitate their actions like the immune system - can hardly use this mechanism to "unadapt" themselves. It does seem that again cannabinoids have some avenues that enable fear extinction, I've read some studies but in general, fear extinction seems like something that doesn't really ever happen.

The net effect of this is "wearing out" of the "life force" via slow degradation of the nervous system ability to carry out its role owing itself to the effect of fear adaptation learning. This causes performance degradation which enables autoimmunity issues, infections and general degeneration. The kappa opioid network is infact the one that modulates/associaties objects/memories to the fear of death itself so even philosophically this seems correct. Kappa opioid network facilitates selfdestructive behaviors and desperate aggression as fear strategies - destruction/elimination of threats or repression of inability to do so(learned helplessness). Mu opioid network governs the opposite - behaviors that integrate us with rewarding objects that increase the life force.

I did kinda drop in from the mental health forum and extending my theory of workings of the mind even to aging, but it fits. Or I'm making it fit, you decide

Edited by addx, 07 March 2014 - 04:23 PM.

[addx]

Wrote this in another thread but I'll stick it here because it belongs here

Some abstract understanding of life:

Dopaminergic networks are ALWAYS about relational processing - distance between real state and projected state. In that sense they provide executive guidance to projected states of ALL "integrated/controlled objects" including muscles(alzheimers vividly explains it, muscle movement works by projecting a position and the dopaminergic networks provide autimatic guidance to that position. Dopaminergic networks provide/facilitate guidance/control methods of EVERYTHING, even people, providing for social paranoia, love infatuation etc.

This is not just wishful thinking abstraction. Dopaminergic networks always provide this function because the electrochemical properties of dopaminergic signalling, the electric functions it provides, the frequency of signalling is suitable for such computations. Evolutions reuses it over and over again for the same abstract function each time it evolves something new. Dopaminergic signalling infact provides brain waves.

Serotonergic networks are ALWAYS about "level of integration" processing. They keep a "state" record and tonically regulate "strenth" of associated dopaminergic relational control methods which is a much useful/better way of saying "serotonin inhibits dopamine". Serotonin regulates level of integration with "bad objects" just as it does with "good objects". Integration is provided by dopaminergic methods of control. Level of integration is provided by their success in execution confirming methods of control to work. There are also methods of control that control us. These are methods of control of "bad objects" or in other words, dopaminergic networks provide "control to avoid" the "bad" and thus facilitate a basis for anxiety as well. There's serotonergic receptors that excite rather than inhibit - these handle control methods of bad.

Opioid networks are ALWAYS about modulating immediate sacrifice for a better future level of "well being". Well being "measure" is, as said provided by serotonin as an increase in methods of control/intergration of good objects, an increase in methods of avoidance control of bad object and an increase of methods of control(pleasing) of bad objects that are integrated and also denied to be bad because of failure to avoid(repressed knowledge about the tamer of the horse being infact its abuser, stockholm syndrome etc). Opioidergic signalling provides ability to sacrifice the now for the future by numbing/easing the painful, negative, opposing body stimuli of the now in order to execute and confirm a control method that when confirmed will provide a new level of well being. There is positive - mu opioid - providing the ability to sacrifice the now(emotional now) and generate a rise in motivation to put in effort to learn to control a pleasurable/positive object. Kappa opioid provide the ability to sacrifice the now to generate increasing motivation to learn to control a negative object, or if helplessness has been learned from too much failure, kappa opioids provide means of repressing the knowledge of being integrated with a bad object but still potentiating the required dopaminergic urges to please it(stockholm syndrom, horse taming, whatever learned helplessness denial).

This actually works at the social psyche level, bodily functions level, all levels. Food is processed as objects. The body recognizes good or bad and processes using the same mechanisms as it does social objects. Social objects have an extra piggy back of vasopressin and oxytocin signalling also potentiating dopaminergic relational control urging, but the underlying system is the same. Pathogens are also processed as objects, regulated as threats, fears etc. All these subnetworks have evolved some of their own specialities perhaps and I guess there has to be some wierd exceptions to these abstract concepts, but I have not yet been dissapointed with how these basic concepts predict studies.

I have more, but just to give an example. It can easily be seed - the main abstract biologic functions of life - evolving through time. Control methods integration with the real world providing well being levels. The most basic life forms follow the same paradigm and the paradigm can be tracked through evolution easily.

Evolving such concepts can actually predict systems that we overlooked. It takes a multidimensional approach to get at these basic concepts but I think it can be worth it. You can see how concepts of aging "oozes" from the function of opioids providing sacrifice(aging) mechanisms. It is sacrifice for "life", even for offsrpings, maternal care and sacrifice for the offspring is also a function of opioids(and piggybacking oxytocin. the mammalian urge to take care of offsprings evolved though oxytocin providing a piggyback "wellbeing input" on top of opioidergic signalling if the attached offspring survives). It takes a wider understanding to create these concepts.

Aging is evolutionary and conceptually sacrifice for future life(primary abstract function of opioids). If an animal did not age there would be less genetic changes, less generations and evolution/adaptation of such species would be slower - they would not surive faster aging competition. I can't really understand why this whole line of research fails to see this. It's almost as if people think aging is a glitch, an imperfection in mother nature, as if it could not create us better. While infact it did it on purpose.

An animal that has been beaten by other animals, stressed too much SHOULD die. Gathering too much stress causes premature death. It as an evolutionary function which the individual experiences as punshiment for failure but from the one order up perspective of life this punishment is actually pro-life. The ones that cant cope, die to provide more chance for the ones that can cope to procreate and spread their superior genetic material and control methods. Life is bigger than an individual or a single generation.

A species that is in danger and being overrun by other conditiones experiences more stress, lives shorter, procreates more(stress increases procreation) in order to speed up evolution and make up for the lack of adaptation.

Anyway, lack of perspective and understanding of *life* is driving scientists into dead ends and random experimenting.

[addx]

Depression is caused by an inability to satisfy evolutions needs. Lifes needs. Not your own. Most happy people are those whose actions "provide life" in the "wise"/evolutionary generational heritage sense - "the selfih gene" whatever. It is meant to punish you. Humans are infact trying to deny the "rules of the game of life/evolution".

Edited by addx, 09 March 2014 - 03:02 PM.

[Gerrans]

I think it is emerging that the nervous system is at the heart of everything in the body. But then so are all the other "systems". My view is that normal aging will affect all the synergistic processes of the body simultaneously, because they are so closely interrelated. Scientists may study physiological actions in relative isolation; but I am not sure that the layman who wants to improve their health should focus too heavily on one thing in isolation--whether that be the gut biome, the brain, the nerves, the blood, the hormones, or whatever. What makes us thrive probably benefits all these at once.

[addx]

I do believe you posted that before reading the second post which explains aging from the higher order perspective and explains why the nervous systems handles it and also why everything we, our bodies experience inputs into it. It explaines why this is not a glitch in mother nature but a result of balance of metagenerational evolutionary mechanisms inbuilt into the nervous system concentrating processing of all experience into an output of aging.

Edited by addx, 09 March 2014 - 03:24 PM.

[addx]

I also do believe the intensity at which I associate, extrapolate and connect information from varios domains and perspectives is bordering on mania. I can't explain why this happens. The initial post was an attempt from the lower perspective(human). The second post was made after I slept on it and my subconscious connected the dots/requirements of the higher perspective(life) and it suddenly made profound sense.



This is infact a "theory of life", not just aging. It seems quite profound to explain aging as a function of life, but not just in a philosophical sense but all the way down to neurology and effects on cells.

And it also seems it profoundly invalidates basicly all existing aging theories which focus on aging as a glitch, a mistake or imperfection of life. This is a human-centered perspective(even my first post was plagued by it) as for an individual human, aging seems like a nuisance an imperfection of the body. But it is not an imperfection of life and therefore it serves a purpose and has mechanisms that make sense, rather mechanisms that go wrong with time.

This fact explains why scientists are so lost at finding the cause. They trying to find the imperfect chemicals, DNA structurs, errors, limitations. All from the wrong perspective.

If they realized the higher perspective they could have been looking for balancing mechanisms that balance aging against increase/descrease in life promoting values in the sense of evolution.

Edited by addx, 09 March 2014 - 04:34 PM.

[VERITAS INCORRUPTUS]

Depression is caused by an inability to satisfy evolutions needs. Lifes needs. Not your own. Most happy people are those whose actions "provide life" in the "wise"/evolutionary generational heritage sense - "the selfih gene" whatever. It is meant to punish you. Humans are infact trying to deny the "rules of the game of life/evolution".

This is a 'game' we are sorely (literally, sufferingly) losing...
As regards depression, and that which in essence underlies most all psychoneurobiological dysfunction, beyond the 'true life needs' as alluded to above, the 'self-imposed' false maladaptive needs, that is dominantly expressed to the highest degree within underlying dysfunctional disorder-state (all pscyhological disorders) has replaced these 'true life needs' to a highly dominant degree; the dysfunctional 'need set' (within the fear/desire(needs) axis set) demands of our 'psyche' that we have internalized to perceive as 'true needs' unto our underlying psychoneurobiology. That our present world is so incongruous with our evolutionary adaptive dictates is expressed in the overwhelming maladaptive dysfunctional states. Even those who are genetically and/or environmentally less psychoneurobiologically maladapted feel this dis-ease/discontent/suffering that is created from the extreme discord.

Our environment as a whole, our present world-life context, is so maladaptive to our evolutionary constitution, creating this preponderance of such maladaption and psychoneurobiological dysfunction, which of course equates to greater suffering/discordance/disharmony. It's a VICIOUS CYCLE that is breeding itself further and further along this path, in both directions. Will our scientific/technological advancements finally achieve a level that we can start the ball rolling in the other direction or are we doomed to slide further pushed along by this vicious cycle, potentially to come to the extreme and implode upon 'ourself' (humanity) as the end consequence of discord/disharmony/suffering = death?

All of this is perhaps better placed into the context of a Living/Dying Axis Theory or something of that nature

Edited by VERITAS INCORRUPTUS, 10 March 2014 - 12:43 AM.

[VERITAS INCORRUPTUS]

ooops on the 'mis-edit' repost thang that happened. This latter post, was supposed to have simply been an edit of the post above it. They should have a delete post function...sorry about that if it causes any confusion...

addx, on 09 March 2014 - 10:01 AM, said:

Depression is caused by an inability to satisfy evolutions needs. Lifes needs. Not your own. Most happy people are those whose actions "provide life" in the "wise"/evolutionary generational heritage sense - "the selfih gene" whatever. It is meant to punish you. Humans are infact trying to deny the "rules of the game of life/evolution".

This is a 'game' we are sorely (literally, sufferingly) losing...
As regards depression, and that which in essence underlies most all psychoneurobiological dysfunction, beyond the 'true life needs' as alluded to above, the 'self-imposed' false maladaptive needs, that is dominantly expressed to the highest degree within underlying dysfunctional disorder-state (all pscyhological disorders) has replaced these 'true life needs' to a highly dominant degree; the dysfunctional 'need set' (within the fear/desire(needs) axis set) demands of our 'psyche' that we have internalized to perceive as 'true needs' unto our underlying psychoneurobiology. That our present world is so incongruous with our evolutionary adaptive dictates is expressed in the overwhelming maladaptive dysfunctional states. Even those who are genetically and/or environmentally less psychoneurobiologically maladapted feel this dis-ease/discontent/suffering that is created from the extreme discord.

Our environment as a whole, our present world-life context, is so maladaptive to our evolutionary constitution, creating this preponderance of such maladaption and psychoneurobiological dysfunction, which of course equates to greater suffering/discordance/disharmony. It's a VICIOUS CYCLE that is breeding itself further and further along this path, in both directions. Will our scientific/technological advancements finally achieve a level that we can start the ball rolling in the other direction or are we doomed to slide further pushed along by this vicious cycle, potentially to come to the extreme and implode upon 'ourself' (humanity) as the end consequence of discord/disharmony/suffering = death?

Life sucks (literally and figuratively) and then you die...will our 'life suck' in relations to all humanity and our increasing discord be our final doom? Or is there some 'salvation' to be had, somehow through science as the only perceivable means? Or will we just continue to suffer more and more within our maladapted discord?

Where is Shiva when you need her?

All of this is perhaps better placed into the context of a The Human Condition: Living/Dying Axis Theory or something of that nature

Edited by VERITAS INCORRUPTUS, 10 March 2014 - 01:00 AM.

[xks201]

I think a certain amount of entropy will need to be overcome like in the microtubules of the kidneys which are not simply repaired at the efficiency other body parts are.

[VERITAS INCORRUPTUS]

I think a certain amount of entropy will need to be overcome like in the microtubules of the kidneys which are not simply repaired at the efficiency other body parts are.

Though I know the following perhaps is seemingly far more dominantly philosophical, and thus certainly to some degree deviates from the core integrity of the thread, it has strong biological/psychological/psychoneurobiologial fundaments. So hopefully addx and those following do not mind this somewhat tangential interjection...

At the core of it all is the 'lost cause' battle life itself fights against the very most fundamental law of the Universe-Nature, Entropy itself. This is where the seat of all the discord and intrinsic suffering arises.

High-ordered states (at the pinnacle Life, Human Life itself) are inherently at the mercy of the tendency toward Entropy/High-Disordered States; such are of course inherently incompatible, 'in a very high level of discord'. The result of this discord within all life is suffering (as such can perceive it, from the lowest forms on), to one degree or another. Even an amoeba 'suffers punishment', it just is not developed in a manner to self-recognize such at any level we would be able to see as 'suffering',...fortunately for them, lol) The higher degree of order, the greater "Entropic Potential". Humans are the highest state of order.

Our advanced' society is now ever higher ordered, creating an even greater juxtaposition; moreoever, as noted, our advancement most obviously has even well-superseded our 'evolution design and capacity'. Of course, in the end Entropy always wins (ashes to ashes, dust to dust; as they say).

Notice how the mantra is always akin to such as 'try to achieve balance', 'don't fight it', 'all in moderation' (balance; equilibrium), or even 'everything happens for a reason' (acceptance; surrender), et al. The only mean toward Peace, a reduction of or freedom from suffering, is to as best as possible surrender/accept the underlying Law of Entropy that prevails. It is our internal recognition of this inherent imbalance of Life-Drive to sustain order and the natural 'order' of all things to move towards a state of Entropy/Chaos/Disorder, though that also which is really Equilibrium/Peace.

The only means to fully be One with the Universe is obviously recognized/expressed in different manners by all cultures, though 'pure' Buddhism of course is the most congruent. Note of course our Westernized lifestyle, for all its 'advancement', is juxtaposed against this very core principle in most every manner possible and moves more and more within this disposition to an ever greater degree (seemingly exponentially perhaps). As such, only within 'R.I.P.' is a Western-oriented mind going to seemingly find peace and be freed from considerable suffering (though some are more fortunate than others to be 'set better' internally and externally though they still suffer).

Again, is there somehow a means to adapt, to 'self-adapt', to reverse the direction we are headed which appears to engender even greater suffering; to even potentially 'supersede' the entirety of this naturally/inherently discordant/suffering juxtapositional state? Time will tell...

Edited by VERITAS INCORRUPTUS, 10 March 2014 - 04:46 PM.