"Exploding head syndrome" and "restless leg syndrome"

I was reading this article when I came across the phrase "exploding head syndrome":

Okay, exploding head syndrome doesn't actually involve detonating domes. This creatively named disorder occurs during the onset of deep sleep, when the person is suddenly startled awake by a sharp, loud noise. These noises range from cymbals crashing to explosives going off. To the person hearing them, the explosions seem to originate either from right next to the person's head or inside the skull itself. There's no pain involved, and no danger, either. Doctors don't know what causes exploding head syndrome, but they do know that it isn't associated with any serious illness.

I've had loud pops (usually like a large bore gun) in my head just as I'm about to fall asleep ever since I can remember but it happens so rarely (maybe once or twice a year at most) that it's always pretty startling. It was even more startling before I started studying science because it was a mystery but, since learning more about the brain and anatomy and especially the nervous system, I've figured that it probably has a simple physical explanation. I've read plenty of theories (there are hundreds) but the most plausible one is that it's caused by a sudden change of pressure inside the eustachian tube.

Till now I did not know that it was called "exploding head syndrome" which seems a bit dramatic as well as inaccurate. "Restless leg syndrome" is also badly named. When I first wrote about it on my blog some people thought I meant that my legs twitched or that I made fidgety tapping movements with my legs the way some hyper kids (usually teenage boys) do. But "restless leg syndrome" doesn't mean that at all.

It means that the nerves in the legs become extra sensitive and it feels as if the leg muscles are contracting and twitching but they aren't. The natural reaction is to try to relieve the annoying sensations by stretching and moving but that doesn't work. There are just as many theories about "restless leg syndrome" as there are about "exploding head syndrome" and nowadays there are even drugs that purport to relieve it. Of course the side-effects of the drugs sound even worse than the symptoms. My "restless leg syndrome" started becoming so annoying a few years ago (keeping me awake) that I decided to try the "old wives' tale" remedy of putting a bar of soap in my bed. I figured it couldn't hurt and there were far fewer side-effects than the drugs.

Of course I didn't put all my eggs in one basket and researched the "science" as well and found that "restless leg syndrome" is very common in people who have lung problems and suffer from congestion. It has to do with lack of oxygen in the blood. I haven't got a clue if my conclusion is scientific or not but I figured my symptoms could be caused by the congestion that I had from COPD so I made sure that I had a good cough before bedtime. Sure enough my "restless leg syndrome" disappeared. I don't know if it's because I put a bar of soap between my sheets or because I cleared my lungs before going to bed.

Thank goodness my "exploding head syndrome" has never caused me problems because I would hate to have to wear ear-flaps with bars of soap in them.

You know it's spring when...

...the camelias, magnolias, quinces and redcurrants bloom.

Saturday sitting rooms

Departures - Okuribito

Departures (Okuribito in Japanese) is the best movie I've seen in ages. It's a 2008 Japanese film by Yōjirō Takita. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2009 Oscars. The movie website is here.

The story (spoiler alert):

Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist in an orchestra in Tokyo, loses his job because of the dissolution of the orchestra. After quitting as a professional cellist he decides to sell his cello (which he had recently purchased for 18 million yen) and also to move back to his old hometown, Sakata, Yamagata, with his wife. One day he finds a classified advertisement for "Assisting departures" for an "NK Agency". He goes to the job interview thinking it is for a job at a travel agency but discovers that NK is an abbreviation for "encoffinment" (納棺, nōkan) and that he is instead to assist the "departed" by ceremonially preparing the dead in front of mourners before their bodies are placed in the coffin. The interviewer, the President of the NK Agency, immediately decides to hire Daigo after confirming that he is able to work hard. The salary is 500,000 yen per month with an additional 20,000 yen bonus for the interview. With no other job prospects, Daigo decides to accept the offer. However, when he comes home to his wife he finds himself unable to admit the type of work he will be doing so he dissembles, saying that he is to be employed in the 'ceremonial occasions industry', which his wife misunderstands as a wedding company.

Daigo has a hard time at his first day of work, being made to act as a corpse in a DVD explaining the procedure of encoffinment. More harrowing still is his first assignment which is, in preparation for the wake, to clean, dress and apply cosmetics to the body of an aged woman who has died alone at home remaining undiscovered for two weeks. Beset with nausea at the sight and smell of her collapsed body, but in need of the money that is paid at the end of each day, Daigo sets out in his new career. Daigo completes a number of assignments and experiences the joy and gratitude at his work of those left behind, while enjoying playing his old cello during his time off. He starts to feel a sense of fulfillment in his work when his wife, Mika, (Ryoko Hirosue) finds the training DVD and begs him to give up such a "disgusting profession." Daigo however refuses to quit, so his wife leaves him. Even his old friend, Yamashita (Tetta Sugimoto), learning of his job, tells him to get "a proper job", then avoids him because of his refusal.

Not long later however, Daigo's wife returns announcing that she is pregnant and pleads with him once again to find a different source of income. At this moment the telephone rings with a new assignment. Yamashita's mother, Tsuyako (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), who ran the local bathhouse on her own, has died. In front of Yamashita, his family and Mika, Daigo prepares Tsuyako's body for her wake and earns the respect and understanding of all present. Then one day, a telegram is delivered to Daigo's house, with notification of the death of Daigo's estranged father. Daigo refuses to see his dead father, but Daigo's co-worker convinces him to go and even insists he take one of the business' display model coffins. When Daigo sees his father, he notices that he has left only one cardboard box of belongings, despite the fact that he lived for over 70 years. Funeral workers come to get Daigo's father's corpse, but Daigo decides to personally encoffin his father. As he encoffins him, Daigo finds a "stone-letter" he had given to his father when he was little; the stone-letter was grasped in his father's hands. When Daigo is finished, he recognizes the father he remembered and cries. As his father is carried away in a coffin, Daigo presses the stone-letter to Mika's pregnant belly.

...

Loosely based on Aoki Shinmon's autobiographical book Coffinman: The Journal of a Buddhist Mortician (納棺夫日記, Nōkanfu Nikki), the film was ten years in the making. Motoki studied the art of 'encoffinment' at first hand from a mortician, and how to play a cello for the earlier parts of the movie. The director attended funeral ceremonies in order to understand the feelings of bereaved families. While death is the subject of great ceremony, as portrayed in this movie, it is also a strongly taboo subject in Japan, so the director was worried about the film's reception and did not anticipate commercial success.

In Japan two sets of death pros take care of the corpse. Undertakers do not embalm the bodies because they are all cremated. An encoffiner (nokanshi) washes the corpse, plugs up the holes, dresses it, puts make-up on the face and places it in the coffin. The undertaker then takes it to the crematorium. But the nokanshi is more than a mere technician. He performs his task with elaborate rituals in front of the whole grieving family who then all take turns to say goodbye to their dearly departed.

Every time the nokanshi performs his task in the movie I was moved to tears. It is so very different from our clinical approach to death. The whole family (including the kids) all get to see the corpse before and after it is beautified. It is a loving farewell and a tribute to the departed.

The trailer:



The music by Joe Hisaishi is stunningly beautiful. Here's the musical finale composed for 13 cellos:



The movie reminded me of the only funeral I have ever enjoyed. In South Africa I was friends with a couple of Indian (Gujarati) guys and came to be close to the whole family. When their mother died I was asked to attend to funeral. They lived in an apartment building in Durban. Mom's corpse was brought out into the central courtyard dressed in a clean white sari, face uncovered and placed on a table. All the women in the huge extended family then sang Hindu hymns and danced slowly around the corpse strewing flowers on the dead woman. There was plenty of uninhibited wailing from the women and the men all wept openly. Then the men only took the body to the cemetery where it was placed on a funeral pyre and cremated. Then we all had to go to a public bath-house for a ritual wash. Afterwards there was a huge feast and the feasting, singing of hymns and dancing went on for three whole days. It was a lovely funeral. I felt as if I had really said goodbye and hadn't suppressed up my emotions as we seem to do in modern funerals.

The second brain

Some ancient Greek philosophers believed that we thought with our guts and that the brain was simply an "air-c0nditioner" that cooled the passions which over-heated the body. Yes, they were ignorant about the brain but it seems they may have been onto something about thinking with our guts:

As Olympians go for the gold in Vancouver, even the steeliest are likely to experience that familiar feeling of "butterflies" in the stomach. Underlying this sensation is an often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain".

A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.
...
Technically known as the enteric nervous system, the second brain consists of sheaths of neurons embedded in the walls of the long tube of our gut, or alimentary canal, which measures about nine meters end to end from the esophagus to the anus. The second brain contains some 100 million neurons, more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system, Gershon says.

This multitude of neurons in the enteric nervous system enables us to "feel" the inner world of our gut and its contents. Much of this neural firepower comes to bear in the elaborate daily grind of digestion. Breaking down food, absorbing nutrients, and expelling of waste requires chemical processing, mechanical mixing and rhythmic muscle contractions that move everything on down the line.

Thus equipped with its own reflexes and senses, the second brain can control gut behavior independently of the brain, Gershon says. We likely evolved this intricate web of nerves to perform digestion and excretion "on site," rather than remotely from our brains through the middleman of the spinal cord. "The brain in the head doesn't need to get its hands dirty with the messy business of digestion, which is delegated to the brain in the gut," Gershon says. He and other researchers explain, however, that the second brain's complexity likely cannot be interpreted through this process alone.

"The system is way too complicated to have evolved only to make sure things move out of your colon," says Emeran Mayer, professor of physiology, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (U.C.L.A.). For example, scientists were shocked to learn that about 90 percent of the fibers in the primary visceral nerve, the vagus, carry information from the gut to the brain and not the other way around. "Some of that info is decidedly unpleasant," Gershon says.

The second brain informs our state of mind in other more obscure ways, as well. "A big part of our emotions are probably influenced by the nerves in our gut," Mayer says. Butterflies in the stomach—signaling in the gut as part of our physiological stress response, Gershon says—is but one example. Although gastrointestinal (GI) turmoil can sour one's moods, everyday emotional well-being may rely on messages from the brain below to the brain above. For example, electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve—a useful treatment for depression—may mimic these signals, Gershon says.
...
Irritable bowel syndrome—which afflicts more than two million Americans—also arises in part from too much serotonin in our entrails, and could perhaps be regarded as a "mental illness" of the second brain.
...
Serotonin seeping from the second brain might even play some part in autism, the developmental disorder often first noticed in early childhood. Gershon has discovered that the same genes involved in synapse formation between neurons in the brain are involved in the alimentary synapse formation. "If these genes are affected in autism," he says, "it could explain why so many kids with autism have GI motor abnormalities" in addition to elevated levels of gut-produced serotonin in their blood.

Many psychological problems manifest as diseases in the guts. For instance: stress, while not the only factor, has been blamed for ulcers and gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) is one of the most common ailments afflicting stressed-out modern man. Most "emotions" which are essential to survival such as fear are felt in the gut. I just know in my gut that these scientists are onto something.

Saturday sitting rooms

Watermelon

Definition:

Green (environmentalist) on the outside but red (communist) on the inside.

Movie stars I loved as a kid - Mary Peach

She isn't well-known in the USA because she stopped acting in Hollywood movies in 1963 after her last movie here, A Gathering of Eagles, with Rock Hudson. She was born 20 October 1934 in my home town, Durban, South Africa. Her first movie was Room at the Top with another South African actor, Laurence Harvey.

Currently we are watching her in the mini-series, Disraeli, about the first (and only) Jewish Prime Minister of the UK. She plays Disraeli's wife, Mary Ann, who was 16 years older than him.

I mentioned to Chas and Andy that she was a babe in the Sixties. So here are a few pics to prove it.

Movie stars I loved as a kid - Katherine Grayson RIP

She died last night at the age of 88:

Kathryn Grayson, a singer and movie star of the 1940s and 1950s best known for MGM musicals such as "Kiss Me, Kate," has died at age 88, her secretary said on Thursday.

Grayson died at home in Los Angeles on Wednesday in her sleep, said Sally Sherman, who had worked with Grayson for 31 years.

The actress was among the top movie musical performers of her day, starring opposite Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in 1945's "Anchors Away" and Ava Gardner and Howard Keel in 1951's "Showboat."
...
Born in North Carolina on February 9, 1922, Grayson was raised in Missouri in a family that loved music. She began singing when she was 8 years old, training to be a soprano in the opera. But as a 15-year-old, the diminutive brunette signed a contract with MGM after studio executives heard her sing.

Sherman said Louis B. Mayer, the legendary studio boss at MGM, once told Grayson that if she went into the opera no one would know her, but if she stayed with movies, she would never be forgotten.
...
Grayson's first film role was in 1941's "Andy Hardy's Private Secretary" and other movies included "It Happened in Brooklyn" (1947) again opposite Sinatra, and "That Midnight Kiss" (1949) with Mario Lanza.

When the musical era began to fade in Hollywood, Grayson switched from films to stage and resumed her opera singing, where her career thrived.

She sang in Carnegie Hall and in 1962, replaced Julie Andrews in the Broadway version of "Camelot." Grayson toured with the stage show, breaking box office records and winning strong reviews for well over a year.

She trained as an opera soprano from the age of 12:

During the 1960s, she performed in several operas, including La Bohème, Madama Butterfly, Orpheus in the Underworld and La Traviata.

Grayson with Mario Lanza singing Be My Love from Toast of New Orleans (1950):



In the same movie, Lanza and Grayson sing Libiamo, the drinking song from from Verdi's opera, La Traviata:



I just ordered Showboat from Netflix. I've seen it many times but...

Happy Presidents Day - William Henry Harrison

On Presidents Day I always raise a toast to Washington (Feb 22nd) and Lincoln (Feb 12th) and Reagan (Feb 6th) but William Henry Harrison was also born in February (9th). Some interesting things about William Henry "Old Tippecanoe" Harrison:

He was the oldest president (67) elected until Ronald Reagan (68) in 1980, and last President to be born a British citizen before the United States Declaration of Independence. He died on his thirty-second day in office of complications from a cold – the shortest tenure in United States presidential history.
...
After the war of 1812, Harrison moved to Ohio, where he was elected to the United States Congress, and in 1824 he became a member of the Senate. There he served a truncated term before being appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Colombia in May 1828. In Colombia, he lectured Simon Bolívar on the finer points of democracy before returning to his farm in Ohio, where he lived in relative retirement until he was nominated for the presidency in 1836. Defeated, he retired again to his farm before being elected president in 1840.
...
When Harrison came to Washington, he wanted to show that he was still the steadfast hero of Tippecanoe. He took the oath of office on March 4, 1841, a cold and wet day. Nevertheless, he faced the weather with neither his overcoat nor hat, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history. At 8,444 words, it took nearly two hours to read, even after his friend and fellow Whig Daniel Webster had edited it for length. He then rode through the streets in the inaugural parade.
...
Harrison's doctors tried cures, applying opium, castor oil, and Virginia snakeweed. However, the treatments only made Harrison worse, and he became delirious. He died nine days after becoming ill, at 12:30 a.m. on April 4, 1841, of right lower lobe pneumonia, jaundice, and overwhelming septicemia; he became the first American president to die in office. His last words were to his doctor, but assumed to be directed at John Tyler, "Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the government. I wish them carried out. I ask nothing more."
...
The death of Harrison caused three presidents to serve in a single calendar year (Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler). This has happened on only one other occasion, in 1881, when Rutherford B. Hayes was succeeded by James A. Garfield, who was assassinated later in that year. With the death of Garfield, Chester A. Arthur stepped into the presidency.
...
Harrison was the first sitting president to have his photograph taken. The original daguerreotype, made in Washington on his Inauguration Day, has been lost—although at least one copy exists in the archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
...
Harrison's grandson, Benjamin Harrison of Ohio, was the 23rd president, from 1889 to 1893, making them the only grandparent–grandchild pair of presidents.

Cheers to "Old Tippecanoe".

Sitting rooms #25

The Boy Scouts are 100 years old

Well, the American organization is; most boy scouts are tweens and teens of course.

Today the BSA celebrates its centennial:

They are young symbols of virtue: honest, trustworthy, doers of good deeds and builders of campfires. For a century, the national organization Boy Scouts of America has been living its pledge to do its duty for God and country.

But the Boy Scouts were actually founded long before that in England:

According to Boy Scout lore, American W.B. Boyce was given directions by a young man after becoming lost in a London fog. The boy refused a tip for the good deed, saying he was a Scout. Boyce was so impressed by the young man's actions that he brought scouting to America in 1910.

But scouting really does have its roots in the USA:

BSA had two notable predecessors in the United States: the Woodcraft Indians started by Ernest Thompson Seton in 1902 and the Sons of Daniel Boone founded by Daniel Carter Beard in 1905. In 1907, British General Robert Baden-Powell founded the Scouting movement in England using elements of Seton's works.

Lord Baden-Powell was inspired to create the Boy Scouts while serving in the British Army bny his experiences during the Boer war in South Africa:

In 1899, during the Second Boer War in South Africa, Baden-Powell successfully defended the town in the Siege of Mafeking. Several of his military books, written for military reconnaissance and scout training in his African years, were also read by boys.

I joined the Boy Scouts as a Cub when I was 6 years old. My first assignment was to grow a bean in a pot. I cut a twig off a bush in our yard. The bean grew and I got my badge. But the twig also grew into a beautiful hibiscus bush and I was told that I had a green thumb. That may not have been true before being told that but it sure made it true afterwards. And I learned what a green thumb means. It's pretty simple and is a not a gift. It just means water your plants regularly.

Sitting rooms #24

Organ recital - congestive heart failure

I didn't blog this past weekend because I was blessed with feeling too well and had other more amusing things to do.

Ever since I got sick two months ago, I've been prodded and poked, tested and scanned till I had information overload. So I checked all the info against research that I did on the Net - for which I also thank God. Today I went to my doctor armed with a sheaf of notes and, by the end of the consultation, we were on the same page. Yes, the first diagnosis of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - from smoking) was partially correct but it is not the whole story.

Eleven years ago I had to have major surgery to remove a colostomy that had been put in because of diverticulitis emergency surgery the year before. My doctor at the time refused to allow me to have the surgery unless I had stents placed in the arteries in my heart. He felt that, if I didn't, I could die during surgery (as I had "died" the year before during the emergency surgery - but was resuscitated.) I refused as it the procedure was too new at that time and too many of the stents (small tubes to keep the arteries open) failed and had to eventually be replaced by bypass surgery which is open-heart surgery - major! I knew that my heart was not perfect but I did not think that it was so bad that I needed stents.

I decided to consult one of the best cardiologists in San Francisco whom I knew from my days working in a hospital pharmacy. He told me that I was fine for surgery and that he would make sure I got through it okay but he also told me that I had the beginnings of CHF (congestive heart failure) which would get worse as I aged.

Well, I survived the surgery and was fine until 5 years later when I had a heart attack. Again I was told that I had to have stents in my heart arteries and once again I refused and checked myself out of the hospital. I hadn't been at home for very long before I asked Chas and Andy to take me back to the hospital because it was obvious to me that I was dying and, if stents could give me a few more years, I was willing to take the chance. I was shipped off to Eugene for 4 days, had 3 stents put in and came home with a new lease on life, feeling better than I had in years.

That is until two months ago when I had to go the the ER because I could not breathe and was writhing with abdominal pain. I knew it was not a heart attack but I also knew that I was dying. I figured it was because of smoking and drinking and that I was paying for the sins of my youth. I told the doctor that I was suffering from COPD and fatty liver disease and that's what she diagnosed me with.

Two months later, after reviewing the results of all the tests that I had and checking the info against research that I did on the Net, I realized that I had to face up to a fact that I had been denying for too long. Like my mother and father, I had CHF.

A friend of mine (who is having his own battle with declining health) emailed me over the weekend and I replied that I too was having health problems. By that time I already knew that I had CHF but I was in such denial that I could not bring myself myself to tell him and deleted the words "congestive heart failure" in case I jinxed myself. Instead I just said that I was having problems with my heart and lungs.

But I couldn't fool myself. I knew from all my research that I had CHF. It's not a happy diagnosis. Men my age have a 50% chance of surviving 5 years after diagnosis. My dad died when he was 6 years younger than me - 57. Women last longer and the disease progresses more slowly. My mom lasted till she was 81. She knew that she had CHF in her seventies and told me that she did not want to live past 80. It's a debilitating disease.

Yes, I brought about my sickness partly through the sins of my youth but also inherited the tendency from both parents. On my mother's side it comes from a genetic heart defect that most Afrikaners/Boers have. I wrote about it here where I said:

In 1901 and 1902, the British torched more than 30,000 farms in the South African Republic and the Orange Free State and placed all the Afrikaner women and children in the world's first "concentration camps," where, because of overcrowding and unsanitary conditions, more than 25,000 Afrikaner women and children died.
...
22,000 Afrikaner children died in the concentration camps in the first ten months. Nearly one quarter of all the Boers in existence at the time were killed by the British. As a result the gene pool was so small that many Afrikaners have a genetic heart defect to this day.

When I was a kid, I used to get what the doctor called "heart palpitations" and "bronchial asthma". I now know that those were warning signs of CHF. CHF can be caused by quite a few different things but it is often hereditary and, once you have had a heart attack, the chances of getting it are increased. And taking recreational drugs, boozing and smoking as I did doesn't help either.

One thing that I did learn in my research is that CHF cannot be cured - only some suffering can be alleviated - and death can be delayed for a while by modern medicine. So, I decided to check out alternative herbal medicine. But I didn't put all my eggs in one basket.

I learned that two of the conventional medications are useful for treating CHF: digoxin and lisinopril. Digoxin has been used for centuries in the form of the foxglove plant and lisinopril is a drug of the angiotensin-converting-enzyme (ACE) inhibitors class. (The ACE inhibitors dilate the blood vessels. This allows the blood to flow more freely to and away from the heart which lowers blood pressure.) It was developed from the venom of a poisonous snake of Brazil. Also both digoxin and lisinopril strengthen the muscles of the heart muscles which become flabby as the heart enlarges.

I had some lisinopril left over from when I had the heart attack. I had to stop taking it because it dropped my blood pressure too low - often as low as 80/60 and once as low as 60/40 just as I was about to have stress test which had to be canceled. I decided to take it at bedtime this time round and so far my BP has not dropped too low. I also started taking the herbal remedies hawthorn, astralagus and osha last week. By Saturday I was feeling really well. So something is working.

Also I had a thought about dying that had been bothering me. Death by CHF is a horrible affair. Basically you slowly drown/asphyxiate on the fluid in your lungs because the heart muscles are too weak to pump the lungs clear properly. Then I remembered how morphine had been pumped straight into my lungs when I was in hospital before Christmas. It had the immediate effect of relaxing the lungs so that I could cough the fluid out and breathe easily. And fortunately it does not have the narcotic effects so you are not all drugged up and loopy. That thought comforted me as it will make my death a much more pleasant affair.

Meanwhile I'm going to enjoy what ever time I have left. As I emailed to my friend the other day:

I've decided I am just going to live for today and enjoy life to the fullest but I had to go through some soul searching. Chas and Andy think I should not post my latest revelations on my blog about how I brought about my own sickness through self loathing but I think I will because it may help someone.

Even the whole surrender to our guru thing was because I had no real respect or love for myself. The funny thing is that, ever since I told Chas and Andy my realization of how self destructive I've been and how much I've actually hated myself, I feel like a weight has been lifted off me. I've been a real shit most of my life but have put on an act of being a good person. I could fool others but not myself.

I've known that I've had heart, lung and liver diseases for a couple of years now but I was in denial until I ended up in hospital 2 months ago at death's door. The fact is that I should have died a long time ago - first when I had the colostomy and then the stroke and then a heart attack but somehow I survived and so now I count each day as a gift.

BTW it's not like I am placing all the blame for my illness on genetic factors; squealing that I was dealt a bad hand in this game of cards called life. I know that the sins of my youth have played a big part - especially the self-loathing - but I think I'll save that topic for a post all of its own.