NEUROTRANSMITTERS AND SPORTS HERNIA
Note: I am not a doctor. I have zero medical credentials.
In about 2006 I read In Search of Memory, the autobiography of Eric Kandel, who received the Nobel Prize for discovering how memory is stored in an animal’s brain (including the human animal). It was an interesting read, but not for the faint-hearted. As you are reading this sentence at LetsRun, your eyes and your brain are utilizing many brain cells and nerve cells, connecting with each other across thousands of synapses by squirting (emitting) tiny sprays of chemicals (neurotransmitters) towards each other that are then picked up by little receptors of the target nerve cell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kandel
One person here at LetsRun who is contemplating surgery posted that he has never been a good runner, and even feels like a clown trying to run.
When an athlete is running down the basketball court, or running down the soccer field, or skating across the hockey rink, two complex processes are occurring hundreds of times per second in many muscles in his body: The stretch reflex and the golgi tendon organ action. It is not simple and easy to understand unfortunately, but important nevertheless.
Stretch Reflex
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfuhVWK8C0U
Golgi Tendon Organ
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgi_tendon_organ
Keep in mind that nerves, nerve cells and brain cells in animals function and communicate with each other using both electrical voltage (potentials, ions, etc.) and also neurotransmitter chemicals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter
Famous neurotransmitters like dopamine, melatonin, serotonin, aspartic acid (related to Aspartame, the artificial sweetner). But there are many more neurotransmitter chemicals used by animals. Many are little understood, and some yet undiscovered.
Long before man existed on earth the process of muscular coordination had already been evolved by nature and made to be very robust. Herds of reindeer being chased down by packs of wolves. Each reindeer and wolf an athlete with almost perfect athletic coordination.
And man the athlete, too.
But it’s interesting that we can take a big 200 lb. man, a mass of muscle and bones, and have him swallow just a few drops of alcohol (with is NOT a neurotransmitter), and we will observe that he begins to slur his speech and stumble when he tries to run. A two hundred pound machine brought to its knees by a few grams of a seemingly harmless liquid. The alcohol hit him right in his weak spot, his achilles heel: It slightly interferred with his neurotransmitters. And down he goes.
So we see that although the wonderful neurotransmitter system of muscular coordination evolved by nature is wonderful and almost miraculous in an athlete, it is highly vulnerable to severe degradation by many chemicals not found in the natural food chain.
According to Eric Kandel’s book, if you’ve just read this sentence, its idea is stored in your short term memory. After about 2 hours, if you deem it important enough, it will automatically be reprocessed into your long term memory (which requires the synthesis of new protein). Otherwise it will be discarded.
So, I’ll stop here and continue tomorrow with a further introduction to my report on my sports hernia recovery progress.
My current objective is that all contributors to this excellent LetsRun thread will recover to good health quickly. I don’t discriminate between those that have had surgery and those who haven’t. All of us can recover if we each put away our emotions and engage our powers of reason (which of course utilizes/relies on neurotransmitters).
Tomorrow I'll post more.