BRAIN FOOD

 A new study links what one eats to how one thinks.

A study conducted by researchers at Oregon State University and published in the journal Neuroscience  suggests that high-fat, high-sugar diets have a detrimental effect on what they refer to as “cognitive flexibility,” or the power to adapt and adjust to changing situations. 

The research was performed using laboratory mice that consumed different diets with varying levels of fat and sugar before facing a gamut of tests—primarily mazes and basic puzzles — to monitor changes in their mental and physical function. The researchers paid specific attention to the types of gut bacteria present in each control group.

“Bacteria can release compounds that act as neurotransmitters, stimulate sensory nerves or the immune system, and affect a wide range of biological functions,” Kathy Magnusson, a professor in the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine and principal investigator with the Linus Pauling Institute, said in a statement. “We’re not sure just what messages are being sent, but we are tracking down the pathways and the effects.”

In about four weeks, the mental and physical performances of the rats fed on a high-fat, high-sugar diet started to drop significantly, especially when one or more variables in the test changed. One of the most disparate physiological factors within the groups of mice, and the suspected reason for the decreased brain function, was gut bacteria.

People have been paying more attention to their guts than ever. Yogurt companies are using the term “probiotic” to peddle their sugary treats to would-be health junkies, and celebrities like sportscaster Erin Andrews are now digestive health spokespeople for hire, trying to finally make gut bacteria the hip and cool subject it deserved to be all along. But the scientific community has also started paying keener attention to those trillions of stomach-dwelling microflora as well.

One of the first studies to ever to link gut bacteria to brain function was performed by researchers at the Gail and Gerald Oppenheimer Family Center for Neurobiology and Stress.  They took three groups of women and had one group eat yogurt loaded with supplemental probiotics daily for four weeks, another group eat a substance that looked and tasted like yogurt but had no probiotics, and the third group was given nothing specific to eat. Not only did the sans-probiotic group suffer in cognitive tests, just like the mice did in the recent Oregon State study, but they also faltered in emotion based tests, linking poor gut health to stress. 

“This work suggests that fat and sugar are altering your healthy bacterial systems, and that’s one of the reasons those foods aren’t good for you.” Magnusson said. “It’s not just the food that could be influencing your brain, but an interaction between the food and microbial changes.”

The old wise tale, "you are what you eat," seems to have some scientific foundation. 

This could explain why the LOST main characters, the survivors, were slow to adapt and adjust to the changing situation of survival. The diet they had was sharply diminished from their standard life style until junk food was reintroduced with the Hatch discovery and food drop. One of the nagging issues during the series was that the main characters never asked viewer questions to each other in order to figure out what was going on. It was more action without thinking than thinking of a plan then acting it out. The latter leaders who had better brain food diets such as Ben or Sayid seemed to grasp island situations better than Hurley, Charlie or even Jack.

1000

It is hard to believe that this is the 1000th post on LOSTheory.

Started in the last season of LOST as a way to expand upon personal fan theories about the show, it continues to explore LOST themes and story lines with related science and cultural stories which used to be the basis of the strong LOST internet community discussions.

I never thought it would last this long.

Most of the fan blogs for the series merely faded away within a year or so. There are probably only a couple of hardcore LOST sites still in existence. The series has faded from the mass collective memory because it is not the type of show fit for syndication which would churn a new viewing audience to the LOST mythology.

The writers and cast members have dispersed throughout the entertainment media complex with less than stellar results. It is hard to remake a widely viewed cult series like LOST. It is hard to repeat success in any business, but it particularly hard in television. Something new and innovative is suddenly tired and boring in another run.

You never can tell what will happen in the future. There are still many fan comments stating that they miss the show. And never say never, because sometimes things come back from the dead like Twin Peaks or the X-Files. But LOST's ending makes a second curtain call more difficult and challenging to create a sequel. Even a spin-off would cause some head scratches because the interwoven story lines of the main characters seems to be set in stone.

Would a Ben spin-off of his conquest of the DHARMA group be compelling enough to last an entire season? Would a Locke spin-off of his depressing childhood of foster homes be so depressing that it turns off viewers? Would a Kate crime spree roller coaster road trip to avoid FBI capture be fun or disguised as a Fugitive rip-off?

No, LOST appears to set itself in television stone, for good or ill.

LOST took a foothold in many people's lives for six full years. That is longer than many people have personal relationships or friendships. It is not to say we cannot still learn from LOST, enjoy it, dissect it and rework it to find new twists or enlightenment. LOST gave us the rare opportunity to branch out, ask questions, seek our own answers, and to weave our own derivative stories. How much longer that will last is up to each individual.

THE SAME EFFORT

There is a proverb which states: We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. ... It takes the same amount of effort.

If one takes an honest, introspective look at one's self, that proverb is an accurate statement.

Effort is a vigorous or determined attempt to accomplish something; a strenuous physical or mental exertion.

So effort takes strength, focus and a goal.

The results we get is equal to the amount of effort we put into the task.

Our mind is not our best friend. It tricks us every day. It makes "excuses" that allows us to procrastinate, take risks, go outside one's comfort zone under the security blanket of making sure we don't "get hurt." It may rain today, so I won't go outside to exercise (jog, run, walk). I won't give up soda because it will give me a caffeine withdrawal headache. It takes too much time to go out and meet new people.

Those excuses are in direct contradiction to one's own personal goals such as losing weight, meeting new people, getting out of a social rut, etc. You may want to change your life but your mind and will creates road blocks to starting a plan to achieve those goals.

It seems contradictory, but it may be the last vestige of basic animal instincts in man who for self-preservation was wary of strangers, the dark, animal noises, risky paths and painful experiences.

Every person is given 24 hours each day to use as he or she pleases. Free will gives us choices. those personal choices is what controls what paths we take during our lives. Some of these paths lead to happiness and fulfillment, while other paths lead us to loneliness and sadness.

In LOST, the vast majority of main characters were going down personal paths of unhappiness.  For example, Jack chose to follow his father's career path as a surgeon, but that is not really what he wanted to do. His career path sucked the life out of him - - - turning him into a loner whose only purpose was to work at the hospital in order to get some recognition from his father.

Sawyer also chose to take his life down a dark road of revenge. He could have accepted his parents deaths for what they were, a troubled murder-suicide caused by being taken by a con artist. But there had to be something more than financial stress to cause such destruction of his family unit. Sawyer was given a chance by his uncle to become a fine young man, but Sawyer chose to copy the man who caused him grave pain. And once he fulfilled his goal of revenge, it left him hollow - - - he had led a meaningless life with nothing to show for it.

If Jack or Sawyer had put in the same effort on something more positive, a different career path, they would have been better human beings. They probably would not have been loners prior to Flight 815. They probably would have had their own happy families from the lessons learned in their own childhoods. Instead, they took the broken pieces of their lives and obsessed on them to the point of darkness.

Everyone needs to take stock in their lives on a periodic basis. Are you putting in the effort to be happy?

SUN CONFLICTS

Sun-Hwa Kwon is an enigma, a person or thing that is mysterious, puzzling, or difficult to understand.  

She grew up in a Korean culture dominated by male power. She was expected to be the passive daughter of a wealthy industrialist (with harsh criminal attributes in his business dealings). By all accounts, she grew up as a spoiled, rich kid who had everything the upper class could offer her except excitement.

So she tried to feed her rebellious spirit by trying to undermine her father. Her daddy issues were part cultural, part self-esteem.

Her illicit romance with a poor man, Jin, was an example of her lashing out against her father's wishes. As Jin turned into her father (by being an enforcer for her dad's business partners), Sun began to rebel against her husband by having an affair with her English tutor. We presume that ended badly with her teacher being thrown to his death.

Throughout her back story, we find that Sun had no real close friends. This may be from her isolation as a daughter of a rich and powerful family. She may have been isolated for her own protection against kidnapping, ransom or shaming the family with bad behavior. As such, with Jin she found herself again alone in her home with nothing to do - - - no one to turn to discuss her problems. She thought that she could drastically change her life with the man she loved, but that quickly turned out to be not the case. She turned into the passive, doting spouse. A role that she despised. 

In order to find some self-worth, Sun tried to conceive a child to stabilize her marriage. Jin's infertility put another strain on their relationship to the point Sun was going to leave him at the airport to start a new life alone in America. 

But a pang of regret, remorse or guilt took Sun back to Jin in the airport. It took her onto Flight 815 and her ultimate fate of being trapped on a mysterious island. Since Jin did not know of her English skills, the couple were isolated from the start from the rest of the survivors. This also brought more stress on their relationship since Sun needed to have something more than Jin's paternal iron hand ruling her life. She sought out Kate with her secrets. 

It is ironic that Kate, who could easily make friends with her charm, could never really keep them.

It seemed that Sun could navigate her cursed island life with the meager chance of one true friend to stabilize her marriage, but a jealous Jin and the betrayal that she spoke English, shocked Jin to  shun her.

Here is where the Sun story goes off the rails. 

Despite Jin's infertility, Sun conceived Jin's baby on the Island, which strengthened their marriage but threatened Sun's health. This is the drama that binds the couple together. But logically, many viewers thought that the child was actually her English tutor's. How the "magic" of the island could create a baby in Sun while the couple was cold towards each other could only be thought to be the dream of a weak school girl.

Then the second improbable occurrence: Sun giving birth to her daughter in the jungle with the help of Kate. This was probably more a Kate moment than Sun's, since Kate had avoided her entire life. responsibility for anything or anyone. 

The third improbable occurrence was Sun's near death experience on the freighter. She gets on the helicopter just before the explosion. She is shocked and grief stricken that Jin has been killed. But then she has another near death experience when the island vanishes and the helicopter crashes in the ocean.

Instead of being grateful for having a daughter to care for, Sun's personality changes dramatically.
Back in civilization, Sun became more self-confident and daring, seizing control of her father's company. She also sought revenge for Jin's death. When a man she never trusted, Ben, tells her Jin is still alive, Sun drops everything - - - including the care of her own daughter - - - to return to the island. That makes no sense. Why would a mother with a young infant abandon her to go to a dangerous island in search for her deceased husband? Since she had the power and wealth of a Widmore, she could have sent her own rescue party to the island. We were as naive as she was in trusting Ben.

Back on the island, she is in the wrong time shift. She cannot find Jin. She feels angry and betrayed but somehow never accepts that it is her own fault. And during her island time, she has no remorse or feelings about her daughter.

Once the time lines merge, Sun reunites in a fantasy reunion with Jin. Their reunion was very brief, since the submarine destined to take them home is sabotaged by Flock. In the worst possible story line, Sun is trapped by a locker when the bomb explodes in the submarine. The ship takes on water. Instead of Jin saving himself to take care of their daughter, he decides to stay and die with Sun. Why would a father abandon his daughter that way?

Sun and Jin drowned together for no good reason. 

But the last contradiction is a major one. In the flash sideways, the pair were reunited after a family crime matter resolves, putting Sun into labor at the hospital. The birth of her daughter in the side ways world (after life) has the same major plot issues as the Aaron birth by Claire at the side ways concert: why would a live human being be born again in the afterlife? One theory is that the children were never born to their parents in their real life. That the island was all an illusion. That the dreams and hopes of a heavenly life would include a fabricated family to love. Otherwise, Sun's daughter would be alive on the mainland, growing up to live her own life, and then dying to reunite with her parents as an adult.

The Sun story shows many of the critical script flaws in LOST.

LOSING MEMORIES

This is a story right out of science fiction.

The BBC reported that a man who went to the dentist for a root canal left with his memories locked in on 1:40 p.m. on 14 March 2005 – right in the middle of a dentist appointment.

A member of the British Armed Forces, he had returned to his post in Germany the night before after attending his grandfather’s funeral. He had gym in the morning, where he played volleyball for 45 minutes. He then entered his office to clear a backlog of emails, before heading to the dentist’s for root-canal surgery.

“I remember getting into the chair and the dentist inserting the local anesthetic,” he said. After that? A complete blank. It is like any new memories were written in invisible ink that slowly disappears from his mind after 90 minutes.

Today, he only knows that there is a problem because he and his wife have written detailed notes on his smartphone, in a file labelled “First thing – read this."

Even the events leading up to his amnesia are highly puzzling. The dentist thought it was a reaction to the anesthetic or a brain blood vessel had burst. But other medical evaluations could not confirm a cause.

The patient could work out how to solve a complex maze, however, he had completely forgotten the skill three days later. “It was like a déjà vu replica of the same errors – he took the same time to relearn the task once more,” says his doctor.

One possibility is that this kind amnesia is a “psychogenic illness." Some patients report memory loss after a traumatic event – but that tends to be a coping mechanism to avoid thinking about painful past events; it doesn’t normally affect your ability to remember the present. However, this patient had suffered no trauma, and according detailed psychiatric assessments, he is otherwise emotionally healthy. 

The answer may be hiding in the thicket of tiny neural connections we call “synapses”. Once we have experienced an event, the memories are slowly cemented in the long term by altering these richly woven networks. That process of “consolidation” involves the production of new proteins to rebuild the synapses in their new shape; without it, the memory remains fragile and is easily eroded with time. Block that protein synthesis in rats, and they soon forget anything they have just learnt. 

Crucially, 90 minutes would be about the right time for this consolidation to take place – just as he starts to forget the details of the event. It is like the protein production just stops so memories cannot be locked in place.

This story is relayed to LOST fans for the simple reason as a possible explanation of the untold torment of what "awakening" meant to the main characters. They had to "awake" in order to move on in life. But why in the sideways world they could not remember the island past has always been a confusing bit of mythology. Instead of not allowing the memories to set in the synapses, the LOST characters' memories were "masked" by something until a traumatic or emotional event triggered the release of that mask. This falls into the category of circumstantial evidence to the premise that LOST's foundation story line was about mind control and illusion over reality.

DO COMA PATIENTS DREAM?

Science is trying to figure out how the conscious and subconscious mind works. Several studies have tried to use EEG monitors to pinpoint brain activity in normal resting individuals, sleeping individuals and people in a coma. The results have been inconclusive. Brain activity is hard to measure on a quantitative level.

People in comas are, to the best of our knowledge (at least in most cases) incapable of entering REM sleep, and very likely are not going to have any kind of dream or nightmare. This is because the brain system required to have a dream are in fact the same systems required while you're awake - to the point that your visual cortex will light up in an FMRI during a dream - it does not light up during a coma. Now, in contrast, there are some patients who aren't in a coma but rather an immobile state (imagine the computer's on, but the monitor's disconnected) - these patients have brain activity and can even, for instance, picture a tennis game if it's described to them. This state would likely allow for dreams, and if so, nightmares. However, if they did, they would likely dream just like we do.

It is also incorrect to assume that we only end nightmares by waking up. The sudden shock of awakening makes us remember the dream more clearly. Most dreams are finite because the neurological triggers for them are transient. We dream, research indicates, to solve problems. To walk through the aspects of our day that were unresolved or had left incomplete traces that needed to be handled. Nightmares similarly give us a chance to practice at our fears - however, our brain is unlikely to keep giving us practice after a certain amount of time.

In our non-waking state, there are two factors at work: dreams to solve problems and nightmares to practice facing our fears.

That seems to be a mission statement for LOST.

Take Hurley for example. He had a fear of rejection, including from his father and later with women. He also had an active imagination to try to solve his problems such as money, work and body imagine. In the complexity of Hurley's semi-conscious sleep state, he could have had both problem solving dreams and fear nightmares overlapping to create his island adventure.

Because what happens when Hurley "awakens" from his island time? He is in the sideways world with a lovely woman, Libby, and his friends.  This could still be part of his dream-nightmare resolution. For Hurley learns through his island time to be responsible, to not blame curses or bad luck for his issues with his parents, work or love life, and that by just being himself he can attain his goals of a romantic life and lasting friendships.

If that is the message of LOST, it is a good one.

CLOSURE

Some things end.  Some things end when you least expect them to end; friendships and relationships.

How they end may be as important as why they ended.

When one person breaks off a friendship or relationship cold turkey, this may lead the other person bewildered, confused, and in shock. If that person does not know what he or she did wrong, the pain of loss is intensified by the lack of closure.

Closure is the act or process of closing something in the a sense of resolution or conclusion at the end of an artistic work or  a feeling that an emotional or traumatic experience has been resolved.

The LOST experience mirrors real life in many ways. For die hard fans, the characters in the show were their weekly friends. They bonded with their stories, hopes and dreams. They were so involved in their lives that they took to the internet to debate, defend and marvel in their characters attributes and stories. So many people were going to take it hard when LOST ended just as any bond of friendship or affection ends in real life.

At least in the series, the producers were given the opportunity to wrap up what they considered the important loose ends to give the main characters a send off to the heavens.  More fans than not accepted the finale as being the resolution they wanted for their characters, their friends and themselves. The journey was not a waste of time. It was just a sad reminder that the six years together was over. Only memories remain.

In real life, some people do not get the opportunity to say goodbye in a relationship. Suddenly, a person is taken away by an accident or sudden death. Sometimes friendships fade away from neglect or fear that they may become too serious for one person. Sometimes relationships end in a heated way that leaves the parties bitter and hurt. Sometimes the pain lingers because one person in a relationship does not have the opportunity to say "I'm sorry," or even "goodbye." The lack of closure takes a greater toll than the known or unknown reason for the break-up.

Even fans who hated LOST's ending can still feel that the series and their relationship to the show ended with real closure. They know how things ended. They know the characters got together as part of their bonds of friendship. Certain characters found their true loves. It may have been overly sweet and cliche ending, but none the less, an ending.

Many TV shows are canceled between seasons, with a cliffhangers or characters in limbo. This is the worst type of fan purgatory - - - not knowing what was going to happen. Unless the show is rescued by a Netflix, Amazon or other secondary outlet, there will always be a "what if?" haunting question in the viewer's mind. That question is also pondered in real life. It is not a good feeling. But sociologists tell us that even the harshest questions about other people will fade over time.