Reversal

I'll confess that I've been in one of those black moods this week... you know the kind - absolute darkness that no amount of sunshine or chocolate or even good wine seems to budge. I'm not necessarily a sunny person on a good day, but this was bleak enough to make me wonder if I need some chemical help again. To top it off, or maybe because of this, I managed to break my little toe quite spectacularly. Pain and depression. Add the frustration of my summer schedule and you have a trifecta of misery.

While mulling all this over, I keep tripping over my negativity. How exactly are we supposed to be positive when the brain is busy following those well worn neural pathways of gloom - stewing in it's own soup of neurotransmitters, most of which are obviously out of whack this week? All these folks with their Secrets (you know that your thoughts are creating your life, so just change those silly thoughts!) are forgetting that many of us aren't on a level playing field when it comes to brain chemistry.

I want it to be that easy. I know my brain chemistry is part of the problem and I want someone to fix that. What I don't want is to take some pill that's going to do a lot of other things to me as well... things I don't need done.... like mess with my appetite or destroy my libido. I wish that I could go to my doctor and he could say something like "oh, your serotonin is off by 5% and dopamine needs a 10% boost... here take this." I wish they could fix my personal chemistry - make my own cocktail of chemical happiness boosters and chemical anti-cranky stuff until my brain was just a regular brain. You know what I mean. A cure.

Not yet. But I happened upon a post today - an amazing post. Seems some scientists reversed the symptoms of retardation and autism in mice. Didn't treat it. FIXED IT. They did it by inhibiting a certain enzyme, and they found that "not only were structural abnormalities in connections between brain cells righted, proper electrical communication was restored between the cells."

They cured them. Onward and upward, science, onward and upward!

Read about it here.