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Epigenetics- exploring


Michaelangelica

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Yes most serotonin is produced and used by the gut (90%?) while the rest seems to be crucial to brain function and mood.

A point lost it seems on doctors now prescribing billions of antidepressant scripts ( serotonin re uptake inhibitors etc)

I don’t think the SSRIs (Prozac, etc.), which work by inhibiting the uptake of serotonin by MATs in the synapses, have any effect on serotonin in the gut, where it’s removed by blood factors. This is one of the reasons, as a antidepressant drug class, they’re safer than the MAOIs that they largely replaced in the practical arsenal of psycho-drugs.

 

Like nearly all drugs, I agree that antidepressants are over and miss-prescribed. The problem, in my experience, is primarily economic rather than clinical – the cost of clinicians time to carefully evaluate psychiatric treatment is greater than the cost of drugs that often effectively treat disorders. Until medicine can be freed from these constraints, it’s difficult, though not impossible, to improve it.

 

it is also intersting that the GUT /stomach can act independently of the brain. It fact it seems to be able to conter brain commands. the only bit of the body i know that can do this.

 

With all the bacterial communication going on in the GIT ( Quorum sensing), and its ability to harvest and create complex organic chemicals could the stomach be more intelligent that the brain?

The gut is certainly smarter than a person (we might as well equate brain with person) when it comes to doing the complicated and vital things that guts do, though this can be said of practically any organ. Fortunately for us and all animals, our bodies function whether our intellects understand how they function or not.

 

In terms of the kind of intelligence we usually mean by “intelligent” – learning, adapting to new situations, creating abstractions and predicting the outcome of potential actions, etc. – I don’t think any organ, bacterial colony, or other kind of biology beats the brain, nor any non-human animal brain the human one. We’re amazingly good at abstract reasoning.

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This is what we are worrying about using epigenetic engineering via nano biotech for: http://dvice.com/archives/2012/03/should-we-re-en.php

 

When, really, we should be using it to fix the obesity problem, and not only that, but reverse engineer how pathetically weak as physical specimens humans are becoming; we should do this by accelerating human metabolism, cardiovascular strength, the immune system, muscle hypertrophy, and the central nervous system. We should use biotech to turn the average 21st century omega-male into Captain America. We should do this so that one could physically put his or her Cro-Magnon ancestors (i.e. T8) and the world's top athletes (i.e. Usain Bolt) to shame. And by "we should do this" I really mean that's what I would do with "nano-biotechnological epigenetic engineering".

 

I would not use robots or complete machine integration as Ray Kurzweil has suggested with his singularity theory, and his idea of an eventual complete "computerization" of humans. I like being human, and I would just use this technology to become a stronger human, the strongest human possible, or use it to fix my underlying genetic disadvantages or even injuries I have sustained and aging, to keep me young and built like a silverback.

Edited by Anti-money
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