Caffeine

Pardon if this jumps around a bit this week. I’m trying to drink more tea. Let me explain.

We were talking today about how much Coke a patient drinks – something like 4 liters a day – and if it was a bad thing. One of my classmates did some fast research and found out that you can actually become psychotic if you take in enough caffeine in a short enough time. The magic number – depending on how much you weigh – is 1 gram. Then we had to figure out how much is in Coke, coffee and tea.

If you’re jittery waiting for the answer, you’re drinking too much already…

I was worried about having 6-7 cups of tea; turns out I can have *40* before the problems start. It’s about 24 cups of Coke, so about 2.5 liters a day. Coffee? Just a few cups less; something like 20 cups, depending on how strong you like it.

My Dad’s coffee – well, that’d be about 7 cups…

Anyway, I had a lecture this week on ECT – Electro Convulsive Therapy. While it was made famous (or infamous) by Jack Nicholson in his 1975 movie ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, it’s actually a very accepted and effective treatment for depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and bad hair days. To explain simply what ECT is, think of it like this: it reboots the system when it’s not functioning correctly.

Kinda like ‘CTRL-ALT-DEL’ for the brain.

What happens is electrodes are placed on the patient’s head (Not the, uh, nether regions – you know, down *there*. We leave that to those military contractors in Iraq. But I digress.) and the other end is connected to a power source (think DieHard Heavy Duty car battery) and a gentle (huge) electric current is sent through the brain. At most hospitals, these ‘treatments’ are given away from the other patients, but you can always tell when they are going on.

The lights flicker.

But what I want to know is who came up with this idea. Who looked at the table lamp and said, ‘Aye, young Johnny over there seems a wee bit blue. What say we plug him into yonder wall to see if it makes him feel better!’ Let’s face it, it sounds mean and barbaric – something you would do to people you don’t like very much or who you are trying to get even with.

I’m sure my brother tried it on me when I was growing up…

And with that, it’s the weekend. I’m finished at Repat; I have two more weeks of psych at FMC before I’m finished. In that time I have to write a paper or two and get ready for a short exam at the end. So I’ll do a bit of study this weekend in addition to some time with friends and playing at the beach. Not to mention getting a bigger teapot…

As always, Love to All and keep working on your 101 List!
Bryan