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The brain is a piece of soggy bacon that lives in a shell of bone, has its own membrane that is like the gut lining, cleans itself by power-washing itself (and
by DiabloD3 5y ago
The brain is a piece of soggy bacon that lives in a shell of bone, has its own membrane that is like the gut lining, cleans itself by power-washing itself (and shorting itself out, essentially; REM sleep is basically the side effect of this process), depends on glucose for its special mitochondria[1], and your humanity is literally a thin layer of meat-paint on top of millions of years of evolution...
... that is doing scientific research on itself, and then reading it and understanding the strange symbols on the screen.
[1]: All your organs have unique metabolic signatures, but they, generally, can all run on purely fatty acids; the brain requires about 30-40g of dietary glucose to run optimally, as fatty acids do not cross the BBB quickly enough.
- remir 5y agoTo me this is the most interesting thing. A bunch of organic matter evolved to the point where it is trying to understand itself. How crazy is that?
- techbio 5y agoI know your ending question is a figure of speech, but since we are imagining it simultaneously, it's more or less by definition not crazy at all.
- hypertele-Xii 5y agoPoetry for nerds. (Thank you)
- codeflo 5y agoSomething something diagonalization proof something something.
- tudorw 5y agohow much?
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoDoesn’t require dietary glucose, the liver will manufacture as needed from fats and proteins.
- kiba 5y agoAlso, it's possible to subsists and survive without food for quite a while.
- davikrr 5y agoIt can also subsist on top of ketone bodies - if fat breakdown is high enough due to a lack of glucose due to fasting or lack of other storage such as glycogen.
- DiabloD3 5y agoUpper limit of what is considered healthy gluconeogenesis is slightly short of what can be provided. Brain needs ~120g of glucose, you're about 30-40g short of that. 30-40g is almost nothing, could be, say, a cup of frozen berry mix, mixed right into 3/4th a cup of plain real greek yogurt, with some turmeric, ginger, and cinnamon mixed in.
- amanaplanacanal 5y agoCan you point to some sources on that? I always want to learn more about diet and how things work in the body.