Last Friday went out party with a friend of mine who's a psychologist. We debated some interesting subjects that night which I want to share here in DA.

1.
Allergies are psychological.

This is an idea I've had for many years. When I was young I had a few allergies and they disappeared, such as allergy to dust / polen / etc. At the time I thought ok if I tell my body this thing he's reacting to is not harmful, it should stop reacting to it. At the time I did not know why but now I kind of understand the mechanism inside.

Our body is layered with a network of nervous conduits which let information flow about every little thing that happens inside our body. As such, if we focus our attention in a certain area of our body, our sensitivity in that area increases. The other way around is also true. For example if you picture yourself exercising a muscle daily, the nerves in that area will be more respondant and your muscle mass in there will increase almost like if you really exercised. There was a study about this which showed a 10% increase in muscle mass on test subjects that exercised mentally.

So to contain allergy one just has to tell the body "this is not harmful" and relax, completely ignore the allergy like if it didn't exist. The nervous system will be relaxed and the body will start interpreting that as a sign of no danger which in turn triggers a softer or no response.


2.
Memory and Brain Function - SuperHuman

It has always been my impression that we have the capability to look at a full-page text for 1 second and then use our photographic memory to read it all anytime we like. Same goes for huge complex calculations, we should be able to do it in seconds as our brain has more than enough power to do it. So why dont we?
Fact: Many autist people have these extra-normal abilities
Question: Why can't we also learn how to do it?

According to my psychologist friend he says our brain just does not work that way so we can't "photograph" something to read later in our memory. Nevertheless as I've always seen the brain as an extremely dynamic muscle, there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to adapt if we really want / have to. As so I will start studying how this works and why when I try to read things in memory it all comes in blurred and I have difficulty reading them clearly. I will only be satisfied when I can look at any full-page text for 1 second then take the page out of my sight and read it all from memory. Should be an interesting and unique challenge no?

Do you have any thought about it?