The Bounce Back Book by Karen Salmansohn

This book was passed around our Sunday morning prayer group and received positive reviews from the group members.  Karen Salmansohn wrote Bounce Back!: How to Thrive in the Face of Adversity shortly after she was a victim of a sexual assault. She offers 75 tips on how to get out of the pit of despair and back into a life where it is possible to thrive not just survive.

Each tip typically covers two to six pages with a description of the problem and an assignment. For the most part, the recommendations are solid and most people could find something to get out of a rough patch. Take care with recommendation #53 which includes a list of supplements to treat depression. According to the Great Courses presentation on Integrative Medicine, St. John's Wort interferes with the effectiveness of many medications and should be taken only after consultation with a medical doctor.

Cultivate the habit of zest #58 suggests we take pleasure in the small things in life like the color of leaves on a fall day. Tip #37 recommends that we reframe our interpretation of a situation and look for the humor in it.  See my  piece about Teenagers who egged my house as an example.

Tip #34 See it as it is and see it as better than it is. (click to enlarge)

Tip #5 Turn over a new belief. (click to enlarge)

Fun is a high performance tool - Karen Salmansohn - 17 min. 

Be Happy, Damnit! - 38 minutes

Tips for longevity - 44 minutes. 

I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong describes the animal microbial interactions that alter and sometimes control our health and behavior.

The effort to describe microbes as either good or bad over simplifies these organisms. A better analogy would be that the microbes could either be a weed or a wildflower depending on the location. The standard gut microbes aid with digestion but are problematic if they enter the bloodstream.

Insect microbial interactions involve complex trade offs. Some provide protection to aphids from parasitic wasps. Other bacteria Janthionobacterium lividum can help frogs ward off infections from fungal organisms like Batrachochytrium dendrobatis (Bd). Researchers noted that Bd was spreading into the area and then dipped susceptible frogs in the bacterial broth allowing some of the species to survive the fungal invasion.

Researchers are trying to replicate the success of fecal transplants with C. difficile for other diseases with mostly poor to mixed results. Other fecal transplants can cause changes in animal behavior. Demonstrating this effect in humans is difficult but may have some implications with susceptibility to mental illness.

The success of introduced probiotics is currently limited to reducing the adverse side effects from antibiotic treatments. With a normal gut microbiome researchers have had difficulty altering the gut microbiome using probiotics. The low number of organisms in the probiotic compared to the number in the gut makes it difficult. Food prebiotics such as mother's breast milk, onions, bananas, garlic and other can successfully change the gut micribiome.

We live in a community of microorganisms. Attempting to make things better by using a broad spectrum antibiotic has the potential to cause other problems. Billions of years ago the merging of archaea and bacteria produced the first eukaryotes as noted by Eugene V. Koonin in 2015.

Can a fungus save plants from Global Warming - 8 min.

 

A world without microbes - 7 min.

The microbes within us - 47 minutes

Minnesota Mirrored by N.G, Carlson

Experimentation with the Mirror Lab app allowed me to manipulate a few images previously published in Fireworks, Flowers, Forests, and the Minnesota State Fair. New images were taken of the Minneapolis Skyline, and at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Kaleidescope images of flowers and fractal images of buildings make for a unique visual experience. I hope readers have as much fun viewing the images as I had creating them.

Both the Minnesota Mirrored in paperback and the Kindle version of Minnesota Mirrored are available from Amazon.

Original mirrored building

Digitally altered building with the Mirror Lab app

Photos similar to those in Minnesota Mirrored - 2 min.