Future Med Student

Hello all :) I'm Georgia, 26, full time Psychology student. My long term goal is to become a medical doctor and I created this blog to connect with other like-minded students, for educational resources and to blog my journey!

[pathcend]

These are cookies and they are ART.

No topping these!! 👀

Created by SarmieSisterSweets

[wayfaringmd]

Friendly reminder from your neighborhood family doctor:

You don’t need to see a specialist for every body part you have. Believe it or not, primary care doctors can treat your arthritis, your high blood pressure, your depression, AND manage your birth control. And we consider the how a medication affects your whole body when we write a prescription rather than fixing one part to the detriment of other parts.

[thejewishmuseum]

In 1938, neonatologist Ingeborg Rapoport submitted her doctoral thesis — which she then waited 77 years to defend. A student in Nazi Germany, she was barred from taking her oral exams because her mother was Jewish. This past May, the 103-year-old finally took her oral exams and received the degree originally denied to her, making her the oldest recipient of a doctorate degree. Learn more about this incredible woman at JM26.org 

[altafpatel]

How to spot signs and symptoms of Breast Cancer 

[madhushaala]

A very common misconception within the south asian community. So glad she addressed that. (x)

[edwinas]

Her name is Gazal Dhaliwal and she’s a screenwriter. She talk about her life here and here.

She’s the writer for Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, an upcoming Indian coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama with a lesbian couple.  She was also the dialogue writer for Lipstick Under My Burkha, which depicts the secret world, including the sex lives, of four small-town Indian women. She contributed to the screenplay for Wazir and Qarib Qarib Single. 

[academicssay]

[the-art-of-medicine]

Brain Anatomy

Cerebellum - located at the back of the brain beneath the occipital lobes 

Functions: 

Fine tunes motor activity or movement

Assists in maintaining posture, sense of balance or equilibrium, by controlling the tone of muscles and the position of limbs 

Important in one’s ability to perform rapid and repetitive actions

Frontal Lobe -  largest of the four lobes 

Functions:

Motor skills such as voluntary movement, speech, intellectual and behavioral functions

Plays an important part in memory, intelligence, concentration, temper and personality

Occipital Lobe - located at the back of the brain 

Functions:

Enable humans to receive and process visual information

Influence how humans process colors and shapes

Temporal Lobe - located on each side of the brain at about ear level

Functions:

Involved in visual memory and helps humans recognize objects and peoples’ faces

Verbal memory and helps humans remember and understand language

Allows humans to interpret other people’s emotions and reactions.

Parietal Lobe - 

Functions: positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe

interpret simultaneously, signals received from other areas of the brain such as vision, hearing, motor, sensory and memory

[neurosciencestuff]

Researcher explores how information enters our brains

Think you’re totally in control of your thoughts? Maybe not as much as you think, according to a new San Francisco State University study that examines how thoughts that lead to actions enter our consciousness.

While we can “decide” to think about certain things, other information — including activities we have learned like counting — can enter our subconscious and cause us to think about something else, whether we want to or not. Psychologists call these dispositions “sets,” explains SF State Associate Professor of Psychology Ezequiel Morsella, one of four authors on a new study that examines how sets influence what we end up thinking about.

Morsella and the other researchers conducted two experiments with SF State students. In the first experiment, 35 students were told beforehand to not count an array of objects presented to them. In 90 percent of the trials, students counted the objects involuntarily. In a second experiment, students were presented with differently colored geometric shapes and given the option of either naming the colors (one set) or counting the shapes (a different set). Even though students chose one over the other, around 40 percent thought about both sets.

“The data support the view that, when one is performing a desired action, conscious thoughts about alternative plans still occupy the mind, often insuppressibly,” said Morsella.

Understanding how sets work could have implications for the way we absorb information — and whether we choose to act or not. We think of our conscious minds as private and insulated from the outside world, says Morsella. Yet our “insulation” may be more permeable than we think.

“Our conscious mind is the totality of our experience, a kind of ‘prime real estate’ in the cognitive apparatus, influencing both decision-making and action,” Morsella said.

The new study demonstrates that it’s actually quite easy to activate sets in people and influence what occupies the brain’s “prime real estate.”

“The research shows that stimuli in the environment are very important in determining what we end up thinking about and that once an action plan is strongly activated its many effects can be difficult to override,” said Morsella.

The study’s findings support Morsella’s passive frame theory, which posits that most thoughts enter our brains as a result of subliminal processes we don’t totally control.

[ohjoy]

“Patient states she is allergic to ‘dick, water and alcohol’”

— Notes from ED

[homotology]

Same tbh

[lyricvl]

[ninjatengu]

To all my female-identifying colleagues.

[thedudeleftthebuilding-deactiva]

[doc-in-progress]

Best demonstration ever 👍 #studyblr #medblr

[simplicitybliss]

Laws of Productivity, No. 1: “Get started.”

[biomedicool]

Benign vs Malignant

Benign tumours are//malignant tumours are

Well differentiated cells // Often become poorly differentiated 

Slow growing // Rapid rate of growth 

Proscribed regular border // Irregular border 

Little or no necrosis // Frequently show necrosis 

Easily removed // Difficult to remove 

Usually encapsulated // Not encapsulated 

No metastatic spread // Metastasis possible 

Grow by expansion // Grow by infiltration 

No recurrence after removal // May recur after removal 

Not invasive // Invasive 

Rarely fatal // Often cause death 

However,  Benign tumours are often the precursors of malignant cancers.

Tumour Progression - from benign to malignant 

Initiation – an event that alters the genome 

Promotion – an event that causes proliferation of the transformed cell, giving rise to a neoplasm 

Progression – new genetic mutations occur, with development of sub-clones of cells 

Tumours become less well differentiated and more aggressive with time. 

Caused by the emergence of sub-populations of cells with new genetic abnormalities 

Any large tumour is composed of slightly different cells (tumour heterogeneity) - result of different mutations 

Any mutations that favour tumour survival or spread are chosen by a form of natural selection 

[wayfaringmd]

I know this is very open-ended, so I apologize, but how do you feel about self-diagnosis? (Typically mental illnesses and chronic pain conditions are what I see a lot)

I’m not a fan for so many reasons: (In no particular order)

We cannot be totally objective when it comes to our own bodies, and especially when it comes to our own minds. It’s fine to have an idea of what might be wrong, but don’t be settled on a diagnosis. Heck, I’m a doctor and I don’t trust myself to diagnose or treat myself.

You can’t know everything. You can’t be an expert on everything. You can’t DIY everything. I don’t consider a youtube video to be enough to teach me how to rewire my whole house’s electrical system. There are some things in life best left to the experts.

Self diagnosis is based mostly on symptoms, not objective data. Granted, a lot of diagnosing I do is also based on symptoms, but its foundation is in years of medical education and on treating thousands of patients versus going off a website and the experience of one person.

The internet often lies. Hard to believe, I know, but websites leave out a lot of detail and nuance, so while your symptoms may be consistent with one Uncommon Terrible Thing, they may also be consistent with 25 other common Not So Terrible Things. Your doctor has more experience handling the nuances and teasing out the specifics and isn’t diagnosing you strictly on an algorithm. Algorithms are great, but not everyone fits into them. 

Just because something is on the differential, it doesn’t mean it’s likely. Which is why WebMD always includes cancer in the differential for a cough or fatigue. Sure, it’s possible, but it’s also possible that you have a common cold or aren’t sleeping enough. 

Self diagnosis often closes people’s minds to other possibilities. They become so focused on the tree in front of them that they become convinced they’re in a forest when in reality it’s driftwood on a beach. It’s the old blind man and the elephant thing. Is it a rope? A tree trunk? It’s a friggin elephant. But when you’re too close to it, you can’t see it. 

As for mental illness- how can you trust your broken brain to figure out what’s wrong with it? You know it’s broken, sure, but can you trust what it thinks is broken? Our minds play tricks on us even when they’re healthy. When they’re not healthy, those tricks can be really dangerous.

[lyjerria]

as you get older, you realize that you’re not always right and there’s so many things you could’ve handled better, so many situations where you could’ve been kinder and all you can really do is forgive yourself and let your mistakes make you a better person.