
Bruce McEwen, who found stress can alter the brain, has died - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/10/science/bruce-s-mcewen-dead.html
======
docdocgoose
Bruce chaired my PhD committee- he was a gentle and thoughtful person.

An observation about his approach to science, which I thought was distinctive:
he was interested in a big, fuzzy relationship- health and stress. Over the
course of his career, his lab wrote hundreds of small, credible papers to fill
out and explore this relationship. Few were in the big journals, but over
time, a sort of broadly understood relationship emerged and many other labs
also participated in developing this concept. Now it’s just sort of something
we understand- it’s a robust concept.

His approach always struck as significantly different from the one or two big
nature/science papers that claims to discover or demonstrate a fundamental
relationship. These tour de force papers can be vital, and they can also
mislead an entire field.

I appreciated Bruce’s approach, especially because the incentive structure
that permeated my graduate experience was “go big or go home”. There are
entire classes of Scientific insight that won’t be revealed if this is this
approach dominates.

~~~
Nasrudith
Reminds me of Norman Borlaug. While rightfully somewhat famous for his dwarf
wheat and preventing famine he operated through a lot of "boring" experimental
iterations. Although he did challenge ideas about seeds needing rest periods.

------
tcj_phx
Stress is a rather generic term. Emotional stress and biological stress are
two ways of distinguishing different kinds of stress.

Biological stress is not getting enough nutrients, having to deal with
bacterial exotoxin/endotoxin [1] (as pneumonia, a hostile microbiome, etc),
lack of sunlight (UV light -> Vitamin D; red light refreshes Cytochrome C
Oxidase, an enzyme in the mitochondria [0]), consuming artificial sugar and
other fake foods, etc...

Emotional stress is related to how a person responds to situations -- to quote
the article, "why crappy childhoods make for adult brains that don’t work
well". Different people can respond to the same situation in completely
different ways... Some people are able to use their "crappy childhood" as
motivation to make something of themselves, while others are disabled by their
own similar childhood.

The tragedy of our situation is how the medical profession considers Dr.
McEwen's work as interesting but doesn't do anything with it.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytochrome_c_oxidase)
\--- this page doesn't talk about the use of certain wavelengths of
red/infrared light to refresh the enzyme. search for 'red light therapy', then
buy heat lamps if you're interested. My current setup cost around $20.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotoxin)

~~~
danharaj
Emotional stress is biological stress unless you believe in an extreme form of
cartesian dualism incompatible with modern understanding of physiology.

~~~
tomhoward
I agree with you and I’d guess your parent commenter would too.

Yet, many people who consider themselves to be rational and scientifically-
minded, and who reject dualism, scoff at the notion that physiological illness
can be caused/exacerbated by emotional stress.

Try this out some time: suggest that an illness like chronic fatigue syndrome
or general autoimmune illness is at least somewhat linked to emotional stress
and/or trauma, and see what kinds of reactions you get (or go and look at the
discussions about this topic in CFS communities).

~~~
Fezzik
I totally agree. I was once in the camp that believed mental disorders/traumas
could _never_ manifest themselves in real, significant, physical ways.
Currently, I work in juvenile dependency law (which I bring up often in
comments... as it shapes my world view... a lot) where I represent our State
Child Welfare Department when they intervene/work with families when parents
are struggling to appropriately parent. We often work with children that have
been sexually/physically/emotionally abused. These children will go in to
foster care and their parents will engaged in services to address their lack
of parenting skills. The parents will also, generally, have limited visitation
with their children. Often, again, these children have severe issues:
encopresis, extreme weight gain/loss, lack of social skills, lashing out at
peers and adults for no reason, hyper-sexualized behaviors, etc... While in
foster care, these behaviors often decrease significantly. Then, out of the
blue, after _one visit_ with a parent, the children see all of their issues
re-arise and they completely decompensate for days or weeks or months. It is
horrific to watch.

The point being, I imagine this same thing happens with adults. And I think
we, as a society, do a horrible job realizing how deep trauma can run and how
it can manifest itself. For children everyone accepts it as normal, but for
adults the perspecitive seems to be exactly as you state it is. And this is
just wrong.

If that makes sense.

~~~
tomhoward
It sure does make sense. Thanks for sharing your observations.

If you haven't already, I'd strongly recommend looking up Gabor Maté; he's
written several books and has plenty of talks/interviews on YouTube, and at
least a couple of threads here on HN I think.

He’s a Canada-based physician who has spent his career researching and
writing/speaking about this whole topic.

The world needs to pay a lot more attention to people like him IMO.

------
rileytg
i worked for dr. mcewen at 15yo. this article barely does justice to how much
he believed in teaching and supporting young scientists. i owe much of who i
am to the culture of his lab.

------
themodelplumber
What an impressive contribution. We are lucky to benefit from the work of
individuals like Dr. McEwen. Rest in peace.

(The note about his online pastor's qualification, used for officiating a
wedding, was pretty amusing though)

Wikipedia notes that he was serving in an advisory capacity for
AntiAgingGames.com, which seems to be defunct at present. I'd be interested to
hear his thoughts on gaming.

~~~
phil_folrida
The website is [http://anti-aginggames.com/](http://anti-aginggames.com/)

~~~
themodelplumber
Thank you.

------
whalesalad

        that toxic stress also expands neurons near the amygdala, 
        an area of the brain that promotes vigilance toward threats.
    

Very enlightening.

