Laura+K.

=Blood Types=

For as long as I've been alive, my father has been obsessed with the study of family lineage, or genealogy. He's been fascinated by our family's heritage, DNA and how it works, and country of origin. Awhile ago, though, he realized that even though he knew almost everything that was possible to know about his ancestors, he didn't even know the blood type of his own children, nor did my mother. Out of curiosity, they decided to buy some small blood-type testing kits;



In layman's terms, you put a drop of water in each circle, stab your finger, mix the resulting blood with the water, and turn the paper around until it's sufficiently covering the circle. Some of the circles will still contain the watered-down blood, while the others will dry up into this sickly-looking, splotchy mess - as seen below. You determine your blood type based on which circles remain bloody and which change.



My father has A- blood, while my mother has O+. Before they tested our blood types, my parents were pretty sure that the majority of us would have type A blood like our father, because A is the dominant blood type.

To everybody's surprise, though, one by one, each of us turned out to be O+, like our mother. The only exception was one of my younger sisters, who got my father's type A blood, but was A+ rather than A-.

A problem arose, then, when my youngest sister's blood test said that she had type B blood.

You see, blood type is determined by antigens, which are toxins that trigger an immune response in the body. Each person has either A or B antigens, and their body will produce antibodies to destroy antigens that they aren't familiar with. If you have an A antigen, then you have antibodies against B antigens. You won't, however, have antibodies against A antigens, because then your immune system would attack your own blood cells.



My father has type A- blood, meaning that he has A antigens, and his immune system would release antibodies to destroy type B antigens. My mother, on the other hand, has type O+ blood, which means that she has no antigens at all, and her immune system will attack both A and B antigens. As a result, having a child with type B blood would be impossible for my parents.

As you can imagine, the whole family was confused, and some of us were worried. There was a minor panic as my father went to get another blood test kit. If my youngest sister truly was type B, then that could only mean two things. The first would be that he wasn't the father of my youngest sister, and this was the one that he was the most confused about. My siblings and I laughed at the very idea. We knew our mother well, and were certain that she would never cheat on my father. The second possibility was that my youngest sister wasn't my sister at all, and that s//he and my real sister had been switched at birth//. Comically enough, while everybody else was having miniature heart attacks, my youngest sister and I were snickering and talking about what would happen if she wasn't really biologically related to us. She thought the prospect was cool, and was likely imagining her 'real' parents as foreign royalty. My mother was not concerned at all, and chalked it all up to user error.

She ended up being right, because my sister's second, very carefully administered blood test revealed that she was in fact O+, and that my father had simply been careless the first time around. While my sister was somewhat disappointed that she wasn't the long-lost princess of Narnia, the rest of us were relieved, and we all learned how important it was to have an understanding of blood types,

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=Anxiety and the Endocrine System=

The endocrine system is a network of glands that produce hormones. Just reading the word 'hormones' took you back to your awkward middle school years, didn't it? Acne breakouts, PMS, and hair in weird places. Hormones do a whole lot more than make you start crying when you see a picture of your favourite celebrity. All the aforementioned symptoms are a result of sexual or reproductive hormones. There are many different types of hormones that control everything from your ability to make a baby to how your heart functions. Hormones also control your fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is pretty self-explanatory. If you were faced with a rampaging grizzly bear, you'd immediately have to decide whether to fight the bear or turn and run away. The adrenal gland is what gives you this response.



The adrenal glands are two glands that sit on top of your kidneys. The adrenal cortex produces hormones that you need to live. The adrenal medulla produces hormones that you won't need every second to survive; like adrenaline, a hormone that helps your body react to emergency situations. When faced with the grizzly bear situation, your brain will tell your adrenal glands to release adrenaline so you can react to the danger. Your heartbeat will increase, less important bodily functions (such as digestion) will slow or even freeze, your blood vessels will increase, and overall, you'll have a greater oxygen flow and will be able to either bop the grizzly bear on the nose (good decision for a black bear, a poor decision for a grizzly) or run away as fast as your legs will carry you (good if you can actually outrun it. If you aren't an Olympic athlete, you'd be best off playing dead).

In life-or-death situations, this response is invaluable. The problem arises when your body produces adrenaline in a non-threatening situation, like when you're sitting at your desk in school or at a family reunion. You honestly believe that you're about to die; even if you're in a perfectly safe, even welcoming situation. This causes a panic attack, and it's something that people with anxiety disorders suffer with on a regular, sometimes even daily, basis.

I struggle with anxiety, and not only does it affect my everyday interactions, it impacts my entire life. It keeps me from talking to my friends. It makes me leave half of my lunch untouched because I'm too afraid of germs to touch my food with my fingers, even if I just washed my hands. It gives me horrible migraines and stomach pains. Perhaps worst of all, it prevents me from going to class, instead hiding in the school washroom while I do my best to say silent even though my whole body is screaming at me that I'm at the brink of death. As a result, my marks suffered greatly, and now I'm struggling to even be able to get a passing grade so I can graduate on time. You may be thinking 'too bad for her; luckily I can't have that problem'. The funny thing is, the anxiety came out of the blue. I used to love being the centre of attention at all times and wasn't afraid to be loud, or even obnoxious. Then in eleventh grade, everything went south.

It's hard, but one of the things that keeps me from hitting absolute rock bottom, other than my supportive parents and anxiety coping groups, is taking medication. . (Alternatively known as 'happy pills')

This medication increases the amount of serotonin and, in the most basic sense, makes you happy. People often feel uncomfortable or nervous to talk about the fact that they take medication for anxiety or depression. For some reason, there's a stigma against mental illnesses, or even taking medication for them. There's a trend in books and movies where the protagonist reaches a climatic moment where they decide to stop taking their medication so they can be 'free' and 'themselves' again. This is basically the equivalent of the character being 'independent' and 'beautiful' by taking off their glasses. We all know that it's stupid and that the protagonist will probably find themselves smashing into a wall or falling off a deck within a few minutes. It's the same thing with medication. My medication helps me actually have the ability to be myself and not be controlled by fear.



It's important for people to understand that anxiety and other disorders aren't caused by people just being ' worry-warts '. It's a legitimate problem caused by imbalances in adrenaline levels and how your endocrine system works. If people understood biology a little more, maybe we could end the stigma against mental illnesses.

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