The Physical Effects Of Racism On The Human Body
Any pain lasting more than a few minutes will leave a trace in the nervous system. So what if pain was synonymous with your existence?
D o you have facts and figures, anecdotes or slices of stories — thin as a dime, heavy as a stone — that you carry around in your head? Things you’re not entirely sure are true, but they’re so comforting, or wonderfully strange or validating that you don’t dare actually look them up?
One of my favorites is the fact that you can’t remember pain. Like, actually, physically, recall the sensation. Somehow, (one should always be suspicious of suppositions predicted on somehow), the mind protects itself from recalling the damage that’s been done to its corporeal counterpart. Or better yet, the human has evolved so as not to make a memory of pain. You can close your eyes and “see” your shattered arm — bone splayed, blood running like tumbled egg dye — but you can’t feel that once-pain.
But as it turns out, this is very far from the truth; the central nervous system “remembers.” Pain memories are stored at the neuronal level, by a persistent protein by the name of kinase PKMzeta; this protein builds and maintains memory by strengthening the connections between the neurons that have transmitted the…
