What I Learnt For The Week 18: Aging Suit, Dysgeusia, Ailurophobia (Fear Of Cats), Fregoli Delusion, Mutant Carrots?

Hello Buddies! Welcome once again to another educative and exciting episode in the series of “What I learnt for the week”.

Over the period of last week (14th-18th May), I made some amazing discoveries, of which I would select some random five to represent the lessons learnt for each day of the week.

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Monday: Aging Suit

Just like my usual custom is; and without an exception to this episode; I normally begin with lessons on emerging technology on “Robotics and Machines”.

Some of us have older people we look after, but have you ever wondered what it feels like to be old? Yeah, I know we would all get old someday, but why wait till that time when you can simulate what it feels like to be old? A particular technology has provided an answer to this, and this is the R70i Aging Suit. Welcome to the world of technological simulations.

This suit was designed by Genworth as a consensus effort for care givers to old people, for them to know how aging looks like, which they believe would help them to be better at care giving. Let us take a look at how the aging suit works.

Mechanism of the aging suit

It is worthy to note that the suit combines the technology of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (which is the mixed reality), to provide a simulation of aging. The individual components include; VR headset. The work of this headset is to simulate the effect of aging on the eyesight, like; blurred vision, glaucoma, etc. Also, the headset comes with earplugs to limit the hearing ability.

Also incorporated with the suit is an electronic hydraulic braking system. This would limit your movement, and make you relatively tired, just like it is obtainable with the elderly ones.

Pheww!! Too much talk. Before I continue, look, I found a video for you in YouTube to show you how this suit looks like and works.

Many people are trying to prevent aging, and here we are trying to simulate aging; how humourous. Also incorporated with the suit, are some specialized gloves that reduce the touch reception of the hand, and also to create hand tremors. And most importantly, the suit has some added mass to exert pressure on the entire body. Now; old age = Simulated. You want to feel old; go grab the suit. With this, you can literally age in seconds. Happy aging, lol.

I'm sure I've piqued your interest. To know more, click here.

Tuesday: Dysgeusia

The tongue is used for tasting right? And you can also use it to distinguish between sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. But what if your tongue tastes a food; for example; and represents a different taste from what the food is? For example; you taste a chocolate ice cream, but what you can taste in it is strawberry. If you've ever experienced this, then I might just tell you that this is a manifestation of dysgeusia.

[Image of bad taste. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Author: Achim Hering. CC BY 3.0 Licensed]

Dysgeusia is an alteration or misrepresentation of the normal sense of taste. The example I gave earlier about your chocolate ice cream tasting like strawberry is just on a fair note. In some cases of dysgeusia, a sweet tasty meal could taste like shit in your mouth. Now that's really weird.

On another note, this condition can further degenerate into complete insensitivity to taste (ageusia) or maybe a very reduced sense of taste (hypogeusia).

Causes of dysgeusia

This condition could be associated as a symptom to other types of medical conditions or can be linked to:

• Flu and cold
• Sinusitis: Infection of the sinus
• Allergy
• Chemotherapy. Yes some chemo given to cancer patients can degenerate and mutilate the sense of taste in the patient.
• Zinc deficiency
• Oral cancer
• Some drug usage can trigger this condition. Like midamor, and some drugs that contain sulfhydryl

From my own experience; during the period I was sick; I discovered that food lost good taste in my mouth and tasted awful. And I know some may have experienced this too.

Treatment of dysgeusia

The treatment is dependent on the diagnosis of the dysgeusia. For example, in the case of zinc deficiency, zinc supplement can be administered to the patient. Also, artificial saliva can be therapeutically used in the treatment of dysgeusia. It is also worthy to note that dysgeusia is different from Gustatory hallucination (a condition which is characterized by someone tasting a substance which is non-existent or is not present).

Wanna know more about dysgeusia, click here.

Wednesday: Ailurophobia (Fear of Cats)

Cats are among the commonest pets found in most homes, and no doubt, people can be easily attached to these pets. But do you know that there are some people with unconditional and irrational fear for this sexy creature? Yes, this phobia exists and it is called Ailurophobia.

[Image Source: Pixabay. CC0 Licensed]

The term "Ailurophobia" is derived from "Ailouros" (Greek term related to Cats), and of course "phobia" which means fear of. And the truth is, the fear of cats can affect ailurophobic people greatly in the course of their daily living, especially those that come across cats.

Causes of Ailurophobia

Like I said in my earlier episode, phobias can be acquired and can grow. So let's look at the possible causes of this phobia.

• Superstitious misrepresentation: Some people have attached superstitions (like witchcraft, sorcery, etc) with cats. And some have believed that cats have religious symbolism; especially among the ancient Egyptians. These sentiments can cause people to pick up this phobia.
• Sympathetic threat: Most times, a child learns by observation. When an adult displays irrational behaviour towards cats in front of kids, it would not be unnatural for the kids to pick up this phobia. Also, a cat can be portrayed; maybe in movies or even cartoons; as a deadly creature, and the kid can easily pick up this wrong mental picture about cats.

Symptoms

The major symptom of this is characterized by the gross avoidance of cats. Other symptoms can include:

• Uneasiness at the presence of cats. Which can include; palpitation, unnatural sweating.
• Irrational behaviour towards cats, which can be in form of fight or flight reactions.

On a very humorous note; I was thinking, if @mobbs develops the fear of cats, what would happen to Smash? Lol.

Wanna know more about Ailurophobia, click here.

Thursday: Fregoli Delusion

This is a rather funny but weird condition in which the sufferer tends to believe that so many people are just a single person who just disguised themselves to; maybe; deceive him/her. Let me use this example to illustrate this: This is just like someone believing that @lemouth, @ruth-girl, @greenrun, and @samminator are just one person who changes his personality and/or appearance to suit a particular situation, or maybe to trick him/her.

[Image Source: Pixabay. CC0 Licensed]

This condition is not entirely new, as the first mention of this dated back to the 1900s and was named after the actor; Leopold Fregoli, because of his ability to quickly make an on-stage change of costume. It is also worthy to note that this condition is delusional; and for the major part of it; is psychological. This condition also causes a distortion or misrepresentation of events that have occurred.

Causes of Fregoli Delusion

Though the exact cause of this has remained relatively unknown, but some factors have been remotely queried, which included: Lesion or injury to the brain. This can cause the brain to misrepresent objects and figures, and can cause the person to be paranoid. Also people who have known to suffer from hallucination (especially the visual and audio hallucination) can have this as a complementary disorder arising from the hallucination.

Also, damages to the hippocampus (the area of the brain related to short-term memory) or trauma to the frontal cortex of the brain can lead to this condition.

Does this have a cure? Wanna know more about Fregoli delusion, click here.

Friday: Mutant Carrot?

We all know "carrot" as the orange-coloured root vegetable. But have you ever wondered if this was the original colour of carrot or did it just suddenly pick up the orange colour? Okay let's take a brief survey into this.

[Image Source: Pixabay. CC0 Licensed]

According to Carrot Museum , it was indicated that wild carrots were originally purple (yeah I know it sounds unbelievable, but just hang on), which originated in the ancient Afghan region, but a particular mutation occurred over time; which saw to the removal of the pigment that caused the purple coloration of carrots. This gave rise to other colours of carrots.

Here's a little tip for you before I continue: There are also the white, yellow, and red carrots. The mutation that led to the removal of the purple pigment can be linked to man's effort to domesticate the wild carrots (this is based on the account of written record, oral tradition, and pollen fossils. Which are still valid sources of history).

What happened to the purple carrots? Majority of the carrots nowadays are either orange or slightly reddish. You won't be wrong to infer that evolution has favoured the survival of the orange-coloured specie, and also, man's effort to domesticate carrots can be attributed to the adaptation of the species of carrots we see in this our contemporary world.

I know I've piques your interest; to get some extensive info about the history of carrot, click here.

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Okay buddies, this is the summary of the discoveries I made for the week. And until I come your way again, keep learning. @samminator says so. Special thanks to @mobbs

Thanks for reading

References for further reading

• Mcknights/Aging-suit
• Sciencedirect/dysgeusia
• Wikipedia/dysgeusia
• Healthtopia/ailurophobia
• Fearof.net/fear-of-cats
• Mentalillnessdisorders/fregoli-syndrome/
• Carrot Museum
• NowIKnow/Purple-carrot

All images are CC licensed and are linked to their sources

gif by @foundation