Physiological reactions to solar activity

[ShanMarie]

I am not a scientist. Not even close. I am trying to teach myself what all the different solar activity is but can't say I have gotten far. What peaked my interest is that I seem to have very strong reactions in my nervous system when the sun is active (someone pointed this out to me because I was at a loss). My experiences are pretty close to debilitating. I will refrain from describing the symptoms until I see if others know of this phenomenon.

[dave]

Others do know of that phenomenon - or at least have claimed to be sensitive in that way.

The usual response from people with some scientific training is either a mild, "That seems unlikely,*" or a vicious, "You're ignorant and neurotic!"

Most comments on this site will be variations on those two themes. Occasionally, there will be links to more or less reliable reports of genuine investigations.

If you really do not know ANY basic scientific facts, you will not get far in your search for 'answers.'  Perhaps it would be better to first revise High School science?

However, many modern High School textbooks are unreliable, at least in part. They contain many "Just So!" stories (Rudyard Kipling), and hand-waving when there should be frank admissions, "This is a subtle issue and perhaps we do not really understand it."

For an example of the basic facts one should know: the function of myelin is not to 'insulate' the axons (projections) of neurons carrying electrical power, but to speed up the transmission of what is called the 'action potential'** along certain long ones. There are plenty of un-myelinated nerve fibres in the body - most of your brain - and these do not 'short out'!    Action potentials travel quite slowly. A fibre with myelin is not continuously coated. The gaps are called "nodes of Ranvier" and effectively the signal jumps from one node to the next ("saltation" which is just the latin for jump) and this is overall quicker. If you need to send the instruction "twitch" from your spinal cord to your toe, which is a distance of a metre, you are going to need a myelinated axon.

 

* One argument is that the 'signal' in the variations from the Sun is small compared to the 'noise' we live in.  A possible counter to this is that, almost by definition, animals are extremely complicated, sensitive and 'irritable.' A single photon of light can be perceived by us.

 

**This is best compared to the game of "pass it along" where one boy punches the next boy in the arm who likewise punches the next, until the last boy is reached. The action potential phenomenon is a transmission of information not of electrical power.