Mi Dieta Paleo

the Ouachita Mountains © 2018 Barry R McCain

Estoy en la dieta Paleo durante siete días. Estoy haciendo esto como parte de mi projecto Neurogénesis, pero diré, me encanta cómo me hace sentir. Mi pensamiento es muy claro, mi memoria es muy buena. Tengo buenos niveles de energía. Es una buena cosa.  Un efecto secundario, perdí nueve libras en una semana. No tengo sobrepeso cuando comencé el protocolo ... sin embargo, ahora soy más refinado y más pequeño.

Neuroplasticity and Me

7 Feb 2018 hard at work doing neuroplasticity

The word for the day is neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.  This ability is especially important if one has a brain injury, such as a stroke.  In neuroplasticity the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain can and will compensate for injury and disease.  These nerve cells will  adjust their activities in response to new situations.

It is not unlike pruning a tree or bush.  You whack a part off and you get new shoots popping out everywhere.  The white coats call it ‘axonal sprouting.’   Undamaged axons grow new nerve endings to reconnect to neurons with links that are damaged, severed, or dead.  These axons can reconnect to the nerve endings.  New pathways are made to allow your damaged brain parts to function.  One gets better over time. 

There is a catch though... you normally have to work at it.  If you do not work at it, then you may not recover your lost brain function, this includes both mental and physical abilities.  This is very serious stuff and you want to ‘work at it’ like an über-mensch.  But, it is necessary, if you want to recover from a brain injury, and be at a level equal to, or even beyond, your pre-stroke level.

nerve endings at work and play

I am recovering fairly well.  My recovery has come with an interesting phenomenon. As I recover I have had very intense, metaphysical, dreams. In these dreams, I have been visited by relatives and family that have passed on, i.e. the dead talk to me in my dreams.  I know the nature of consciousness is wildly complex.  Not there is a silver lining to a dark cloud of a stroke, but as I recover I have an awareness of consciousness that was not there pre-stroke.  It awakened me in a way. Something has changed in me, mentally, or a better way to say it is, with my consciousness, and my awareness of the universe. 

Dr Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain research scientist.  She had a devastating stroke in 1996; this was while she was a brain research scientist.  She has written a book of her recovery which I find remarkable in that she had metaphysical experiences, and a change in her thinking, or awareness, of consciousness, not only her consciousness, but that of the universe as well.  She used her stroke, or it allowed her to perceive, a connection to the universe.    By-the-way, it took her many years, but she did recover, and returned to work as a brain research scientist and wrote a best-selling book about her stroke and recovery.  Her book is My Stroke of Insight.

So the word for the day is Neuroplasticity.   Use it. 



© Barry R McCain 

Big White Beard, Christmas 2017

Continuing to recover from the stroke.  Almost, two full months into the recovery now.  I have started writing again.  I am working in Gaelic language again.  I am doing hill hikes in the trails in Oxford... and last night late, walked the Oxford, Mississippi, Square.  I had several Coeds give me 'hugs' and took photographs of me, etc.  They asked me where I was from, I replied, 'the North Pole.'   Interesting, the effect a Big White Beard has on people.  

It was a quiet night in ole Oxford town, as it was a Tuesday.  A number of students were out at the clubs on the Square.  The weather was coolish and nice. 

Finding the McCains

Finding the McCains

Finding the McCains, is an account of a man’s 40 year odyssey to find the McCain family in Ireland.  Senator John McCain and his cousin, novelist Elizabeth Spencer, both include a short history of the McCain family in their respective memoirs Faith of our Fathers and Landscapes of the Heart.  Their history is a romantic tale of Highland Scots who supported Mary Queen of Scots and who fled to Ireland after her downfall in 1568.  The search for the McCains became a mystery story with clues, false turns, many adventures, and then ultimate success through Y chromosome DNA testing.  In 2008 the McCains were reunited with their family that remained in Ireland, after 289 years of separation.

The McCain history includes people and events familiar to readers of Irish and Scottish history; Redshanks, Iníon Dubh, Mary Queen of Scots, the Earls of Argyll, the Ulster Migration, and the Scots-Irish, are all part of this family’s history.  Faint memories of this past were told for generations in Mississippi and as the research progressed the facts behind these memories were uncovered. 

The Y chromosome DNA results revealed that the McCains of Mississippi, which include Senator John McCain’s family, are the same family of Wallace and Harrison McCain, the founders of Canada’s McCain Foods, one of the most successful corporations in the world.  They are also the same family as James McKeen who organized the 1718 fleet that began the great Ulster Migration to the English Colonies.  All these families are paternally related and they all descend from one Gaelic man named Mac Eáin that lived in Kilmichael Glassary parish, in mid Argyll, in the Scottish Highlands, in the 1400s.

The book tells of the author’s many trips to Ireland in search of his distant cousins there.  There are anecdotal stories, some humorous and others involving “famous” people; such as, Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty, Mary Coughlan (Irish Tainste or vice president), Cindy McCain (wife of Senator McCain), Seán Mac Stiofáin (1970s head of the IRA) , Alan Heusaff (WW II German officer in Dublin who later became president of the Celtic League), and Muhammad Ali.  There is even an encounter with a Bean Sí (faerie woman) on the windy cold hill of megalithic stone ruins at Loch an Craoibh.  All presented from the perspective of a native Mississippian.

Another theme in the book is the Scots-Irish.  Contemporary histories about the Scots-Irish present stereotyped and romanticized accounts of this dynamic group.  Finding the McCains reveals a more complex history and shows the cultural conflation common in Scots-Irish popular history.

Finding the McCains is an excellent read for all interested in Irish and Scottish history and is an how-to guide for those interested in how-to guide for those who would like to use genetic genealogy to locate their family in the old country and recover lost family history.

To purchase from Amazon: Finding the McCains

To purchase from Ulster Heritage directly send US $20 (postage paid) to:

Ulster Heritage

PO Box 884

Oxford MS 38655

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