Is that really going to make you happy? (sound familiar? anyone? anyone?) What really makes you happy, anyway? Well, if you want to get technical about it, it's a little almond-shaped piece of gray matter in your brain called the amygdala (which means "shaped like an almond" - fancy huh!). People who have badly damaged (or removed) amygdalas are incapable of feeling happy. Sounds pretty depressing, but it's not SO bad for these folks, because guess what? They can't really FEEL sad or angry or depressed about it, either. They just can't feel much of anything, emotionally, even though they may be intellectually intact. If you put a gun up to the head of a person without an amygdala, they may think to themselves, "Hm, I should probably be really scared right now." But they won't FEEL afraid. There won't be any raise in heart rate, sweaty palms, etc. They just stay pretty neutral, and wonder why everyone around them is so upset with their reactions (or lack thereof). Conversely, it's possible to have brain damage whereby a person can be "pathologically happy." That is, they lack the potential for the "darker" emotions, but their "happy" triggers are firing abnormally frequently. While these people can be pleasant to have around sometimes, there can be problems as well.

My point is this: happiness is highly subjective, as we know, but it is also VERY HIGHLY PHYSIOLOGICALLY BASED. Besides the outer trappings that you think you need for happiness, you REALLY need an intact nervous system. You need a healthy, well-nourished brain, a nervous system whose impulses are free to travel unhindered and as efficiently as possible, and you need appropriate stimulus applied to those healthy centers at the right time. Here, we aspire to cover the bases in order to make that happen.

Will receiving care at this office make you happy? I'm legally not allowed to say, but this much is true: it'll certainly increase your odds.

And that is all I have to say about that.

-DK