Slow reflexes

[cypressbill]

Hi. I appear to have some mild neurological problems.  
I seem to have very slow reflexes or response speeds or whatever the correct terminology is. I'm not in pain or greatly inconvenienced by this. I only noticed this because I play online "shooter" games with a bunch of friends and I'm always the "free kill guy" lol.  I looked around on the internet to find a way of testing my reflex speeds and I found this, I have no idea how accurate it is, but it indicated that I'm responding about 3x slower than most of my friends.

http://www.starcraft2forum.org/index.php?action=arcade;sa=play;game=50

It's a flash game in which you're presented with a gun. When you see/hear it fire, you have to click on the screen and if you click fast enough you "dodge." It displays how long it took your to respond to the "bang" and click. Obviously, it's a totally unrealistic scenario, but I suppose since it's actually measuring how long, in milliseconds, it took for you to click the button in response to stimulus it must be fairly accurate.  It more or less confirmed that my reflexes are, for some reason, slow.

So anyway, just coming here to scope out if there's anything I can do about this. Obviously this isn't an urgent medical concern. A minor inconvenience I would like to correct if it's possible is all.

The little research I've done indicated it might have something to do with my myelin sheathes. I've also ran across research about something called "adaptogenics" which are apparently herbs which can have various immune-system heightening effects. I believe I ran across descriptions of "ginseng," "schizandra chinesis," "ephedra sinica,"  and "rhodiola rosea" being used to induce heightened alertness and response speed. Anyone know anything about this? Are they valid?

Thank you very much for reading and hopefully replying.

[Abhijeet Deshmukh, MD]

Hello.

I have seen the link that you pasted here. And I wasn't even close to "crazyjake". ( I guess you know who I am talking about).

But I do appreciate your concern. After all, who would like to be called "slow" and not do something about it.

Your guess about this being due to some neurological problem is not entirely wrong. But it is not entirely correct either. To make things clear, let me ask you a few questions. Do you feel that you are slow in studies ? And do you feel that you are not achieving as per your potential ? It's like, you have all the capabilities, but not quite there. Do you feel like that ?

Our reflexes depend upon our processing speed. The shooting games involve visual and auditory processing of the stimuli. Now, if the processing speed is less, the output will be likewise.

About myeline sheaths...... there need not be any problem with the sheaths. The reflex in association with myelin sheaths is of some other kind.

The various medicines you mentioned are basically to increase alertness. They act on the central nervous system. This works temporarily.

I suggest you get your Thyroid Hormones checked.

Regards

[cypressbill]

Thank you very much for your post, Abhijeet.  

To answer your questions:
My studies can be somewhat impacted by mental fatigue or lack of focus. Sometimes I'm able to perform extremely well, other times I get frustrated when I can't concentrate or pull information from my 'memory banks.' I think I could achieve more, definitely. Your suggestion that I feel as if "I have al the capabilities, but not quite there" struck me as quite accurate - something I myself have not considered until you posed it. Yes, I would definitely agree with that.

How does visual and auditory processing work in terms of speed?

I will definitely get my thyroid hormones checked, I know my mother used to take thyroid drugs when she was in her late teens, early twenties. I suppose it might be genetic.

Thank you very much again sir.