Travis, your personal experience with serotonin is well described. It is difficult to tell people (general acquaintances and/or aikido partners) that serotonin is not the happy hormone. Your description points to how its effects distort interpersonal relationships. "Happy" with apathy, unprincipled mental laziness. It makes it almost impossible to partner (aikido) with people in this state. Very very weird.The first step is to find books that won't insult you with cartoonish illustrations. These ones below are safe:
Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol I (2016).
Soderberg, Timothy. "Organic chemistry with a biological emphasis." Vol II (2016).
But I can't find .pdf files for many other decent books. There is a website called scribd.com that allows to you read four books at $7.99 per month. There you can find books numbering in the tens of thousands. I'm fairly certain they have Linus Pauling's book on general chemistry, as well as all the books written by Albert Szent‐Györgyi:
Pauling, Linus. "General chemistry." (1954).Chemistry is no small subject, and people tend to specialize. Other areas relevant to biochemistry are photochemistry, enzyme kinetics, and genetic engineering. The genetic engineering book is a good primer for reading experimental articles dealing with nucleic acids, to know what they're doing and why. The book below is actually quite simple:
Szent-Györgyi, Albert. "Bioenergetics." (1957).
Nicholl, Desmond ST. An introduction to genetic engineering. Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Bisswanger, Hans. Enzyme kinetics: principles and methods. John Wiley & Sons, 2017.
There's a few .pdf files you can find just scattered around the internet, but a website like scribd.com can really increase the silicon library.
They are anonymous and sporadically distributed throughout the internet. If I ever write something longer than an article I'll let you know, but so far I'm concerned with reading articles on sci‐hub. I was thinking about the Mead acid, and what function cyclooxygenase would have for a person not eating linoleic acid. There has to be a cyclooxygenase product of the Mead acid...
You'd have to crawl through my comment history. When I need to look for a previous comment, even I have to look through my own comment history. I find writing helps to consolidate any information that I've read, and keeps the articles around for quick reference. Just today: I was looking at the twenty or so articles on histamine I still had on my browser and had to summarize them somewhere. It's as if the writing turns the articles into a final synthesis, or information condensed small enough to keep in my memory for awhile.
Now I can close those articles on histamine and move on to something else.
I think one of these days I ought to buy some tryptophan, histamine, and tyrosine to be certain what the neurotransmitters feel like. I know both ingested tryptophan and hisitadine turn into their corresponding neurotransmitters in the brain. Levodopa is usually given as precursor to dopamine, but I think tyrosine should work as well.
This week I have spinach, kale, coconuts, almonds, dates, pineapples, coffee, and cigarettes. I have been experimenting with eggs, and have determined that the protein is safe. However, linoleic acid represents roughly 20% of the fatty acids; this is no good. I feel there is also a subtle serotonin spike from the high tryptophan, something which doesn't seem productive. Almonds only have about 3% linoleic acid (as a fraction of total fatty acids) and what I consider a better amino acid ratio; tryptophan and methionine are the limiting amino acids.
I do remember getting that feeling from eating cooked kidney beans in a can a few years ago, something which had been lying around. I think cooking may increase amino acid absorption leading to a serotonin spike in high‐tryptophan foods. This may not be noticeable in people always eating cooked foods.
Serotonin, it appears to me, can make a person both happy but sort‐of apathetic. It's almost like I stopped caring about certain things, and had become almost unprincipled and mentally lazy (although not physically lazy). Serotonin now makes me think of Hilary Clinton for some reason, but I should buy some tryptophan to confirm the effect. It would be nice to be able to map serotonin, histamine, and dopamine onto sensations—and perceptions—to be more aware of the neurological effects from food.
I think Ray Peat's response in this interview describes the sort of frozen state:
"Having your own mind, a critical and constructive ability, makes you aware of possibilities and threats. The “go along to get along” attitude represents a denial of your mentality. Recognizing the reasons for the evils and obstacles is an intrinsic part of moving toward your goals. Without a realistic view of where you are, you can’t expect to go anywhere."
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