Zero social energy(light headed in public). Plenty of energy for everything else.

[faust jaeger]

I have more than enough energy to work everyday, train everyday, and read hours everyday but for some reason socializing just drains me within minutes to the point of yawning and feeling light headed. I have a hard time speaking with any passion no matter how I feel about what I am saying and it just does not make any sense to me. My brain and body can do so much but really any form of conversation/dealing with people feels like a marathon. I have become light headed the past couple days a few times in public but not at the gym or my house. Is social energy a final hurdle in being prometabolic?

 

[Alex Jaramillo]

Do you consume caffeine? Do you eat enough?

 

[Androsclerosis]

Socializing can be draining, but a person with high energy levels will always be ready to socialize. Maybe you drain your energy training and there is no much left for socializing. The first symptom in my experience that guides the energy spectrum is socializing. When I don't have motivation to talk I noticed that I tend to do more chores around the house, which makes me think that stress guides us to do repetitive things, such as work/training. If I were in a high energy state, I would rather go outside, seek novelty and the beauty of nature and I would become dissatisfied with working.

Do you have often internal chatter?
How often do you seek novelty?

 

[faust jaeger]

Do you c

Socializing can be draining, but a person with high energy levels will always be ready to socialize. Maybe you drain your energy training and there is no much left for socializing. The first symptom in my experience that guides the energy spectrum is socializing. When I don't have motivation to talk I noticed that I tend to do more chores around the house, which makes me think that stress guides us to do repetitive things, such as work/training. If I were in a high energy state, I would rather go outside, seek novelty and the beauty of nature and I would become dissatisfied with working.

Do you have often internal chatter?
How often do you seek novelty?

I have constant internal chatter but rarely seek novelty due to most of it seeming pointless within my area. My town is not very exciting or scenic so there is not much to do for fun or explore its just parking lots and strip malls. What would you describe as novelty?

 

[Zellig Pliskin]

I had similar problems in the past. My 2¢ is that you have low dopamine.

In a high dopamine and euthyroid state socialising should come naturally and be low-effort.

I have constant internal chatter

A symptom of high serotonin. It doesn’t get much mention here but one feature of serotonin is that it promotes introception while dopamine promotes exoception.

I learnt this from a friend who studied psychology at university.

 

[golder]

Whilst the entire peat philosophy is about rebalancing these neurotransmitters, increasing dopamine and in turn, decreasing seratonin…but what are two or three really low hanging pieces of fruit that someone in this state can do to improve this specific situation?

 

[Runenight201]

Whilst the entire peat philosophy is about rebalancing these neurotransmitters, increasing dopamine and in turn, decreasing seratonin…but what are two or three really low hanging pieces of fruit that someone in this state can do to improve this specific situation?

It is literally in your response lol!

Digestible sugars.

Whatever fruits and starches you can properly digest and assimilate will do wonders for dopamine. If you ever feel fatigued, bloated, or apathetic after a meal, you ate the wrong thing.

Eating should be an energetically positive experience.

Personally for me, I thrive on corn. For some reason, that crop is better than any other starch I can consume. Salted corn and I’m a little chatter box

 

[Dapose]

I have more than enough energy to work everyday, train everyday, and read hours everyday but for some reason socializing just drains me within minutes to the point of yawning and feeling light headed. I have a hard time speaking with any passion no matter how I feel about what I am saying and it just does not make any sense to me. My brain and body can do so much but really any form of conversation/dealing with people feels like a marathon. I have become light headed the past couple days a few times in public but not at the gym or my house. Is social energy a final hurdle in being prometabolic?

My guess is that socializing for you is calming and relaxing to your nervous system. You are thinking too much about this and assuming that hanging out is supposed to be a party or a laugh riot. But you might be so tense and uptight from work training reading, (all very energy consuming and stressful) that as soon as you socialize your nervous system relaxes and you “think” you are drained.

I’m equating my theory of you on caffeine dosing. A little caffeine in the evening after dinner is calming and can help sleep. But mostly coffee/caffeine is used to get people going in the morning.

I hate the idea of socializing. And then when I am forced to, I always end up loving it! I get so jazzed up talking with people and connecting eye to eye with people. It’s very electric for me socializing. I literally get tons of energy from it.

 

[faust jaeger]

My guess is that socializing for you is calming and relaxing to your nervous system. You are thinking too much about this and assuming that hanging out is supposed to be a party or a laugh riot. But you might be so tense and uptight from work training reading, (all very energy consuming and stressful) that as soon as you socialize your nervous system relaxes and you “think” you are drained.

I’m equating my theory of you on caffeine dosing. A little caffeine in the evening after dinner is calming and can help sleep. But mostly coffee/caffeine is used to get people going in the morning.

I hate the idea of socializing. And then when I am forced to, I always end up loving it! I get so jazzed up talking with people and connecting eye to eye with people. It’s very electric for me socializing. I literally get tons of energy from it.

Socializing for me thus far has neither been anything to love nor hate it has mostly been out of necessity to not seem odd and it becomes almost script like in the predictability of most convos. Now I know that those experiences came out of a serotonin/estrogen/cortisol hell state we'll just refer to as SEC. As I crawl out of SEC many things have improved but dealing with people irl is still so taxing, let alone actually connecting with someone beyond the relationship of cashier and buyer which I still have not experienced unfortunately. There are still several metabolic peaks to reach it seems.

 

[Androsclerosis]

I have constant internal chatter but rarely seek novelty due to most of it seeming pointless within my area. My town is not very exciting or scenic so there is not much to do for fun or explore its just parking lots and strip malls. What would you describe as novelty?

Novelty can be found everywhere, trees, people, anything. Look at the world with child eyes. Novelty is the opposite of habitual, seeking it gives you pleasure and happiness, the more you change your environment the more you will experience novelty. Some people find it in art because they can draw anything comes to their mind. It they would paint everyday the same thing, satisfaction will disappear, as well as novelty. It goes hand in hand with creativity. Others find it in studying nutrition, new supplements or new studies that can be analized and shared.
Personally I get novelty from changing environment, I always go to different parks in my city, once in a while I change country. I like to pay attention to the expression of people's faces and to guess how they feel. Always I try to seek new information about the elites.
Novelty is seeking new things.
If you find it hard to look for it, then your health state is not optimal. Coffee helps a lot. Starches may make you numb and emotionless.

The internal chatter may be present because of stress. It's hard to look for novelty when you can't live the moment fully.

 

[Nick]

I have more than enough energy to work everyday, train everyday, and read hours everyday but for some reason socializing just drains me within minutes to the point of yawning and feeling light headed. I have a hard time speaking with any passion no matter how I feel about what I am saying and it just does not make any sense to me. My brain and body can do so much but really any form of conversation/dealing with people feels like a marathon. I have become light headed the past couple days a few times in public but not at the gym or my house. Is social energy a final hurdle in being prometabolic?

This sounds like it could be an issue with some type of EMF, like being around many people with cellphones or public places with small cell antenna transmitters. If your gym is very busy where you are close to many people and you don't have the issue there then this might make my theory less likely. I have sometimes had an issue feeling light headed around cellphone signal, wifi, bluetooth, and arc welders.

 

[faust jaeger]

This sounds like it could be an issue with some type of EMF, like being around many people with cellphones or public places with small cell antenna transmitters. If your gym is very busy where you are close to many people and you don't have the issue there then this might make my theory less likely. I have sometimes had an issue feeling light headed around cellphone signal, wifi, bluetooth, and arc welders.

I have no issues at the gym or any other “techy” places.

 

[faust jaeger]

Novelty can be found everywhere, trees, people, anything. Look at the world with child eyes. Novelty is the opposite of habitual, seeking it gives you pleasure and happiness, the more you change your environment the more you will experience novelty. Some people find it in art because they can draw anything comes to their mind. It they would paint everyday the same thing, satisfaction will disappear, as well as novelty. It goes hand in hand with creativity. Others find it in studying nutrition, new supplements or new studies that can be analized and shared.
Personally I get novelty from changing environment, I always go to different parks in my city, once in a while I change country. I like to pay attention to the expression of people's faces and to guess how they feel. Always I try to seek new information about the elites.
Novelty is seeking new things.
If you find it hard to look for it, then your health state is not optimal. Coffee helps a lot. Starches may make you numb and emotionless.

The internal chatter may be present because of stress. It's hard to look for novelty when you can't live the moment fully.

The living in the moment thing really sticks with me. I’ve never been able to do it. I’ve seen some people on here discuss dancing and a lot in the moment type moments and that sounds impossible to me at the moment.

 

[JamesGatz]

I do think Socialization takes a lot of Energy, but I also do I think one huge problem being around people, is that people in a Lower Energy state steal your energy even if you guys don't talk or conscious interaction with each other, for someone with a high metabolism, it is difficult to maintain that state when everyone around you is a high-serotonin zombie looking to drain energy from healthier organisms

 

[faust jaeger]

I do think Socialization takes a lot of Energy, but I also do I think one huge problem being around people, is that people in a Lower Energy state steal your energy even if you guys don't talk or conscious interaction with each other, for someone with a high metabolism, it is difficult to maintain that state when everyone around you is a high-serotonin zombie looking to drain energy from healthier organisms

Exactly.

 

[reality]

Socializing can be draining, but a person with high energy levels will always be ready to socialize. Maybe you drain your energy training and there is no much left for socializing. The first symptom in my experience that guides the energy spectrum is socializing. When I don't have motivation to talk I noticed that I tend to do more chores around the house, which makes me think that stress guides us to do repetitive things, such as work/training. If I were in a high energy state, I would rather go outside, seek novelty and the beauty of nature and I would become dissatisfied with working.

Do you have often internal chatter?
How often do you seek novelty?

This aligns with my experience. When I’m a high stress/low energy state I’m more inclined to routine, habits and doing the same things. Low stress high energy state makes me want to do other things, meeting friends, socialising, seeking new things.

 

[AllThingsPeat]

A symptom of high serotonin. It doesn’t get much mention here but one feature of serotonin is that it promotes introception

More specifically, incessant internal monologuing, or what Ray called "hyperverbalization," as opposed to more energetic mental processes like daydreaming or visualization, is definitely a symptom of high serotonin.

About Ray Peat:
“That he sometimes completely stops reading and talking for several days because he believes too much verbalisation damages the brain. During those days he paints and does sculpture instead to stimulate the areas of the brain that are responsible for creativity and three dimensional thinking.”

Serotonin has been linked to rumination in depressed people, and I suspect that invasive, internal chatter is a milder form of the same process:

The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems

"...attentional control is achieved by sustained neuronal activity in the VLPFC during periods of distraction or delay. However, the sustained activation of VLPFC neurons in depression is costly. Roughly 80% of cortical neurons release glutamate, an important neurotransmitter. High levels of glutamate in the synapse are toxic and can induce apoptosis (programmed cell death)...

To reduce this risk, glutamate must be quickly cleared out of the synapse. This function is accomplished by nearby astrocytes... Under these conditions, there is an increasing reliance on the metabolism of astrocytic glycogen, the predominant product of which is lactate...

...support comes from studies of behavioral depression in rats, which is often induced by repeated exposure to uncontrollable stress. Uncontrollable stress triggers sustained release of 5-HT to the mPFCv and sustained firing of mPFCv neurons. As the mPFCv is a likely homologue to the human VLPFC, this may be analogous to sustained VLPFC activity in human depression. Moreover, repeated exposure to uncontrollable stress also causes astrocytic lactate production to increase in the mPFCv via the 5-HT1A autoreceptor...

Sustained 5-HT transmission in depression may reduce apoptosis caused by sustained VLPFC activity by increasing lactate production."

So hyperverbalization may involve an interplay between excess serotonin production upregulating glutamate signaling in the prefrontal cortex and excess astroglial glycolysis. Lactic acid in the muscles feels pretty bad, so I can't imagine it's having good effects on the structure of the brain. The last two sentences go well with the idea of serotonin as the "hibernation hormone," or the "self-preservation hormone," essentially a maladaptive neuroendocrine response to chronic stress.

In addition to lowering serotonin, inhibiting glutamate with progesterone, allopregnanolone (the most potent endogenous GABA agonist), or other GABA agonists would probably also be helpful, and of course lowering other excitotoxic substances like estrogen & PUFA. Actually, we already know allopregnanolone has been used for post-partum depression:

https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/fda-approves-allopregnanolone-as-a-fast-acting-long-lasting-antidepressant.28167/

You might also be interested in reading Ray's work on P.K. Anokhin and about Pavlov's 2nd signal system:

The second signal system as conceived by Pavlov and his disciples

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I have more than enough energy to work everyday, train everyday, and read hours everyday but for some reason socializing just drains me within minutes to the point of yawning and feeling light headed. I have a hard time speaking with any passion no matter how I feel about what I am saying and it just does not make any sense to me. My brain and body can do so much but really any form of conversation/dealing with people feels like a marathon. I have become light headed the past couple days a few times in public but not at the gym or my house. Is social energy a final hurdle in being prometabolic?

It's not a metabolic issue. It's an emotional one.

 

[Androsclerosis]

It's not a metabolic issue. It's an emotional one.

What does even mean?

 

[reality]

More specifically, incessant internal monologuing, or what Ray called "hyperverbalization," as opposed to more energetic mental processes like daydreaming or visualization, is definitely a symptom of high serotonin.



Serotonin has been linked to rumination in depressed people, and I suspect that invasive, internal chatter is a milder form of the same process:

The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems

"...attentional control is achieved by sustained neuronal activity in the VLPFC during periods of distraction or delay. However, the sustained activation of VLPFC neurons in depression is costly. Roughly 80% of cortical neurons release glutamate, an important neurotransmitter. High levels of glutamate in the synapse are toxic and can induce apoptosis (programmed cell death)...

To reduce this risk, glutamate must be quickly cleared out of the synapse. This function is accomplished by nearby astrocytes... Under these conditions, there is an increasing reliance on the metabolism of astrocytic glycogen, the predominant product of which is lactate...

...support comes from studies of behavioral depression in rats, which is often induced by repeated exposure to uncontrollable stress. Uncontrollable stress triggers sustained release of 5-HT to the mPFCv and sustained firing of mPFCv neurons. As the mPFCv is a likely homologue to the human VLPFC, this may be analogous to sustained VLPFC activity in human depression. Moreover, repeated exposure to uncontrollable stress also causes astrocytic lactate production to increase in the mPFCv via the 5-HT1A autoreceptor...

Sustained 5-HT transmission in depression may reduce apoptosis caused by sustained VLPFC activity by increasing lactate production."

So hyperverbalization may involve an interplay between excess serotonin production upregulating glutamate signaling in the prefrontal cortex and excess astroglial glycolysis. Lactic acid in the muscles feels pretty bad, so I can't imagine it's having good effects on the structure of the brain. The last two sentences go well with the idea of serotonin as the "hibernation hormone," or the "self-preservation hormone," essentially a maladaptive neuroendocrine response to chronic stress.

In addition to lowering serotonin, inhibiting glutamate with progesterone, allopregnanolone (the most potent endogenous GABA agonist), or other GABA agonists would probably also be helpful, and of course lowering other excitotoxic substances like estrogen & PUFA. Actually, we already know allopregnanolone has been used for post-partum depression:

https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/fda-approves-allopregnanolone-as-a-fast-acting-long-lasting-antidepressant.28167/

You might also be interested in reading Ray's work on P.K. Anokhin and about Pavlov's 2nd signal system:

The second signal system as conceived by Pavlov and his disciples

Interesting stuff

Do you think this same thing happens with too much screen time/reading/scrolling?