Is The Supplement Intervention Route Kind Of Like An Inner Authoritarian?

[Makrosky]

I am starting to feel like the mind body connection is really paramount. It’s almost as if my ability to digest any food is related to my ability to “stomach” reality, even if the foods are “suboptimal”. I used to be allergic to cats too (my eyes would swell shut and I’d be nearly asthmatic) and now I live with a cat.

Using supplements and stuff like that can make you feel you are punching back to some of the hard, sad and depressing facts of reality. That alone surely decreases lerned helplessness.

Maybe percieving reality as hard, sad and depressing is the root cause in the first place?

How come antidepressants are prescribed to more than 350 million people around the world?

I don't have answers. Just thinking out loud.

 

[Peatogenic]

The goal is to be free. Avoiding pufa or gluten for the rest of your life is slavery. You have to find a way to be healthy in a balanced way. Do you know what I mean? What kind of freedom is that that if you don't eat 4000cals, take sups, avoid pufa, gluten, sleep with the bed inclined, take mushrooms twice a week, not having a wifi router closer than 200m, avoid fluorescent ligjts, don't do cardio sports, etc... you feel sick? You get more and more closed in your own shell. But don't get me wrong, I also do these kind of things and I feel better doing them. It is just that I miss the times when I didn't have to do any of these things to feel healthy. Is there a therapy to go back to that state? I wonder. I feel like I am a slave of my own rules.

I think you're talking about something else entirely, more like a kind of orthorexia, though I understand it. If the body is performing optimally, it can deal with most all the other environmental stressors....though it seems that they can become an unusual burden themselves.

I'm pretty sure gluten is ok with me....I eat bread pretty regularly with not any downsides really. Do I feel better eating root vegetables and potatoes? Usually. I mean, it only makes sense. But rice still hates me. I've actually never thought of healing as being free of food stressors/food anxiety.

 

[LUH 3417]

Using supplements and stuff like that can make you feel you are punching back to some of the hard, sad and depressing facts of reality. That alone surely decreases lerned helplessness.

Maybe percieving reality as hard, sad and depressing is the root cause in the first place?

How come antidepressants are prescribed to more than 350 million people around the world?

I don't have answers. Just thinking out loud.

I would say this entire journey has helped me see reality for what it is (for me): sometimes brutally depressing and difficult, other times quite beautiful, but the greater feeling of connectivity has blossomed and that in and of itself has been quite healing.

 

[Makrosky]

I would say this entire journey has helped me see reality for what it is (for me): sometimes brutally depressing and difficult, other times quite beautiful, but the greater feeling of connectivity has blossomed and that in and of itself has been quite healing.

Maybe you can write a long post detailing your journey and ideas about all this and what you think helped you more? I would be really interested.

 

[LUH 3417]

Maybe you can write a long post detailing your journey and ideas about all this and what you think helped you more? I would be really interested.

That’s the thing, I don’t know what worked. I wish there was something more scientific to say than just referring to a “flow” state. Pregnenelone and progesterone definitely helped. So did traveling and encountering interesting writings and meeting people I felt I connected to. Sometimes just hearing true words spoken from the heart by someone can make you feel at ease and peace. I have a tendency towards orthorexia and a neurotic need to control everything. It’s as if I had to make my health much worse using supplements and forcing healing to happen in order to finally wake up to my body’s intelligence. Blake says something about the mind housing reason and the body housing energy in The Marriage of heaven and Hell. I wish I could put it more scientifically, but it’s like when reason and energy fuse, the will and the body do too.

 

[Makrosky]

I think you're talking about something else entirely, more like a kind of orthorexia, though I understand it. If the body is performing optimally, it can deal with most all the other environmental stressors....though it seems that they can become an unusual burden themselves.

I'm pretty sure gluten is ok with me....I eat bread pretty regularly with not any downsides really. Do I feel better eating root vegetables and potatoes? Usually. I mean, it only makes sense. But rice still hates me. I've actually never thought of healing as being free of food stressors/food anxiety.

The gluten was just an example and what you define as orthorexia was me exagerating the facts, to "caricaturize". But you get the point I hope.

 

[Makrosky]

meeting people I felt I connected to. Sometimes just hearing true words spoken from the heart by someone can make you feel at ease and peace.

I hope Cirion would read this.

 

[Ron J]

@Makrosky
I think Ray Peat mentioned eating foods that give more than what they take. If you can somehow reverse all the damage you've done to your body over the years(before you weren't able to tolerate these foods), and you habitually ate the foods that made you sick in the first place, you'd go back to square one or worse, because you'd be older and more susceptible; unless you can somehow overcome the negatives by supplementing or eating healthy in the most part.
Some members here claimed to tolerate certain foods by taking certain supplements. Perhaps you should look into that. For PUFA there's the Sat fat to PUFA ratio, vitamin E etc.

 

[Makrosky]

@Makrosky
I think Ray Peat mentioned eating foods that give more than what they take. If you can somehow reverse all the damage you've done to your body over the years(before you weren't able to tolerate these foods), and you habitually ate the foods that made you sick in the first place, you'd go back to square one or worse, because you'd be older and more susceptible; unless you can somehow overcome the negatives by supplementing or eating healthy in the most part.
Some members here claimed to tolerate certain foods by taking certain supplements. Perhaps you should look into that. For PUFA there's the Sat fat to PUFA ratio, vitamin E etc.

I am not saying this to be rude, but for instance : if you have a starch free diet and do well, and whenever you eat a single serving of starch you feel bad, then I don't think you are cured of anything. Probably you have some digestive problems, name it sibo, parasites, IBS, low digestive enzymes, whatever.

By any means I suggest this is not the way to go. If all you have to do to feel in full health is avoid starch (agaun, it's just an example, say dairy, gluten, pufa, vegetables, whatever), so be it! We have to be pragmatic. But don't call it a cure. That is my point.

 

[Peatogenic]

I am not saying this to be rude, but for instance : if you have a starch free diet and do well, and whenever you eat a single serving of starch you feel bad, then I don't think you are cured of anything. Probably you have some digestive problems, name it sibo, parasites, IBS, low digestive enzymes, whatever.

By any means I suggest this is not the way to go. If all you have to do to feel in full health is avoid starch (agaun, it's just an example, say dairy, gluten, pufa, vegetables, whatever), so be it! We have to be pragmatic. But don't call it a cure. That is my point.

But what if they healed other things? There are some cultures that don't even eat starch. I've always been able to eat starches. There was a time I thought I was sensitive to gluten, but I got over that, too. I've noticed periods of high stress make it to where I don't digest things as well. That's only a natural part of being human. For me, I had other issues to wrangle, like mental health issues (not saying the mind is separate from body).

I spent four years just relying on the intelligence of the body and just focusing on regulating blood sugar and perceiving, thinking, acting. I stopped researching physiology. But none of that helped my CPTSD. Not until I brought in supplements.

My post brings up the curiosity of how supplements mechanically heal. Because over eight pretty difficult symptoms vanished over about two days, and five weeks later still feeling "cured"...but if I stopped and the symptoms returned, it would be clear that the hormone dysregulation is still problem. It's considered a structural disorder, altering brain and hormone symptoms.....not really a "metabolic issue" the way we usually think of it. Nobody that I know of in the trauma world uses hormone therapies, so it really is an experiment that I accidentally fell into.

 

[Peatogenic]

@Makrosky
I think Ray Peat mentioned eating foods that give more than what they take. If you can somehow reverse all the damage you've done to your body over the years(before you weren't able to tolerate these foods), and you habitually ate the foods that made you sick in the first place, you'd go back to square one or worse, because you'd be older and more susceptible; unless you can somehow overcome the negatives by supplementing or eating healthy in the most part.
Some members here claimed to tolerate certain foods by taking certain supplements. Perhaps you should look into that. For PUFA there's the Sat fat to PUFA ratio, vitamin E etc.

This is how I imagined it.

 

[redsun]

That’s the thing, I don’t know what worked. I wish there was something more scientific to say than just referring to a “flow” state. Pregnenelone and progesterone definitely helped. So did traveling and encountering interesting writings and meeting people I felt I connected to. Sometimes just hearing true words spoken from the heart by someone can make you feel at ease and peace. I have a tendency towards orthorexia and a neurotic need to control everything. It’s as if I had to make my health much worse using supplements and forcing healing to happen in order to finally wake up to my body’s intelligence. Blake says something about the mind housing reason and the body housing energy in The Marriage of heaven and Hell. I wish I could put it more scientifically, but it’s like when reason and energy fuse, the will and the body do too.

Humans have instincts that tell them what to eat and when to eat. Your body knows what it needs. When the will, which is from the mind, fuses with the instincts, which come from the body, you become whole. One with yourself. I am not a hippy by any means but what I learned is the more conflict you have between the mind and the body, the worse you are. You are always worse off if there is a disconnect between instincts and reason.

A practical example of this mind/body connection actually happening in real time is when you get a fever. The fever originates from the body's instincts. The fever is supposed to help eliminate something from the body by forcibly increasing metabolism but its also a sign to the mind(you) to not eat anything. Food will heat you up even more which can be dangerous, thats why generally people have an aversion to food when they have fever. That is a practical example of how when the body signals to you not to eat or not to eat certain things you follow the signal.

The problem with manmade ways of eating e.g. low-carb, high-carb, carnivore, vegan (Peat guidelines are no exception) is that they are reasoned based, based on human understanding of our physiology. Often times they are very adamant on what is good to eat and what is not or what is right and what is wrong. The clear problem with this is that is not so clear to many is our knowledge is imperfect no matter what and whenever we suscribe to one food ideology likewise we tend seperate which kind of science we listen to or take seriously. Our body is much older and much smarter then us, it knows how to keep itself alive. Its all due to instincts humans have relied on since the beginning. Think about how we are taught through learning what to eat and not to eat to completely disregard the body's instincts.

Some people are so misaligned with their body, they outright disrespect and insult their own body's instincts by eating very restricted diets, restricting certain nutrients because the author of their current diet path says they are bad even though there is extensive research saying otherwise, doing non-diet related things they are told to do for perfect health but they dread doing, etc.

The big question that everyone willing to ask should consider is how to align their mind and body together? The answer is not completely surrendering to your body's instincts and not completely being overrun by your mind's habit to obsessively control everything thinking it will give you perfect health or even improve health.

If I were to completely surrender to my instincts, I would be chomping down hot cheetos, eating chips and spicy salsa, and dousing the flames with tons of milk and coke. I would be scarfing down so much unhealthy starchy foods(not that starch is unhealthy) like chips, pizza rolls, and all these low quality desserts in boxes. On the other spectrum, if my mind had 100% control I would be eating a carnivore diet thinking all plant foods are bad.

I am sure everyone has their own two versions of what they would eat if they gave in to the body or the mind fully.

What I discovered for myself is there is a compromise in which your mind feels at ease as well as your body. I believe it applies for everyone. Food/Health obsession drove me crazy but likewise living totally off the whims of your bodys cravings(which I have done for a period of time) also made me visibly unhealthy even though it was fun for a time.

For me its an emphasis on meat(preferably red meat), milk products, eggs, and liverwurst(cant stand liver) which covers most micronutrient requirements and then plenty of starch, usually skinned potatoes, white rice, and white flour products which fill out the rest of the necessary nutrients eats. The leftover calories I usually just eat whatever like sugar foods and I feel great and at ease. Barely supplement but usually its minerals occasionally sometimes B complex and D,E,K. This way of eating puts me at ease and makes me feel good and healthy and not restrictive.

I think a varied, non restrictive diet is something we should all strive for. Eventually we have to climb over this hurdle of health obsession. We can't do it if we are deathly afraid of certain nutrients and naturally certain foods which tons of research has been done on solidifying the need for or become so stuck into one way of eating.

 

[Peatogenic]

Humans have instincts that tell them what to eat and when to eat. Your body knows what it needs. When the will, which is from the mind, fuses with the instincts, which come from the body, you become whole. One with yourself. I am not a hippy by any means but what I learned is the more conflict you have between the mind and the body, the worse you are. You are always worse off if there is a disconnect between instincts and reason.

A practical example of this mind/body connection actually happening in real time is when you get a fever. The fever originates from the body's instincts. The fever is supposed to help eliminate something from the body by forcibly increasing metabolism but its also a sign to the mind(you) to not eat anything. Food will heat you up even more which can be dangerous, thats why generally people have an aversion to food when they have fever. That is a practical example of how when the body signals to you not to eat or not to eat certain things you follow the signal.

The problem with manmade ways of eating e.g. low-carb, high-carb, carnivore, vegan (Peat guidelines are no exception) is that they are reasoned based, based on human understanding of our physiology. Often times they are very adamant on what is good to eat and what is not or what is right and what is wrong. The clear problem with this is that is not so clear to many is our knowledge is imperfect no matter what and whenever we suscribe to one food ideology likewise we tend seperate which kind of science we listen to or take seriously. Our body is much older and much smarter then us, it knows how to keep itself alive. Its all due to instincts humans have relied on since the beginning. Think about how we are taught through learning what to eat and not to eat to completely disregard the body's instincts.

Some people are so misaligned with their body, they outright disrespect and insult their own body's instincts by eating very restricted diets, restricting certain nutrients because the author of their current diet path says they are bad even though there is extensive research saying otherwise, doing non-diet related things they are told to do for perfect health but they dread doing, etc.

The big question that everyone willing to ask should consider is how to align their mind and body together? The answer is not completely surrendering to your body's instincts and not completely being overrun by your mind's habit to obsessively control everything thinking it will give you perfect health or even improve health.

If I were to completely surrender to my instincts, I would be chomping down hot cheetos, eating chips and spicy salsa, and dousing the flames with tons of milk and coke. I would be scarfing down so much unhealthy starchy foods(not that starch is unhealthy) like chips, pizza rolls, and all these low quality desserts in boxes. On the other spectrum, if my mind had 100% control I would be eating a carnivore diet thinking all plant foods are bad.

I am sure everyone has their own two versions of what they would eat if they gave in to the body or the mind fully.

What I discovered for myself is there is a compromise in which your mind feels at ease as well as your body. I believe it applies for everyone. Food/Health obsession drove me crazy but likewise living totally off the whims of your bodys cravings(which I have done for a period of time) also made me visibly unhealthy even though it was fun for a time.

For me its an emphasis on meat(preferably red meat), milk products, eggs, and liverwurst(cant stand liver) which covers most micronutrient requirements and then plenty of starch, usually skinned potatoes, white rice, and white flour products which fill out the rest of the necessary nutrients eats. The leftover calories I usually just eat whatever like sugar foods and I feel great and at ease. Barely supplement but usually its minerals occasionally sometimes B complex and D,E,K. This way of eating puts me at ease and makes me feel good and healthy and not restrictive.

I think a varied, non restrictive diet is something we should all strive for. Eventually we have to climb over this hurdle of health obsession. We can't do it if we are deathly afraid of certain nutrients and naturally certain foods which tons of research has been done on solidifying the need for or become so stuck into one way of eating.

Another thing you perceive though is that the body doesn't really communicate with you in clear terms. It actually "deceives" you. For example, when you have suppressed appetite from metabolic damage. Everyone and their mom skips breakfast, because they are listening to their bodies. Till they gently start feeding through some moment of intuition, or they read something, or they are forced to meet someone for breakfast, and they might realize they have ravenous hunger after a few bites. This is not an argument for reason-based living or doubting intuition...it's just a peculiar rub to the simplistic idea of listening to the body.

Your Cheetos and coke, etc example was actually very close to an analogy I was going to give of Cheetos, peanut m&Ms , etc...like, I can't imagine that being a goal to eat those things and be bubbly and a curious adolescent again. Do I still eat those things at times? Of course. As far as you or I or anyone else actually enjoying those things, I wonder...if it's not really a kind of dissociation. Dissociation from how it really makes you feel....I know I'm going out on a limb here, but almost as a kind of unconscious sabotage or manifestation of a lack of self care... I wonder this while not believing those foods are evil. There's something really inauthentic about those cravings, I believe.

 

[redsun]

Another thing you perceive though is that the body doesn't really communicate with you in clear terms. It actually "deceives" you. For example, when you have suppressed appetite from metabolic damage. Everyone and their mom skips breakfast, because they are listening to their bodies. Till they gently start feeding through some moment of intuition, or they read something, or they are forced to meet someone for breakfast, and they might realize they have ravenous hunger after a few bites. This is not an argument for reason-based living or doubting intuition...it's just a peculiar rub to the simplistic idea of listening to the body.

Your Cheetos and coke, etc example was actually very close to an analogy I was going to give of Cheetos, peanut m&Ms , etc...like, I can't imagine that being a goal to eat those things and be bubbly and a curious adolescent again. Do I still eat those things at times? Of course. As far as you or I or anyone else actually enjoying those things, I wonder...if it's not really a kind of dissociation. Dissociation from how it really makes you feel....I know I'm going out on a limb here, but almost as a kind of unconscious sabotage or manifestation of a lack of self care... I wonder this while not believing those foods are evil. There's something really inauthentic about those cravings, I believe.

Well there are a many different reasons people skip breakfast. How prevalent is it really to instinctively avoid breakfast because of metabolic damage? People dont eat right in the morning to lose weight, considering how popular intermittent fasting nowadays(its literally everywhere), shame in one's own fatness by themselves can trigger meal skipping, no time in the morning, poor sleep(high cortisol, lack of appetite), ate too much the night before therefore blunted morning appetite.

The problem with pondering what you suggest that our body's signals can deceive us first is figuring out whether our actions are a cue from our body, or done out of habit, because we think its good for us(reasoning), out of shame. I dont think the body ever deceives us, its merely dissociation from ourselves because of the effects of living in modern civilization. This falls in to the realm of psychology and how our brain deals with information especially societal pressure or pressure from others and authority figures(say Peat, Mark Sisson, Matt Stone) on what we should and shouldnt be doing.

I thoroughly agree with you. I don't think its outlandish to suggest that probably no one is capable of truly knowing what they want now because of how much we have been dissociated from our instincts due to things like the aformentioned above.

You could say these cravings for things like hot cheetos and junk food is my attempt at relieving myself of pressure from my own mind from indulgence like this. And boy is it that. The best thing I feel from eating like that is relief and of course the pure pleasure from spice, salty starch, and sugar. But i never feel good in the healthy and revitalized sense. I don't think the craving is inauthentic necessarily. I think generally we as humans living in the modern world and its plethora of information we are constantly living inauthentically through acculturation and indoctrination and indulging is a way of letting go of all that. Definitely not healthy, but in an unnatural world you can say the only methods of release that are effective are unnatural ones. For the record, never felt good after hot cheetos.

 

[Whichway?]

What supplement trials are you referring to? This forum is absolutely full of studies showing benefits in humans of both drugs and supplements.

A lot of the big trials which are longest term and well designed and controlled have found no beneficial effects and sometimes evidence of harm. These include SU.VI.MAX, PHS-II, REACT, SELECT.

Sure there are short term studies showing effects of supplements, but that translating to improved health doesn’t seem to be the case, and indeed in the case of the anti-oxidant nutrients may reduce life span, rather than increase it as you would assume from looking at all the studies where positive effects for different parameters are shown.

 

[Peatogenic]

A lot of the big trials which are longest term and well designed and controlled have found no beneficial effects and sometimes evidence of harm. These include SU.VI.MAX, PHS-II, REACT, SELECT.

Sure there are short term studies showing effects of supplements, but that translating to improved health doesn’t seem to be the case, and indeed in the case of the anti-oxidant nutrients may reduce life span, rather than increase it as you would assume from looking at all the studies where positive effects for different parameters are shown.

I don't understand the mechanism behind the healing, but it seems there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary?

 

[Luann]

....I know I'm going out on a limb here, but almost as a kind of unconscious sabotage or manifestation of a lack of self care... I wonder this while not believing those foods are evil. There's something really inauthentic about those cravings, I believe.

I feel the survival instinct has really dipped as a culture. IQ might be in decline but it's really what we do with our IQ that has changed I think. More and more people content to live in squalor, hard jobs, yucky food.

 

[Whichway?]

I don't understand the mechanism behind the healing, but it seems there is anecdotal evidence to the contrary?

I’m not trying to downplay your experience and that it helped you. As I said in my OP on page 1 of this thread, supplementing when it makes up for a deficiency can definitely improve functioning. So in your case the trauma may have exhausted you and left you in a deficient state, and because deep rest and withdrawal from society is often not possible, supplementing enabled your metabolism to improve and make the necessary hormones and chemical messengers to improve your functioning and help you to then feel better as a result.

My concern is more in the case of blanket supplementation, long term supplementation after deficiencies have been resolved, that seems to have either little to no benefit or actual detrimental effects. The studies I listed are those that show some of these longer term harms. So I guess the message probably needs to be more nuanced. Take supplements for specific conditions, for a specific time until the condition is resolved. After that stop and get your nutrients from food, and work on lifestyle adjustments to minimize stress and keep you in your happiness sweet spot.

 

[Peatogenic]

I’m not trying to downplay your experience and that it helped you. As I said in my OP on page 1 of this thread, supplementing when it makes up for a deficiency can definitely improve functioning. So in your case the trauma may have exhausted you and left you in a deficient state, and because deep rest and withdrawal from society is often not possible, supplementing enabled your metabolism to improve and make the necessary hormones and chemical messengers to improve your functioning and help you to then feel better as a result.

My concern is more in the case of blanket supplementation, long term supplementation after deficiencies have been resolved, that seems to have either little to no benefit or actual detrimental effects. The studies I listed are those that show some of these longer term harms. So I guess the message probably needs to be more nuanced. Take supplements for specific conditions, for a specific time until the condition is resolved. After that stop and get your nutrients from food, and work on lifestyle adjustments to minimize stress and keep you in your happiness sweet spot.

Oh, I meant for the other posters on the forum that resolved issues. I don't know if my condition is healed, because I haven't gone off my supplements yet. I've only been on them for four weeks, but I'm starting to taper down now out of curiosity.