My Journey To Optimal Health

[Amazoniac]

not bad like too much video games

Guru, I know there is a 'too much' there, but it's often view'd as a waste of time, yet the positive effects are underestimated. You not only exercise the cerebra in solving puzzles, practicing to extend to other areas of life; but there is the sense of achievement and wiring from it. Building something cool in Minecraft or coming up with a strategy to develop a functional empire must be rewarding, even when rudimentary Mario saves the princess there must be the rush of hormones that ends up reinforcing competence. Games in the first person probably make the gurus immerse themselves enough to trick the brain that it's real but at the back of their heads they knows that their life isn't on the line, so it's a safe experience with some aspects of the hormonal cascade of reality. Fear no more, jump in.

My opinion wouldn't be different is this post wasn't sponsored by Xbox.

--
Unrelated: have you ever recorded yourself for a day and night? It can reveal some weird things that pass unnoticed, such as eating boogers, poor posture, bad lighting, masturbating to a sheep picture at an inopportune time and almost being caught (friend), distractions, ignored break times (nothing to do with breakdancing) where you become agitated, and so on.

 

[milkboi]

Guru, I know there is a 'too much' there, but it's often view'd as a waste of time, yet the positive effects are underestimated. You not only exercise the cerebra in solving puzzles, practicing to extend to other areas of life; but there is the sense of achievement and wiring from it. Building something cool in Minecraft or coming up with a strategy to develop a functional empire must be rewarding, even when rudimentary Mario saves the princess there must be the rush of hormones that ends up reinforcing competence. Games in the first person probably make the gurus immerse themselves enough to trick the brain that it's real but at the back of their heads they knows that their life isn't on the line, so it's a safe experience with some aspects of the hormonal cascade of reality. Fear no more, jump in.

My opinion wouldn't be different is this post wasn't sponsored by Xbox.

--
Unrelated: have you ever recorded yourself for a day and night? It can reveal some weird things that pass unnoticed, such as eating boogers, poor posture, bad lighting, distractions, ignored break times (nothing to do with breakdancing) where you become agitated, and so on.

Great post Regenwald!

 

[Mufasa]

Would you expand on this a bit more? What was your approach to get better? I feel like there is likely some truth to this based upon what I've also touched on in a couple of recent posts.

However, I do also find (also touched on in other posts) that any activity that requires energy is NOT helpful when hypo. For example -- Even a lot of house cleaning may not be helpful even though it's way more productive than video games. Yes having a clean house is great. But I've had days where I really cleaned things up then the next day woke up more hypo than ever, probably because I expended way too much energy to do so.

The goal of hypo recovery should be generating energy (eating food/sunlight/maybe targeted supplementation like B vitamins) while also conserving energy (sleeping, meditation, not exercising, avoiding stimulation--caffeine/porn/TV)

I'm gonna give the no TV/video games things an honest effort this week. Wish me luck LOL

Funny, I find #noTV even harder to do than #nofap... But maybe that just goes to show how badly I need to do it? I've managed to do #nofap for months at a time (although lately, I've struggled here too...) but #noTV? Lol. I don't think I have EVER done this for months at a time.

I can surely expand on this. But most of what I will tell comes from one of those books, that will probably explain this better:

- https://www.amazon.com/Bored-Brilliant-Spacing-Productive-Creative/dp/1250124956
- https://www.amazon.com/BrainChains-...perconnected-multitasking-ebook/dp/B00M039OUM
- https://www.amazon.com/Organized-Mind-Thinking-Straight-Information/dp/0147516315

When I made my initial big improvements in my health around februari-july 2016 (after 6 years of trying everything), I stopped studying and stopped close to all my screen activities, I did some logging like you do, and I kept reading a bit of this forum, mostly haiduts post and videos, and that was it as it comes to screen time.

I was in the luxury position that I was living with my parents, so I could afford doing “nothing”. I was walking a lot, going to my university sauna, I did yoga and meditation, sun bathing, preparing meals, mindful and slow eating, just laying in the grass and enjoying nature. Stuff like that.

I was somehow convinced that this was what I needed to do (next to my diet and supplements) after watching the videos of haidut and danny roddy that came out on youtube around that time. I didnt yet read the books I mentioned above.

After this period I got my own appartment, a job and a girlfriend, so I cannot live that kind of lifestyle anymore except for holidays. I read that you have a job, so you are probably a lot better than I was at that time already.

Since then, I have not been improving that fast, but I feel like I still get better every month a bit. If you are sick you need to do a lot right to even improve a little bit, and when you are healthy you have much more buffer to do stressful things and still improve. I put a lot of energy in my work and relationship, but I try to find that the balance so that Im still making fundamental progress in my health as well.

In that sense I feel like Im not yet as “healthy” as some of my colleages that can eat whatever they want and still be productive. I am probably one of the most productive, energetic and creative employees at my work, but if I would have their lifestyle, I would be at the bottom as it comes to performance. I can not party 2 times a week, drink beer, eat all kind of fast food, and maintain or improve my health.

If I look at your lifestyle, I think I would not be able to maintain or improve my health if I would live like you @Cirion. It seems to me that you are avoiding going in you “default mode network”, and (subconciously) are pushing your time in your “central executive network” to the limit. While, to make any progress in your mental health and stress levels, you need a lot of time in your default mode network.

If you are interested, I could give a small summary about what those books exactly tell about those two brain networks. I have been studying this for over a year now and have experimented a lot with it.

 

[Cirion]

Thanks for the post. I will have to look into those books. From what you've said I pretty much agree. It sounds like you did a lot of de-stressing activities which is definitely crucial to get well. It might be a bit until I can read the books, so if you could give a summary in particular of how to go into "default mode network" that would be helpful.

So yesterday I turned ev erything off after just 1 episode of TV (I needed/wanted to at least finish the show I was on with 1 episode left lol) and slept like 12 hrs.

I'm back up another 0.2F waking temp and down another 0.4 lb body weight! I'll take every small victory I can... that's also not bad considering I had some meat yesterday. But I think the fact that A.) it was organ meat and B.) I didn't go crazy with protein (even w/ the meat only had like 80 gram protein yesterday, which my data suggests is my limit) did a lot.

 

[Cirion]

Sleeping a lot really does seem like one of the magic bullets. Every time I can sleep like 12 hr I seem to get better (usually only on weekends), drop weight and increase body temp.

I think one reason I historically can't do it on weekdays is because I watch too much tv/play too much games after work which stimulates me and keeps me awake plus you keep falling into the deadly trap known as "just one more episode" lol. This'll be another advantage of at least toning down if not stopping this entirely in getting me to sleep sooner.

 

[Cirion]

After this period I got my own appartment, a job and a girlfriend, so I cannot live that kind of lifestyle anymore except for holidays. I read that you have a job, so you are probably a lot better than I was at that time already.

Since then, I have not been improving that fast, but I feel like I still get better every month a bit. If you are sick you need to do a lot right to even improve a little bit, and when you are healthy you have much more buffer to do stressful things and still improve. I put a lot of energy in my work and relationship, but I try to find that the balance so that Im still making fundamental progress in my health as well.

I find alot of my problems also stem from cockiness. What do I mean by that? I'll start to get better, feel better, then get cocky and think oh I can relax a little and not be as strict, lose an hr of sleep no big deal, play a ton of video games today no biggie, have a few drinks of alcohol, eat one pufa meal no big deal, relapse no #nofap no big deal etc etc. Then of course, I get sick all over again when I do said things.

I personally found having a girlfriend was actually (For me at least) one of the deadliest things to my health ironically. It's actually what wrecked my health last go around. Tho, maybe it didn't help she was bipolar and worked night shift, two deadly combos... argggh LOL. That, and having a gf that is obsessed with sex is not as awesome as it sounds. You get sooo drained all the time, which to me had the same effect as excess masturbation. I definitely will have to look into karezza for my next relationship because I HATED that constantly drained feeling I got which I know for a fact was me literally draining my metabolism as well.

Yeah, I do have a job but many days I don't do well / not very productive because of being metabolically sick. IN a way I'm scared of this job in FL if I do get it, since I know it is a huge amount of stress to move states AND move from house to another house (way more stressful than just moving apartments since you have 10x more stuff to move but worse than that is the process of buying and selling can be rather stressful, plus with selling is worse than buying since you have to deal with demands of buyers and make sure the house is pristine clean with no problems etc etc...) but the thing is, I pretty much have to take it if I get the offer because it's a huge step up professionally, better pay (which means my plans for early retirement get accelerated), and better location (always warm, near beach) so I'll just have to be aware of the upcoming stressors and just do things like sleep a lot more, relax a lot more inbetween the waves of stressors.

 

[Cirion]

masturbating to a sheep picture at an inopportune time and almost being caught (friend)

Lol, your posts never cease to make me laugh man!

 

[somuch4food]

I find alot of my problems also stem from cockiness. What do I mean by that? I'll start to get better, feel better, then get cocky and think oh I can relax a little and not be as strict, lose an hr of sleep no big deal, play a ton of video games today no biggie, have a few drinks of alcohol, eat one pufa meal no big deal, relapse no #nofap no big deal etc etc. Then of course, I get sick all over again when I do said things.

That pretty much is what happened yesterday. I was feeling good and productive and pushed myself at work and forgot to eat and drink enough. By the end of the day, I was wired and my edema was the worst it had been in many days. I slept terribly and woke with some edema remaining (it usually clears up overnight). That's a pattern I know all too well. When I start to feel good, I take on projects one after the other and eventually crash because I neglected my health. I build my health again, just to crash again when I feel better. I've had this pattern since high school, but the good times were getting rarer and rarer before I started focusing on health.

 

[Cirion]

That pretty much is what happened yesterday. I was feeling good and productive and pushed myself at work and forgot to eat and drink enough. By the end of the day, I was wired and my edema was the worst it had been in many days. I slept terribly and woke with some edema remaining (it usually clears up overnight). That's a pattern I know all too well. When I start to feel good, I take on projects one after the other and eventually crash because I neglected my health. I build my health again, just to crash again when I feel better. I've had this pattern since high school, but the good times were getting rarer and rarer before I started focusing on health.

Yeah I've done this several times already in the past few months and I hate that I keep doing it.

So I am starting to be convinced that organ meats is indeed one of the keys to health. I haven't proven it yet from data, but I feel like it is. Something about liverwurst does "feel right" compared to muscle meats, but one can probably still overdo it so I'm probably gonna limit myself to a lb a week or so and still have zero muscle meats because I do know for a fact those don't work for me. Muscle meats are "dead proteins" and don't do a whole lot for you in comparison to organ meats. Organ meats are restorative foods for the specific organ in question whereas muscle meats only provide some protein and nothing more nothing less other than maybe a B vitamin or two, and I now feel are a "net negative" food due to the problems I've found with cysteine, tryptophan etc.

I was reading up a little about how eating animal organs literally replenishes the same organ in your own body. EX: have a sick liver? Eat liver. Have heart disease? Eat heart. Have brain dysfunction? Eat brain. So on and so forth.

Now with that in mind, it begins to make sense why Ray recommends Liver--in fact to fix your liver. And @Amazoniac posted awhile back saying that research indeed shows this--eating liver helps fix a fatty liver. Same with thyroid. I think it probably makes more sense to eat whole thyroid organ than it does to just take T3 or T4. Eating the whole organ is probably more helpful to actually heal your own thyroid. Of course eating thyroid also brings with it T3 and T4 but I kind of think fixing your thyroid is more than just supplementing T3 and T4.

 

[Mufasa]

Thanks for the post. I will have to look into those books. From what you've said I pretty much agree. It sounds like you did a lot of de-stressing activities which is definitely crucial to get well. It might be a bit until I can read the books, so if you could give a summary in particular of how to go into "default mode network" that would be helpful.

The default mode network is the network the brain is in when it is not engaged in a purposeful task, when you are sitting on a sandy beach or relaxing in your easy chair and your mind wanders fluidly from topic to topic.

This mind wandering mode stands in stark contrast to the state you are in when you are intensely focused on a task such as doing your taxes, writing a report, or navigating through an unfamiliar city. This is the central executive network, the more the mind wandering network is supressed the greater the accuracy of performance on the task at hand.

Quoting a bit of The Organized Mind here above.

Now, how I see this, in ideal health, you are switching from DMN network (yin) to CEN (yang) throughout the day. You are never in both. You are producing something with your full attention, being totally “here”, or you are relaxing and letting everything go.

CEN produces immediate value, but DMN is what gives the most long term value. It is responsible for learning, making new connections, making new habits, creativity, putting things in context etc. And of course it lets you recharge so that you can go to a full functioning CEN again.

Now, what you often see in neuro diseases is that someone can not go in full focus, the mind wandering mode is constantly interrupting their focus. In this sense, the default mode network is often seen as the villain that needs to be suspressed. (I dont agree with this).

Besides this, the mind wandering mode often lets you think about things you want to avoid. Like old trauma, guilt, shame etc. So how can you suppress the default mode network and be fully focussed?

There are two things that activates the central executive network, “change” and “importance”. I see this as there are two types of being active. You are either being proactive or reactive. Now proactivity, driven by what you find important in life, is much weaker in suppressing your default mode network.

However, “change” is seen by your brain as something that needs to activate your CEN as good as possible. As change in the environment may be life treatening. Humans are perfect change detectors, and change triggers us to be completely there even if we are too tired for anything else.

Now, the internet, and other media, use this evolutionary mechanism, to catch your attention, even if you dont want it, or even when you are too tired to do that. Notifications are just changes in the environment that immediately catch your eye. People are too tired to read a book, but can read the news. Etc.

Why? Because change triggers our central executive network with stress hormones. And internet addicts, social media addicts, TV addicts have a constantly elevated stress hormones that keep supressing their default mode network and keeps them clued to the screen.

Okay, I need to go now, so I will leave the question how you can restore a healthy balance between those 2 networks for later.

 

[Cirion]

Thanks man. That all actually makes a lot of sense and I find myself in agreement. I would say most of my life I've been stuck in CEN, which definitely explains my chronic hypo for 95% of my life. Even my mom would always comment "You don't know how to relax" to me a lot as a kid lol.

If I end up moving to FL, my CEN is gonna go into overdrive again, d'oh....

 

[Cirion]

So I had energin earlier in the day and also made sure to have a large bulk of my carbs earlier in the day. checked my weight after getting home from work and saw that it was quite low. only marginally above my waking weight. In addition, had a couple pills of the beef thyroid/liver supplement in the morning.

That's always a good sign that my wt is low at this point in the day and showing me I'm on the right track. also explains my hunger atm lol. Bloat is low despite having meat (But it was liverwurst) earlier in the day. I am starting to definitely think there's something to organ meat indeed.

Gonna try my best to end the night on a low-bloat condition so that I can lose some more weight tonight =)

 

[Cirion]

So sleeping a LOT seems to be one of the " Master Keys " to weight loss. Down another 0.6 lb today after sleeping over 12 hr again. I was a little hungry before bed tho, but I think a little sensation like that might be unavoidable when weight is rapidly dropping but even so I had 3800 calories yesterday. I'm still solidly 98.1F+ every morning but I can do better, my carbs are too low, I got lazy with them over the trip to FL, gonna be bringing them back up higher again prolly. Carbs don't impact weight loss in fact they assist weight loss so hoping weight will drop even faster by doing so (alongside getting my temps back up to 98.6F again). The weekend is coming up which means two more days of lots of sleep =)

 

[Hans]

Histamine can be a missing key here. I know you tried histidine before and felt nothing, but that could be because the amino acid gets broken down before creating histamine.
Histamine is needed for arousal, motivation, satiety, reduces fatigue etc., all which you want more of. Inhibiting H3 receptor also promotes glycogen storage, so low histamine can lead to poor glycogen storage.
DAO and methylation break histamine down, so overmethylation leads to low histamine. This can also explain why you do poorly on high protein, as methionine increases methylation and also compete for absorption with histidine. You might benefit from high dose niacin as that will lower methylation and increase histamine. Worth a try.

 

[Cirion]

What foods are high histamine but low in cysteine/tryptophan?

I have been eyeing the recent niacin thread redsun made. I did recently begin taking Energin virtually every day. Not sure I'm quite sold on the mega-dose of B3 though. Even the 100mg I get from Energin is still technically a mega-dose, in that thread they're discussing 1000mg, it just seems like too much...

 

[redsun]

What foods are high histamine but low in cysteine/tryptophan?

I have been eyeing the recent niacin thread redsun made. I did recently begin taking Energin virtually every day. Not sure I'm quite sold on the mega-dose of B3 though. Even the 100mg I get from Energin is still technically a mega-dose, in that thread they're discussing 1000mg, it just seems like too much...

I don't think there's a food that's particularly super low in cysteine and super high in histidine. The two meats I know of when I was researching this myself that have the best histidine to methionine ratio is pork and beef. Pork being a bit better. Certain cheeses like meunster and gouda are incredibly favorable to histidine and even lower in cysteine, but these are high fat foods.

 

[Cirion]

Well at the very least per my previous suspicions it seems organ meat is about the only meat I can indeed tolerate (in limited dosages at least). I believe I had a couple favorable metabolic days as seen by lowering of inflammation / weight loss and that at least part of it I have the liverwurst to thank for. I'm definitely going to at least do a bit more experimentation with organ meat. I had looked through old data a while back and saw a day where I ate a lb of liverwurst and the next day dropped like 1.5 lb, so I think there's definitely something to organ meat. Go figure, should have just listened to Ray and eat my darn liver lol.

As long as tryptophan/cysteine is limited, then these organ meats are tolerated. Like yesterday I limited my starch as even starch is somewhat high in cysteine/tryptophan, so with 8 oz of liverwurst my total cysteine/tryptophan was still well within my tolerance limit as gauged by my data tracking and my tryptophan and cysteine both were only like half a gram.

 

[Cirion]

So as I went for a quick afternoon stroll outside, I was aware of my stress and breathing. I walked really slow such that I could still deep breath and not have an accelerated heart rate. As I did so I pondered how stressful most americans are. Virtually everyone I walked past was walking at least twice, sometimes more, faster than me, clearly running on stress hormones. Meanwhile I'm just chilling and taking the opportunity to lower, not increase, my own stress hormones, and feeling bad now for people who live their lives in a high stress state all the time.

As mufasa said earlier, this is gonna be key to recovery. Really letting the "go go go" part of the brain shut off and the relax part of the brain turn on more and more.

 

[lampofred]

So as I went for a quick afternoon stroll outside, I was aware of my stress and breathing. I walked really slow such that I could still deep breath and not have an accelerated heart rate. As I did so I pondered how stressful most americans are. Virtually everyone I walked past was walking at least twice, sometimes more, faster than me, clearly running on stress hormones. Meanwhile I'm just chilling and taking the opportunity to lower, not increase, my own stress hormones, and feeling bad now for people who live their lives in a high stress state all the time.

As mufasa said earlier, this is gonna be key to recovery. Really letting the "go go go" part of the brain shut off and the relax part of the brain turn on more and more.

Yeah my health is by no means perfect, but I feel bad for most people I meet. They talk like they are on cocaine, not in a good way as if their minds were sharp and fast, but in a "their thyroid is nonexistent so they are relying purely on adrenaline and are constantly jumbling words, full of anxiety" kind of way. Particularly younger people and especially girls. Only people who are relatively normal with a thyroid that's still hanging in there are older people in upper management at work.

 

[Cirion]

Yeah my health is by no means perfect, but I feel bad for most people I meet. They talk like they are on cocaine, not in a good way as if their minds were sharp and fast, but in a "their thyroid is nonexistent so they are relying purely on adrenaline and are constantly jumbling words, full of anxiety" kind of way. Particularly younger people and especially girls. Only people who are relatively normal with a thyroid that's still hanging in there are older people in upper management at work.

It's the corporate culture that really ruins peoples health I am fully convinced.

From the day you start first grade you are taught to work hard and get those A's, suffer the st ress of endless homework and endless exams, and then when you survive all that... Great! You get to do it again in college! And then once you survive all that stress.. Great! Now you get to join the rat race and suffer the stress of overtime, working weekends, dealing with traffic on a daily basis. And that's if you're lucky. The unlucky ones have to additionally deal with a stressful marriage due to said overtime at work, and eventually a divorce. Modern life is fun times lol. And by fun I mean it's the optimal environment to get metabolically sick.

Younger and younger people are getting sicker now (Haidut has touched on this) and its partly because the pressure to succeed is cut-throat.. make sure you get that 4.0 GPA otherwise you won't get into grad school/get scholarship/get a job! Make sure you impress your boss by working overtime or even working for free so you get that promotion! And so on.