RP Advice For Overactive Brains

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May 29, 2013
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Just discovered this in my email folder - not sure if I shared it originally. I've bolded the parts that I found particularly interesting and helpful.

An active large brain uses energy at a very high rate, and it needs lots of support from the body. The liver is the main store of glucose (as glycogen) for mental work, and if it isn't efficient, it can't support prolonged original thinking. (The need for some nutrients, other than calories, can be very high when mental activity is intense.) Thinking while lying down, or sitting in an almost horizontal position, makes less demand on the liver. Familiar physical activities reduce the brain's glucose consumption by stopping the energy-expensive brain processes. (The active brain produces lots of heat, so snacks are helpful. I used to notice that when I was working intensely mentally, even on a warm day my glasses and nearby windows would fog up with condensed water. Oxygen and calorie consumption can be more than twice as high as normal during intense thinking.)

When prolactin is high, thyroid stimulating hormone, TSH, is usually high, too (because the same signals increase both of them), but for commercial-cultural reasons, the "normal range" for TSH isn't realistic--optimally, TSH should be below the range that's called normal. Thyroid hormone inhibits both prolactin and TSH. Thyroid hormone is needed for using glucose fully, and also for storing it as glycogen, so intense brain activity increases TSH, to cause the gland to produce more hormone. Magnesium and thyroid hormone have to act simultaneously in cells for efficiency, and if there's not enough of either of them, glucose is consumed wastefully, increasing the need for calories. Coffee happens to be one of the best sources of magnesium, and that's one of the reasons that it synergizes with thyroid hormone, and caffeine also happens to protect against the over-production of nitric oxide, increasing the ability to use glucose efficiently. Both cortisol and prolactin should probably be at the lower end of the normal range, when there's enough thyroid hormone and magnesium. The well energized cell is able to relax immediately after being active. This makes problem solving easier, but it also makes the transition to rest and sleep easier and quicker.

I think a thyroid supplement, increasing energy efficiency, can make it easier to integrate the two kinds of activity, so that each of them, thought and physical activity, is a little different, possibly with a sense of newness in familiar activity, and more concrete associations in problem solving.
 

Constatine

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This is the most interesting thing I've read in a while. Thanks for sharing. This partially explains the beneficial effects of meditation for the body, it spares energy for other uses. This is also a factor explaining why intellectuals tend to be smaller physically.
 

lampofred

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This makes so much sense.

Mainstream science: "the brain uses the same amount of calories at rest vs during intense thinking" So why is mental exertion so exhausting and why do people get so hungry after it? Intuitively it just makes absolutely no sense.
 

arien

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Aug 4, 2013
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The great nutritional requirements of an active brain remind me of the sometimes sad oddities of various famous 20th century mathematicians:
Kurt Gödel - Wikipedia
Paul Erdős - Wikipedia
"His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, "a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems",[16] and Erdős drank copious quantities (this quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős,[17] but Erdős himself ascribed it to Rényi[18]). After 1971 he also took amphetamines, despite the concern of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could not stop taking the drug for a month.[19] Erdős won the bet, but complained that during his abstinence, mathematics had been set back by a month: "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper." After he won the bet, he promptly resumed his amphetamine use."

In the case of Godel, I suspect some of his paranoia came from experiencing insight that was highly metabolically demanding, with insufficient nutritional support, which worsened as he became more paranoid. At the same time, I imagine many logicians may suffer from their rational analysis of thought rarely being permitted to creatively resolve itself into a holistic acceptance of existence.
 

Regina

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Just discovered this in my email folder - not sure if I shared it originally. I've bolded the parts that I found particularly interesting and helpful.

An active large brain uses energy at a very high rate, and it needs lots of support from the body. The liver is the main store of glucose (as glycogen) for mental work, and if it isn't efficient, it can't support prolonged original thinking. (The need for some nutrients, other than calories, can be very high when mental activity is intense.) Thinking while lying down, or sitting in an almost horizontal position, makes less demand on the liver. Familiar physical activities reduce the brain's glucose consumption by stopping the energy-expensive brain processes. (The active brain produces lots of heat, so snacks are helpful. I used to notice that when I was working intensely mentally, even on a warm day my glasses and nearby windows would fog up with condensed water. Oxygen and calorie consumption can be more than twice as high as normal during intense thinking.)

When prolactin is high, thyroid stimulating hormone, TSH, is usually high, too (because the same signals increase both of them), but for commercial-cultural reasons, the "normal range" for TSH isn't realistic--optimally, TSH should be below the range that's called normal. Thyroid hormone inhibits both prolactin and TSH. Thyroid hormone is needed for using glucose fully, and also for storing it as glycogen, so intense brain activity increases TSH, to cause the gland to produce more hormone. Magnesium and thyroid hormone have to act simultaneously in cells for efficiency, and if there's not enough of either of them, glucose is consumed wastefully, increasing the need for calories. Coffee happens to be one of the best sources of magnesium, and that's one of the reasons that it synergizes with thyroid hormone, and caffeine also happens to protect against the over-production of nitric oxide, increasing the ability to use glucose efficiently. Both cortisol and prolactin should probably be at the lower end of the normal range, when there's enough thyroid hormone and magnesium. The well energized cell is able to relax immediately after being active. This makes problem solving easier, but it also makes the transition to rest and sleep easier and quicker.

I think a thyroid supplement, increasing energy efficiency, can make it easier to integrate the two kinds of activity, so that each of them, thought and physical activity, is a little different, possibly with a sense of newness in familiar activity, and more concrete associations in problem solving.
I concur with Constatine how interesting is this missive. Aikido is physically and mentally both a familiar and novel endeavor each and every time one steps on the mat. (hopefully, one accepts that the rabbit hole is deep each time). Now I think the "stress" adaptions I make during practice are due to the dynamic mental challenges. (i.e., my lacking dynamic mental pyrotechnics. I'm an easy person to psych out). I think these states can be improved upon. (at least, theoretically). Smaller people (most females) have to focus more on the technique (can't shove, grab, push, or game-face their way out) and that necessarily draws one up into the mental/analytical during practice. Takuan talks about Mushin (no mind) for martial arts. But getting these techniques in the body and mind require intense thinking. It's quite cool but this really shines the light on my nervous/analytical mind on the mat. And now I know that it is also bad physiologically speaking.
 

Constatine

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Sep 28, 2016
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I concur with Constatine how interesting is this missive. Aikido is physically and mentally both a familiar and novel endeavor each and every time one steps on the mat. (hopefully, one accepts that the rabbit hole is deep each time). Now I think the "stress" adaptions I make during practice are due to the dynamic mental challenges. (i.e., my lacking dynamic mental pyrotechnics. I'm an easy person to psych out). I think these states can be improved upon. (at least, theoretically). Smaller people (most females) have to focus more on the technique (can't shove, grab, push, or game-face their way out) and that necessarily draws one up into the mental/analytical during practice. Takuan talks about Mushin (no mind) for martial arts. But getting these techniques in the body and mind require intense thinking. It's quite cool but this really shines the light on my nervous/analytical mind on the mat. And now I know that it is also bad physiologically speaking.
An analytical mind would only be bad if the body cannot support it. If the body can support it then I would assume a heavily active brain would be beneficial for much of the same reasons a heightened metabolism is beneficial. Though it would be very difficult for a body to have a high metabolism while the brain doubles the calorie demand. Bottom line calories and overall energy production is even more important than we have previously thought.
 

Lilac

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Joined
May 6, 2014
Messages
636
I was telling my next-desk coworker that the active brain uses more energy than any other organ and that's why we need to snack while working hard mentally. She said that jibed with what her pet trainer had said about her dog--that it would be hungrier when it was learning obedience. As Peat has pointed out, what is common knowledge about farm animals is not applied to human beings.
 

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