The Central Nervous System

jaywills

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Hi All,

The following quote really interests me, and believe this could be key to digestion difficulties and diverting the pregnenolone conversion towards androgenic steroid production opposed to the cortisol and stress hormone pathway.

"The Autonomic Nervous System
Enhancing performance is about balancing stress and recovery, both of which are controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS has two subsystems: the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system.

The sympathetic division excites. It's known for preparing you for either "fight or flight." The parasympathetic division, by contrast, inhibits. It's known for allowing you to "rest and digest."

Questions:
1) How does Ray Peat view the system?
2) What are tips to relax the central nervous system and engage the parasympathetic division?
3) Where does coffee fit in; does caffeine excite the system and prevent this relaxation, should Dec-Caff be consumed if one is looking to move into a parasympathetic state?
 

emmanceb

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The following is from this interview: http://www.raypeatforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5432

Int: Okay let’s carry on about the sweat. Let’s go on about night sweats. I’ve always understood that night sweats was indicative of disease and it wasn’t good. What do you think about night sweats and how you think about temperature regulation?

I think it is the same thing. The body needs to be hot, but the night signal is to cool off the metabolism to permit sleep and you have to mobilise the nervous system in a different way, shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic and parasympathetic activation makes you sweat, and getting your blood sugar up is the other thing that shifts you away from the sympathetic dominance. The various things during the night trigger those nervous changes. Just lying down tends to shift you to the parasympathetic dominance, making you sweat more easily. But then prolonged darkness increases the production of cortisol, which raises your blood sugar and shifts you again away from sympathetic to parasympathetic, so it’s a combination of dakrness, the day cycle, whatever the stress is that is lowering your blood sugar and then the compensating cortisol raising your blood sugar.

Int: So what are some things we can do to fix this?

One of the things that happens at night is that the shift in nervous system tends to slow the digestive process and it can allow bacteria to become more toxin producing during the night and keeping your intestine clean during the night, as far as possible, and eating a carrot in the afternoon, for example, to stimulate the intestine and supress some of the bacterial growth.
 

emmanceb

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I wonder then if there is some basis to the thought that laying down impairs digestion. Perhaps the increase in parasympathetic activity is unfavorable for people with too much parasympathetic activity.

Here's something else:

"Situations that favor the production and retention of larger amounts of carbon dioxide in the tissues are likely to reduce the basic “tone” of the parasympathetic nervous system, and there is less need for additional vasodilation."

http://www.functionalps.com/blog/2014/02/15/ray-peat-phd-on-nitric-oxide/
 

jyb

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emmanceb said:
I wonder then if there is some basis to the thought that laying down impairs digestion. Perhaps the increase in parasympathetic activity is unfavorable for people with too much parasympathetic activity.

That's not cool. Know that feeling of wanting to lay down take a nap after a huge restaurant meal?
 

tara

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My impression is that Peat thinks that common discussion of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems oversimplifies things too much.

Ray Peat said:
Although I don’t think the autonomic nervous system, with its sympathetic and parasympathetic divisions, exists in the way it has traditionally been conceived, the idea can be useful if we think of using drugs and other factors in ways that tend to “quiet an overactive autonomic nervous system.
http://raypeat.com/articles/other/auton ... tems.shtml
 

emmanceb

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jyb said:
emmanceb said:
I wonder then if there is some basis to the thought that laying down impairs digestion. Perhaps the increase in parasympathetic activity is unfavorable for people with too much parasympathetic activity.

That's not cool. Know that feeling of wanting to lay down take a nap after a huge restaurant meal?

Yes all too well :lol: , probably the insulin spike
 

Giraffe

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The parasympathetic division, by contrast, inhibits. It's known for allowing you to "rest and digest."
jaywills said:
What are tips to relax the central nervous system and engage the parasympathetic division?
A sign that the digestion-mode is at work is the gut making happy noises. These noises as far as I know mean that the gut is detoxifying itself. I can trigger this by laying down on my back and doing breathing exercises.
 

tara

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Giraffe said:
The parasympathetic division, by contrast, inhibits. It's known for allowing you to "rest and digest."
jaywills said:
What are tips to relax the central nervous system and engage the parasympathetic division?
A sign that the digestion-mode is at work is the gut making happy noises. These noises as far as I know mean that the gut is detoxifying itself. I can trigger this by laying down on my back and doing breathing exercises.
I thought the happy noises were the gut moving things along - peristalsis. I guess you could call that detox insofar as regular BMs are a kind of detox, but I think it's basic motility.
Rakhimov (normalbreathing, Buteyko method) recommends against doing strong reduced breathing exercises on a full stomach, because too speedy peristalsis with lots of solids in the system can damage the villi. I guess this is based on some people's experience. I wonder if that is related to other's advice not to eat (or only very lightly) before yoga?
 

Giraffe

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tara said:
I thought the happy noises were the gut moving things along - peristalsis. I guess you could call that detox insofar as regular BMs are a kind of detox, but I think it's basic motility.
I agree. I mentioned it because this does not happen when the body is in the fight or flight mode.

tara said:
Rakhimov (normalbreathing, Buteyko method) recommends against doing strong reduced breathing exercises on a full stomach, because too speedy peristalsis with lots of solids in the system can damage the villi. I guess this is based on some people's experience. I wonder if that is related to other's advice not to eat (or only very lightly) before yoga?
I do yoga only as physical exercise. I don't know what's going on during meditation. In some poses I find it difficult to breath deep into the body when the stomach is full.

Why do you mention reduced breathing exercises?
 

tara

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Giraffe said:
tara said:
I thought the happy noises were the gut moving things along - peristalsis. I guess you could call that detox insofar as regular BMs are a kind of detox, but I think it's basic motility.
I agree. I mentioned it because this does not happen when the body is in the fight or flight mode.

tara said:
Rakhimov (normalbreathing, Buteyko method) recommends against doing strong reduced breathing exercises on a full stomach, because too speedy peristalsis with lots of solids in the system can damage the villi. I guess this is based on some people's experience. I wonder if that is related to other's advice not to eat (or only very lightly) before yoga?
I do yoga only as physical exercise. I don't know what's going on during meditation. In some poses I find it difficult to breath deep into the body when the stomach is full.

Why do you mention reduced breathing exercises?

Rakhimov, following the Buteyko tradition, points out that traditional yoga pays attention to controlling/slowing breath to retain prana. This would be expected to raise CO2 levels. This is also the point of Buteyko reduced breathing exercises. (Some modern day yoga teachers do the opposite, and encourage excessive breathing, which can lower CO2 too much.)

Raising CO2 levels by traditional yoga or by Buteyko methods or other practices, if done intensely, can apparently speed peristalsis because it can rapidly increase the circulation and oxygen suppply to the GI tract. As I understand it, if stimulated too intensely, with a lot of solids in the gut, Rakhimov says some people interfere with their own recovery by repeatedly damaging the intestinal villi by suddenly and repeatedly stimulating too fast peristalsis, with symptoms like ongoing diarrhea and failure to improve gut function for digesting food, barrier function, etc. So he recommends doing the Buteyko exercises on an empty stomach, possibly fuelled by hoey if needed to keep blood sugar up - honey being simple enough to dissolve and digest that it does not risk this kind of damage. So I wonder if similar logic applies to traditional yoga.

As you know, Peat also recognises the value of keeping CO2 levels up, which is the point of the bag-breathing he recommends, and part of the benefit of raising metabolism in general.

Personally, I can't do intense reduced-breathing far for other reasons - I have to keep it gentle to avoid triggering migraine, and I never do yoga hungry - running out of fuel is another efective trigger for me. Hoping as my glygogen storage improves that I can have more fllexibility with this.
 

Giraffe

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tara said:
Raising CO2 levels by traditional yoga or by Buteyko methods or other practices, if done intensely, can apparently speed peristalsis because it can rapidly increase the circulation and oxygen suppply to the GI tract.
I do nadi shodana (the yoga alternate nostril breathing) for CO2. I note that my feet feel warmer and sometimes the space behind the forehead feels pleasently empty (longstanding sinus issues). I do not notice anything with my GI tract when practicing it.

The happy gut noises come when I work with visualisations to induce relaxation.

tara said:
Personally, I can't do intense reduced-breathing far for other reasons - I have to keep it gentle to avoid triggering migraine, and I never do yoga hungry - running out of fuel is another efective trigger for me. Hoping as my glygogen storage improves that I can have more fllexibility with this.
When I started practicing nadi shodana I felt a bit nauseous. Therefore I am cautious, I stop as soon as my feet feel warm. - Target is met! :) - This takes a minute or two.

Hoping for improved glycogen stores too. I could do with a little more sleep than five hours.
 

tara

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SOunds like the nadi shodani is working well for youI keep meaning to try that a bit more often too - thanks for the reminder.
 

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