one of the experiences that fed into my enthusiasm for feeling my feelings etc. was being extremely confused about the energy economics of feeling depressed / "low on spoons"
like i could not believe that the raw biological energy was unavailable, given that i had plentiful food
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so it seemed to me that the only way i could possibly ever feel "low energy" despite having as much raw biological energy as i could ask for is that there were regulatory mechanisms actively preventing me from using the energy i had
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and i eventually found such a mechanism, namely, the freeze response, which was more than satisfactory as an explanation of my own low-energy states for a long time
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but recent experiments with my diet like cutting out seed oils and fasting a bit, plus reading 's website, suggests a quite different possible cause of "low energy": the body could be struggling to digest food effectively
bodyepiphanies.com/bioenergetic-n
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if much of your energy is taken up with the struggle to digest and meanwhile you're getting less energy from your food than a hypothetical person with perfect gut health, that combination might be enough to sap your energy by itself? (trying to first-principles this)
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i am still struck by how calm i felt 40 hours or so into my last fast. i finally felt like i was in a state where sitting meditation made perfect sense, where i would've been happy to sit in stillness for hours. all from... reducing gut inflammation???
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thanks for the input everyone, i got a lot of gut health stuff to learn about. i decided to fast yesterday on a whim to see how much it would help and boy howdy did it. i feel calm and patient, my gut feels quiet and no longer looks like i'm pregnant, my breathing is easier twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/st…
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normally i always feel like i am vibrating a little bit and not in a pleasant way and 40 hours after i stopped giving my digestive system new work to do i just... didn't??? fucking insane
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he still has me blocked but one thing that feeds into this train of thought is tweeting about how he was able to dramatically improve his mental health just from making diet changes. one day i hope to understand how this could possibly fucking work
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probably lots more to say here about chronic stress, adrenal fatigue, etc. ways the body’s energy could be being used up constantly fighting threats, one way or another
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my big broscience medical conspiracy theory is that tonnes of things are downstream of stress (which have ton tonnes of upstream things- environment, relationships, etc). I believe that chronic stress is more injurious to health than smoking, seed oils, microplastics…
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Whoa this vagal chart is cool. Have been learning a lot about freeze recently. Is it a separate axis from fight/flight? Or a similar response?
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Re: diet affecting mental health
Most neurotransmitters, are created from food. Protein is a big precursor for dopamine. Protein with stimulants enhances the effects quite dramatically
Inflammation does seem to be a big part. Might be something to blueberries and fish oil
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