Note to a suicidal chronically ill person
| March 5, 2012 | Posted by JosephB under coping, self-experimentation |
Well, I can certainly understand the confluence of biological, social and circumstantial factors that would lead one to such a decision.
The questions you have to ask yourself are:
1. Am I taking ownership of emotions and behaviors that are in fact driven by external forces?
2. Have I realistically assessed my future happiness? (Keeping in mind that most attempted suicides later report that they badly miscalculated.)
Personally, I find I am entering an unexpected phase where scars, humiliations and regrets I thought I would carry forever have completely ceased to matter. Personal evolution is difficult to predict.
However, what kept me going in my case was a single-minded purpose that overrode aversion to pain – and a slim hope that this purpose might yet be achievable. I did find that after a certain point, the argument for enduring pain now to enjoy potential pleasure later loses its motivational effectiveness.
If I were to go back and give myself advice, I might say this: “You will be here awhile. Find ways, chemical or audiovisual, to make the downtime pass unnoticed.”
Think of past suffering as principal paid on a mortgage. Walk away now, and you lose the house.
The good thing about suffering is that it can only happen in the present, which is such a tiny sliver of time that it can hardly be said to exist at all.
`
By the way, you appear to be strongly cycling between manic and depressive phases. I am very familiar with this cycle. Here is how I cracked it:
Begin a journal. Make one entry daily. Every two days, summarize into a two-day entry. Every four days, summarize two two-day entries into a 4-day entry. Every 8 days, summarize two 4-day entries into an 8-day entry, etc. Keep separate journals for each entry class: one for 2-day, one for 4-day, one for 8-day, etc.
Second, get on lifemetric.com and start tracking as many variables as might be relevant daily. Look for major mood swing patterns and try to identify independent causal triggers in either your journal or tracking data. In my case, food was the obvious causal variable.
Other self-tracking options are available here: http://quantifiedself.com/guide/
Circadian disruption alone causes IBS – solution is evening fasting, early breakfast
| March 1, 2012 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet, coping |
It turns out that Circadian disruption, all by itself, is a sufficient trigger to cause an IBS reaction cycle exactly as if I had eaten bad food.
Since the IBS reaction cycle itself generates serious Circadian-disrupting forces, this creates all kinds of potential for negative feedback loops. This is why my measurement and analysis of cycle causes and durations has been so hopelessly screwed up.
Well, I now have the equivalent of snow chains and anti-lock brakes. Credit goes to Seth Roberts for his idea of controlling Circadian rhythm with meal times. I stop eating 12 hours before desired awakening time, and eat immediately upon awakening when I want to shift my Circadian earlier.
Previously, I would get into a negative IBS cycle that would push my Circadian to where I was falling asleep around dawn. Then I’d get roughly shifted out of that by some morning obligation, triggering another stress-induced IBS cycle, and the pattern repeats. Ouch.
Now, I have a method for roughly switching myself back even when I’m low energy. I generally have an energy peak at night when sick. So I just cook for the following morning, and fast the whole evening until I’m ready for sleep. My Circadian quickly falls back into line in a day or two, no matter how badly shifted I am.
Very often, fasting in the evening means skipping every meal since breakfast. I often suffer a severe energy lull in the first 2/3′s of the day when I’m sick. Fasting all day isn’t easy when sick and tired. But the rebound in energy is well worth it, once Circadian is synced with daylight hours. Sleeping out of sync with the sun is just terrible for you in so many ways.
Fundamentally, Circadian disruption is a trigger because stress is a trigger. Therefore my priority going forward is to absolutely minimize stress. Fortunately I’ve already gotten pretty damn good at that.
Accutane – it will teach you Zen.
Pro-paleo research papers
| February 15, 2012 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet |
Studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2724493/?tool=pubmed This one sould have gone on for longer, since the “paleo diet” is improving with time whereas the “diabetes diet” is getting worse. Then again all diet studies should go on for a longer time but there’s the $$$$ to think about.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h7628r66r0552222/fulltext.html This one only demonstrates a benefit from a paleo diet, not that it has shown to be better than a “Mediterranean diet” here, because that’s not really what people call a Mediterranean diet.
Not categorically paleo but these are great articles and pretty damning -
“The western diet and lifestyle and diseases of civilization”
And
“In the face of contradictory evidence: report of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans Committee”
http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0899-9007/PIIS0899900710002893.pdf
From Paleo hacks: http://paleohacks.com/questions/95849/top-5-published-scientific-papers-for-paleo#ixzz1mREhd6RG
Summary of the Aquatic Ape Diet + Circadian regimine
| December 26, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet |
Hey [redacted],
I was a little leery of MMS, not sure quite what to make of it. Now that you’ve endorsed it, I’ll move it to the top of my list, to be tried right after cholestasis stuff.
Actually I got a bit screwed over today. I was out and about yesterday and had a bowl of plain white rice at a restaurant. Turns out they must’ve put MSG or sugar or something in there, so I’m in a bit of pain today. But normally I’m symptom free.
My regimine is a combination of extreme dietary restriction and Circadian management. It works without any pills or supplements whatsoever. Which is necessary, because the ingredients in most pills, solid or gelcaps, make me ill.
Here’s the diet I follow:
Every meal is the same. I put a layer of white rice in the bottom of a non-stick pot. Then I add water. Then I add a 300g package of scallops, 400g of cod, and 200g of shrimp. I boil it all together, taking extreme care not to burn. I eat and immediately refrigerate the leftovers. All leftovers are tossed after 16 hours.
The only other ingredient I consume is water. No spices, flavoring, additives, salt, nothing.
For Circadian control, I primarily use meal timing. If I need to shift earlier, I make sure to eat breakfast quickly after waking, before I’m feeling hungry. I also stop eating 12 hours before I want to wake up. I make sure to get natural sunlight in the morning, and to limit my blue light exposure at night. Occasionally I’ll use an alarm clock, but it’s rarely necessary.
OK, now I’ll list my symptoms. First is IBS cramps, which I’m experiencing right now unfortunately. These are accompanied by extreme fatigue and Circadian disruptions. I also experience emotional and psychological alterations, depending on the kinds of food I eat. I become depressed, emotionless, angry, irritated. I lose my ability to focus and work. I break out in acne. I lose my ability to be social. It’s absolutely miserable.
The primary mechanism of action that I’ve isolated so far is intrahepatic cholestasis. In plain English, this means that my liver has stopped producing bile. As a result, I cannot digest fat. I have ordered and am awaiting a collection of drugs and supplements to correct this condition. I’m also ordering a number of IBS and leaky gut related products, since I suspect my intestinal lining was affected.
You are probably already aware of the mechanism by which accutane induces intrahepatic cholestasis. It is not much different than what happens to the liver during anabolic steroid abuse. This reaction can be triggered by a wide range of toxins.
I’m not yet at a point where Spectracell analysis is on the agenda, but I certainly would like to get one done within the next year or two.
I am living in China, so I will immediately start looking at ways to create or purchase MMS, but it might take a bit of doing.
Thanks,
JB
PS I’ve just described my regimine, without saying how I figured it out or why it works.
Basically, my current understanding is that humans are differentiated from hairy apes due to a large number of aquatic adaptations, possibly going back to oreopithicus. A link: http://eatingoffthefoodgrid.blogspot.com/2009/10/pleistocene-diet.html . [also see the pdf in the previous post]
There are multiple ramifications to this oceanside hypothesis for optimal diet, which you can learn by reading the above.
I believe the ability to hunt large game with higher percentages of body fat came much later in our evolution, after larger brains and efficient bipedalism. So fat should be harder to digest.
The human gut differs from apes in that we don’t have large guts designed for fermenting insoluble plant fiber. So that is also harder to digest for us.
The preferential eating order for both primates and human hunter gatherers is protein, starches, and then everything else. So I focus on those two.
A human can thrive on a monotonous diet of a single animal source, as long as that animal has sufficient fat to prevent protein poisoning. If there isn’t enough fat available, he must cut the protein with other energy sources, e.g. starch or sugar. Since I cannot digest fat or sugar, I use starch.
The least allergenic source of starch available today is white rice, which contains very little plant toxin or potential irritants, and is used to manufacture e.g. hypoallergenic pill casings. Rice is also a marshland aquatic starch source, and it or similar plants would’ve been available deep into the anthropological past.
Shellfish are extremely easy for hunter gatherers to collect, and contain a tremendously beneficial profile of minerals and vitamins, which are not impacted by the soil-depleting effects of fertilizer-based agriculture. They are also extremely low fat. Ancient shellfish middens indicate that they were a major food source.
Cod are an extremely lean variety of fish, the other two being pollock and perch. Cod contains under 1% fat.
Shrimp add much needed texture and flavor to round out the dish, which is crucial to avoid cheating and maintain weight and mood. They are also extremely low fat and relatively easy to catch in shoreline environments.
I arrived at this diet through a process of trial and error, wherein I tested and rejected many of the dietary models out there. This took about 8 years, during which I was not aware that I had either Accutane poisoning or intrahepatic cholestasis.
One other thing worth mentioning – I have experienced extremely high sustained vitality while eating a diet very high in scallops. It is worth consuming as much of these as is tolerable.
Aquatic Ape vs. Shoreline Dweller
| December 26, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet |
The “Aquatic Ape Hypothesis” has a terrible reputation in the professional scientific community.
This is because Elaine Morgan has defined it as a scenario where a group of apes were trapped in a swamp by some kind of natural catastrophe, and had to spend most of their time wading in shallow water. Which is pretty silly.
What’s far less silly is now known as the “shoreline dweller” hypothesis, that apes gradually adapted to take advantage of shoreline environments, and developed bipedalism by wading.
I think it’s pretty clear that no ape is designed to spend most of its day in the water. That’s not a theory I support.
But Elaine Morgan doesn’t own the “Aquatic Ape” franchise. It started before her, and even if she’s gone off the deep end, “Aquatic Ape” is still the best way to describe it.
I’m comfortable believing that humans are about as aquatic as pigs, less so than otters, but in that general neighborhood.
Here’s an excellent paper that describes some of the evidence for the Aquatic Ape evolutionary hypothesis. In this case, they’re calling it a “waterside dweller” theory.
I happen to like the nice ring that “Aquatic Ape” has to it, so I’m sticking with that.
Here’s the paper. Hat tip to Melissa McEwen
Evidence for this diet’s sustainability
| December 19, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet |
First of all, the people on Survivor living off of speargun caught seafood and rice looked pretty healthy to me. And happy.
Secondly, I have experienced some weight loss while eating only scallops and rice for a month, but I experienced zero fatigue – instead, my energy and mood was the highest it’s ever been, before or since. In fact, it was a little bit like being on coke. I’m usually a more laid back person. Everything was more vivid, more fun, I was smarter, etc. I regard a diet of scallops and rice only as an emergency extreme diet – it gives fast recovery but it’s not so great in the long term.
My current diet is scallops, rice, lean fish and shrimp. This diet has no fatigue and no muscle loss. You can see my current natural musculature here, which I maintain while doing zero workouts of any kind beyond soccer games.
I’ve been on this diet with little or no deviation for probably close to 5 months. During this time, I’ve had zero green vegetables, maybe 2-3 sweet potatoes, no vitamin or mineral supplements except vit D and calcium briefly – in short, almost no dietary variation of any kind. Even before I discovered scallops, I was only eating rice and different kinds of meat – no green vegetables – for probably another 6 months.
Unlike other Accutane sufferers, I spent most of my 8 years trying to fix myself without knowing that Accutane was the cause. Instead, I focused on diet. I’m therefore something of an expert on paleo nutrition, and extreme elimination diets. What most people think they know about human nutrition, probably ain’t so. For example, humans can eat nothing but the same meat from the same animal for years, and as long as it’s fatty enough, be completely healthy. I’m willing to bet most readers think that’s impossible. Fact is, the conventional wisdom on human nutrition is completely wrong.
This diet is anything but random… and it may change the world
| December 18, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under Aquatic Ape Diet |
It occurs to me that maybe my diet seems unappealing because it’s so random. There’s actual a sound evolutionary basis for it, albeit it draws from a minority viewpoint among evolutionary theorists. Point being, it’s not something I randomly came up with. Instead, I systematically tested and rejected pretty much every dietary paradigm out there before find this one.
For reference, my long term stable diet is 1. scallops daily, one package; 2. unlimited white rice; 3. lean fish – cod, perch or pollock; 4. shrimp for flavor/texture. Boiled, no burning or seasoning.
It’s fairly uncontroversial among evolutionary theorists that the transition to eating larger animals with higher percentages of body fat may have been a major turning point in human evolution that allowed us to develop larger brains and smaller stomachs. Compare large ape guts designed for fermenting fibrous vegetables to the smaller human intestinal tract. The morphology of the human gut suggest that humans are designed to eat animals. And the mainstream theory described above suggests that the adaptation to digest lots of animal fat is more recent.
Going beyond the mainstream view, we can look at the Aquatic Ape / shoreline dweller theory of human evolution, which observes morphological similarities between humans and other semi-aquatic animals, such as pigs, and concludes that humans are adapted to a semi-aquatic environment. This suggests a whole host of dietary recommendations that are borne out by what we know about humans nutrition today. Here are two informative links, one on the Aquatic Ape Theory, and the other on the implications of the shoreline dweller hypothesis for diet.
From genetics we know that pretty recently ancestral humanity was reduced to a small population (around 10-1k breeding pairs maybe 700k years ago). This fits well with catastrophism, an alternative geological and cosmological school of thought. This bottleneck(s) might well have played a role in forcing our ancestors to the shorelines .For example, a supervolcanic eruption, ice age, and/or solar/magnetosphere event might have rendered survival impossible on the interior, forcing our ancestors to survive by living on the shoreline. If such catastrophes were regular, then we might’ve adapted to such a life over a much longer period of time.
On the shore, shellfish are one of the easiest and most plentiful animal food sources for unskilled hunter gatherers, as any fan of the TV series Survivor knows. Ancient shellfish middens (giant piles of discarded shells) confirm that this was a major food source for shore-dwelling hunter gatherers. See the shoreline dweller diet link above for ample evidence that present-day humans are still specially adapted for life on the beach.
One feature of shoreline life is that seafood tends to be pretty low fat. Also, starches are available, including marsh growing starches, of which rice is one example. In the absence of animal fat, humans must consume carbohydrates or plant fats to avoid protein poisoning. Evidence indicates that modern adult hunter gatherers strongly prefer starchy and fatty plant sources to sweet fruits or fibrous vegetables (what we traditionally think of as veggies, e.g. salads.)
Of all the dietary paradigms I tried, this is the only one that yielded results, and highly impressive results at that. That may just be a coincidence, since my intrahepatic cholestasis biases me towards low-fat diets. But I am far more restricted than just fat – there is almost nothing I can safely eat. The fact that this paradigm predicts literally all of the things I can safely eat suggests that maybe this is the “original” or “default” human diet, the one our gut can digest with the least difficulty, and that results in the largest micronutrient surfeit.
That’s why I am so eager to see whether a shoreline dweller diet can yield results for others suffering from a wide range of ailments – not just accutane injuries, but all manner of chronic conditions.
If this turns out to be the case, it could revolutionize not just evolutionary theory, but also present-day medical practice, both alternative and (eventually) mainstream.
Journal entries from melatonin debacle (No more pills)
| December 13, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under coping, journal |
Day 2
The best solution is to be able to retreat, rest, avoid boredom with entertainment, and recover your biological health. The mental health will follow.
When I get flattened, I know how long it will take me to get back up again, and I just grimly wait it out, while minimizing the pain. I tell myself, “It’s all biological.” That reminds me that it’s not my fault, it’s not under my control, and it will pass soon, changing into an upswing as irresistible as the down.
Dark light and minimal social contact helps too.
I just spent a day and a night getting flattened by either the magnesium stearate or the gelatinized starch in two melatonin pills I took two nights ago. So I got to put all this into practice. First came the depression, then cramps whose agony incited me to homicidal rage, then exhaustion, then long sleepless boredom.
But here I am, fine and dandy again. My body doesn’t even remember what happened to it yesterday, and neither do my emotions. It’s all biological. [EDIT - the morning was good, the rest of the day wasn't. Fatigue and cholic pains.]
—–
Day 3
I’m finishing up my time on those two melatonin I took. It isn’t easy, but my mind is right, and I’m almost through it.
From now on, no pills that aren’t specifically gastro neutral. Not even Vit-D.
Exceptions: probiotics, bile production / liver pills, lecithin, stuff like that.
——
Day 4
Ahh, I’m back at 100% after my 3 days of suffering. Nothing feels better. So worth it.
I’ve realized that the soybean oil in those Vit-D pills was the reason I wasn’t quite hitting my top speed over this recent period.
I’ll avoid Vit D deficiency and set my Circadian with sunlight and exercise now, instead of pills.
Caloric Restriction is overrated
| December 11, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under bio-enhancement |
Those autists who tend to conflate “evidence” with “peer reviewed scientific studies with large sample sizes” also tend to inordinately buy into CR, calory restriction, and Intermittent Fasting. Which is unfortunate, since they are the last people one wishes to have suffering from low blood glucose while one is around.
They believe it because it has a fair amount of scientific studies to support it. It’s the sort of thing blinkered science has managed to figure out.
Here’s why I don’t buy the hype:
- Longevity is not the only factor of interest.
- There’s CR and CR. A paleo lifestyle will greatly increase natural tolerance to fasting, leading to longer periods without meals, up to one day at times. Deliberate CR is something different.
- CR doesn’t show up among blue zones or the world’s oldest people. Rather, the opposite – enjoyment of life.
- I read a chimp study that showed CR chimps lived longer but had terrible quality of life compared to the fat happy sly contented ad libitum eaters. That suggests it’s a tradeoff between living longer slowly and living faster richly.
- Longevity is extremely hard to study in humans and there are many better-established effects on health from altering biological inputs than anything related to longevity.
- Most importantly, cages and unnatural diets may tend to exaggerate the positive effects of CR on animals. Now interestingly, many humans live in the modern equivalent of cages and eat highly unnatural diets….
Do I believe that CR is probably a good thing for prisoners and caged animals? Yeah.
Do I think fasting has spiritual and physical benefits? Yeah… although your physical goals may conflict with fasting’s effects, depending.
Do I care enough to actually restrict what I eat, beyond avoiding overeating to discomfort? No.
Melatonin pills fuckup – magnesium stearate a problem
| December 10, 2011 | Posted by JosephB under journal |
Taking two melatonin pills last night severely fucked me up. Even though I took them with food.
They were solid, chalky pills. I don’t know what they were made of, but one of the ingredients was magnesium stearate, which according to some website, “Individuals with impaired digestion may have particular difficulty absorbing nutrients coated with stearates.”
Apparently it’s made from palm oil, which would explain my difficulty.
Anyway, it was fast and sharp so the effect should only ruin me for one day. Ugh.
