Weekly WIL 5-Point Review #10
Not showering, testosterone increasing behaviors, splitting my skull in half and more...
This is my free weekly newsletter covering 5 interesting points from the week. Subscribe if you’d like to get it in your inbox each week!
1. Stop showering for better skin health? 🤨
Dr. James Hamblin wrote a book titled Clean: The New Science of Skin where he discusses soap, shampoo and whether they are actually good or necessary for our skin and scalp. In an article with Freethink, he explains that there are natural mites on the skin that serve to exfoliate the skin, and by stripping them away with soap, you may be making yourself more susceptible to infections and breakouts.
On that note, I do take showers, but I haven’t shampoo’d my hair in years. My scalp feels better, is less oily, my hair looks better and my head doesn’t smell (I’ve been told). The logic behind this is that:
・The natural oils and other substances produced by the scalp serve a purpose.
・Stripping them away with shampoo just makes the scalp produce even more oil to compensate.
・Ironically, this makes you feel even more like you need to shampoo.
・Products like pomade or conditioner try to make the hair look better or increase volume by adding back oils.
2. Concept I often think about: The Zero-Cost Testosterone Hack
“The major effect of testosterone is to make effort feel good. That’s what testosterone does.” -Andrew Huberman
While discussing a particular study, Andrew Huberman explains that stress and frustration will decrease T.
Per the 2001 study Testosterone levels in healthy men and the relation to behavioural and physical characteristics: facts and construct
Stressful situations as experienced during work, before tournaments or anticipating exams have been shown to decrease testosterone levels.
Huberman also said that if you can just enjoy yourself or if you can convince yourself that you are enjoying yourself in the face of difficult situations, you are going to maintain or even increase testosterone.
So, it seems like there is a two way street.
・Testosterone → Enjoy effort
・Enjoy effort → Testosterone
With that in mind, do you think the following would have a chance to raise or lower testosterone?
・Assuming you’re definitely getting fired when presented with the possibility that you could either be fired or promoted.
・Listening to sad music or listening to Wolf Totem by The HU.
・Pondering what you need to do to win next time upon experiencing defeat.
・Dejectedly ruminating about your defeat.
・Listening to the president’s inspiring speech from Independence Day.
・Crying during a Japanese press conference.
・Assuming your lack of success as a musician is the result of oppression.
・Subscribing to Nietzche’s philosophy of “Will to Power”
・Subscribing to Schopenhauer’s philosophy of ‘The world totally sucks and is simply a realm of suffering (boohoo wah wah)’
I’ve talked before about the concept that social dynamics and behavior have a huge effect on testosterone levels. The TL;DR is:
Testosterone → Behavior
Behavior → Testosterone
Social Interactions → Testosterone
Testosterone → Social Interactions
Some more interesting points on this from a very old paper on rhesus monkeys titled Behavioral and Environmental Events Influencing Primate Testosterone Levels:
・Introducing female rhesus monkeys to their environment induced a 2-3 fold increase in testosterone. Testosterone levels fell after they were removed.
・They introduced male rhesus monkeys one at a time to a group of 34 male rhesus monkeys, knowing that the ‘intruder’ would likely be attacked and quickly defeated. They withdrew the monkey before it could experience serious wounds. Experiencing defeat depressed their testosterone such that it was comparable to “physical castrates.” Testosterone did not rapidly return to baseline, but rather remained depressed for weeks.
・Even after the defeat, their T still shot up massively (8-fold) in response to the presence of females, comparable to what it would be when the females were introduced before the defeat.
・They wanted to repeat the defeat experiment, this time with 3 monkeys and 1 intruder, but the intruder unexpectedly defeated all three of his attackers. This success rose his testosterone from 950ng/dL to 3000ng/dL.
P.S. Which mentality do you think elicits more testosterone? Speed Racer’s or the kid’s?
3. The mouth affects your posture
Today I was doing some reverse barbell curls and noticed I wasn’t getting as much force out of my left arm compared to my right. Remembering a video I watched earlier, I bit down a bit so the top and bottom molars on the left side of my mouth would touch. My left arm engaged better, I could get more balanced force out of my arms. This increased the number of reps I could do. That might sound farfetched, but consider this paper: Effects of Jaw Clenching While Wearing a Customized Bite-Aligning Mouthpiece on Strength in Healthy Young Men
These findings suggest that it is advisable to use a customized bite-aligning mouthpiece to improve strength and power performance.
Neal Hallinan’s video How Your Jaw and Teeth Influence Your Posture: What no one talks about! may blow your mind. While referencing several studies, he basically explains that your occlusion (the way your teeth fit together) affects your posture, gait, range of motion and how your skeleton performs in general. Definitely worth a watch.
Pointing to the head and neck region, he says ‘This sensory system up here is what grounds you. Your feet don’t ground you.”
On that note, I’ve always felt my skeleton was ‘off balance’ or that maybe one of my legs was longer than the other. I also happen to have this jaw issue that has affected the balance of my bite for 15+ years…
4. Root cause of my mysterious jaw problem
Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) is something I’ve talked about multiple times on this Substack. Based on the reaction from the first time I talked about it, it sounds like a decent chunk of people have this issue. Basically something is screwy with the left side of my jaw (mandible) at the joint. The joint feels like a stripped screw so it slips around when I open and close my mouth. It’s not an acutely severe issue - there’s no sharp terrible pain in my jaw like a shoulder dislocating. It’s just been a persistent annoyance for 15+ years that has lead to clenching at night which has slowly grown my masseter muscles to an abnormal size. Further, this has been a cycle of imbalance as now the right masseter muscle is bigger than the left.
What causes this?
There’s no consensus.
(1) My dentist in high school said the issue was that I open my mouth too big sometimes when I was eating. ‘I bet you eat a lot of big ol’ hamburgers, don’t you Joseph?’ I suppose I did. That slightly made sense at the time.
(2) Another dentist told me that the issue was that I grind my teeth and clench at night. I woke up with a dull soreness in my jaw and temples, so I was sure I was clenching. The prescription was to make a hard mouthpiece that would latch on to my upper teeth so the mandible could slide around without grinding my teeth down. Sort of made sense but didn’t sound like it would stop the unconscious impulse to bite and clench.
(3) After about 13 years of just basically ignoring the TMJ issue, I finally read elsewhere that the issue was an imbalanced bite. My molars couldn’t touch at the same time and something about this induced a stress reaction. If I had to wake up often at night to pee, that was an indication that I was experiencing elevated stress levels while asleep. Elevated cortisol is known to induce frequent urination.(S,S) I did have to wake up often at night. I found a dentist in Japan who was focused on correcting the bite. While the adjustments didn’t solve all the issues associated with TMJ, I did notice I woke up with less tension in the jaw and temples in the morning.
He also pointed out that a previous dentist had shaved down my natural upper molar to make room for a ceramic cap he placed on my bottom molar. (What the fuck?)
(4) Mike Mew has said that the issue with TMJ is not having the tongue pressed against the roof of the mouth overnight. This made sense too. The upward force of the tongue would balance out the downward biting force from the clenching. Yet, some nights I felt like I was doing a good job of pressing the tongue against the roof of my mouth, others not so much. Also, my masseter muscles are crazy strong, so do I need an abnormally strong tongue now?
(5) Finally, I saw some videos from Ron of the Youtube channel Jawhacks. That I feel explains the root issue: My airway (maxilla) is not big enough.
・Grinding (bruxing) and clenching are a response to a small airway because maintaining tension in the neck, jaws and face makes the airway rigid and preserves the airway space while you sleep.
・Constantly putting pressure on the joint likely deteriorated it such that it drifted out of the proper position.
・My bite wouldn’t be so misaligned and my molars would touch if the left side of my mandible wasn’t slipped out of place.
・It should be a natural instinct for humans to have their tongue on the roof of their mouth if there is enough space to fully accomodate the tongue.
What’s the real solution? There is likely some lasting damage done from 15 years of pressure and grinding on the joint, but if I can get my airway bigger, it should alleviate the next link in the chain: grinding and clenching.
5. Why I plan to split my skull in half for better sleep.
The plan for expanding my airway is to split my maxilla bone (dental arch/roof of mouth) in half where the suture running back to front is. An appliance will then be used to pull the two halves apart about 4-6mm and the body will naturally put down new bone to fill in the gap. When the appliance is removed, the maxilla will remain expanded.
This should result in a big gap between the front teeth, which would be corrected with invisalign.
This likely sounds fucking bonkers, but it’s very straightforward. The maxilla is the ‘ground’ of the nasal airway. If you can expand it, your airway will become much larger. You’ll breathe better at night and there will be less need to preserve the airway by making it rigid through clenching.
There is tons more to say about this procedure, but honestly I think small airways are a MASSIVE problem for people nowadays. Imagine sleeping not quite as well as you should for decades. What if you only got 85% of the restoration your body needs every night for years? I think people are finally becoming more and more aware of the massive issues associated with sleep apnea.
If you want to learn more about the negative effects of suboptimal sleep, snoring and suboptimal airway space, make sure to read the book Jaws: The Story of a Hidden Epidemic. If you want something quicker, you can watch this old video of mine: What’s the best position to sleep in? Do we even need a pillow?
P.S. If this really resonated with you and you’re excited about maxilla expansion, don’t just book a random MARPE provider. You are literally going to split a part of your skull in half, make sure you vet the hell out of your provider. Do some digging around. The Jawhacks channel has tons of useful information & his interviews with experts on this, so start there. Ron, the guy who runs it, used MSE to massively expand his maxilla and he talks extensively about the pitfalls in his experience and what he would have done different. You can also grab a 1-on-1 consult with him here.
Used to have consistent dandruff despitr using the typical mainstream dandruff shampoos. Now I use Nizoral shampoo once a month and don't shampoo otherwise. No dandruff, softer hair, no itchy scalp. It’s been brilliant
Hi Joseph,
interestingly I have a similar procedure and braces coming up for me, as my doctor also figured, that my bad sleep and mild apnea is most likely coming from poor jaw alignment. Will be funny wearing braces with 34 :D.