WIL Weekly 5-Point Review #20
Supplement for sleep, cold exposure for mood, eating less sugar 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. Improve sleep with Myo-Inositol?
“Myo-inositol has been established as an important growth-promoting factor of mammalian cells and animals,” and it’s been investigated as a possible therapeutic since it was found in the 70’s that deprivation of myo-inositol induces fatty liver in rats.(S) It is also a glial marker which plays a critical role in some brain regions and is thought to have an impact on sleep.
A study titlted The impact of myo-inositol supplementation on sleep quality in pregnant women: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study concluded that:
myo-inositol supplementation can improve global sleep quality, subjective sleep quality, and sleep duration during pregnancy.
For 10 weeks, two groups of pregnant women took either 2000mg of myo-inositol with 200 μg or a placebo of just 400 μg of folic acid. “The primary outcome was the change in sleep quality from the first trimester to the second trimester (24–28 weeks).” There were significant differences between the two groups in terms of subjective sleep quality, sleep duration and habitual sleep efficiency.
Andrew Huberman says he takes 900 of myo-inositol every third night and says “the depth and quality of sleep that I’ve been obtaining on myo-inositol is pretty remarkable.”
2. Even a couple minutes of exercise is helpful
A study titled Do stair climbing exercise "snacks" improve cardiorespiratory fitness? found that in 24 sedentary people, even 3 sets of climbing a mere 60 stairs with 1-4 hours of rest in between each set had a modest but positive impact on their health. It increased their peak oxygen uptake by about 5 percent and peak power output by about 12 percent.
Moral of the story is if you go from being sedentary to even just a little bit of exercise you’re going to experience a benefit from it. If you’ve already got an exercise routine but don’t have the time to expand it as much as you’d like, just throw in a pushups to failure break in the middle of the day. When I was doing my consulting job, I would often go into the changing room, do a bunch of pushups and get back to work.
3. ‘Tis the Season for Cold Exposure
With winter coming up, it seems like a good time to get excited about cold exposure again. Various lines of research have suggested cold exposure is good for mood, so let’s take at one on cryotherapy.
Efficacy of the Whole-Body Cryotherapy as Add-on Therapy to Pharmacological Treatment of Depression
Accumulating evidence indicates the effectiveness of cryogenic temperature interventions in rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and chronic low back pain. The application of whole-body cryotherapy (WBC) in psychiatric aspects of medicine was also noted. Nevertheless, the exact mechanisms explaining the beneficial effect of WBC on mood disorders remain unclear.
This study compared the effect of whole-body cryotherapy sessions (-110°C till -160°C) with low but non-cryogenic temperatures (-50°C) on adults with a diagnosis of a depressive episode. It was found that there was a statistically significant difference on depressive symptoms in the two groups with proper cryotherapy sessions offering a significant benefit compared to the non-cryogenic temperatures. Significant improvement was noted in life quality, self-assessed mood and acceptance of their depression.
The Whole Body Cryotherapy intervention reduces mental health deterioration, especially in mood disorders, such as depression, and can be beneficial for well-being and quality of life.
4. How to stop eating so much sugar: Stop eating so much sugar
When I first got to Japan, I noticed that most of the sweets were not particularly sweet. Even many chocolates, cakes, cheesecakes et cetera just seemed less sweet overall and some were even kind of bland. Eventually I got used to it and came to enjoy the various sweets Japan had to offer. Then, my family sent me a box with various American snacks including several American breakfast cereals. They were way too sweet and I could only eat about half as much in one sitting as I would have when I was back in America.
This paper titled Reduced dietary intake of simple sugars alters perceived sweet taste intensity but not perceived pleasantness investigated how people’s preferences change after eat low-sugar diet. The low-sugar group
The Low-Sugar Group: ate their typical “baseline” diet for 1 month, a low-sugar diet for 3 months, and then were free to eat how they like for 1 month.
The Control Group: ate their baseline diet for 4 months, and then ate how they liked for 1 month.
The low-sugar diet meant reducing calories from sugar by 40% (in favor of protein, fat, and complex carbs). No artificial sweeteners were allowed so they were specifically trying to also reduce the “sweetness” of the diet. Once they low-sugar group was able to choose their own diet come the 5th month, they still ate 20% less sugar than their baseline diet.
This suggests that they were likely more easily satisfied with a lower level of sweetness after doing 3 months of a low-sugar diet.
I thought of this because I recently got a new protein powder and it made for an alarmingly sweet shake. It reminded me of the extra sweet milk leftover after eating Cap’n Crunch.
5. Freudian ‘repression’ & meditation
Recently, this tweet by user VividVoid popped up on my twitter feed. It stood out to me since they’re followed by three people I follow: One in the meditation space, another in the nutrition space and another person who writes about improving testosterone levels.
…I’ve seen so many people try to heal without ANY suppression or repression, as a corrective for an over-disciplined life, and they are failing. From my perspective, it’s obvious that the optimal amount of self-coercion is not zero.
…suppression is like a bulldozer. It doesn't just push down what you want. Your emotional energy is pluripotent, so when you suppress its forms that harm you, you necessarily suppress the forms you wish it would take instead - those that could heal you and bring you back into balance.
…you can only do detailed work if your mind and emotions are sufficiently peaceful. If you've got a big emotional force driving you to compulsion and preventing you from getting the peace and clarity you need, then at that point, a temporary use of suppression becomes skillful means. Of course suppression is a hazardous move in self-work that people should take great care with. I think you should only use it consciously and within pre-planned bounds, for a specific purpose. Anything you shove down will eventually come back, either in a stronger version of itself or a form you struggle to recognize. But if it temporarily buys you time to make a gain, or an insight, or a change to your life that you can't make otherwise, then you shouldn't be afraid of it…
VividVoid’s overall message is quite reasonable and promotes a middle way of avoiding both extremes of over-repression and zero repression of emotions. I also agree in general with his saying “you can only do detailed work if your mind and emotions are sufficiently peaceful.” This is what drew me to TWIM. When practicing meditation under traditions that encourage a strict posture, I always thought to myself: ‘It sure is hard to focus considering I am very distracted by how uncomfortable this is.’ TWIM allows people to sit however is comfortable for them (as long as the posture doesn’t make them sleepy).
I agree that acknowledgement of your emotions, analyzing what the dominoes preceding their arrival were, contemplating which (or whether) past events were responsible for the mind deciding that that emotional response was a reasonable reaction to certain circumstances, contemplating what the most appropriate action to take is if that circumstance presents itself again going forward et cetera are all very useful.
However, I couldn’t totally agree with this blanket statement:
“Anything* you shove down will eventually come back, either in a stronger version of itself or a form you struggle to recognize.”
*If this was simply worded as “Sometimes, things you shove down…,” I wouldn’t be writing about this.
First, this is basically echoing Freud’s conjecture that “unexpressed” or “unprocessed” emotions will be buried in your subconscious and will eventually come out to bite you when you least expect it. The problem with Freud is many of his statements were unfalsifiable. If a repressed emotion is presenting itself in a form that we “struggle to recognize,” then we literally have no way to confirm which ‘repressed’ emotion was the source of which behavior or thought process.
Second, I’d say that in some circumstances, the opposite of “anything you shove down will eventually come back” is true. I’ve found on several occasions the more I engage in certain emotions, the more my mind produces mental patterns that have that emotional flavor. For example, in the past when I often watched pornography, I suppose you could say I was acting too often to process or express the emotion of ‘lust.’ Expressing that lust didn’t make me less ‘lusty.’ If anything, if I watched porn once a week then the next week I wanted to do it twice a week. Then the following week, I more often felt this lust feeling and watching porn three times a week seemed like a good idea. However, the longer I went without enjoying a porn-fueled emotional catharsis, the less the emotion of lust presented itself.
Several years ago when I first started my youtube channel I would often get frustrated if I kept slipping up on my words; knowing I was increasing more and more the amount of editing I’d have to do. I would usually curse after a mess up, but I quickly found this only compounded the problem. I would feel more angry after expressing my anger and then it became even harder to read the next line smoothly. So, I decided to deliberately smile after messing up. This usually calmed the annoyance bubbling up inside me and kept me in a calm state which made it easier to read off the upcoming lines.
The James Lange theory of emotion says that our body first expresses the physiology of an emotion before the emotion presents itself in our mind. That is, the increased heart rate and blood pressure of anger manifests itself before you notice you are angry. The reason it takes people a while to “calm down” after becoming angry is that the body is still expressing the physiology of anger.
Have you ever been mad at your girlfriend and then upon expressing your chief complaint to her, your mind brings up various other things to be annoyed about? Or, when she is mad at you and you’ve sufficiently address her chief complaint, she still remains angry and begins bringing up all these other seemingly random points of annoyance from months ago?
Or, have you ever had a friend talk to you about how bad they’re feeling after a breakup …over and over again?
A 2003 paper on coping mechanisms explains that “making a plan not only guides problem solving but also calms emotion. Venting not only escalates negative emotion but also interferes with implementing instrumental actions.”
I can think of several situations that provoked a strong emotional response initially, but I never “released” or “expressed” those emotions. I just made a mental note of what needs to be done if that situation presents itself again and moved on. In fact, after I decided the appropriate plan of action, I usually just forgot about what I was bothered about. In the event that the memory and accompanying emotion arose again after “shoving” it down, the accompanying emotion was usually weaker, not stronger.
Let’s say I already was in a sad emotional state, I may have [sad memory A] then arise in my mental space that would then escalate that sadness that was already there. Does that mean [sad memory A] finally presented itself as a “stronger version” because I shoved it down? Or, did [sad memory A] arise in a stronger form because I was already in a particularly sad mental state …that escalated as I reviewed certain memories associated with sadness?
At the end of the day, I’m not saying ignoring your emotions and never discussing your problems is the way to go. I get my friends’ take on situations that bother me all the time (though rarely while talking in an emotionally charged way). Just talking with them would often help me reframe the situation and reduce its emotional charge.
So all in all, I agree mostly with VividVoid’s message except this Freudian idea that potentially all strong emotions are liable to come back and bite you in the ass if you don’t “process” them.
P.S. Workshop Nov 4th & 5th
Quick update: I appreciate all the interest in the workshop. While something is still coming, it won’t be taking place on November 4th and 5th. As I continued to prepare and organize the information into a digestible package, I realized that to really deliver something useful and impactful, it will need to be much bigger scope than just a brief workshop. So thank you for your patience - I'm working to get everything in place to make it something that is really useful and worth the time, rather than just something you attend once and never get around to implementing.
5.
4-points and an article; an article that should be echoed. Nice write-up!
2.
"(n = 12; male/female = 3/9, age = 20.0 ± 1.8 years; body mass index = 21.9 ± 5.0 kg/m²; mean ± SD) or a nontraining control group (n = 12; male/female = 2/10, age = 19.3 ± 1.6 years; body mass index = 23.8 ± 2.6 kg/m²)"
They use ml/min for VO2 while everywhere else ml/kg/min seem to be used, i.e. https://www.fitnescity.com/understanding-vo2-max
So it's hard to say for sure, however, given their BMI and presumed heights, it looks like they had "above average" VO2 already? On that basis 5%/12% sounds like a pretty huge increase.
3.
Haven't done such extreme temperatures, but on an anecdotal point I can confirm that I recall the winter cold feeling comforting back then.
May it be that depression is experienced as a form of "coldness" and the physical coldness changes the basis point for what is felt "cold"? Sort of like that experiment with putting one hand in hot water and another in cold water.
4.
Japanese "sweets" also tend to have an actual interesting "palette" to them as well, rather than just being sugar bombs. The greater focus on umami might also help?
Here I thought I couldn't miss Japan more...
On point 5, I don't disagree with the overall message but I don't think your repression examples work as a counter. I think there's a conflation here between outwardly embodying/expressing an emotion versus having awareness of it.
When watching pornography, I'm definitely not noticing my own lust and reflecting on it, I'm simply acting from it. From the brain's perspective all that's being done is the following through of a desire is being rewarded with dopamine, consciously to me the lust is still "repressed". When people talk about not repressing emotions, I don't think they're always saying you're supposed to act on those emotions and _outwardly_ express them, they're saying to be consciously aware of those emotions directly, to engage them as more of a separate coach rather than a vessel, to express them to your conscious self.
What you say you're doing around "made a mental note of what needs to be done and moved on" is I would argue a form of engagement with the emotion, it's not "repressing" it simply because you aren't acting on it. Its possible to make a note and move on without actually having reflected on the full depth of the emotion, which risks not having a plan for the full problem, and people arguing against repression are mainly arguing against the extreme form of that where none or only a small sliver of the emotion is consciously engaged with.
If I felt shame after watching pornography but I just never thought about it and moved on immediately, that'd be "repressing it", but if I made note of that feeling of shame, regardless of which way I leaned afterwards of "I shouldn't be ashamed" or "I shouldn't do this as much", I still didn't repress it.
There's absolutely folks that do talk about repression in the sense of "I want you to outwardly express your emotions", and against those people your examples work, but I don't think an observation of someone using the term "repression" necessarily means they're in that camp, versus someone using the definition I laid out above.