Archive for the ‘Psychology’ Category

The Iceman

40 Comments
Posted 29 Jan 2012 — by Todd
Category Fitness, Hormesis, Psychology

Wim Hof can raise or lower his body temperature at will, overriding his autonomic nervous system. He is able to sit in a box of ice for almost two hours. He can swim 50 meters under arctic ice. Wearing only shorts and going barefoot, he has run a marathon in Lapland and climbed through snow to the summits of Mt. Everest and Mt. Kilamanjaro. In carrying out these feats, he is able to avoid hypothermia, the normal human response to extreme cold. Monitoring by physiologists show that he keeps his core temperature constant and normal during these challenges.

Yet Wim is not a genetic freak or Tibetan monk. He is a 52 year old Dutch man without much body fat. He believes that anyone can adapt to the cold and learn to control body temperature.

In this article, I will try to answer two questions:

  • How does he do it, and can anyone really do the same?
  • Is this basically an impressive stunt, or is there any benefit to learning Wim’s methods?
I will end by reporting on a preliminary experiment of my own with cold exposure.
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Hormesis and the limbic brain

18 Comments
Posted 02 Jan 2012 — by Todd
Category Health, Hormesis, Psychology

There is a powerful way to re-program your brain that has been largely overlooked.  A way to change your relationship with eating, sleep, sex and basic emotions like fear, love and aggression.  While cognitive therapies can modify behavior, they are of questionable help in altering these basic drives.

Our drives are largely governed by two small primitive brain structures, the hypothalamus and the amygdala – shown in red in the drawing at right.  Remarkably, these two tiny structures are respectively the size of a pea and an almond — representing less than 1% of the brain’s three pounds of neural matter. Together, they constitute the control center of the paleomammalian brain–the “limbic” brain that governs our basic urges and desires as well as our homeostatic “set points” for temperature, sleep, body fat and behavioral urges like sex drive and aggression.

You can attempt to change your behavior by conscious determination and cognitive therapies.  But most attempts at intentional change are temporary and are doomed to fail in the long term because they are strongly resisted by powerful homeostatic processes encoded in our limbic brain.  Modern medicine recognizes the importance of homeostatic drives, and has developed pharmaceuticals to override them with diet pills, sleeping pills and antidepressants.  In fact, these medications do shift the balance of neurotransmitters and neural activity — at least in the short term.  But such chemical interventions are short-sighted “crutches” that promote dependency and come with side effects.  Often they exhibit  a “tolerance” effect: the brain’s control system fights back and weakens the impact of the medication.  To maintain the benefit, doses are increased, but this strategy may not always work.

This article will explain how the hypothalamus and amygdala contribute to the regulation of basic drives like eating, sleeping and sexuality, and how the amygdala can actually override the hypothalamus by enhancing the reward value of foods and other stimuli. (As I will explain, however, my take on “food reward” is different from that of Stephan Guyenet and other advocates of the Food Reward Hypothesis). This dual-control model can help explain anomalies such as obesity, addiction, and disordered sleep.

Finally,  I will provide suggestions on effective and natural ways to re-program the hypothalamus and amygdala and change your homeostatic set points, using the principle of hormesis.

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Obesity starts in the brain

66 Comments
Posted 25 Nov 2011 — by Todd
Category Diet, Health, Psychology

 

Where does obesity begin?  What drives you to eat too much or expend too little energy, and why has there been such a dramatic increase in obesity since 1980? Some recently popular explanations are the carbohydrate / insulin hypothesis (CIH), singling out the prevalence of carbohydrates in the diet, and the food reward hypothesis (FRH), putting the primary blame on the availability of “hyper-palatable” food.

In this post I will present evidence for new paradigm, which I call the  Hypothalamic Hypothesis (HH).  I think it provides a better explanation for the facts of obesity than the CIH and FRH theories, and leads to some different advice about how best to lose weight.

Some recent research suggests that obesity starts with specific physical changes to the brain. Appetite is regulated by the hypothalamus, particularly the arcuate nucleus (ARC), ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) and lateral hypothalamus (LH). It turns out that two very specific changes to the brain cause us to get get hungry, overeat, burn less fat, and gain weight. And these changes to particular brain structures come about as a result of what you eat, eating frequency, and to some extent your activity level. The problem of obesity or overweight is often portrayed as a single problem, but it is really two problems, and each type of obesity corresponds to one type of brain alteration. Failure to distinguish these two types of obesity has resulted in much confusion. In part, the confusion comes about because these two types of obesity frequently occur together in the same individual, although one type is usually dominant. If you understand this, and you understand the role your brain plays, you can become more successful at losing excess weight.

I’ll spend a little time explaining the theory, provide some specific suggestions for how it can help you fine tune your weight loss program, and try to point out why I think the Hypothalamic Hypothesis overcomes some weaknesses of the other obesity theories.

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Voluntary stress

6 Comments
Posted 22 Sep 2011 — by Todd
Category Hormesis, Psychology, Stoicism

When does stress help you and when does it hurt you? There is no doubt that stresses of the wrong sort can lead to anxiety, emotional turmoil — and eventually depression and diseases like atherosclerosis and cancer.  Yet a central theme of this blog is that certain stresses are “hormetic”: at the right dose and frequency, stress can actually make you stronger and more resilient.  The many posts on this blog illustrate how stress can be channelled to build muscle, retrain appetite, improve eyesight, strengthen immunity, defeat allergies, and tame addictions and anger.  Judicious exposure to stress can even promote joy and excellent health.

But one can come away from the study of hormesis with the misleading impression that it’s all about adjusting the level and timing of stressors to induce an appropriate adaptive or defensive response.  In this article, I would like to focus on a frequently overlooked ingredient in hormesis:  the role of intention, attitude and voluntary choice.  If you omit this ingredient, you are leaving out an important element of the way that stress helps you become stronger.

Voluntary, deliberate exposure to stress can be particularly effective in providing psychological benefits, including overcoming anxieties, obsessions and phobias, and vanquishing appetite cravings, addictions. Beyond overcoming such self-defeating tendencies, deliberate exposure works to unleash confidence and generate a sense of joy and accomplishment.

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Does tasty food make us fat?

15 Comments
Posted 09 Sep 2011 — by Todd
Category Diet, Psychology

Are we getting fatter because there is just a lot more irresistibly delicious food around us?  Does that explain the obesity crisis?

That theory has been around the block but it is in fashion again.   In 2009, David Kessler’s book, “The End of Overeating” put forward the thesis that food in contemporary American food has been deliberately engineered–by adding fat, sugar and salt–to exploit our neurochemistry and hijack our free will.

More recently, one of the luminaries of the Paleo movement, Stephan Guyenet, has formulated his own version of this theory, in a compelling series on his Whole Health Source blog, arguing that  ”food reward” is a main driver of obesity. His prescription:  eat a bland diet. Guyenet’s talk about this at the Ancestral Health Symposium last month is the buzz of the paleosphere.

But I think the theory is wrong, for the simple reason that it too blindly takes correlation for causation. And in doing so, it gets the causal direction mostly wrong. We don’t get fat because food has become too tasty. Rather, to a large extent, it is the metabolism and dietary habits of the obese that make food taste too good to resist, leading to insatiable appetites. And the good news is that we are not consigned to blandness.  If we eat and exercise sensibly, we can eat flavorful, delicious foods and enjoy life, without packing on the pounds.

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Stop procrastinating! Use the Premack principle

7 Comments
Posted 19 Dec 2010 — by Todd
Category Psychology, Time Management

A lot of people have problems with procrastination, myself included.

We start off the day with a list of things that need to get done, and by the end of the day those plans are often hijacked and many tasks remain untouched. To some extent, that’s understandable and normal. We can always point to legitimate interruptions — an urgent assignment from the boss, a sick kid, an unexpected visitor. And of course there’s ultimate excuse:  In the complex new business environment, you have to stay flexible and go with the flow!  Can’t be rigid!

But be honest:  a lot of the time, it’s just because we prefer to procrastinate.

For those with office jobs or self-employed knowlege workers, connectivity is the norm. But this comes with a new kind of temptation: cyberslacking. It’s so easy to take a peek at an interesting blog, check your Twitter or Facebook, play a quick online game between phone calls.  Before you know it, you’re wasting a lot of time.

There are a lot of tasks that we tend to put off at work.  Difficult, undefined tasks like planning or starting a writing project. Boring or mind-numbing tasks like tabulating numbers. Stressful tasks the require us to deal with unpleasant people or situations.

Think about phone calls. There’s that phone call you’ve been meaning to make to resolve an issue you just don’t want to deal with. Or that client, associate or relative who likes to boast, berate you, or bore you with infinite detail. That call is just not going to be any fun. Easier to put it off.

At home, that storage room or garage stuffed full of old junk just sits there all year. There are all the little projects you dread doing–like bills, taxes, repairs, or organizing the closet.

I think you get the picture.  If your life is perfect and you can’t relate to any of this, just stop reading here. Read More

Willpower: How to get it

3 Comments
Posted 16 Dec 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet, Psychology, Uncategorized

This week I wrote a guest post about willpower for Julien Smith’s blog.  It synthesizes a number of the ideas on this blog about deconditioning urges and emotions that tend to undermine our resolve to make significant changes in life.

How to break through a plateau

14 Comments
Posted 19 Sep 2010 — by Todd
Category Diet, Fitness, Psychology

You’ve embarked on a new weight loss diet or fitness program. You’ve read a book, become inspired, signed up for a program or health club and what’s more — it’s working.  For the first week, two weeks, a month, the weight is coming off, you’re hitting the gym on a regular schedule. You even drop a size or two and garner some compliments from friends.

And then…progress stalls. You’re still eating the same foods, faithfully completing your workouts, but your weight loss stalls, perhaps the scale even goes up a few pounds. The progress you make at the gym similarly maxes out…you can’t lift any more weight, your running speed or distance maxes out…maybe even some soreness or injury sets you back a bit. You’ve hit the dreaded plateau.  Sometimes it lasts a few weeks and progress resumes. But it can last months. And it saps your morale because you are not getting any more return on your invested effort. In all likelihood, you give up or cut back, your discipline withers. Your weight goes back up, maybe adding a few pounds on top of where you started, and you cut back on or cut out your exercise program. The genie is back in the bottle.

What causes plateaus?  Are they inevitable endpoints in any effort to make progress? Or are they at best temporary way-posts or resting points that you can move beyond with the right approach?  The school of thought that says that plateaus are unavoidable indicators of biological limits is called the Set Point theory. I think that the Set Point theory is wrong, and that there is a reliable way to push past plateaus to bring about substantial weight loss and improved fitness.

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The opponent-process theory of emotion

9 Comments
Posted 04 May 2010 — by Todd
Category Hormesis, Psychology, Stoicism

There is a remarkable psychological theory that explains the paradox of why so often our pleasures turn into problematic addictions and, conversely, why our stressful experiences frequently lead to sustained good feelings and even happiness. This under-appreciated theory was developed in the 1970s by behavioral psychologist Richard Solomon of the University of Pennsylvania. He published his theory and findings in 1980 in the journal American Psychologist, as a seminal paper, “The Opponent-Process Theory of Acquired Motivation: The Costs of Pleasure and the Benefits of Pain”. Solomon’s theory has been verified experimentally with animals and humans, and reflects a sophisticated understanding of the physiology of the nervous system. It provides a framework that has been used to explain behaviors and emotional experiences in areas as diverse as addiction, thrill-seeking, love, job satisfaction, and cravings for food or exercise.  I believe it can also explain the psychological benefits of cold showers that I have described in a separate post here, and why these benefits increase with time and repetition. I would urge followers of this blog to read Solomon’s paper, via the above hyperlink. It provides many important insights regarding how to effectively and reliably use challenge and stress to increase mental and emotional resilience, while maximizing your motivation and enjoyment in doing so. In this post, I will explore Solomon’s theory in some detail, and suggest some practical strategies for how to enhance pleasure and satisfaction in everyday activities, while avoiding the addictive side of pleasure.

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Overcoming addiction

5 Comments
Posted 14 Apr 2010 — by Todd
Category Psychology, Rehabilitation

One of the most difficult challenges to overcome in life is getting out from under the grip of an addiction, whether it be drug, alcohol or nicotine dependency, a food addiction or eating disorder, or compulsive activities such as gambling, shopping, pornography or Internet addiction. Taken to the extreme, addictions can become highly self-destructive, antisocial or criminal activities such as self-mutilation, kleptomania, or pyromania. At the other end of the scale are ordinary activities, such as exercise or work, which in normal degree are healthful but when excessive can become addictive. There are also minor compulsions which might best be considered bad habits rather than addictions, such as nail biting, hair pulling and the like. Broadly speaking, an addiction can be any habitual behavior which takes over one’s life, interferes with social relations and personal achievement, and threatens one’s autonomy. There are many ideas about what addiction is and how to treat it, but unfortunately success rates are low and relapse rates are high. However, there is a recent approach to snuffing out addiction based on the emerging sciences of neuroplasticity and behavior modification, which holds out the promise of lasting change. The approach is called cue exposure theory, and it goes against the conventional wisdom. I will discuss it after first reviewing the more conventional approaches. And I’m going to do something else unusual at the end of this particular blog post: I will apply this methodology to an “addiction” of my own and follow my progress in the Discussion Forum associated with this blog.

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